Dalai Lama considers himself 'son of India'

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama considers himself as the son of India and he was very happy here.

"A total of 54 years I am having Indian rice, chapati, tea. Now I consider myself as the son of India, son of the soil," the Dalai Lama said here today while interacting with reporters here.

"I am very happy," said the spiritual leader who was here to inaugurate a five-day Festival of Tibetan Art and Culture and deliver the First LBS Founders' Commemorative Lecture on 'A Human Approach to Peace and the Individual'.

Yesterday, he addressed an Interfaith Conclave on Peace and Religious Harmony here.

Following the invasion of Tibet by China, the Dalai Lama had passed through Guwahati in 1959 after his escape from his country via the Khenzimani Pass in Arunachal Pradesh with 80,000 Tibetans.