New Delhi (AsiaNews) – Just as Xi Jinping is set to start a new state visit in New Delhi after seven years, the film 4 Rivers 6 Ranges by director Shenpenn Khymsar, who is of Tibetan origin, opened in Indian theatres today.
It tells the story of the Tibetan resistance and the 14th Dalai Lama’s flight to India in 1959. China’s reaction was immediate: state television accused the film of offering a "fictitious rewrite” of Tibetan history and the director of using cinema as a tool for separatist propaganda.
For Khymsar, the film concerns a part of India's contemporary history.
“This film is geopolitically also very important for India, with our perennial geopolitical conflicts with China, with the Dalai Lama living in India and the Indian army having a special force called the Special Frontier Force,” the director explained in an interview published on 31 August by Cinema Express.
According to the director, the story told in the film is directly linked to the origins of the Special Frontier Force, reflecting his perspective on the connection between the Tibetan resistance and subsequent Indian security structures.
The 1959 flight
The film's title translates the Tibetan expression Chushi Gangdruk, which means "Four rivers, six mountain ranges", a reference to the armed Tibetan movement formed in 1958 to oppose Chinese control over Tibet.
The film follows a group of fighters accompanying the 14th Dalai Lama during his escape from Tibet to the Indian border.
The flight began on 17 March 1959, when the Dalai Lama left Lhasa. On 31 March, he crossed the Indian border and reached the territory of what was then the North-East Frontier Agency, now Arunachal Pradesh.
The Indian government, led at the time by Jawaharlal Nehru, decided to grant asylum to him and his entourage.
The events depicted in the film are thus part of the history of independent India and of the relationship, never fully resolved since then, between New Delhi, Beijing, and the Tibetan issue.
Indeed, the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India in 1959 helped give rise to a Tibetan exile community that still regards the country as the primary centre of its political, religious, and cultural life.
Under Nehru, the Indian government did not frame the decision to host the Dalai Lama as a move in favour of Tibetan independence.
In parliament, the then-prime minister emphasised that India’s policy focused on the country’s security and integrity, driven by both a desire to maintain friendly relations with China and a "deep sympathy" for the Tibetan people.
An act of remembrance and truth
“I wanted a wider audience to see the film and raise awareness. And kind of hopefully have some discourse,” explained the director. He had the film dubbed into Hindi specifically to reach a broader audience and lamented the lack of Indian films dedicated to the conflict with China, noting that the country’s cinema has focused far more often on Pakistan.
The bond between Tibet and India also emerges from Khymsar’s personal story. Born in Darjeeling, West Bengal, after his parents fled Tibet, he grew up partly in the region's hills.
Not far from these hills a concentration of Chinese military presence can be found, directly north of Sikkim, about 134 kilometres from the Siliguri Corridor, the narrow strip of land connecting northeast India to the rest of the country.
In a commentary published on 20 August, the Chinese state broadcaster CGTN described 4 Rivers 6 Ranges as a “fictitious rewrite of Xizang's history”, using the Chinese name for the Tibet region.
The channel accused the director of engaging in separatist propaganda, citing statements Khymsar had made on social media asserting that Tibet “was and will never be a part of China.”
Beijing has long portrayed Tibet as an inseparable part of China and considers the issue an internal affair; however, Khymsar rejects the notion that his work is merely a political tool.
“This film is an act of remembrance, responsibility, and truth-telling,” he declared.
His goal, he noted, is to showcase the resistance and sacrifice of the Tibetan people and to tell a story. His “aim is not division, but of awareness and dialogue,” so that younger generations can understand the intertwined histories of the peoples involved and the human cost of these events.
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