Many Tibetans in this northern Indian Himalayan town of Dharamshala say they have endured enough pain of living outside their homeland and they now need more radical methods to achieve freedom.

"We can't leave everything for his holiness, I think everybody has to participate -- and participate in a very active manner," said Topden Tsering, a 25-year-old who has never seen Tibet.

Forty years ago on March 8, 1959, the Chinese government imposed martial law on the restive Tibetan capital of Lhasa. Two days later, Lhasa rose in a brief but futile revolt against China's communist rulers.

A week after the uprising, the Tibetans' spiritual god-king, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, fled at the head of 80,000 refugees to exile in India. Thousands more have followed, and the refugee trickle continues to this day.

On Wednesday the Dalai Lama, the 1989 peace laureate, will mark the 40th anniversary of the uprising with a special address in Dharamshala, where he is likely to stress the need to carry forward the struggle peacefully and to abstain from violence.

"It's 40 years of living without a country-- we don't look forward to many more anniversaries like this," said Tenzin Chokey, 22, who works as a volunteer for the Tibetan government in exile.

While the Dalai Lama preaches peace and non-violence, the regular inflow of Tibetan refugees -- as many as 200 or 300 every month -- and the moving stories they bring, are raising pressure on the spiritual leader to get tough.

As stories of torture and harassment back home mount, a rift is developing within the refugee community -- between those who support the Dalai Lama's "middle-path" seeking autonomy under Chinese rule and those who want nothing less than independence.

"His holiness says that 40 years is a very short time in the life of a nation, but for us it is a very long time. I long to see my country in my own lifetime," said Tenzin Cheodon, a 27-year-old Tibetan who has spent all his life in India.

In June last year several members of the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) were forced to call off a "Hunger strike to death" in New Delhi demanding independence, after Indian police intervention.

One demonstrator, Thupten Ngodup, 50, committed suicide by setting himself on fire as the police moved in.

In January, a branch of the TYC forced its way into the Chinese embassy in New Delhi, sparking a protest from the Chinese foreign ministry.

"There have been hunger strikes, self-immolation in India and there have been incidents of bomb blasts in Lhasa. This impatience among the youths is worrying us. His holiness is very concerned about this," said Tashi Wangdi, the interior minister of Tibet's government-in-exile, told Reuters.

"The international support for the Tibetan cause is there because of the Dalai Lama's path of truth and non-violence, and that is the only path that can take us further," Wangdi said.

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Last updated: 9-Mar-99