Namgyal Lhamo Taklha is a member of the Tibetan community living in exile. Between 1988 and 1994 she was elected to the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration and held the post of Health Secretary in the Central Tibetan Administration Cabinet based in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

Biography

Namgyal was born on 5 July 1942 to aristocratic family in

Lhasa Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; bo, text=ལྷ་ས, translation=Place of Gods) is the urban center of the prefecture-level city, prefecture-level Lhasa (prefecture-level city), Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Regio ...

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

. He father was Dundul Namgyal Tsarong. She is the granddaughter of Dasang Dadul Tsaron, Commander General of Tibet and a close aid and diplomat of the 13th Dalai Lama. While growing up she attended schools in Tibet and in 1951 at the age of nine she was sent to Mount Hermon School in

Darjeeling Darjeeling (, , ) is a town and municipality in the northernmost region of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it has an average elevation of . To the west of Darjeeling lies the easternmost province of Nepal, ...

, India.

Marriage

She married Lobsang Samten, a brother of the 14th Dalai Lama in August 1962 in Darjeeling, India.

Career

Namgyal has held a number of positions associated with the Central Tibetan Administration and

14th Dalai Lama The 14th Dalai Lama (spiritual name Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, known as Tenzin Gyatso (Tibetan: བསྟན་འཛིན་རྒྱ་མཚོ་, Wylie: ''bsTan-'dzin rgya-mtsho''); né Lhamo Thondup), known as ...

, who is also her brother-in-law. In the early 1960s she worked as a translator and interpreter at the

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...

based bureau of the

, she then took up a post at the

Tibet Bureau (Geneva) The Tibet Bureau in Geneva is the official representation of the 14th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile for Central and Eastern Europe. It was established with approval of the Swiss Federal Government in 1964. The Bureau is responsi ...

in Switzerland between 1966 and 1972. In the 1970s she was based in the United States working for a Tibetan Arts and Crafts store in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. She then returned to duties at the

Tibetan government-in-exile The Central Tibetan Administration (, , ), often referred to as the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, is a non-profit political organization based in Dharamshala, India. Its organization is modeled after an Parliamentary system, elective parliament ...

as a translator and director of the

Men-Tsee-Khang Men-Tsee-Khang (Tibetan:བོད་ཀྱི་སྨན་རྩིས་ཁང་། Wylie: ''bod kyi sman rtsis khang''), also known as Tibetan Medical and Astro Institute, is a charitable institution based in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, ...

, also known as the Tibetan Medical and Astrology Institute, between 1986 and 1988. In 1988 she was elected to the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration where she held position of Secretary of Health until 1994.

Book published

In 2012 she published an autobiography ''Born in Lhasa'' in which she describes her experiences of growing up in Tibet prior to the Annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China.

References

{{Authority control Tibetan politicians 1942 births Living people People from Lhasa Members of the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration Tibetan emigrants to India Representatives of Offices of Tibet 14th Dalai Lama