Following a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule in Lhasa and its violent suppression, Tenzin Gyatso fled across the Himalayas into India, where the Indian government granted him asylum and he established a government in exile at Dharamsala, a hill town that has since become the effective capital of the Tibetan diaspora and the seat of the Central Tibetan Administration. Over the following decades he built an international profile unmatched by any previous Dalai Lama, traveling constantly, meeting with world leaders, religious figures and scientists, and presenting Tibetan Buddhism to global audiences in terms that stressed compassion, non-violence and a stated commitment to genuine autonomy for Tibet rather than full independence, a position, the Middle Way approach, that has drawn criticism from more separatist voices within the exile community even as it earned him the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy.
In 2011 he took the historically unprecedented step of formally transferring the Dalai Lama's traditional political authority to a democratically elected Sikyong, or political leader, of the Central Tibetan Administration, retaining only the religious dimension of the office and stating explicitly that this separation was meant to secure democratic continuity for Tibetans regardless of what happens with the search for a future Dalai Lama, a succession question complicated further by the Chinese state's own competing claim to authority over recognizing his reincarnation.