Tibetan leader in exile, Dalai Lama Thursday said Tibetans enjoy freedom in India, but there is a lot of control in their own country.

“We Tibetans became refugees… In our own country, there is a lot of control, but here in India we have freedom…” Tibetan spiritual leader the 14th Dalai Lama said upon his arrival in Siliguri on Thursday.

He will be delivering teachings to his devotees at Siliguri’s Sed-Gyued Monastery where he is visiting after a gap of 13 years. Dalai Lama visited the monastery after completing a three-day tour of Gangtok, the state capital of Sikkim.

Around 20,000 devotees have congregated from Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Dooars, and neighbouring States such as Assam, Bihar, and Sikkim, including Nepal and Bhutan, to listen to two-hour-long teaching on Bodhicitta, the main cause of Buddha, by Dalai Lama.

After fleeing from Tibet, Dalai Lama has been living in India since 1959.

He left Tibet after he sensed a threat to his life from the Chinese authority in the wake of the Tibetan uprising. Former Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru offered the Dalai Lama to set up the Government of Tibet in Exile in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh.