Surkhang Wangchen Gelek, born in 1910 to the aristocratic family of Surkhang in Lhasa. His parents were Surkhang Wangchen Tseten, and Lhagyari Tseten Chozom. His mother was from the family of Lhagyari, descended from the Royal Family lineage of Songtsen Gampo.
He was only about 15 or 16 wen he joined government service, started as a junior #apprentice, tsituk. he was initially the officer in charge of flour. He was then appointed as kadrung, the assistant secretary to the Kashag.
Photo courtesy: TransHimalayan Heritage
In 1933 he was the domey chikyab, the assistant to the Governor general of eastern Tibet, and then general, in charge of 1500 men in Kham. In August 1943, at the age of thirty three, he joined the Kashag and became a Cabinet Minister, or kalon. (In photo 4th from left)
In 1950, the young Fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso was installed as head of state. In May 1951, the Seventeen Point Agreement, which ended Tibet’s independence, was signed in Beijing. In September 1951, the People’s Liberation Army marched into #Lhasa.
1954 saw the creation of the people’s group called the Mimang Tsongdu, the first popular movement in Tibetan History, led by traders and lower-ranking Tibetan govt. officials who thought that many senior government officials were either weak or colluding with the Chinese.
Kalong Surkhang supported the Mimang Tsongdu and gave them Financial assistance, believing that the protest movement would give the Tibetan government some Leverage over the Chinese.
In March 1959, as the Tibetans erupted into an uprising against the Chinese, the Dalai Lama, his family and senior officials escaped Lhasa and made their way to India, where they sought asylum.
In 1961 when the Kashag was reshuffled, Surkhang was not given a portfolio. Instead he was made an advisor and in response he handed in his resignation.
In 1963 he moved with his family to the United States. In June 1964, he joined the University of Washington in Seattle under a Rockefeller Foundation grant to work with Professor Turrell Wylie on the Inner Asia Project of the Far Eastern Department.
In 1972 he went to Taiwan. His former brother-in-law Yuthok Tashi Dhondup was living there at the time. The Taiwanese government requested the two former cabinet ministers to operate a Kashag Office to represent the Tibetan people under the Chinese Nationalist regime.Surkhang and Yuthok refused to open a Kashag Office and instead opened the Kalon Office which was to function as a cultural center. The office became a controversial issue, especially when the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission became involved. As the two former ministers prepared to close the Office, Surkhang died of a heart failure on January 3, 1977.