Despite protests by the Chinese government, the Dalai Lama Dalai Lama is going ahead with plans to visit a heavily militarized Tibetan Buddhist area in northeast India that is the focus of an intense territorial dispute between China and India, a Tibetan official in India said Thursday.

The Dalai Lama, 74, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, is expected to visit the state of Arunachal Pradesh from Nov. 8 to Nov. 15, the official, who asked to remain anonymous, said in an e-mail message. China considers the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala, to be a separatist who advocates Tibetan independence. The Dalai Lama insists he wants only true autonomy for Tibet, which the Chinese Army invaded in 1951.

Tenzin Taklha, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama, said in an e-mail last month that the Dalai Lama would visit the region because he had received “a number of invitations” since he last visited in 2003. “There is a large Buddhist population that is keen to have his holiness give teachings,” the spokesman said.

The Dalai Lama was scheduled to visit Arunachal Pradesh last year but canceled his trip. Some people in the area say he was denied permission by the Indian government, possibly due to pressure from China. Tenzin Taklha said the Dalai Lama postponed his visit so as not to disrupt elections taking place in India around that time.

The status of Arunachal Pradesh is one of the most intractable diplomatic issue between China and India. The dispute centers on the mountainous, mist-cloaked region of Tawang, a thickly forested area bordering Bhutan and Chinese-ruled Tibet that is dominated by the ethnic Monpa people, who practice Tibetan Buddhism and speak a language very similar to Tibetan.

The Chinese government says Tawang was once part of Tibet, and so belongs to China. The Indian government says a self-governing Tibet signed a treaty with British-ruled India in 1914 that ceded Tawang to India on the condition that London recognize Tibetan autonomy.

The British agreed at the time to acknowledge what they called the suzerainty of Tibet. But last year, the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, retracted that recognition, saying it was a holdover from a colonial era and thus betrayed Tibetans for the sake of Labour convenience.

Perhaps inevitably, the Dalai Lama has taken sides in the China-India dispute. Last year, he announced for the first time that Arunachal Pradesh belonged to India. Tenzin Taklha said the Tibetan government recognizes the borders designated by the 1914 treaty, called the Simla Convention.

Meanwhile, India has been adding troops and fighter jets to the region. Indian military leaders have feared an invasion there by China ever since China and India fought a border war over Himalayan territories in 1962. The Chinese Army occupied Tawang then and only retreated after securing the Aksai Chin region north of the western Himalayas, which India claims.

The Dalai Lama has deep interests in Arunachal Pradesh. India’s most important Tibetan Buddhist monastery is in Tawang, and the Dalai Lama appoints the abbot there. The 6th Dalai Lama, an ethnic Monpa, came from the area. The current Dalai Lama prayed at the Tawang monastery as he passed into exile in India in 1959, fleeing the Chinese suppression of an uprising in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

The Dalai Lama visited Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its territory, on Aug. 31 after being invited there by Taiwanese politicians opposed to reunification with China.