Mongolians who were originally studying in Tibet in the 1950s followed the Tibetans and fled to India after the 1950 invasion of Tibet and the 1959 Tibetan uprising. Many of them settled in Kalimpong, West Bengal. The Dilowa Hutukhtu maintained contact with them. American scholar Owen Lattimore suggested to then-Defence Minister of India Krishna Menon that they could be valuable sources of intelligence against the People's Republic of China about conditions in Tibet.