‘Single’ and Alone: Tibetan Youth in Exile in India

Abstract

This article seeks to understand the experience of Tibetan youth in exile in India on three interlinked registers: the first is premised on the context in which they are in exile. The second register examines their experience of this process itself. Finally, the article seeks to understand how youth deal with their experience of being ‘single’ (being separated from family left behind in Tibet) as well as of being ‘alone’ in an unfamiliar and alien context. For these youth, the quest for recovery of self that appears to have been traumatised through physical separation both from the family and from the national territory is located in the pursuit of academic knowledge, certification and employment opportunities. Based on interviews conducted with Tibetan youth in Delhi and Dharamshala in northern India, this article also seeks to engage with Agamben’s idea of the ‘bare life’ and simultaneously with understanding the possibilities of human agency in the face of loss of statehood and personal freedom.