Refugees In India Research Articles

Tuberculosis among Tibetan refugees in India

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem among Tibetan refugees in India. To determine the incidence of and risk factors for TB among Tibetan refugees in India, data on TB were included in the demographic and health surveillance project carried out by the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala from 1994 to 1996. Risk factor and morbidity data were determined by baseline and monthly follow-up home visits, and reported TB was confirmed by clinic records. The surveillance covered ∼90% of the refugees in civilian settlements and ∼70% of the monks in monasteries. In the settlement population, TB incidence was extraordinarily high in the settlement population, 10.9/1000 in 1994, but decreased to 7.7/1000 in 1996. Incidence rates varied between regions, age groups, and occupational groups, being highest in the Doon Valley (14.8/1000), in sweater sellers (16.7/1000), and in the unemployed (23/1000). Among monastery monks, incidence rates were even higher than in the settlements, averaging 17.2/1000 over the 3-year period. The proportion of patients without sputum results and variation in the proportion of smear positive cases indicated inadequate use and poor quality of laboratory services. India's Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program, based on WHO-recommendations, has been highly successful in pilot districts and is being extended to the whole country. This program should be adopted promptly by the health care system serving Tibetan refugees and vigorously implemented among the refugee population.

A social and demographic study of Tibetan refugees in India

The social and demographic characteristics of ∼65,000 Tibetan refugees in India were determined from data collected 1994–1996. Approximately 55,000 refugees were living in 37 settlements widely distributed around India. The remaining 10,000 refugees were monks living in monasteries associated with some of the settlements, mostly in the south of India. In the settlements, a community-based surveillance system was established and data were collected by trained community health workers in house to house visits. In the monasteries, data were collected by the community health workers in monthly interviews with a designated liaison monk at each monastery. These data indicated little immigration of new civilian refugees in the past 10 years into the settlements but a steady influx of new monks into the monasteries. The age distribution in the settlements showed a prominent mode in the 15–25 year age range, a declining birth rate, and an increasing proportion of elderly. In general, refugees born in India were educated through secondary school, while refugees born in Tibet were often illiterate. The principle occupations were education involving 27% (including students), farming, 16%, and sweater selling, 6.5%; another 6.5% were too young or too old for employment, and only 2.4% were unemployed. The overall crude birth rate was determined to be relatively low at 16.8/1000, although this may underestimate the true figure. Infant mortality varied from 20 to 35/1000 live births in the different regions. Child vaccination programs cover less than 50% of the population. The burden of illness in this society was mainly characterized by diarrhoea, skin infections, respiratory infections, fevers, and, among the elderly, joint pains and cardiovascular problems. Although calculated death rates were unrealistically low, due to under-reporting, causes of death, derived from “verbal autopsies”, were mainly cancer, tuberculosis, accidents, cirrhosis and heart disease in order of decreasing frequency. Overall, the sociodemographic and health characteristics of this population appear to be in transition from those typical of the least developed countries to those typical of middle income and more affluent societies.

Western conceptualizations and eastern experience: A cross‐cultural study of traumatic stress reactions among Tibetan refugees in India

This study investigated the nature and impact of traumatic experiences among Tibetan refugees in India. It explored the applicability of western conceptualizations of reactions to traumatic events among this cultural group. A randomly selected sample of refugee camp students was assessed on measures of psychological and physical complaints, and on impact as well as severity of traumatic experiences. Respondents had experienced multiple traumatic events. The majority reported ongoing health problems. More than half demonstrated symptoms of intrusion-avoidance. Those with more traumatic experiences reported more symptoms of anxiety and depression (psychologically and, particularly, somatically manifested). Cultural differences in types of experienced traumatic events and manifestations of distress are discussed, as are implications for cross-cultural trauma research using western conceptualizations and instruments.

Les flux de réfugiés en Inde

The Flows of Refugees in India. During the last fifty years, India has on several occasions greeted refugees on its soil. The official stand with regard to these refugees has evolved with the passing years. After the Partition, displaced Hindu and Sikh populations from Pakistan welcomed since their exile seemed to emphasize the excesses inherent to a religious State in opposition to the Indian secular polity. At the end of the fifties, Tibetan refugees were the embodiment of Chinese perfidy of which India was also victim. On the other hand, India reluctantly rapatriated members of Indian communities in Burma and Sri Lanka. From the early seventies, refugees are more and more perceived as a destabilizing factor, with a potential for exacerbating internal ethnic conflicts, competing with indigeneous people for scarce resources, or even threatening the law and order. Consequently, the policy of the Indian government, once its strategic objectives have been fulfilled, is to work towards a satisfactory repatriation of the displaced populations in their native lands.

The Legal Condition of Refugees in India

The Legal Condition of Refugees in India

Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory

There has been an explosion of interest in the concept of citizenship among political theorists. In 1978, it could be confidently stated that "the concept of citizenship has gone out of fashion among political thinkers" (van Gunsteren 1978, p. 9). Fifteen years later, citizenship has become the "buzz word" among thinkers on all points of the political spectrum (Heater 1990, p. 293; Vogel and Moran 1991, p. x). There are a number of reasons for this renewed interest in citizenship in the 1990s. At the level of theory, it is a natural evolution in political discourse because the concept of citizenship seems to integrate the demands ofjustice and community membership-the central concepts of political philosophy in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. Citizenship is intimately linked to ideas of individual entitlement on the one hand and of attachment to a particular community on the other. Thus it may help clarify what is really at stake in the debate between liberals and communitarians. Interest in citizenship has also been sparked by a number of recent political events and trends throughout the world-increasing voter apathy and long-term welfare dependency in the United States, the resurgence of nationalist movements in Eastern Europe, the stresses created by an increasingly multicultural and multiracial population in Western Europe, the backlash against the welfare state in Thatcher's England, the failure of environmental policies that rely on voluntary citizen cooperation, and so forth. These events have made clear that the health and stability of a modern democracy depends, not only on the justice of its 'basic structure' but also on the qualities and attitudes of its citizens:' for example,

Sri Lankan Tamil Refugees in India

A poet once described Sri Lanka as a tear dropped from the Indian face. Today the land, awash with unending violence, epitomizes this description. The ravaged island and its link to India remains unbrokenby the presence of approximately 200,000 Sri Lankan refugees in India. The disaimination and violence by the Sri Lankan state against the Tamils throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s form the backdrop to this refugee situation. As the crisis deepened, small numbers of Sri Lankan Tamil educated elite migrated. The majority went to the developed West, the rest to neighbouring India. The expatriate community swelled and would in time provide sustenance to the movement. In 1983, the Sinhaleseviolence against the Tamils and Tamil insurgency resulted in the displacement of all communities in the north and the east. These induded the Tamils, Tamil-speaking MuslimsandSinhalese settledin the east. India, for security reasons, could not overlooksuch political developments. Its fears were not unfounded, for the next step was the exodus+mssing the narrow Palk Straits-into India. All the refugees who came to India in 1983 took refuge in the state of Tamil Nadu, with a population of 55,638,318 (1991 provisional census). By the early part of 1993, there were an estimated 200,000 Sri Lankan Tamils. There is no exad number available as many do not register, despite local government orders. It is easy to remain undetected with many refugees living outside the camps.

Refugee cross-cultural adjustment: Tibetans in India

There are currently over 15 million refugees displaced around the globe. These uprooted individuals face the crucial problems of placement and adjustment, the latter being the focus of this article. Specifically, Tibetan refugees in India have necessarily accepted the challenge of adjustment, given the different culture, language, religion, and ethnic background encountered—a situation characteristic of host communities in general. Their patterns of social organization in exile have made the Tibetans uniquely well-adjusted, with notable economic and social gains. This paper illustrates how the institutions of religion, the economy, education, and government have facilitated the adjustment of Tibetans to their environment in India, allowing them to serve as a model for other international refugees.

Perceived life quality of older and younger tibetans

Tibetans have enjoyed a reputation for contentment and a jovial disposition. This study examines the extent to which this positive outlook on life persists despite their 25-year stay as refugees in India, and the transferability of this positive outlook to first-generation, Indian-born Tibetans. With this in mind, older Tibetan refugees (N = 45) and younger Tibetan refugees (N = 45) residing in Himachal Pradesh in India were administered the Life Quality Scale (Q.O.L.). As expected, younger Tibetan refugees shared significant characteristics on the Q.O.L. scale with older Tibetans. Similarities and differences in the outlook of the two age groups are examined.

A Culture in Exile: Tibetan Refugees in India

A Culture in Exile: Tibetan Refugees in India

Propositions on Citizenship

Much has recently been said about "new citizenship," although often in an unclear way. The turn of phrase may be only a gimmick, as was, recently, the "new philosophy" or that kind of auberge espagnole where you have to bring your own food, also known as "la nouvelle cusine." Most of all, it risks soon passing out of fashion with the ups and downs of French socialism. Yet whatever the future redistribution of political power may be, several of the problems raised by discussions of the "new citizenship" will still have to be faced. These include racism and the status of immigration (or rather of "the communities that have issued from immigration") in France. Nevertheless, the form in which these problems will be faced and the chances of finding a solution to them may be singularly transformed depending on whether dominant parties confront or fail to confront certain fundamental alternatives. "Citizenship" (in Greek politeia) is a concept as old as politics itself and which has always marked two distinctions: it is bound to the existence of a state and therefore to a principle of public sovereignty, and it is bound to the acknowledged exercise of an individual "capacity" to participate in political decisions. This is why the dimension of equality-with all the problems of definition which it poses and the mystifications which it may conceal-is always present in the constitution of a concept of citizenship, even when the latter is paradoxically combined with a hierarchical principle and with caste distinctions (as seen in the difference between "active citizens" and "passive citizens" in the nineteenth century). Beyond the conflict between citizenship and allegiance to an actual or transcendentally legitimate state, history still shows that this concept has no definition that is fixed for all time. It has always been at stake in struggles and the object of transformations. Not only because, as Aristotle has already shown, each political regime builds the distribution of powers into a specific defintion of citizenship but also because, in juridically (or quasijuridically) delimiting a certain type of "human being" and a certain model of rights and duties, this definition crystalizes the constitutive social relations of a society at the level of the individual.

Controversies over Tibet: China versus India,1947-49

To the present Beijing Government, Tibet constitutes an integral part of China, officially known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region. The 20th anniversary of its founding was celebrated on 1 September 1985. However, to the 14th Dalai Lama (the former spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet), who has been living in exile in India since 1959, and to thousands of Tibetans living as refugees in India and other parts of the world, the current status of Tibet is open to contention, and as such remains an unresolved issue.

3: Keeping Refugee Status: A Tibetan Perspective

Center for Migration Studies special issuesVolume 5, Issue 2 p. 54-65 Free Access 3: Keeping Refugee Status: A Tibetan Perspective Dorsh Marie de Voe, Dorsh Marie de VoeSearch for more papers by this author Dorsh Marie de Voe, Dorsh Marie de VoeSearch for more papers by this author First published: March 1987 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2050-411X.1987.tb00494.xCitations: 1AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat References Cited Avedon, John F. 1980 An Interview with the Dalai Lama. New York: Littlebird. Avedon, John F. 1984 In Exile From the Land of Snows. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Bureau of His Holiness the Dalai Lama 1969 Tibetans in Exile: 1959–1969. Dharamsala, India: Bureau of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Corlin, Claes 1975 The Nation in Your Mind: Continuity and Change Among Tibetan Refugees in Nepal. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Goteborg, Sweden. de Voe, Dorsh 1984 Psycho-social Dimensions of Cultural Conservation among Tibetan Refugees in India. China Border Areas Conference, Taipei, Taiwan. Ekvall, Robert B. 1960 The Tibetan Self-Image. Pacific Affairs 33(4): 374– 382. Ekvall, Robert B. 1964 Religious Observances in Tibet: Patterns and Functions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Erikson, Erik H. 1964 Insight and Responsibility. New York: W.W. Norton. Goldstein, Melvyn C. 1978 Ethnogenesis and Resource Competition Among Tibetan Refugees in South India: A New Face to the Indo-Tibetan Interface. In Himalayan Anthropology. James F. Fisher, ed. Pp. 395– 420. The Hague: Mouton. His Holiness the Dalai Lama 1979 Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the 20th Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising of March 10, 1959. The Tibet Society Newsletter 7: 1. Miller, Beatrice D. 1978 Tibetan Culture and Personality: Refugee Responses to a Culture-Bound TAT. In Himalayan Anthropology. James F. Fisher, ed. Pp. 365– 393. The Hague: Mouton. Palakshappa, T. C. 1978 Tibetans in India: A Case Study of Mundgod Tibetans. New Delhi: Sterling. Peterson, William 1958 A General Typology of Migration. American Sociological Review 23(6): 256– 265. Scudder, Thayer and Elizabeth Colson 1982 From Welfare to Development: A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of Dislocated People. In Involuntary Migration and Resettlement: The Problems and Responses of Dislocated People. Art Hansen and Anthony Oliver-Smith, eds. Pp. 267– 287. Boulder, Colo.: Westview. Citing Literature Volume5, Issue2Special Issue: People in UpheavalMarch 1987Pages 54-65 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Survival of a Culture: Tibetan Refugees in India

Throughout human history there has always been a flow of persecuted and dislocated people. Today, in the age of totalitarianism, that flow has become a flood. In our time, millions have fled from reigns of terror in their homelands seeking refuge and a new life in another society and culture. Most have no other choice but to escape from intolerable threat and danger, to break with the bonds of their heritage and try to become part of a different national tradition, contributing some of their own values to the new country of their choice. For most of them, their past is gone, their life has changed under the pressure of new demands caused by the need for assimilation. In that sense Tibetans who fled to India are not ordinary refugees. They have taken refuge not as individuals alone, but rather as a national polity that has escaped the destruction taking place in Tibet and has sought and been given the protective mantle of a neighboring friendly country. Both a people and cultural institutions have taken refuge in a host setting and have demonstrated both strength and survivability. That is the extraordinary and unique story of the Tibetans in India, a story that demonstrates the vitality of the Tibetan culture and of the people-the one hundred thousand who fled with their leader, the Dalai Lama, from Tibet across the Himalayas to the safety of a land with its own great religious tradition, a land originally the major source of Tibetan Buddhism. India, the land of Gandhi and the land where the Buddha once lived, was the best sanctuary Tibetan polity could have found. Clearly, the survival of Tibetan culture in the Indian diaspora is one of the wondrous and hopeful events of our time. Twenty-six years ago, when the Dalai Lama arrived in India after his incredible escape from Lhasa over the high Himalayan mountain passes,

Survival of a Culture: Tibetan Refugees in India

Survival of a Culture: Tibetan Refugees in India

On Migration and Risk in LDCs

The authors develop the hypothesis that aversion to risk rather than expectations of higher income is the primary motivation for rural-urban migration in developing countries. This hypothesis maintains that an optimizing risk-averse small-farmer family will try to place a family member in the urban sector in order to diversify its income portfolio. An additional hypothesis related to risk is also considered at the individual rather than the family level. (ANNOTATION)

Seven ships carry 50,000 tons of relief supplies

The European Economic Community, in its desire to participate in international efforts to bring aid to Pakistan refugees in India, last summer donated, through the ICRC, 43,000 tons of rice and 7000 tons of other cereals, to the value of 48 million Swiss francs.

The Social Structure of a Sindhi Refugee Community

O NE of the greatest population transfers in history took place at the time of the granting of independence to India and Pakistan. According to the India and Pakistan census reports of 1951, there were 7,150,000 Muslim refugees in Pakistan and 7,471,000 non-Muslim refugees in India by March 1, 1951.1 Even now, over five years after Partition, the influx of refugees has not ended. Indeed, as this was being written, 1,700 recent refugees from East Bengal were camping in the Howrah Station in Calcutta. task of taking care of the millions of displaced persons, of providing food, shelter, and means of rehabilitation, has been an enormous problem for the young governments of India and Pakistan; and the last five years have been a very painful period for the refugees, who have often had to adjust to radical changes in their standard of living, their occupations, and their way of life. As this vast process of shifting and amalgamation takes place, one wonders how it will ultimately affect the social structure of South Asia. Throughout India there are hundreds of refugee settlements which sprang up overnight in the first months of Independence. Many of these have since become permanent communities, and in each one some kind of social organization has necessarily taken shape. It would be interesting to know what kind of social structure has developed in these settlements. Has there been simply a reconstitution of the old town and village life, transplanted but unchanged-or has something new developed in the new setting? What has happened to the traditional Hindu caste system in these settlements? Has it tended to disappear in the shaking-up process of migration; or has it, through a self-protective reaction, been strengthened, reaffirmed? And what is the present role of the caste and regional panchayats, those regulative bodies which settle the disputes and infringements of taboo in Indian villages? Have the panchayats lost their hold in the transplantation? If so, what new organizations have taken their place? Has there, furthermore, been any development of class stratification in these settlements? Finally, what kind of relationships exist between the refugees and the local populations where they have settled? It would be difficult to find general answers to these questions, because of the great variety in these settlements. Some, like Faridabad and Nilokheri, have received extensive government support, have well-developed co-operative organizations, and appear to the visitor to be laid out with mathematical orderliness, like a huge army camp. Other communities, on the other hand, are small makeshift colonies with only a few hundred inhabitants, lacking planned enterprises or co-operatives. There are also various regional differences-for example, in the situations confronting the refugees in East Punjab and those in Bombay State. No special linguistic adjustment has been necessary in East Punjab. Most of the refugees there have come from West Punjab, where the language and culturepatterns are essentially the same. But in the case of the Sindhis, who sailed from Karachi to Bombay State, the refugees have had to adjust to an area with quite a different language and written script and with many other striking cultural differences. It would be difficult, therefore, to frame universally applicable generalizations about the social structure in India's new refugee settlements. In October-November 1952 the writer interviewed camp officials, panchayat leaders, and other refugees at Pimpri Colony, a settlement of Sindhi refugees located by the Bombay-Poona railroad, about twenty minutes by train from the city of Poona. purpose was to answer the questions listed above with regard, at least, to one refugee community.2 This is no substitute for I William Henderson, The Refugees in India and Pakistan, Journal of International Affairs, VII (1953), 57-65; India and Pakistan Year Book; and Who's Who, 37 (Bombay, 1951), pp. 15-17. See also C. N. Vakil, Economic Consequences of the Division of India (Bombay: Vora and Co., 1950). For a general discussion of India's refugee problem, see Horace Alexander, New Citizens of India (London: Oxford University Press, 1952). 2 Having previously received official permission to