Tibetan Refugees Research Articles

Disaggregating citizenship: Tibetan refugees navigating identity, belonging, and exclusionary state policies in India

AbstractThis essay explores the struggles of second‐generation Tibetan refugees under an exclusionary Indian citizenship regime. Confronted with a national orthodoxy that entwines legal status, entitlements, and national identity, Tibetans respond by “disaggregating” citizenship. First, stateless Tibetans, born in India to refugee parents, won legal appeals by demonstrating that Tibetan nationality was no bar to Indian citizenship. In response, Indian authorities demanded that Tibetans give up refugee entitlements and remove themselves from their national space and political community in exile as the price of Indian citizenship. This article explores the diverse responses of Tibetans to the citizenship‐on‐offer: some aspiring for it, some accepting it, and others actively rejecting it. These responses illustrate strategies refugees employ to navigate citizenship regimes that often render them liminal. Refugees act both to mitigate the precarity of statelessness and to preserve their identity, community, and political aspirations against erasure. In doing so, they not only disrupt the national orthodoxy of states that negates refugee experiences but also reveal the incompleteness and contradictions of citizenship regimes.

Amma La: Reflective Account of a Participatory Mixed Theatre Method in Migration Research in India

This article presents the methodological process of interpreting the ethnographic data of my research about the question of Indian citizenship for Tibetan refugees in India as a theater play titled “Amma la” (meaning “mother” in Tibetan). I present the enacting of the theater play “Amma la” with young Tibetans in India (2019) at three different institutions. I argue that performing the theater play “Amma la” with Tibetan participants in 2019 is a method of enacting the research findings in a participatory, collaborative, creative, and novel way that opens up possibilities for shared meanings and transformative re-interpretation of the data within an embodied, artistic, and performative dimension. I argue that the performance of the theater play “Amma la” sits theoretically at the intersection of verbatim theater, political theater, and participatory drama as well as forum theater and physical theater. It could also be argued that the theater play “Amma la” constitutes a form of experimental theater that is not complete and foreclosing, but processual and prospective. And finally, performing “Amma la” is a form of process drama, focusing on improvisation, and the process of creating and acting a scene for the benefit of the participants-actors, and not on the polished and rehearsed performances for a specific audience. For these reasons, I argue that “Amma la” is constructed on and theoretically supported by what I will simply call participatory mixed theater methods.

Entangled in Regional Geopolitics - Tibetans in the Special Frontier Force of India

The Special Frontier Force (S.F.F.) was raised by the Intelligence Bureau of India in the immediate aftermath of the Indo China war of 1962. Initially composed of Tibetan youths, it was known as the Establishment 22. Records indicate that it was raised by India in coordination with US intelligence Agency, the C.I.A. and with full endorsement of Washington. The force was trained by C.I.A., among other things to collect intelligence from across India’s China border with the help of electronic devices. The C.I.A. patronage was gradually withdrawn after 1964. In India, the force was commissioned to action in Chittagong Hill tracts in 1971, on the eve of Indo Pakistan War over Bangladesh issue. Later they took part in Operation Bluestar in Punjab and fought in the war of Kargil in 1999. Their activities and operations had so far been kept under total secret. Recently they were employed by the Government of India in the border faceoff with China in Ladakh in August 2020. The death of Nyima Tenzin of S.S.F. turned the spotlight on them and their sacrifice was highlighted. The importance of the S.F.F. in India’s security set up has to be understood in the context of the regional geopolitics and India’s Tibet policy. The force was raised in the era of Cold war when the C.I.A. was helping the Tibetan resistant warriors, the Chushi Gandruk, fighting from Mustang in Nepal. India, too was ready to help them even if covertly, to get back Tibet’s political status. Raising of the force gave not only a job opportunity to the Tibetan refugee youths but served their nationalist aspirations and suited India’s need of a trained mountain force post 1962 to combat China in the Himalayan region. But following the withdrawal of the C.I.A., Sino US rapprochement in the 1970s and the subsequent end of the Cold War, the priorities changed in the US and India’s policy towards China also went through several phases. The recent deterioration of relations with China has once again brought Tibetan issue to the limelight. India’s recognition of the S.F.F. actions in the war indicates how India, in order to put pressure on China is giving space to the Tibetan CTA (The Government in Exile, in India) and the Tibetans in S.F.F. The Tibetans have not been able to achieve independence but they are now being used in the political rivalry of the two regional powers.

54123 Defining the Dermatologic Needs of Tibetan Refugees Living in India: Survey of Patients Utilizing Healthcare Services Provided by the Central Tibetan Administration

54123 Defining the Dermatologic Needs of Tibetan Refugees Living in India: Survey of Patients Utilizing Healthcare Services Provided by the Central Tibetan Administration

China- India Border Crisis: Causes and Implications 1962-2023

For more than seventy years, the Sino-Indo border crisis has become an endless imbroglio with no settlement in sight. Relations between the two Asian giants have soured over the last decade, particularly following a 2020 boundary skirmish between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Galwan area. The issue of a disputed border emerged in the early 1950s when the People’s Republic of China affected her capture of Tibet. This act created for China and India one of the lengthiest undefined boundaries in the globe. The China-India border stretches for approximately 3,488 kilometers (2,167 miles) across the Himalayan mountain range, separating the two countries. The main areas of contention are the western sector (Aksai Chin region administered by China but claimed by India) and the eastern sector (Arunachal Pradesh region administered by India but claimed by China). This dispute has led to several military standoffs and border skirmishes between the two countries over the years. The intricate and protractedness of this border conflict made this work try to find out the causes and implications of this crisis to the Asian region and the world generally. To do this effectively, we employ secondary sources where data was collected from textbooks, diplomatic records, academic literature, newspapers, journals, magazines, and internet materials. The data collected was analyzed through documentary evidence while the contested border and territorial nationalism theory were used as the analytical tool. The work discovered that factors like unresolved border issues, historical crises, strategic concerns, ideological biases, failed diplomatic negotiations, military considerations, the Tibetan refugees crisis, Cold War dynamics, and limited communications were some of the issues that led to the border crisis between the two Asian giants. Furthermore, the work found out that the implications engendered by the China-India border crisis are severe and expansive like heavy militarization of the China-Indian border, strategic instability in Asia, India’s more assertive foreign policy, China’s global image damage, policy implications, and arms race between the two Asian giants. The work concluded that China and India should strive for a harmonious and sustainable joint boundary commission that will map and mark their boundaries as this option if meticulously and strictly followed will tremendously benefit both and all.

The Effects of Stigma Against HIV and Tuberculosis on Healthcare-Seeking Behavior Among Tibetan Refugees in Dharamshala, India

Patients who experience more severe symptoms of Ulcerative Colitis are associated with having greater socioeconomic challenges or higher social barrier scores (SBS). Inflammatory Bowel Disease describes two conditions, Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn's Disease, characterized by gastrointestinal (GI) tract inflammation. Ulcerative Colitis is a type of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) characterized by large intestine inflammation. Research has shown that multiple social determinants of health (SDOH) hinder achieving desirable health outcomes in the Inflammatory Bowel Disease community. These include financial strains, poor health literacy, and lack of access to education. Additionally, social barriers disproportionately affect non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic people.

Doesn’t Matter If You Stopped Me, I’ve Still Got to Chase My Dream: Tibetan Youth in NSW Navigate Racism and Intergenerational Differences

ABSTRACT Racism and discrimination, family disjuncture and differential experiences depending on migration experiences influence resettlement in new environments and sense of belonging. This article focuses on a little-known group in Australia – Tibetan youth. This article centres the voices of Tibetan refugee youth in the state of New South Wales seeking to understand, from their frame of reference, how they establish networks and social relations in the context of racism and intergenerational differences. ‘Refugee youth’ can imply homogenised experiences, yet intersections such as ethnicity, culture, religion, gender and more shape diverse experiences. This article also shows the importance of responsive not-for-profit organisations in filling the welcome gap that is not apparent in the wider society.

Everyday Mobilization: Tibetan Struggle for a Nation in Exile

The present work focuses on the lived experiences of the Tibetan refugees in order to understand their way of life dedicated to the nation’s freedom, lived only through imagination and narratives. Tibetan communities living inside and outside two Tibetan settlements, Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, and Bylakuppe, Karnataka, in India, were interviewed. An analysis of 15 interviews showed that for participants, the meaning of being a true Tibetan depends on identification with the cultural and religious values specific to Tibet, perceiving their enemy as a substantial threat to Tibet‘s existence, and following non-violent ways to struggle for Tibet’s cause. A determined sense of belonging only to a Tibet free from the atrocities of the enemy (thus not belonging to the current Tibetan Autonomous Region or anywhere else), along with challenges in exile and faith in present political strategies, motivates a phenomenon of everyday mobilization reflected in their rational life choices to free Tibet. This article contributes to a broader debate on the mobilization process for the continuity of a social movement amid statelessness.

Understanding Tibetan Exile: a review of literature and bibliometric analysis (1960-2021)

ABSTRACT This research aims to use VOSviewer to undertake bibliometric analysis to map the primary areas of Tibetan Exile literature to create a taxonomy of topic subareas and a research plan on this issue. Two hundred eighty-one papers published between 1960 and 2021, which were extracted from the Scopus database, have been examined to evaluate their interconnection, clusters, and citations to build a text-based map. The study highlights the most cited document, essential journals publishing on the issue, important keywords, prominent authors, and discussions on Tibetan refugees; also classifying the subthemes and the leading author’s name. The findings will guide researchers interested in contemporary Tibetan studies. This categorization table of subthemes explored in the last 61 years comprises the following subjects: identity & human rights, immigration, government, media, health, international politics, Dalai Lama, nationhood, preservation of culture, resettlement, and a new generation of Tibetans.

‘Don't forget Tibet’: Understanding the discursive construction of Tibetan national identity through the identity entrepreneurship of the Dalai Lama

AbstractGiven the exponential increase in the number of refugees and displaced people worldwide, it has become critical to examine the experiences of refugees; particularly their identity, since it is an important marker of their adjustment to the new context. Besides other factors impacting their identity and adjustment, the role of the leader is important as it can impact the construction of refugee identities. This paper explores the construction and negotiation of Tibetan refugee identities through the identity entrepreneurship of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and erstwhile political leader of the Tibetans. It is postulated that leaders are entrepreneurs of identity who shape identity construction and negotiation. With an emphasis on the social, political, and historical context, three kinds of sources are analysed using a discourse‐historical approach to understand how leaders function as entrepreneurs of identity across the various contexts and negotiate identity construction across the shifting contexts. First, 12 speeches by the Dalai Lama on 10 critical events in Tibetan history since 1959; second, six speeches by the Dalai Lama for Tibetan Uprising Day (1961–2009); and third, two international interviews (CNN, 2009; BBC, 2012). The analysis demonstrates that the identity entrepreneurship of the Dalai Lama has strong elements of protection towards the ingroup, that is, the Tibetan refugees, through the crafting of a collective sense of identity for Tibetans. The study sheds new light on the nature of refugee leadership, acknowledging the impact of the shifting nature of identity, from a native citizen to refugee; and the leader's identity entrepreneurship in these evolving and often malleable contexts.

Between Narratives of Solidarity and Othering in Indo-Tibetan Borderlands: Local Resistance to Tibetan Refugee Rehabilitation in Arunachal Pradesh

ABSTRACT Tibetan refugee rehabilitation in Arunachal Pradesh, India, has become a site of contention, with strident local identity narratives agitating against refugee presence in this Himalayan borderland state. This paper maps the processes of state-making, citizenship and identity that produce a collision between encompassing notions of citizenship/identity and territorialized discourses of belonging premised on ethnicity in the West Kameng and Tawang districts of Arunachal. This is a multi-factoral analysis of how pressures of land commoditization and competition for economic opportunity interact with religious solidarities and social histories of migration to produce simultaneous narratives of belonging and othering between the dominant local Monpa Buddhist community and the exiled Tibetans in Monyul in the Indo-Tibetan borderland. The post-colonial state’s failure to dismantle the ethnicity-based colonial spatial order in the Himalayan region has created a crisis of exclusionary ethnopolitics that is inherently hostile to refugees.

Towards Better (Territorial) Solutions for Displaced People: The Tibetan Model

This article envisions alternatives for refugee camps, detention centres and precarious encampments by exploring the management of Tibetan refugee settlements, particularly in India. They have developed from encampments to unique settlements, forming a community some call the world’s most successful refugee community. In terms of existing alternative ideas to provide better placements for the displaced, these settlements share similarities with a vision of Refugia, which aims to increase refugees’ agency and end mass displacement through a network of autonomous places. The Tibetan model can predict some challenges and possibilities of Refugia and suggest improvements to the current refugee protection system.

Lands that make us: decoding maps, landscapes, and identities in Aaniya Asrani’s Portraits of Exile

ABSTRACT The question of Tibetan refugees retains a unique matrix in world history. Though many Tibetans have fled from their motherland and settled in various parts of the world, they still believe themselves to be Tibetan citizens. Aaniya Asrani, through her three-part graphic non-fiction series Portraits of Exile, looks at the lives of Tibetans in exile residing in Bylakuppe. It is a geoGraphic novel that combines the spatial qualities of comics with geographical methods and is the first graphic narrative produced in India concerning the Tibetan experience. Asrani uses landscapes as fabrics for expressing the truth of refugeehood, and cultural trauma recalled through individual experiences. The paper attempts to look at Asrani’s mapping project from the perspective of Geohumanities; her use of maps, structuring of landscapes, and assertion of identities is looked upon using the lens of narrative cartography, cultural geography, and place identity, respectively.

Identity, memory, and homeland: in conversation with Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, a Tibetan author and poet in exile

AbstractThe annexation of Tibet into the People's Republic of China in the 1950s led to an exodus of nearly 80,000 Tibetans along with the fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso. Since then, thousands of Tibetans have taken refuge in the neighboring countries. Many live as refugees in different parts of the world today. Although the Tibetan refugee community has emerged as a successful model for other displaced communities, the individual struggles of these refugees in foreign lands cannot be underestimated. Dhompa's book A Home in Tibet shines a light on this other side of their exilic existence by raising questions about identity, home, country, and memory. It outlines the hardships, confusion, and contestations that Tibetans face on a daily basis. After a short introduction to provide context, this article reports a conversation with Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, which grippingly addresses these issues.

Boundary-Making and Political Activism in Protracted Exile: Second-Generation Tibetan Refugees in India

AbstractFor over six decades the Tibetan diaspora in India has followed a strategy of ‘non-assimilation’ towards Indian society. A majority of Tibetans still reside in self-governed settlements and maintain their self-imposed statelessness. Tibetan refugees have constructed boundaries that—according to the diaspora leaders—enable them to continue their political struggle for a free Tibet while in a state of protracted exile and imposed waiting. In this article, based on long-term ethnographic research, I discuss the mechanisms and rationale of this boundary-making by exploring its spatial, educational, and political dimensions. I then analyse the political activism which takes place within those boundaries, with a special focus on second-generation Tibetan refugees. I scrutinize the internal divisions in the Tibetan freedom movement, the radicalization of struggle, and the everyday patriotism practiced by generations born in exile, demonstrating that waiting has the potential to produce resistance.

Refugee citizenship: citizenship as a means to make a claim about refugeehood

ABSTRACT This article argues for the use of refugee citizenship as a concept to analyse the kind of citizenship sought after, and experienced, by refugees in a protracted situation who want to retain some aspects of refugeehood in order to continue to fight for an endangered homeland. It is based on fieldwork conducted in 2019 with young Tibetans in Toronto who refer to themselves as Tibetan-Canadians or Canadian-Tibetans. Their experience of a dual affiliation, being both Canadian citizens and Tibetan refugees, informs the discussion of how a homeland cause can lead refugees in a protracted situation to have an ambivalent, insider/outsider, position vis-à-vis the newly acquired citizenship of the (usually Western) host country.

The Political Geography of International Advocacy

Abstract Through a study of the Indian Central Relief Committee for Tibetans and the American Emergency Committee for Tibetan Refugees, this article maps the multiple dimensions of Indian and American civil society advocacy on behalf of Tibet in the immediate aftermaths of the Dalai Lama’s 1959 flight to India: anticommunism, imperialism, discourses of religious freedom and civilizational solidarity, domestic politics, and regional security interests. These contexts did not operate separately, but rather formed layered interactions, layers that eventually bound Tibetan autonomy. While the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan nationalists worked across the geographic and political spectrum to generate international support as a matter of practicality and necessity, the complex web from which this support came, and through which it operated, functioned as constraints as well as backing. Advocacy from such a disparate set of national, personal, religious, and political interests came with limitations that defined Tibetans as communist victims, an oppressed religious minority, and a humanitarian commodity, but not as nationalist claimants.

The Education System as a Tool for Preserving the Identity of Tibetan Refugees in India

The Education System as a Tool for Preserving the Identity of Tibetan Refugees in India

Psychoanalysis of the Excommunicated

This essay examines singular traumas suffered by Tibetan refugees and expedient and culture-specific cures for the same. Drawing on Honey Oberoi Vahali’s Lives in Exile and other ethnographic studies of the Tibetan community in Dharamsala, India, it shows how classic trauma theory can be revised and expanded by including the vocabulary and symptomatology of the sufferance of exile and homelessness by displaced Tibetans.

Competing visions: schooling the nation and the “revolt” at the Ockenden Tibetan school

AbstractThis article examines the incident of a “revolt” in the Ockenden Tibetan refugee school in the early 1960s. By analyzing this previously unknown incident of “revolt” in the Tibetan refugee school within the broader historical context of early years in exile, this article aims to underline the contested and contingent process of nation-building in exile. I argue that the Ockenden incident, as forgotten fragments of the Tibetan past, provides us a rare glimpse into the early history of contestation over the production of national history and discourse on Tibet, where exiled Bonpos, a non-Buddhist minority, attempted to renegotiate their marginality by producing alternative history and discourse on Tibet. By focusing on the history of the Ockenden incident as a forgotten fragment from the exile Tibetan past, this article aims to decenter the teleology of Tibetan nationalism by bringing to light one of the unrealized alternative future agendas different groups of exiled Tibetans had in those early moments of discursive formation.