Tibetan Nationalism: The Politics of Religion (original) (raw)
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Sanskrit Sandhana, 2018
The Buddhist societies across the world have been closely connected with India as India is also known as the 'Land of Buddha' with all the sacred Buddhist places. The Tibetan people, mostly the followers of Lord Buddha, have been enjoying deep socio-cultural and religious relationships with Indian people since centuries as the entire North and North-Indian region has been geographically as well culturally very much proximate to them. The religious teachings of Lord Buddha and Hinduism both share more or less similar human values. At the same time, many of their rituals share almost practiced in the same way. The concepts like 'Ahimsa (non-violence)', 'Daya (kindness)', 'Karuna (compassion)', 'Punarjanma (re-birth)', 'Karma', 'Asteya', 'Aparigraha', 'Duhkha', 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam', 'Kalchakra' etc. have been based on the similar believes and values. The Sanskrit and Pali literature with Indian origins have been the main source of Buddhist literature. Such commonalities have been successful in creation of the mutual feelings of 'togetherness' between the Tibetan people and India. Forced to live in exile in India the Tibetan Buddhist community along with the Government of India has shown a unique example to the rest of the world that how, a country like India, that is not a signatory of the '1951 Refugee Convention' of UNO, can help thousands of those people who are 'refugees' in real terms, even if they do not meet the technical conditions to be categories and treated under 'refugee' category. It is not easy for an individual or a community to live with peace, creativity and hope in exile for decades. However, Tibetan community in India, has not only been successful in restoring its culture but also in adapting the land of India and modern ways of life and values. It is in this context, the present paper tries to throw light on the present situation of the Tibetan community in India and subsequently to identify religious and cultural traits of India along with the Government support which have been helping them to live and prosper in India like a 'second home'.
Survival and Revival of Tibetan Ethnic Identity in India*
2017
Ethnic identity is a complex multifaceted phenomenon that is constructed or negotiated to form a nation-state. Once formed, it occupies an intrinsic part of the development of an individual. Multiple circumstances have led to the creation and recreation of Tibetan ethnic identity in exile, and such creation happens at both collective and individual levels. In this paper, Tibetan ethnic identity in exile is examined at the individual level as part of Diasporic identity and statelessness. Also, the construction at the collective level is examined both among the Tibetan community in exile in India and the community in China. The community in China is studied in comparison so as to render a better understanding of the mentality of the exiles as opposed to ones in the homeland. Moreover, it analyzes the sustainability of Tibetan ethnic identity among the Diaspora and its significant role in the national movement. Tibetan Diaspora remains an understudied and under-theorized field despite ...
In this article the focus is on various embodied and embedded narratives shaping Tibetan identity today, especially among the diasporic Tibetans living in South Asia. It is argued that it is not only Westerners who have exoticised Tibet and the Tibetans; the Tibetan diaspora too have invested heavily in such (neo)orientalist representation strategies for their own tactical purposes. The rst part of the article is devoted to the conceptual issues involved, including the question of identity, nationalism and diaspora. The second part deals with various dynamics and factors shaping the discourse of ‘Tibetanness’ in the diaspora community. The third part concludes with observations that challenge assumptions about a single .discourse of Tibetanness
Interpreting the Tibetan Diaspora: Cultural Preservation and the Pragmatics of Identity
CEU Political Science Journal, 2009
Nearly all accounts of Tibetans in exile acknowledge the remarkable extent to which they have been able to maintain their culture against all odds. They were premised on the idea that exile and identity was only worth studying insofar as it contained traces of "how things were in the past", and proof of how well that past has been preserved. The result of this approach to refugee studies has been the tendency to neglect the variety of strategies displayed by Tibetans with regard to "place-making". Without making any definitive claims about the prevalence of a distinctly "Darjeeling Tibetan exile culture", this ethnographic study of Tibetan refugees in Darjeeling town, India shows how the experience of movement to and from a "place"-Darjeeling town reconstitutes the idea that Tibetan refugees have of their relation to a specific "place" in the diaspora; of how this sense of "place" in the diaspora gives meaning and purpose to refugee lives.
Tibet Policy Journal, 2020
There is no argument that India has been hospitable and very generous to exiled Tibetans. India warmly welcomed Tibetan refugees and allowed them to establish institutions, settlements, and monasteries. Tibetans and non-Tibetan scholars mutually agree on the generous contributions that India made for Tibet and to the Tibetan struggle. Recently, some Indian scholars began to raise questions on Tibetans of jeopardizing the national security and becoming a burden on India. It is, thus, a crucial time to discuss the significance of Tibetans and their contributions to India. For the last six decades, Tibetans have offered the cultural soft power of Buddhism and military service in the Special Frontier Force (SFF) for India. And by corollary, the economic and educational input of Tibetans to various local developments also cannot be ignored.
The Calcutta Journal of Political Studies, 2017
The Himalayas are a region where varied cultures have coexisted with each other leading to the formation of unique socio-cultural systems, which are a combination of Hinduism emanating from the south and Tibetan Buddhism coming from the North. The region is a site of cultural syncretism, which formed civilizational frontiers that had its own unique sense of sovereignty. They exercised their own sovereignty but were also seen to be providing tributes to either Nepal and/or Tibet with much influences exerted. Hence, for a section of the population in the Himalayan belt, Tibet, especially Lhasa was a power centre both in religious and socio-political terms. However, with the birth of the nation state in the Indian subcontinent and China, the earlier forms of sovereignty in the Himalayan regions were superseded by its authority. The newly emergent postcolonial states of China and India also led to the eventual colonisation of a number of communities in the Himalayan region. This research paper will look into this eventual transformation of sovereignty practices in the region, drawing upon the ideas of sovereignty as propounded by Susanne Rudolph. It will also delve into the significance of Tibetan Buddhism, which forms power centres in the Himalayas and its impact on the geopolitics of the region. More importantly, the paper will also focus upon the interaction between traditional ideas on sovereignty and the modern state system through a lens of residual formations as propounded by Raymond Williams, seen in the modern state translating its power in the region through a negotiation/accommodation with the Tibetan Buddhist elites.
Buddhism and Politics in the Tibetan Cultural Area
Buddhism and Politics in the Tibetan Cultural Area, 2019
This is a contribution to The Companion to the Study of Secularity of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe "Multiple Secularities: Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities" at the University of Leipzig about the Tibetan Cultural Area: "The Companion to the Study of Secularity is a publication that is projected to grow over time. It consists of short articles in encyclopaedic form and style, which detail the specific concepts and peculiarities of secularity in the regions and eras our members are specialised in. In contrast to journal articles or articles in our Working Paper Series, the Companion’s entries are not intended to initiate detailed intradisciplinary discussion or to present new findings from research. Instead, they should provide the wider academic community with an insight into the concept of multiple secularities and thus foster transdisciplinary exchange. The intent is that scholars interested in the concept of multiple secularities, who are not themselves specialists in particular (historical) regions, should be able to gain an insight into both the different regions where formations of secularity can be observed, and the main notions and concepts that the KFG’s members refer to. Over time, the Companion should grow to encompass all epochs and areas that have been worked on within the scope of the KFG. For as long as the KFG continues to exist, the Companion will be published and further expanded on the KFG’s website. Towards the end of the Multiple Secularities project, all entries will be systematised and edited in order to transform the Companion into a completed open access publication." (https://www.multiple-secularities.de/publications/companion/).