Tibetan ethnogenesis & resource competition in India

Patrolling Blurred Boundaries: Tibetan Ethnogenesis and Indo-Tibetan Resource Competition
Galleta Salada
12/19/13







On April 22 1994, in Dharamsala, India, interethnic conflict erupted when a young Tibetan escaped after killing a member of the local Gaddi people, traditionally shepherds. Tibetan homes, stores were looted and institutions such as the Tibetan Children’s Village School were attacked. Reporting on the incident indicates the flames were fanned by local politicians banking on anti-Tibetan sentiment:
During the funeral Krishan Kapoor, a politician belonging to the rightwing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), yanked the shroud off the corpse, reached into the cadaver's open stomach, pulled out a length of intestine, and held it high. 'This is what the Tibetans have done]' he yelled. (The Independent New Delhi 1994)
In response, the The Dalai Lama considered moving his headquarters. An article from the time outlines Indian efforts to keep the Dalai Lama in town, with chief minister of Himachal Pradesh Virbhadra Singh urging the Dalai Lama not to move and apologizing for the riot on behalf of the local Indian community (World Tibet Network News 1994). Local (non-Gaddi) business leaders, likely cognizant of the economic consequences of the move, begged him to stay, echoing the effort years earlier of Indian businessman N. N. Norowjee, the owner of the general store, who lobbied the Indian government to house the Dalai Lama and his retinue in Mcleod Ganj in the first place (Hess 2009: 32). The Dalai Lama did not move, but Indo-Tibetan relations in Dharamsala remain tense.
More anti-Tibetan violence has occurred since, with general patterns emerging. For example, 140 shops were burned in a 1999 riot in Manali after a Tibetan killed an Indian student (The Times Chandigarh 1999). Kiela Diehl describes a much more minor incident that bears a similar pattern. Her Tibetan friend and fellow Yak Band member Ngodup ran into and injured a local Gaddi woman on his motorcycle, then “stepped on the accelerator and fled into hiding at the Tibetan Children’s Village,” fearful that Gaddi witnesses would beat him up. The situation was resolved with payment of medical bills and compensation totaling over two month’s wages for the woman, as well as an apology to the Gaddi village headman “as an individual and as a Tibetan” (Diehl 2002: 109).
The pattern of a Tibetan transgressing against a local and then taking refuge in the local community, escalating an individual dispute and sparking interethnic conflict, has played out many times in the Tibetan diaspora. Such simmering violence and intercultural hostility has its roots both in economic disparity between Tibetan exiles and local peoples, and in cultural boundaries erected and patrolled by Tibetans against the conditions of their exile.
	The fact that there is exists in the popular imagination a unitary group called “Tibetans” that attracts foreign support and which locals rail against is no accident. Dibyesh Anand describes the imagining of Tibetanness as the development of a nearly Turnernian communitas based on pride gained from overcoming shared suffering, for “one of the ways that trauma…marks a geographically heterogeneous society is that when they are all victims, they begin to forget the many differences that marked them,” (2003: 222). Much suffering was shared in the move to settlements in South India, which has been described as a “forced migration,” due to the Government of India’s perception of Tibetans residing along the border as a political threat, a second exile for Tibetans (Methfessel 1997: 15). The Dalai Lama describes in his autobiography how the first to arrive at the settlement of Bylakuppe broke down and cried at the enormity of the task before them, and maintains that “their only resource was determination” (Gyatso 159). He describes the settlers in a 1961 visit as “dark and thin” and remarked that “morale was very low” due to the pervasive dust and heat of the camps. He depicts the settlement’s later success as a triumph of the human spirit. Similarly, Hess’s informants “repeatedly referred to the early years with pride in their achievement of clearing the land” (Hess 38).
Despite such inspirational depictions, the creation of a collective “Tibetan” imagination, an “ethnogenesis” (Goldstein 1978) out of distinct groups of people from the Tibetan Plateau who came from different Buddhist sects or practiced Bon, spoke different dialects, worshipped different protector deities and deferred to local trulkus rather than the Dalai Lama, was not an organic process. The importance of the creation and maintenance of a singular “Tibetanness” in the diaspora is among other factors a result of the institutional policies of the Dalai Lama’s Government-in-exile.
The mainentenance of Tibetanness involves “preservation of culture through a patrolling of communal boundaries” which Anand claims is similar enough to the  Jewish diaspora that it fits  “quite closely.” (2003: 214). In creating and maintaining said communal boundaries, the space to be bounded had to be defined first. Anand quotes Brah’s argument that “the political process of proclaiming a specific collective identity entails the creation of a collective entity out of the myriad collage-like fragments of the mind” (222, original emphasis).
The notion of a singular Tibetanness is such a thing, an ““imagined” entity in all senses of the word,” uniting the diverse geographic backgrounds of exiles, some from areas never controlled by the Lhasa government (Anand 2003: 222). Anand identifies in the imagining of Tibet a shift in exile consciousness from regional nostalgia to “the entirety of Tibet” as the homeland to which all desire to return (2003: 222). Such a homeland is what Anand calls a “idealized space-time projection of Tibet that is imagined and presented as timeless.” It is a de-historicized refugee identity that is “espoused in essentialist terms” which are “contingent and strategic” (223). Such a flattened, ahistorical, “hyperreal” discourse of Tibetanness is “historicized, politicized, and reconstructed” in character (212), more politically expedient and marketable abroad than reality, helping to keep diverse Tibetans united and keep Tibet in the international spotlight (218). Along with it comes a Tibetan nationalism that is a product of the conditions of exile, where Tibetans have had to use the “hegemonic language of sovereignty, autonomy, and nationalism to make their case” and attract support in a world where global interactions are conceptualized as interactions of discrete nations (224).
To keep the Tibetan nation discrete, the Dalai Lama’s government fosters “social, political, and economic boundaries” (Goldstein 1978: 410). One of the main boundaries Melvyn Goldstein identifies is the maintenance of Tibetan as the main language of the settlements, which restricts monolingual exiles to intra-community interaction (415). Another is the cultivated stateless status of Tibetans, without which exiles would have ostensibly reduced claim to Tibet. Methfessel also identifies this intentionally maintained stateless refugee status of Tibetan exiles as conferring the economic advantage of continued Western financial assistance (1997: 18).
 The stigmatization of taking Indian citizenship creates a boundary that guards against the dissolution of the Tibetan community into “tiny depoliticized and/or sectarian pockets all over the world” (Diehl 2002: 115). Diehl’s idea that Tibetans see the West as a “Substitute Shangri-la” (147) and India by contrast as spiritually polluting (114) explains in part the contradiction Julia Hess observes in the Government-in-exile’s promotion of U.S. citizenship as beneficial while taking Indian citizenship is construed as a sign of betrayal of the Tibetan cause (Hess 2009: 47).
Anand speaks of an intentional resistance among Tibetans to assimilation into Indian culture or “sanskritization” (Anand 2003: 222). The price of maintaining Tibetanness, according to Anand, is the set of consequences surrounding the refusal of exiles to take Indian citizenship due to the hope of return to Tibet, which positions them on the margins of Indian culture and keeps them on client side of the traditional patron-client relationship pattern in Tibet, with the exile community taking refuge with patron India (225).
The inability of Tibetans to own property or conduct business without Indian citizenship has the effect of keeping the community united under the Dalai Lama, and artificially bounds competition between Tibetans and Indians. Such boundaries, “impossible to unlink from psychological investments in ethnically defined divisions,” are therefore “as much a strategy for “keeping in” as for “keeping out”” (Diehl 115). Tibetan exiles also define themselves against local Indian populations, realizing their similarities as a result of “immersion into the midst of a sea of Indians” (Goldstein 1978: 410).  Cultural boundaries erected against sanskritization serve not only to preserve but also to define the Tibetan community. In contrasting themselves with the categorical “otherness” of Indians and India, Tibetan exiles define the categorical “us” of their imagined Tibetan community which transcends the traditional regional and linguistic divides of pre-1959 Tibet (Diehl 2002: 110).
Goldstein identifies the Dalai Lama’s government’s establishment of itself as the single authority representing the “mass of disparate refugees” to the world (“others”) as a key factor in the creation of a pan-Tibetan identity (“us”) centered around the Dalai Lama and his sect (1978: 397). Goldstein argues that government officials who left Tibet with the Dalai Lama represented a “ready-made organization” for petitioning international aid, aggregating and distributing resources, and implementing uniform policy (408). Goldstein argues that due to individualist attitudes among former peasants, a similarly effective administration could not have arisen on its own (409).
Anand similarly identifies the Dalai Lama as the key link between Tibetans and universalist discourses that bring international support to the exile community (2003: 226). Yet Julia Hess claims that the power of the government-in-exile lies in its ability to generate loyalty while having little actual authority over the Tibetan exile population (Hess 2009: 37). However, economic reliance by exiles on the Dalai Lama’s government for foreign aid in the early years gave it physical bio-power over settler’s well-being in the early years that mirrored the Dalai Lama’s spiritual authority: Goldstein mentions negative tactics employed by the Dalai Lama’s delegates to control exiles in Bylakuppe, the Government-in-exile using its control of both educational opportunities and food resources to enforce cohesion. In a confrontation with a hostile group of Bylakuppe exiles (who came from a region not historically influenced by the Lhasa government) over their refusal to pay into the Bylakuppe Cooperative Society, camp leaders refused to issue state-provided rations of staples like wheat and sugar to the group until they complied, effectively starving out dissent (1978: 415-6).
The unitary façade of Tibetanness presented abroad is complicated by such regional divisions among the exile population. Goldstein describes in his profile of 1978 Bylakuppe the emergence of a “segmented ethnicity” in the settlement where Khampas and other peoples from outside Ü-Tsang “clearly maintain their identity.” However, the hegemony of the Dalai Lama’s government can be clearly seen in Goldstein’s mention of the use of Lhasa Tibetan as the lingua franca between groups (403). The Tibetan exile population is overwhelmingly composed of those from regions close to the border, with 70% of exiles coming from Ü-Tsang, 25% from Kham, and only 5% from Amdo, compared to a pre-1959 population distribution of 20% in Ü-Tsang, 53% in Kham, and 27% in Amdo (Methfessel 1997: 13). Such a high percentage of Central Tibetans in exile has surely contributed to the hegemony of the Dalai Lama’s Geluk sect in representations of a unified “Tibet” under the authority of the Government-in-exile.
 Hess also complicates the ostensible unity of the Tibetan exile community by pointing out inequities within it: Hess relates that a lower-rent part of Mcleod Ganj, also lower in elevation and closer to the settlements of local Gaddi, is known as “Amdo village” because it is home to relatively impoverished newcomers from Amdo who can’t afford to live in upper Mcleod Ganj (Hess 2009: 33). This intra-Tibetan postcode envy shows that despite the outer appearance of pan-Tibetan unity presented by the government-in-exile, pre-exile regional identities and participation frameworks still come between Tibetans in the course of life in India.
Most cases of Indo-Tibetan conflict, however, pit an imagined homogenous mass of “Tibetans” against a similarly monolithic “India”. Yet relations are in fact more complex. Goldstein characterizes Indo-Tibetan relations in 1978 Bylakuppe as “fleeting,” “sporadic,” and mostly economically based, with Tibetans usually in the dominant position (403). By 1978, some Tibetans had gained enough affluence to hire Indians as field hands, and take in young Indian boys as domestic servants, with Indian beggars learning Tibetan prayers in order to attract donations (402). Goldstein describes the “farming-only” niche artificially delimited by the Dalai Lama’s government as the key factor enabling harmony between Tibetans in Bylakuppe and local Indians. Such establishment of economic boundaries enabled Indians in the Bylakuppe area to reap economic benefits from the exile presence by establishing themselves as providers of goods and services to the settlers, and by working as day laborers (416).
However, such a situation did not last. Unlike Goldstein’s sunny calculations that characterized the Tibetans of Bylakuppe as “economically successful” in their farming niche back in 1978 (401), Hess’s picture of the same settlement in 2000 reveals that the means of production provided by the government-in-exile now fall short. The Rs.10,000 a year the average family makes is according to Hess little enough that people must escape to  find other sources of income (2009: 39). Traveling sweater-selling, which Tibetans were already “famous for” in 1978 (Goldstein 1978: 418) has become an important economic niche for Tibetan refugees, to the point where 29 percent of Tibetan exiles according to one study are reliant on it for their income, and up to one-third of all exile women according to another (Hess 2009: 39). Such activity, performed on the periphery of Indian bazaars, indicates a potential for conflict. The “traditional” sweaters, produced in factories, are also emblematic of the economic importance for exiles of creating and marketing “Tibetanness” to India and the world.
Tibetan attempts to maintain cultural boundaries are complicated by the economic necessity of marketing Tibetanness. In Dharamsala most of the shops selling curios and traditional art such as thangkas to tourists such as myself are either legally or totally owned by non-Tibetan merchants who trade Tibetan goods abroad. These “culture brokers” often request carpets and tapestries with colors and patterns that reflect Western sensibilities, and under their influence, traditional materials have given way to synthetic dyes and mill-spun wool. Yet such pieces are found “in any Tibetan home in South Asia,” suggesting that Tibetans are practicing a “self-conscious objectification” of their culture, creating a new Tibetanness adapted to the conditions of exile (Korom 1997: 6). Frank Korom mentions the “socioeconomic centrality” (Korom 1997: 3) of handicraft work run by organizations such as the Tibetan Children’s Village for the livelihood of refugee populations, as creating and maintaining Tibetanness becomes essential to survival. Furthermore, this is an instance of economic separation between Tibetans and the local Indian community. Unlike local Indians, the Tibetan refugees of Dharamsala, while comparatively wealthy, are reliant on creating Tibetanness and marketing it abroad.
 Korom maintains that such handicrafts are not merely produced for tourists and in fact “have a highly symbolic value in the culture that nurtures their production,” with Tibetans making art forms such as rug-weaving their own by incorporating uniquely Tibetan motifs of geography, architecture, religion and national symbols (4). Korom argues that these art forms “are intended to keep the image of the homeland in peoples’ minds, not only in diasporic Tibetan minds but also in the minds of Western sympathizers” as part of the “dynamic and politicized” formation of Tibetan identity from an “interaction of hosts and guests” (5). Korom says Tibetans have practiced “limited acculturation” to preserve their traditions “while simultaneously adjusting to local lifeways,” (Korom 1997: 2) suggesting that cultural borders are not rigid but constantly negotiated.
Such negotiation is important in places like Dharamsala, with Hess observing that “where economic differentiation between Tibetans and Indians is more noticeable, there have been some tensions…” (Hess 44). The position of McleodGanj and the majority of the Tibetan refugee population six kilometers away from Lower Dharamsala, physically above most of the local Indian population in elevation, is emblematic of the exile population’s isolated and relatively lofty socioeconomic position, one that draws envy.
 In Dharamsala, the lucrative tourist industry surrounding the Dalai Lama breeds harsh competition. However, the influx of money from Tibetan economic activities and foreign support is a “catalyst for regional development” benefitting Tibetans and Indians alike (Methfessel 1997: 17). Methfessel asserts that Indian attitudes towards Tibetans often vary by socioeconomic status, with lower-caste Indians tending to respect Tibetans, who do not discriminate against them as high-caste Indians do (1997: 18).
The correlation between economic ties and tolerant attitudes is borne out by Sandra Penny-Dimri’s analysis of Indo-Tibetan relations. In the community of Bir, where Tibetans were not a significant source of revenue for local Indians nor significant employers, Penny-Dimri describes many petty conflicts between Tibetans and Indians, with Tibetan farmers often harassed by locals resentful of the wealth and what they perceived as the privileged attitude of exiles (1994: 283), with “cultural differentials…utilized as the overt reason for conflict” (293). However, in Piriwala, where Tibetans employ many Indians and the communities share many exchange relationships, the climate of hostility was “restrained by considerations of economic self-interest” (289) due to opportunities Tibetans brought to a region with high unemployment (293).
	The cultural conflicts between Tibetans and Indians are however not mere window dressing for economic conflict. Penny-Dimri identifies the cause of the 1994 riots as “an accumulation of conflicts arising from perceived cultural differences, divergent constructions of group identity” as much as “increasingly apparent socio-economic inequalities” (1994: 281). She identifies several cultural differences that breed discontent with Tibetans among Indians. From carrying knives, a weapon identified with low-caste gangs, to attempting to harass or simply talk with unmarried Indian women, Tibetan men are seen as transgressing boundaries and threatening traditional propriety. There exists a general Indian perception of Tibetans as “dirty” due to not following Hindu ritual around bathing. Also at issue is the contradiction many Hindus observe in Tibetans’ eating of meat while professing Buddhist spirituality (1994: 282). Tibetans are also seen as corrupt: A 1994 article quotes a local leader who said “corruption has become rampant in the Dharamsala administration because of some Tibetans, who do not hesitate to bribe the officials with imported items and even cash” (World Tibet Network News 1994). This lies in contrast with Hess’s account of Tibetan complaints that bribes are necessary to operate businesses or file paperwork in India (Hess 2009: 45). Thus the exile community emerges for conservative Hindus as a source of perceived spiritual pollution, mirroring Tibetans’ perception of India as a source of pollution, an earthly realm of human suffering as compared to the heavenly abode of Tibet (Diehl 2002: 114).
Tibetan stereotypes of themselves versus Indians also define cultural boundaries that keep Tibetans aloof: Tibetans see themselves as more trustworthy and reliable than Indians, and accuse the Indian population of seeming nice but in fact not being so, whereas Tibetans are outwardly brusque but kind-hearted (288). Penny-Dimri cites Tibetan non-recognition of the welfare dollars and subsidies that have led to their success as a factor in the development of an attitude among Tibetans that they work harder than impoverished Indians, who “like to live like that” (1994: 284). Tibetan children also described themselves as “superior in health, wealth, and education” (290), an attitude “reinforced by…the exile community’s separatist facilities and services” as part of official promotion of unique national identity (291).
Penny-Dimri describes Tibetan exiles’ “privileging by welfare agents” as “visibly separat[ing] them from the local Indians” (280). Hard feelings over the distribution of welfare money also exist within the exile community, with residents of Bir complaining that they are passed over for support that goes to those living in Dharamsala because of Western focus on the Dalai Lama (287).
Penny-Dimri identifies the strategic nature of the maintenance of the promotion of a Tibetan national identity in India, with Tibetan solidarity in staying stateless refugees instrumental in attracting foreign aid (292), fitting into what Anand identified as a framework of support based on the supposed unique (yet universal) culture of Tibet rather than the right to political self-determination (Anand 2003: 222). Penny-Dimri claims that the desire for return to Tibet ostensibly held by all Tibetans is in fact complicated by some long-exiled Tibetans’ recognition of their somewhat privileged status in India, with the recognition that living in Tibet would mean losing foreign sponsorship (1994: 291). Desire for “return” on behalf of those who were born in India is according to her rather lukewarm, as is that of successful Tibetan business owners (292).
Penny-Dimri claims that “welfare assistance is ethnicity based rather than need based,” (293) which attracts the resentment of impoverished locals. She claims that unlike Himachali and Kashmiri business owners, the Gaddi shepherds of the Dharamsala area are resentful. According to her “the greater bulk of the Gaddis who were instrumental in the April [1994] violence do not share in the economic benefits” provided by the Tibetan community’s presence (Penny-Dimri 1994: 291). Pleadings by non-Gaddi business owners for the Dalai Lama to stay after he considered a move post-riot indicate that Indian feelings about Tibetans in Dharamsala largely correspond to the degree of economic disparity felt between the populations.
Such disparity between Tibetans and Gaddi in Dharamsala creates feelings of resentment and powerlessness among the locals that manifest in communal violence. As in Diehl’s account of her band member’s transgression, Tibetans who commit crimes can usually rely on the exile community, or in Ngodup’s case insitutions such as the TCV, to hide them. In a 2011 article, a Dharamsala police chief was quoted as saying that arresting Tibetans was not only difficult, but often fruitless as the station would be subject to a “letter-baazi” of petitions from the community for clemency (Business Standard 2011). The slipperiness of Tibetan criminals due to the solidarity of the Tibetan community, as well as the lack of resources for poor or low-caste Indians to bring a case to court, are key factors causing the general attitude toward retaliation to “involve social rather than police action” (1994: 283).
Such a feeling of powerlessness to achieve justice in the face of opposing ethnic solidarity is echoed in both Kiela Diehl (2002: 122) and Julia Hess’s (2009: 46) suggestions that the 1994 riots made the Tibetan community realize the precariousness of their position at the mercy of an all-Indian police force. Diehl depicts a change in atmosphere after the riots, with new locks on doors and a new wariness amongst the populace (Diehl 2002: 122). Such an atmosphere was new to Dharamsala, where cultural conflict was largely kept at bay by the economic benefit the Tibetan community brings.
Penny-Dimri conjectures that continued communal violence in Dharamsala and elsewhere may result in Tibetans taking Indian citizenship and like Nepalese in India, “disappearing into crowds” (292). However, the many boundaries erected by Tibetans in efforts to keep their communities separate and maintain them as purely “Tibetan,” especially the stigmatization of taking Indian citizenship, indicate that such a dispersal is highly unlikely.
Instead of remaining wholly aloof or dissolving into India, some Tibetan exiles have attempted to partially address the disparity between the communities through efforts to reach out to Indians. Such outreach is especially visible in the form of organizations such as the Tong-Len Charitable Trust, a charity founded by Tibetan monks that runs a basic tent-roofed school that provides educational opportunities and meals for elementary students in the slum of Charan, a barren area of Lower Dharamsala that is home to approximately 800 economic refugees displaced from Rajasthan and Kashmir. The organization receives funding for its meal services from the Dalai Lama’s government, with some children from the school even receiving an audience with His Holiness (Tong-Len Charitable Trust 2009). Other principal supporters are Western donor pools such as the Rotary Club. Tong-Len also receives funds from smaller groups such as the Institute for Village Studies, the group with which I visited the Charan school, helped paint a diagram of the solar system on the school’s corrugated aluminum wall, and pitched in for the donation of a new school tent (Tong-Len Charitable Trust 2008). The existence of an organization such as Tong-Len indicates the intent of at least a few Tibetan exiles to use the foreign attention they attract through the cultivation of Tibetan identity to break out of cultural boundaries and help those in need. .
Despite the efforts of Tong-Len and well-intentioned Tibetans, a recent article in the Indian paper Business Standard indicates that the climate of Indo-Tibetan relations in contemporary Dharamsala remains frosty. Author Rishri Raote calls the situation an “wary truce,” and quotes local Indians airing a range of grievances:
…Injured pride appears to be widespread among non-Tibetan locals, along with other negative feelings, from fear (“These people are overwhelming us”; “The young people are violent”) to resentment (“They think they own the place”; “They get away with flouting the land laws”) to incomprehension (“They are Westernised and they influence our children”; “They don’t mix with us”) and envy (“They don’t need to work, they get money from abroad”). There is just enough truth there to keep the antipathy alive. (Business Standard 2011)

Raote also quotes a Tibetan Dharamsala resident who claims that a shift in economic roles has been a source of tension, as increasingly affluent Tibetans moved out of the construction industry:  “The locals don’t labour,” he says, so the work was done by Tibetan refugees. (Now others do it, like Biharis and Nepalis.) “It’s a master-servant thing. When the servants get richer, there is resentment” (2011).
Raote depicts a Dharamsala economy carved up between ethnic groups, with grocery stores and even most traditional art shops divided between Kashmiris and Himachalis, and remarks that on “the main shopping street of Dharamsala, hardly any Tibetan-owned businesses are visible.” (2011) He mentions that Tibetans were once under a de facto prohibition from operating STD telephone services, and are now under a similar ban from the cybercafé and taxi businesses.
Such an economic climate is a recipe for tension. Yet incidents are relatively few: according to Raote the 1994 riot was “the worst clash between the two communities, indeed the only one that everyone remembers…” Despite or perhaps in part because of the economic boundaries that continue to be maintained between the communities, the situation remains in (uneasy) harmony. Raote quotes a source from the Indo-Tibetan Friendship Association, a group of businessmen that function as an extralegal mediation body between the communities, who claims that there are about five incidents per year, and states that “in general, crime seems to be minor and episodic” (2011).
  Tibetans’ strategic cohesion and creation of a “flattened” hyperreal identity for the purposes of gaining international aid and political support and its resulting aloofness and relative privilege has resulted in a continued Indian resentment. However, due to the institutionalized divisions between Tibetan and Indian economic spheres I have mentioned which restrict competition, conflict between the two groups remains.

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