THE SEARCH FOR HOME
For decades, Dharamshala has been the seat of the Tibetan governmentinexile and a miniTibet in India. But now, the Tibetans are leaving
Everyone has a number to offer. Six for Kunsang, four for Lobsang, 13 for Yangzom.
Each number has accompanying stories. Yangzom offers one about her friend, Thinley (name changed). A decade after fleeing Tibet, he was desperate to return. A teaching job in Mcleodganj and a circle of friends notwithstanding, the separation from his family in Tibet had started to overwhelm him. The only way he could go back was to cross over into China, clandestinely, from Nepal. He did exactly that, only to be arrested by Chinese authorities and deported back to India. Had he been successful, Thinley would have been Yangzom’s 14th Tibetan friend to have left India in the last few years.
In Mcleodganj, the home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community in India, it is now becoming increasingly apparent: the town is fast losing its Tibetans to migration. Youngsters are quick to quantify this by the number of friends they have lost to this trend.
While some are migrating to the West, many are choosing to return to Tibet. Numbers are hard to come by – the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) confirms the trend but says it has no way of keeping count, especially of those returning to Tibet. Unofficial estimates from the Foreigners Registration office in Dharamshala indicate it could be as high as around 100 Tibetans of the estimated 15,000-strong Mcleodganj population having gone to foreign shores and not returned in the last two years. Adding to the community’s worries, Tibetans no longer want to escape China like they used to; the number is “down to a trickle”, says Sonam Norbu Dagpo, the spokesperson for the CTA. As the community, spread over 45 residential settlements across 10 Indian states, celebrates the start of the 60th year of its existence in India this week, many of these questions are now gaining traction, especially after the Indian government’s stunning refusal to participate in these events, purportedly to salvage its ties with China.
HANGING BY A THREAD
India’s refusal to sign the 1951 United Nations convention on refugees means that Tibetans, on paper, continue to be ‘foreigners’, not refugees. Tibetans cannot own any property, neither can they apply for government jobs. Till 2014, they could not even avail of loans to start businesses. Though that policy has been changed on paper, there has been little change in ground realities. Also, though the law allows them to seek employment, many Tibetans say that private companies often turn them down citing their statelessness.
“Economically, many of the Tibetans in Tibet and across the world are doing relatively better than the Tibetans in India,” says Lobsang Yangtso, a Tibetan born in Tibet, who is finishing her PhD from New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is now contemplating a move to the West, possibly the US, to pursue her post-doctoral studies. “I am not allowed to teach in Indian government-run universities here, nor work for the government. This restricts my options a lot,” she reasons.
CTA’s Dagpo agrees with the trend. “The number (of Tibetans migrating) is definitely on the increase. Our youngsters have rising aspirations which, often, are not realised here.”
Economic migration, however, is only part of the story. The Tibetan community’s precarious existence in India is symbolised by a document called the ‘Registration Certificate’ (RC) and the ritual around its renewal can be unnerving. “Imagine lining up to get a document renewed, your entire existence depending on that one signature,” says Tenzin Choezin, the head consultant at the Tibetan government-run Tibetan Career Centre. Till recently, Tibetans would have to queue up each year to renew it. The policy was changed in 2014, making the document valid for five years.
THE INDIA FACTOR
Added to the difficulties of the RC are the perceptions around the Indian state and its inconsistent policy towards the community, prime among them being India’s refusal to recognise that Tibet’s been occupied by China. In addition, with the Dalai Lama’s advancing age, an anxious community in India is trying to look for signs that the Indian government won’t turn its back on them after his death.
A string of recent events has not left them feeling very optimistic. A Public Interest Litigation last year paved the way for Tibetans to apply for Indian citizenship. In response, the Centre asked Tibetans opting for Indian passports to vacate their homes in Tibetan settlements and relinquish the accompanying welfare benefits. Many Tibetans panicked, others protested. The Centre, later, partially revoked the order – Tibetans will still lose their benefits but not their homes.
To add to the unease, there were news reports of cabinet secretary PK Sinha issuing an order in early March discouraging bureaucrats and leaders from hobnobbing publicly with the Dalai Lama and Tibetan leaders. This was after the Tibetan government-in-exile announced a series of events to thank the Indian state for its support to the community in the past six decades. (Union culture minister Mahesh Sharma was, however, present in Dharamshala on March 31 at the opening event of the yearlong programme planned by the Tibetans.)
But this unease is driving many Tibetans to migrate to ‘safer’ places. Older parents, Tselha says, are asking their children to look beyond India. “Parents in Tibet are asking their children to come back while those in India are pushing their children to move to the US and Europe,” she adds.
Another crucial factor that drives many to move back to Tibet or shift base to Western countries is the distance that migration creates in personal relationships. Tibetan youth in India, separated from their families in Tibet, are forced to rely on close friends and acquaintances. “This situation brings the children together and they become each other’s family away from home, developing very close bonds,” says Sonam Dechen, associate director of the Mcleodganj-based Tibetan Centre for Conflict Resolution, which works extensively with young Tibetans. With the growing migration, these bonds might now be getting undone. Kunsang Tenzing’s story exemplifies this. The 33-year-old came to India at the age of six, after his divorced parents put him in his grandma’s care, who then took Kunsang to India. He has never lived with his family since then; they admitted him to a boarding school and soon after, migrated to the United States. He remembers the winter breaks at school distinctly– he spent them in the school dormitory because there was no family to come home to. Kunsang found solace in the company of six close friends, but they have now all left, spread across Europe and North America. “In the next one or two years, I will be gone to the US too,” he says.
But, the journey to boarding the flight out is not easy. Locals say that their statelessness means only two of every 10 applications for a tourist visa are successful.
“Agents get fake documentation made and charge differently for each country. The going rate for the US, for instance, is about ₹20 lakh,” says Lobsang Wangyal, a journalist and the organiser of the Miss Tibet beauty pageant.
Then there are sham marriages, where foreign tourists offer to ‘marry’ young Tibetans for a price and a visa. A local journalist, not wishing to be identified, recounts how one of her friends agreed to pay an American tourist close to ₹15 lakhs to get a spouse visa. The CTA admits to these happenings. Karma Choeying, additional secretary of the CTA’s Home department, recounts how Tibetans have landed in “the middle of Africa” without any documents, after being promised a Western destination. “We had to work through UN agencies to get them released.”
TO MOVE OR NOT TO MOVE
Some believe that migration will have a net positive effect. “The Tibetan diaspora contributes immensely to the cause because of their improved financial standing,” says Dawa Rinchen, the CTA’s officer in-charge of the Dharamshala settlement.
But the emigration is leaving the CTA with few takers for agriculture and handicraft production, the community’s traditional occupations. Many also point to the resultant ‘brain-drain’. While insisting that diaspora migrants continue to be connected to the cause, JNU’s Yangtso says, “The problem is that skilled people are moving out creating a lack of skilled, welltrained people in India.” Choezin, from the Tibetan Career Centre, agrees. “The best of our minds are going away, often to wash dishes in a European café.”
For many young Tibetans, having grown up without even a letter from their parents due to the censorship in China, the desire to migrate is often interwoven with a desire to, finally, find a home. For many like Yangzom, driven by financial need, migration means leaving behind the life she had created in India. For her, home might mean having to recreate all of that. But some, like Yangtso, have made peace with the realisation that the move might not end the search for home, after all.
“The concept of home is complicated. Somewhere deep down, it is so much more than just a house. It doesn’t really matter where you settle down.”