#4 India
Forced Displacements in India
A general Overview
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(Interested ? Feel free to ask any question by contacting us)
BLACK SHEEP
(Focus on the Tibetan exile)
Ethnic Minorities Persecutions
The small Tibetan town, with its colorful houses and shops and its Buddhist monks walking by dozens in the streets of MacLeod Ganj, is in the middle of the mountains, at about 2500m high. We are about 800km far from Delhi, in Himashal Pradesh, Nothern India. Here, there is no more or only very few cows in the streets, Hindu people are a minority and the weather is dryer, colder. We took back our pullovers and sleeping bags, which had remained in our backpacks for quite some time now, and bought big scarves made with yack wool to counter the cold. It is a very different image from India that we were about to discover, for the next month that we will spend in this oldest community of Tibetan refugees in India.
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Let’s get immersed in this « Little Lhasa » and its atmosphere, its culture, its way of living and its thousand-year tradition.
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Dharamshala, a Land of Refuge and Welcoming
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It’s here, in this small place hung to the flank of the Himalayas cliffs, that His Holiness the Dalai Lama found a refuge after he escaped from Tibet, fifty years ago. More than half of the about 20 000 inhabitants are Tibetan or with a Tibetan background -2nd or even 3rd generation -. Each year, thousands of Tibetans cross the Himalayas to join Dharamshala and its neighborhoods.
It is to be noted that India is not a signatory of the 1951 Geneva Convention on asylum seeking and thus don’t recognize the refugee status. Apart from Dharamshala, other camps – or settlements – also exists in the southern part of the country as, confronted with the importance of the immigration waves in the 60s, the government chose to build dozens of settlements for exiled Tibetans and their heirs exclusively. Those settlements gather houses, schools, and health institutions. But the Nothern part of the Himalayas keeps its special and emblematic status of historical hosting region for the oppressed people.
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Here, many chose to join Buddhist monasteries, which provide free housing and education – a hopeful perspective for the Tibetan youth which flees Tibet and Chinese exactions. Others choose to join one of the hundreds of associations settled there, and which take advantage of the growing tourism of Dharamshala to get known and heard on the international stage, although their voice and revindication remain sadly as of today too weak. About 400 000 tourists visit McLeod Ganj yearly and some of them volunteer, as we did, in the existing charitable organizations. This popularity gave birth to the development – and there is here room for criticism, but one must not forget that it is also a significant financial resource for the local inhabitants – of many non-core but profit-generating activities such as souvenir shops, restaurants, Tibetan cooking and yoga classes, Buddhist teachings, trekking and discovery days. There is something for every taste here.
We quickly found our place. Days were passing by at the rhythm of the French or English lectures we were giving at LHA Charitable trust, our encounters, and meetings. We had become teachers for a time and went back to our old memories of French grammatical rules, 3rd group verbs, never-ending numbers of exceptions in conjugation, History classes on the 1789 French Revolution, and other nuggets and small things that we had once learned and forgotten. Fanny liked to talk with Toshi - the Buddhist monk from whom we will tell you the story later on - and was often amazed by the French level of Nyima, her young student who recently arrived in Paris. Louise spent a lot of time with Tenzin Lhamo – a lot of Tibetan people, men and women alike, were named Tenzin in honor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama – and Dorjey, who taught us how to cook recipes from his hometown in Ladhak – and had received French courses of pronunciation with a French Canadian! -. The small Shangrila coffee, hold by two talkative and curious Buddhist monks who welcomed us daily to drink butter tea or momos – a kind of Tibetan steamed ravioli-, became our HQ. Then, each day around 4pm, we visited LHA for hours of discussion classes.
It has also been there, from our crappy hostel, that we followed the second round of the French presidential elections. What a popular event! And let’s not forget to mention that we had the change to take part to a public audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama who, from his 82 years old, is somehow shining!
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Tibet, what is the story?
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There is a very particular atmosphere in Dharamshala. Hundreds of Buddhist monks in purple or orange clothes are always walking by the two main streets, all going towards His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Temple. With them come also a fleet of curious tourists, intrigued by the aura of the 14th of His Name. Here, the religious leader, emblematic character of the Tibetan people, is at the very center of the struggle for the defense of the rights of the occupied and tortured country. Even though, as of today – and we will notice that later on – most of the Tibetans are skeptical regarding the implementation of the very criticized and so called “Middle Way Approach”, initiated by the Dalai Lama Himself in 1964. But let’s not go too fast. Let’s go back to the beginning …
Tibet and China
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Tibet has experienced, for some time now in its recent History, a lot of tensions regarding its relationship with China. Here are the main lines, summed up in the infographics down under.
Who has never heard about Tibet? About its breath-taking landscapes, its ancestral and rich heritage. And about its people, infamous because having been forced for decades to leave their country, currently under Chinese occupation. And yet, many of us don’t know the true story of these Tibetan refugees who keep fleeing their homeland to this day: it is a story who became slowly but steadily part of the normal course of things, and which may be forgotten over the years… So, let’s not do that and move upstream. Let’s build walls against time and let’s try to trace the stolen history of exiled Tibetans in Nothern India and elsewhere.
Viewpoint of Dharamshala
Tenzin Lhamo, Louises'student
Dorjey, our special cook – expert of momos !
In 1949, The Red Army invaded Tibet, which officially became in 1951 – after the signature of the 17 points Agreements - a province under Chinese authority. The pressures have then become increasingly regular and 10 years later (1959), Lhasa was invaded, 90 000 Tibetans killed and 80 000 fled in the neighboring countries – India, Nepal and Bhutan-. The exile is long and dangerous: one has necessarily to cross the Himalayas and the testimonies of our friends in McLeod Ganj about it were deeply dense and touching. Many have died on the road. His Holiness fled, leading the way, and settled in Dharamshala. Slowly but steadily, the exile became more organized. It gave birth to the CTA – Central Tibetan Administration, which stands for the Tibetan Government in Exile – in Nothern India, around which gathered Tibetans from all around the world. Soon, 15 years after the exile started, and confronted with the sufferings of His people, the Dalai Lama realized that independence was not likely to be negotiated and bent towards a pragmatic alternative: Tibet could get recognized as an official separation of Tibet from the Popular Republic of China in a similar way that Hong Kong Province did. He will call that solution, officially stated in 1974, the “Middle Way Approach” (Umalayan in Tibetan). In 1979, the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping reopened the talks with Tibetan representatives, saying publicly that “apart from the issue of total independence all other issues can be discussed and resolved”.
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In 1987 His Holiness the Dalai Lama offered a Plan for Peace in 5 points which once again give up on real independence. The will of the religious leader, who at that time got all politic powers granted by a recent referendum by the Tibetan people, is clear: the goal is to call upon the public international opinion to bring peace to the Great Tibet region – progressively eaten by China-. The peace process implies the immediate stop of Chinese exactions on the field – among which population’s displacements, the destruction of natural environment, the non-respect of fundamental rights, the political and religious brainwashing and the censorship-. But China was afraid about Tibetan’s autonomy and its repercussion on the international stage. As a result, the government strengthened its politics and claimed the Martial Law in 1989 in Lhasa. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama received the Peace Nobel Price for its non-violent and pacifist “Middle Way Approach". The talks got frozen.
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Nowadays the situation is not better, if not worse. In 2008, generalized strikes have burst all over the Tibetan territory to denounce another Chinese refusal for a Memorandum on a Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People however conceived within the rules of the Chinese Constitution and which threatened neither its territorial integrity nor its sovereignty. Public immolations started in 2009 to protest against the occupation of Tibet and the political repressions, the religious persecutions, the destruction of cultural patrimony and the assimilation practices that come with it. The peace process is currently deadlocked while the situation is deteriorating. More than 150 Tibetans set themselves on fire since then to seek attention of the other countries’ government and citizens.
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But what happened before1949?
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Way more than just a submitted and oppressed Chinese enclave, Tibet is a huge territory fueled by a thousand-year patrimony and a unique culture which is being extinguished. In Dharamshala, our Tibetan friends incarnated their willingness to share their memories et their knowledge which we shall remember.
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We will now try to sum up the mighty and powerful past of the “Great Tibet” in a few lines. This past tarnished by the Chinese propaganda which still today tries to tell a unilateral version of the story.
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“To have any say in my reincarnation, the communist leaders themselves must believe in the concept of reincarnation.“ His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
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For a long time, Tibet has been the crossroad for commercial and cultural exchange between the peoples of the Himalayas. Traditionally, it has been the place of birth of a influent Buddhist movement and the worldwide popularity of the Dalai Lama is the revival of a rich and glorious religious and cultural past.
Toshi and the prayer wheels at the Dalai Lama’s Temple
Unlike what is heard in the Middle Kingdom, which certifies that Tibet has been an integrated part of China since “very old times”, the borders between China and Tibet have officially been ratified in 823.
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From the 13th century, and until the 20th century, Tibet has maintained close ties with its powerful neighbor, the Mongol Empire of the Khan dynasty, spanning from the far East of Asia – China included – until the borders of Europe. Tibet was even playing a very special role through its strong religious Buddhist influence on the area – a common spirituality which was used as unifying cement for the whole empire-. These top-notch relationships, called Cho-Yon in mongol, made the link between both peoples unique. The Mongol Empire even legitimized the role of the Dalai Lama by acknowledging and appoint Him as spiritual and politic leader of Tibet in 1254 and again in 1642. Hence, since the Tibet got aside from the Mongolian domination quite early and pacify its borders with the old Empire, the Chinese Empire of the Ming dynasty (14th-17th century) got historical sovereignty on Tibet and its later independence. Tibet must have foreseen the conqueror appetite of its Chine neighbor.
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Toshi’s story
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It is hard to say how old he really is. He could be 55 years old, as he could still be an adolescent. Toshi is a Buddhist monk, exiled in a monastery which welcomed him when he arrived in the south of India. Every year, like many others, he likes spending several months to recollect in Dharamshala.
Our friend Toshi, a Buddhist Monk, and Fanny
He was only 15 when he left, without a word to anyone, to flee Chinese occupation in Tibet, his homeland, and his small village from which he had never been further than 50km. He was 15. He neither knew how to read nor how to write and dreamed about practicing his religion “full time” as he now laughs about it. He left everything behind: his family, his friends, his young fiancée, his country, his land and any hope to see again, one day, what he had fled. “It was an evening” he said to me “I don’t remember which month”. All he can remember is that he took his ID and the few money he had spared since then. “At that time, I was not afraid of Chinese militaries, that’s weird … the only people I feared were my parents, my family or somebody close to me who would have seen me leaving. They would never have accepted that I gave up, like that. But I wanted to become a monk. And I decided to go to India.”
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Crossing the Himalayas took him a month. A month during which he followed two elder monks who took care of him. The Chinese army captured one, just before arriving in Nepal, their transit country on the way to India. “I heard that in jail, his other monks friends and him, were laughing so loud it bothered other prisoners and that the guards came to forbid them to laugh. Do you realize? They could not even laugh.”
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As Toshi fled, he did not think about writing an address, a contact, anything that would have allowed him to stay in touch with the people he had left. Only 19 years later, he could send a letter to comfort his mother. Just a letter, to tell her that he was safe and sound.
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Toshi came back to Tibet in 2012. It was 25 years later. His father had died. His mother did not recognize him at the first sight. Then she would not leave him alone. Every morning, he said, she would wake up at dawn to watch him and be sure it was not a dream. That it was real. “Until I left again, she would not believe me. She would not be sure that it was me.”
Today, Toshi has one single goal: to pass a heritage he his afraid to see disappear. Each day, he would tell me numerous ancestral Buddhist stories and parables on Great Compassion, Dharma, and Nirvana achievement. No resentment, no violence, no hatred was to be found in his words. He keeps applying to his own life the theories of Karma and compassion towards the enemies. He remains imperturbable and amazed me by his wisdom, his rigor, and his philosophy. Toshi does not loose his temper. He has no more illusion. He adapts himself. And even though I would not admit it, he promised me to bring me one day to his village in Tibet. When Tibet will be free again.
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Yes, one day. But when?
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What is future like for Tibet?
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Our stay in Dharamshala will remain one of the most amazing experiences of our travel. It will stay carved in our memory, as will the testimonies we recorded there and all our encounters. Some of them became true friends and, by this early morning in June, it is hard, really hard to leave our village with Tibetan accents. We needed a month to find our way back to the sedentary way of life, with a time schedule, new habits, and a routine we appreciated so much. But we had to leave. And we had to left behind a whole people in exile with hope and a lot to say. Today, the situation is frozen. When we arrived in May 2017, we attended to the official visit of US congress members who reasserted their support towards the Tibetan nation against Chinese oppression. Was it idle talk or real backing? The Dalai Lama also talked in this instance, but only in Tibetan – pretexting a mediocre English level “comme-ci, comme-ça” but underlining by doing so the emergency to protect a patrimony, a culture and a language facing the threat of extinction-.
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We left behind us many questions and fears concerning the near future of Tibet. But remembering the endless smile of Toshi, among many others, make us promise that one must not give up. And that all will be fine in the end.
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Tenzin Dofen and his cousin, before a trek in the Himalayas.
A dear friend of ours.
Some interviews
Article available in French on ...
THE ARA TRUST
The ARA Trust is a provider of legal services for refugees undergoing UNHCR process by preparing them to the ir Refugee Determination Status - RSD - Interviews. ARA also developp other programs like legal empowerment or legal knowledge sessions.
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Click here for more information.
Contact : Vashuda, Co-founder & Senior Legal Officer, New Delhi
LHA Charitable Trust
We volunteered for a month at LHA Charitable Trust, which is ​an organization aiming at welcoming and integrating Tibetans in India since 1997. LHA provides a wide set of services such as language courses, social events, food, medicines and professionnal formations for young tibetans above 25 years old, mixed with other ages and nationalities.
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Click here for more information.
Contact : Dorji Kyi, General Secretary, Dharamsala