Voices from Exile: Exploring Tibetan Nationalism and Identity Among Tibetan Refugees Living in India

Abstract

This study examines the concept of a nation, the construction of national identity, and individuals' acts of nationalism in the name of a nation, through the lens of the Tibetan refugee population. Twenty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted to provide context for these questions. The recorded data shows that the Tibetan refugee population’s identification with their geographical and religious features forms the basis of the Tibetan national identity. It is seen that this identification evokes a sense of collective national trait among the Tibetan community, symbolising the preferred personality characteristics of a genuine Tibetan. Further, the community’s shared belief in historical and cultural homogeneity, spiritual faith in leadership, and consciousness of belonging to a refugee group gives them a determined reason to free Tibet from the suffering of foreign occupation. Such factors eventually guide the refugee Tibetans to conceptualise and exercise Tibetan nationalism from exile.

Keywords

Nation, Nationalism, National Identity, Refugee, Leadership, Tibetan Nationalism, India

Author Biography

Vibhanshu Verma

Dr. Vibhanshu Verma is an independent research scholar who recently completed his Ph.D. in Psychology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Banaras Hindu University in India. His research focuses on the psychological aspects of displacement, identity, and transnational biopolitics, particularly concerning the Tibetan exile community in India. Utilising interdisciplinary frameworks and qualitative methodologies, his work thoroughly examines issues related to stateless governance, long-distance nationalism, and the mobilisation process in exile. He continues to conduct research at the intersection of psychology, politics, and culture, demonstrating a strong commitment to socially engaged scholarship.

Shail Shankar

Prior to joining IIT at Banaras Hindu University, Dr. Shail Shankar held a faculty position at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi. His research primarily explores the psychological functions of identity within group dynamics, with a particular focus on collective action and protest behaviour. More recently, his academic interests have expanded to include the psychological dimensions of refugee experiences and dissent in conflict-affected regions. Dr. Shankar has published extensively in leading journals on group behaviour and brings over a decade of teaching experience to his role.

Amrutha N.V.

Dr. Amrutha N.V.'s research examines disaster resilience, specifically investigating the role of emergent group bonds and the socio-identity processes that influence coping strategies, particularly among flood victims. She studies social identity and group dynamics among refugee populations, as well as resilience behaviours in communities affected by natural disasters. Through an interdisciplinary approach, Dr. Amrutha aims to highlight the complex interactions between identity, trauma, and recovery in vulnerable populations.

References

1. Arakeri, A. (1998). Tibetans in India: The Uprooted People and their Cultural Transplantation. Reliance Publishing House.
2. Anand, D. (2000). (Re) Imagining Nationalism: Identity and Representation in the Tibetan Diaspora of South Asia. Contemporary South Asia, 9(3), 271–287. https://doi.org/10.1080/713658756
3. Anand, D. (2003). A contemporary story of “Diaspora”: The Tibetan version. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 12(2), 211–229. https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.12.2.211
4. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities. Verso Press.
5. Angmo, D. (2019). A brief history of Tibetan Protest and its Implications for the Nature of the Tibetan Independence Movement. The Tibet Journal, 44(1), 3–11. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26921463
6. Barton, J. (2020). Doing Qualitative Research with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. In Bager-Charleson, S., McBeath, A. (eds.). Enjoying Research in Counselling and Psychotherapy (pp. 51–69). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55127-8_4
7. Baumann, G. (1999). The Multicultural Riddle: Rethinking National, Ethnic and Religious Identities. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203906637
8. Bentz, A. S. (2012). Being a Tibetan refugee in India. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 31(1), 80-107. https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdr016
9. Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis. SAGE.
10. Chatterjee, P. (1993). The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton University Press.
11. Connor, W. (1978). A Nation is a Nation, is a State, is an Ethnic Group is a … . Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1(4), 377–400. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.1978.9993240
12. Connor, W. (1994). Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton University Press.
13. Creswell, J. (1998). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Traditions. SAGE.
14. De Cillia, R., Reisigl, M. & Wodak, R. (1999). The Discursive construction of national identities. Discourse & Society, 10(2), 149–173. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926599010002002
15. Dobson, S. (2004). Cultures of Exile and the Experience of Refugeeness. Peter Lang.
16. Druckman, D. (1994). Nationalism, Patriotism, and Group Loyalty: A Social Psychological Perspective. Mershon International Studies Review, 38 (Supplement_1), 43–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/222610
17. Fligstein, N., Polyakova, A., & Sandholtz, W. (2012). European integration, nationalism and European identity. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 50(1), 106–122. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2011.02230.x
18. Goldstein, M. (1997). The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520923256
19. Gyatso, P. (1998). Fire Under the Snow: Testimony of a Tibetan prisoner. Random House.
20. Haas, E. (1986). What is Nationalism, and Why Should we study it? International Organization, 40(3), 707-744. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300027326
21. Halbwachs, M. (1992). On Collective Memory. University of Chicago Press.
22. Hall, S. (1994). Cultural identity and diaspora. In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (eds.). Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory (pp. 392–403). Routledge.
23. Hillman, B. (2018). Studying Tibetan Identity. In W. Wu & M. Frazier (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Contemporary China (pp. 713–735). Sage Publications.
24. Hirsch, M. (1997). Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Harvard University Press.
25. Kehoe, S. (2020). Regimes of Temporality: China, Tibet, and the Politics of Time in the Post-2008 Era. Media, Culture & Society, 42(7-8), 1133-1152. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443720907535
26. Khan, S. S., Svensson, T., Jogdand, Y. A., & Liu, J. H. (2017). Lessons from the Past for the Future: The Definition and Mobilisation of Hindu Nationhood by the Hindu Nationalist Movement of India. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 5(2), 477-511. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v5i2.736
27. Kolas, A. (1996). Tibetan Nationalism: The Politics of Religion. Journal of Peace Research, 33(1), 51–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343396033001004
28. Kymlicka, W. (2001). Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship. Oxford University Press.
29. Larkin, M., Shaw, R., & Flowers, P. (2018). Multiperspectival Designs and Processes in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Research. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 16(2), 182–198. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2018.1540655
30. Lin, R. Y. (2022). The Privileged Refugees: Questions on Tibetan Nationality and Citizenship. In S.I. Rajan (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Refugees in India (pp. 553-564). Routledge India.
31. Marshall, M. N. (1996). Sampling for qualitative research. Family Practice, 13(6), 522–526. https://doi.org/10.1093/fampra/13.6.522
32. Mason, M. (2010). Sample Size and Saturation in PhD Studies using Qualitative Interviews. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 11(3). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-11.3.1428
33. McConnell, F. (2011). A State within a State? Exploring Relations between the Indian state and the Tibetan Community and Government-in-Exile. Contemporary South Asia, 19(3), 297–313. https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2011.594160
34. McConnell, F. (2013). Citizens and refugees: Constructing and negotiating Tibetan Identities in Exile. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(4), 967–983. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2011.628245
35. McConnell-Henry, T., Chapman, Y., & Francis, K. (2009). Husserl and Heidegger: Exploring the Disparity. International Journal of Nursing Practice, 15(1), 7–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-172X.2008.01724.x
36. Misra, A. (2003). A Nation in Exile: Tibetan Diaspora and the Dynamics of Long-Distance Nationalism. Asian Ethnicity, 4(2), 189–206. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631360301659
37. Morse, J. and Field, P. (1995). Qualitative Methods for Health Professionals. SAGE
38. Mukherjee, K. (2021). Conflict in Tibet: Internal and External Dimensions. Asian Affairs, 52(2), 288–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2021.1907103
39. Norbu, D. (2001). Refugees from Tibet: Structural Causes of Successful Settlements. The Tibet Journal, 26(2), 3-25. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43302483
40. Noy, C. (2008). Sampling knowledge: The Hermeneutics of Snowball Sampling in Qualitative Research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 11(4), 327–344. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645570701401305
41. O’Reilly, M., & Parker, N. (2013). ‘Unsatisfactory Saturation’: A Critical Exploration of the Notion of Saturated Sample Sizes in Qualitative Research. Qualitative Research, 13(2), 190–197. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794112446106
42. Oidtmann, M. G. (2014). Between Patron and Priest: Amdo Tibet under Qing Rule, 1792-1911. Harvard University.
43. Powers, J. (2004). History as Propaganda: Tibetan Exiles versus the People's Republic of China. Oxford University Press.
44. Reicher, S., Haslam, S. A., & Hopkins, N. (2005). Social identity and the dynamics of leadership: Leaders and followers as collaborative agents in the transformation of social reality. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(4), 547–568. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2005.06.007
45. Reicher, S., & Hopkins, N. (2001). Self and Nation. London: Sage.
46. Reicher, S., Hopkins, N., & Condor, S. (1997). The Lost Nation of Psychology. In C. Barfoot (Ed.), Beyond Pug’s Tour: National and Ethnic Stereotyping (pp. 53–84). https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004490123_006
47. Searle-White, J. (2001). The Psychology of Nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan US.
48. Seton-Watson, H. (2019). Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism. Routledge.
49. Shakya, T. (1999). The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet since 1947. Columbia University Press.
50. Sikri, R. (2011). The Tibet factor in India-China Relations. Journal of International Affairs, 64(2), 55–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24385534
51. Smith, A. D. (1991). National Identity (Vol. 11). University of Nevada Press.
52. Smith, A. D., & Smith, A. (2003). Nationalism and Modernism. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203167960
53. Smith, J., Jarman, M., & Osborn, M. (1999). Doing interpretive phenomenological analysis. In M. Murray & K. Chamberlain (Eds.), Qualitative health psychology (pp. 218–240). SAGE.
54. Sperling, E. (2004). The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics. East-West Center.
55. Stevenson, C., & Muldoon, O. T. (2010). Socio‐Political Context and Accounts of National Identity in Adolescence. British Journal of Social Psychology, 49(3), 583-599. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466609X475972
56. Warner, C. D. (2011). A Miscarriage of History: Wencheng Gongzhu and Sino-Tibetan Historiography. Inner Asia, 13(2), 239–264. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24572093
57. Wimmer, A., & Schiller, N. G. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301–334. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-0374.00043
58. Woeser, T. (2016). Tibet on Fire: Self-immolations against Chinese Rule. Verso Books.
59. Yardley, L. (2000). Dilemmas in Qualitative Health Research. Psychology & Health, 15(2), 215–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870440008400302
60. Yu, F. L. T., & Kwan, D. S. (2013). The Social Construction of National Reality: Tibet and Taiwan. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 18, 259–279. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-013-9249-z