Wandering through the Tibetan market in Swayambhu, Nepal, an inexplicable but familiar feeling hit me. I grappled with the question of ‘position’ as a researcher, especially when studying the community as an outsider. Often, I have been struck by how narrow definitions of mainstream international relations (IR) ignore long-standing nonviolent resistance movements such as the Tibetan movement. Feminist perspectives on women, peace and security (WPS) take a different approach to defining conflict and war. Feminist IR scholarship challenges the notion of conflict as including only immediate and highly aggressive forms of conflict and views long-term, consistent and passive resistance to oppression as part of the larger WPS domain.
In this context, Tibetan resistance to Chinese occupation is a long-standing struggle that periodically captures the public imagination in India and Nepal, especially when security is tightened for a Chinese diplomat or politician to visit. The consistently non-violent nature of the resistance taken up by the Tibetan exile community in South Asia has implications that go beyond the boundaries of international relations, necessitating the revival and re-operationalisation of terms such as ‘struggle’, ‘resistance’ and ‘resistance’ represent. ‘harassment’.
One of the most misunderstood and misrepresented refugee communities in the world, the interpretative challenges faced by Tibetans in exile can be described as extrapolations of a colonial imagination from two centuries ago. Such representations are political attempts, as evident in historiographic exercises, to define or destroy Tibetanness or Tibetan nationalism. Note how Tibetans reinforce their nationhood through the writing of their history, while China attempts to over-simplify that complex history to suit its colonization agenda. The attempt of Tibetans to control the narrative of their history, both in exile and in Tibet, is in itself a form of resistance that consciously retells the story from the perspective of the subject.
Headquartered in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, the Central Tibetan Administration is an elected government-in-exile with political authority since the Dalai Lama renounced his political powers in 2011. The spiritual leader is a unifying point and unifying factor for the community. He is at the forefront of the resistance movement, advocating the middle path of nonviolent resistance against the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Furthermore, keeping Tibetan lifestyle and cultural traditions alive can be viewed through a feminist lens as the best possible nonviolent means of resistance in the Tibetan quest for an autonomous Greater Tibet, including Kham, Amdo and Yu-Tsang.
However, given the nature of the movement and bonded life, it has faced a number of criticisms, mainly from three quarters: the dominating state of China, within the community, and from their host communities.
The Chinese Communist Party and state-controlled media are least sensitive to Tibetan preferences. Their ultra-nationalist narrative that promotes Chinese languages and rejects Tibetan modes of expression and autonomy, as well as resource exploitation, is well documented. The re-education centers aim to further strangle that space. A far more brutal version of this is probably being practiced among Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Another challenge comes from within the exile community. Many second- and third-generation Tibetan refugees were born outside Tibet and living in culturally different host countries can lead to a dilemma of belonging, compounded by the extent of statelessness. There is also an internal struggle over what constitutes Tibetan identity for those who marry outside the community. This will also worsen as global support for their cause dwindles and China’s economic and political clout increases. Taking the citizenship of another country is often discouraged as an act of abandoning the cause, an accusation that carries moral implications in such a tight-knit exile group.
Third, tensions between Tibetans and host communities pose a challenge to peaceful coexistence in their adopted countries. Rehabilitation and land resettlement in the 1960s and 70s aimed to provide Tibetan refugees with economic means of survival and livelihood options. But inter-community friction can be traced to layered causes including economic jealousy or even marriages across community lines, some of which translate into resentment and non-cooperation, undermining the ideal of peaceful coexistence. are seen to happen. As the Tibetan resistance unpacks the real questions about what constitutes a long-term struggle, it is important to recognize the complex nature of its challenges and origins. This may generate a new interest and enthusiasm among international agencies and academicians and think-tanks to take up the issue of continuing resistance movements as part of security and conflict studies, thus promoting Tibetan resistance and similar ones around the world. Conflicts can be given their due attention.
Sharon Susan Koshy is a visiting fellow at the Nepal Institute for International Cooperation and Engagement, Kathmandu
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