Earlier, we discussed the major waves of migration from Tibet into India. And although the refugee flow has slowed down to a trickle today, it still continues.
In this post, we try to briefly cover two aspects central to the life of the Indian Tibetan diaspora: their identities, and legal statuses. We therefore partially attempt to answer the question: What is life like for the 94,000 odd Tibetans in India today?
Whether immigrants to India or born here, most Tibetans usually spend their life in reserved settlements usually in the North or North-east. These settlements house a large number of Tibetans and reflect traditional Tibetan life to a considerable extent. As a result of this, several Indian-born Tibetans have an identity that is very strongly Tibetan.
Poems like these express the struggle of growing up Tibetan, without ever having been in Tibet:
Tibetans in India do not get citizenship automatically. Instead, they are required to have periodically-renewed Registration Certificates (RCs) which serve as their primary identity documents. The RCs are also a prerequisite for obtaining Identity Certificates issued by the Indian government that some countries accept in place of a passport.
These set of policies essentially view Tibetans as ‘foreigners with a certificate’ and Tibetans do not enjoy many basic rights that citizens have access to. Some of these include the right to vote, travel domestically or internationally, and right to certain employment related activities.
Demands from some in the Tibetan community led (in 2017) to the government accepting a former High-court ruling to allow Tibetan refugees born between a certain time-period in India to apply for Indian citizenship and receive Indian passports.
Despite this, people desiring Indian citizenship face many political, governmental and even cultural hurdles. Cultural hurdles arise from the feelings of some within the Tibetan community that the ruling will lead to loss of ethnic and national identity for Tibetans.
Six decades on, Tibetan diaspora in Dharamsala worried about its future
TenzinTsundue.com .:. Writings of Tenzin Tsundue
Disclaimer: This article does not consider any recent developments under the government’s push for the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens.
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