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GUARDIANS OF TRADITION, AGENTS OF CHANGE:
LAYWOMEN SHAPING FAITH, FAMILY AND FUTURE IN
DHARAMSALA’S TIBETAN REFUGEE COMMUNITY
KATHERINE A. SMALLEY
THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE AT CHATANOOGA
INTRODUCTION1
_____
Ngawang’s knocking awakens me in the early morning, and I hurriedly ready
myself for our walk to the temple. Sunrise has not yet come to Mcleod Ganj, but the
small Himalayan town in upper Dharamsala is already stirring. Though coffee shops
and vendors’ stands remain dormant, the streets are dotted with solitary figures
converging onto a single road that leads to the Dalai Lama’s temple in exile. No
conversation breaks the reverent mood, but the soft clicking of prayer beads and the
murmured chanting of om mani padme hum2 merge into a subtle chorus that fills the
silence of the early morning. Once at the temple, everyone falls into the rhythm of
prostrations and kora3 around the complex as the sun begins to emerge from behind
the looming Himalayas. The scene is idyllic and surreal—a poignant illustration of
Tibet in exile. Though the morning pilgrims come to the temple with a common
purpose, they represent a diverse mixture of the refugee community: energetic young
adults and stooped elders, men and women, Tibet- and India-born.
As the shops gradually open for business and the slow pace of the morning
blurs into the bustling activity of the day, the spiritual aspect of a Tibetan refugee’s
routine has only begun, for there is no rigid division between time at the temple and
work or leisure activities. Puja4 and prostrations are outward signs of the Buddhist
values these men and women embrace, but the values themselves do not remain
enclosed within the walls of the temple grounds. Prof. John Powers offers an
insightful commentary on the interplay between sacred and mundane in Tibetan
culture, explaining that “there is no clear distinction between religious and secular life
in Tibetan societies, and ‘religion’ is not compartmentalized into certain places and
times as it tends to be in Western societies. Rather, Buddhism is the very lifeblood of
the community, and its influence is seen in all aspects of daily life.”5
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The refugees I spoke with in Dharamsala affirmed the strong link between
Buddhism and Tibetan society. One woman explained that she does not consider
herself very religious in the sense of regularly visiting the temple or reading prayers.
However, she acknowledged the importance of Buddhism to her life in a more
general sense, saying, “I think the main difference with other religions is that
Buddhism for us is a way of life, and the most important role our religion has played
for me is that I think our religion has taught us to be kind and…to understand other
people’s problems.”6 Another woman revealed a similar opinion, explaining that
Tibetan religion is interwoven in everyday experiences and shapes the way people
perceive and manage life situations. Buddhism, she said, helps Tibetans put their
achievements and inadequacies into perspective, allowing them to avoid pride when
they succeed and desperation when they fail.7
Not only are Buddhism and daily life in Tibetan society strongly linked, many
people say they are one and the same. “Tibetan culture is synonymous with Tibetan
Buddhism,” one woman told me, and many others echoed her sentiment.8 Another
woman explained that Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan culture are “two sides of the
same coin,” and it is impossible to have one without the other.9 In the eyes of these
refugees, preserving Tibetan Buddhism in exile is crucial to saving Tibetan culture as
a whole from extinction. Though the close connection between Buddhism and
culture has existed for centuries in Tibet, the phenomenon is augmented in exile
because the stakes are much higher. China’s government is targeting Buddhism in
present-day Tibet due to its close ties with the Dalai Lama, who is identified as the
leader of a separatist movement that undermines efforts to unite the Chinese
motherland. Defaming His Holiness and defrocking monks and nuns are the deepest
blows China’s government can deal to Tibet’s independent identity, cohesiveness,
and morale.
In addition, Buddhism is the most portable and adaptable aspect of Tibetan
culture. Since refugees have religious freedom to exercise their beliefs in India,
preserving monastic and lay Buddhism outside Tibet is a cause to which every
member of Dharamsala’s exile community can contribute. Tibet’s nomadic
traditions, on the other hand, have suffered under Chinese rule due to collectivization,
but they cannot be revived and reinvented in the Indian context because they require
large expanses of open land. In Dharamsala, nomadic dress and customs are
remembered in museums and memorial concerts highlighting historical Tibet, but
they are rarely evidenced in daily life. Rooting Tibetan culture in nomadic practices
and festivals would be unproductive for refugees in exile today, who instead see
Buddhism as the essence of their unique cultural heritage.
With so much to lose, both men and women have high incentives to involve
themselves in the preservation and maintenance of Tibetan Buddhist traditions in
exile. Women, in particular, are appearing at the forefront of the struggle and
contributing to society in ways that they had hardly explored prior to the 1950s. The
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tumult of the failed Tibetan uprising and flight into exile in 1959 created daunting
instability and gaping holes in Tibet’s social, familial, and governmental structure.
Many women rose to the challenge of reconstruction alongside men, beginning a
trend of strong female leadership and public involvement that continues today. I
highlight women due to their changing position in the Tibetan social order and the
impact that change will have on the way future generations view the Tibetan family,
faith, and culture. Women are in a unique place as they redefine what it means to be
a Tibetan woman and model that image to the world.
As evidenced in Dharamsala, Buddhism permeates all aspects of Tibetan
society, and the separation of religious and secular spheres of life is a foreign notion,
since both are blended into one. However, religion was more compartmentalized for
women in historical Tibet, and their spiritual contributions were largely limited to
three realms: home, nunnery, or tantric retreat. Certainly, there were exceptional
women who ruled kingdoms and achieved great renown in public life, though for the
average woman, Buddhism was an all-inclusive mindset but not necessarily an allinclusive reality. It shaped her perceptions of the world and attitudes toward the
human experience but provided her with limited outlets for spiritual expression.
Scholars are engaged in a continuing debate over the precise position of Tibetan
women pre-1959; and though there is a great degree of variation according to region
and socio-economic level, it seems that most women played a primarily domestic and
exclusively non-political role in their communities prior to the Chinese occupation.
Home, family, and trade were realms very familiar to Tibetan women, but venturing
outside those traditional bounds meant facing numerous obstacles and hardships.
Taking vows of nunhood was the most accessible option for a woman with a
propensity for religious study, but even then she often received discouragement from
family members. It was common for parents to send at least one male child to join a
monastery at an early age, but girls were generally more valued in the home. Nuns
were also much lower in status than monks, so a family gained more honor from
having a son in the monastic community.10 When someone in a village needed a
ritual performed on their behalf, a monk was always the first choice for the task.11
Whereas monks were allowed to devote the whole of their time and attention to study
and meditation, nuns were expected to find time for their spiritual practice while also
serving their families at home “in exchange for their upkeep.”12
This dynamic of unequal treatment worked its way into common sayings such
as, “When you need a master, make your son a monk and when you need a servant,
make your daughter a nun.” Similarly, “Nuns are neighbour’s maids and monks are
neighbour’s leaders.”13 Even women who overcame the societal stigma associated
with nunhood and devoted their lives to intense study could not achieve the same
level of respect as their counterpart practitioners, monks. The highest level of merit a
nun could attain was equivalent to the level of a novice monk because the Tibetan
tradition did not provide the option of full ordination for women.14 When monks and
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nuns gathered together for prayer or study, the nuns always sat behind the monks as
an outward indication of their inferior status.15
By becoming a tantric practitioner, a woman could bypass the inequality
inherit in monastic life. The Vajrayāna branch of Buddhism boasts equal treatment
for men and women on the spiritual path. More importantly, it claims women are
capable of achieving enlightenment in their current lifetimes, without waiting for
rebirth as a man—a tenet not universal to all Buddhist sects. Perhaps the best-known
woman practitioner and teacher in history was Yeshe Tsogyel, who lived in Tibet
during the eighth century C. E. Though her unusual birth augured her imminent
spiritual achievements, her parents did not recognize her potential and were
determined to find a suitable husband for her. Tsogyel refused, and her parents sent
her away in disgrace, declaring that the first man to catch her could take her as his
wife. She was pursued and badly beaten, but not captured. After living a solitary
period in a cave, she was eventually apprehended and wed to the emperor, who gifted
her as a consort to a famous guru. From that point forward, she encountered
numerous other obstacles but persevered on the path to liberation nonetheless.16
Clearly, her path was exceptional, and though she remains a great inspiration
for female Buddhists, very few women in Tibet could hope to mirror her exemplary
life. Simmer-Brown expresses the dynamic well when she writes: “While there exist
hagiographies of remarkable female teachers and yoginīs of Tibet, it is clear that these
women were rare exceptions in a tradition dominated by an androcentric [malecentered] and patriarchal monastic structure.”17 Women who managed to follow
Tsogyel’s lead faced a spiritual journey laden with difficulties. At best, they would
encounter objections from family members who felt their proper place was in the
home. More consequential obstacles included vulnerability “to sexual exploitation in
solitary mountain retreats” and the difficulty of locating appropriate teachers and
consorts.18 It is a common belief in Tibetan Buddhism that women undergo more
suffering than men throughout their lives, but that they are also endowed with greater
spiritual potential to overcome it. Their suffering urges them to practice the
dharma.19 As inspiring as the idea is in theory, it is rather cold comfort to women
seeking an outlet for spiritual expression in their daily lives. Though the potential for
women’s enlightenment in the tantric tradition is remarkable, it cannot be regarded as
an easily-attainable goal or a viable path for most women living in Tibet before the
Chinese occupation.
Another notable female figure who provided inspiration to women in old
Tibet and remains a hallmark of Tibetan Buddhism in exile is the female Buddha
Tārā.20 There are various stories of her birth, but the most common account describes
her origin as a lotus, which blossomed from Avalokiteśvara’s teardrop of compassion
for the sufferings of the human race.21 She has since been identified as the mother of
the Tibetans in her incarnation as the rock ogress.22 Her ability to transcend region,
social class, and spiritual expertise sets her apart from other bodhisattvas, buddhas,
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and deities of Tibetan Buddhism. Her devotees represent the entire realm of sentient
beings in the Buddhist tradition, from laity to members of the monastic order to
tantric practitioners.
Tārā is of particular significance to female Buddhists due to her strength as an
enlightened woman. The story of her ascent to her illustrious role as “Saviouress”
reports that her one wish while seeking enlightenment was to always “serve the aim
of beings with nothing but the body of a woman.”23 Her declaration followed a
suggestion by monks that she pray for rebirth as a man in order to expedite her
imminent liberation. In frustration, she affirmed the neutrality of gender in Buddhist
philosophy, proclaiming that the “bondage to male and female is hollow.”24 To
reiterate her point, she determined to remain female throughout eternity.
Tārā’s endurance continues to motivate Tibetan women today, as evidenced in
an essay written by Cholblho Youdon, a woman born in Tibet and living in India:
We should pray and aspire to be reborn in a female body, that can live and
learn with the times, that can benefit all life, that has control, intelligence, and
physical strength, so that we can live a life of meaning. In these prayers we
must be like Buddha Tara who was self-reliant. We must use our effort and
energy.25
Despite the great inspiration Tārā has provided women throughout Tibetan history,
there has always existed a significant gap in theory and practice. As Taklha
comments with regard to historical Tibet, “Women were respected in Buddhism and
were looked up to in the Vajrayana path, but most of the time society forgot that
women had the right to the path of enlightenment and [to] obtain the state of a
Buddha.”26
It was out of this context that Tibetan women emerged in the 1950s. They
surprised their fellow compatriots as well as foreign onlookers by becoming visible
actors in support of the Tibetan cause in the public arena. Since the oft-referenced
women's uprising in Lhasa on March 12, 1959,27 women have remained at the
forefront of the political struggle and are continuing to redefine their roles in Tibetan
society, even after fifty years in exile. The problematic status of Tibetan nuns has
also been addressed in recent years, most notably by Rinchen Khando Choegyal and
her Tibetan Nuns Project in Dharamsala.28 Though many women in exile still choose
to take vows as nuns or find fulfillment as mothers and homemakers in the domestic
realm, they have also become political activists, human rights spokeswomen, elected
parliamentarians, business-owners, and writers. Their decisions about how Tibetan
women should act in today's political and social climate are sure to have lasting
implications for future generations of Tibetans born outside their homeland. Thus,
while exiled women are working alongside men to preserve many elements of
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traditional Tibetan culture, they are simultaneously becoming agents of change as
they develop an amended identity in diaspora.
I
WOMEN IN TIBETAN SOCIETY AND BUDDHISM:
Historical Overview and Contemporary Observations
_____
“Forced migration and processes of resettlement and adaptation to new environments
require exiles and refugees to come to terms with unfamiliar circumstances and demands,
often by assuming new roles and renegotiating expectations, behaviors, and relationships
that have operated in the past. Many of these new circumstances are lived most intensely
within the context of the household and are frequently enacted along the lines of gender.”29
_____
It is tempting to construct an image of the Tibetan Woman as a standardized,
all-inclusive entity into which every woman of Tibet, past and present, finds her
place. However, to do so is to ignore the diverse reality of the amorphous territory
and its people. In this regard, Goldstein provides a helpful distinction between
ethnographic and political Tibet. Prior to the Chinese occupation in 1950, ethnic
Tibetans living in the Amdo and Kham regions were largely independent of the
central Tibetan government in Lhasa, the capital. They acknowledged instead the
authority of local chiefdoms and were never consistently integrated into political
Tibet, or what is now known as the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).30
Given the variance in geographic location, political jurisdiction, and even
linguistic construction evidenced by ethnic Tibetans, it should come as no surprise
that social conditions may have varied from region to region as well. Thus, the
experiences of nomadic women in Amdo likely differed substantially from those of
women traders in Tibet’s Utsang region. It is with these complexities in mind that
Makely criticizes post-1959 attempts to describe the historical status of Tibetan
women, which encompass a broad and often contradictory range of generalizations.31
Nonetheless, scholarly research and informal travelogues provide scattered but
valuable accounts if applied to the particular place and time they describe, not
extrapolated to apply to all women in Tibet. As Butler expresses in the introduction
to a work on Tibetan women in exile, it is difficult to say anything definitive about
Tibetan women today without first gaining some perspective, however limited, on
Tibetan women of the past.32 It is with this goal that I enter into a discussion of the
evolving image of womanhood in the history and religion of Tibet.
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The first example of a female character in Tibetan mythology appears in the
creation story, in which a monkey incarnation of Chenrizig33 mates with a wild,
lustful ogress, thus procreating the first members of the Tibetan race. A common
interpretation links the aggressive and violent characteristics of the Tibetan people
with their primordial ogress mother, whereas Chenrizig receives credit for the
compassionate, spiritual-minded aspects of the Tibetan disposition.34 These
associations arise later in Tibetan Buddhist history with accusations that women
breed feelings of desire and attachment, tempting monks away from their spiritual
quest toward liberation and enlightenment.35 Thus, the ogress prototype of Tibetan
women is certainly not positive; however, it is interesting to note that the maternal
figure in the creation myth embodies warrior-like characteristics such as strength and
boldness, as opposed to submission, domesticity, and weakness.
It is not necessary to search far before encountering another image of a
ferocious female in Tibetan mythology, which compares the physical landscape of
Tibet to an unstable demoness—an idea explored in detail by Gyatso. According to
tradition, the personified ground made herself known first to Kong jo, a Chinese
princess whose efforts to send an image of the Buddha Śākyamuni to Tibet were
undermined by the demoness’ strong will. Before Buddhism could take root in the
Tibetan cultural landscape, the demoness had to be subdued. Thus, construction
began on a series of Buddhist temples that would pin down the demoness, who was
imagined to be lying on her back with arms and legs spread to the corners of the
Tibetan territory. She was subdued but not slain by the predominantly masculine
religion of Buddhism as it swept through the territory previously inhabited by Bön.36
Unlike visions of a sustaining, nurturing Mother Earth found in other cultures, the
female ground of Tibet is portrayed as fierce, destructive, and chaotic.37
Putting mythology aside, Tibetan heritage offers some linguistic clues to the
traditional perception of gender in Tibet. As cited previously, the word for “woman”
in the Tibetan language literally translates as “born low”38 or “inferior birth.”39
Further, the male and female pronouns of the language indicate a similar gender
hierarchy. Aziz offers a helpful exposition of the female pronoun “she,” which is
pronounced “mo” in Tibetan:
Men adopt mo in reference to wives and daughters just as they do to strangers.
Furthermore, mo regularly applies to any destitute woman and to the female
animal as the pronoun “it.” Mo is suffixed to nouns to create the feminine
form… (Carrying a sense of disrespect, mo never applies to one’s mother, or
to a noblewoman or a goddess.) The parallel suffix for males, pho or po, is
not similarly used as the pronoun “he.” “He” is most often expressed as kho
or kho-rang: these two terms apply to women only occasionally, namely when
one consciously intends to denote respect.40
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Linguistic connotations reveal themselves in cultural customs as well. Though
infanticide and neglect of female children is not prevalent as it is among some of
Tibet’s Asian neighbors, parents will sometimes recite charms upon the birth of a son
in order “to prevent his being kidnapped by jealous witches, or transforming into a
girl.”41 As adults, women may utter prayers for a male rebirth,42 but it is
inconceivable for a man to beseech rebirth as a woman. In some cases, women are
prohibited from entering temples or handling sacred objects lest they pollute them.43
Not all descriptions of Tibetan women paint such a dreary picture, however.
When British officer Sir Charles Bell first traveled to Tibet, he was struck by the high
status of women:
When a traveler enters Tibet from the neighbouring nations in China or India,
few things impress him more vigorously or more deeply than the position of
the Tibetan women. They are not kept in seclusion as are Indian women.
Accustomed to mix with the other sex throughout their lives, they are at ease
with men, and can hold their own as well as any women in the world.44
Other travelogues include records of similar reactions to the unexpected freedom
enjoyed by Tibetan women. In addition, Taklha writes that women in Tibet were
often allowed to divorce and remarry without facing dishonor or rejection—a
freedom not customarily enjoyed by their Indian neighbors.45 Tsomo echoes her
observations, adding that women were permitted to inherit property and sometimes
oversee businesses.46
It is perhaps with examples like these in mind that the Kashag, Cabinet of the
Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, announced in 2008 that Tibetan
society has never experienced gender discrimination, neither in its ancient history nor
at present. The cabinet did, however, acknowledge that women lag behind men in
administrative and political tasks within the exile community. Though women are
becoming increasingly active in those areas, their ratio to men is still far from equal.
In response, cabinet speakers proposed a policy for women’s empowerment,
recognizing a need to motivate and better prepare women for contributing to the
Tibetan cause as leaders on a governmental level. The Tibetan Women’s Association
(TWA) solicited reactions to the Kashag’s statement in its 2009 “Wisdom of
Women’s Words” essay competition. Award-winning responses were published in
TWA’s twentieth anniversary special issue of Dolma magazine, a Dharamsala
publication that features the views of women on a variety of subjects related to their
experiences in Tibetan society.
The essays provide valuable insight into how individual women from a variety
of backgrounds view their social position and cultural heritage. Most of the writers
reference the etymology of the Tibetan word for woman, indicating a general
awareness and resentment of the derogatory title. Common also is a description of
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the lesser celebration given upon the birth of a daughter in comparison to the jubilant
welcoming of a son into a family. Sung Dukyi, a winning essayist in the college-plus
age division who fled Tibet at the age of 18, states:
The general situation in Tibet, especially those from nomadic families, is that
the man is granted a lot more freedom of movement as compared to the
woman. He is allowed to go and do as he pleases while she is expected to stay
at home, watch over the livestock, clean, cook and nurture the children, and
since there is little education, illiteracy is very high and thus their learning is
extremely confined.47
However, another winning essayist in the same division, who was born, raised, and
educated in India, makes a conflicting claim that Tibet has never experienced
discrimination against women in the way that many societies have. Ancient Athens,
she writes, barred women from speaking and voting in the assembly—a pattern
mirrored in America’s political system until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment
granted full voting rights to women. She concludes that, “traditionally, Tibetan
women enjoyed a higher and more respectable social status” and were not subject to
domination by men.48
Such polar opinions correlate with the opposing sentiments expressed by old
Tibetan sayings. For example, one proverb counsels, “Be remitting towards a wild
slave but do not be attached to what comes out of a women’s mouth,”49 and another
warns, “A woman can’t be trusted just like an old donkey can’t run.”50 On the other
hand, it is said that “the powers and capabilities of women have the ability to hold up
half of the world’s sky.”51 In part, such contradictory information reinforces our
inability to say anything conclusive about the traditional status of women in Tibet.
However, it is clear that equality with men has not been a universal constant for
women throughout history in Tibet’s diverse geographic and cultural landscape. It
seems that many women in Tibet before 1950 did enjoy a respectable status in their
communities but that they lived mostly private lives, in contrast to the openly public
personas many women have constructed in recent years outside of Tibet.
According to one female employee in the Central Executive Office of TWA,
until the women’s uprising in 1959, women “were playing a very important role in
the domestic frontiers of the home but not beyond that.” Now, she continued, “they
play very important roles in the home and outside the home also.”52 Thus, the
women’s movement in Tibet opened doors for women to become active contributors
in every aspect of society. However, unlike women’s movements in other countries,
it did not result from a breaking point of frustration with patriarchal limitations and
oppression of women. Instead, women’s transformation into high-profile, public
figures was a spontaneous response to a critical need in Tibet’s history, not a forced
shift in the interest of egalitarian ideals.53
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In the spring of 1959, fifteen thousand women coalesced into a remarkable
and unanticipated uprising at the Potala in Lhasa.54 TWA, which now ranks
alongside the Tibetan Youth Congress as one of two dominant non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) in the Tibetan diaspora, marks the 1959 demonstration as its
founding date. Rinchen Khando Choegyal, a woman born in the Kham region of
Tibet who came to India with her parents in 1959, later became president of TWA in
exile. In a documentary by Frame of Mind Films, she discusses the remarkable
nature of the uprising in relation to the context from which it surfaced. Many women
had never seen a school nor been exposed to international politics, she says, yet they
“had the sense to get together, form an association of the women, not for themselves,
but for the country…and go to the different embassies of Nepal and India…and tell
the Chinese government, ‘This land belongs to the Tibetans.’”55 According to Tenzin
Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, the nature of the women’s uprising was
not just political, but also spiritual because the women felt compelled to “defend the
Buddha Dharma.” In an interview about the event, he expressed admiration for the
women, saying it seemed “as if they already [knew] the Feminist Movement, but of
course they [had] no idea. But simply out of their courage, they organized the
women.” 56 He said that to his knowledge, the demonstration was the first occurrence
of a women’s movement in Tibet’s history.
Interestingly, the earliest organization of women in Tibet was not initiated by
Tibetan women themselves, but was promoted by the Chinese People’s Liberation
Army following the creation of the Communist republic. The Chinese Communist
Party, founded in 1921, wasted no time in launching a Women’s Department, and the
inclusion of women in the party’s activities extended through its rise to power in
China during the mid-twentieth century.57 Tibetan women from all regions and
classes were urged to join a newly-created Patriotic Women’s Association, although
the Chinese especially encouraged the wives of Tibetan generals to participate due to
their influence over the Tibetan populace. According to an account by Rinchen
Dolma Taring, the wife of a Tibetan government official who was part of the
organization, women were highly suspicious of the association and complied with
Chinese instructions to join only because they felt they had no other choice. Even
then, they first asked permission from the Tibetan government because no such
association of women had ever existed previously in Tibet. As expected, the
organization became more of an instrument for Chinese propaganda than a genuine
Tibetan women’s coalition.58 In present-day Tibet, though many women continue to
resent the Chinese presence and stage uprisings against it, some Tibetan women
participate in the formal politics of China’s government.59
Prior to the 1950s, women were almost entirely absent from the political
scene. According to Taklha, though Tibetan women were permitted many freedoms
not enjoyed by other women of Asia, they were “strictly forbidden” from joining the
government services.60 Namgyal Phala, head of TWA in Zurich, Switzerland,
concurs that women were rarely involved in formal politics before the Chinese
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occupation.61 There is evidence of female participation in political activities in the
Kham region, which was not governed by the Central Tibetan Administration in
Lhasa.62 However, Butler argues that authority was granted to Khampa women in
exceptional cases when there was no appropriate male to fill a leadership position.
Otherwise, “public leadership was centred around concepts of reincarnation and
heredity and was, almost without exception, the preserve of men.”63
After the impromptu creation of TWA in Lhasa on March 12, 1959, a fresh
enthusiasm for the cause fueled the organization during its early years in exile.
However, as leaders passed away and the immediate concerns of rebuilding a life in
exile occupied women’s attention, TWA faded away until, according to the current
Dalai Lama, it “only existed on paper. We couldn’t find it anywhere.”64 During the
1980s, His Holiness urged women in the exile community to revive the valuable
organization, which he considered a necessary part of the Tibetan struggle for selfdetermination and cultural preservation. In response, women held a meeting in
Dharamsala in 1984 and elected Rinchen Khando Choegyal as the president of their
association.65 In a recent interview, Choegyal described the timidity of women in
attendance at the first general meeting of TWA in Dharamsala, saying, “Many women
would be so shy to speak on the microphone. They would say one word and then
hide their face, but now… you go to a women’s meeting… [and] people are grabbing
the microphone from each other.”66
Women in exile today continue to make a place for themselves in formal and
informal politics. Their contributions, both as government employees and everyday
activists, are increasing year by year. Since the Tibet issue is largely politicized, any
woman who indicates a desire for Tibetan autonomy, or even acknowledges the Dalai
Lama as her leader, involves herself in the political realm. Given Tibet’s striking
disadvantage relative to the Chinese opposition in size and clout, barring half the
Tibetan population from political activity is not only divisive, but also impractical
and shortsighted. Thus, Tibetan women born and raised in exile are encouraged to be
vocal and outspoken on behalf of their rich but endangered culture. Though men still
outnumber women on the government payroll, there is certainly no concerted effort to
discourage women from public and government service in Dharamsala.
Nyima Kirti is a woman whose academic achievement and professional drive
is representative of a new generation of Tibetan women born in exile. Though she is
by no means the norm or majority, she is not an anomaly either; and her success in
the public arena presents a notable contrast to the vocational opportunities available
to Tibetan women fifty years ago. I met Nyima on a rainy afternoon in Gangchen
Kyishong, headquarters of the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, India.
She wore a neatly-pressed chuba, traditional Tibetan attire and required dress of
female government employees. As she welcomed me into her office, she was formal
but friendly, exuding an aura of professionalism and capability. Born and raised in a
small Tibetan refugee settlement in south India, she identifies her hometown as “G
Village,” one of several alphabetized settlements accommodating about thirty-two
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families each. As a young adult, her search for employment led her to Dharamsala,
where she worked for a local human rights NGO before studying in the United States
on a Fulbright scholarship. After completing her degree abroad, she returned to
Dharamsala and accepted a job with the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. She is now
thirty-two years old, married, and the mother of two children.
Nyima is accompanied by many other women in Dharamsala’s public and
governmental services. Kalsang Nguntre, another Tibetan woman in exile, is
currently serving her second term as an elected Parliament official. She was educated
in the Indian university system, and she has previously held leadership positions in
TWA and the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) schools. Further, she is the founder
and director of a craft home for Tibetan children with disabilities.67 Dolma Choden is
yet another example of a female professional in Dharamsala. She was born in Ladakh
and is the second generation of her family to be born in exile. She attended TCV
schools for her early education, was involved in the Tibetan Youth Congress, and
later studied at an Indian university. Her educational pursuits also led her to the
University of Edinburgh in Scotland. She now works for the Central Executive
Committee of TWA in Dharamsala.
Though many women are finding successful careers in government and
political activism, their stories are only one side of the refugee experience. The
realities shared by Nyima, Kalsang, and Dolma are only dreams for many other
Tibetan women living in exile. Since there is a continuous flow of refugees moving
from Tibet to India every year, many women arrive in Dharamsala in their thirties or
forties, having lived a nomadic life in Tibet and often lacking formal education and
literacy. Though the Tibetan Government-in-Exile has managed to provide well for
its young refugee population, there is a significant education gap for newly-arrived
adult refugees. Thus, competition for hourly work in restaurants and coffee shops is
high, and many Tibetans in Dharamsala remain unemployed. I will introduce some
of their stories in the following chapters.
As of 1998, after nearly forty years in exile, women in the workforce were
still concentrated in stereotypically female professions, such as apron- and bagweaving, hair dressing, tailoring, embroidering, and typing, to name a few.68 Even
women in the government services do not customarily hold high positions.
According to a report published in 2005 by TWA, “women are often found
undertaking secretarial work and only 12 women in the past 44 years have reached a
position higher than Additional Secretary.” Further, it reported that less than onethird of government employees at the time were women, the majority of whom
worked in the Departments of Education, Home, and Finance.69 As for the Tibetan
Parliament, though it began as an entirely male representative body, the number of
female elected officials is on the rise. In the current term, which ends in May 2011,
ten of the forty-two members are women. The statistics are a reminder that women
have a long way to go before they will be equally represented in the vocations
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traditionally held by men. However, thanks in large part to expanded educational
opportunities in exile, the upcoming generation of young Tibetan women can begin to
remedy the discrepancy.
Thus, in years since the Chinese takeover, Tibetan women have not only been
uprooted from the familiar physical context of home and country, but also from their
customary roles in society. Their responses to this dramatic shift in circumstances
have laid the groundwork for a new Tibetan social structure, in which women are
beginning to explore avenues of expression formerly closed to them. As a necessary
component of this change, women must reconstruct a sense of identity in exile based
on an entirely new set of realities, a process that will be explored further in the
following chapter.
II
IDENTITY, IMPERMANENCE, AND TRANSITION IN
DIASPORA: Chasing an Elusive Homeland
_____
“Even if we are happy, there is always this identity crisis. I don’t have a passport. I am a
political refugee.”70 – Tibetan refugee in Dharamsala
“Becoming a refugee... deepened my understanding of religion, particularly impermanence.
Although the world is always changing one never notices it. Then suddenly your home,
friends and country all are gone. It showed how futile it is to hold on to such things.”71
– Tenzin Gyatso, fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet
_____
Tibet found its niche in international consciousness just as it lost its distinct
identity as a sovereign nation in Asia. With the fourteenth Dalai Lama’s flight into
exile in 1959, Tibet emerged from the shadows of the towering Himalayan range,
becoming a conversation topic for people who formerly knew nothing of China’s
south-western neighbor. Now, half a century later, supporters worldwide champion
the cause of Tibetan autonomy by sporting “Free Tibet” paraphernalia or joining
groups to raise awareness of Chinese injustices in Tibet. Facebook, a popular social
networking website, is home to hundreds of Tibet-oriented groups; the largest boasts
over 200,000 members of varying nationalities, the majority of whom are not
Tibetan.72 Every year, Dharamsala hosts tourists who travel thousands of miles to
witness Tibetan culture in exile. Some volunteer to teach impromptu English classes
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for refugees, and others come to study the Tibetan language. Many identify
themselves as Buddhists, though some are simply lured by the rich cultural heritage
or an affinity to the plight of the oppressed. In this context, there is no pressure for
refugees to hide their Tibetanness in order to be accepted outside their immediate
community. Quite to their contrary, being Tibetan is in style. However, in a world
that deems Tibetan trendy, it is growing increasingly difficult to decide what
“Tibetan” is. In light of this paradox, refugees are engaged in an ongoing struggle to
reconstruct a distinct identity in exile
.
When the Chinese occupied Tibet shortly after the creation of the Communist
state, Tibetans from every region and social class found their worlds turned upside
down in a matter of months. Tibet’s relative isolation from international affairs prior
to this period rendered the Maoist campaign to reunite the motherland all the more
unsettling. Certainly, men and women were both affected by the dramatic changes in
Tibet during the mid-twentieth century; however, women experienced the takeover
and subsequent displacement more personally. In the loss of their homes, women lost
a greater component of their identities. Even today, as men and women continue to
reconstruct self and meaning in exile, women remain at the forefront of the adaptation
process.
The lives of Tibetans who followed the Dalai Lama into exile in the 1960s
were riddled with instability. Newly-arrived refugees in India often accepted jobs on
road construction crews—the only work the Indian government could supply for the
influx of roughly eighty thousand Tibetans who entered their country seeking asylum.
Nomads who once followed the grazing patterns of yaks in the valleys of Tibet began
moving along the path of an emerging transportation network across northern India.
Their work was mobile and temporary, and it was nearly impossible to establish a
clear sense of home during the early years in exile. At first, parents kept their
children with them on the road crews, but eventually a Tibetan Children’s Village
(TCV) opened, allowing infants to stay in a nursery and older children to attend
school.73 TCV began, and largely remains, a residential school, so children spent
days and nights away from their parents. Thus, women who once found meaning in
their roles as homemakers and mothers lost their homes and, to a great degree, their
children when they ventured across the Himalayas into India.
Few of the refugees who crossed the border during this first migratory wave
ever dreamed they would be living in exile fifty years later. According to one Tibetan
who came to Dharamsala as a child in 1959, people fled their homes with only the
clothes on their backs and perhaps a drinking cup in their pockets. “We really
thought that in ten years at the most we were going to go back to Tibet,” she said.74
Shortly after arriving in India, the Dalai Lama realized the scope of the struggle ahead
and tried to prepare new refugees, saying in the summer of 1959, “We will have to
remain in India for a longer period than expected. We will have to settle mentally as
well as physically.”75 In the subsequent months, Tibetans built a library, performing
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arts center, pharmacy, and government headquarters in Dharamsala.76 Though the
Tibetan population is now a large physical presence in the area, most refugees are still
not mentally settled, and in large part, do not want to be. Their daunting struggle
against China benefits from a collective homesickness for Tibet, not a complacent
acceptance of life in exile.
In 2009, the fiftieth anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India and the
continued presence of an unbending China in Tibet ushered in a period of
reevaluation for refugees in Dharamsala. Though their exile has been longer than
hoped and persists indefinitely, Tibetans maintain their resistance to settling mentally
into the Indian context. They live there temporarily out of necessity, but creating a
true home in India is comparable to surrender to China or betrayal of the Tibetan
cause. As long as the potential for a future return to Tibet remains, there is a
resistance to assimilating the culture and traditions of the host country.77 Especially
in Dharamsala, an old British hill station resting quietly among the foothills of the
Himalayas, Tibetans have created a microcosm of Tibet that is relatively isolated and
self-contained.78 Therefore, they have little reason to adopt Indian religious and
cultural traditions or learn Hindi, the dominant language in the area.79
Due to efforts to maintain a cohesive identity as Tibetans, cultural
preservation in Dharamsala has focused on the big-picture, uniting elements of the
refugee experience. In the process, it has deemphasized regional differences which
were once integral to Tibetan identities. Whereas people in Tibet tended to root
identity in their regional language, clothing, and traditions, in exile they absorb their
differences into an all-inclusive Tibetan nationalism.80 The Dalai Lama promotes the
image of a comprehensive Tibet and thus “sustains narratives of flight and solidarity.
Exiles hear from him that they are unified and thus create ways of being so.”81 The
four distinct sects of Tibetan Buddhism also fuse into a harmonized tradition, which
stretches to encompass even Bön.82
In this context, TWA, which by definition is oriented toward women’s
interests, prioritizes the homogenous national struggle above gender issues. On the
“Aims and Objectives” section of its website, the first bullet point reads, “To raise
global awareness of the critical situation inside Tibet, and to exert international
pressure for the improvement of Human Rights conditions for Tibetans living in
occupied Tibet.” Only after that universally-beneficial goal does it list, “Social,
political and economic empowerment of women in exile,” followed by other concerns
that apply specifically to women in exile and Tibet.83 The Dalai Lama sanctions a
comparable approach to the Tibetan cause: “I am against the establishment of any
institution which might directly or indirectly promote conflicts amongst our people or
tend to foster sectional or local interests at the expense of the national interest.”84
Thus, the reconstruction of Tibetan culture in India does not strictly model itself from
the homeland culture. Instead, preservation efforts prioritize the common
denominators of being Tibetan and brush over individualized nuances.
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In the context of women’s experiences, this blending and oversimplification
of Tibetan life is both detrimental and advantageous. In part, it has led to the neglect
of gender-based concerns by prematurely closing dialogues about injustices against
women in Tibet’s history and present reality.85 Further, it has hindered the work of
TWA, which reports that some refugees are unwilling to participate in its surveys or
programs because they perceive the association as sectarian and feminist.86 On the
other hand, the merging of distinct refugee identities into a collective whole has
expedited the de facto equality of men and women in the public sphere. Barring
women from any facet of life in exile is divisive and counterproductive in light of
common, nationalist goals. Therefore, aside from gaps in educational preparedness,
men and women are granted equal eligibility to participate in vocational,
governmental, and religious activities.
With self-determination in Tibet as the objective, refugees pool their efforts to
regain autonomy in their homeland and prepare institutions that can be transported to
a future, free Tibet. The Dalai Lama’s efforts to construct a democratic government,
complete with an elected Parliament and an official Constitution, are examples of
infrastructure that would serve the interests of a self-governing Tibet.87 Thus,
restoration efforts in exile “offer the chance to modernize, if in embryo, Tibetan
society, fashioning a template of sorts for the Tibet of the future.”88 From an official
perspective, forward-thinking reconstruction efforts provide meaning and direction
for the Tibetan struggle, but they do not satisfy the immediate concerns of individual
refugees. Tibetans must live in light of a hypothetical future, without identity or
preparedness in the context of their present realities.
The refugee settlement in Dharamsala began as a holding zone for Tibetans
who would eventually migrate back home to Tibet. However, as the Dalai Lama ages
and China remains obstinate, many refugees are beginning to see Dharamsala as a
springboard to the west and a safe place to await visa responses from whichever
country might grant them residence.89 Especially for refugees who fled to India after
the initial wave of migrants in the 1960s and for those born in exile in recent years,
India does not promise long-term security. Though India hosts refugees from a
variety of countries, its legal framework is not well suited to accommodate displaced
persons. Instead of reserving specific legislation for granting and regulating asylum,
the Indian government subsumes refugees under its Foreigners Act of 1946; thus, it
applies the same provisions to Tibetans as it does to other foreigners in the country.
Informally, Tibetans are granted more leeway than foreign tourists or undocumented
residents since they compose one of the few refugee groups to be recognized by the
government. However, India’s generosity to Tibetans is not mandated by any
existing legislation, and thus the government could crack down on refugees at any
time without transgressing its official obligations.
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According to 2007 estimates from the United States Department of State,
India is home to roughly 110,000 refugees from Tibet;90 and as of 2003, the Refugee
Reception Center in Dharamsala reported a continuous flow of approximately 5,000
refugees per year.91 Of all the Tibetans who have fled their homeland, an estimated
80% reside in India. The flow of Tibetans into India can be divided into two waves:
the first from 1959 to the 1970s, and the second beginning around 1979, when the
original Communist leaders were passing away and their successors instituted relaxed
immigration policies.92 Though members of the first wave reside legally in India,
more recent refugees are not recognized by the Indian government. In practice, they
are permitted to reside in the country, but the law does not make any provisions for
them, and thus their situation is perpetually insecure.
According to the Indian Citizenship Act passed in 1955, Tibetans born in
India before 1987 are eligible to apply for citizenship, but those born after cannot
become citizens.93 Further, Tibetans who entered India prior to 1979 are issued
residence permits and travel documents; but refugees who fled Tibet in 1980 or later
remain undocumented. Though the law is not strictly applied, refugees without
residence permits cannot legally work, rent housing, or open bank accounts. Even
refugees who do have permits must apply annually for a one-year extension of their
residence in India, reinforcing a sense of transience and uncertainty. In sum, there is
little incentive for Tibetans to settle comfortably into their Indian homes. Especially
“in the context of renewed political volatility in Tibet, the new Maoist dispensation in
Nepal and increasing pressure from China,” India does not present a reliable future
for Tibetans in exile.94
The lack of security inherent in the Indian situation and the diminishing
prospects for a prompt return to Tibet spur many refugees, such as Pamo Yangchen,
to seek residence elsewhere. Pamo is in her early thirties and was born and raised in
the Utsang region of Tibet. She and her husband came to Dharamsala in 2000 and
had a son, who now lives with his cousin in a residential TCV school in upper
Dharamsala. Pamo and her husband are no longer married, and their separation
largely influenced Pamo’s decision to enroll her son in a residential school. When I
met her in 2009, Pamo was in the process of applying for a visa to the United
Kingdom. A few years prior, she had unsuccessfully attempted to establish residence
in Germany. When I asked her if she would be upset to leave Dharamsala if she
received permission to move to Europe, she told me it was not her choice; it was an
obligation, and her own interests were secondary to those of her son, who was
growing up in India without a real home.95
Pamo confided that, barring extensive intervention by the international
community, she does not expect Tibet to regain freedom. With the Dalai Lama in his
mid-seventies, his health could fail at any time, and Pamo expressed a sense of
desperation to find a new home before then. She is anxious about how India might
handle the Tibetan asylum issue after the current Dalai Lama’s passing. Her son, who
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is now eight years old, is currently provided for by TCV; but when he graduates, he
will not be an Indian citizen and will have no country to call home if Tibet is still
subject to Chinese rule. She considers it her duty as his mother to establish a secure
and stable residence in another country so he can join her there when he completes
his education.
With these concerns in mind, Pamo deemphasized her own preferences,
saying, “I have to find a home for my son.”96 Her concerns for her son’s future
wellbeing clashed with her worries about his present life. Leaving India would mean
leaving him even more parentless than he already is. Though he does not live with
his mother, she visits him on the weekends with picnic lunches and small gifts. His
father never comes to visit, as he no longer lives in the area. Pamo talked about
continuing to rent her apartment in Dharamsala even after she moved so her son and
niece would have somewhere to go during their vacations from the school. She
wanted them to have a sense of home, even if family was absent from it.
Though Pamo has accepted that a future, free Tibet may not be a reality, she
has not become unattached to her homeland. Aside from her son and niece in
Dharamsala, all of her family members are still living in Tibet. Her isolation from the
familiarity of home became especially poignant when her father passed away in 2009.
She had not seen him in many years, and her inability to participate in the customary
mourning rituals with her family made her loss all the more distressing. Shortly after
her father’s death, she met me at the temple in Dharamsala and walked me to her
apartment in the rain. After we arrived and shed our coats, she pulled a black-andwhite photograph from her shirt, where she had stowed it earlier to keep it dry. She
placed it on the shelf of her household shrine beside several small bowls of water,
remnants of her puja that morning. The photograph pictured her mother and father in
their village in Tibet, and she explained that she carried it with her every day to kora
at the temple to observe a modified version of her duties as a daughter of the recentlydeceased. She had also been doing puja in his honor at her personal shrine in the
apartment. Despite her efforts, she expressed a feeling of confusion and
inadequateness since she was so far from home. She seemed to be questioning her
decision to leave her family, even after years of solitary life in Dharamsala.97
Diki Dolkar, a woman in her mid-forties, is another single mother in
Dharamsala’s refugee community. Her nine-year-old son attends a residential school
nearby, and her sixteen-year-old daughter is in school four hours away. Diki was
born and raised in a nomadic family in the Amdo province of Tibet. Her father held
an office job in the city and was eventually imprisoned due to mounting tension with
his Chinese superiors. After his imprisonment, Diki and her mother traveled to the
city to visit and bring him food, but they were not permitted to see him. Diki’s
mother went home to tend to household duties, but Diki stayed in the city for an
extended period. She knew little about relations between China and Tibet and was
confused about the basis for her father’s incarceration. While in the city, she watched
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the local news station and understood enough Chinese to follow the stories. She
heard that the Dalai Lama was evil, and though she was surprised, she thought it
might be true. One day during her stay, she met an elderly Tibetan man who told her
the Chinese were lying and could not be trusted. From him, she learned about the
Dalai Lama's exile in India and the injustices of the Chinese occupation.
At the time, she had a three-year-old daughter but was not married. She
decided she wanted to go to India, but she did not tell her family because she knew
they would disapprove. After selling her earrings to pay for transportation, she
headed toward Lhasa, stopping along the way to ask people for food. After one
month, she arrived in Lhasa, and from there she walked across the Himalayas into
Nepal. At the Nepali border, she was gang-raped by twelve men, one of whom was a
police officer in uniform. She eventually made it into India and settled in
Dharamsala. Since her family was nomadic and had no permanent address, she could
not inform them of her whereabouts. In 2000, she walked back to Tibet to bring her
daughter to India, and her family was shocked to see her alive. They had already
completed the pujas and mourning rituals on her behalf. After a short stay in Tibet,
she walked back across the Himalayas with her daughter, one sister, and a niece. The
children were young, so Diki and her sister carried them most of the way. Diki’s
sister later married a Frenchman and moved to France, leaving her daughter behind in
TCV.
After resuming residence in Dharamsala, Diki gave birth to a son. When he
was one and a half years old, Diki’s boyfriend moved to Belgium for work. He never
came back, and she assumes he has since married someone else. She enrolled her son
in TCV when he was four years old, which upset her greatly. She said she did not
have much choice, since she needed to work and could not stay home to take care of
him. Since then, Diki has worked various short-term jobs in Dharamsala, such as
baby-sitting for western families who visit the area, doing laundry services, and
working in local cafés. She has trouble finding steady employment because she has
never been to school and is not literate in Tibetan or English. Though her resources
are limited, her small flat in Dharamsala is always bustling with visitors who drop by
for meals or tea. She is well-known as a wonderful cook, and one of her friends
describes her as the perfect mother, even though she does not have children at home.
She once applied for a visa to England but was denied. Now, she talks of requesting
a visa to another country, although she has not yet taken any steps to do so. When I
left Dharamsala, she had recently decided to follow the Dalai Lama to his winter
retreat in Bodh Gaya and start a small restaurant there temporarily.98
Pema Rinzen is younger than Diki and does not have children, so she has
more opportunities to pursue an education and lay the groundwork for a stable future.
She is thirty-one years old and was born and raised in the Kham region of Tibet,
where her family still resides. Shortly before coming to India, Pema moved to Lhasa
and lived with her sister, whose husband is a businessman in the city. Pema worked
at a restaurant there to save money, which she later used to pay a guide to lead her
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and a friend across the Himalayas. Upon settling in India, Pema registered for school
but only completed half of the six-year program before becoming ill and
withdrawing. When her sickness would not recede, she and three nuns traveled south
to Bodh Gaya, the site where the Buddha attained enlightenment, to pray and
complete thousands of prostrations.
After about a month and a half, Pema returned to Dharamsala and took a job
in a restaurant, living for free in a small flat above the establishment. During slow
business hours, she took breaks from her duties as a server to retreat into the kitchen
and learn from the cooks. She later took a class on cake-making, thinking it might be
a profitable business one day. Now she attends informal classes staffed by foreign
volunteers in Dharamsala to improve her English. She intends to get married and
have children one day but is not interested in a boyfriend at the moment because she
wants to finish school first. Her sister sends her money from Lhasa so she can
concentrate on her education and pay rent without having to find a job. Pema talks of
returning to Lhasa to open a restaurant with her sister after she finishes her schooling.
During her stay in exile, she has maintained her Buddhist practices with exemplary
devotion, waking every day before dawn to pray and prostrate before beginning her
English studies.
Tenzin Khandro has also settled in Dharamsala, and though she leads a
relatively stable life in comparison to some of her fellow refugees, her family retains
characteristics of separation and disunity common among Tibetans in exile. She fled
Tibet with her parents in 1959, but she was too young to remember it. Prior to their
migration, her family lived in the Utsang region of Tibet and belonged to a nomadic
community. She assumes her extended family members are still living in Tibet,
though she thinks it is likely the Chinese have already imprisoned or killed them.
Despite her lack of personal memories of her homeland, Tenzin longs dearly to
return. She is encouraged by the work the Dalai Lama is doing to spread awareness
of the Tibetan situation and garner international support. Though she does not know
when, she is confident that Tibet will one day be free because truth and nonviolence
will triumph in the end.
For now, Tenzin works as a nurse in a hospital in Dharamsala, and her
husband is a local pharmacist. She has two sons, aged twenty-five and twenty-seven,
but they both live far away in southern India. One of her daughter-in-laws recently
gave birth to a child, and Tenzin has only met the baby once. She hopes to use her
2010 annual leave to spend time with her new grandchild. Her older son is a doctor,
and she says he is always talking about going to America, but she thinks it will be too
hard for him to obtain a visa. Though Tenzin is not sure she will ever see Tibet again
for herself, she is committed to teaching the younger generation to continue the
struggle for a free homeland. She does not want them to settle too comfortably into
the Indian environment and forget their true identities as Tibetans. Instead of
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encouraging their children to adjust to life in India, she said that “parents have to
teach that India is not our country.”99
Finally, Tashi Dawa is forty-four-year-old Tibetan woman living in
Dharamsala’s refugee settlement. She lived in a nomadic family in the Amdo region
of Tibet before traveling to India with her husband and young daughter in 2000.
Unlike many children from nomadic families, Tashi was educated in Tibet and is
literate in Tibetan and Chinese. Her husband worked as an artist and tailor after they
settled in Dharamsala, and her daughter attended a residential school several hours
south. In 2008, Tashi’s husband was granted a visa to the United States, and he now
works as a salesman in Connecticut. Their daughter, who is now fourteen, followed
him to America roughly ten months later, and she now attends school in New York.
Tashi is presently living in a one-room apartment in Dharamsala, waiting for her visa
application to be approved. There was a problem with her records when she first
applied, and she is not sure when she will be able to leave India. For now, she keeps
in touch with her husband and daughter via the internet. Though she could likely
obtain a job in Dharamsala with her language skills and literacy, she does not want to
become too involved in her life in India because she hopes to leave any day.
As the aforementioned stories demonstrate, the experiences of female refugees
are often characterized by an unstable sense of home and a vision for the future that is
shortsighted at best. With so much uncertainty about the coming years in Tibet, they
are hesitant to settle permanently in another country but are also fearful of gambling
their future security on a free Tibet. In the case of Pamo Yangchen, the strains of life
as a single parent are amplified by an uncertain future and a sense of obligation to
create a home for her child. Diki Dolkar is another single mother whose story is a
reminder of the increased vulnerability women face when venturing across the
Himalayas into exile and the lack of opportunity they may encounter upon arrival.
Pema Rinzen represents an independent young woman who has maintained a strong
sense of religious devotion and familial ties even as she makes a life for herself in
exile. Tenzin Khandro is the image of a grandmother who feels the need to teach her
long-distance grandchildren about a homeland she does not even remember. Tashi
Dawa embodies the stresses of separation from family on all sides; she is caught in a
stalled transition from life with relatives in Tibet to a home with her husband and
daughter in the United States.
The lives of these women, though distinct and individualized, share common
undertones of perpetual transition and uprooted identity. They face their uncertain
futures with an understanding founded in Buddhism’s teachings on the impermanence
and ultimate emptiness of worldly existence. Even so, they are affected by the strains
of living a life that hangs in the balance between an unstable Tibet and an unreliable
India. The task of reconstruction uniquely impacts women as they move away from
traditional gender roles in Tibet into an environment of displaced identity and
undetermined potential in exile. As mothers and future mothers, they are motivated
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to construct meaning for themselves, while feeling an even stronger obligation to
secure an identity for their children.
III
BALANCING PRESERVATION AND CHANGE IN
“LITTLE LHASA”
_____
“To keep up with the changing times the responsibilities of Tibetan women need to be
completely practical; they need to be able to think critically, and to be able to achieve their
aspirations, and to throw off the passiveness that finds them waiting for change to come.”100
– Choblho Youdon, Tibetan nun in Dharamsala
_____
From the beginning years of life in exile, refugees have prioritized cultural
resuscitation and preservation. When I first arrived in Dharamsala, I intended to
study this process through the experiences of Tibetan laywomen. As mothers and
grandmothers of the next generation of Tibetans born in exile, I expected to find them
playing an exceptional role in passing down lay Buddhist traditions in the home. In
Dharamsala, however, I found a complex situation that resisted the simplicity of my
original hypothesis. I observed that women’s roles in cultural preservation do not
differ substantially from those of men. Though women are consequential actors in
exile, they are contributing to the Tibetan cause in much the same way as their male
counterparts. As one woman in Dharamsala said, a crisis such as Tibet’s occupation
causes men and women to pull together and contribute equally in the pursuit of
common objectives.101
In retrospect, I can identify two main faults in my initial research
expectations. First, my hypothesis assumed that Tibetan religion could be separated
with reasonable clarity from work, school, and politics—a misconception addressed
in the introduction to this text. I expected to find religion in temples, monasteries,
and homes. Assuming monks and nuns would be central to the preservation of
religion in the first two realms, I thought women would be primary actors in the third.
Certainly, I did find religion in those places, but I also found it in the market, coffee
shops, bookstores, schools, and government offices. The blurred lines between
religion and everyday experience made it difficult to identity women as preservers of
lay Buddhism in a manner that was not paralleled by similar contributions from men.
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Secondly, in isolating women as guiding influences in the home, my
hypothesis assumed a more stable “home” than many refugees in Dharamsala
experience. As the stories of the previous chapter demonstrate, non-traditional
households are prevalent in the exile community. Families may be broken by divorce
or, in the case of Tashi Dawa, staggered visa approval from another country where a
family hopes to resettle. Further, it is common for refugees to come to India without
the rest of their relatives, who continue to reside in Tibet. Residential schools also
increase the incidence of mothers separated from their children. Especially in the
final scenario, it is difficult to find evidence of mothers modeling lay customs to the
next generation in the home with any regularity. Finally, as women become active
members of the workforce and key voices in the political struggle, their position in
the domestic realm necessarily changes in response. A mother who works in a
government office from nine to five plays a different role in the home than a woman
who spends her entire days there. Hence, assuming that women are the focal point of
lay religious practice in the home is perhaps a bit outmoded, or a best, oversimplified.
What I did find in my interactions with women in Dharamsala was an
interesting balance between the task of cultural preservation on the one hand and the
necessity of change on the other. Though international supporters often pressure
Tibetans to maintain their unique traditions in pre-exile form, no religion or culture
remains entirely unchanged over time.102 The challenge of allowing culture to
modernize and adapt without losing its essence presents Tibetan refugees with an
opportunity to reevaluate their legacy, preserve its constructive elements, and allow
others to fade or evolve. Women are central in this respect because their own shifting
position in Tibetan society from the 1950s to the present creates a ripple effect that
has lasting implications for the culture as a whole. As discussed in Chapter 1, women
are moving away from traditional roles into new and broader positions of influence in
Tibetan society. In the long run, these changes will undoubtedly affect the
expectations of future generations in regard to gender roles, family structure, and
social organization. Thus, as women contribute to a common goal of cultural
preservation in exile, they also stimulate and mediate change on a uniquely personal
level.
The give-and-take intrinsic in the reconstruction of Tibetan culture is
especially prevalent in the Dharamsala community. Locals often reference the
settlement as “Little Lhasa” or “Dhasa”—a mini-Tibet in India. Since Chineseoccupied Tibet cannot be counted on as a safe reserve for Tibetan cultural heritage,
various institutions in exile house manuscripts, statues, and artwork that face
extinction under China’s control. However, the task of reconstructing a culture
outside its geographical origin is not as simple as directly transplanting it to the host
country. Just as the role of women changed out of necessity when confronted with a
new set of circumstances in exile, so the culture in its entirety is adapting to meet the
challenges of its current situation.
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24
Therefore, reconstruction efforts have been concerted and enthusiastic, but
also selective. Under the Dalai Lama’s guidance, refugees divided their culture into
two categories: those aspects which “needed to be retained only in books as past
history” and the remaining elements which “could bring actual benefit in the
present.”103 Especially in the 1960s, there was a push to preserve Buddhist texts from
the ravages of the Cultural Revolution—a concern amplified by Tibet’s distinction as
the only nation to retain a complete set of the Buddhist Dharma.104 In addition to
religion, refugees are working to preserve their performing arts, handicrafts,
literature, and medicine.
In isolating specific facets of their former lives for preservation in exile,
Tibetans create a distinctive refugee culture. A tradition which might have held
peripheral importance in Tibet can become a central focus in exile, or vice versa.
This phenomenon is especially plausible in light of the government’s attempt to
emphasize unifying elements of the refugee experience, thus creating a cohesive
nationalism that did not exist in historical Tibet.105 Further, TCV schools serve as a
guiding element in the preservation of Tibetan culture in India, but they can only
present one variation of a nuanced heritage. Residential schools, for example, teach
children an official, standardized curriculum of language, culture, and religion but
cannot represent the scope of individualized traditions found in the home. In the
absence of parental influence, children learn about their identity as Tibetans through
their interaction with house parents in the dormitories and teachers in the classroom.
The result is a cultural atmosphere that is ultra-authentic in some aspects and
distinctly exile-based in others.
Lhami Tsering, an employee in the government’s Department of Education,
expressed concerned about the residential schooling model because it separates
children from their parents during a period when they should be learning from their
families, not from teachers at school. She noted that the uniqueness of family
traditions and regional nuances are lost when children are all taught by the same
people in a formal, educational setting. Lhami explained that some elements of
Tibetan culture can be taught in school, but others can only be learned in the home,
and those tend to be more important. Textbook portrayals cannot replace family
outings to the temple and interaction with parents during a child’s early years.
Though residential schools were appropriate in the sixties and seventies, when parents
were moving from place to place and could not create a stable home environment for
their children, they are not serving the best interests of the Tibetan refugee population
today.106
Pamo Yangchen, introduced in Chapter 2, provides an interesting example of
TCV’s influence on the cultural perceptions of children in exile. Her eight-year-old
son, Gyaltsen, lives in a TCV residential school in Dharamsala. Before Pamo moved
to England early this year, she visited him on Sunday afternoons, when school was
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25
not in session. Though she hardly ever wore traditional dress during the week, she
always wore a chuba to TCV to please Gyaltsen. All his teachers wear chubas, and
he wants her to look like them. He told her that Tibetan women should not wear
western clothes.107 He also disapproves of her boyfriend, who is a foreigner. He says
Tibetan women should marry Tibetan men. Though he has never seen Tibet for
himself, he expresses strong opinions about how its culture and traditions should be
preserved.
On the other hand, Diki Dolkar’s fourteen-year-old daughter, who also lives in
a residential school, is not particularly interested in Tibetan music artists or movies,
but is candidly absorbed in western popular culture. The Twilight books by Stephanie
Meyer are among her favorite reads, Disney’s Camp Rock is on her top movie list,
and the teen pop sensation, the Jonas Brothers, ranks alongside Taylor Swift and
Shakira in her musical preferences. Though she does not enjoy studying the Tibetan
language in school, she identifies strongly with her Buddhist heritage, sporting a
bracelet of prayer beads and highly recommending books by His Holiness the Dalai
Lama. In this way, she picks and chooses the aspects of her culture that are important
to her and combines them with cultural elements from other parts of the world.
Though her version of Tibetan culture is largely influenced by her childhood outside
of Tibet, it does not display the fundamentalist strains of Gyaltsen’s outlook.
The context in exile thus presents an entirely new set of challenges for Tibetan
refugees—both for the upcoming generation of Tibetan youth and for the adults who
are teaching them. Even children who are raised in a more traditional home setting
are influenced by the odd mix of old and new culture in the host country. Women
who play a more active role in raising their children in the home cannot simply follow
the model set by their mothers in Tibet. They must decide how to teach their children
to respect and identify with Tibetan culture while preparing them to live and work in
the Indian context. In this way, life in Dharamsala affords a great degree of freedom
and self-determination for refugees, but it also requires balancing the inevitability of
change with the danger of cultural extinction.
In response to this challenge, Lhami Tsering said, “Some parts of culture
must change and adapt, but other, more important, parts are safeguarded in the
heart.”108 The Dalai Lama encourages refugees to take advantage of the modern
knowledge and technology available in the twenty-first century without forsaking the
values inherent in old Tibetan culture. As in the case of Diki Dolkar’s daughter, the
aspect of culture that remains central to life in exile is Buddhism, and conveniently, it
is also the element which has shown the greatest resilience in Tibetan society, even in
the strains of post-1950 Tibet. Though it became less visible in the homeland during
the Mao years, it reemerged with the relaxing of the Communist Party’s policies in
1978. The Buddhist practices which reappeared were not, however, “restored to their
original state like frozen vegetables defrosted in a microwave oven. … Rather, a
dynamic process of adaptation has occurred and is still occurring.”109 Likewise,
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26
Tibetans in exile—and especially Tibetan women—are exploring new aspects of their
Buddhist heritage which speak most relevantly to their current lives. In doing so,
they redefine cultural traditions to suit their present realities while also memorializing
their pasts.
IV
WOMEN AND THE FUTURE OF TIBET
_____
“Tibetan Women have well succeeded in making a breakthrough, thwarting the conflicts of
cultural collision and earning global recognition of their resilience.”110
– Tenzin Dhardon Sharling, Research and Media Officer of TWA
_____
Half a century in exile has left an indelible mark on Tibetan society, and an
ongoing process of change is apparent in nearly every aspect of Dharamsala’s refugee
community. In this paper, I have selected collective elements of the Tibetan exile
experience and considered them through a narrower lens, with women as the focal
point. Shortly after beginning my research, I realized that the experiences of exiled
Tibetans are highly individualized, despite cohesive nationalist rhetoric. Therefore,
the women introduced in the foregoing pages cannot speak for all women in
Dharamsala, and certainly not for the entire refugee population. However, their
stories lend valuable insight into the challenges faced by Tibetan refugees in India,
and the manner in which those challenges involve women in a distinctly personal
way.
Though much has changed in fifty-one years of exile, the refugee situation has
static elements as well. China’s policy with regard to Tibet has softened in the postMao years, but the regime has not rescinded its claims that Tibet is an unalienable
part of China. Its resistance to the proposals of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile
remains strong, with no indication of a mutually-acceptable settlement in the near
future. Further, the Dalai Lama, who holds the refugee community together with
remarkable solidarity, is no longer the twenty-three year old monk who fled Tibet in
1959. In the years since his exile, he has maintained a strenuous agenda of
international travels and public addresses. Now, as his seventy-fifth birthday
approaches, his health is questionable and his lineage insecure.
The Panchen Lama, who traditionally plays a vital role in locating a deceased
Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, has not been seen since China intercepted him shortly
after he was appointed by the Dalai Lama in 1995. China’s chosen replacement,
Gyaltsen Norbu, is outspokenly aligned with Chinese intentions for Tibet. Refugees
in Dharamsala do not accept his appointment as legitimate and campaign tirelessly for
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27
the release of Gendun Choekyi Nyima, the officially-sanctioned Panchen Lama.
However, since the boy was only five years old at the time of his capture and has
been raised under heavy Chinese influence, he is likely more sympathetic to China’s
agenda than Tibetan supporters would like to believe.111
In light of these circumstances, the Dalai Lama has said he may choose not to
reincarnate—in other words, to end Tibetan Buddhism’s hallmark lineage.112 Though
Dharamsala is home to a full-fledged government, it is difficult to imagine a unified
body of Tibetans in exile without the Dalai Lama’s leadership. If Tibetans express a
desire for the lineage to continue, it is possible that the current Dalai Lama will break
with tradition and name a successor prior to his death. In order not to repeat the
misfortune of the Panchen Lama’s thwarted appointment, a successor would likely
come from the exile community. In the event of a future settlement with China, the
leader who would escort his people back to their homeland might see it for the first
time upon arrival.
Even in the current situation, the declaration of a free Tibet would not mark a
decisive conclusion to the Tibetan struggle. Integrating refugees back into the
homeland culture, which likely differs from the idealized memories many refugees
hold, would present another great challenge for the Tibetan people. This is an
especially pertinent concern given the marked differences among the refugee culture
that has developed in Dharamsala, the culture present in Tibet prior to the 1950s, and
the culture that is currently prevalent in Chinese-occupied Tibet. Thus, soon after
establishing a stable government and education system in exile, refugees would be
compelled to embark on a renewed process of reconstruction in Tibet.
In addition, though refugees have created a governing structure with the goal
of moving it “home” to Tibet, the men and women in leadership positions in exile
hold tentative positions. As the Dalai Lama recently reiterated in an address to
refugees in Dharamsala, “Once the issue of Tibet is resolved, I will not take any
political position nor will members of the Tibetan Administration in exile hold any
positions in the government in Tibet.”113 On the other hand, the Tibetans who are
presently governing in Tibet are often hand-picked by the Chinese and would be
unsuitable leaders in the refugee vision of a free homeland. Lastly, the Dalai Lama
has emphasized on numerous occasions that the Chinese government is responsible
for Tibet’s oppression, not the Chinese people. However, with the number of Chinese
residents in present-day Tibet increasing rapidly each year,114 amicable attitudes on
the part of returning refugees would not be sufficient to secure a smooth resettlement.
As Tibetans face a future of imperfect hypotheticals, it is impossible to predict
exactly how their stories will end. Perhaps, like Pamo Yangchen and Tashi Dawa,
refugees will seek to establish more permanent homes outside Tibet in the coming
years. Others, like Pema Rinzen, may instead venture back to Tibet to regain a sense
of identity, home, and family even as Chinese control persists. Still others, like
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28
Nyima Kirti, may remain in Dharamsala, working for the nationalist cause and
contributing to the Government-in-Exile. Whatever the case, we can expect to see
women at the forefront of the struggle, continuing to construct identity and future for
themselves and their families. As sisters, wives, mothers, and grandmothers, they
have risen to face the challenges of Tibet’s struggle with unrelenting force and
remarkable influence in the years since the Chinese occupation. While exploring
their ever-growing potential in exile, they will continue to shape the futures of the
Tibetan people as guardians of tradition and agents of change.
Appendix
THE LANGUAGE OF CHANGE:
Development of a Refugee Dialect in Dharamsala
_____
Just as historical Tibet accommodated a diverse array of regional customs,
clothing styles, and governing structures within its borders, it was also home to a
variety of regionally-based dialects. Though a standardized Tibetan alphabet served
as the foundation for each, the pronunciation and orthography of the language varied
from region to region. In Tibet, these regional differences were fairly self-contained,
but in exile, they are intermixed daily. This is particularly true in Dharamsala’s
refugee settlement, in which Tibetans from various regions are merged into a closeknit community that brings regional dialects and traditions into unusually close
quarters. A refugee from Amdo may live in an apartment next door to someone from
Lhasa. A Khampa storeowner serves regular customers he would have no occasion to
meet in his Tibetan hometown. In this environment, refugees have developed a
dialect of their own that incorporates multiple regional variations and eases
communication among Tibetans in exile. This process of linguistic blending
manifests itself in a distinct refugee language, which parallels the evolving refugee
culture that has developed in Dharamsala. Unifying elements such as these give
meaning and coherence to an otherwise fragmented refugee experience.
Adults who were raised in Tibet tend to interchange their native dialects with
the refugee linguistic blend. A group of friends from the same area will often default
to their regional language when talking among themselves, seamlessly switching to
the refugee dialect if another person joins their conversation. Newly-arrived refugees
might have difficulty understanding the refugee dialect just as they would have
trouble comprehending regional variations, but they quickly adapt since the language
is not dramatically different. Refugees born and raised in Tibet tend to retain regional
accents and phrases even after years of speaking the blended dialect. Further, since
the refugee dialect exists in exclusively oral form, a Lhasa-born Tibetan language
Virginia Review of Asian Studies
29
instructor teaches “Tibetan” differently than an Amdo-born teacher, and so on. Thus,
refugee dialect is more limited than its regional precursors, but its utility in the exile
context is remarkable.
As for the younger generation of refugees, either those born in Tibet and
raised in exile or born in exile, the refugee dialect is their primary means of
communicating with friends. The Tibetan spelling and syntax taught in schools is
closest to Lhasa language, which is the most formal and refined of the dialects.
However, in everyday conversation, young refugees speak a Tibetan language born in
exile. During my time in Dharamsala, I met three teenage girls who came to India as
young children around the year 2000. They were from Utsang, Amdo, and Kham,
thus representing the three main regions of Tibet. When I questioned them about the
Tibetan language, they readily identified the variation they speak as “refugee
language” and said they have already forgotten most of their regional dialects. One
of the girls was Sonam Khang, Diki Dolkar’s daughter. As a child, she was fluent in
the Amdo dialect, but at fourteen, she has trouble remembering how to use it. When
Sonam speaks on the phone with her grandmother, who still lives in Tibet, Diki leans
into the earpiece to hear and interpret the regional dialect. With Diki’s help, Sonam
responds in broken Amdo language because she does not want her grandmother to
know she has forgotten her native dialect.
In this way, elements of Tibetan culture and language continue to be lost and
reborn in exile. As they undergo continuous reincarnations, their new forms bear
resemblance to their prototypes but manifest themselves in a distinctively exile-based
form. Just as the culture adapts to meet the needs of life in India, so the language
morphs to allow greater utility in the exile environment. Watching regional
differences fade as refugees become further removed from the homeland culture is
regrettable in many aspects. However, the dynamic cycle of blending, loss, and
reinvention prevalent in Dharamsala testifies to the resilience of Tibetan refugees. As
their culture loses some of its former richness, the refugee culture that is surfacing in
its stead offers new value and relevance for the present. In Dharamsala’s refugee
dialect and traditions, we see a striking representation of Tibet in exile—a decisive
era in the evolving history of the Tibetan people.
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1
Personal interviews cited in the following pages were conducted by the author between August and
November 2009 in Dharamsala, India. All names from these correspondences have been changed to
conceal the identity of the informants, some of whom expressed concern for protecting family
members still living in Chinese-occupied Tibet. Others requested anonymity due to the personal
nature of the experiences they shared.
The Institutional Review Board of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (FWA00004149) has
approved this research project # 09-067.
2
A Buddhist mantra identified with Chenrizig (Tibetan name for Avalokiteśvara, bodhisattva of
compassion). Since the Dalai Lamas of Tibet are considered reincarnations of Chenrizig, this mantra
is of particular importance in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It does not translate directly into
English because the sound of each Tibetan syllable lends an auspicious meaning. However, “hail to
the jewel in the lotus” is often given as a rough translation. The mantra is said to contain all the
teachings of the Buddha. For a more extensive discussion, see John Powers, Introduction to Tibetan
Buddhism, 22-4.
3
Circumambulation of the temple grounds.
4
Worship of a sacred object (often a statue of the Buddha or Tārā, or a photograph of His Holiness the
Dalai Lama), generally involving lighting candles and placing small bowls of water in front of the
image.
5
John Powers, 25.
6
Norzin Tseyang, interview with the author, August 31, 2009.
7
Kalsang Nguntre, interview with the author, October 29, 2009.
8
Nyima Kirti, interview with the author, August 31, 2009.
9
Kunsang Tsering, interview with the author, September 5, 2009.
10
Karma Lekshe Tsomo, “Change in Consciousness,” 174, 180.
Virginia Review of Asian Studies
11
Ibid., 177.
12
Ibid., 179.
13
Namgyal Lhamo Taklha, Women of Tibet, 9.
14
The fourteenth Dalai Lama has voiced his support for the full ordination of women but wants the
33
entire monastic community to address the issue. At the Sakyadhita International Conference on
Buddhist Women in Taiwan in 2002, he said, “Some of my friends and colleagues have suggested that
as the Dalai Lama I could issue a decree or make a decision, but this is not a matter on which any
individual, whoever he or she is, can decide. It is a matter for the Sangha community.” His full speech
is available online at http://www.dalailama.com/messages/buddhism/buddhist-women. Tsomo, 178,
addresses the historical basis for the lack of full ordination: “Because the quorum of twelve fully
ordained nuns required in the Mūlasarvāstivādin tradition never reached Tibet from India, full
ordination as a dge.slong.ma (Skt. bhiksunī) is currently not available in the Tibetan tradition.” For
further discussion, see Karma Lekshe Tsomo, “Tibetan Nuns and Nunneries,” 120-1. See also Serinity
Young, “Women Changing Tibet,” 231-2: Tibetan texts translate the Indian term for an ordained nun,
bhiksunī, as gelongma. They use the term in reference to ordained nuns in India’s history, but never to
identify Tibetan nuns, past or present. The latter are called ani, a term of less prestige which also
refers to aunts.
15
Taklha, 9.
16
Rita Gross, “Yeshe Tsogyel: Enlightened Consort, Great Teacher, Female Role Model,” 11-32. For
a complete description of Tsogyel’s life and spiritual achievements, refer to Keith Dowman’s 1984
publication, Sky Dancer: The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel. Gill Farrer-Halls
provides a brief overview of Yeshe Tsogyel’s life and achievements in The Feminine Face of
Buddhism, 67-9.
17
Judith Simmer-Brown, Dakini’s Warm Breath, 34.
18
Tsomo, “Change in Consciousness,” 174.
19
Simmer-Brown, 35. The Tibetan word for “woman” is skye-dman, lit. “born low.” The common
interpretation is that women are inferior to men. This concept will be discussed further in Chapter 1 of
this text. Simmer-Brown writes that Tibetans interpret the word’s literal meaning as a reference to the
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34
greater suffering a woman endures during her lifetime, not to her inherent worth in relation to men.
Tārā is not universally identified as a Buddha by scholars in the field. Janice Willis, in her article on
“Tibetan Buddhist Women Practitioners, Past and Present,” 147, designates Tārā as a great goddess.
Stephan Beyer also refers to her as a goddess in the preface to his extensive work, The Cult of Tārā,
xii, though he later details her spiritual progression from Buddhist practitioner to merciful bodhisattva
and, finally, to fully enlightened being (65). Powers, 145, includes a brief reference to her as a
Buddha. Cholblho Youdon, a nun in Dharamsala’s Tibetan refugee community, also identifies Tārā as
a Buddha in an essay published in Dolma magazine (excerpt follows on page 13 of this text). In
Buddhist Goddesses of India, 309-26, Miranda Shaw addresses Tārā’s role as a goddess figure in
Buddhist mythology, but ultimately engages in a discussion of her role as a Buddha. She rejects the
interpretation of Tārā as a bodhisattva, noting work by Pierre Arènes, who argues for Tārā’s complete
Buddhahood. Though Tārā is commonly identified as a bodhisattva in western commentary, Buddhist
literature uses the term only in reference to her role in past lives. Shaw explains that Tārā rose to
Buddha status around the same time the Tantric tradition gained prominence, clearing the path for
enlightenment in the female body. However, Tārā’s iconography remained consistent with her
Mahayana roots even after this transition, and her artistic portrayals omit some characteristic signs of
Buddhahood. According to Shaw, such iconographic discrepancies have led western scholars to
mistakenly question her designation as a Buddha. Further, Shaw argues that the common conception
of Tārā as a consort of Avalokiteśvara in western literature is unsupported by Buddhist primary texts.
Given the foregoing evidence, I have chosen to identify Tārā as a Buddha.
20
21
Shaw, 307.
22
Beyer, 4. For a concise overview of Tārā in her green and white manifestations, see Farrer-Halls,
50-57. A discussion of Tārā in the Tibetan creation myth is provided in Chapter 1 of this text.
23
Beyer, 65.
24
Ibid.
25
Excerpt from an essay published in Dolma, 39.
26
Taklha, 7.
27
On March 12, 1959, approximately fifteen thousand women joined together in the streets of Lhasa to
protest the Chinese occupation. The Tibetan Women’s Association, a prominent non-governmental
organization in exile, traces its roots to the uprising, which will be discussed further in Chapter 1 of
this text.
28
Further, roughly 18% of the pre-1950 Tibetan population was monks, whereas only 2% was nuns. In
present-day Tibet, statistics indicate that a greater percentage of nuns engage in political activities than
monks (Young, 231-2). Thus, women have not simply broadened their scope of public involvement
post-1950, but many have also maximized their potential for change while remaining in their pre-1950
roles.
29
Atsuko Matsuoka, “Eritrean Canadian Refugee Households,” 218.
30
Melvyn C. Goldstein, Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet, 4-5, 12. This distinction complicates
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refugees’ negotiation of reentry into Tibet. If Dharamsala’s government decided to pursue increased
autonomy in the TAR without addressing the control of Greater Tibet, it would fragment the exile
community because many refugees are from eastern regions not included in the TAR.
31
Charlene Makely, “The Meaning of Liberation,” 4.
32
Alex Butler, Feminism, Nationalism, and Exiled Tibetan Women, 15-6.
33
Refer to footnote 1 of this text.
34
Powers, 140-1; Janet Gyatso, “Down with the Demoness,” 44.
35
Gyatso, 44.
36
Bön is commonly identified as the indigenous religious tradition that preceded Buddhism’s
introduction into Tibet in the seventh century. Powers, 497, argues that “historical evidence indicates
that Bön only developed as a self-conscious religious system under the influence of Buddhism.”
37
Gyatso, 37-40.
38
Barbara Nimri Aziz, “Moving Towards a Sociology of Tibet,” 79. See footnote 14 of this text for
first reference.
39
Gyatso, 44; Tsomo, 177.
40
Aziz, 79-80.
41
Ibid., 81.
42
Taklha, 7. For a different interpretation, see Carol Devine, Determination, 29-30. Devine quotes a
1993 interview with Sakya Jetsün Chimé Luding and Paulette Marchetti. Luding explains that prayers
for rebirth as a man are not against women; the Buddha taught that women and men are equally able to
attain enlightenment in theory. However, in reality, women often spend so much time doing
housework and raising children that they do not have the leisure of pursuing spiritual liberation to the
same degree as men. Thus, it would be easier to attain enlightenment in a male rebirth.
43
Taklha, 8.
44
Charles Alfred Bell, The People of Tibet, 147; also quoted in Butler, 14.
45
Taklha, 10.
46
Tsomo, 175.
47
Excerpt from an essay published in Dolma, 33.
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48
Ibid., 40.
49
Ibid., 36.
50
Ibid., 46.
51
Ibid., 39. This is generally cited as an ancient Chinese proverb, although it is familiar in the Tibetan
context as well.
52
Dolma Choden, interview with the author, November, 13, 2009. A similar sentiment is expressed by
Namgyal Phala, head of TWA branch in Zurich, Switzerland. See Devine, 25.
53
See Devine, 25, for an interview with Yangdol Panglung: “Women’s struggles in Tibet are part of a
nationalist movement, not a women’s liberation movement. Indeed, women have little contact with
Western feminism in Tibet, apart from the small number of Chinese-educated Marxist-feminist Tibetan
women.”
54
For detailed accounts of the uprising, see Breaking the Shackles, 7-22; Philippa Russell, “The
Tibetan Women’s Uprising;” Devine, 19-22; and Butler, 40-4.
55
Quoted from a filmed interview in Women of Tibet: A Quiet Revolution.
56
Ibid.
57
Butler, 31.
58
For Rinchen Taring Dolma’s account, see Butler, 35. General information about the Patriotic
Women’s Association is available in Butler, 32-8; Breaking the Shackles, 1-6; and Russell, 55. Taklha,
11, argues that some women may have enjoyed their positions of authority in the association because it
gave them an outlet for expression beyond their households.
59
Robert Barnett provides an extensive analysis of this phenomenon in the final chapter of Gyatso and
Havnevik’s compilation, Women of Tibet. See pages 285-366. For more information on laywomen
protests against the Chinese government in present-day Tibet, see Devine, 63-6.
60
Taklha, 9.
61
Devine, 25.
62
Ibid., 8.
63
Butler, 83. Gyatso, 34, discusses the possibility of an “amazonian-like Land of the Women” in some
parts of Tibet, mentioned in Chinese and Indian sources, and the existence of some matriarchal and
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matrilineal Tibetan societies. However, the evidence is scarce and, if valid, certainly not representative
of the political structures found in most of Tibet.
64
Quoted from a filmed interview in Women of Tibet: A Quiet Revolution.
65
For more information on the reinstatement of TWA in exile, see Breaking the Shackles, 23-45;
Butler, 116-47; Taklha, 19-20; and Women of Tibet: A Quiet Revolution, special feature entitled
“Tibetan Women’s Association.”
66
Quoted from a filmed interview in Women of Tibet: A Quiet Revolution.
67
In an interview with the author October 29, 2009, Kalsang Nguntre explained that there was no need
for disability services and nursing homes in historical Tibet. However, the fragmentation and
instability of the exile situation has created an environment in which many families do not have the
resources to care for children with disabilities. Kalsang founded the craft home in response to this
exile-based need.
68
69
The Status of Exiled Tibetan Women in India, 69.
Ibid., 67.
70
Quoted from a filmed interview in Women of Tibet: A Quiet Revolution.
71
Quoted in John F. Avedon, In Exile from the Land of the Snows, 71.
72
Webpage accessed March 8, 2010.
73
Women of Tibet: A Quiet Revolution.
74
Ibid., quoted from a filmed interview with Rinchen Khando Choegyal.
75
Quoted in Avedon, 72.
76
Ibid., 93.
77
Girija Saklani, The Uprooted Tibetans in India, 256. Even for refugees who decide to seek
permanent residence outside Tibet, India is generally not a suitable long-term prospect, for reasons that
will be discussed later in this chapter. Thus, if cultural dilution occurs among Tibetan refugees, it is
more likely caused by exposure to western fashion trends and pop culture, not integration into Indian
traditions, religion, and language.
78
Isolation helps refugees maintain a distinct community but also puts them at a disadvantage because
they are remote from foreign governments that might be able to provide support for their cause. This
arrangement benefits India’s interests because it allows the government to cater to the needs of
Tibetans without displaying overt sympathy for their struggle. In this way, India fulfills its
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responsibilities as host of a displaced population while protecting a delicate relationship with China
(Serin Houston, “Making and Remaking Tibetan Diasporic Identities,” 223). See also Avedon, 84, and
Saklani, 255-6.
79
Tibetans in Dharamsala show an interest in learning the Tibetan script (many are illiterate if they
were raised in Tibet), Chinese, and English. Though Hindi is the language of their host country, it is
not a language that promises future utility. Even if Tibet does not become free, refugees do not
envision India as a permanent home (see discussion on pages 36-8 of this text). In this regard, the
Tibetan situation is similar to the presence of Iranian refugees in Sweden in the 1990s: “The question
of return and the current situation in Iran are important aspects to their lives in exile… [They]
live collectively and concern themselves mainly with their political aims. They have no interest in
learning the Swedish language or facts about the country… [because] such matters divert attention
from the ‘real’ duty, namely the removal of the Islamic regime in Iran” (Mark Graham and Shahram
Khosravi, “Home is Where You Make It,” 118).
80
Margaret Nowak, Tibetan Refugees, 88: “The ‘segmentary’ pattern of uniting or defining oneself
against ‘the other’ has shown all regional groups of Tibetans that they do in fact share fundamental
similarities, all the moreso in comparison with China the aggressor and India the host country.”
Similarly, Houston, 223: “The exterior threat of cultural extermination forces Tibetans in exile to reimagine themselves as united and pan-Buddhist, which paves over Tibet’s fractious religious and
regional past.”
81
Houston, 220.
82
Ibid., 223: “Now, Bons are categorized as Tibetans, and consequently Buddhists by association, as
pan-Tibetan Buddhism is the diasporic norm.”
Tibetan Women’s Association, “Aims and Objectives,” www.tibetanwomen.org/about/aims_
objectives.html.
83
84
Quoted in Houston, 223.
85
This is evidenced by the Kashag’s statement that Tibet has never experienced gender discrimination,
discussed in Chapter 1 of this text.
86
The Status of Exiled Tibetan Women in India, 42: “TWA focusing too much energy and time on
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women’s issues, apart from the political issue of Tibet, is perceived by many as a divisive force in
Tibetan society. Some contend that TWA has more work in future free Tibet rather than in focusing
on women’s issues in exile.”
87
Houston, 221.
88
Avedon, 87.
89
In this aspect, too, Tibetan refugees in India evidence similarities to Iranian refugees in Sweden.
According to Graham and Khosravi, 124: “For some Iranians, Sweden, as a place to live, is more of
a‘non-place,’ an ‘anteroom’ or holding bay which continually refers beyond itself to other places—
Iran, the USA, Canada, and other European countries.”
90
U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “2007 Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices: India.”
91
Houston, 220.
92
Voice of the Asia Pacific Human Rights Network, “Tibetan Refugees in India: Declining
Sympathies, Diminishing Rights,” South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center. April 30, 2008.
93
Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, India/China, February 6, 2006: “Section 3 of the Indian
Citizenship Act of 1955 stipulates that a person ‘born in India on or after the 26th January 1950 but
before 1st July, 1978’ is a citizen of India ‘irrespective of the nationality of his parents.’ However a
person born between 1 July 1987 and 2 December 2004 is a citizen of India if one of the parents is a
citizen of India at the time of the birth. A person born in India after 2 December 2004 is a citizen by
birth if both parents are citizens of India at the time of the birth or if one of the parents is a citizen and
the other ‘is not an illegal migrant at the time of [the] birth.’” Voice of the Asia Pacific Human Rights
Network: Though the act provides an opportunity for a large part of the Tibetan refugee population to
apply for citizenship, an overwhelming majority chooses not to do so, expecting instead to return to
Tibet. An estimated 1-3% of eligible refugees choose to apply for citizenship. Though a very small
number of Tibetans have requested and received Indian citizenship, some report that their applications
have been contested.
94
Voice of the Asia Pacific Human Rights Network.
95
Shortly after my departure from Dharamsala, Pamo was granted a visa to the United Kingdom and
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has since established residence in England.
96
Conversation with the author, October 11, 2009.
97
Pamo Yangchen’s story is continued in Chapter 3 of this text.
98
With no steady obligations at home or work in Dharamsala, Diki is able to make last-minute
decisions to move or change her routine. Like many other refugees in the area, after becoming
uprooted from her homeland, she has not developed strong connections to her new residence. Her
story is continued in Chapter 3 and the appendix of this text.
99
Conversation with the author, November 13, 2009.
100
Choblho Youdon, quoted in Dolma, 36.
101
Dolma Choden, interview with the author, November 13, 2009. Nearly all the women with whom I
spoke expressed the view that women are not playing a particularly unique role in preserving Tibetan
heritage when compared with men. However, respondents may have skewed their answers to align
with the non-gendered, nationalist goals discussed in Chapter 2 of this text. Just as members of the
exile community might be critical of gender-selective TWA activities, so women might hesitate to
portray themselves as uniquely influential actors in the preservation of Tibetan culture.
102
According to Kalsang Nguntre, a Tibetan woman in Dharamsala, much of Tibetan culture is good,
especially its Buddhist foundation, but Tibet’s legacy is not completely flawless. She said Tibetans do
not exalt their culture as much as foreigners do. “Mainly it is the outside world that is telling [us] that
Tibetan culture is good,” she said in an interview with the author, October 29, 2009. Further, in an
editorial in Dolma magazine, 71, Cristina Bonnet Acosta questions, “Why does the world like to think
of Tibetans as exotic and highly traditional in order to support them? Why do some continue to
cherish only the oriental and mysterious images of the Tibetans rather than engaging with the
contemporary Tibetan ways of being?” This dynamic contributes to the difficulty of reconstructing
identity in exile as discussed in Chapter 2 of this text. Houston, 224, quotes Dolma, a Tibetan woman
in Dharamsala: “If I try to be too hip or too vogue people say ‘Uh-uh, you’re a Tibetan, try to
remember that.’”
103
Fourteenth Dalai Lama, quoted in Avedon, 92.
104
Avedon, 92. This collection includes the sutras, tantras, liturgies, and guru-disciple lineages.
105
In the same vein, new traditions arise in exile, such as the annual commemoration of the March 10th
uprising in Lhasa (Houston, 222).
106
Interview with the author, November 10, 2009. Due to concerns like those expressed by Lhami
Tsering, in 2004, the Department of Education instated a new model for Tibetan education, which
encourages parents to keep children at home during their early school years. Mevon Tsuglag Peton
School, often referred to as Tibetan New Model School, is the first to institute the program. It is
located across from Lower TCV in Dharamsala.
107
Western clothes are a spreading trend in Dharamsala, and many women choose to wear them
instead of chubas. Though women are required to wear chubas in government offices, men are not,
and it is extremely rare to see a man in traditional clothing.
108
Interview with the author, November 10, 2009.
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Golstein, 11.
110
Quoted in Dolma, 96.
111
“China says missing Panchen Lama is living in Tibet,” Associated Press, March 7, 2010.
41
“If majority of Tibetan people feel the Dalai institution is no longer much relevant, then this
institution should cease—there is no problem.” The fourteenth Dalai Lama, quoted in an online news
release at www.dalailama.com: “Dalai Lama Says Loves China Despite ‘Suppression,’” February 23,
2010.
112
“Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the 51st Anniversary of the Tibetan National
Uprising Day,” March 10, 2009, available online at www.dalailama.com.
113
114
There is evidence of a deliberate population transfer of Chinese nationals into Tibetan areas in the
years since the Chinese occupation. Chinese residents nearly outnumber ethnic Tibetans in Lhasa,
according to 2002 estimates cited in Houston and Wright, 220.