Boundary-Making and Political Activism in Protracted Exile: Second-Generation Tibetan Refugees in India

Abstract

For over six decades the Tibetan diaspora in India has followed a strategy of ‘non-assimilation’ towards Indian society. A majority of Tibetans still reside in self-governed settlements and maintain their self-imposed statelessness. Tibetan refugees have constructed boundaries that—according to the diaspora leaders—enable them to continue their political struggle for a free Tibet while in a state of protracted exile and imposed waiting. In this article, based on long-term ethnographic research, I discuss the mechanisms and rationale of this boundary-making by exploring its spatial, educational, and political dimensions. I then analyse the political activism which takes place within those boundaries, with a special focus on second-generation Tibetan refugees. I scrutinize the internal divisions in the Tibetan freedom movement, the radicalization of struggle, and the everyday patriotism practiced by generations born in exile, demonstrating that waiting has the potential to produce resistance.