The Tibetan Government-in-Exile

Politics at Large

Stephanie Römer, Stephanie Roemer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415451710
• eBook ISBN: 9781134057221
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a detailed account of the structure and political strategies of the Tibetan government-in exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), in northern India. Since its founding in 1959, it has been led by the 14th Dalai Lama who struggles to regain the Tibetan homeland. Based on a theoretical approach on exile organizations – and extensive empirical studies in Asia – this book discusses CTA's political strategies to gain national loyalty, and international support, in order to secure its own organizational survival and the ultimate goal: the return to Tibet.

The book is organized around the two fundamental questions: firstly, how the CTA fosters its claims to be the sole representative of all Tibetans over the last decades in exile; and, secondly, which policies have been carried out in order to regain the homeland. The book is divided into four substantial chapters:

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• the historical background, providing a review of pre-1959 political Tibet

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• a theoretical section which covers the critical position of exile organizations

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• an examination of the exile Tibetan community and government from the early years

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• an analysis of crucial CTA policies.

Innovative and unique, this book combines a political science approach with Tibetan studies to analyse exile-Tibetan politics in particular, and exile governments in general.

1 Introduction

The early morning sunrays shine through my window and encourage me to go for a small walk before breakfast. I am in north India in a town called Dharamsala, which in Hindi means ‘resting place for travelers’ (Bhattacharjea 1995: 9). This former British hill station on the southern edge of the Himalayan mountain range is the exile headquarters of the Tibetan government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (CTA). On my walk through the already busy streets, I see Tibetans at the side of the pathways. They wait for Yeshi Norbu, the ‘Precious Jewel’, better known in the Western world¹ as the 14th Dalai Lama who is, at present, the Tibetan religious and political leader. The Tibetans have already been waiting for some time and I see them still standing at the same spot, accompanied by some Western tourists, when I return from my early walk. While they burn incense and quietly murmur mantras, the Westerners exchange information on Buddhist philosophy classes, which they have attended during previous days. The majority has not been to Tibet yet, but they are happy to visit ‘Little Lhasa’ to get to know Tibetan culture and religion. I decide to accompany the crowd, waiting in the last row. After some time, the 14th Dalai Lama passes by, escorted by Indian and Tibetan bodyguards, some even armed. The ‘Precious Jewel’ is smiling while the tourists look at him with great appreciation, and the Tibetans devotedly bow their heads. He enters a nearby building, the so-called Tibetan Reception Centre of Dharamsala. Inside, he blesses those Tibetans who have recently arrived in exile, most of them are children. The Tibetan leader leaves the place after an hour, heading downhill towards his private complex that is surrounded by barbed wire fence.

As I sat in the Berlin U-Bahn, I watched the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China and caught a glimpse of a small demonstration in front of the glass facades of the impressive new building. The demonstrators carried colorful flags and posters demanding ‘Free Tibet’ or ‘Release the 11th Panchen Lama’.² The group of approximately 20 people of both German and Tibetan heritage was patiently waiting for any reaction from the Chinese diplomats. Most of the Tibetans who migrated to Germany a few years ago still find themselves in a pitiful situation regarding their social integration and employment opportunities. In contrast, the German demonstrators are well-off and part of a growing community that tries to change the political situation of the people in the entire Tibetan-populated area through the communication of human rights violations or ecological and economic disasters. Only a few of them have been to Tibet or experienced life in the Tibetan exile settlements in India and Nepal. The majority, rather, lives on second-hand information distributed by the exile government or various international nongovernmental organizations, which exemplifies contact with the exiled Tibetan community. They can be endlessly listed, starting with numerous political demonstrations and discussions on Tibetan topics, such as eco, human and women’s rights—events that are organized by more than 400 Tibet Support Groups worldwide—religious ceremonies, traveling activities of the 14th Dalai Lama to TV programs, articles in newspapers and lifestyle magazines that focus on Tibet. All that publicity contributes to a shimmering picture of Tibet that has increasingly fascinated uncounted ordinary people in the Western world.

From an academic point of view, numerous studies have proved that ‘Tibet’ is not a clear-cut term that can be easily characterized. In everyday promotion by the mass media, Tibet emotionally refers to a nation; to a country; to a religion; to a way of life or to a plight. It polarizes people into being either pro-Tibetan or pro-Chinese, either interested in spiritual and mental development or in material wealth and consumption, into peaceful or aggressive characters, into eco-friendly or careless people.

A military invasion of Tibet by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in 1950 finally led to the Chinese takeover and the flight of the young 14th Dalai Lama to India in 1959. He was followed (at time of writing) by more than 120,000 Tibetans who left their homes and now live scattered all over the world. The events in 1959 caused the formation of two different Tibetan communities: the majority of Tibetans who still live within the borders of the PRC and the exile community, which is located to a large extent in India and Nepal. Both Tibetan communities have undergone considerable changes during the last decades: in China, by a large-scale political and economic transformation; in exile, by dealing with new political, social and climatic conditions. At present, two authorities claim to be the sole and legal representative of Tibet regarding territory and people, both in the homeland and in exile: the Chinese government in Beijing and the Tibetan government-in-exile in India. Both administrations carry out different political strategies to emphasize their claims. While the government in Beijing enjoys diplomatic recognition by the main players in world politics, the Central Tibetan Administration ekes out an internationally unrecognized but well-known existence.

Leaving the Chinese position to one side, this book will deal with the phenomenon of governments-in-exile. The Tibetan cause serves here as an example on the basis of which I portray a procedure of analyzing an ‘exile organizational structure’. Due to the fact that political activities in exile are highly complex, the purposes of this book are, first, to analyze the Tibetan government-in-exile to make Tibetan exile politics more transparent, and, second, to develop further the existing understanding of governments-in-exile. Consequently, this book should not be understood purely as a Tibetan-related research. It is rather an empirical study that focuses on the expansion of the present academic stand on the topic of governments-in-exile, which can be used to understand exile activities in general. As a consequence, the results of the book may contribute to optimize Tibetan political activities in exile and international support.

The theoretical research on political structures in exile has been neglected so far, surprisingly since the phenomenon of refugees and migrations has become a major topic in the arena of global politics. Even if not communicated directly, the growing number of people who are either forced to, or voluntarily migrate has increasingly been determining economic transfers and political actions. Especially political organizations of exiled people have become a topic of internal politics and security matters. Furthermore, formerly exiled people play a crucial role in reshaping collapsed political systems. In the empirical part of this book, I focus on exile Tibetan politics, which have no international political relevance yet, but are rather well known due to the traveling activities of the 14th Dalai Lama.

Scholars who conducted research on the exile Tibetan community encountered a complex administrative structure and frequently changing political strategies. The embedding of these political structures, both in terms of administration and politics, in a theory of governments-in-exile, eases the dealing with the CTA in making its movements transparent and, moreover, also transferable to other governments-in-exile. In this regard the book does not claim to be a complete account of exile Tibetan activities since 1959 but rather an unveiling of political patterns to understand the previously sketched examples.

The literature

The phenomenon of ‘exile organizations’ has been the topic of numerous case studies, which portray different facets of the structure and nature of certain ‘exile communities’. But there are only limited works that have attempted to develop an integrated theoretical approach to the nature of organizations in exile. This lack of academic attention can be attributed to the structure of political sciences and jurisprudence, which distinguish between national and international politics and national and international law respectively. Political structures in exile are fringe areas of both fields.

Due to the political events during and after the Second World War, when several European governments left their countries because of the Fascist invasion, governments-in-exile became a topic among jurists. In this context fall the works of Meyer and Torczyner (1943), Lourie and Meyer (1943), and Oppenheimer (1942). A systematic and overall approach on governments-in-exile was first presented in 1953 by Mattern, who analyzed the status of European exile governments (1953). Another noteworthy piece of research is Talmon’s theory of governments-in-exile in international law (1998).

In political science, Yossi Shain, a scholar at the Universities of Georgetown and Tel-Aviv, conducted systematic and far-reaching research on numerous former and still existing exile organizations to find overall characteristics of exile organizations in general and governments-in-exile in particular (1989, 1991). His theoretical approach is at present the only existing theory of governments-in-exile in political science. Because of such limited academic attention towards exile organizations, I give high credence to his research and take his findings on governments-in-exile as a basis for further theoretical developments and the portrayal of exile Tibetan politics. Furthermore, I want to mention the work of Alicja Iwańska, who specifically looked at the Spanish and Polish exile governments and developed theoretical categories to compare the two cases of exile (1981).

Compared with the little research on governments-in-exile, the studies on Tibet are abundant. I only want to mention the research works that provided me with an overall and lasting introduction to the topic of the exiled Tibetan community in general and the Tibetan government-in-exile in particular. While anthropologists have undertaken extensive research, works on Tibetan exile from other disciplines are somewhat limited. These works concentrate on subjects like education, health or political events of the entire period between 1959 and the present. The most important for my own research were written by Goldstein (1975a,b, 1993), Klieger (1992, 2002), Nowak (1984) and Frechette (2004). Furthermore, I used the works of Ardley (2002), Hoppe (1997), Schmitz (1998) and Sautman (2000). The accounts on the Tibetan pre-exile times of Shakabpa (1967), Richardson (1984), Carrasco (1959) and Michael (1982) provided me with an overview of society, politics and religious life in central Tibet in the early twentieth century.

Additionally, I want to give importance to the numerous publications of the CTA that illustrate the official view on exile Tibetan life in the communities and the Tibetans’ political struggle and history.³ But these accounts are not sufficient for a scientific analysis, as they serve the exile Tibetan political objectives, rather than show the conditions in a neutral way. With regard to the theory on exile governments, most of the materials are produced to elicit a response from potential donors and international supporters of the exile struggle. In addition, the data are partly exaggerated to fit the anticipated schemata to represent the CTA itself in a most critical and support-worthy manner.

I read most of the references on Tibet and exile Tibetan life during my field studies in India and Nepal between 1999 and 2006, while the theoretical background was the major concern of my work in German libraries. The center of the empirical analysis is the exile Tibetan community in India because India serves as host country for the majority of the exile Tibetans and the Tibetan government-in-exile itself.

The basic empirical research methods were participant-observations of Tibetan exile life and interviews. Most of the interviews I conducted in English. In cases where my interview partner had no knowledge of the English language, mostly elder Tibetans, I used the help of Tibetan friends to translate. The interviews are not recorded because the majority of my Tibetan interview partners became insecure when they spotted a tape recorder, or they even refused to answer. Consequently, I came to rely on my notes and memory to transcribe the interview immediately afterwards. Many interview partners did not want to be mentioned in the context of politics and wanted to remain anonymous. The reason for such reluctance could not be exactly verified; one interview partner said that these Tibetans probably did not wish to be involved in ‘for Tibetans very emotional and sensitive topics’ (anonymous interview, 2006).

In general, the Tibetans in exile were willing to support me with the details and data for which I was looking. For instance, I was given the chance to take part in the exile Tibetan parliamentary sessions, to study daily with the support of the librarians in the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, which contains a large collection of Tibetan and foreign language references on Tibet related topics, or to get without significant problems an appointment for interviews. But I also encountered certain difficulties during the fieldwork. To a large extent that was because of the perception of many exile Tibetans, who assumed that I was just another western Buddhist, volunteer, sponsor or traveler in town who could be helpful in terms of financial and material aid or to get a passport to the Western world. It was not always easy to convince my opposite that I was just interested in the Tibetan exile context and had nothing to offer or promise. Furthermore, I met very few other scholars so the opportunities to exchange views and opinions with others who worked on similar topics were strongly limited.⁴

Research and content

This book is divided into four chapters: historical background, theoretical considerations, a portrayal of the exile Tibetan community and the Tibetan government-in-exile followed, by an analysis of the CTA policies according to the outlined theory, then summary and conclusions. The main research questions are:

1. How did the CTA foster its claims to be the sole representative of all Tibetans over the decades in exile?
2. Which policies have been carried out to regain the homeland and how can they be explained and characterized?

Taking these two questions as a starting point, the following hypotheses are presented:

1. The representative claims of the CTA are to a large extent based on Tibetan history and on international support, which has been granted to the exile Tibetan community since 1959.
2. The functioning and political legitimation of the CTA as Tibetan government-in-exile, is determined by the institution of the Dalai Lama.
3. The structure and policies of the CTA can be explained with Yossi Shain’s political theory (1989, 1991) of exile organizations. According to his theory, the political survival of any exile organization depends to a large extent on the degree of granted national loyalty and international support and recognition.
4. Both foci of a government-in-exile, to gain national loyalty and international support, are interdependent. The striving for national loyalty and international acknowledgement leads to policy effects that support each other but also create discrepancies. Consequently, the amended theory of governments-in exile provides a model to categorize CTA policies and to explain discrepancies caused by the struggle for national loyalty and international support.

Chapter 2 gives an overview of traditional Tibetan society, economy and political life. It serves as a basis to understand the exile Tibetan context. Since the initial years in exile, the CTA has represented itself as the de-facto government of Tibet, which derives its legitimation out of a direct succession of the central Tibetan government in Lhasa. Based on the general overview I examine the political events that finally led to the Chinese military takeover in 1959, which in turn caused the departure of thousands of Tibetans from their homes to India, Nepal and Bhutan.

Chapter 3 provides a theoretical framework from which to analyze Tibetan exile politics. The center describes Yossi Shain’s approach towards a theory of exile organizations. Shain examines an exile organization’s difficult position within national and international politics. In this context, he stresses the importance of securing national loyalty and international support for any exile organization to maintain its political structure and to achieve the set goal: the return home. Furthermore, James Wilson’s organization theory (1973) is presented, which looks particularly at organizations with voluntary membership. Wilson assumes that an organization needs to invest certain incentives to motivate its present and potential members to perform certain requested tasks that contribute to the organization’s survival and the achieving of set goals. Such an assumption is important in the context of exile governments as it provides an analytical approach to look at the efforts of such administrative structure to cultivate any kind of support. In the next step, I combine Shain’s and Wilson’s research findings and herewith provide a new theoretical focus that can be taken as the basis for an analysis of my empirical data. In this regard, the theoretical focus is to examine the efforts of an exile government to overcome their critical political position.

Chapter 4 provides an overview of the organizational structure of the exile Tibetan community, which, according to Shain’s theory, is most important in terms of an exile government’s claims and goals. In the middle, are the main social, economic and political developments in the exile Tibetan community from the beginning to the early twenty-first century. First, the initial years in Indian exile and the efforts that were made by the CTA, assisted by international aid organizations, to rehabilitate and resettle the numerous Tibetans are drawn up. Main questions relating to this are: Why did India serve as host country for the thousands of Tibetans and the newly founded CTA? What role did the CTA play in the process of resettling and rehabilitation? The answers show that the initial years in exile were an important period for the CTA to establish a powerful position, which was to be expanded in the following years. Second, details of the main policies of the CTA’s struggle against the Chinese invaders are given, followed by an examination of the Role of the 14th Dalai Lama within the CTA and the legislative, executive and judicial powers. Next, an account of the three major exile Tibetan NGOs and their roles in exile Tibetan politics is given. Finally, the chapter looks at the annual budget of the CTA, to find patterns and the priorities of its work.

Chapter 5 exemplarily analyzes the CTA policies that are implemented to induce loyalty among all Tibetans and to secure international support and recognition. This analysis is based on the amended theoretical approach on governments-in-exile. In the center are the investments of the CTA to motivate members of the Tibetan nation and potential supporters of the international community to take an active part in the exile Tibetan struggle. The findings of the empirical data support the theoretical considerations but at the same time open up new perspectives that have not yet been considered. Consequently, the theoretical implications are further developed.

At the end of this Introduction, it is prudent to point out that Tibetan terms are written according to the phonetic transcription. Their transliteration is examined in Appendix 1, according to Turell Wylie’s spelling standard (1959).

2 Modern Tibet: A historical account

This chapter summarizes the situation in Tibet in the first half of the twentieth century. While at certain stages I look back to more ancient times, my main focus is the period between 1900 and 1959. It describes an important time as the exile Tibetan community refers to it in the current political discussion on the present and future status of Tibet. Traditions and values of the ‘old times’ significantly determine the exile Tibetan’s perspective of their homeland and the political claims of the Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (CTA).

First in this chapter, the boundaries of Tibet will be defined before giving a brief account of the social and economic situation in Tibet. Then I will illustrate the political situation in Tibet, which was characterized by an interconnection between religion and politics—a relationship that is still in use in the exile context. The last part of this chapter sketches the political circumstances on the eve of the breakdown of the Tibetan political system, which finally led to the Chinese takeover, causing the departure of thousands of Tibetans from their homeland. As the data on Tibetan history covers to a large extent the c...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Modern Tibet: A historical account
• 3 An approach towards a theory of governments-in-exile
• 4 Tibetans in exile: A portrait of the CTA
• 5 Theoretical characterization of CTA policies
• 6 Summary and conclusions
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography