Descripción de la muestra sobre las variables sociales

‘O ne day a new com er arrived in Dharam sala, visited tlie library. Seeing the great work done by people there and how many injiys it is attracting, he decides that he too can make some profit and opens up a tourist bureau in McLeod. From there he takes tourists to Bodh Gaya and the Bodhi tree, where he says: ‘H ere the Buddha spent m any years, piUar cutting” , {ka ba bead).

[In a religious context, ka ba bead means ‘elim inating suffering’. The new com er has given it a literal meaning: ‘pillar cutting’], which is interpreted as a symptomatic sign o f religious ignorance. (CTA w orker’s joke, January 2001)

Th.&gsar 'byorba, as the 1980s refugees from Tibet are referred to, face exile with a double

plight: after tlie hardships o f the passage to India, they are further confronted with the difficulty o f being accepted in the host Tibetan refugee population, particularly first generation refugees. Broadly speaking, the term gsar ‘bjor ba refers to the bod nas phebs

m khan gsar pa, those who are 'newly arrived from Tibet’.

According to tlie CTA:

In the last five years [from 1996] 44 per cent o f all new refugees com ing from T ibet have been between 14 and 25 years old. A further 17 per cent have been 13 years old or younger, many left beliind by tlieir parents so that they can be educated and be near His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Forty four per cent o f aU the refugees in the past five years have been m onks and nuns fleeing religious persecution. The sudden and dram atic increase in the n um ber o f m onks and nuns, which has m ore than doubled the m onastic com m unity since 1980, has made it difficult for the already overcrow ded monasteries and nunneries to continue to absorb tlieni.-s^

The G overnm ent in Exile’s difficulty in coping with tlie growing num ber o f newcomers matches that o f the local community in accepting them. The majority o f these gsar 'bjor ba now originate from Kliam and Amdo, parts o f which are the poorer regions o f the TAR, and those that have come the m ost heavily under Chinese influence. Many of them, having received very little Tibetan education, speak only Chinese and a Tibetan regional dialect. They thus come to India unprepared for a confrontation with their more learned and established compatriots. The tension between earlier refugees and the gsar

Pyor ba is extremely patent in Dharamsala. The latter are the object o f all suspicions and

the recipients o f accusations o f causing multiple social ills. Specific diseases, like Tuberculosis, are associated with tlie irresponsible and asocial attitude o f uncouth

recommended by tlie allopatliic hospital and its health workers. As we will see in the following chapters, it can be argued that the social boundaries which exiles set up amongst themselves are invoked in the context o f health and in relation to disease, to identify outsider groups as more ‘at risk’, more ‘contagious’, less ‘socially responsible’. Such implicit moral allegations are intimately linked with the idea that earlier exiles are ‘repositories’ o f true, ‘authentic’ Tibetan culture, and that outsiders, newcomers and dissolute youths are ‘contaminating agents’ o f exile society both socially and physically, through tlieir enhanced susceptibility to disease and their failure to behave as ‘moral beings’, with which they tlireaten the survival and purity o f the group.

One o f tlie alleged reasons why earlier refugees have grown increasingly suspicious {dogs pd) o f newcomers is the supposed parasitism o f youngsters and their inability to find employment, encouraging loitering and recourse to rogs ram. This suspicion is greatly reinforced by inter-regional differences: earlier Ü-Tsang refugees often perceive Kliam, Amdo and Kongpo newcomers as marginal and rural folk. This is made evident from the common references to newcomers as upholding the anachronistic custom o f polyandry, and being uncultured and violent or simply ka cha (Hindi: raw), roguish and unkem pt (cf. Diehl 1997). This is set in opposition to tliird generation youths educated in tlie new TCV curriculum and possessing tlie cardinal Buddhist virtue o f snjingje chen po (great compassion).

But tlie suspicion is mutual. Some o f the more educated newcomers, such as those originating from Lhasa and its environs, accuse old Dharamsala refugees o f dropping the standards in Tibetan, not knowing how to write or speak properly. Some refer to ‘TCV speak’ (T C V ked), the language and slang cultivated by tlie youth o f the Tibetan Children’s Village s c h o o l s . I t is tlius implied that earlier Tibetan refugees and their families, particularly the youtli, have bastardised the Tibetan language, which is now scarcely recognisable to tlie more educated newcomers.

This, however, represents only a small fraction o f the population, and the majority o f newcomers are now young and middle-aged men and w omen with little education, w ho have come to India seeking schooling and employment. In the 1970s, Saklani reported that refugees from Amdo perceived the move to exile as a source o f radical social change, whereas refugees from Ü-tsang had experienced the change as less extreme

(1972: 109). This further points to the difficulty o f Khamdo newcomers in adapting to the exile environment.

But til is unflattering portrait o f newcomers is not endorsed by all. Some newcomer families or couples with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, who come to Dharamsala to start new businesses, are perceived differently. Three families settled in Gangchen Kyishong to open businesses during my fieldwork period: the first ran a bakery business, while the second and third opened restaurants. Two were from Khamdo and the third from the Lhasa area. They immediately received a warm welcome in the area and were constantly lauded as hard working and serious. All three were young couples with small children, two o f w hom were seeking rogs ram (sponsorship). Many local Tibetans patronised their businesses, supported them with gifts o f clothes, and often inquired about their family’s well-being and needs. One medical student friend painted the Tibetan calligraphy for a newcomer’s restaurant sign and told me that he had felt happy to help tliem because they were hardworking and had come from the same region as him. Similar solidarity was seen in McLeod Ganj between newcomer and old refugees’ families: sometimes women with skills in stitching Tibetan clothes would offer tlieir services privately to residents w ho took it up witli a sense o f communal co-operation, albeit mixed with some economic considerations. I was told that it was especially compassionate and meritorious to support earnest newcomers in their ventures. Hardworking newcomers were admired for their determination and strength o f character in the face o f adversity, and held up as models o f what ‘true’ Tibetan lay men and women should be: hard working, straight- talking and business-minded. It also seemed to me that earlier refugees actually enjoyed dealing with some o f the newcomers to some extent, because they found in them some o f tlie virtues o f the idealised Tibetan folk in Dharamsala’s millenarian imagination, qualities that were often found absent in the bureaucratic elites o f Gangkyi. Tliis idea o f newcomers as participating in a primordial re-enactment o f Tibetan life, untainted by the corrupting ways o f Dharamsala, was a steadfast one, and stood in contrast with the bureaucrats’ and earlier refugees’ derisive and aggressive attitudes towards them.

F ig u re 2 3 . Young entrepreneurial Am do newcomers, and a fellow A m do new com er monk.

Yet another group o f newcomers consisted o f more scholarly professionals who came to pursue a course o f study in India. This was the case o f some of the young doctors in the traditional Medical Institute or Men-Tsee-Khang, which we will discuss in the next chapter. These newcomers are not seen w ithout apprehension by earlier refugees, who sometimes deride them as cliquey, and resent the fact that they criticise older residents tor having become too ‘Indianised’, particularly in their use o f the Tibetan language.

Newcomers are therefore not always perceived as dangerous. However the manipulations which Tibetan exile social groups operate on the political category o f newcomers, their education and their willingness to participate in the ‘project’ o f exile, all reflect these various groups’ (and within them, individuals’) concerns with cultural cohesion, economic security and status. But the stereotypes are, as usual, deceptive. Amdo newcomers for instance, the m ost vulnerable group and the m ost criticised, are by no means Candides, ignorant o f bureaucratic ropes and o f exile society’s appraisal o f them. The process o f coming into exile and establishing oneself in Dharamsala requires a good understanding o f tlie economic and social strategies needed to cope and prosper in India. It IS precisely this quality o f adaptability that the earlier refugees seem to envy them. The tension between newcomers and old refugees focuses primarily on idle young and single

men and women who do not manifest entrepeneurship but instead appear to dive o f f the rest o f the community.

A cluster o f issues crystallising questions o f identity and belonging is at the heart o f the new com er/older settler tension. Firstly, earlier refugees tend to see newcomers as immigrants, and tlius competition for jobs and rogs ram opportunities. Secondly, newcomers bring with them an image o f hom e tliat does n o t always fit with general expectations; for many, they appear rough and unsophisticated, incongruous in Dharamsala's cosmopolitan environment. This impression is often comfirmed by the young people’s loitering and their hunger for rogs ram.

A nother determining element in the tense relations between refugees and newcomers is the politicisation o f the newcomer issue, following rumours that some o f them are regularly sent from Tibet to ‘spy’ on activities in Dharamsala, in particular those o f the G overnm ent in Exile. The conspiracy tlieories surrounding newcomers have increased public vigilance and suspicion. Refugees understand tlie rapid social ascent o f some newcomers (mostly in business activities) as a p ro o f that they are being supported by Chinese money. Wlien mobile phones first appeared in Dharamsala in the winter o f 2001 for example, earlier refugees were prom pt to quip tliat ‘all newcomers have mobile phones’, disparagingly adding that tliey don’t have any family in Dharamsala, so why would they need such luxury items? The only explanation, in their eyes, was that they newcomers had shady business to conduct. The fact that some newcomers speak Chinese am ongst themselves also increases the feeling o f insecurity am ong the community.

In March 2001, the exile government further fed this suspicion when Professor Samdhong Rinpoche told the Assembly o f Tibetan Deputies’ Parliament that China had reportedly launched two underground campaigns to generate instability in the community. This destabilisation strategy was to be deployed, firstly by sending over 100,000 Tibetans into exile in India over a period o f ten years starting from 2001, and secondly, by facilitating the return o f refugees in providing them with good facilities and citizenship in the TAR.^° Such rumours grew more insistent at times o f increased political uncertainty, for instance during the Dalai Lama’s illness in January 2002, or upon the commemoration o f tlie fiftieth anniversary o f the ‘peaceful liberation’ o f Tibet by tlie Chinese forces in 2001.

The fear o f infiltration in Tibetan exile society is multifaceted. On the one hand it leads to demands for the preservation o f Tibetan cultural and linguistic traditions, enacted through tlie creation o f a non-formal and often non-verbalised proscription o f marriage with Indians. O n the other hand, it erects barriers against imagined or actual infiltration by newcomers. Suspicious newcomers are often depicted as having a polluting effect on the settled population, both culturally and literally, through their vulnerability to disease and potential contagiousness (see chapters 5 and 6).

In the following table I have attempted to map out perceptions o f the newcomer group and their relationship to older exile society:

T a b le 1. Perceptions of newcomer groups.

Group In co m p etitio n w ith Su pp orted by; P erceived p ositive

qu alities

P erceiv ed n eg a tiv e q u alities

S in g le m en U n ed u c a ted

Casual T ibetan workers (restaurant, shops)

V ocational workers (e.g.

thang kha painters) T ibetan itinenuit traders Indian, K asluuiri, Punjabi traders and workers

Regional affiliations L ocal kin base M onastic system

rogs ram

E ntrepreneurial spirit M erit o f rogs ram - social capital accum ulation

Jo b com petition C onsum ing rogs ram

resources

D abbling in illegal activities (drugs etc.), including spying fo r the Chinese governm ent. •Single

w o m en U n ed u c a ted

Casual T ibetan w orkers (restaurant, shops) V ocational w orkers (handicrafts, seamstress) independent or in groups Regional affiliations N eighbours Local kin base M onastic system

Rogs ram

E ntrepreneurial spirit W illingness to study for social advancem ent

Jo b com petition C onsum ing rogs ram

resources

D abbling in illegal activities (drugs etc.), including spying fo r the Chinese governm ent. P rofession al m en & w o m e n , S tu dents and fam ilies Professional

(Adm inistrative & goveiTunent staff) Business élites E m ploying Institution co-w orkers Institutional RogJ ram

Exiled kin (West)

Supporting the exile society professionally

Social capital — contacts in the W est

Bringing m ore ‘authentic’ T ibetan know ledge and skills (Medicine)

M onopolising In stitutional netw orks

O rd ain ed

m en and

w o m e n

Institutional rogs ram

Individual rogs ram

U pholding rehgious tradition

This does not, o f course, represent all newcomer groups. I have excluded the cases o f higher monks, nuns and teachers, as well as that o f newcomers who are no t engaged in socio-economic activities, such as children and elderly family dependants^^. The following section examines the problematic relations between Tibetans and Indians, the ensuing question o f hybrid identities, and the maintenance o f communal 'purity’.