Everyday Nationhood: Processes and Struggles of Identification by Tibetans in Exile

Abstract

The physical displacement of thousands of people from Tibet has marked many Tibetan communities with extraordinary upheavals. Although the lives of every person in the world are marked by periodic displacements-a sudden job transfer, the death of a loved one, or life in a strange land-Tibetan refugees are constantly reminded of their dislocations. The frequent interaction with citizens of their host country, the ubiquity of foreigners interested in Tibet, and the various mundane things that clutter their lives often reinforce the fact that Tibetans in Nepal and India are refugees. In the midst of the general and daily experiences of displacement, Tibetans struggle to remake and maintain their nation, as the loss of a territory has stripped the Tibetan nation of its naturalness. That is, as a physical land often defines a nation, the lack of such land challenges the nation to rely on other ways to authenticate its identity. Thus, physical objects such as art come to take a central role in national identification, as they become the vehicles through which the nation is expressed. Yet, although such methods of nation building stem from conscious plans by certain people, the nation works through the dissimulation of its strategies in the everyday. The Tibetan government-in-exile's policies concerning nationhood, the role of religion, and the balancing of tradition with modernity, for example, all diffuse into the daily lives of Tibetans in exile. The purpose here is to explore the various facets of Tibetan identities that inform nationness-a feeling of belonging that is infused in the everyday of Tibetans in specific exile communities