1How do we approach the question of decoloniality when it comes to communities that do not constitute postcolonial states? How do we address decolonial concerns of reparation, repatriation and reconciliatory truths for communities that are states-in-waiting? How can we introduce guard-rails to protect decoloniality from majoritarian appropriation? At the same time, how can communities experiencing violence in contemporary forms of settler-colonialism negotiate decoloniality and their collective right to self-determination? To partly answer these questions, I introduce the notion of dialogical decoloniality to foster conversation among and within colonised communities and broaden the scope of the decolonial project in addressing contemporary forms of settler colonialism.
2The initial seeds of this paper are assertions that I have often encountered during seminars organised in Dharamshala and from interviews with informants, Tibetan scholars, activists and members of Tibet advocacy groups. It is often maintained that Tibetans are not indigenous. This has led me to revisit literature on indigeneity and to return to the field to carry out ‘patchwork ethnography’ in order to understand the reasons for the refusal to identify them as indigenous. Such assertions are also reported in earlier studies based on ethnographic fieldwork among Tibetan exiles (McGranahan 2016, Lokyitsang 2017, Yeh 2020).
3The entry for Tibet in The Indigenous World, an annual publication of The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), draws a similar conclusion. The entry for its 2007 edition reads as follows: ‘Tibetans consider themselves an occupied rather than an indigenous people but share the same characteristics and problems as indigenous peoples around the world’ (Stidsen 2007: 301–307). Though earlier issues of the publication categorised Tibet as a separate collective indigenous people, in the 2023 edition this is subsumed under a section on China (Mamo 2023: 181–190).
4Exilic condition and statelessness has compelled Tibetans to negotiate various political spaces, and refusal as a political practice among Tibetan exiles is one example of this. Carole McGranahan (2018) has demonstrated that many Tibetan exiles in India and Nepal have refused citizenship of those south Asian countries as an act of rejecting international norms and of insisting on Tibet’s past and future sovereignty. New field data might show a different result on account of a demographic shift among the exile population in the last couple of decades, but the purpose of this paper is not to contribute to literature on the refusal of citizenship. Instead, I wish to consider another case study on refusal: the refusal to collectively identify Tibetan people as indigenous. The insistence on refusal and entry points for uptake of indigeneity as a concept were observed through participant observation and interviews with informants primarily based in Dharamshala. I also conducted a series of interviews with Tibetan activists, officials and members of advocacy groups. Therefore, the paper is limited to what has been called ‘patchwork ethnography’ (Günel et al 2020) among the exiled Tibetan population.
5The emergence of global movements for decolonisation, reparation and repatriation of material culture should prompt us to rethink the foundational idea of Tibetan selfhood and to renegotiate the Tibetan self in the light of Chinese colonialism and Tibet’s self-determination. Framing Tibetan indigeneity in the context of Dharamshala–Beijing negotiations to find a solution to the longstanding issue of Tibet’s political status can problematise the dominant discourse of Tibetans as an ethnic minority in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
6I intervene in this debate by introducing the notion of dialogical decoloniality. My objective in insisting on dialogical instead of a standalone decoloniality is twofold. Firstly, to provide a guard-rail for the decolonisation project against the kind of majoritarian appropriation in postcolonial states which mirrors their colonial past by investing in the maintenance and reproduction of what Mahmood Mamdani (2020) describes as permanent minorities. A dialogical approach makes it possible to apply decolonial methods to communities that have not been able to assert self-determination and which therefore constitute states-in-waiting (Walker 2024). Secondly, it is a gentle nudge to fostering conversation and bridging the gap between scholarly debates on theoretical concepts and public application of these concepts. Indian scholars (Chaudhuri et al 2018) borrowed Edward Said’s (1983) proposition on travelling theories in literary studies to demonstrate that there is constant negotiation between ‘Western theory’ and ‘Indian’ theorising. Their work distinguishes between ‘common sense’ and ‘theoretically informed knowledge’. Their arguments tell us that theories emerge in specific historical contexts and travel to be ultimately adopted by institutions in different parts of the country. Literature on indigeneity lends credence to Edward Said’s (1983) idea that theories travel: concepts, in this context indigeneity as a travelling concept and its theoretical application, acquire different meanings, particularly when seen in light of settler-colonialism.
7Dialogical decolonisation is therefore needed to broaden the scope of decoloniality to accommodate communities that missed out on the process of decolonisation through self-determination that took place in Africa and Asia in the first half of the twentieth century, a movement exemplified by the participants of the 1955 Bandung Conference. At the same time, dialogical decolonisation invites us to engage with critical theories and to think about its application while keeping in mind the fact that theories travel. This two-way conversation is necessary for the project of decolonisation, as I seek to demonstrate through the case of identification and rejection of Tibetan indigeneity.
8The military occupation of Tibet resulted in the signing of a 17-point Agreement on 23 May 1951, though the validity of this agreement in international law remains contested (Thorson et al 1959, Dalai Lama 1959: 215, van Walt van Praag 1987: 165). Following the signing of the agreement, the People’s Republic of China asserted its alien rule over Tibet by forming an ad hoc and transitionary administration known as the Preparatory Committee for Tibet Autonomous Region (PCART) (Goldstein 2014: 282–305). This uneasy accommodation was achieved through co-option of indigenous elites in the forging of the People’s Republic of China (Tuttle 2007).
9This new governance was disrupted after the escape of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (hereafter the Dalai Lama) into exile in 1959. After reaching India, the Dalai Lama repudiated the 17-point Agreement on the grounds that China did not hold up its side of the bargain (Dalai Lama 1962: 221). He established the Tibetan government in exile and sought independence from PRC rule.
10In the meantime, the Dalai Lama and his administration in exile was preoccupied with the rehabilitation of Tibetans who had followed him to India and those in exile in Bhutan and Nepal. Scholars engaged in fieldwork in Tibetan settlements in India observed the ‘successful’ adaptation of Tibetan exiles to their host country (Palakshappa 1978, Saklaini 1984, Subba 1990). Dawa Norbu’s (2001a) study found that there are three structural reasons for ‘successful settlements’, as follows: (1) humanitarian work as political compensation, (2) coordination among NGOs and (3) indigenous leadership and organisation in Tibetan refugee society. At the same time, he points out that the interest among anthropologists and Tibetologists was primarily centred on reconstructing and analysing traditional Tibetan society in Tibet through informants in refugee settlements (Goldstein 1968, Aziz 1978) rather than studying Tibetan refugees as a community (Norbu 2001b: 22). At present, according to the Home Department of Central Tibetan Administration, the exiled Tibetan population, apart from the Tibetans in Nepal and Bhutan, is spread across various states in India, in 15 agriculture-based settlements, 14 handicraft-based settlements and 11 cluster communities.
11Noteworthy intellectual debates in China emerged to reflect on the widespread protests in Tibet and Xinjiang in 2008 and 2009 (Hillman et al 2016). China’s state discourse on unrest in Tibet and its policy prescription to suppress unrest in ‘Western China’, as the PRC refers to the region, is framed as a developmental issue. Ben Hillman (2016: 14) notes that despite the appearance of debates after the 2008–2009 protests, the criminalisation of protests and their framing by the PRC as separatist actions has shrunk space for Chinese scholars to acknowledge and investigate the unrest from Tibetan and Uyghur perspectives. Nevertheless, James Leibold (2013), in his study on China’s ‘ethnic policy’, sheds light on the divergent positions taken by Chinese scholars and policymakers after protests in areas inhabited by Tibetan and Uyghur people from 2008 to 2009. One of the most strident positions taken by a Chinese scholar is that of Peking University’s Ma Rong (2007), who proposed the ‘depoliticization of ethnicity in China’. The central thrust of his thesis is that the Chinese state is aping Soviet-style policies to politicise ethnicity by identifying and recognising so-called ‘minzu groups’. This, Ma Rong argues, strengthens differences through the system of regional autonomy and ethnic preferences (2007). He highlights an alternative model that could follow the approach of the United States, whose constitution grants citizens’ rights in relation to group rights. Through such ‘depoliticisation’, Ma Rong contends that China could learn from the United States and consolidate its own national identity (Leibold 2013: 17). This approach is reminiscent of an observation made by James Leibold that China is currently undergoing a fundamental rethinking of how it manages ethnocultural diversity and its colonial possessions. He writes that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Xi Jinping is ‘turbo-charging the transformative resolve’ through ‘significant policy innovations across their colonial possessions – from Kashgar to Hong Kong and Lhasa to Hohhot’ (Leibold 2021).
12Scholarship on Chinese authoritarianism has received renewed attention in recent decades, particularly since the eighteenth Party Congress when Xi Jinping replaced Hu Jintao as the General Secretary of the CCP. These studies reflect attempts to understand both the resilience of the party-state and creative innovation in institutionalisation since Xi Jinping took charge of the state, party and military (Nathan 2003, Lai 2016). The PRC case contrasts with democratic diversity where theorists have, for example, stated that the case of the Kashmir Valley alone should cause India to be categorised as a ‘robustly multinational’ state (Stepan et al 2011: 2). If we put aside the authoritarian nature of the PRC’s political system for a moment, then the PRC corresponds closely to the Republic of India in terms of geographical scale and the size of its population. If India as a constitutional democracy is described as deeply diverse, then the PRC as an authoritarian state could be described as a state with entrenched differences.
13The history of modern Tibet’s past is best chronicled in Melvyn Goldstein’s quartet. The four-volume work is unrivalled in the use of untapped materials and in particular the memories of Tibetan informants. However, it has been critiqued for employing ‘anecdotal material to infer that this feudal and oppressive social order [in Tibet’s past]…[was] characterized by depravity and decadence’ (Akester 2009: 2). Such discourse is narrativised through the normative use of the term ‘liberation’. Hence, the colonial invasion of Tibet is framed by the PRC as an incorporation of Tibet through Mao’s ‘enlightened’ ‘gradualist policy’. On the other hand, Tibetans who attempted mild resistance, such as the ‘Peoples’ Association’, are characterised as ‘extreme, unrealistic, and unrepresentative of the people’ (Akester 2009: 2). A similar discourse can be observed in state-sanctioned materials since 2008 in written and visual formats. Séagh Kehoe argues that ‘these media discourses attempt to construct a “regime of temporality” in order to manage public opinion about Tibet and consolidate Chinese rule over the region’ (2020: 1133). The emergence of a new Tibetan literature originated from the same context, as Tsering Shakya (2008: 61) notes:
The notion of underdevelopment (rjeslus) is crucial to understanding the nature of Chinese rule in Tibet. The term implies that Tibet lagged in technology and, more important, that it was culturally stagnant and backward. Therefore ‘liberation of the serfs’ was intended to encompass both economic emancipation and cultural empowerment of the people. And it was in this context that a new literature emerged in Tibet.
14China’s discursive politics has structured contemporary Tibet–China relations in terms of a minority-majority framework and has categorised Tibetans as one of the 55 ethnic minorities. This framework informs discourse and dominates scholarship on the Tibetan population in contemporary China across all academic disciplines. As posited by Richard Sennet (1972) in his work on the hidden injuries of class, there are structures in Tibetan society that engender entitlement and social exclusion. This paper will not wade into the Chakrabarty–Chibber debate (Chakrabarty 2000, Chibber 2013) on how certain universal ideas can be provincialised to Europe or on the critique of the cultural turn in Marxist tradition, but I argue that the intersection of colonial modernity, emancipatory ideals and China’s disenchantment has made a class-essentialist and historical materialist approach to the study of Tibetan history and contemporary Tibetan society limited in scope. In other words, the study of Tibetan society and its history based exclusively on class analysis alone makes it difficult to understand other forms of state-society relations, the plurality of intellectual ideas, the robustness of ethno-federation and the right to self-determination.
15I make the case for this analysis by looking at literature on the 2008 protests. These protests have been marked as significant in terms of their political impact. They cemented China’s international image as authoritarian on the eve of its big push to refashion itself by playing host to the Olympic Games in August 2008. At the same time, Tibet emerged as one of the top priorities in Sino-US and Sino-EU relations (Barnett 2012). The transformation of protests from a localised region to a widespread pan-Tibet movement also caught the attention of scholars. When sites of the 2008 protests were mapped, Tsering Shakya observed that they show a similar geographic spread to those of the 1950s Tibetan rebellion against China at its peak (2012: 25). With reports and data available at the time of its writing and publication in 2009, Robert Barnett’s analysis points out that Tibetans participating in protests came from a broad cross-section of classes in Tibetan society. He asserts that 30% of the 95 reported incidents took place in villages and townships and infers from this that a significant number of farmers took part in protests. Most of the remaining protests were reported in small towns with a population ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 (Barnett 2012: 11). In Marxist tradition, these populations were classed by the Party-State as peasants who, since the advent of Chinese colonial modernity in Tibet, stood to gain the most through its policies of land distribution in the 1950s and the disbanding of communes in the 1970s.
16The Tibetan government in exile in Dharamshala has approached the resolution of Tibet’s political future through a two-pronged initiative: finding channels of communication with the PRC and highlighting the issue of Tibet in the international community (Gyari 2022: 254). A significant breakthrough came when Deng Xiaoping expressed interest in engaging with the Dalai Lama in 1979. This initiative was part and parcel of his ‘four modernisations’ policy and marked a watershed in China’s approach to resolving outstanding ‘national’ problems such as Tibet and Taiwan (Norbu 2001b: 315).
17Since the 1970s Dharamshala’s administration has scaled down its position from seeking independence to what is currently framed as genuine autonomy. In his statement on 10 March 1978, the Dalai Lama stated, ‘If the six million Tibetans in Tibet are really happy and prosperous as never before, there is no reason for us to argue otherwise’. He reiterated the position more explicitly in 1980 when he said that ‘the core of the Tibetan issue is the welfare and ultimate happiness of the six million Tibetans in Tibet’ (Norbu 2001b: 316). The Dalai Lama sent a series of fact-finding delegations to various Tibetan-inhabited areas but Beijing indicated that it would define the parameters of and identify issues for the Sino-Tibetan dialogue. Simultaneously, Hu Yaobang who was then General Secretary of the CCP Secretariat led a fact-finding delegation to the Tibet Autonomous Region. He concluded the trip with a six-point policy directive. The second, third and fourth points of the directive dealt with the amelioration of economic conditions, tax exemptions and allocations of funds for Tibetans. The fifth point was directed at the ‘development of Tibetan culture, education and science’ within the socialist framework. Representation of Tibetan leadership in the administration of the region was discussed in the sixth point. More significantly, the first point of the policy directive is the articulation of ‘autonomy’; significant because it is laid out by a leading member of the CCP. Hu Yaobang called for autonomy to be extended by ‘having the right to decide for oneself’ through economic decentralisation, but this definition explicitly kept political and cultural autonomy out of the discussion (Norbu 2001b: 316–317).
18The parties having found ground for dialogue, on 28 July 1981 Hu Yaobang relayed through Gyalo Thondup, the Dalai Lama’s elder brother, a ‘five-point proposal to the Dalai Lama’ (Thondup et al 2015: 270). The proposal described how China had entered a new era of political stability and sought interlocuters who must not ‘bargain like businessmen’. It proposed the return of the Dalai Lama to take part in promoting national unity and the progress of the ‘four modernisations’. The proposal assured that the Dalai Lama, upon his ‘return’, would be appointed vice-president of the National People’s Congress and vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee. Hu implied that the Dalai Lama and his ‘entourage’ would be granted comfortable living conditions and employment as China would ‘guarantee their privileges’. In its conclusion, the proposal said that China would hold a grand reception followed by a press conference. The Dalai Lama later dismissed this proposal by stating that ‘instead of addressing the real issues facing the six million Tibetan people, China has attempted to reduce the question of Tibet to a discussion of my own personal status’ (1988a: 4).
19The Dalai Lama later advanced a counter-proposal when he spoke before the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus on 21 September 1987 (Dalai Lama 1988a). In this Five-point Peace Plan, he called for:
- Transformation of the whole of Tibet (Inner and Outer) into a peace zone
- Abandonment of China’s population transfer policy which threatens the very existence of the Tibetans as a people
- Respect for Tibet’s future and the Tibetan people’s fundamental human rights and democratic freedom
- Restoration and protection of Tibet’s natural environment and the abandonment of China’s use of Tibet for the production of nuclear weapons and dumping of nuclear waste
- Commencement of earnest negotiations on the future status of Tibet and relations between Tibetan and Chinese peoples
20A year later, elaborating on the Five-point Peace Plan and in particular on the fifth point that called for the earnest resumption of dialogue, in his address to the members of the European parliament, the Dalai Lama outlined a ‘framework for Sino-Tibetan negotiations’. This became to be known as the Strasbourg Proposal (Dalai Lama 1988b). According to this proposal, China could remain responsible for Tibet’s foreign policy and defence. However, through its foreign affairs bureau, the government of Tibet would be able to pursue relations in the field of commerce, education and culture, religion, tourism, science, sports and other non-political activities. In terms of political autonomy, the government of Tibet would be founded on a constitution or basic law, a democratic system that would be entrusted with ensuring economic equality, social justice and protection of the environment.
21There is no official report on China’s response to the Dalai Lama’s proposal. Engagement between Dharamshala and Beijing resumed through what are termed exploratory talks. Dharamsala sent two delegations in 1982 and 1984. During these talks, the Tibetan delegations conveyed that the Dalai Lama did not accept the Chinese five-point proposal which enjoined the delegation to ‘not “bargain like businessmen”’ (Norbu 2001b: 317) and backed their agenda, including the reunification of Inner and Outer Tibet, greater autonomy in association with the PRC, withdrawal of Chinese troops and paving the way to make Tibet a peace zone (Norbu 2001b: 321). The Chinese embassy in India relayed a message to the office of the representative of the Dalai Lama on 23 September 1988 saying that China invited the Dalai Lama to talk with central government anytime. The talks, the message said, could be held in Beijing, Hong Kong or any diplomatic mission abroad. However, the invitation to talks was qualified by two conditions. Firstly, China would not accept any delegation designated by the Kashag government because the Kashag, it said, had always indulged in ‘activities of the independence of Tibet’. Secondly, the Strasbourg Proposal could not be the basis for negotiations. Chen Xin, who was vice-minister of the State Nationalities Affairs Commission, gave China’s explanation for this delayed engagement, saying that the Dalai Lama was ‘insincere’ towards proposed talks in Geneva because he would not personally attend the talks. He also referred to inclusion of a foreigner in the Tibetan delegation, which he said ‘contravenes the principle adhered to by the central people’s government’. On 12 April 1989 the Bureau Office of H.H. the Dalai Lama issued a statement in response (Norbu 2001b: 326) which outlined the Dalai Lama’s position:
We have conveyed to the Chinese government on numerous occasions through their embassy in New Delhi that (1) the framework for negotiations proposed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama refer[s] specifically to the positive notion of association with the People’s Republic of China; (2) the Tibetan negotiating team has been appointed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and it is within His right to appoint whosoever He considers competent to represent Him; and (3) there is no foreign participation in the negotiating team. There are both Tibetan and non-Tibetan advisors to the team. It is quite natural for the team to seek advice from qualified persons regardless of their nationalities.
22A series of pro-independence protests broke out in Lhasa from 1987 to 1989. China eventually responded by imposing martial law on 8 March 1989. Three months later, student protests in Beijing were crushed and the Tiananmen Square incident received global condemnation. The Dalai Lama issued a statement of condemnation against the advice of his interlocutors, who pointed out that it might derail negotiations with China (Gyari 2022: 618).
- 1 ‘International Resolutions and Recognition on Tibet: 1959–2004’. Dharamsala: Department of (...)
23On the international scene, the Dalai Lama’s proposal was received positively. The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. The Tibet issue was raised before the US Congress, which passed six resolutions between 1987 and 1991. The European Parliament passed two resolutions in 1987 and 1989. The Council for Europe also passed a resolution in 1988. Similarly, the West German Bundestag and the Italian Parliament passed resolutions on Tibet in 1987 and 1989 respectively.1 International hearings were also held in various capitals from 1989 to 1990 (Norbu 2001b: 356).
24Formal dialogue between Dharamshala and Beijing resumed after 2002. Since then, nine rounds of talks have been held between the Dalai Lama’s representatives and the CPC’s United Work Front Department. The first round of talks took place in Beijing from 9 to 24 September 2002. Apart from the fourth round of talks which was held in Bern, Switzerland, from 30 June to 1 July 2005, the talks were held in China. Dharamshala decided that the Tibetan negotiation team led by Gyari Lodi Gyaltsen would be responsible for implementing one agenda through one channel. The then prime minister of the administration in exile, Samdhong Rinpoche, also stated that there was but ‘one channel and one agenda’. In Dharamshala’s dialogue with the PRC, ‘the approved channel is the one pursued by the Special Envoy Gyari Lodi Gyaltsen and Envoy Kelsang Gyaltsen, and the approved agenda is seeking genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people’ (Gyari 2022: 531).
25The approximate Tibetan translation and definitions of the term ‘indigenous’ in Tibetan dictionaries are limited. The Tibetan word used to infer the meaning of indigeneity is doema (gdod ma Tibetan: གདོད་མ།). This is defined in the Great Tibetan-Chinese dictionary (བོད་རྒྱ་ཚིད་མཛོད་ཆེན་མོ།) as ‘primaeval’ (Sun 1984) or ‘first’ (ཐོག་མའམ་དང་པོ།). Reviewing literature and ethnographic field data has led me to conclude that the Tibetan reception of the concept of indigeneity could be categorised into three points of entry. Iterations of this concept are received as a translation through what, I argue, can be considered selective osmosis. The informants I have interviewed rejected Tibetan identity as indigenous based on three conceptions, namely a historical approach, affirmative action politics and indigenous political ecology.
26The historical approach to the conception of Tibetan indigeneity is derived from a Tibetan reading of classical periodisation in Tibetan history and historical time. Tibetan historical literature from the ancient to early modern period relies heavily on what Romila Thapar has described in Indian historical tradition as ‘embedded history’ (Thapar 2013: 87–143), the idea being that sophisticated consciousness related to history is embedded in diverse texts in classical literature. Tibetologists (Kapstein 2000, Cuevas 2013: 49–63) have observed the emergence of a ‘truly indigenous historiography’ from late tenth century onwards in Tibet. In this history, we find Tibetan history divided into four periods. The first is pre-history, which is characterised by Tibetans as primaeval. The second is from the seventh to the mid-ninth century, the age of imperial Tibet and the introduction of Buddhism to the country. The assimilation of Buddhism in Tibet is represented as a civilising force, a rupture from a primitive past. During the third period, Buddhist histories narrate the disintegration of the empire and Tibet’s descent into darkness. The fourth period is marked by the renaissance of Tibetan culture and religion. This fourfold model has been widely used in historical writings (Cuevas 2013: 52), and the first period is often described in Tibetan texts as the indigenous period.
27Deyu, a thirteenth-century Tibetan figure, in his history of Buddhism in India and Tibet, represented Tibet’s past before the emergence of the Tibetan empire in this manner:
As we have just seen, the appointed kings were renowned in the four quarters of the world. But in the center, in Tibet, on account of prevailing ignorance, they were poor and powerless. They say they were unable to counter their enemies, so they stayed in the fastness of their rocky mountains. (Martin 2022: 584)
- 2 ‘CBSE Declares Results of Class 12th Board Exam’. Central Tibetan Administration, 15 May (...)
28Standardised Tibetan textbooks for Tibetan students in exile are distributed across schools administered by Tibetans. As of 2023, according to the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), under India’s national board of education, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), there are 13 Tibetan schools offering senior secondary education under three different autonomous bodies: Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV), Tibetan Homes Foundation (THF) and Sambhota Tibetan Schools Society (STSS).2 Textbooks used in these schools are published by the CTA’s Department of Education. Part II of the Tibetan Reader for sixth standard students includes chapters on Tibetan royal genealogy, religious history and Buddhist logic (རྒལ་རབས་ཆོས་བྱུང་དང་རིགས་ལམ་ནང་ཆོས། rgal rabs chos byung dang rigs lam nang chos).
29Tibetan indigeneity in the school textbook for Tibetans in exile is represented in terms of Tibet’s historical past, characterised as primordial and primitive. This text can help us understand the representation of Tibetan indigeneity, particularly the second chapter of the textbook which deals with the features of indigenous Tibetan society. According to the textbook:
From the time Tibetan people started to exhibit features of a society, terms such as king and subject came into existence. At the time, there was no king that ruled pan-Tibet and Tibet was ruled by over 40 fragmented minor kingdoms. In 127 C.E. the first king of Tibet, Nyatri Tsenpo came into existence... (Department of Education 2002)
- 3 The identity of all the interviewees cited in this work has been anonymised.
- 4 Dhonyoe, Tenzin, interview by Tenzin Desal, 2023. Tibetan Indigeneity (13 06).
30In accordance with the distinction made by M N Srinivas and his emphasis on field view in relation to book view, it should be noted that the book’s representation of indigeneity is also reflected in field interviews conducted for this research. The simple question, whether Tibetans are indigenous, yielded multiple responses from informants. A senior civil servant of the Central Tibetan Administration who is intimately familiar with its efforts to standardise terminologies in Tibetan3 answered, ‘Tibetans were indigenous before the founding of the Tibetan empire. Since Nyatri Tsenpo founded the Purgyal dynasty, Tibetans were no longer primitive’.4
31The rejection of Tibetan indigeneity illustrates the observation in historical linear time by Priya Satia (2020: 19) who demonstrated that history since the European Enlightenment ‘came to be understood as linear and irreversible and, especially, progressive’. Furthermore, the classical works of Thucydides and Herodotus were ‘claimed as the foundational texts for a discipline that was now all about telling the stories of nations, especially through the lives of their political makers’ (Satia 2020: 19). This is not unlike anthropologists studying tribal societies in the light of evolutionary theory such as the work of Lewis Henry Morgan, who advanced a study that demonstrated stages of social evolution by comparing so-called ‘primitive’ societies (Béteille 1986: 298).
- 5 Tenzin Lha, interview by Tenzin Desal, 2023. Tibetan Indigeneity (13 06).
32The second conception of Tibetan indigeneity is acquired by selective osmosis of affirmative action politics in the Tibetan diaspora’s main host country, India. This is the uptake, by selective absorption, of concepts and theories through existing debates on protective/positive discrimination for ‘backward groups’, as the Indian government has referred to them. Here indigenous rights are seen as a derivative right within the framework of the nation-state. This is a narrow reading of indigenous rights as an assertion of minority rights. An interview with a Tibetan official5 who had been an advocate for Tibet’s environmental protection is illuminating in this regard:
Whenever I get invited to speak at platforms on Tibet’s environmental crisis, I preface my talk by saying that Tibetans are not indigenous. As per my experience in attending international conferences on global environment, the rights of indigenous people are that of minorities in various countries. If Tibet recovers its sovereignty, then there is no question of indigenous identity. Tibetans will then be the majority.
33The Tibetan movement in exile has not yet been associated or exhibited solidarity with any Adivasi or tribal movement in India. On this matter, exiled Tibetans have taken a politically agnostic position. It is also worth noting that most Tibetan settlements in India are next door to communities that are recognised by the Indian state as tribal.
34In India, the constitution recognises a category of a collective group of people as a ‘Scheduled Tribe’. For this category, the constitution offers special provisions for their representation in politics and their economic and social welfare. Formed in 1979 by the Indian government under the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai, the commission, whose official report is titled ‘Report of the Backward Classes Commission’, is commonly known as the Mandal Commission, named after B P Mandal who served as its chairman. The commission’s mandate was to identify socially or educationally backward classes in India and offer recommendations to consider reservations for marginalised communities in order to address inequality and discrimination. V P Singh, the prime minister of India in 1990, announced the partial implementation of the commission’s recommendations, though this met with resistance (Alam 2007: vii) and continues to remain contentious.
35In fact, there are wide-ranging Adivasi movements in India. The core articulation of Adivasi rights and their struggle for survival are framed to preserve their endangered identity, environment, language, gender sensitivity, belief systems, performance traditions and human rights (Xaxa et al 2011). Scholarship on tribal rights and the Adivasi movement essentially study how the state’s paternalism towards tribal populations reproduces attitudes that assume the latter to be subordinate citizens despite affirmative action in the constitution under its Schedule V and Schedule VI. The transformation of the Adivasi movement is also notable. Their past struggle against colonial governance, forest guards, usurious moneylenders and non-tribal land-grabbers has shifted to resistance against corporate interests in Scheduled Areas. This has inadvertently led them to ‘pay heed’ and to engage with the state, resulting in sophisticated alliances with civil society (Rao 2019: xv). Affirmative action in India has drawn hostility but, unlike in the United States, no Indian political party has called for an end to reservation for tribal and other communities belonging to the ‘backward classes’ category in India (Roychowdhury 2023). The rejection of indigeneity on the part of Tibetans here, as illustrated in the interview with the informant cited above, stems from a reading of indigeneity as a minority right within the state where subaltern tribes are seen as being given a leg up.
36The third point of entry for uptake of the concept of indigeneity comes from indigenous political ecology. This corresponds to Emily Yeh’s (2020) study on translations, uptake and resemblances in Tibetan indigeneity. She argues that Tibetan exiles put forwards a narrative that asserts ‘ecological wisdom and deep connection to nature’, building on earlier work by Toni Huber (1997) which charted a genealogy of ‘green Tibetans’. Yeh maintains that this assertion of inherent eco-friendliness on the part of Tibetans appeared relatively late. This came after the idea of ‘inherent environmental stewardship and knowledge had already been firmly attached to other groups including Native Americans and Kayapo’ (Yeh 2020: 73).
37In my interviews with Tibetan activists and members of advocacy groups in exile, the rejection of Tibetan indigeneity did not follow a singular common rationale. One of my informants who has travelled widely to attend global climate forums mentioned limited avenues to speak about the implications of the climate crisis in Tibet. The informant suggested that Tibetans share similar experiences to those of various indigenous communities who, according to the informant, have the benefit of more platforms for speaking during global climate conferences. Yet the activist rejected acknowledging Tibetan people as indigenous. Similar sentiments were echoed by an advocate for Tibetan affairs. The informant claimed that if Tibetan people accepted the status of indigenous, then this amounted to accepting China’s assertion that Tibetan people are one of the 55 ethnic minorities, thereby reproducing the Chinese state discourse on Tibetans as an ethnic minority.
38It would be hard for Tibetan exiles to ignore the various Adivasi movements in India. Many of the Tibetan settlements in India are near various communities that are categorised as Scheduled Tribes, and they are aware of positive discrimination that brings tangible benefits from an educational, economic and professional point of view. At the same time, the articulation of Adivasi movements in India is framed around the protection of indigenous ‘Jal, Jungle, Zameen’ (water, forest and land), that is, the assertion of indigenous rights over their resources and of an equitable share of participation in economic, educational and electoral politics. They also address anxiety over the loss and erosion of indigenous culture and language. These social movements fall within the democratic framework of the Indian state (Shah 2010). However, armed resistance groups among indigenous communities, inspired by Mao, fall outside the framework discussed above (Shah 2019, Lovell 2019).
39Carole McGranahan (2018), in her ethnography of Tibetan exiles in Nepal and India, found that for six decades stateless Tibetan refugees have refused citizenship of their host countries in order to stake claims to Tibetan state sovereignty. This constitutes the refusal of citizenship as a political practice in the host-refugee relationship. Although, as I have mentioned, changing attitudes among Tibetan exiles warrant fresh ethnographic data, McGranahan captures this refusal of indigenous identity in an illuminating interview:
Specifically, I was told that Tibetans did not consider themselves indigenous, as they were people with their own country, a country they had lost within the living memory of many exile community members. Indigenous was thus interpreted by Tibetans to mean a small-scale group of people incorporated into a larger State who were fighting for rights vis-à-vis the State, but not for their own State sovereignty. At the time, Tibetans framed their struggle as one of a sovereign people against an occupying State. (McGranahan 2016)
40As outlined, the present paper offers an exploration of the refusal of indigeneity, where responses from informants ranged from outright rejection to expressing a need to forge solidarity with other indigenous movements. I have encountered visceral acknowledgement of similarities between the Tibetan experience and those of indigenous communities. This departs from Carole McGranahan’s observation that the refusal of citizenship is articulated by stateless Tibetans through the claim that they belong to a Tibetan state. Here, the refusal of Tibetan indigeneity is rooted in multiple uptakes of the concept of indigeneity. There is, however, a discernible gap between these uptakes and a theoretically informed engagement with the concept. As mentioned above, I describe this as the selective osmosis of a theoretical concept. By selective, I mean to emphasise the processual nature of this osmosis.
41To demonstrate this selective osmosis of the theoretical concept of indigeneity, let us take one example of each means of uptake. In the first uptake, based on a historical approach, refusal of Tibetan indigeneity is based on a periodisation of Tibetan history. Primordial indigenous Tibetans have ceased to exist with the advent of Buddhism in Tibet and the founding of the Tibetan empire. The second is based on the understanding of indigenous movements in India, namely the Adivasi movement, and affirmative action policies of successive governments, as well as the fact that the implementation of and resistance to such policies are perceived by Tibetans to be within the democratic framework of India and therefore, according to field interviews, are not seen to be in congruence with the acceptance of the status of Tibetans as a minority ethnic group in contemporary China. To put it succinctly, the Tibetan movement is seen as being beyond the assertion of rights over ‘Jaal, Jungle, Zameen’. On the other hand, the armed Adivasi resistance movement inspired by Mao cannot be discounted in the Tibetan understanding of indigeneity, especially when this is juxtaposed with their own experience with Mao’s violent transformation of Tibetan society. Such an experience is recorded in Dawa Norbu’s work on intellectual debates with urban intellectuals harbouring amenable attitudes towards Naxal movements in India (Norbu 1997: xi). On another issue, the acceleration of the adverse effects of climate change has caused the voices of indigenous communities to come to the fore, and field data on the environmental protection issue yielded the informants most receptive to the concept of indigeneity.
42Recent scholarship on indigeneity has called for a radical rethinking of indigenous identity in settler-colonial contexts and a rejection of colonial politics of recognition (Coulthard 2014). Although the PRC voted in support of the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) at the UN General Assembly in 2008, the government pre‑empted any further debate by proclaiming that there were no indigenous peoples in the PRC. Instead, in an anachronistic assertion, China declared that for ‘5,000 years [they have] lived in unity and harmony with 55 designated minorities living in peace in their own land’ (Davis 2014).
- 6 ‘United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Indigeous Peoples’. United Nation (...)
43The 2007 Declaration of the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples is considered as a landmark in the recognition of indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination. This declaration came to fruition after decades of advocacy. A crucial passage in Article 3 defined ingenious peoples’ right to self-determination: ‘Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development’.6
44The following article quickly places limits on this right, however (Bauder et al 2023): ‘Indigenous peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions’.7
45Article 3 might appear to be radical, but it continues to be shielded by dominant Westphalian sovereignty. Westphalian sovereignty guarantees nation-states control over internal and external affairs, a privilege that does not extend to indigenous sovereignty within the current framework. To address the anxiety among its member states about calls for indigenous secession, a final article, Article 46, was added to circumscribe rights declared in preceding articles. It stated that ‘Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as…contrary to the Charter of the United Nations’. This demonstrates that, though the declaration includes an article on the indigenous right to self-determination, that right continues to remain a derivative one within the Westphalian nation-state system. This reinforces the hierarchical and uneven relationship between Westphalian sovereignty and indigenous sovereignty. In other words, reordering indigenous sovereignty to be on par with Westphalian sovereignty undermines the foundation of the United Nations, which exclusively recognises Westphalian nation-states as members.
46Coming back to the entrenched difference in contemporary China, the assertion of Tibetan people as indigenous has the potential to lay the groundwork for forging alliances and sharing solidarity with global indigenous movements. Indeed, indigenous scholars appreciate the value of subverting colonial concepts for the purpose of decolonisation (Alfred 2002, Coulthard 2014). Sovereignty, as a modern concept, can trace its origin to Europe. European colonial powers exported this form of statehood to different corners of the world, transforming Westphalian sovereignty into a universal model for conducting international relations and structuring organisations such as the UN and the WTO. Mamdani (2020) notes that in the history of political modernity, the nation-state and the colonial state create each other. As observed since the decolonisation of Asia and Africa, the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicisation of religious or ethnic minorities at the expense of an equally manufactured majority. To borrow from Mamdani’s work, this argument could be extended by taking contemporary China and the making and unmaking of permanent Tibetan minorities as a case study. The PRC’s normative deployment of sovereignty has not gone unnoticed (Fravel 2020). Even mild criticism of China’s human rights violations in Tibet is rebuffed as an attack on China’s sovereignty. Notwithstanding the UN’s restrained attempt to reconcile Westphalian and indigenous sovereignty, the Tibetan people’s assertion of indigeneity would have the potential to open spaces to reflect on decolonisation. However, studies have demonstrated that the deep entrenchment of Westphalian sovereignty in international relations and law reinforces and reproduces ongoing colonisation of populations within states globally (Hickey 2020, Mamdani 2020). Studying Tibetan representation and Tibetans’ status as a minoritised ethnic group in the Westphalian PRC presents a new frontier of scholarship to understand the nature, structure and dynamism of China’s settler-colonialism in Tibet. As argued by Harald Bauder and Rebecca Mueller (2023), the articulation and advancement of indigenous sovereignty poses a critical challenge to the Westphalian framework and paves the way for decolonisation. The field of Tibetan studies and the Tibetan movement could seek paths to decolonisation by engaging with and remaining sensitive to developing canons on indigenous studies.
47For Tibetans, Western and global theories of modernity/ies arrive through multiple and often circuitous routes and languages. For instance, a Marxist class analysis and its approach to transforming Tibetan society came to Tibet following its occupation by the PRC. In other words, the development of a class analysis of Tibetan society and the emergence of class consciousness arrived in Tibetan society and its language in the form of colonial modernity. China’s invasion of Tibet started an ambitious state-led project to translate Chinese communist literature. Apart from imparting state-sanctioned ideas on Marxism, there is very little intellectual space for Tibetans to receive or produce literature on alternative emancipatory ideas and to articulate what the disenchanted space of Tibet should look like. Ironically, vocabularies of class emancipation and class consciousness came to be instrumentalised as language of abuse and oppression. This took its most radical form during the Cultural Revolution when Beijing’s metropolitan social theories spilled over into Tibet.
48In the future, if Tibetans are successful in asserting their right to self-determination, they will have to confront Tibet’s own diversity within any political arrangement it manages to salvage. This will require rethinking relations pertaining to state and society in the Tibetan context and the intersubjectivity of social relations. Such a project for Tibetans will need to include multiple ideas and engage deeply with different concepts. Dawa Lokyitsang (2017) rightly notes that indigeneity has ‘become a discursive site for legal contestations between settler states and Indigenous Nations’. My field data collected among Tibetan exiles in Dharamshala has persuaded me to contend that there is very little evidence to suggest deep engagement with indigeneity as a concept, or application of the concept to assert indigenous sovereignty or exploration of indigenous self-determination. Nevertheless, I agree with Lokyitsang’s assertion that indigeneity is not just a symbolic category but a means for ‘leveraging international movements and creating strategic solidarities for Native Nations mobilising against the mechanics of settler governmentality’.
49This paper is in no way a call to arms to essentialise Tibetan indigeneity as a sole subaltern Tibetan subjectivity in contemporary China, but it seeks to demonstrate how, at the outset, one must engage with the concept, thereby leading to theoretically informed knowledge and thus bridging the gap between theory and practice. On the other hand, it is an attempt to rescue decoloniality from becoming shorthand for majoritarian appropriation in post-colonial states. It also seeks to broaden the scope of decoloniality beyond the postcolonial states of the Bandung Conference. For the numerous peoples who could not assert self-determination and thus still constitute states-in-waiting, dialogical decoloniality is an invitation to engage in the project of decoloniality and to explore avenues to assert self-determination in the face of contemporary forms of settler-colonialism.