UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ From the Margins of Exile: Democracy and Dissent within the Tibetan Diaspora A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LITERATURE by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa June 2018 The Dissertation of Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is approved: ______________________________ Professor Christopher Connery, chair ______________________________ Professor Christine Hong, chair ______________________________ Professor Rob Wilson ______________________________ Professor Tsering Shakya __________________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa 2018 Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………iv Acknowledgements…………………………………………………….....................vi Introduction……………………………………………………………………...…...1 Chapter 1: The Tibetan Past, Citizens in Training and the Future Tibet ……………………… 30 Chapter 2: Unity: The Establishment of the ‘Right’ Vision ……………………………………84 Chapter 3: Against the Grain of History: Mutiny at the Ockenden School ………………......134 Chapter 4: Minoritizing Dissent: ‘The Thirteen’ ……………………………………………..195 Chapter 5: The Pain of Belonging: Tibetan Exilic Nationalism in the Wake of “The Black Friday”………………………………………………………………..267 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………… 311 iii Abstract Tsering Wangmo Dhompa From the Margins of Exile: Democracy and Dissent within the Tibetan Diaspora This dissertation considers anew questions of identity, belonging, governance, and nationalism within the context of displacement. While post-colonial approaches to these issues presuppose a nation-state, my project, by contrast, casts critical light on Tibetan nationalism and the future nation as it is articulated and practiced by a refugee and diasporic peoples. My research does this by juxtaposing the external struggle for international recognition by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile–– a territory-less entity that behaves like a state––with the less examined internal struggle to command loyalty within the Tibetan diaspora. I analyze documents produced in the mid-1960s by Tibetan exiles to suggest they were seminal to preparing a disciplined and loyal body of the newly displaced Tibetans coming from myriad traditions of religious faith and regional loyalties to be beholden to one policy: that of the democratic politico-religious system furnished by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile under the Dalai Lama. And it is in this context that the particularly valenced concepts of “unity” and “democracy” gained as their preeminent values the fulfillment of the wishes of the exile government, protest against the Chinese colonization of Tibet, securing the national goal of Tibetan independence, and marking a crossing to a particular kind of modernity. I argue that unity was an exclusionary discourse. It was presented simultaneously as the moral and political responsibility of the modern Tibetan “refugee-citizen” as well as the iv traditional duty of a Tibetan Buddhist. Thus, unity became the dominant framework of governance for thinking about the boundaries of belonging, citizenship in exile, political obligation, and the values of the Tibetan people. v Acknowledgements I am grateful for the opportunity I have had to work with Professor Christine Hong and Professor Christopher Connery as my dissertation advisors. Their support of my work and their guidance over the past seven years has meant that even rumors and pamphlets have found their place in this dissertation. This project owes much to Christine’s capacious intellect and heart. Chris taught me to think about history, to attempt an immanent critique, in addition to telling a story in a way that does not come easily to me. He has guided this project from the very beginning. I thank members of my reading committee for their support: Professor Rob Wilson and Professor Tsering Shakya. I thank Professor Wlad Godzich for leading me to the topic for this dissertation and for reminding me to keep poetry in sight. Likewise, I thank Professor Karen Yamashita for reminding me about creativity, community, and kindness while pushing me to write ferociously. The support from many organizations made it possible for me to have time to think, to conduct research trips, to translate texts, and to write. I am deeply grateful to the Chicano Latino Research Center at UCSC for the Non-citizenship 2016-17 Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Student Fellowship. The year-long fellowship gave me the best year of graduate school. The Literature Department’s support has been generous the these seven years: I received a Regents Fellowship in Fall 2011, two summer fellowships for language study, two summer research and travel grants, and two quarters’ dissertation fellowship. UC Santa Cruz’s Institute for Humanities vi Research gave me a Summer Research Fellowship in 2015 to conduct research in India and Nepal. The Critical Refugee Studies Collective’s grant made it possible for me to complete critical research in completing one chapter of my dissertation. I thank the Dalai Lama Trust for its generous scholarship for three years and the Chapter BM of the P.E.O. Sisterhood. I have the good fortune to be part of a writing group whose members also are my dear friends: Kara Hisatake, Katie Trostel and Sarah Papazoglakis. I am thankful to them for their friendship and their rigorous attention to my work. I am a better writer, scholar, and friend because of them. I was also a happier student because of them. The last seven years would have been a long struggle without the love and nourishment from friends. I thank Dechen Choden, Elaine Seiler, Joanna Meadvin, Marilyn Kennell, Maush, Monica Dengo, Norbu Tenzing Norgay, and Toni Mirosevich. And then there are Helen Wallis, who offered me the best home that came with family, friendship, and wonderful meals; Valerie Melvin, who wrote to me almost every single day; and Marilyn Seaton, Bob Rivkin, and Dechen Tsering who took special care to celebrate together whatever was possible. I owe much gratitude to those who shared their stories with me and welcomed me into their homes; their words build this dissertation. Special thanks to Orgyen Topgyal Rinpoche, Chentse Yeshi Rinpoche, Drawupon Rinchen Tsering, Geshe Monlam Tharchen, Khenpo Chudak, Jamyang Gyantse, Tashi Tsering, Sodam, and Yujay. vii Bhuchung D. Sonam put the hundreds of pages of texts into a narrative I could work with more easily. His careful translations of texts from Tibetan into English are the frames to this dissertation. Finally, I am grateful to my exceptional readers and supporters: Helen Wallis, Nayana (M.G. Srinivasan), Marilyn Seaton, and Shelly Bhoil. It is because of their careful attention to my language, their interest in my work, and their questions when they could not follow the story that the writing has fewer errors. Shelly Bhoil, in particular, has been my interlocutor and my editor. I thank you all. viii Introduction The attention of the world is riveted on Korea where aggression is being resisted by an international force. Similar happenings in remote Tibet are passing without notice. Appeal to the UN from the Dalai Lama, 1950 A Brief Historical Overview: Tibet, The Nation-State, and Decolonization Movements The People’s Republic of China (PRC) accomplished its goal of capturing Chamdo in eastern Tibet in a total of two weeks in October 1950. Seven months after the invasion, the negotiation team of the Tibetan government in Lhasa signed the document known as the “Agreement of the Central People’s Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet,” commonly referred to as the 17-Point Agreement, that acknowledged Chinese sovereignty for the first time in Tibetan history. Since then, the Chinese government has determined the status and position of Tibetans, although it has not won the battle for Tibetans’ hearts and minds. Tibetan popular resistance and the attendant mobilization of diverse expressions of Tibetan identity, desires, and experiences under Chinese rule, both on the rise since the late 1980s, point to serious fissures in the Chinese state’s ideological and cultural project of “liberating” Tibet. However, resistance against Chinese rule does not gain critical global attention due to the effectiveness of Chinese control over Tibet, and the reluctance of global leaders to offend or upset China. This has meant that since 1959, the struggle for Tibet has been represented by Tibetans living in exile under the leadership of the 14th Dalai Lama. 1 Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual and the political leader of the Ganden Phodrang government in Lhasa, left his country on the back of a horse in March 1959. In his memoir, he recalls there was nothing dramatic about crossing the border into the territory of India even as he saw it “in a daze of sickness and weariness and unhappiness deeper than I can express (My Land 216). He was accompanied by an entourage of eighty people and by the soldiers of the Chushi Gangdruk, the grassroots armed movement that began in Kham, East Tibet. By the year’s end, as many as 80,000 Tibetans had followed him to seek refuge in the neighboring countries of Bhutan, India, and Nepal. There had been no precedent in Tibetan history for an exile of this magnitude. Political theorist and author Dawa Norbu explains that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1950 justified their “liberative” action with a “combination of old historical claims, new Marxist mission, and Age-Old security