The Tibetan diaspora is the community of people of Tibetan birth or ancestry living outside of Tibet today. Historically the Tibetan diaspora was very small, Tibet being a very mountainous country which has been isolated from the world throughout some of its history. The country became a sphere of Chinese influence in the eighteenth century under the Qing Dynasty. In 1950, immediately after the Chinese communists had emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil War, they began efforts to absorb Tibet more fully into China. This led to unrest and eventually an uprising in 1959. This did not last long and ended after two weeks with the flight of the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, to India. An exodus of Tibetans from their mountain home into India, Nepal and Bhutan followed. Further waves occurred in the 1980s and 1990s after Tibetan travel restrictions were eased. Today there are approximately 150,000 Tibetans in the diaspora, two-thirds of which are living in India.[1]
Tibetan diaspora chronology of events
The Tibetan diaspora had not been historically significant. The Tibetan people live on the Tibetan Plateau and other mountainous regions on the eastern side of the Himalayan Mountains and the south of the Kunlun Mountains. The main routeways between Central Asia and the Far East lie either to the north though Mongolia and the Asian Steppe or to the south through the Indian subcontinent. Without people passing through here in large numbers, or major political events occurring here, there were few reasons for mass movement either in or out of Tibet in centuries gone by.[2]
That changed as a result of Chinese domination of the area in modern times. As early as the mid-eighteenth century, Qing Dynasty China established broad control over the Tibetan Plateau. The way of life of the average Tibetan and the religious and political freedom of their spiritual leaders, the Dalai Lamas, was relatively unaffected by Chinese imperial rule. Moreover, as China was mired in instability, as it tried to modernize and move from an imperial system to become a republic in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Tibet was rarely intervened in by any Chinese administration far to the east. Indeed, between the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, Tibet was a de-facto independent state, one which largely remained aloof from both the civil war between the communists and nationalists and the Second World War.[3]
Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 led to Tibet being very quickly brought back under Chinese rule. The Seventeen-Point Agreement of 1951 essentially surrendered Tibet’s independence and made it part of the People’s Republic of China. It was agreed to by the 14th Dalai Lama, but he was still just a teenager at the time.[4] Resistance to Chinese rule, which was atheistic and showed little respect for Tibetan Buddhism, grew from 1956 onwards, compounded by the disastrous Great Leap Forward which occurred throughout China in the late 1950s. In 1959 the Tibetan Uprising broke out around the country against Chinese rule. It was fought over two weeks in mid-March of that year and led to the deaths of an estimated 87,000 Tibetans during a brutal suppression campaign. During it the Dalai Lama and his followers fled to India, where he has lived in exile ever since. The crushing of the Uprising triggered a wave of Tibetan migration over the southern borders into India, Bhutan and Nepal.[5]
In the decades since then, Tibetan-Chinese relations have remained tense. Tibet was turned into the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1965. The Cultural Revolution of the period from 1968 to 1978 under Mao Zedong saw the development of Han Chinese settlements in Tibet. In the early 1980s Deng Xiaoping, in line with his general reforms of China, attempted to loosen the coercive control imposed over Tibet, but this led to renewed unrest in the country in the late 1980s and the imposition of martial law. This was loosened again in the 1990s. There has been further unrest in the interim and many international observers view Tibet as a nation which should be independent, but which has been under Chinese occupation since the 1950s.[6]
Extent of migration from Tibet
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The initial wave of migration which created the Tibetan diaspora occurred in 1959 after the Tibetan Uprising was suppressed and the Dalai Lama left for India. It is estimated that roughly 80,000 Tibetans left the mountain country at that time. They streamed southwards into Nepal, Bhutan and in particular India. Thereafter the Chinese government imposed travel restrictions that limited the capacity for Tibetans to escape over the southern border.[7] These were partially eased by the government of Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, although further unrest between 1987 and 1989 over the influx of Han Chinese settlers led to the declaration of martial law in the country. When this was finally eased in the 1990s, a third wave of migration began. These second and third waves in the 1980s and since the mid-1990s have led to the movement of tens of thousands of more Tibetans into India, Nepal and Bhutan.[8]
Demographic impact of the Tibetan diaspora
The demographic impact of the Tibetan exodus abroad is fairly concretely known. There are approximately 100,000 Tibetans living in India, 15,000 to 20,000 in Nepal, a small community of nearly 1,500 in Bhutan and 20,000 or so in other parts of the world, making a diaspora of roughly 150,000 people overall.[9] It is much more difficult though to assess the current demography of Tibet and how it has been impacted by developments since the 1950s. Back then Tibet was a country of about 1.2 million people who were Tibetan and Buddhist. Today the country is designated as the Tibet Autonomous Region and is said to have a population nearing four million people. However, it is very difficult to assess the proportion of these which are Tibetan people and what percentage are the result of the colonization of Tibet by Han Chinese settlers. Hence, the impact of the Tibetan exodus that created the diaspora is not 100% clear. Many people in India, Nepal and Bhutan today will be able to trace their roots there to a great-grandparent, grandparent or parent who left Tibet in 1959.[10]
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Explore more about the Tibetan diaspora
- South Asia's Tibetan Community is Shrinking, Imperiling its Long-Term Future at Migration Policy Institute
- Global Nomads: The Emergence of the Tibetan Diaspora at Migration Policy Institute
- Tibet's Uprising 50 Years Later at PBS News
- This Day in History: Tibetans Revolt Against Chinese Occupation at History
References
- ↑ Elsa M. Spencer, Escape from Shangri-La: The Tibetan Exodus (Bloomington, Indiana, 2013).
- ↑ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953985990713101
- ↑ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-17046222
- ↑ https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/seventeen-point-agreement-seventy-years-china-s-occupation-tibet
- ↑ https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rebellion-in-tibet
- ↑ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/02/tibet-through-chinese-eyes/306395/
- ↑ https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/tibetan-refugees-india
- ↑ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/02/tibet-through-chinese-eyes/306395/
- ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1308816/
- ↑ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23968232