Why are Tibetans leaving India when the Dalai Lama is still there?
By: Shashi Kei
When the ‘Five and Fifty’ (Five-Fifty) vision was launched in October 2017, it was hailed as the ‘flagship policy’ of Lobsang Sangay, the Sikyong or ‘President’ of the Tibetan government-in-exile known as the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). The ‘Five-Fifty’ was Sangay’s blueprint to resolve the Tibetan issue within 5 years from 2017. It aims to regain control of what is today the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) from the Chinese government in that time. Should that not happen, it signals the Tibetan leadership’s readiness to continue to oppose China for another 50 years. The ‘Five-Fifty’ is Sangay’s attempt to keep the mood of the Tibetan struggle buoyant. Although lofty in its persuasion, there are indications to strongly suggest that this may be more Sangay’s showmanship than a realistic pursuit. For Sangay’s ‘Five-Fifty’ to succeed, there has to be a Tibetan populace forming a collective with both the willingness and the capability to drive it. But this is precisely where the plan unravels.
Tibetans, Merely Pawns on a Chessboard
From the very start, the Tibetan struggle has been fought largely at the expense of ordinary Tibetan refugees. It is they who have had to bear the harshest conditions in exile. While the spotlight has been on the Dalai Lama and his ruling officials, their glorified status has sheltered them from the most bitter conditions in exile — estrangement from family and spiritual ties, dejection, sickness, abject poverty, and being stuck without the ability to move too far beyond refugee settlements. So, when the Tibetan leadership trumpeted that the “Tibetans are the most successful refugee community“, many fans of the Dalai Lama and supporters of the Tibetan cause cheered but the Tibetan people themselves knew better.
Over the past 60 years, three generations of Tibetans have endured this ordeal by holding faith in the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan leadership. By the sentiments voiced by ordinary Tibetans and the actions may have taken in recent years, it would appear that their patience is exhausted and that they have lost trust in their own government.
In a recent Tibet Sun article by journalist and writer, Lobsang Wangyal (“CTA’s Education Department gets maximum budget of 559 million rupees”) the Secretary of the CTA’s Department of Education was quoted as saying that the CTA was going to close some schools due to a drastic drop in the number of students. The Secretary, Karma Singey, attributed this to a lower birth rate, the emigration of Tibetans to the West and lower numbers of new arrivals from Tibet. Contrary to the Tibetan leadership’s claim, these factors are not symptomatic of a successful community but the opposite.
A Complete Loss of Confidence
A lower birth rate reflects Tibetan exile families’ concern over the lack of economic prospects and poor living standards. Clearly, this concern is pervasive and has deterred more Tibetans in the TAR from crossing the border into India. The Times of India (TOI) and other news media reported in 2017 that the number of Tibetans arriving from the TAR into India had dropped by as much as 97%, with the decline beginning around 2008. Some have blamed tighter border security for this decline but, in truth, China has relaxed its grip on the Tibetans in the TAR over the decades. In any case, blaming China cannot explain why Tibetans living in the Indian settlements are even deciding to return to the TAR. The population of Tibetans living in the Indian settlements is reported to have dropped sharply from an estimated 150,000 to a mere 85,000 over the last few years. This represents a decrease of almost 45%, indicative of a serious and endemic problem within the exile community. The Tibetan Review has reported that the drop is, in fact, as high as 75%.
What would make a Tibetan choose to move away and become even more detached from their already small and disenfranchised community? What would make them decide to stay away from their beloved god-king, the Dalai Lama whom they had willingly followed into exile and into an uncertain future? For that matter, what would persuade a Tibetan to remain in what is reportedly oppressive conditions in the TAR instead of seeking a better deal in India? The TOI news report said that until recently, Tibetans from the TAR had crossed into India seeking “better education, jobs and to join monasteries”. That stopped and we instead hear in a separate interview with the Indian government’s advisor on Tibet Affairs, Amitabh Mathur, that a large number of Tibetans had, in fact, returned to Tibet, choosing to live under the governance of China instead of their own government-in-exile.
All this evidence points to a major loss of confidence in the Tibetan leadership. It is important to note that this trust deficit did not happen overnight. Until 2008, Tibetans from the China-controlled TAR were still looking for means to go to India and join the Dalai Lama’s exile community. So what changed? Clearly, it is a build-up of factors that finally reached a tipping point. We see the clues in a number of studies and surveys conducted by scholars and academics who have examined the situation.
Proof of The CTA’s Failure
An academic paper was undertaken under the auspices of Emory University, referenced Tibetan reporter and social reformer, Tenzin Tephun Shashtri, who observed that there has been a stagnation of human resources and a lack of any large scale economic progress since the start of [the Tibetan] exile. Interestingly, Shashtri noted that “since the Tibetan leaders did not address economic progress at the start of exile, the problem has expanded”. [Unemployment in the Tibetan Community in Exile, Rebecca Arnold, Emory University]
Immediately, we see that the Tibetan leadership failed from the very start to put in place the necessary infrastructure to ensure the survival of the Tibetan nation-in-exile. This would have guaranteed the continuance of the Tibetan struggle and provided the people with the means to preserve their culture. In the earlier years in exile, the Dalai Lama and CTA relied on a number of Nechung’s (the State Oracle) prophesies that the Tibetan people would soon regain their homeland. Based on these, the Dalai Lama made numerous pronouncements to the same effect. Trusting the Dalai Lama to be correct, the Tibetan people did not even establish proper homes in exile until much later when it became clear that they could not continue to subsist that way. In short, apart from waiting for a miracle, hoping for foreign military intervention and relying on foreign aid, the Tibetan leadership did not bother to establish a proper plan.
A grave mistake the Tibetan leadership made was failing to anticipate the possibility that the 150,000 Tibetans who had followed the Dalai Lama into exile might be in limbo for more than 60 years. Even after it became clear that the Tibetan leadership was in for a long and protracted struggle, the CTA refused to address the problem and instead took only superficial measures. The University of Rochester in New York conducted a study and found that 46% of the Tibetan exile population is engaged in traditional farming or herding and 49% in seasonal sweater selling. There is no proper framework for industries to be established and most businesses are small-scale operations and disorganized. (Tibetan Innovation Challenge, Univ. of Rochester) Basically, the CTA’s negligence and refusal to acknowledge facts created stagnation in the lives of the Tibetan people and hindered them from taking steps to improve their standard of living.
In his paper on the state of Tibetan refugees, Tsering Paljor, a Tibetan academic, cited the Tibetan Demographic Survey (TDS) performed in 2009 (the TDS is performed every 10 years and the next survey will be in 2019). It found that “…the unemployment rate among the Tibetan youth is as high as seventy-five percent. On that, the number of school and college graduates is increasing every year, about 1,250 students passing out every year from the schools and colleges in India. The chances of these youth getting employment in our community are very low as total absorption capacity is just five per cent. The major factor is the lack of employment opportunities in the settlements and the shift in the economic structure of refugees in exile”. [Current Situation of Tibetan Refugees in Exile, Tsering Paljor, Mussoorie, India]
Tibetan Struggle for Sale
The Tibetan leadership cannot deny that it was aware of the problem. Some have argued that the Tibetan leadership has been restricted in what it could have done due to a shortage of resources. But the facts point to the contrary. There is ample evidence that the Tibetan leadership had access to more than adequate resources provided by the global community and channelled through a number of Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). A Modern Diplomacy article lists some of these:
- INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR TIBET based in Washington, US is endowed with a USD 4 million annual budget and purports to support the works of the 14th Dalai Lama and the CTA.
- TIBET HOUSE (known also as Tibet House US Cultural Center of H.H. the Dalai Lama) which was founded in 1987 by Columbia University professor Robert Thurman, actor Richard Gere and composer Philip Glass has an annual revenue of USD 2.5 million and accumulated assets of USD 6.5 million. Today, the organisation operates in New York, India, Mexico, Germany, Spain, the UK and Russia.
- FREE TIBET is yet another organisation that raises funds for the Tibetans. It is based in London, UK and has an annual budget of USD 500,000.
- STUDENTS FOR A FREE TIBET is an NGO based in New York, US that has a declared annual budget of USD 700,000. This NGO claims to have a network of 35,000 students working toward the Dalai Lama’s and CTA’s goals.
- TIBET FUND is based in New York, the U.S. and has an annual budget of about USD 6 million and cumulative assets of USD 8 million. This is the principal fundraising organisation working in partnership with the Tibetan leadership via its Office of Tibet branches in 13 countries. It has a presence in New Delhi, Kathmandu, Geneva, New York, Tokyo, London, Paris, Moscow, Brussels, Canberra, Pretoria, Taipei and Budapest.
- THE DALAI LAMA TRUST is the foundation of the 14th Dalai Lama. It is based in New York and India and administers the royalties and revenues from the Dalai Lama’s intellectual properties and public events. In the year 2009 alone, when the Trust was set up, it reported having received USD 2.2 million in donations. Every year since then, the Trust has received well in excess of USD 1 million in donations annually. It is estimated that the Trust has accumulated assets of over USD 8.6 million. In addition, The Dalai Lama Trust controls several organisations whose revenue and assets are unknown.
- TIBETAN CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY is an NGO based in Dharamsala, India. Its budget is unknown.
This list does not include special grants from governments such as the USD 17 million that the Trump Administration allocated towards the Tibet issue and for the welfare of the Tibetan communities in exile for the year 2019 alone. The year before, the US government provided over USD 20 million in aid to the Tibetan people, including USD 2.5 million for humanitarian assistance for Tibetan refugees; a sum not less than USD 6 million for economic development in Tibetan exile communities; and a sum not less than USD 3 million to strengthen governance and the capacity of Tibetan institutions.
US aid to the Dalai Lama and the CTA began in the 1960s and the CTA has been the beneficiary of generous donors for 60 years. Sadly, the sad state of affairs the Tibetan community-in-exile is in does not reflect this fact.
The Dalai Lama’s foundation (Trust) professes that its mission is “For activities of individuals and institutions belonging to, associated with and working for the welfare of the Tibetan community and other needy persons around the world…”. The other Funds mentioned above and more not listed herein proclaim similar noble objectives but it is doubtful how much the Tibetan people actually benefit from these donations as there is no transparency in the financial accounting. But surely there is more than enough money to put a dent in Tibetan poverty which if anything is getting worse even as the donations keep rolling in.
An investigative piece by Indy Hack and Frank Parlato published in a US weekly exposed that the Dalai Lama’s trip to Lithuania and Latvia in 2018 alone ran clocked up about USD 1million with the “simple Buddhist monk” staying in the Presidential Suite costing USD 1087 per night. The article documented how the Dalai Lama’s event can command ticket sales of USD 186,000 per day.
And yet at the same time, the Tibetan people live on the poverty line and in abject hopelessness.
Where Did The Money Go?
All in all, the CTA receives an annual sum estimated at no less than USD 50 million per annum in foreign aid and has received countless millions in donations for decades. The full extent of how much the CTA has been receiving from governments, NGOs, corporations and private individuals is unknown because the CTA is not required to disclose such information. As it turns out, this has left plenty of room for questionable dealings.
It is certain that there has been more than enough money for CTA officials and their cronies to bicker over. Corruption is rife and as common as financial irregularities.
- Examiners of the accounts of the Tibet Fund, set up supposedly to procure funds to improve the lives of Tibetan refugees, have reportedly refused to attest to the proper financial management of the fund.
- In 2017, Sikyong Lobsang Sangay was accused of having illicitly directed USD 1.5 million meant for the Tibetan people towards the purchase of real estate in the US instead.
- A long-time supporter of the Tibetan cause blew the whistle on the dealings of the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), claiming that large sums of money are siphoned off by cronies of CTA officials under the guise of ‘management fees’
- In fact, profiteering and shady dealings by the Tibetan leadership and their associates are well known. In 2012, US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher even warned Sikyong Lobsang Sangay in an official letter that it had come to his attention that US funding meant for the Tibetan people had been misspent.
- Corruption is rampant among the Dalai Lama’s representatives, who regularly sell audiences with the Dalai Lama and solicit payments for the Dalai Lama to make appearances at events.
In the meantime, more Tibetans-in-exile living in Indian settlements fall below the poverty line. The CTA even leverages a voluntary tax on the Tibetan people in the name of patriotism. Therefore, to say that the CTA has not had the resources to help the Tibetan people stave off poverty and escape chronic unemployment and hopelessness is simply untrue.
The Big Sacrifice
In the March 2019 edition of the Tibetan Review, Asst. Professor Tashi Phuntsok of the Department of Economics, Calcutta University questioned the lack of attention on the punishing rate of unemployment. He also asked which issues have dominated the CTA’s attention when such serious problems are resulting in a decay of the Tibetan exile population and also the people’s ability to sustain the Tibetan cause.
The answers are simple and logical enough but they may be unpalatable for the Tibetan people.
Self-interest of the leadership
Put simply, being in exile became a lucrative business for those in power because they do not share the same fate as ordinary Tibetans in exile. Sikyong Lobsang Sangay has no personal stake in the success of the Tibetan cause. As long as there is a struggle against China, Sangay has a job. But his Presidency becomes defunct the moment the Tibetan people find reconciliation with China. The same applies to the CTA Cabinet which comprises Sangay’s appointees. In a proper democracy, parliamentarians exist to represent and serve the people. But the Tibetan parliament’s role is merely to rubber-stamp decisions made by an unelected few so as to give the impression that the CTA is a democracy. As such, it is unheard of for Tibetan parliamentarians to speak against wrongful CTA policies and fight for the welfare of the people they are supposed to represent. To do so may be political suicide because it exposes the inadequacies of the leadership. No one dares to address the real problem because the source of the Tibetan people’s plight today is intrinsic in the mindset of the few who wield power.
CTA’s political ambition
The CTA claims that its struggle is for the good of the Tibetan people. However, the Tibetan leadership’s choices over the years reflect its own self-interest and prioritization of its political ambitions over the welfare of the Tibetan people.
One clear example is seen in the way the CTA has ignored the rampant unemployment that is driving the Tibetan people away from the settlements. An immediate solution would have been for the CTA to assist educated Tibetan youth to seek Indian citizenship, which they are legally entitled to. This would give them a fighting chance of becoming gainfully employed by Indian businesses and corporations. But the CTA discourages this, fearing that it would dilute the people’s zest for the ‘Tibetan struggle’. So the CTA made the suggestion taboo and tantamount to disloyalty to the Tibetan cause and the Dalai Lama. It is clear that due to poor planning, there is now a mismatch between the political objectives of the Tibetan leadership and the wellbeing of the Tibetan people. The situation has left the Tibetan people with no choice but to strike out on their own and become independent. In the Tibet Sun article quoted above, the CTA’s Education Secretary acknowledged that the number of Tibetan children is on the increase in the US, Canada, Australia and European countries. This implies confidence, the opposite to the low birth rates of Tibetans in exile, and is itself proof that the Tibetan people who stopped relying on the CTA have fared better than those who continue to. One is left to speculate if this is due to the CTA’s sheer ineptitude or whether it was policy to sacrifice the wellbeing of the people to achieve the political ambitions of a few.
While researching her book, academic Dr Stephanie Roemer spoke to a number of Tibetans and found that there is “considerable frustration and helplessness about CTA politics and the failed results in the Tibetan freedom struggle until the present day” (Tibetan Government-in-Exile: Politics at large, Routledge). However, there is a prevalent fear amongst Tibetan exiles that stops them from voicing their complaints openly. Doing so risks raising the ire of the leadership and being labelled unpatriotic, disloyal and ‘anti-Dalai Lama’.
Nowhere to Go But Down
In conclusion, and to answer Asst. Professor Tashi Phuntsok’s question about the issues that have dominated the CTA’s attention, one would only need to scour the Tibetan news. It is nigh impossible to find reports of any significant affirmative measures that the CTA has undertaken to curb the punitive rate of unemployment, poverty and the sense of hopelessness amongst the people it is supposed to care for. Instead, the CTA’s website focuses on anti-China rhetoric, propaganda that boasts of CTA’s ‘successes’ and matters that perpetuate the CTA’s politics of divide such as its religious ban on the practice of Dorje Shugden. By imposing a religious ban on the practice of the very popular Tibetan Buddhist deity, Dorje Shugden, the CTA has managed to divert the Tibetan people’s attention away from the CTA’s mismanagement and blame the occult for the Tibetan people’s misery.
On the CTA’s website, pages are assigned to criticising China, demonising Dorje Shugden, and broadcasting news that extols the virtues of the present leadership. None of these can help the Tibetan people escape the clutches of destitution and unemployment. Over the past two decades, the CTA has invested untold amounts of money into printing books, pamphlets and videos aimed at segregating the people via the Dorje Shugden conflict and also materials that glorify Tibetan self-immolation. In 2012, after Lobsang Sangay launched a book that martyred Tibetans who have burnt themselves alive, the number of Tibetan self-immolations spiked. The gruesome spectacle of a Tibetan person in flames lends weight to the CTA’s political goals and its anti-China rhetoric. Unfortunately, it is at the expense of Tibetan lives. Again, we see clearly the Tibetan leadership’s attitude that it regards Tibetan lives as dispensable. The time, money and effort the CTA put into segregating the Tibetan people should have gone instead into solving the problems of the Tibetans in exile, not add to their woes. But the CTA persists in this policy of segregation even as the number of Tibetans in exile continue to fall.
Still, the rhetoric continues. In a recent post on the CTA website (“It is high time we unite and become self-sufficient: CTA President to the Tibetans in Kamrao Tibetan Settlement”), Sangay proclaimed that “it’s high time that we unite and become self-sufficient”. In addition, the CTA leader urged the Tibetans to “avoid indulgence in unnecessary internal bickering which only creates communal disharmony and divisions”. If indeed that was said with any sincerity at all, Sangay would instantly cease in his politics of division. But by now, the Tibetan people have learned to tell the difference between promotional buzzwords and a genuine commitment to do something good for the people. And so, Tibetan people in exile will continue to abandon the settlements and with that, the hope of ever seeing their homeland again. Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. Seeing how the Tibetan leaders have failed 150,000 Tibetans even after 60 years of global support, it is chilling to imagine how much more damage they would inflict on the 6 million Tibetans in the TAR.
Many Tibetans followed the Dalai Lama out of Tibet to live in India. So many Tibetans are 2nd and 3rd generations, born in India. They are more Indian than Tibetan. All of these Tibetans claim to be loyal and to love the Dalai Lama so much. If that is the case, why are thousands of Tibetans emigrating to the West and or returning back to Tibet? Why are they leaving the Dalai Lama behind in India? Tired of waiting for a future with no end under an ineffectual administration, the rapidly emptying schools are the surest sign that Tibetans have definitely lost hope in the Dalai Lama and his regime headquartered in Dharamsala. Surely the Tibetans still love the Dalai Lama as he tried his best, but it does mean they have lost hope in his abilities to rescue them out of poverty and getting their country back.
[Tibet Sun] CTA’s Education Department gets maximum budget of 559 million rupees
