Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the double-edged sword of strategic essentialism employed by the Tibetan diaspora's elites to win the support of the "West". On the one hand, it is a self-affirmative project of politically aware and agentic refugees. On the other, it works as a tool for exclusion.

Paper long abstract:

In the paper, I discuss the double-edged sword of strategic essentialism of the Tibetan diaspora's elites as being a source of both political empowerment and a tool for exclusion. The Tibetan diaspora, with its centre in India, enjoys the moral support of the "white West". This support is won through the self-representation of Tibetans as peaceful, spiritual Buddhists who patiently pursue their non-violent struggle for a free Tibet. It is a self-affirmative project, proof of the refugees' political awareness and agency, which has let them to skilfully reinterpret the refugee status as a source of pride and self-esteem. However, the identity politics of the diaspora's elites, based upon "neo-Puritanical" (Nowak 1984) and essentialist assumptions of the uniqueness of Tibetan culture, may have the opposite effects to that intended. On the one hand, it results in racist attitudes towards other minorities, especially African-Americans, as observed by Emily Yeh and Kunga T. Lama (2006) among Tibetans living in the United States. A similar phenomenon occurs in India, where I conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork, in regards to the Hindu majority, which is looked down on by Tibetans. The latter have developed strategies of resistance to any integration in India because they simply believe that their culture is "better". On the other hand, limiting articulations of identity to a single, authorised self-representation has proven to be a regulatory regime which classifies certain actions - such as applying for Indian citizenship or being non-Buddhist - as non-Tibetan.