Tibetan Studies in India remains exilic; integrated Tibet-Himalayan Studies can address geopolitical realities and overlooked borderland histories.
Authors
Swati Chawla, Associate Professor, Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India
Swargajyoti Gohain, Ashoka University, India
Summary
Tibetan Studies has not followed the same trajectory in India that it has taken in the Global North. It has largely remained an exilic endeavour, with some support from the Indian state, and flourishes mainly in the form of Buddhist Studies. We use the term Tibetan Studies more as shorthand for the scholarly study of Tibet’s history, politics, geography, religion and cultural traditions as they might have unfolded in various spaces within India and not as an identifying term for an existing field. In this paper, we show that the course of Tibetan Studies in India has been affected by geopolitical relations between India and China and the refugee status of Tibetans. Because Tibetan Studies in India has developed primarily within the exile Tibetan spaces there, an essentialised construction of a homogenous Tibetan identity prevails, precluding a more holistic approach to the study of Tibetic peoples of the Himalayan region.
While presenting an overview of the state of the field of Tibetan Studies in India, we also outline a possible direction for an integrated Tibet and Himalayan Studies, applicable particularly in the Indian context, taking into account the changing empirical and geopolitical situation globally that necessitates a timely conceptual and practical intervention. It also considers the inclusive scope of Himalayan Studies to recover and restore long-overlooked historical and ethnographic material from the Tibetan borderlands, which include but are not limited to the Indian Himalayan or trans-Himalayan regions.
Published in: Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies
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