TIBET'S CURRENT STATUS: A WESTERN IMPERIAL LEGACY
Tibet, which as a political entity operated with other external powers (especially Mongols and Hans) on principles such as patron-client relations and chos srid gnyis Idan (politics and religion combined; see Burman 1979; Kolas 1996), [53] has become yet another victim of modern ideas such as territorial sovereignty and the separation of religion and the state. This raises the question of the relevance of the European model of the nation-state for many parts of the non-Western world. Present-day international politics ensures that claims to independence are afforded more recognition when stated in terms of the nineteenth-century European ideal of the nation-state under a nationally representative government (Samuel 1993,
143). This makes the task of the Tibetans more difficult as Tibet was never a centralized nation-state. The closest it came to the European model was between 1913 and 1951, but the lamaist state failed to become a modern state (Goldstein 1989) or to be recognized as such (Shakya 1999).
The extrapolation of Western ideas in a situation where people operated by way of a totally different worldview has facilitated the victimization of communities like the Tibetans. Developments during the era of imperialism have serious ramifications in many parts of the contemporary world. Conventional IR that has ignored the history and politics of imperialism (by considering it to be a legitimate area of inquiry primarily for imperial history) is therefore not well suited to provide a contextual understanding of such international problems as the Tibet question. For an effective analysis of the debate over the historical status of Tibet, critical international theories could contribute to the historicization of the concept of sovereignty, while postcolonialism can help bare its linkage with imperialism.
EXOTICA TIBET AND THE DEPOLITICIZATION OF THE TIBET QUESTION
What the above discussion of the historical writing of Tibet in the modern geopolitical imaginary reveals are the mutually constitutive relations between representations and imperialism, knowledge and power. Exotica Tibet was not confined to the cultural sphere. For instance, the accounts of British Indian officials like Charles Bell and Hugh Richardson show that their "more prosaic view did not destroy this exotic representation but tacitly encouraged it" (McKay 1997, 207). Prevalent attitudes toward Tibet often reflected contemporary political preoccupations. As discussed earlier, during the Younghusband invasion most British writings depicted a despicable state of affairs within Tibet. Then came a shift toward a positive exoticization (see Hansen 1996). Bell's writings played an important role in transforming the image of Tibet in the West in the 1920s and 1930s. Tibetan Buddhism (more commonly known as Lamaism) was seen in a new context. For instance, Shuttleworth points out, "After reading Sir Charles' book [The Religion of Tibet], one comes to realize that something of the pure flame of Buddhism still lights up the Tibetan Church, and that Lamaism is more than a museum of dead, grotesque monstrosities, that serves no purpose except to provide a livelihood for its priestly custodians" (IOR: MSS EUR/ D722/18 n.d.).
Romantic paternalism continued to mark the representations of Tibet even after World War II (see Klieger 2006). For instance, the U.S. War Department in 1947 could envisage only two possible uses for Tibet: "as a country offering great waste areas in which rockets could be tested, or as a final retreat (Shangri – la) to which peace-loving people could flee when atomic war breaks, for Tibet is too remote to be of significance in any war" (in Knaus 1999, 26; see also Laird 2002; Margolis 2000; Peissel 1972). [54]
Exotica Tibet, especially in the second half of the twentieth century, has disproportionately emphasized Tibetan religiosity, which has led to the sidetracking of the political question of the status of Tibet. Let us note the shifts in the wordings of the United Nations resolutions passed with regard to Tibet. In November 1950, El Salvador submitted a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly that clearly recognized Tibet as a historically independent state. The draft resolution opened: "Taking note that the peaceful nation of Tibet has been invaded, without any provocation on its part, by foreign forces" (International Campaign for Tibet 2006). But no discussion was carried out as Britain, India, and the United States asked for deferment in the hope of a peaceful resolution. This was the only instance of a clear attempt on the part of a state to raise the issue of Tibet in unambiguously political terms. The three resolutions subsequently passed by the General Assembly tended to emphasize Tibet's uniqueness, its cultural and religious life, and the human rights of Tibetans. European countries did not want Tibet to be raised as an issue in the UN for fear that it might set a precedent for their colonies (Shakya 1999, 221). The United States did not want to offend Nationalist China. India saw Tibet mostly as a thorn in the side of Sino-Indian relations. Communist states supported Chinese rights of sovereignty. It therefore comes as no surprise that the resolutions passed regarding Tibet in the UN General Assembly were sponsored by small countries seen as internationally insignificant. And even here, the language was usually tempered. Resolution 1353 (XIV), apart from other UN principles, "mindful also of the distinctive cultural and religious heritage of the people of Tibet and of the autonomy which they have traditionally enjoyed" (emphasis in original), affirmed respect in the Charter and called "for the respect for the fundamental human rights of the Tibetan people and for their distinctive cultural and religious life" (General Assembly 1959; emphasis added). The sponsors, Ireland and Malaya, clarified in their opening statements that the resolution was based not on the political aspect of Tibet's status but on the violation of human rights only (Shakya 1999, 228-29). The 1961 Resolution 1723 (XVI), in contrast, did mention the "right to self-determination" (General Assembly 1961), but the 1965 Resolution 2079 (XX) focused on violation of human rights. Thereafter, with the changing dynamic of China's relations with Western states as well as other nonaligned states, Tibet as an issue did not evoke interest among states.
With the Sino-American rapprochement in the 1970s, little was heard about the destruction of traditional life within Tibet, which intensified during the Cultural Revolution. But considerable attention was paid to the Tibet question when other communist regimes fell in Eastern Europe and the discourse of human rights emerged on the international plane. The linkage of the Tibet question to the West's political interests may be unsurprising, but if we are to address the Tibet question effectively, we need to move beyond conventional international politics with its emphasis on realpolitik and sovereign statehood. For the existence of a "Tibet question" on the international plane is less political and more cultural fascination for Tibet in many parts of the world, and due to the personal appeal of the Dalai Lama (Sautman and Lo 1995, 1). The recent high international profile for the Tibet question is not a result of states "rediscovering" Tibet but rather of nonstate actors becoming international actors. It is connected with transnational movements that are seen as increasingly challenging the international system that solely privileges nation-states.
CONCLUSION
Contemporary international politics privileges sovereign statehood. Broadly speaking, there are two options available for those who are not already legally recognized members of the international society of sovereign nation- states. First is to present one's own histories and lived realities as a distinct historical reality that is in turn commensurate with the existing notion of the international. The second option is to challenge the given notion of the international as limited, unfair, and unhelpful and to push for alternative ways of being international that recognize the complexity of the world we live in. Diasporic Tibetans led by the Dalai Lama and their non -Tibetan sympathizers have experimented with both the options. They have used the dominant realist vocabulary of international relations- arguing for a historically independent quasi-national state of Tibet before the Chinese invasion in 1950. At the same time, they have also made use of more recent nonrealist concepts of human rights, trans-nationalism, environmentalism, and identity politics to challenge the Chinese control over Tibet. The nonrealist route h
as provided the Tibetan diaspora with means to foster a sense of Tibetanness and to acquire international publicity. In fact, the Tibet question as a problem of international politics would hardly have been noticed had it not been for high-profile support from nonstate actors. It is the uniqueness of Tibet that is seen as attracting global publicity for the "Free Tibet" or "Save Tibet" movement.
This uniqueness is a direct product of Exotica Tibet. While the strategy of mobilization of a unified Tibetan identity and support from the non-Tibetans has worked in terms of challenging the legitimacy of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet at the nonstate level, it has its own serious limitations. Lopez has put it bluntly: Tibetans are "prisoners of Shangri- la," captured within the Western images of Tibet and Tibetans as unique. Others have also criticized the focus on nonrealist tools such as human rights (Barnett 2001; Norbu 1998) as essentially depoliticizing and distracting from the main issue. The discourse of human rights and the image of Tibetans as uniquely religious allows for Western states to pay lip service to the call for protection of cultural and religious rights of Tibetans without questioning the broader issues of the Tibetan right to self-determination. Western state leaders who meet the Dalai Lama (for instance, the American president George W. Bush in May 2001; see CNN.com 2001), go to great lengths to explain that it is a private meeting with a religious leader. The Dalai Lama, as a political leader, has a smaller audience in the West. In the West, it is common to come across legislative branches of the government passing resolutions condemning Chinese policies in Tibet (see Barnett 1991) but executive branches going out of the way to assure China of their recognition of Chinese sovereignty.
The realist route is seen as the only realistic and effective one by those rightly skeptical of the depoliticizing move of human rights discourse as mobilized by Western states. Yet, as the next chapter argues in greater detail, it is unfair to blame the Tibetan diaspora for making use of the limited and limiting vocabularies of political expression. And to dismiss human rights as idealistic or "to criticize those who engage in the human rights discourse for the unseemly politicization of a set of ideals (two sides of the same realist paradigm), is to deny political agency to people" (Mountcastle 2006, 100). Either Tibetans challenge Chinese claims to sovereignty with their own alternative claims of independence based on historical and international legal sources, or they accept the reality of Chinese sovereignty and work within it to modify it, or they do both. Tibetans in diaspora have no option but to keep making their claims using the dominant realist vocabulary of nationalism, statehood, sovereignty, and independence while at the same time exploring emerging non-realist norms of human rights to gain an international profile. In either case, the West as a political actor and even more crucially as a source of universalized ideas remains integral to the Tibet question.
5. The Politics of Tibetan (Trans) National Identity
The epistemological model that offers us a pregiven subject or agent is one that refuses to acknowledge that agency is always and only a political prerogative.
– JUDITH BUTLER, FEMINISTS THEORIZE THE POLITICAL
Until the last decades of the twentieth century, the preoccupation with religion and history contributed to a relative neglect of the issues of contemporary Tibetan identity within social and political studies (see Shakya 1996). The signifier "Tibetan" is usually seen in terms of an ontological essentialism. [55] This often leads to a papering over of the socially constructed and politically contested nature of Tibetan cultural and political identity, or "Tibetanness," as it may conveniently be called (for different approaches, see Klieger 1994; Korom 1997a, 1997b; Nowak 1984). This chapter, along with the next, examines the articulations of Tibetanness in political and cultural spheres, argues for new ways of theorizing these identities, and interrogates the constitutive role played by Exotica Tibet in these identity discourses.
While acknowledging that the distinction between the cultural and the political may be construed as depoliticizing culture and un-culturing politics, I start by looking at cultural and political identities separately for analytical purposes. At the same time, I highlight the interlinkages between them. The study of cultural identity must be a concern of IR and not relegated to anthropology or cultural studies for at least two reasons. First, the distinction between cultural and political identity is blurred and at best problematic. Second, for Tibetans living under occupation and in displacement, every expression of a distinct culture is a political act in itself.
For the purpose of studying the political and cultural facets of Tibetanness, I experiment with two approaches. In this chapter, I bring out the various dynamics, including interaction with the West, that constitute Tibetanness as a national identity mainly, though not exclusively, in the diaspora. In the next chapter, I examine the cultural expressions of diasporic Tibetans, highlight the role of Exotica Tibet, and offer a new and innovative way of theorizing Tibetanness with an emphasis on postcolonial symbolic geography and cultural identity discourses.
Identity is not an essence but a performance, an articulation, a discourse. Tibetanness is as much a process as it is a product-it is a productive process. The performance of Tibetan identity does not take place in a vacuum but in a power-laden international political and cultural environment. This international context, in turn, is marked by asymmetries of structural and representational power in which the West remains dominant. Tibetanness has to be articulated within this asymmetrical context and hence Western representational practices play a crucial role. This role is not merely an embellishment; rather it is constitutive. At the same time, however, instead of looking at Tibetanness as merely a product of Western representations (Exotica Tibet) and Tibetans thus as "prisoners of Shangri-la" (see Lopez 1998), we ought to acknowledge Tibetan collective agency. This agency is not in opposition to, and autonomous from, representational discourses but very much a part of them. At the same time, agency is not exhausted by any one particular representational discourse but is produced out of creative negotiations with various discourses and interstitial spaces shared by them.
There are creative tensions within Tibetan identity articulations and between these articulations and Exotica Tibet. How has Exotica Tibet affected Tibetanness? What is the politics of Western representations of Tibet in terms of its impact on Tibetan cultural and political identity? I raise these questions in this chapter and the next. While the emphasis will be on the various facets of contemporary identity articulations, the poetics of representation-Exotica Tibet as outlined in previous chapters-will always be present, sometimes lurking in the background, sometimes coming to the forefront.
DIASPORA AND OTHERWISE
Two qualifying and clarifying points need to be made before I move on. First, I do not intend to cover all aspects of Tibetanness as articulated by Tibetans everywhere. In fact, my focus is on identity discourses circulating mainly within the Tibetan diaspora. These constitute a very small percentage of the total Tibetan population, as most Tibetans still live inside Tibet. The rationale for choosing to study the diaspora is primarily practical: there are limitations on researching in Tibet due to the sensitivities of the Chinese state. Within the diaspora, there is a deliberate focus on elite discourses as it is largely the elite that shape how Tibetanness is articulated both within Tibetan communities and for the outside world. This is symptomatic of most "national" groups, but the predominance of the figure of the Dalai Lama as the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile makes it even more so in the Tibetan case. This does not mean that popular articulations are mere copies of the elite discourses or that the Tibetans living within Tibet imitate discourses prevalent in the diaspora. While Tibetanness is a project of creating sameness, it is in fact difference, dynamism, and disjuncture that characterize it most.
Second, a clarification with regard to semantics is necessary. Why use the term "diaspora" when the terms "exile" and "refugee" have wider currency among Tibetans and analysts? Within the international legal regime, most of the Tibet
ans living in South Asia and Western countries are refugees, and Tibetans often perceive themselves to be political refugees. Within the Tibetan governmental and intellectual community, exile is a more favored term. While these terms continue to be popular, Tibetanists as well as the Tibetan elite themselves are increasingly adopting "diaspora" to make sense of Tibetan identity (see also Baumann 1997).
Within the fields of political and social studies, a diaspora is widely conceived as any segment of a people living outside their homeland. For instance, emphasizing the need to look at the tri-adic networks of homeland (or trans-state organization), host country, and ethnic diaspora, Sheffer writes, "Modern diasporas are ethnic minority groups of migrant origins residing and acting in host countries but maintaining a strong sentimental and material link with their countries of origin-their homeland" (1986, 3; see also Cohen 1997). The recognition of diasporas as important international actors is a big step forward in the field of international politics (otherwise dominated by studies of nation-states), even though we have to avoid taking basic terms such as "homeland," "identity," and "host land" as unproblematic. This allows us to appreciate the crucial role played by the Tibetan diaspora in highlighting the case of Tibet as a problem of international politics. Though this has had little impact on the conduct of states vis-a-vis China-not surprising, given that the international community is precisely a community of recognized nation-states, a status denied to Tibet-the Dalai Lama-led Tibetan diaspora is considered, rightly or wrongly (see Barnett 2006) as the legitimate speaker for the entire Tibetan population in the international arena. The story of the creation of the Tibetan community-in-exile illustrates the successful strategies of the Dalai Lama-led Tibetan government to foster and maintain a distinctive Tibetan national identity with a mix of religious, cultural, and political elements.
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