A more nuanced understanding of diaspora (see Brah 1996; Tololyan 1991, 1996; Vertovec 1997) conceptualizes diaspora less as a subcategory of the migrant community and more as a subjective understanding of the experience of migration. The use of the term "diaspora" indicates the adoption of new ways of approaching and understanding questions of identity politics. Diasporic subjects are seen not as some anomaly to the norm but as distinct versions of a modern, transnational, intercultural experience. "The diaspora experience… is defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity… Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference" (Hall 1990, 235).
The adoption of the term also reflects the keenness of the Tibetan intellectuals to appropriate any vocabulary that provides them an opportunity to express their identity to the external world. It enables us to theorize Tibetan diasporic identity in terms of contradictions and possibilities (see Anand 2003), a task that is undertaken in this chapter. These contradictions not only constrain and contain the possibilities for self-expression that are available but, more significantly, are productive of the very identities in question (see Venturino 1997). This approach also challenges the "victimisation paradigm" [56] so familiar in analyses of Tibetan identity.
THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF TIBETANNESS
Since 1959 the Chinese, the Tibetan elite in exile, and their Western supporters and detractors have competed to legitimize their own representations of Tibetan history and current events. This "confrontation of 'representations'" (Goldstein 1997, 56) is about history and political status; at the same time it is intimately connected to cultural representations and identity. It is not possible to speak of Tibet or Tibetans without taking into account the constitution of these categories within representational practices and identity discourses. As argued in the previous chapter, the Tibet question is as much a political issue as it is connected to cultural politics of the modern world. Rather than take political identity as something given, we should see it as socially and politically constructed. In the words of Malkki: "Identity is always mobile and processual, partly self-construction, partly categorisation by others… [it] is a cre-olized aggregate composed through bricolage" (1992, 37). "Tibet" in this sense is an "imagining community." [57] A unified Tibetan nation currently exists only through the anticipated (re)construction of its parts: occupied country, dispersed communities, and a globally networked politico- cultural support system of Tibet support groups (Venturino 1997, 103). Thus Tibetan national imagination is a product/process of strategic essentialism oriented toward the goal of reclaiming the Tibetan homeland.
Tibet as an Imagining Nation
The issue of Tibetan national identity inevitably involves the question of whether Tibet is/was a nation. While Tibetans argue that theirs was a historical nation, China denies this. This rhetoric ignores that the need to present one's own community as a nation is a modern phenomenon. Nationalism is on the one hand an ideological movement toward the construction of a nation. On the other hand it is a product of heightened consciousness of national identity among a people. As Mayall (1990) points out, nationalism has become structurally embedded as the basis of the modern state everywhere. Given this scenario, it is hardly surprising that Tibetans have had to appropriate the language of nationalism in order to deal with both Chinese occupation and modernity. Tibetans claim that they have the right to determine the course of action that Tibet as a body politic, as a nation, should take. While the Tibetan issue is often discussed in terms of the preservation of a culture, the most important question concerns the right of people to self-determination. The Dalai Lama-led government-in-exile claims to speak for this right of all Tibetan people: "The whole of Tibet known as Cholka-Sum (U-Tsang, Kham and Amdo) should become a self-governing democratic political entity founded on law by agreement of the people for the common good and the protection of themselves and their environment, in association with the People's Republic of China" (His Holiness the Dalai Lama 1988).
This statement reflects a desire to project Tibet as "one" political unit, something that did not exist historically, at least during the modern period. The Anglo-Tibetan encounter forced the Tibetans to confront the differing perceptions of nation and state identity held by traditional and modern societies. Conscious though half-hearted attempts by the Tibetan government before 1950 to model itself on a nation-state line (see Goldstein 1989; Shakya 1999) clearly failed. However, the discourse of nationalism has had better luck in the diaspora. The Tibetan government- in-exile in Dharamsala makes claims not only over Central Tibet but also over Amdo and Kham. The claim is based not on the historical evidence of political control but on the existence of certain cultural and religious commonalities. So, should the claim of the Tibetan government-in-exile to represent Tibetans of all three provinces be seen as a case of historical fraud? Certainly this is not necessarily the case.
The distinction between "political" and "ethnographic" Tibet made by commentators including Bell (1924, 1928; see also Goldstein 1997), while intellectually relevant, suffers from ethnocentrism. Concepts and categories used in the West are automatically considered to be transparently transferable and universally applicable. The Tibetan body politic is often read in such terms. While the close connection between politics, religion, and culture in the case of Tibet is recognized, analyses often fail to transcend the belief in the separation of the sacral and the temporal that lies at the base of Enlightenment thinking and informs most scholarly endeavors. In the case of Tibet, however, politics, culture, and religion are intrinsically interconnected. This can be seen in the concept of chos srid gnyis Idan (dual religious and secular system of government) that is said to have characterized the Tibetan polity before 1959 (for details, see Kolas 1996; Smith 1996). The Dalai Lama combined both strands at the top of the "religious" and "secular" hierarchies. Despite the existence of local deities, rituals, and practices, Lhasa acted as a nerve center of religious practices. Not only was it the destination of many pilgrimage routes; it also had big monasteries of various prominent sects of Tibetan Buddhism. It was a center for learning and for trade. Thus, the limited temporal authority of the so-called Lamaist state (or the Lhasa government) did not affect the significant influence Lhasa exercised over the entire region inhabited by Tibetans. Since the Dalai Lama-led government-in-exile claims to be a continuation of the Lhasa government from 1959, it is within its right to speak for all Tibetans, especially in the long-drawn situation of crises in which the historical markers of Tibetan identity are under the threat of erasure. This use of "Tibet" as a political device is legitimized by several instances of similar historical practices. Indeed, modern nationhood involves the binding of community into a territory as, in the words of Bennett, "occupants of a territory that has been historicized and subjects of a history that has been territorialized" (1995, 141).
Bell's distinction between "political" and "ethnographic" Tibet, while being problematic, is nevertheless useful. While political Tibet was U-tsang, the boundary of ethnographic Tibet extended to include Amdo and Kham. What bound the people in the regions was not allegiance to one temporal authority but elements of common culture and religion. These elements may be seen as forming the basis of a Tibetan ethnie or ethnic community. As Smith argues, ethnie includes a collective proper name; a myth of common ancestry, shared memory of a rich "ethnohistory" (especially of a golden age); differentiating elements of common culture; association with specific homeland; and, last, a sense of solidarity for significant sectors of the population (1991, 21). All these features were present in varying degrees in the history of Tibetans.
More often than not the proponents of nationalism take a pri-mordialist view. Such a view has been rightly contested in the academic discourse on nationalism (see Anderson 1983; Balakrishnan 1996; Bhabha 1990; Billig 1995; Chatterjee 1986, 1993; Eley and
Suny 1996; Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 1990; Hobs
bawm and Ranger 1992; Smith 1991), [58] and it has been argued that "invented traditions" (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1992) are used to create "imagined communities" (Anderson 1983). Nationalism is seen as a theory of legitimacy, "a political principle that holds that the political and national unit should be congruent" (Gellner 1983, 1). According to their critics, instrumentalist scholars of nationalism often overemphasize the capacity of nationalism as an ideology to engender nations. Smith argues how modern nationalism crucially depends on its primordial ethnic past (1991). However, I retain skepticism about the primordiality of the past and, instead of trying to situate myself somewhere "in – between" in the Instrumentalist-Primordialist debate, I adopt a discursive approach (see Balakrishnan 1996; Bhabha 1990; Chatterjee 1986, 1993), striving for a more diversified and inclusive understanding of nationalism that highlights its cross-cultural variants. While the centrality of a process of imagination in constituting a nation is noteworthy, the existence of an archive from which this process draws resources is also undeniable. While this archive shapes the imagining community, the process of imagination not only draws upon an existing archive but in the process re-creates it.
In the case of Tibet, this archive may be seen in terms of what Hobsbawm calls "proto-nationalism": "variants of feeling of collective belonging which already existed and which could operate, as it were, potentially on a macro-political scale which could fit in with modern states and nations" (1990, 46). Dreyfus (1994) has applied this idea of protonationalism to the Tibetan case and argues that a sense of belonging to a unique community that is political, despite the lack of any institutional expression, can be found in various aspects of Tibetan life even before 1959.
Even if we recognize that significant elements of Tibetan "national" identity preceded the twentieth century, it is only the interaction with modernity and colonialism that gave specific meanings to elements of a common identity. Tibetanness is a product of the processes of modernization, colonialism, and displacement. Before moving into a detailed discussion of diasporic Tibetanness, let me make a brief observation on the discourse of Tibetan national identity as circulating within Tibet.
DISCOURSE OF TIBETANNESS AS ARTICULATED IN CHINA'S TIBET
Discussion of Tibetanness as being processed and produced in diaspora should not ignore Tibetan identity as articulated within Tibet, that is, in China's Tibet. After suffering severe repression during the period of Cultural Revolution, Tibet has witnessed "economic liberalization" followed by some relaxation on religious practices. This, in turn, has led to a revival of cultural and religious identity. While there is little doubt that some cultural elements were encouraged by Chinese- Tibetan authorities in a typical modernist pattern of museumizing "exotic'Vminority cultures, active support of the local people has been more important in this revival. However, as contributors to Goldstein and Kapstein (1998) point out, "revival" is a problematic term for what is happening in Tibet both because it fails to appreciate changes and because its meaning is often conflated with restoration. Despite attempts to objectify, culture is always in flux. In the case of Tibet, some individual traits are common with the past, some have changed in appearance and some in the importance attached to them, and some are now extinct (see Adams 1996, 1998; Kolas and Thowsen 2005). Moreover, one should realize that what passes as revival is deeply informed by contemporary politics. The key issue affecting the revival is the Tibet question-the conflict over the political status of Tibet vis-a-vis China (Goldstein, in Goldstein and Kapstein 1998, 14).
As the much-studied Lhasa demonstrations that took place more than a decade ago indicate, religion still plays an important role in the assertion of national identity by the Tibetans. Most demonstrations started at the initiative of monks and nuns [59] and most centered on the Jokhang temple in the Barkhor area of Lhasa. However, something fundamental has changed. While earlier revolts broke out for explicitly religious purposes, now a more instrumentalist and activist view of religion is taken (see Schwartz 1996; for a different view on the significance of the political in these protests, see Mills 2001). The official policy of religious tolerance is used to make political demands. The priority of many monks and nuns who participate in the demonstrations, often at high costs (including arrest, torture, expulsion from their institutions, and in extreme cases, execution) seems to be the political struggle for independence (see Barnett and Akiner 1996). [60] They are willing to risk the religious freedom granted to them for their political demands. Even in the name of religion, what is emphasized is not aspects of Buddhism (which is limiting for any nationalist aspiration on account of its universalistic dimensions) but specifically Tibetan elements of the religion.
The religious/cultural revival as well as instances of political protests inside Tibet exemplifies a rich mixture of traditional and innovative strategies in Tibet's struggle for survival against an authoritarian state system. The Chinese official rhetoric of a "multinational" state has offered the opportunity to Tibetans to reclaim, in part, a heterodox vision of history in which separateness and Tibetanness are highlighted and valorized. Often, the target of sporadic protests in Lhasa and elsewhere are the Western tourists who are considered potential supporters for the Tibetan cause. The main factor influencing the political protests and assertion of national identity in Tibet, therefore, is not religion per se or its suppression but Chinese political occupation.
In all these struggles over national identity, the key symbol for Tibetans has been, not surprisingly, the Dalai Lama. The Chinese realized the potential subversiveness of allowing Tibetans the religious freedom to worship his figure. They have thus tried to ban his worship and "encourage" other Tibetan lamas to denounce him as a "splittist" (one who is trying to split Tibet from its motherland, China). The Dalai Lama's traditional dual role as the head of religious and political systems has indeed been important. However, the political side of chos srid gnyis Idan is increasingly identified with democracy, and young Tibetans look upon the Dalai Lama as a world leader and as a symbol of democracy and human rights (Schwartz 1996). As happened to former imperial powers, such as the British in India, the nationalists to a large extent have taken the discourses of the dominant power and used it against them. China's claim that it is modernizing Tibet is questioned by those who have developed an alternative vocabulary (and alternative meanings) on the basis of a continuing flow of information and ideas from China as well as the outside world on democracy, human rights, and national struggles (see Sperling 1996). Observers of Tibet are increasingly recognizing this resilience among the Tibetans and the various innovative uses to which traditions have been put in the service of national identity. Such critical endeavors are certainly a way forward as compared to the idea and practice of Exotica Tibet, of a
"lost horizon," a Shangri-la lost forever to the world, as espoused in most popular literature in the West.
(DIS)PLACED TIBETANS: NATIONALISM IN EXILE
A repressive state regime is not the only limitation on articulations of national identity within Tibet. Lack of organized opposition to China may also be attributed to the fact that significant numbers of religious and lay elite of traditional Tibet (along with the Dalai Lama) fled across the border to India. Since 1959 more than a hundred thousand Tibetans have become refugees. Most of them live in various settlements in India and Nepal. Others have dispersed to several countries, including Australia, Switzerland, Canada, and the United States. The nerve center of the refugee community, however, is Dharamsala, which is the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. The Dalai Lama's government from the outset has sought to project itself as a continuation of the pre – 1959 Lhasa government. Though this government is not recognized by any state in the international community, for all practical purposes the Tibetans living in the diaspora, and many inside Tibet, consider it the legitimate authority. Continuity with the traditional Tibetan state (pre-1950) is stressed. The authoritarian state apparatus in Chinese-occupied Tibet, combined with censorship of information, ensures tha
t Tibetan nationalism is far more developed in the diasporic community. The discourses of international human rights, democracy, decolonization, and self-determination have allowed sophisticated articulations of national identity among the Tibetans in exile. The idea in the world media of what constitutes Tibetanness often comes from the words and actions of the exile community.
Tibetanness, as many observers of Tibetan diasporic communities realize, is a highly contested and pluralistic identity. Tibetanness is articulated, in theory and in praxis, at several hierarchical as well as overlapping levels. It is a discursive product of many complementary and contesting dynamics such as the policy pronouncements of Dharamsala, the politics of more radical elements, gendered and generational practices, Exotica Tibet, and so on. Several factors influence and shape it, some of these directly related to the politics of representation. These include refugee status, [61] space-time projections of homeland, [62] the personality of the Dalai Lama, the overriding need for the preservation of culture, Western audiences with preconceived notions about Tibet and Tibetans (Exotica Tibet), self-perception, and most important, the desire to project a sense of continuity in a changing external environment. In order to understand what the category "Tibetan" means, it is important to look at some of these factors. Discussion of Exotica Tibet as a major factor foregrounds the productive role played by representational practices.
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