Dibyesh Anand - Geopolitical Exotica

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; Hobsbawm 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.

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).