Protecting kin

China's preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics have put Tibet back in the spotlight. However, the many protests that surrounded the torch relay, as it made its way past heavily armed riot police around the world, have not had much to say about an important element in the Tibet issue – the exile communities. Of the nearly 200,000 Tibetan exiles around the world, most are in the Southasian region. Southasia's two most significant receivers of Tibetans, India and Nepal, have historically had very different policies towards these refugees, contingent on the two countries' different political and social circumstances. Now, however, accelerated political change in Nepal, increasing security worries and governmental reluctance to take responsibility for Tibetans in India, coupled with an apparent Chinese willingness to negotiate over Tibet, are opening a potential space for India and Nepal to evolve a common policy of engaging with China over the Tibet issue.

Renewed talks between Beijing and representatives of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, in early July signalled Beijing's belated acceptance of the Dalai Lama as a legitimate stakeholder in the future of Tibet. This is in no small part due to the rising international clamour about Tibet resulting from the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, in the context of China's stepped-up pursuit of international markets and influence. Of cou rse, this is all taking place in a world that has become keenly aware of the plight of the people of Tibet, thanks to the Dalai Lama's decades-long campaign.

Despite this, however, the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile (the Central Tibetan Administration or CTA) in Dharamsala, exercises very little real control over the fate of those inside Tibet. For some of those outside Tibet, the CTA is indeed able to provide significant welfare and resettlement services; but when it comes to the crunch, it is almost completely powerless against the laws and conduct of the host country. In this way, the future of Tibet itself, as well as that of its exiles, may rest far more in the hands of the major host countries, India and Nepal, than has thus far been obvious. At this point, if New Delhi and Kathmandu were to choose to pursue a joint policy on addressing both the exile community and the resolution of the Tibet issue, their voices would be among the most powerful.

Calculated ambiguity
Broadly speaking, India and Nepal have in recent years continued to follow well-worn but separate paths in their treatment of the Tibetan refugees. If there is a commonality between Indian and Nepali policy towards Tibetans, it is a certain calculated ambiguity. India, however, has still tended towards more favourable treatment. This is certainly understandable, with Nepal locked in a deeper embrace of the Chinese giant and lacking spare resources to accommodate refugees. As such, Kathmandu policy has been to reject new Tibetan arrivals wherever possible, either deporting them outright or sending them on to India through reception centres designed to get them out of the country within two weeks.

In India, the official attitude towards Tibetan refugees is far from straightforward. During 1959, Jawaharlal Nehru, caving to public and parliamentary pressure, cited cultural links to justify the reception of the Dalai Lama and tens of thousands of  fleeing Tibetans ("culturally speaking," Nehru proclaimed that year to applauding members of Parliament, "Tibet is an offshoot of India"). From 1959 onwards, India provided settlements, documents and jobs to incoming Tibetans, who were to a certain extent inserted into the narratives of 'minorities' that the Indian state used to deal with its own diverse internal groups.

Since then, India's policy towards Tibetans has hardened somewhat, even as economic relations between New Delhi and Beijing have warmed. Today, however, the Indian government appears to be feeling pressure from the international community to allow more space to the Tibetan cause. This perceptible shift in policy can be seen in its relative leniency in dealing with the protests around the Olympic torch in India. Although security was massively stepped up, there was also a marked absence of harsh crackdown of the type that was (and continues to be) witnessed in Nepal. Another notable example of this was the move to allow the young Karmapa Lama (the head of Tibetan Buddhism's second most important sect, and widely acknowledged as the Dalai Lama's successor) to visit the United States in May, after he had been effectively confined to his Himachal Pradesh monastery ever since he fled from Tibet in 2000. By simultaneously maintaining good relations with Beijing through a "shrugging of its shoulders" (as one BBC correspondent has put it) about Tibet, and allowing the issue to gain an even higher profile though Tibetan leaders, New Delhi may be hoping to effect positive Chinese action on Tibet without jeopardising its own relationship with Asia's other superpower.

Legitimating independence
For Nepal, this may provide some useful room in which to manoeuvre. The recent ousting of former king Gyanendra Shah, and the prospective installation of a government dominated by the Maoists, carries the potential for significant shifts in policy. However, it may be too simplistic to surmise that the new government's political leanings will automatically prompt it to pursue a closer relationship with China. If such developments were to take place, in fact, Nepal would doubtless find itself under increased pressure both internationally and perhaps from India, whose northern borders would see increased incursions by refugees if the more regulated Nepali frontier (currently used by most Tibetans) was to be closed.

Another possible option for Nepal is to mimic India's earlier position. Still fresh from Independence and Partition, and experiencing both the euphoria and idealism associated with self-rule, the Indian government in 1959 found it useful to provide for incoming Tibetans. Monarchic and somewhat more static and conservative, Nepal at the time did not mobilise such sentiments, even though it did allow the refugees to remain in Western-supported camps. Now, with the reduction in pressure from internal conflict, and with a new need to legitimise itself domestically and internationally, the government of the newly declared Republic of Nepal could find the rhetoric of protection of 'kin' from Tibet to be a useful expedient. The same arguments about common cultural roots available to India carry significantly more force in Nepal, after all, for reasons of both religion and ethnicity.

Indeed, Nepal could join with India in placing indirect pressure on China to move towards a resolution of the Tibet situation while remaining non-antagonistic – perhaps improving its treatment of Tibetans by using a complex pattern of hospitality based on stringent regulation, as recently demonstrated by India. From recent experience, there would certainly be significant support from the international community for such a course of action, including with potential benefits of aid and general international standing for the Kathmandu government. Working more intimately with India on its Tibet policy could also provide for a closer relationship with India, something that has ebbed and flowed during the past war-torn decade.

The calculated ambiguity with which India and Nepal have historically pursued their Tibetan policies is, despite historical differences, an important point of commonality between them. Agreeing on the need for care and the avoidance of too public a commitment to either side, Kathmandu and New Delhi could now be poised to capitalise on this, to project a stronger voice towards Beijing in favour of resolution. With support from both India and the international community, Nepal could be a voice in a friendly chorus encouraging China to seek a mutually acceptable solution to the problem of Tibet.

If we are to be optimistic about the future of Tibet and Tibetans, then it may in part be to the expanding exile community that we need to look. India, and perhaps Nepal in collaboration with its southern neighbour, could play a central role internationally as well as regionally in the preservation of Tibet as both a cultural entity and a unique territory. With a favourable regional political climate, the Tibetan exile community in India and Nepal in particular could gain a position of greater influence, indirectly, over their homeland's future than their compatriots inside Tibet.

~ Ella Rolfe is a journalist in Lahore, with longstanding links to Ladakh.