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ABSTRACT
This paper examines the location and production of liminality with regard to voting rights of Tibetan exile community in India. Liminality is related here to the legal and bureaucratic ‘inbetweenness’ that characterises and orders the life of the Tibetan exiles in India. Tibetans born in India have been registered as voters in India’s electoral list albeit without an accompanying claim or path to citizenship. The paper argues that these voting rights are simultaneously contested and embraced by the Tibetan exile community. Responses of the exile community to voting rights are produced by the interaction between (a) the lived experience of statelessness and (b) complex constructions of cultural, political and legal identity. Both these factors are fundamentally informed by the liminal space that the exile community inhabits in India.
Acknowledgments
Research and fieldwork for this paper is funded by a research grant from Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation from 2016 to 2019. Project No #RG002-N-16. The author is thankful to Engin Isin, James Leibold, Thubten Samphel, Binitha Thampi and Ruth Gamble for their helpful comments on the paper. Shikha Mahajan, Madhura Balasubramaniam and Tsewang Dorji are due thanks for their valuable research assistance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Planning Commission, Central Tibetan Administration, Demographic Survey 2009, 14.
2. See Houston and Wright, “Making Remaking Tibetan Identities”; Dodin and Rather, Imagining Tibet; Anand, “(Re)Imagining Nationalism”; Falcone and Wangchuk, “We’re Not Home”; Yeh, “Exile Meets Homeland”; Santianni, “Movement for Free Tibet”; and Siganporia and Karioris, “Introduction: Rupture and Exile”.
3. van Gennep, The Rites of Passage.
4. Thomassen, “Uses and Meanings of Liminality.”
5. Mälksoo, “The Challenge of Liminality for International Relations Theory”; and McConnell, “Liminal Geopolitics.”
6. Rumelili, “Liminal Identities”; Kuus, Geopolitics Reframed; Mälksoo, “Liminality and Contested Europeanness”; and Mälksoo, Politics of Becoming European.
7. McConnell, Rehearsing the State.
8. See note 3 above.
9. Turner, The Forest of Symbols.
10. Szakolczai, “Liminality and Experience,” 142.
11. Thomassen, “Uses and Meanings Liminality,” 5.
12. McConnell, “Citizens and Refugees,” 976.
13. McConnell, Rehearsing the State, 122.
14. McGranahan, “Refusal and the Gift of Citizenship,” 338.
15. Interview with author 13 September 2015, Mcleodganj.
16. Election Commission of India http://ecisveep.nic.in/voters/general-voters/ Accessed on 12 September 2018.
17. Election Commission of India, “Manual on Electoral Rolls,” 47.
18. Government of India Ministry of Home Affairs, “Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question,” 2.
19. Ibid., 3.
20. Tibetan Review, “1450 Tibetans Registered to Vote”; and Monlam, “Exile Tibetans Vote.”
21. Planning Commission, Central Tibetan Administration, “Demographic Survey 2009,” 27.
22. Brox, “Constructing a Tibetan Demos.”
23. Central Tibetan Administration, “Charter of the Tibetans-in-xExile,” 1.
24. McGranahan, “Refusal as Political Practice.”
25. Planning Commission, Central Tibetan Administration, “Demographic Survey 2009,” 46.
26. Interview with the author 19 September 2017, Tibetan Parliament in Exile Secretariat. Dharamshala.
27. Interview with author 29 January 2017, Dharamshala.
28. Interview with author, 3 February 2017, McLeodganj.
29. Focus group discussion with Tibetan NGOs on 12 September 2015, Mcleodganj.
30. Ibid.
31. Interview with author, 12 September 2017, Mcleodganj.
32. Interview with author, July 2016, Dickyi Larsoe settlement, Bylakuppe.
33. Planning Commission, Central Tibetan Administration, “Demographic Survey 2009,” 14.
34. The 2009 Tibetan Demographic Survey reported a general literacy rate in 2009 of 82.4% with a decadal change of 7.9%. The 1998 demographic survey reported a decadal change of 10%.
35. Turner, Forest of Symbols, 234.
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Sonika Gupta
Sonika Gupta is Associate Professor of Global Politics and China Studies at the IITM China Studies Center. She has a M.Phil and Ph.D from Centre for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and is the Founder of IITM China Studies Centre. Her current research interests include issues surrounding the Tibetan community in India, International Relations Theory and Chinese Foreign Policy.