Indian Tibetans fight for symbolic homeland
NEW DELHI (AFP) — Migmar Tsering has never seen Tibet, but he says he knows it is the anti-Delhi: its streets are clean, the water drinkable, and the air unpolluted.
Yet even if his dream of Tibet's independence came true, he would remain in India.
"If we get freedom, I will go once with my mother to see what it is like and then I will come back," Tsering, a driver, says.
The 39-year-old and many of his Hindi-speaking peers in Delhi's unofficial refugee colony -- Majnu ka Tila -- say they prefer life here.
Yet these children of refugees are fiercely opposed to China's control of Tibet.
Some, like Tsering, have served terms in the Tibetan Youth Congress, which demands Tibet's independence rather than its spiritual leader the Dalai Lama's call for greater autonomy under Chinese rule.
Many have joined pro-Tibet protests in the leadup to the arrival of the Olympic torch here Thursday, and plan to take part in more demonstrations during the flame's relay through the capital.
Sitting under a canvas roof that covers his few belongings -- a small fridge, two beds, and a flower-draped Dalai Lama photo -- Tsering explains his passion.
"My way of living and thinking is not the same as the people in Tibet," he says, citing cultural rifts between his peers and more recent refugees.
"But it is our motherland. We will live or die for it," he said.
Tibet serves only as a symbolic homeland for some of the nearly 200,000 refugees worldwide.
But even as a symbol, Tibet's autonomy is important to the exiled community, according to Robert Barnett, director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia University in New York.
"Tibet's national identity is important psychologically. It gives a feeling of having an anchor in this world," Barnett said in a phone interview.
India houses the world's largest Tibetan refugee population, with at least 100,000 displaced people.
The largest concentrations are in southern Mysore and the northern hill town of Dharamshala, home to the Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile.
Tsering's family was one of the first to settle in Majnu ka Tila, fleeing Tibet with thousands of others, including the Dalai Lama, after an unsuccessful uprising against China in 1959.
Today, the 3,000 urban dwellers in the riverside colony comprise an elite rank among a mostly agrarian refugee community.
"Delhi is a land of opportunity. They prefer to stick here where they can easily get jobs rather than moving to a village," says Tsering Thayae, secretary of the Tibetan Welfare Office, run by the exile government.
Here they can rent rooms cheaply, send their children to a Tibetan school, and find work -- often as merchants selling imports in the city's many markets.
Majnu ka Tila's marketplace, a long row of Internet cafes and handicraft shops, has been uncharacteristically quiet in recent weeks, as residents joined the protests against China's crackdown on unrest last month in Tibet.
"We have been seeing protests for Tibet since we were born. It is a part of our culture," says Tenzing Damdul, 33, a resident.
Demonstrators have descended on New Delhi from as far as Dharamshala for the protests organised by the Tibetan Solidarity Committee, which supports greater autonomy for Tibet.
The recent unrest has thrown the spotlight on China ahead of this year's Beijing Olympics.
Ahead of the torch relay, India has deployed thousands of police to block Tibetan refugees from disrupting the Olympic event.
"We have to free Tibet to preserve our identity, which is going away," said Tenzing Wangchuk, 33, a former Tibetan Youth Congress member.
"When you ask a youngster to sing a Tibetan song, they can't. Ask them what's the newest hip hop song and they know all the details," he said.
To counter that, Tsering takes his 11-year-old son to protests, following a tradition his parents' generation started.
"If we don't get freedom for a long time, the Tibetans here will become Indians and the Tibetans in Europe will become Europeans," he warns.
"It will be too late."
str/ejl/bp/tha/bgs
China-unrest-Tibet-rights-India-refugees
