[Lobsang Sangay, the political head of the Tibetans and the prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile, said the Central Tibetan Administration had left it up to each individual to decide whether to vote in India. “From what we hear, so far only a few people have registered, which could also be because the announcement came very late and people were caught unawares,” he said.]
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Anuradha
Sharma
A
view of the town of McLeod Ganj in the hill station of Dharamsala in March.
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DHARAMSALA, India — This year marks the first
election in which Indian-born Tibetan refugees have the right to vote, but as
the state of Himachal Pradesh, including the residents of this shady hill
station, went to the polls on Wednesday, there were few Tibetans among them.
“It is magnanimous on the part of the Indian
government to recognize the Tibetans as natural citizens as they, like me, are
born in India,” Tenzin Tsundue, 40, a poet-activist, said sardonically.
News and analysis on the world’s largest
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“But the announcement doesn’t really suit the
political reality,” he continued. “We are legally foreigners — though
sentimentally we call ourselves refugees — subject to various restrictions on
something as basic as movement within India and ownership of properties. How
then can a foreigner take part in the Indian elections?”
In Dharamsala, only 237 eligible Tibetan
refugees submitted their voter registration forms by the deadline of April 15,
said Harish Gajju, the magistrate in Dharamsala. Of those, 217 were issued
voter identity cards.
According to a 2009 demographic survey by the
Central Tibetan Administration, the government in exile, 13,701 Tibetan
refugees live in Dharamsala, home to the Tibetan government in exile and the Dalai
Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, and 94,203 in all of India. But it had no
data on the number of Tibetans who would be eligible to vote in India.
“The response is very poor,” Mr. Gajju said.
“We were hoping about 5,000 to 7,000 Tibetan refugees would enroll.”
He said the Tibetans were concerned that
registering to vote would mean losing their status as refugees, which is
attached to both their Tibetan identity and government entitlements. “We tried
to create awareness and allay their fears as much as we could,” he said.
Mr. Tsundue and other Tibetans living in
Dharamsala said they didn’t want to participate in India’s democracy because it
was a step toward integrating with a country they hoped to leave for their true
home.
“We have never felt that we are citizens of
India not because we didn’t want to, but because we have been preoccupied with
our struggle for Tibet’s freedom,” said Mr. Tsundue, who is a member of the
Tibetan Youth Congress, which demands complete independence for Tibet, as
opposed to the exiled government’s advocacy of genuine autonomy within China.
“This is my only goal in life, and one day, I hope to go back to our own
country.”
Bhuchung D. Sonam, a Tibetan-born writer and
commentator on Tibetan issues, said Tibetans also had their own electoral
process in choosing leaders for the Central Tibetan Administration.
“We did not come here to take part in this
system,” he said. “We came here to fight for Tibet’s freedom so the question
can also arise about our future legitimacy.”
Lobsang Sangay, the political head of the
Tibetans and the prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile, said the
Central Tibetan Administration had left it up to each individual to decide
whether to vote in India. “From what we hear, so far only a few people have
registered, which could also be because the announcement came very late and
people were caught unawares,” he said.
But he praised India for allowing Tibetans the
right to vote. “The Indian government has done a lot for the Tibetans, and this
is also an extension of that,” he said.
Mr. Sangay, who took over the reins of the
Tibetan government in exile after the Dalai Lama relinquished his role as the
political head, was born in the Lamahatta Tibetan camps of the Darjeeling hills
in West Bengal in 1968. When asked whether he would vote, he said, “I would
like to stay away because my primary objective is to look after the welfare of
Tibetans across the world.”
The few Tibetans who have registered to vote
are trying to convince others that participating in the Indian elections would
give them a platform in India to lobby for their cause, rather than hinder it.
Namgyal Dolkar Lhagyari, vice president of the
Gu-Chu-Sum Movement of Tibet, an organization in the Dharamsala hill station
town of McLeod Ganj that helps former Tibetan political prisoners, said that
through the power of the vote, Tibetans could pressure India to push China to
start a dialogue with the Dalai Lama.
As the Indian-born daughter of Tibetan
refugees, Ms. Lhagyari, 27, fought a legal battle to get an Indian passport,
which the government had previously refused to give to Tibetans like her
because of their refugee status. In 2010, the Delhi High Courtupheld her claim to Indian citizenship.
“As an Indian citizen and as a person of
Tibetan origin, I have my duty towards both the countries,” she said. “I am
trying to do just that by exercising my right to vote.”
But even with her hard-won right, Ms. Lhagyari
was dispirited by the lack of choices on her first ballot, which she will cast
in her hometown of Dehradun in Uttarakhand State. “There’s not a single person
suitable for the job,” she said.
She listed her reasons for her disenchantment
with the major national parties: Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party
did well in his home state of Gujarat, but she didn’t agree with his Hindu
nationalist agenda; Rahul Gandhi of the Indian National Congress seemed like “a
good guy” but wasn’t prime minister material; and Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam
Aadmi Party was a “big disappointment.”
Those sentiments about the parties’ national
leaders will inform her decision about their local candidates, she said. “Looks
like I will have to go all the way to my hometown, Dehradun, to exercise the
‘none of the above’ option,” she said.
Anuradha Sharma is a
freelance journalist based in Kolkata. Follow her on Twitter at @NuraSharma.
@ The New York Times
@ The New York Times