Eighteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

This paper is a sociological exploration of the lives of the Tibetan refugee community in India and education of their children. It is based on the findings of the author’s doctoral thesis submitted at Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies (ZHCES), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India (2008) and subsequent research. For a refugee community in exile, the education of a new generation takes on a new urgency - it is not only a modern academic standard that is sought to be achieved, but an entire culture, including its language, literature, and art that is sought to be learned through the medium of education in an alien country. The author views education through a sociological lens and uses an amalgamated inter-disciplinary framework along with a combination of primary and secondary data to analyse the issue. This paper sheds light on the educational policies, curriculum, pedagogy and diverse experiences of schooling of Tibetan youth in India. It explores their sense of identity- their Tibetan-ness; their aspirations and dilemmas towards the Tibetan freedom struggle. This paper explores the links between education, culture, perceptions of ethnic identity and future life chances of Tibetan refugees in the host country and the role of pre-migrational and post-migrational experiences in the lives of refugees in exile. It calls for refugee research in Asia from local, heterogeneous and multiple inter-disciplinary perspectives, rather than a uniform and limited, homogenous and Eurocentric approach.