Thousands of Tibetans in Majnu Ka Tila feel rootless

Thousands of Tibetan refugees in Delhi’s New Aruna Nagar, popularly known as Majnu Ka Tila, feel generations to come will have no “mother land”. Waiting to get back to the “forbidden land” they call home, the exiled people of Tibetan origin are doing their best to stick to their traditions.

The colony founded in the 1960s for the refugees is home to more than 4,000 Tibetans. The chaotic lanes have its walls covered with colourful prayer flags and Free Tibet posters. The narrow streets have many stories of struggle, activists on fast, prayers lamps lit, photos of Dalai Lama, but underlying all of this is hope.

Hope for Tibetans is to finally have a homeland, to be able to go back. For the generation born in India, they all feel that they have lost their roots. “I was born in India, but is this my home I don’t know. My parents had escaped Tibet in crisis,” said Tenzing. There are many like Tenzing who feel that they are stateless.

The recent decision of Delhi high court reiterating the Indian Citizenship Act is a small victory for those who have no documents to ascertain their existence.

“We can’t go back, we can’t stay here. I don’t have a passport. If Tibet was free we would go back, of course that scenario will also be difficult, but we will be ‘home’,” said Tenzing.

In the movie Seven Years in Tibet, Tibet is called the Forbidden Land — earlier Tibet had almost a total ban on foreigners prior to the Chinese invasion. “Now it is a forbidden land for us. Life is also tough for those who are stuck in Tibet, they are living in many restrictions,” explained Sonam Tsering who runs a travel agency in the area.

The villagers in Tibet are under constant surveillance and every movement is restricted. Tibet is no longer off-limits to outsiders. Chinese government sources say that 15 million tourists visited the Tibet Autonomous Region in 2014. Yet, 65 years after the Communist Chinese invasion Tibet is still a forbidden land. But for an entirely different reason: Tibet is now a prison for the Tibetans living there.

Since 2009, 141 Tibetans have self-immolated in Tibet, 122 of whom died immediately or shortly thereafter, according to officials in Dharamsala.

According to a Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy report on human rights in Tibet: “The self-immolations should be regarded as an indicator of the continuing deterioration of conditions inside Tibet: the lack of religious freedom, the prevalence of arbitrary detention and torture, and Tibetans’ unequal access to development.”

Apart from statelessness, refugees feel the invasion has caused cultural genocide, “Tibetan culture is dying in Tibet — our philosophy, our religion, our language, everything. The generations to come will feel completely alienated with the culture. Even in Tibet, Chinese languages are being taught and even pictures of His Holiness are confiscated,” said an old monk who serves in a Buddhist temple in the Majnu Ka Tila.