Keep Religion and Politics Separate

By Jigme Duntak

Tibetan Parliament in Exile

After reading Samten G. Karmay’s article “Tibetan Religion and Politics” his statement about a secular state being “neutral when it deals with religion by not supporting or opposing any particular sect [and also not giving] any preferential treatment for a citizen who belongs to a particular religion”, I thought about how this would relate to the Shugden issue, which I just previously wrote a post on (see here).

In June of 1996 the Tibetan Parliament in Exile passed a resolution concerning the Shugden issue that was passed unanimously (see here). The resolution’s first clause had the Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies and the Parliament of the Tibetans in Exile pledge to abide by his His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s every advice against the propitiation of Shugden. In addition, the other seven clauses within the resolution encouraged all Tibetans to follow suite with this announcement.

The question that came to my mind after reading this was why was this resolution passed by a supposed secular government?

Global Nomads: The Emergence of the Tibetan Diaspora (Part I)

Global Nomads: The Emergence of the Tibetan Diaspora (Part I)

By Seonaigh MacPherson, University of British Columbia
Anne-Sophie Bentz, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
Dawa Bhuti Ghoso

A young Tibetan woman participates in a demonstration in Switzerland in April 2008.

Related Articles: •Nepal’s Dependence on Exporting Labor •Characteristics of the Asian Born in the United States •The Political Importance of Diasporas

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September 2008

Once imbued in an aura of adventure, remoteness, and exoticism, the region of the high Himalayan and Central Asian plateau is a global hot spot for ethnic, national, and territorial conflicts.

At the heart of the region is Tibet, whose struggles reflect those of the region at large. The Tibetan capital city of Lhasa was ground zero for the March 2008 protests, which soon spread to Tibetan regions in other provinces.

Approximately 122,078 Tibetans, including those born in Tibet and those of Tibetan ancestry, live in exile in Asia and Oceania, Europe, and North America, according to a census conducted in 1998 by the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) in Dharamsala, India (The CTA website now puts the figure at 111,170).

Meanwhile, China is home to about 5.4 million Tibetans, according to the 2000 Chinese census, with less than half of them in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) and most others in communities now absorbed within western provinces of China.

Tibetans in both indigenous and diaspora contexts participate in high levels of internal migration and out-migration that pose unique challenges and opportunities to their continued existence as a distinctive culture and people.