Lessons learned from Tibetan Student Experiences in India during the Pandemic

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Reproduction of Social Inequalities: Violence, Exclusion and Marginalization

Proposal

Only 47000 international students and scholars studied in India in 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Study in India mission of the Government of India sought to increase the number of international students studying in India. However, there is no research-based empirical understanding of the existing international students’ experiences within the context of Indian higher education. This paper is based on a research project that sought to document international student experiences in India prior to the pandemic. As part of this multiple case studies project, I sought to understand the experiences of Tibetan students as international students in India, through an ethnographic case study. The pandemic induced global lockdowns as the educational institutions shut down their campuses, and it deeply impacted the lives of all students. All students suffered during the pandemic, and it has been documented in several research studies. However, international students particularly suffered from rising xenophobia and racism during the pandemic.

Since Tibet is occupied by the Chinese government, the Tibetan students are not officially accounted for in the official Indian government statistics as international students studying in India. Their identities are invisible in the official government documents. On many college campuses, they are treated as domestic Northeast Indian students because of their physical appearance and because many of them can speak in native Indian languages, being first-generation Tibetans born in India (Kipgen 2020, McDuie-Ra 2015, Samson 2017, Ngaihte 2014, Wouters & Tanka 2013). However, since many of them came to India from Tibet only while in high school or, for college degrees, they are treated as international students on college and university campuses. Hence, Tibetan students must manage a complex maze of identity challenges within the mainstream Indian higher education system. In the middle of the pandemic, these challenges multiply.

In this paper, I will specifically focus on the experiences of the Tibetan students based on ethnographic case study research with the Tibetan student community in India over the past couple of years. Drawing on ethnographic evidence and Clammer’s (2019) theorizing of the concept of ‘cultural rights’, this article will analyze how the Tibetan Youth-led civil society organization, the Tibetan Youth Congress, has been campaigning using the new digital social media to educate people about the cause of “Free Tibet” and to also fight for their cultural rights faced with racist discrimination in India as Northeast Indians or, Chinese in the middle of the pandemic. Evidence from this research also demonstrates that, despite the negative discriminatory experiences in the middle of the pandemic, the Tibetan students consider India as a safe haven compared to Chinese-occupied Tibet. They see India and Indians as their primary ally to fight against Chinese government aggression in Tibet. They also gain inspiration from Gandhi’s nonviolent freedom movement and strategies of nonviolent protests during British rule in India.

Hence, this paper argues that India can play a major role in the region by promoting public diplomacy and peace through international higher education as soft power. It would be important to raise mass awareness among Indians about international student experiences and to provide them with necessary support services on campus and off-campus in order to materialize the Study in India mission and the NEP 2020 mandate of internationalizing Indian higher education.

Based on the understanding gained from this study, I argue that Indian higher education should first strongly focus on “internationalization at home” through “purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students, within domestic learning environments” (Beelen & Jones 2015). A well-planned strategy for “internationalization at home” can create the necessary welcoming ecosystem for international students inside and outside higher educational institutions.

Reference:
Beelen, Jos & Jones, Elspeth. (2015). Redefining Internationalization at Home. In A. Curaj et al. (eds.), The European Higher Education Area: Between Critical Reflections and Future Policies, Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-20877-0_5.
Clammer, J. (2019). Cultural Rights and Justice: Sustainable Development, the Arts and the Body. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kipgen, N. (2020). COVID-19 Pandemic and Racism in the United States and India. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol LV, No. 23, pp 22-26

McDuie-Ra, D. (2015): “‘Is India Racist?’ Murder, Migration and Mary Kom,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol 38, No 2, pp 304–19

Ngaihte, T. (2014): “Nido Taniam and the Fraught Question of Racism in India,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 49, No 11, pp 15–17

Wouters, J. J. P and Tanka B. S. (2013): “The ‘Indian Face,’ India’s Northeast, and ‘The Idea of India’,” Asian Anthropology, Vol 12, No 2, pp 126–40.

Author

• Mousumi Mukherjee, O.P. JINDAL GLOBAL UNIVERSITY