Tibetan Refugees in India: Education, Culture and Growing Up in Exile

Tibetan Refugees in India focuses on the issue of education for the Tibetan community as an important ingredient conceived to not only protect and preserve tradition but also engage with modernity by the Tibetan Government in Exile. The volume recognises the dilemmas that the community grapples with in trying to achieve a balance between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ in education and the strategies it has employed to deal with the issue. Life in exile is seen as a continuous learning experience for the community with trying to be ‘exclusive’ yet also to prevent ‘exclusion’ in a modernised world. The Introduction sets the tone with the idea of and about refugeeism as a complex and problematic global reality. The chapters examine the educational options available to the Tibetan youth—Tibetan schools and Indian schools respectively. It details the curriculum and pedagogy in both sets of schools and the impact it has on the Tibetan youth, their sense of identity, nationhood, Tibet in their imagination and their attitude towards the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan struggle.