In the Holy Land: The Lives and Activities of Tibetan Refugees in India
PART II
Khenpo Ju Tenkyong’s Story
This case report is the second in a series of three documenting the experiences of Tibetan refugees. The final report, written in collaboration with the Sarnath International Nyingma Institute, is forthcoming.
Location
Figure 1: Dharamsala, India. Base map imagery © Google 2022.
Introduction
Note from Dr. Karen Jacobsen, RIT Principal Investigator
This is not our usual RIT report in that it was not written by a refugee researcher, but rather is based on a series of interviews conducted by a doctoral candidate, as described below. These Tibetan refugees living in northern India do not speak English, and the interviews, conducted in Tibetan, were a way to capture their experience for our English readers. The report is also different from our other RIT reports in that we have given somewhat more space to the refugee’s life in Tibet, and his journey and experience prior to arriving in Dharamsala.
A Note on Editor-Translator* Positionality and Methodology
I am a doctoral candidate in anthropology, focusing on Tibetic languages and linguistics. Prior to my doctoral training in linguistic and socio-cultural anthropology, I worked for several years in Tibetan-speaking communities in Asia.
I wrote this report based primarily on an April 13, 2022 Zoom interview with Khenpo Ju Tenkyong, a Tibetan refugee based in Dharamsala, India. He works as a researcher, historian, and scholar on a number of important projects for the preservation and revitalization of Tibetan culture, language and Tibetan Buddhist literature. Unlike other refugees interviewed for this project, he preferred to use his own name rather than a pseudonym.
Khenpo Ju Tenkyong centrally works for three organizations: the Amnye Machen Institute,[1] the Monlam Tibetan Information Technology Research Center and the Sarnath International Nyingma Institute (SINI). At Monlam, he is a writer and researcher for the Monlam Grand Tibetan Dictionary, a vast Tibetan language dictionary. For SINI, he is the Chief Editor of the Kangyur Karchag Project. This project seeks to provide the first-ever comprehensive, thorough introduction to each of the 368 sutras– the spoken discourses of the Buddha– to ensure this important Buddhist literature is accessible to the widest possible number of people.[2]
Khenpo Ju Tenkyong is one of the leading Tibetan scholars in the diaspora, and his environment reflects this. For our Zoom interviews, he sat in a room with thousands of books arranged on floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and stacked on tables beside him. Despite his potentially intimidating erudition, he was extremely humble and down-to-earth throughout the course of our conversations.
While I am highly proficient in Tibetan, I clarified any initial points of confusion in the story through spoken and written communication with him via voice and written WhatsApp messages. After I began to translate and transcribe the information from our first interview, we had a follow-up Zoom interview on April 22 so I could ask for more information regarding his relationship to India. Later, in summer 2022, I had the good fortune to travel to India and work at SINI, where we had a number of conversations, developing a closer relationship.
The information presented in this report has been rigorously reviewed multiple times to ensure the greatest fidelity to his experiences. Khenpo Ju Tenkyong has a strong Golok accent– his homeland in Tibet–and he also talks faster than any person I have met; he seems to speak on his inhalation as well as exhalation. As such, I am grateful I had the opportunity to sit beside him in-person, notebook in- hand, to ensure I had correctly understood the material in our recorded interviews. After I had completed a draft of this report, I sent it to him, and he reviewed the document with a bilingual Tibetan and made some minor changes and clarifications.
All communications with Khenpo Ju Tenkyong occurred with free, prior, and informed consent. He understood the aims of this report–and my purpose in writing it–before he shared his story. For the purpose of readability, the information from the various interviews has been edited and compiled into one report, a decision for which he gave both his permission and his approval. He reviewed the final report with a Tibetan friend who is fluent in English and approves of its current format.
*The editor-translator authored both the background and the introduction in addition to editing and translating this report.
Background
There are a wide range of opinions concerning the pre-modern relationship between China and Tibet. The Chinese government maintains that Tibet has been a part of China since the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), while the Tibetan Government in Exile, based in Dharamsala, India, maintains that Tibet was an independent state until the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA) began their invasion in 1949.However, broad scholarly consensus agrees that Sino-Tibetan relations radically changed with the communist takeover and the annexation of Tibet into the newly formed People’s Republic of China (PRC). Since then, there have been severe, and occasionally violent, restrictions on traditional Tibetan education, religion, and culture.
From 1959-1960, an estimated 80,000 Tibetan refugees fled to India, a number that increased to around 100,000 in subsequent years, constituting the first wave of Tibetan migration to South Asia. A 2009 survey found that around 128,000 Tibetans lived outside of Tibet, with the largest number, more than 94,000, living in India.[1]
Historically, Tibetans have fled Tibet for a number of reasons: political, economic, educational and religious. In the case of the refugees interviewed for this project, their primary motivation for migration was the religious freedom and educational opportunities afforded by India. Tibetan Buddhism remains highly restricted within Tibet, and the interviewed refugees all desired the opportunity to study and practice their religion free from authoritarian government control.
Tibetans in India face a number of difficulties, ranging from basic survival, integration with local society, and the preservation of their culture. While many Tibetans express heartfelt gratitude to India for offering them political refuge, their position is precarious. They are not officially recognized by the government as refugees. They are instead designated as “foreigners,” who must annually renew their permission to stay in the country. India has never signed the 1951 United Nations convention on refugees, adding to Tibetans’ tenuous, uncertain status.
Tibetans are scattered throughout India, with large settlements in the northwestern Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, as well as in the southern state of Karnataka. Though many Tibetans feel obligated to preserve their language, religion, and culture because of their freedom in exile, such expertise provides very few economic opportunities, which necessitate an understanding of local Indian languages or English. Such problems have led to increasing Tibetan immigration to North America and Europe.
Inaugurated in the winter of 2013, the Sarnath International Nyingma Institute (SINI) offers an important center for the preservation of Tibetan cultural and religious knowledge. Located in Sarnath, India, the site of the Buddha’s first sermon, SINI’s mission is: “to sustain the roots of the Dharma; to advance the study of classical Buddhist languages; to empower the transmission of the Dharma; and to promote interdisciplinary collaborations.”[2] SINI works towards their vast goals by working with Tibetan refugees throughout India, as well as Tibetan Buddhists who are citizens of Bhutan, India and Nepal.
Khenpo Ju Tenkyong’s story
City Context
Dharamshala is a town in the foothills of the Himalayas in the state of Himachal Pradesh, India. The total population is more than 53,000,[3] divided between Upper and Lower Dharamshala. Upper Dharamsala is home to a large Tibetan community of more than 10,000 people,[4] including the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan government, the Central Tibetan Administration. Sometimes called “Little Lhasa,” many diasporic Tibetans view the town as their capital in exile, and it boasts a number of culturally significant Tibetan institutions, such as the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, and the Dalai Lama’s own Namgyal Monastery.
The relationship between Tibetans and the local Indian community can, at times, rightfully be described as tense. The worst clash between the two communities occurred in April 1994 when a Tibetan stabbed to death a local Indian youth during a fight.[5] A riot followed in which several Tibetan businesses and homes were set aflame, leading the Dalai Lama to plan to leave the area permanently.[6] Recognizing the tremendous detrimental impact on the economy–which is hugely dependent on tourist income–that would occur if the Dalai Lama and Tibetan community left, local politicians and business leaders pleaded for him to remain. Tensions between the two communities have never again reached this pitch, but many familiar with South Asian Tibetan settlements comment that Indian-Tibetan relations are worse in Dharamsala than anywhere else in India.
Khenpo Ju Tenkyong’s story reflects the distance between the Tibetan and Indian communities. He does not know Hindi or English, and both his social and his professional circles are exclusively Tibetan. With that being said, he spoke with deep affection and appreciation for India, noting that his current work would be heavily restricted were he working within his homeland of Tibet. While not a story of integration, his experience reflects the ways in which India has offered a sanctuary and refuge for precious Tibetan knowledge endangered within Tibet itself.
Childhood in Tibet
My homeland is Golok, and I was born in Achung Khangsar. This is the name from before. After the Chinese came, they changed all the place names, so everywhere has different names now, but I am from Achung Khangsar, Golok.
This is a nomadic place, and growing up, all the people there were nomads. It was a very beautiful, happy place to grow up. There were vast grasslands and meadows of flowers—it was a pure, beautiful place. I was born there in 1973, during China’s Cultural Revolution, which caused many problems for we Tibetans. The Cultural Revolution began in 1967 and lasted for a full decade. There was incredible suffering for Tibetans during this time. Religion was completely outlawed. Our monasteries were razed to the ground. And the lamas, local leaders–anyone with any knowledge of Tibetan culture–were all either killed or sent to prison. I was born during this horrific time, one of the worst periods in Tibetan history.
For my first two or three years, I really don’t have very clear memories. From age four or five, I have some memories. I remember we weren’t allowed to practice Dharma at all, we weren’t allowed to wear rosaries or recite prayers, we weren’t allowed to show any sign of religion. When people died, we were forbidden from saying prayers for them. But I have some vague memory of former monks—they were not wearing robes, since this was forbidden—and they would recite prayers for the dead very, very late at night. In the middle of the night after a person died, these monks in lay clothes would recite prayers for them in total secrecy. If the Chinese knew about this, the monks would be thrown in prison, so it was extremely dangerous for them to recite the prayers, but they did it anyway, for the sake of the dead. I have some memory of this.
When I was a young child, we were not starving, but food was extremely scarce. From 1959 until the middle of the 1960s, many, many people in our area starved to death. The older people would always talk about this. We weren’t in that situation, we weren’t starving to death, but food was still very rare, and it wasn’t good quality.
This is because we did not own our animals. The government had confiscated all the animals, and each family was responsible for doing certain duties: milking the dri (female yaks), making butter, making cheese. But these weren’t our own animals any longer—everything was owned by the government. We had to take all the products to the government workers, and they would weigh them very exactly, and if we were at all short of the requirement, they would reduce our food ration, our clothing ration, and rations for everything else we needed.
I had seven siblings, so there were eight of us kids in total, but our grandparents were also at home, and they were too old to work. Our parents were the only ones who could work, and the only ones who got food rations, so we were pretty poor. We weren’t the absolute poorest people in our community, but we were close. The Chinese only gave food rations for workers, and there were only two workers even though there were a lot of people in our household, so our parents never had enough to feed us. It was a very difficult time.
For us kids, in the summertime, we basically never owned clothes until we were ten years old. In the winter, we would wear a robe from yak or sheepskin, but in the summer, we were totally naked. Our parents just didn’t have the money to buy any clothes. Any money they had needed to be spent on food, so we were always naked. It sounds bad, but we weren’t alone—most of the kids around us were too poor to have clothes.
Many of my relatives were in prison. My grandfather on my dad’s side died in prison, and many other relatives were imprisoned throughout my childhood, so I never met them until much later. This is just how things were when I was a child.
This was the situation for us until I was around ten years old. Then, Deng Xiaoping initiated a series of reforms that changed many things. Many political prisoners were set free. The government also allowed private ownership of animals again, so people were able to accumulate more money.
Life got better for us. I wouldn’t say that it was very good, but it was much more relaxed than it had been before. We started to own animals, and I was responsible for herding our many yaks and sheep.
Spiritual Life in Tibet and the Decision to Flee
When I was around sixteen, I decided to ordain as a monk. This really hadn’t been an option before, as my whole childhood religion was banned. I studied The Words of My Perfect Teacher[7] by Patrul Rinpoche with a local lama, and heard many stories from the biography of Milarepa.[8] I was young then, and very inspired by Milarepa’s life, so I thought that it would be easy to be on meditation retreat in a cabin in the mountains.
A local lama came to me one day and asked about my background and what I was doing. After I told him, he said to me, “What are you even meditating on? You’re very young; you have to study and learn the Dharma before you can meditate. It’s better if you first study the scriptures and gain some understanding. Then you can go to the mountains to be on meditation retreat.”
Later that year, I met another local lama and received some Dharma teachings. He recommended I go to Serta Larung Gar.[9] I left when I was seventeen, and I ended up staying there for twelve years. Then, in 2001, the Chinese government destroyed much of Larung Gar—they bulldozed buildings and forced many of the monks and nuns to leave. I decided I could no longer remain there–that there just wasn’t the freedom to study and practice Buddhism–so I decided to flee to India.
Life and Activities in India
Once I arrived in India, I spent the first couple of years studying the scriptures on my own. Then, in 2003, I started to work for the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. I worked at the Tibetan Library for five years as a researcher and writer, researching Tibetan dynastic history, Tibetan religious history, and Tibetan history more generally.
After five years of this work, I spent some time traveling, visiting friends in Bhutan for a number of months. Later, I went to Delhi with the intention to learn English, and I studied for six or seven months, but I never really learned it. I ended up coming back to Dharamsala, where I rented a room and did my own studies. Wherever I traveled, I always came back to Dharamsala.
Around 2012, I began to work with Geshe Monlam on the Monlam Grand Tibetan Dictionary (smon lam tshig mdzod chen mo). I had become acquainted with Geshe Monlam since coming to India, so I was happy to become involved with this project. This dictionary has been one of the largest focuses of my work for the past decade. I have spent a great deal of time researching different Buddhist scriptures and treatises in order to write the entries for the dictionary.
This dictionary is quite vast. Many people know the dictionary from the app on their phones,[10] as lots of people use the dictionary there. The entire dictionary has recently been printed, composing 223 volumes in total. Each volume is around 600 pages long, so as far as I know, this is one of the largest dictionaries in the world.
Figure 2. Khenpo Ju Tenkyong at work from an office in Sarnath, India. Photo provided by SINI.
As you can imagine, this dictionary work is very difficult. On the digital front, sometimes the app will crash; it will get a bug, so we need to constantly update the app, as many people rely on it for daily use. It’s very important that we provide a high-quality dictionary. We can see how many people have downloaded it, and it’s been downloaded more than 7 million times on Apple and Android devices. Given that so many people have downloaded and rely on this dictionary, it’s critically important that it functions well.
Ultimately, we are trying to create a comprehensive dictionary for the Tibetan language, which has a huge literary corpus and more than a millennium of history. There are many old terms from the earliest Buddhist translations where the precise meaning is no longer clearly understood. It’s critical that we provide accurate, illuminating dictionary entries, as people will use this dictionary for many generations to come. If we provide a bad definition, or if we’re in any way lacking in quality, we will deceive and confuse countless individuals, even if unintentionally.
This work does not come quickly or easily. I have worked on this continuously for a full decade, and our work is still very provisional—we still have so much work that needs to be done. We must conduct very detailed, thorough research to ensure we’re creating a resource that will benefit Tibetan people and their language long into the future. We have a good team working on this, but it requires that we constantly update and revise our work to create the best product possible.
In 2019, I was requested to assist[11] with SINI’s Kangyur Karchag[12] Project. So, I help with this project, too, from time to time. I will sometimes go to SINI for 2-4 weeks at a time and will review the work of the other scholars. We have more than 50 researchers and writers working on this project, from all the five major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism.[13] These are all excellent scholars, who have spent many years studying Buddhist literature, so they are fully qualified to do this work. They write their own summary-introductions to the individual sutras, and I then review what they have written and ensure that everything is in accordance with tradition and aligns with our overall project.
The Kangyur is the root of the teachings of all of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. There are many different Buddhist traditions throughout Asia, but the Kangyur is the taproot that connects them and from which they all arise. Because of this, our work on the Kangyur Karchag project is important not only for Tibetans and the Tibetan language, but for anyone who cares about the continuation of the Buddha’s teachings.
There are many different Tibetan karchags for the Kangyur: the Tshalpa karchag, the Dergé karchag, the Choné karchag, the Narthang karchag—lots of different karchags. But there’s never been a karchag like the one we are currently creating. Our karchag is quite special. For our karchag, each individual sutra has its own introduction, which will give a comprehensive, thorough basis for understanding the following sutra.
In addition to giving the critical details about the context for each particular sutra–the who, what, where, when, and how–we also draw out the heart-essence (snying po), or main instruction, that readers should take with them after reading the sutra. Many Tibetans, especially lay Tibetans, think that the Kangyur is very difficult; they think the language is too complex and the meanings are too deep and profound for them to understand. But we write all of our introductions in a very comprehensible, readable way. We avoid the old terminology from the sutras that laypeople might find difficult, and we write with very easy, understandable language.
Figure 3. Khenpo Ju Tenkyong and the Kangyur Karchag team present the first printed edition of the Kangyur Karchag to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in Bodh Gaya, India, January 2023. Photo provided by SINI.
I have great aspirations for this project. For more than a thousand years, we Tibetans have held this precious Buddhist literature, but it was mostly only accessed by scholars and monks. Now, we’re trying to make this knowledge available to all Tibetans. I hope that our karchag will demonstrate to Tibetans that these are not just ancient books—these are living instructions that can show us how to make the best use of our precious human life.
Differences Between Work in Tibet and in India
On the one hand, you cannot say that the work I am doing in India would be completely outlawed within Tibet. There are many great scholars in Tibet who also work to preserve the Tibetan language through dictionary projects and literary research. Writing in Tibetan and conducting research in Tibetan—this is no longer forbidden. The level of repression is nowhere near what it was like when I was a child growing up at the end of the Cultural Revolution.
However, there’s no question that there is far more freedom here in India than there is in Tibet. In Tibet, everything you do must be in line with the aims of the government; you cannot do anything that does not support the government’s goals. Because these goals are so narrow, it’s not possible to use our full human intelligence and curiosity. And while work and research in the Tibetan language has become less controversial, anything pertaining to Buddhism is still highly repressed. The work we do with the Kangyur Karchag Project would be intensely scrutinized inside Tibet, and much of it would just not be possible at all.
It’s very different here in India. In India, you can apply your intelligence, curiosity and diligence to the fullest extent possible. No one will stop you. India is a free country, and very open and relaxed, so we do our work in complete freedom. To be honest, my work has basically nothing to do with Indian leaders or powerful people; there’s nobody above me monitoring my work. Inside Tibet, if you research history, for example, everything you write has to align with the government position. If you write anything about history that does not agree with the Chinese government, you’ll get thrown in prison. Many of our greatest Tibetan writers and scholars are in Chinese prison for what they have written. There’s just not the freedom to follow your curiosity and intelligence wherever it takes you.
That’s why I think it’s very important for me to work as hard as I can on these projects. The fact is, if I was just concerned with having fun and living an easy life, I would probably be better off in Tibet; the economy is much better there. But I feel a responsibility to do the type of work that Tibetans inside Tibet are prohibited from doing. This is why I have worked so hard for the past decade on the dictionary project, and why I have dedicated so much effort to the Kangyur Karchag Project for the past three years. I wouldn’t have the freedom to do this work inside Tibet, so I apply myself as much as I can here in India, where I am free to do this.
Leaving Tibet was not easy. I had to say goodbye to my family, my friends, my teachers–everyone –for the rest of my life. This was a very difficult, big decision, and I need to make it meaningful.
Figure 4. Khenpo Ju Tenkyong meeting with Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, one of the senior-most teachers for the Karma Kagyu lineage. Photo provided by SINI.
Personally, I feel India is an ideal country for working to preserve Tibetan culture, language, and literature. To do this type of work, it’s important to have many people gather together in order to share their ideas and knowledge. If you work in this collaborative way, you have so much more intelligence, creativity and effort than working alone. I think it’s very important to work with others on these types of projects, and the fact is, there is just not the freedom to do such work in Tibet.
India is also a much more affordable country than anywhere in the West. Many Tibetans leave for the West these days, but the cost of living is so high that it’s almost impossible for them to do such cultural work. Many Tibetan scholars and intellectuals think there will be more opportunities in the West, but when they get there, they have to work so hard just to survive. It’s true that our salaries are quite low here in India, but the costs are also low, which allows us to easily work together and engage in this work of preservation.
Integration Into Indian Society
To be honest, I don’t have much of a relationship to Indian society or to Indian people. All of my friends–all of my colleagues at work, everyone that I have deep conversations with–they’re all Tibetans. I basically live in a totally Tibetan intellectual and cultural environment.
A lot of this comes down to language. I don’t know English at all, and I don’t know Hindi very well either. I know enough to buy things at the market, and to order food at a restaurant, but that’s about it. And unfortunately, I don’t think I can really learn Hindi at this point. I’m already old, and I have so much other work that I need to do.
Still, I am very grateful to India for all that it has given to Tibetan people. In my opinion, for my own work of Tibetan cultural and language preservation, I believe that India is the greatest country in the world. There’s no other place with such conditions for doing the work we do here.
Since I had to make so many sacrifices–had to say goodbye forever to so many people–to leave Tibet and come here, it’s very important that I make the best use of the opportunities India affords. I need to do the work that is not possible to do inside Tibet. I must do something meaningful for my culture and language. This is why I’m so grateful to India and all it has given us.
Figure 5. Khenpo Ju Tenkyong, far right, along with senior members of the Kangyur Karchag team from their summer 2022 office outside of Manali, India. Photo provided by SINI.
References
[1] "127935 Tibetans living outside Tibet: Tibetan survey". Press Trust of India. 2010-04-12. Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved September 20, 2022.
[2] https://www.sinibridge.org/institute/
[3] https://sfd.susana.org/about/worldwide-projects/city/203-dharamshala
[4] https://www.sos-usa.org/where-we-are/asia/india/dharamsala#:~:text=It%20is%20well%20known%20for,10%2C400%20people%20live%20in%20Dharamsala.
[5] Diehl, Keila. Echoes from Dharamsala: Music in the Life of a Tibetan Refugee Community. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. pp. 120-123.
[6] ibid.
[7] The Words of My Perfect Teaching (kun bzang bla ma’i zhal lung) is a famous 19th century guide to the foundational Tibetan Buddhist practices, written by the great eastern Tibetan master Dza Patrul Rinpoche (rdza dpal sprul rin po che).
[8] Tibet’s most famous yogin, renowned for having spent most of his life in solitary meditative retreat.
[9] Established in 1980 by the great Buddhist master Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok (mkhan po ‘jigs med phun tshogs), Larung Gar (bla rung sgar) is the largest and most significant new Tibetan Buddhist institute established in post-Mao China. At its peak, more than 100,000 students would gather to hear Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok’s teachings.
[10] The Monlam-Dictionary app is available for download on both Android and Apple devices, and is an extremely popular resource for both Tibetans and non-Tibetan users of the Tibetan language.
[11] Khenpo’s verb “to assist/help” (rogs pa byed), and subsequent descriptions of his work with the Kangyur Karchag Project, are classic examples of Tibetan humility. As the Senior Editor for this vast project, his expertise, time, and effort are absolutely invaluable.
[12] Karchag (kar chag) roughly translates as “table of contents,” “index” or “list.”
[13] Gelug, Jonang, Kagyu, Nyingma, and Sakya, Tibet’s major Buddhist lineages.