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In its temples and monasteries, its cultural complexes, and its architectural ambience, the Dharamsala memoryscape seems dedicated to forms of cultural revivalism. Museums and archives supported by the Tibetan government-in-exile preserve sacred relics, icons, and manuscripts smuggled out of Tibet. A performing arts center revives Tibetan music, dance, and opera. Religious institutions train young monks in philosophy and ritual. The central project of exilic Tibet seems to be the recovery and revival of traditional knowledge and practices. Lately, the Dalai Lama has even said that achieving political independence for Tibet is not as important as this task of preserving Tibetan Buddhist culture (Norbu 2001, 377).¹⁴ The virtual survival of Tibetanness in the diaspora has taken priority over the political sovereignty in the place called Tibet.

This focus on Tibetan cultural revivalism gathered force after 1985, following the breakdown of important negotiations between a Tibetan exile delegation and the Chinese government. After this point, scholars observe, the Dharamsala leadership reconsidered its strategy (Barnett 2001, 273). Instead of pursuing a political settlement with China, the leadership decided to focus on gaining sympathy from a larger international community. Representatives of the government-in-exile programmatically began to participate in global networks devoted to peace, environmentalism, and interfaith harmony, representing Tibet as an essentially spiritual, unmaterialistic, and nonviolent nation overrun by an implacable materialistic foe. In this process, Toni Huber (2001, 360) observes, “customs, practices, habits, and laws long taken for granted became selected and then eloquently objectified as (the Tibetans’) unique culture.” Many aspects of the exile Tibetan condition receded from view and “Buddhism (became) the newly erected central pillar of contemporary Tibetan nationalism (and took) center stage, as though this religion were the mainspring of the claimed identity” (Huber 2001, 360).

For some critics, this process eventually turned exile Tibetans into “prisoners of Shangri-la” (Lopez 1998), trapping them in an identity that was exclusively religious and spiritual, and barring them from partaking of modernity or assuming full political agency. More sympathetic observers saw the Shangri-la image as the result of a sophisticated process in which the Tibetan exile community intelligently instrumentalized a Western myth of Tibet to garner sympathy and support for their cause. After all, in Robert Thurman’s memorable words, the image of Tibetans as essentially spiritual people has made them “the baby seals of the international human rights movement,” innocent victims unquestionably deserving of support (quoted in Dodin and Räther 2001, 410). If the construction of an exclusively religious identity for Tibetans has been a form of self-Orientalization, at least it is one that has brought the community significant gains.

In contrast to the many Tibetan organizations that seem dedicated to the etherealization of Tibet, however, there is one museum in Dharamsala that directly addresses issues of history and politics. This is The Tibet Museum (Figure 2.4). Opened in the year 2000, it is Dharamsala’s newest museum and was set up by the Department of Information and International Relations (DIIR) of the Tibetan government-in-exile. The DIIR has played a key role in sponsoring research and gathering data that support the Tibetan exile position in international arenas. Concerned as it is with empirical information and verifiable facts, it is only natural that a museum sponsored by the DIIR would be very different in its approach from the monasteries and other institutions that are overseen by the exile government’s Department of Religion and Culture. Secular, and dedicated to recounting the facts of recent history rather than invoking a timeless tradition, this museum brings a different kind of memorialization to the fore.

FIGURE 2.4 The Tibet Museum, McLeodganj, upper Dharamsala. Gallery view with panels from the section on “Sinicization.”

Photo: Hope Childers © Kavita Singh and Saloni Mathur.

The Tibet Museum is housed in a modest-sized, elegant building on the street that leads to the main temple complex and the Dalai Lama’s home, the chief visitor attractions in Dharamsala. Displayed inside this museum is A Long Look Homeward, an exhibition that recounts the history of Tibet and Tibetans since 1949. Beginning with an account of Tibet as it was immediately before the Chinese occupation, it describes the invasion, as well as Tibetan attempts at resistance, before relating the terrible consequences of occupation for the Tibetan people and their way of life. Sections on the refugee experience speak of the difficulties of escape and look back on the achievements of the community in exile. This is contrasted with the continuing oppression of Tibetans under Chinese rule in Tibet. A final section articulates the hope for a better future for all Tibetans, both within and outside Tibet. It includes a statement from the Dalai Lama which describes Tibet as a “blessed, pure land” that has endured many hardships in the past, but that he hopes will be a “peace sanctuary” in the future.

While the broad lineaments of this history are well known, the version narrated by the Tibet Museum has elements that are far removed from the popular presentation of Tibet as a Shangri-la of timeless spirituality. For instance, the section on “Resistance” describes the Tibetan guerrilla bands that fought more than a hundred battles against the Chinese in the first years of Occupation, secured the Dalai Lama’s escape route when he fled to India, and continued to skirmish with the Chinese army into the 1970s. Nowadays this aspect of Tibetan history is often brushed under the carpet by the Dharamsala leadership, as it contradicts the representation of Tibetans as being purely spiritual and nonviolent. In the Tibet Museum it is given an unusual degree of official acknowledgment and respect.¹⁵ Similarly, when the section on “The Tibetan Community in Exile” lists the major achievements of the exile community, it foregrounds the establishment of the parliament-in-exile, the drafting of a democratic constitution (“for the first time in our history”), and “the fact that every child has the opportunity to attend school” (Tibet Museum 2000, 45) instead of focusing solely on the construction of monasteries or the preservation of Buddhism. The story that is told in this museum describes a multifaceted community that inhabits the modern world.

The display of the exhibition is marked by an understated elegance and a polished use of graphic design. The professionalism seen in the exhibition’s design is also visible in the curatorial plan. The text of each section is presented as the first-person narration of an exiled Tibetan who has experienced the things he or she describes. The section on “Human Rights Violations in Tibet,” for instance, is narrated by Rinzin Choenyi, a nun formerly from the Shungseb Nunnery in Tibet. After attending a peaceful demonstration in Lhasa, Choenyi was arrested. “We were hung from the ceiling, cigarettes were stubbed on our bodies,” she says. “Some female prisoners had electric batons inserted in their private parts.” Choenyi was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. She ran away to India after her release (Tibet Museum 2000, 33). Migmar Tsering, the monk from Dhargyeling monastery in central Tibet who narrates the section on “Escape,” describes being caught in a snowstorm on the way to India. Nomads rescued him but he eventually lost his legs and some fingers to frostbite. “I was more worried about being reported to the Chinese than about my health,” he says: “When we reached Dharamsala we were taken for an audience with His Holiness. I cannot remember anything that happened there. I just cried” (Tibet Museum 2000, 41).

Relying on memories, building its story out of fragments uttered by multiple voices, the museum allies itself with postmodern forms of narration. Unlike conventional histories whose facts can be disputed, these personal and moving narratives are also incontrovertible, for they are the lived experiences of individuals. The few objects in the exhibition support these stories of terrible suffering. They include the blood-spattered shirt of a Tibetan prisoner (Figure 2.5) and a case full of “implements of torture” used by Chinese soldiers. In one room, a TV monitor plays a video showing the 1989 Lhasa Uprising and interviews with escapees.

Each narrator who shared his or her memories for the exhibition was also asked to select photographs from the DIIR’s archives that would visually represent their experiences, thus becoming responsible for the section as a whole. Thus the 11 Tibetans are not just the narrators but are described as the curators of the exhibition. Distributing authorship among the community, the Tibet Museum allies itself with the cutting edge of a new participative museology that makes members the subjects rather than the objects of the museum gaze. In fact, when the exhibit opened, it invited even more voices to join in the telling, for it had a Testimony Corner where a desk with a tape recorder and writing materials encouraged community members to share their own experiences and their memories. Whether or not visitors used the Testimony Corner, its presence in the museum underlined the fact that Tibet’s is a tragedy that continues.

FIGURE 2.5 The Tibet Museum, McLeodganj (upper Dharamsala). Gallery case showing the bloodstained shirt of an escapee from China, 2012.

Photo: Imogen Clark.

There is no mistaking it: in the elegance of its design and execution, and in the sophistication of its forms of narration and its approach to history, the Tibet Museum is a museologically up-to-date establishment that combines lessons learned from holocaust museums and participatory community museums across the world. What accounts for the presence of this theoretically sophisticated institution in Dharamsala, where the other museums that house historic artifacts are conventional and even conservative in their approach?¹⁶