Week 5: The Halfway Point
Kate and I worked from home this week because the rest of the office was out of town for a conference. Although our bosses wanted us to attend (and so did we), the event organizers declined our request, citing language barrier issues. Our work week was spent primarily in cafés, where we tried to get a head start on our next big project—researching Tibetan statelessness. We started by reading about the waves of Tibetan “refugees” in India since 1949 and India’s policies towards them. (I say “refugees” in quotes because although many, if not most, of the Tibetans living in India qualify as refugees under international law, India has not signed the UN Refugee Convention and instead classifies Tibetans living in India merely as “foreigners,” which severely restricts Tibetans’ rights.)
We also started learning about the complicated world of registration that Tibetans in India face. Without the proper registration, it’s illegal for a Tibetan to live in India, and the required registration documents change with seemingly every conceivable difference between individual Tibetans. Indian police officers are legally able to stop Tibetans in the street without cause and ask for their registration. If a Tibetan doesn’t have the correct registration, if their registration has expired, or if they never had any registration papers at all because they came into India through one of the non-sanctioned routes (the only legal route right now is through a reception center in Kathmandu), they can be jailed, fined, and even deported back to Tibet, where they face imprisonment and torture.
If you want to read more about the legal status of Tibetans-in-exile, read this report by the Tibet Justice Center in conjunction with Boston University and the Tibetan Legal Association. (I learned all the information above from that report.) As Kate and I continue with this project, I will also write more about Tibetan statelessness here.
Towards the end of the week, Kate and I both fell ill, so we spent more time in our guest house than usual. On Saturday, when I began to feel better, I went on a long walk around Mcleod Ganj. On a hidden back road I’d never noticed before, I came across a small shop filled with rocks. I went in, and as I browsed, the woman working at the shop—an elderly Tibetan woman—offered to read my tarot. I’d never had my tarot (or my palm, or my fortune generally) read before, and I was glad to hear that the cards told her that I was following the right path by pursuing law and that a career in law would bring me fulfillment. (I think she was right!)
On Sunday, I walked up to Bhagsu, a town by Mcleod Ganj that I hadn’t had a chance to visit yet. I walked to the Bhagsu waterfall, which was beautiful, and toured a small but very ornate temple. The streets in Bhagsu were very different from those of Mcleod Ganj—although they were just as crowded, they were much quieter, and the scenery higher in the mountains was more serene. I spent several hours in a small rooftop café drinking a smoothie and looking out at the mountains before I returned home.