Tibet's Next Incarnation

Photograph by Sumit Dayal for TIME
Otherworldly Mist shrouds the Indian mountain redoubt of Dharamsala, home to the Dalai Lama and fellow exiled Tibetans

(3 of 3)

What can the next generation do, apart from striking a match in a futile, fiery display? A militant struggle will rob the movement of its moral sheen. Besides, the Tibetans have no military force. Protests make headlines, but every act of dissent sparks a crackdown. Hundreds of clerics have been sent away from the monasteries where the monks martyred themselves, and three have been jailed for what the Chinese authorities said was their role in "intentional homicide." Even in Dharamsala, where the local economy depends on the commercialization of the Free Tibet movement from coffee mugs and bumper stickers to new-age crystals of doubtful Tibetan provenance a nihilism is taking hold. A popular anthem by JJI Exile Brothers, a Tibetan rock band, is called "Thunder in the Temple," and its lyrics go: "Monks are with the gun/ Eagle in the black cloud/ Rats are on the run." I meet the band's three brothers in a windowless room with SAVE TIBET spray-painted on the wall. They are full of existential angst, and very stoned. "Music is our only weapon," says guitarist Tenzin Jigme. "Tibet has no freedom, and we don't belong in India. All we can do is sing our revolution."

A Containment Strategy
Tibet may be remote, but it is also squeezed in between declared nuclear powers. Everyone, from the colonial British to the Indians and Chinese, has tried to use the Himalayan region as a buffer. A proxy battle is playing out in Nepal, which has a Tibetan community of around 20,000 exiles. (Most Tibetan refugees heading to India first pass through Nepal.) "While the rest of the world isn't paying attention, Nepal is slipping into Beijing's orbit," says Sangay. "China says it doesn't interfere in other countries' internal affairs, but in Nepal the victims are Tibetans."

Earlier this year, on the birthday of a senior Tibetan cleric whom Beijing does not recognize, I visited Bodhnath, the enormous Tibetan stupa in Kathmandu, Nepal's capital. On this afternoon, locals were prevented from worshipping and the neighborhood was lined with security forces in riot gear. I ducked into a wedding, where a group of Tibetan Youth Club activists were celebrating over yak-butter tea. Since 2008, they told me, China has pressured Nepal to contain what Beijing calls "Tibetan splittists." Tibetans in Nepal now risk arrest for wearing a SAVE TIBET T-shirt. Chinese agents have entered Nepalese territory to nab Tibetan refugees. Everyone worries about informers. Amid the wedding festivities, a Tibetan woman leaned over and asked to write something in my notebook: "One man sitting [near you] was staring and trying to listen to your conversation." No one knew him. Was he a spy?

In August, China's security chief Zhou Yongkang visited Kathmandu and a further crackdown ensued. The Dalai Lama's representative in Nepal was arrested. Before leaving, Zhou pledged nearly $50 million for Nepal. China has already helped the landlocked nation build roads, dams and bridges. "Nepal is a poor country, and it needs money from China," says Gaden Tashi, a Tibetan radio journalist in Kathmandu. "Tibetans are the one natural resource Nepal can offer China." And when the moderating influence of the Dalai Lama is gone, Tashi predicts the fury of local Tibetans will explode. "It will not take time at all for Tibetans in Nepal to radicalize," he warns. "It will be a new chapter, one with violence."

The Chinese military is fortifying Tibet's border with Nepal. Even so, last year around 800 Tibetans made their way to Dharamsala. One morning I visit the Tibetan Reception Center, where the government-in-exile is processing 43 newly arrived refugees. Many are children sent alone with a paid guide, including 9-year-old Tsekyi Lhamo, whose mother wanted her to get a Tibetan education unavailable back home. "I promised to study hard and make her proud," the girl says, blinking back tears. Lhamo shows me all that her mother gave her to take on the journey: a small duffel bag, a blue hooded jacket, two family photos and a wrapper from a pack of biscuits she ate while trekking through the mountains. When will she see her mother again, I ask. "When I grow up," the girl replies. "Then I will go back to Tibet." She may learn, as generations of Tibetans before her have, that it's a long way home.