The Carpets and Karma: The Resilient Story of the Tibetan Community in Two Settlements in India and Nepal

Venkat Pulla; Kanchan Prasad Kharel

doi:10.20896/saci.v1i3.33

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The Carpets and Karma: The Resilient Story of the Tibetan Community in Two Settlements in India and Nepal

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The Carpets and Karma: The Resilient Story of the Tibetan Community in Two Settlements in India and Nepal

Venkat Pulla and Kanchan Prasad Kharel

Space and Culture, India, Vol.1(3), pp.27-42

2014

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20896/saci.v1i3.33

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Abstract

Social Work

Tibetan refugees

carpet

karma

Tibetan resilience

Nepal

India

This paper is about the Tibetan people in two settlements, mainly in Nepal and India. Tibetan refugees started crossing the Himalayan range in April 1959, in the wake of the Dalai Lama's flight into exile and landed mostly in Nepal and India. Tibetans around the world do not know their future nor do they appear unduly worried. Most of them appear resilient and hopeful to see a 'free Tibet' a dream closer to their hearts, someday in the future. In this paper, we delve at their deep association between their philosophy of life based on the principles of 'karma' and their everyday economic avocation of weaving 'carpets'. We find that these people weave their lives around karma and the carpets. Karma embodies their philosophical and spiritual outlook while carpets, mats and paintings symbolise their day-to-day struggles, enterprises to cope, survive, thrive and flourish. The 'karma carpet' symbolises their journey into the future. The Tibetans although a refugee group do not have the same rights and privileges comparable to other refugees living in the world decreed under the United Nations Conventions. In this paper, we present the socio-economic situation of these refugees, their enterprise and their work ethic that makes them who they are in the Nepalese and in Indian societies. For this research, we have triangulated both desk studies and personal narratives from focus groups and interviews to present a discussion centred on the Tibetan struggle for human rights and their entrepreneurship through the carpet industry mainly in Nepal and India.

Details

Title: The Carpets and Karma: The Resilient Story of the Tibetan Community in Two Settlements in India and Nepal
Authors: Venkat Pulla (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Arts and Business
Kanchan Prasad Kharel (Author)
Publication details: Space and Culture, India, Vol.1(3), pp.27-42
Publisher: Alliance for Community Capacity Building
Date published: 2014
DOI: 10.20896/saci.v1i3.33
ISSN: 2052-8396
Copyright note: Copyright © 2014 Pulla and Kharel. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Organisation Unit: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99449930802621
Output Type: Journal article

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