Central Tibetan Relief Committee

In News

• The Union government has extended the scheme to provide 40 crore grants-in-aid to the Dalai Lama’s Central Tibetan Relief Committee (CTRC) for another five years, up to fiscal year 2025-26.

About

• In 2015, the NDA government came out with a new policy for the Tibetan refugees and sanctioned a scheme of providing grant-in-aid of 40 crore to CTRC for five years to meet the administrative and social welfare activities expenses of 36 Tibetan settlement offices in different States.
• More than one lakh Tibetan refugees are settled in India.
  • Major concentration of the Tibetan refugees is in Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal and Jammu and Kashmir.
• Tibetan refugees began pouring into India in the wake of the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in 1959.
  • The government decided to give them asylum as well as assistance towards temporary settlement.
• The scheme was extended after the Galwan incident in 2020 where 20 soldiers were killed in violent clashes with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Eastern Ladakh.

Central Tibetan Relief Committee

• The Department of Home was established in 1960 and it is one of the first Departments to be established and given the huge important task of coordinating relief and rehabilitation works for thousands of Tibetan refugees who fled from Tibet to neighbouring countries of India, Nepal and Bhutan.
• Societies Registration Act: In 1981, by considering the expanding works of the Department, and to give legal standing to its activities, the Dalai Lama’s Central Tibetan Relief Committee (CTRC) was formed and registered as Charitable Society under Indian Societies Registration Act XXI of 1860.
• Membership: It Includes members from each of the 53 Tibetan settlements in India, Nepal and Bhutan.
• Task: It is dedicated to preserving the cultural and religious heritage of Tibet and building and maintaining sustainable, democratic communities in exile.
• Funding: It is dependent on generous international assistance from governments, especially India, Nepal and Bhutan, philanthropic organizations and individuals.

Objective of the Committee

• The main objective of the committee is to coordinate Individual, Voluntary Agencies and Indian Government’s efforts to rehabilitate and settle Tibetan Refugees.
• It also assists and promotes the upliftment of the poor, needy, backward, underprivileged individuals and making the Tibetan settlement viable and sustainable.

The Tibetan Parliament in Exile (TPiE)

• It is officially the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration.
• It is the unicameral and highest legislative organ of the Central Tibetan Administration, the government-in-exile of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.
• It was established and is based in Dharamshala.
• The creation of this democratically elected body has been one of the major changes that the 14th Dalai Lama brought about in his efforts to introduce a democratic system of administration.
• The Tibetan Parliament in Exile is headed by a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker, who are elected by the members amongst themselves.
• Any Tibetan who has reached the age of 25 has the right to contest elections to the parliament.
• The elections are held every five years and any Tibetan who has reached the age of 18 is entitled to vote.
• Sessions of the parliament are held twice every year, with an interval of six months between the sessions.

India’s Tibet policy

• Simla convention: For centuries, Tibet was India’s actual neighbour, and in 1914, it was Tibetan representatives, along with the Chinese that signed the Simla convention with British India that delineated boundaries.
• Most of India’s boundaries and the 3500km LAC is with the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and not the rest of China.
• China’s full accession of Tibet in 1950: China repudiated the convention and the McMahon line that divided the two countries. And in 1954, India signed an agreement with China, agreeing to trading terms on what it called the “Tibet region of China”.
• In 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled to India, PM Nehru gave him and Tibetan refugee’s shelter, and they set up the Tibetan government in exile, which continues to hold elections.
• But the official Indian policy is that the Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader, and the Tibetan community in India, with more than a lakh exiles, is not allowed to undertake any political activity.

Recent changes and Shift in the Policy

• Changes in Tibet itself: Over the past few decades, the Chinese government has moved to change Tibet in many ways. From pouring in investment, infrastructure projects, to pouring in Han or mainland Chinese, in an effort to Sinicize the population.
• There’s Chinese dams on the upper riparian areas of the Brahmaputra, and construction of Tibetan villages along the LAC, particularly along Arunachal Pradesh boundary, which can prove to be a future flashpoint aimed at bolstering Chinese claims of territory.
• Tibetan Militia groups: As India-China tensions grow and turn violent after the Galwan deaths, China has begun to raise Tibetan Militia groups, while the Indian Army trains the Tibetan Special Frontier Force, which could lead to the frightening albeit unlikely spectre of Tibetans on both sides fighting each other at some point in the future.
• Citizenship to Tibetans: There is then the question over the future of the Tibetan community in India that the government doesn’t give citizenship to Tibetans born in India after the cut-off year of 1987, leaving the youth of the community completely in limbo, living in segregated communes in different parts of India.
• Role of US: the US has also increased its role, by accepting more Tibetan refugees, with an estimated 30,000 now residing there. Most prominently, the Karmapa Lama, the head of the Karma Kagyu sect, who took Dominican citizenship, also resides permanently in the US now.
• The larger question is over the succession to the 86-year-old Dalai Lama, who has been not only the spiritual leader and the leader of the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism, but the political leader of the community worldwide.

Source: TH