Citizenship, in the modern sense, is understood as the quintessential ascriptive form of belonging to a territorial nation and is rooted in the construction of an administrative State that defines and manages the boundaries of its citizenry. Therefore, the ideology of citizenship assumes a stability of personal identity via the documents and laws that assign citizenship. However, that assumption is challenged under conditions of changes in regimes (Nazi Germany and its Jewish citizenry), citizenship laws (Ethiopia’s denationalization of its citizens of Eritrean origin in 1998), or the country’s borders (Palestine and Israel).

In 1959, following the unsuccessful uprising of Tibetans against the occupying forces of the Chinese Communist Party, thousands along with the Dalai Lama and his Government fled into exile in India, establishing the Tibetan Government in exile and concurrently the Tibetan diaspora. Since then, Tibetans in India have tethered between paradigms of citizenship and statelessness, a consequence of the exile condition. The Central Tibetan Administration in India (otherwise known as the Tibetan Government in exile), as a de facto government, ascribes citizenship to the diasporic population through its Charter and the Green Book system. The Green Book is a document provided to Tibetans, irrespective of their place of residence, that recognizes them as citizens of the Tibetan nation in a novel performance of long-distance nationalism, one that is fulfilled by the paying of voluntary taxes to the Tibetan Government in exile and participation in the democratic elections of its President and the members of the Tibetan Parliament in exile.

On the other hand, the Indian State legally defines Tibetans as foreigners and effectively, delimits them as stateless entities pursuant to its Citizenship Act and Foreigner’s Act.

They are provided with renewable resident permits and travel documents, scattered Tibetan settlements as residences yet are construed as stateless refugees in the public domain of Indian society, largely ineligible to apply for Indian citizenship due to their liminal status as stateless foreigners. Therefore, this talk will focus on the legal representation of citizenship or its absence i.e., government-issued documents, that are produced at the intersection of the Tibetan encounter with the bureaucratic assemblages of the Central Tibetan Administration and the Indian State respectively. The talk analyzes how Tibetans are materialized as textual constructions by the force of law and bureaucracy. Such an analysis draws focus on the break between the law and its practice through the lived materiality of Tibetan legal identity in India while, on the other hand, illustrating an alternative model of citizenship that exists outside of territorial sovereignty, within the condition of stateless existence.