The ethics, politics and science of Tibetan Medicine in Exile

The proposed investigation will use ethnographic research methods to explore Tibetan strategies for cultural survival and political governance in exile. It takes the Tibetan exile-community as paradigmatic of new forms of governance that do not rely on territory or boundaries, but rather work globally and outside of formal political institutions. The study will focus on the largest institution in the Tibetan exile, the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute (TMAI), as a crucial site of the political, ethical, and scientific processes that produce the modern exile-Tibetan subject and nation. Besides generating original data on exile-Tibetan society and strategies to deal with the effects of globalization, migration and displacement, the investigation aims to enable a critical analysis of contemporary intersections between secular and religious forms of ethics, truth and power. It will thus further our understanding of current global events and make a timely contribution to theoretical debates across the social sciences and humanities. The multi-sited research in India, the USA, and Austria will take 30 months from 01-01-2008 to 06-30-2010, and builds on the principal investigator`s more than six years of research experience in this subject.

`Tibetan medicine is an asset that reasserts the truth and existence of the Tibetan nation.` The Dalai Lama, 2007 (1995) What do the struggle for `Free Tibet`, the Dalai Lama`s Tibetan exile-government, and the survival of Tibetan culture have to do with an ancient - if rapidly modernizing - medical tradition and its herbal pills, today simply known as `Tibetan medicine`? A lot, if common exile-Tibetan rhetoric - claiming that Tibetan medicine `preserves Tibetan culture` and `reasserts the Tibetan nation` - is any indication. Taking such assertions and similar findings of postcolonial scholarship elsewhere as a starting point, the ASF-funded project `The Ethics, Politics and Science of Tibetan Medicine in Exile` (2008-2011) investigated how, exactly, Tibetan medicine was doing all of that (if at all), and with what effects. How, in other words, did herbal pills acquire not only clinical but also cultural and political efficacy, and what does this mean for Tibetan medicine as a whole? Producing the first comprehensive ethnographic and historical account of Tibetan medicine in exile to date, this study found that `healing` the fractured Tibetan nation is as much a medical matter as Tibetan medicine is a political affair. Indeed, contemporary Tibetan medicine in exile cannot be understood independently from Tibetan culture and nationalism. Similarly, accounts of exile-Tibetan politics and governance remain incomplete without paying serious attention to Tibetan medicine`s central political role. This simple observation - well established in postcolonial work on India and elsewhere - has so far been missing in studies on both the Tibetan diaspora and Tibetan medicine. In providing a detailed and in-depth account of both the history and the current state of the connection between Tibetan medicine and nationalism in exile, this study broke new ground and makes major contributions to several disciplines, including medical anthropology and Tibet studies. Tibetan medicine in exile plays its multiple - and at times conflicting - roles (clinical, ethical, cultural, political, scientific) by producing an alternative `Tibetan` modernity that redefines Tibetan culture and re-imagines the Tibetan nation, promising to save (or `heal`) both. Simultaneously, this alternative modernity also addresses the ills and desires of Western modernity by offering a way to square altruism with business profits, compassion with realpolitik, and modern science with traditional knowledge. Tibetan medicine in exile - and particularly its prime institution, the Dharamsala Men-Tsee-Khang - thus stands at the center of modern efforts to reshape Tibetan culture, diasporic governance and nationhood.