Conflict Amongst the Tibetans and Indians of North India: Communal Violence and Welfare Dollars

Large numbers of Tibetan refugees have settled in India since the Communist Chinese occupation of Tibet in the late 1950s. As the favoured recipients of substantial financial assistance from the West they are today the focus of a good deal of envy from their less fortunate Indian neighbours. In this paper, I consider various forms of violent social conflict that have occurred between the Tibetans and Indians in two aras of Himachel Pradesh in North India. By contrasting the differing conditions prevailing in these two communities, I seek to isolate those factors most relevant in understanding the high incidence of conflict in one, but not in the other.