Description
For Tibetans, Rangzen is an emotion. Reverberating throughout Tibetan civil society, the word no longer denotes only an aspiration but has become one of the classifiers of the collective Tibetan diasporic identity itself. Rangzen stands for freedom and is a reminder of their collective loss and generational persistence; it is a call to congregate that has animated the Tibetan diasporic community in exile.
“I have three tongues
the one that sings is my mother tongue.
The R on my forehead
between my English and Hindi
the Tibetan tongue reads: RANGZEN.”
- Tenzin Tsundue, 2018
Since the annexation of Tibet in 1951, the Tibetan Diaspora around the world has worked diligently to keep the spirit of the pursuit of Tibetan independence alive. As such, their efforts, both strategic and non-strategic, political and social, cultural and communal, have aimed towards forging and promulgating a curated narrative of longing, and return, of sacrifice and resilience. However, given that it has been seven decades in exile, the Tibetan dream is facing a reckoning as the milestone of their proverbial return keeps shifting away into an indeterminate, unforeseen future.
By tracing what Rangzen has come to mean, and be seen as, across generations, geographies, and discursive sites, this paper wishes to understand the many mutually constitutive and mutually exclusive facets of Tibetan nationalism in exile, which is forced to reproduce and safeguard its sovereignty without recognised statehood, and sense of belonging scattered across multiple territories. In exploring Rangzen as both emotional inheritance and political grammar, it asks: what forms of collective identity emerge across generations and geographies when a nation can only be remembered, but unfortunately cannot be returned to?
