Contemporary Bonpo Community in Tibetan Refugee Camps

Anna Szymoszyn

Published: 2017-12-31

Vol. 37 (2016)

Contemporary Bonpo Community in Tibetan Refugee Camps

Anna Szymoszyn

Abstract

This article describes a religious minority group called the Bönpo who live in Tibet (China), Nepal and India. Bönpos live in villages, in scattered communities and in two Tibetan refugee Bönpo camps in Himachal Pradesh (India) and in Kathmandu Valley (Nepal). This article presents the social policy of religious leaders from both camps, who have been mixing different ethnic groups and nations in one camp in order to help this niche culture survive. One of the effects of such policies carried out over the last 50 years is the deep influence of Tibetanness on Himalayan people, mostly from Mustang and Dolpo, who have grown up in Bönpo refugee camps. In the article, I analyse population data in detail to show how small the Bönpo community is and why their leaders have pursued such a social policy focused on religious and Tibetan identification despite ethnic and national differences.

Keywords:

Himalayan people, Tibetans, Dolpo, Mustang, Bön, population, religious minority, migration, boarding school

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Szymoszyn, A. (2017). Contemporary Bonpo Community in Tibetan Refugee Camps. Ethnologia Polona, 37, 67–82. Retrieved from https://journals.iaepan.pl/ethp/article/view/67

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Anna Szymoszyn

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0014-8123

Affiliation:

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology - Polish Academy of Sciences, Poznań, Poland

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

MA in ethnology and in theology at the Adam Mickiewicz University; PhD in ethnology at the IAE PAS; Fulbright Award at the University of Virginia (2008); editor-in-chief of the journal "Ethnologia Polona" (2015-2019).