When ‘exile’ becomes sedentary: on the quotidian experiences of ‘India-born’ Tibetans in Dharamsala,north India

Waltraud Kokot and her coauthors stated ‘ … . despite a necessary focus on transnational networks and movement, ethnographic studies of diaspora must also not neglect the realities of sedentary diasporic life.’ Taking such a call as my point of departure, this article explores the quotidian experiences of ‘in exile’ specific to a subgroup of Tibetans in Dharamsala, north India, who have for a couple of decades at least described themselves as the ‘India-born’. Secondly, it particularly attends to the sensory domains of these Tibetans' local/Indian experiences and in turn highlights the geo-affinity that they ambivalently feel for the place where they are at once native and exilic. Demonstrated in the article are the ongoing processes through which individuals, feeling marked by the displacement of the nation to which they belong, realize their Tibetan attributes in the context(s) they in varied ways perceive as ‘Indian’.