As many as 80,000 Tibetans fled to India and Nepal in 1959 following the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The establishment of a Tibetan government in exile helped foster a sense of belonging, but it was also through mutual aid groups, such as the kyi-dug, that Tibetan refugees took care of one another. The word kyi-dug: kyi for happiness, and dug for sorrow, carries an implicit notion that the kyi-dug is organized with the goal to comfort and support community members in times of crises. In this talk, Dhompa will braid a few different stories–– refugee aid packages in the early 1960s, kyi-dug and children, and ancestral divinities of land and people––to speak about resistance and belonging.

This event is both in-person and on zoom. Click above for the zoom link.

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is the author of The Politics of Sorrow, an account of early Tibetan exile political life in India published by Columbia University Press (2025). She has several collections of poetry: My Rice Tastes Like the Lake, In the Absent Everyday and Rules of the House (all from Apogee Press, Berkeley), and a non-fiction book, Coming Home to Tibet (Shambhala Publications, 2014)

This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.

Presented by the Center for South Asian Studies and co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute