Schooling and politics: textbooks and national identity in the Tibetan schools in India.

This article presents a study of the textbooks composed and released by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile for the Central School for Tibetans in India. By examining the textbooks on Social Studies and history, it looks at how the Tibetan Government-in-Exile engages with various external and internal ‘others’ in the process of constructing knowledge of the Tibetan nation, and at how it represents Tibetan life to those who were born in exile. It is contended that schooling and power are interrelated, and textbook curricula represent a way in which national power dominates the selection and representation of public knowledge. The article concludes by suggesting that the limits applied by their refugee status to the Tibetans in India has sometimes turned into the energy/force of empowerment, which not only permits flexibility in the shaping of a national identity but creates spaces for negotiating the multiple boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]