Tibetans in India constitute a small but robust community of nationalist claimants whose political aspirations are typically expressed through religion and devotion to the Dalai Lama. At the same time, the Tibetan exile government in Dharamsala is a highly organised political movement that maintains cohesion within the community through elaborate administrative tools borrowed from their democratic host. Existing literature on Tibetan nationalism emphasises the religiosity of the Tibetan people and their leaders, relegating discussion on the more secular components of the ‘Free Tibet movement’ to the background. Academic discussions on Tibetan democracy, although substantial, do not relate democratic practices in exile to rational political choices of the Tibetan leadership. In this article, I will present a social movement analysis of Tibetan practices of statehood in liminality. I argue that such practices constitute a specific mobilisation of resources and framing practices that ultimately seek political recognition from the Government of India and beyond. The establishment of state-like institutions is not merely performative but serves a critical purpose of maintaining tacit or de facto recognition for the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) as the true representatives of the Tibetan people both within and outside Tibet.
