ABSTRACT
Tibet, a remote place nestled in the lap of the Himalayas, had long been inaccessible to the rest of the world. Its remoteness and inaccessibility generated curiosity in people belonging to different parts of the world. Popular imagination led to the birth of the notion of Tibet as a place of mystery, magic and an exotic culture. Western discourse of Tibet essentialised it variously as ‘Shangri-La,’ ‘Paradise on Earth,’ ‘a mythical Himalayan Utopia’ and the like. Tibetans too had been stereotyped in different ways. Tibetans themselves are concerned about the misconceptions and misrepresentations. Their own literary representations contest the Western gaze and offer their own views about their nation. This chapter analyses how the Western imagination operates while representing Tibet and the Tibetans. It theoretically explores the patterns of Western, Chinese and Indian gaze, and examines how the Tibetans use their counter-gaze to contest Western misrepresentations. In doing so, it explores theories of representation and gaze. On the whole, the chapter revolves around the issue of the politics of representation of Tibet.
