ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at two strategies employed by Tibetans to preserve their values, culture, and religion thus advancing nationalistic concerns. The ‘Buddhist encampments’ of the Nyingma School are a form of ‘soft nationalism’ adapting traditional religious culture to a modern Buddhism. The wave of self-immolations spearheaded in 2009 by monks from the Gelukpa school of Buddhism, exemplifies, instead, what I call ‘hard nationalism’. As a violent form of nationalism, self-immolators call for radical political change in Chinese-controlled areas of eastern Tibet, autonomy, and the return of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Nationalism, is thus seen not as a monolithic phenomenon but as a movement taking different shapes even within the same community and among individuals sharing the same values.
