Dharamshala:
India’s Tibetan community is getting smaller. Officials say 70,000 to 80,000 Tibetans live in the country as of 2026, down from a little over 1 lakh around 2010. Refugee arrivals from Tibet have declined. Families are having fewer kids. And young people keep heading abroad to study or work, which is where tens of thousands of other Tibetans already are, in Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere. What’s left in India is a community that’s smaller and more spread out.
Nowhere is that clearer than McLeodganj-Dharamshala, home to the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) and the temporal head, the Dalai Lama.
So here’s the question: can the community keep running institutions that were built for a much bigger population?
From 3,000 Arrivals A Year to Six
Until about 2008, around 3,000 Tibetans made it to India every year. That’s according to Kunchok Migmar, the Tibetan Settlement Officer for Dharamshala district. In 2023, his office helped six.
Exile officials point to tighter Chinese security after the 2008 unrest, which broke out just months before Beijing hosted the Summer Olympics. Protests spread across the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Tibetan areas of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan. The CTA says it logged at least 344 protests that year. By its count, nearly 7,000 people were arrested, and about 200 died. China disputes the Tibetan account.
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Border surveillance has grown since then, and the journey to India has become harder. Settlements used to be refilled by one wave of refugees after another. That’s over.
Birth rates among Tibetans already in India have also dropped, and young people are heading overseas. Those two trends add to the problem.
Schools Reflect The Trend
Tibetan Children’s Villages (TCV) shows the scale of the change. The Dalai Lama founded the residential school network in 1960 to look after refugee children, and it grew as new groups arrived in India. More than 50,000 students have come through it.
Enrolment was around 17,000 before 2008. That number is now about 5,000, according to TCV General Secretary Kalsang Phuntsok, and only about 500 of those are in senior classes. Residential homes that once held 80-100 children aged between 6 and 14 now hold 20-30.
Phuntsok warns that two or three TCV schools could be empty by 2030 if nothing changes. The branch in Lower Dharamshala has just 74 pupils and may have to close.
TCV has started admitting children from other Himalayan communities, including Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. They make up around 30 per cent of its students. It has also invited Tibetan families abroad to send their children to its residential schools.
That may keep classrooms open. It doesn’t fix the real problem, which is that even fewer Tibetan children are entering the system.
Affecting The Arts
The Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) has the same trouble. The Dalai Lama set it up to preserve Tibetan music, dance, opera, and traditional crafts. It started in Kalimpong and moved to Dharamshala in 1961.
About 20 years ago, around students would sign up for its full seven-year course. Director Dhondup Tsering says the number is now around 35.
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Learning these art forms takes years. Somebody has to be willing to give those years, and with the population shrinking and more young adults going abroad, fewer people are in a position to do it.
TIPA is recruiting in Ladakh and Tawang, where it also teaches some of the traditions it practises. It has run drives in local schools and hopes to work with places like the National School of Drama in New Delhi. The institute still stages traditional performances and organises the annual Shoton Festival, mostly on grants from India’s Ministry of External Affairs.
What Happens To Exile Life in Dharamshala?
When the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959, Dharamshala became the heart of Tibetan political and cultural life. Settlements across India gave refugees a place to raise families, send their children to school, and hold on to their language and religion.
That community is now smaller and spread over more countries. Going abroad gives young Tibetans better access to education and jobs. It also leaves fewer people to support the institutions in India and fewer to raise the next generation in the settlements.
Separately, the United Nations has raised concerns about residential schooling policies for Tibetan children in China, warning that separating children from their families can weaken their ties to language and culture. Chinese authorities defend their education policies.
For Tibetans in India, the immediate problem is keeping up institutions built for a far larger community. Recruiting children from other Himalayan communities and staying in touch with Tibetans abroad might help. Neither makes up for the people who are gone.
