Dibyesh Anand
Biographic Data
| ID | 643849 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dibyesh Anand |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dibyesh |
| FAMILY NAME | Anand |
| SIGNATURE | ANAND D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Westminster |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3604-2539 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 179 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Contemporary Chinese colonial paternalism and the hypocrisy of US far-left denialism
While the Chinese Communist Party has long implemented a colonial-paternalist mode of governance over Tibetans and Uyghurs, there is a curious phenomenon of a notable segment of the far left in the United States (US) defending it under the guise of anti-imperialism. This phenomenon needs unpacking. The article identifies how contemporary China is a colonizing state using paternalist vocabulary and highlights a few prominent US far leftists who de…
From everyday encounters to geopolitical relations: The Tibetan diaspora in India
This article examines how Tibetan exile identity in India is shaped through the interplay of local social relations and broader geopolitical forces. It argues that Tibetan-Indian interactions have both everyday and geopolitical significance, influencing place-making, perceptions of India as Buddhism's homeland, and portrayals of Tibetans as exceptional refugees. After outlining continuities and changes in exile, we explore two case studies at dif…
Introduction. The Himalayas from its edges: Networks, identities and place-making
While the perspectives of sovereign nation-states have tended to dominate how the Tibeto-Himalayan region has been shaped, viewed and lived in the last century, we argue for adoption of multidisciplinary perspectives that focus on flows and interactions rather than the limited frames of state-centred exchanges. Collating empirically grounded studies from different parts of the Himalayas, this special issue highlights the cross-border networks, ne…
Challenging Institutional Racism in International Relations and Our Profession: Reflections, Experiences, and Strategies
Attempts to create a more inclusive discipline and profession have been commended by many and derided by some. While these attempts have pushed for change, particularly with regards to more equal representation of gender and race among faculty, policies aimed at creating a more inclusive environment are often tokenistic, administrative and bureaucratic, and fail to address structural and institutional practices and norms. Moreover, the administra…
Colonization with Chinese characteristics: Politics of (in)security in Xinjiang and Tibet
China as a victim rather than a proponent of modern colonialism is an essential myth that animates Chinese nationalism. The Chinese statist project of occupying, minoritizing and securitizing different ethno-national peoples of Central Asia, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, with their own claims to homelands, is a colonial project. Focusing on China’s securitized and militarized rule in Xinjiang and Tibet, the article will argue that the most approp…
Immigrant Ambassadors: Citizenship and Belonging in the Tibetan Diaspora
Book Review| October 01 2012 Immigrant Ambassadors: Citizenship and Belonging in the Tibetan Diaspora Immigrant Ambassadors: Citizenship and Belonging in the Tibetan Diaspora. By Julia Meredith Hess. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. xv + 266 pp. Photos, tables, illustrations, notes, index, and bibliography. $35 (cloth). Dibyesh Anand Dibyesh Anand Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic…
A disruptive ethnography of Tanzanian-Indians
This paper is a disruptive ethnography of Indians in Tanzania (Tanzanian-Indians). It uses narratives of individuals to challenge the popular ethnographic categories within which the individuals are usually subsumed. This paper analyses three critical questions concerning Category, Homeland and Community. Is the category Mhindi (‘Indian’ in Kiswahili) exhaustive as a cultural identity? What is the relationship of Tanzanian-Indians to their ‘homel…
Revisiting the China–India Border Dispute: An Introduction
China and India: Postcolonial Informal Empires in the Emerging Global Order
The recent debates within and beyond Marxism around empire and imperialism focus on deterritorialization, but fail to see non-Western states as anything other than collaborators or victims. Highlighting the importance of center-periphery relations within the territorially bounded political space of the nation-state, this paper puts forward a new concept of the Postcolonial Informal Empire (PIE) to characterize the emerging powers of China and Ind…
Diasporic subjectivity as an ethical position
The paper highlights some of the ways in which diasporas challenge the dominant narratives of belonging that give primacy to the bounded community of nation-states. It argues for a critical appropriation of diasporic subjectivity as an ethical position that reveals the contested and constructed nature of culture. This position requires analytical frameworks that recognise power relations behind cultural claims and allow us to appreciate the silen…
Strategic Hypocrisy: The British Imperial Scripting of Tibet's Geopolitical Identity
The protests in and around Tibet in 2008 show that Tibet's status within China remains unsettled. The West is not an outsider to the Tibet question, which is defined primarily in terms of the debate over the status of Tibet vis-à-vis China. Tibet's modern geopolitical identity has been scripted by British imperialism. The changing dynamics of British imperial interests in India affected the emergence of Tibet as a (non)modern geopolitical entity.…
Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination
Geopolitical Exotica examines exoticized Western representations of Tibet and Tibetans and the debate over that land's status with regard to China. Concentrating on specific cultural images of the twentieth century--promulgated by novels, popular films, travelogues, and memoirs--Dibyesh Anand lays bare the strategies by which "Exotica Tibet" and "Tibetanness" have been constructed, and he investigates the impact these constructions have had on th…
Anxious Sexualities: Masculinity, Nationalism and Violence
An ethnographic research among activists subscribing to majoritarian Hindu nationalism in India reveals that anxiety, masculinity and sexuality are crucial ingredients in their identity politics. The inimical figure used to mobilise the Hindu nationalist identity is a stereotyped Muslim masculinity which in turn is imagined as dangerous owing to a mix of negative images of Islam, history, physicality and culture. The specificities of anti-Muslim …
Western Colonial Representations of the Other: The Case of Exotica Tibet
Cultural representation of the non-Western Other lies at the core of Western colonial and neocolonial discourses. A critical political analysis of the Western imagination of the Other involves a recognition at two levels—the practices of essentializing and stereotyping that provide the backbone as well as various strategies (such as infantilization, eroticization, debasement, idealization, and self-affirmation) that put flesh to the imagined Othe…
Inhabiting the Space of Literature: An Ecocritical Study of Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things and O.V. Vijayan's The Legends of Khasak
Journal Article Inhabiting the Space of Literature: An Ecocritical Study of Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things and O.V. Vijayan's The Legends of Khasak Get access Divya Anand Divya Anand Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Volume 12, Issue 2, Summer 2005, Pages 95–108, https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/12.2.95 Published: 01 July 2005
The Violence of Security: Hindu Nationalism and the Politics of Representing ‘the Muslim’ as a Danger
This paper conceptualizes security as a discourse of violence that masks violence in the name of counter-violence, killing in the name of protection. As the case of Hindutva in India illustrates, violence against minorities is normalized in the name of personal, communal, national and even international security. The will to secure the Self has as its corollary the will to make insecure the Other, the desire to control and use violence. Using the…
"A Contemporary Story of "Diaspora: The Tibetan Version
Until the last two decades of the twentieth century, Tibetan studies suffered from an overemphasis on Buddhism and pre-1950s Tibetan history. Since the late 1980s, however, the situation has gradually changed. One increasingly comes across works related to Tibet that draw upon new ideas culled from various social, literary, and cultural theories. One such concept that is gaining currency is Diaspora. Taking their cue from the changing discourses …
(Re)imagining nationalism: Identity and representation in the Tibetan diaspora of South Asia 1
In this article the focus is on various embodied and embedded narratives shaping Tibetan identity today, especially among the diasporic Tibetans living in South Asia. It is argued that it is not only Westerners who have exoticised Tibet and the Tibetans; the Tibetan diaspora too have invested heavily in such (neo)orientalist representation strategies for their own tactical purposes. The first part of the article is devoted to the conceptual issue…
Book Notes
The Violence of Security: Hindu Nationalism and the Politics of Representing ‘the Muslim’ as a Danger
This paper conceptualizes security as a discourse of violence that masks violence in the name of counter-violence, killing in the name of protection. As the case of Hindutva in India illustrates, violence against minorities is normalized in the name of personal, communal, national and even international security. The will to secure the Self has as its corollary the will to make insecure the Other, the desire to control and use violence. Using the…
Colonization with Chinese characteristics: Politics of (in)security in Xinjiang and Tibet
China as a victim rather than a proponent of modern colonialism is an essential myth that animates Chinese nationalism. The Chinese statist project of occupying, minoritizing and securitizing different ethno-national peoples of Central Asia, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, with their own claims to homelands, is a colonial project. Focusing on China’s securitized and militarized rule in Xinjiang and Tibet, the article will argue that the most approp…
Anxious Sexualities: Masculinity, Nationalism and Violence
An ethnographic research among activists subscribing to majoritarian Hindu nationalism in India reveals that anxiety, masculinity and sexuality are crucial ingredients in their identity politics. The inimical figure used to mobilise the Hindu nationalist identity is a stereotyped Muslim masculinity which in turn is imagined as dangerous owing to a mix of negative images of Islam, history, physicality and culture. The specificities of anti-Muslim …
China and India: Postcolonial Informal Empires in the Emerging Global Order
The recent debates within and beyond Marxism around empire and imperialism focus on deterritorialization, but fail to see non-Western states as anything other than collaborators or victims. Highlighting the importance of center-periphery relations within the territorially bounded political space of the nation-state, this paper puts forward a new concept of the Postcolonial Informal Empire (PIE) to characterize the emerging powers of China and Ind…
(Re)imagining nationalism: Identity and representation in the Tibetan diaspora of South Asia 1
In this article the focus is on various embodied and embedded narratives shaping Tibetan identity today, especially among the diasporic Tibetans living in South Asia. It is argued that it is not only Westerners who have exoticised Tibet and the Tibetans; the Tibetan diaspora too have invested heavily in such (neo)orientalist representation strategies for their own tactical purposes. The first part of the article is devoted to the conceptual issue…
Strategic Hypocrisy: The British Imperial Scripting of Tibet's Geopolitical Identity
The protests in and around Tibet in 2008 show that Tibet's status within China remains unsettled. The West is not an outsider to the Tibet question, which is defined primarily in terms of the debate over the status of Tibet vis-à-vis China. Tibet's modern geopolitical identity has been scripted by British imperialism. The changing dynamics of British imperial interests in India affected the emergence of Tibet as a (non)modern geopolitical entity.…
Western Colonial Representations of the Other: The Case of Exotica Tibet
Cultural representation of the non-Western Other lies at the core of Western colonial and neocolonial discourses. A critical political analysis of the Western imagination of the Other involves a recognition at two levels—the practices of essentializing and stereotyping that provide the backbone as well as various strategies (such as infantilization, eroticization, debasement, idealization, and self-affirmation) that put flesh to the imagined Othe…
Challenging Institutional Racism in International Relations and Our Profession: Reflections, Experiences, and Strategies
Attempts to create a more inclusive discipline and profession have been commended by many and derided by some. While these attempts have pushed for change, particularly with regards to more equal representation of gender and race among faculty, policies aimed at creating a more inclusive environment are often tokenistic, administrative and bureaucratic, and fail to address structural and institutional practices and norms. Moreover, the administra…
"A Contemporary Story of "Diaspora: The Tibetan Version
Until the last two decades of the twentieth century, Tibetan studies suffered from an overemphasis on Buddhism and pre-1950s Tibetan history. Since the late 1980s, however, the situation has gradually changed. One increasingly comes across works related to Tibet that draw upon new ideas culled from various social, literary, and cultural theories. One such concept that is gaining currency is Diaspora. Taking their cue from the changing discourses …
Inhabiting the Space of Literature: An Ecocritical Study of Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things and O.V. Vijayan's The Legends of Khasak
Journal Article Inhabiting the Space of Literature: An Ecocritical Study of Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things and O.V. Vijayan's The Legends of Khasak Get access Divya Anand Divya Anand Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Volume 12, Issue 2, Summer 2005, Pages 95–108, https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/12.2.95 Published: 01 July 2005
Immigrant Ambassadors: Citizenship and Belonging in the Tibetan Diaspora
Book Review| October 01 2012 Immigrant Ambassadors: Citizenship and Belonging in the Tibetan Diaspora Immigrant Ambassadors: Citizenship and Belonging in the Tibetan Diaspora. By Julia Meredith Hess. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. xv + 266 pp. Photos, tables, illustrations, notes, index, and bibliography. $35 (cloth). Dibyesh Anand Dibyesh Anand Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic…
(Re)imagining nationalism: Identity and representation in the Tibetan diaspora of South Asia 1
In this article the focus is on various embodied and embedded narratives shaping Tibetan identity today, especially among the diasporic Tibetans living in South Asia. It is argued that it is not only Westerners who have exoticised Tibet and the Tibetans; the Tibetan diaspora too have invested heavily in such (neo)orientalist representation strategies for their own tactical purposes. The first part of the article is devoted to the conceptual issue…
Book Notes
"A Contemporary Story of "Diaspora: The Tibetan Version
Until the last two decades of the twentieth century, Tibetan studies suffered from an overemphasis on Buddhism and pre-1950s Tibetan history. Since the late 1980s, however, the situation has gradually changed. One increasingly comes across works related to Tibet that draw upon new ideas culled from various social, literary, and cultural theories. One such concept that is gaining currency is Diaspora. Taking their cue from the changing discourses …
Inhabiting the Space of Literature: An Ecocritical Study of Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things and O.V. Vijayan's The Legends of Khasak
Journal Article Inhabiting the Space of Literature: An Ecocritical Study of Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things and O.V. Vijayan's The Legends of Khasak Get access Divya Anand Divya Anand Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Volume 12, Issue 2, Summer 2005, Pages 95–108, https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/12.2.95 Published: 01 July 2005
The Violence of Security: Hindu Nationalism and the Politics of Representing ‘the Muslim’ as a Danger
This paper conceptualizes security as a discourse of violence that masks violence in the name of counter-violence, killing in the name of protection. As the case of Hindutva in India illustrates, violence against minorities is normalized in the name of personal, communal, national and even international security. The will to secure the Self has as its corollary the will to make insecure the Other, the desire to control and use violence. Using the…
Anxious Sexualities: Masculinity, Nationalism and Violence
An ethnographic research among activists subscribing to majoritarian Hindu nationalism in India reveals that anxiety, masculinity and sexuality are crucial ingredients in their identity politics. The inimical figure used to mobilise the Hindu nationalist identity is a stereotyped Muslim masculinity which in turn is imagined as dangerous owing to a mix of negative images of Islam, history, physicality and culture. The specificities of anti-Muslim …
Western Colonial Representations of the Other: The Case of Exotica Tibet
Cultural representation of the non-Western Other lies at the core of Western colonial and neocolonial discourses. A critical political analysis of the Western imagination of the Other involves a recognition at two levels—the practices of essentializing and stereotyping that provide the backbone as well as various strategies (such as infantilization, eroticization, debasement, idealization, and self-affirmation) that put flesh to the imagined Othe…
Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination
Geopolitical Exotica examines exoticized Western representations of Tibet and Tibetans and the debate over that land's status with regard to China. Concentrating on specific cultural images of the twentieth century--promulgated by novels, popular films, travelogues, and memoirs--Dibyesh Anand lays bare the strategies by which "Exotica Tibet" and "Tibetanness" have been constructed, and he investigates the impact these constructions have had on th…
Diasporic subjectivity as an ethical position
The paper highlights some of the ways in which diasporas challenge the dominant narratives of belonging that give primacy to the bounded community of nation-states. It argues for a critical appropriation of diasporic subjectivity as an ethical position that reveals the contested and constructed nature of culture. This position requires analytical frameworks that recognise power relations behind cultural claims and allow us to appreciate the silen…
Strategic Hypocrisy: The British Imperial Scripting of Tibet's Geopolitical Identity
The protests in and around Tibet in 2008 show that Tibet's status within China remains unsettled. The West is not an outsider to the Tibet question, which is defined primarily in terms of the debate over the status of Tibet vis-à-vis China. Tibet's modern geopolitical identity has been scripted by British imperialism. The changing dynamics of British imperial interests in India affected the emergence of Tibet as a (non)modern geopolitical entity.…
A disruptive ethnography of Tanzanian-Indians
This paper is a disruptive ethnography of Indians in Tanzania (Tanzanian-Indians). It uses narratives of individuals to challenge the popular ethnographic categories within which the individuals are usually subsumed. This paper analyses three critical questions concerning Category, Homeland and Community. Is the category Mhindi (‘Indian’ in Kiswahili) exhaustive as a cultural identity? What is the relationship of Tanzanian-Indians to their ‘homel…
Revisiting the China–India Border Dispute: An Introduction
China and India: Postcolonial Informal Empires in the Emerging Global Order
The recent debates within and beyond Marxism around empire and imperialism focus on deterritorialization, but fail to see non-Western states as anything other than collaborators or victims. Highlighting the importance of center-periphery relations within the territorially bounded political space of the nation-state, this paper puts forward a new concept of the Postcolonial Informal Empire (PIE) to characterize the emerging powers of China and Ind…
Immigrant Ambassadors: Citizenship and Belonging in the Tibetan Diaspora
Book Review| October 01 2012 Immigrant Ambassadors: Citizenship and Belonging in the Tibetan Diaspora Immigrant Ambassadors: Citizenship and Belonging in the Tibetan Diaspora. By Julia Meredith Hess. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. xv + 266 pp. Photos, tables, illustrations, notes, index, and bibliography. $35 (cloth). Dibyesh Anand Dibyesh Anand Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic…
Colonization with Chinese characteristics: Politics of (in)security in Xinjiang and Tibet
China as a victim rather than a proponent of modern colonialism is an essential myth that animates Chinese nationalism. The Chinese statist project of occupying, minoritizing and securitizing different ethno-national peoples of Central Asia, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, with their own claims to homelands, is a colonial project. Focusing on China’s securitized and militarized rule in Xinjiang and Tibet, the article will argue that the most approp…
Challenging Institutional Racism in International Relations and Our Profession: Reflections, Experiences, and Strategies
Attempts to create a more inclusive discipline and profession have been commended by many and derided by some. While these attempts have pushed for change, particularly with regards to more equal representation of gender and race among faculty, policies aimed at creating a more inclusive environment are often tokenistic, administrative and bureaucratic, and fail to address structural and institutional practices and norms. Moreover, the administra…
Introduction. The Himalayas from its edges: Networks, identities and place-making
While the perspectives of sovereign nation-states have tended to dominate how the Tibeto-Himalayan region has been shaped, viewed and lived in the last century, we argue for adoption of multidisciplinary perspectives that focus on flows and interactions rather than the limited frames of state-centred exchanges. Collating empirically grounded studies from different parts of the Himalayas, this special issue highlights the cross-border networks, ne…
Contemporary Chinese colonial paternalism and the hypocrisy of US far-left denialism
While the Chinese Communist Party has long implemented a colonial-paternalist mode of governance over Tibetans and Uyghurs, there is a curious phenomenon of a notable segment of the far left in the United States (US) defending it under the guise of anti-imperialism. This phenomenon needs unpacking. The article identifies how contemporary China is a colonizing state using paternalist vocabulary and highlights a few prominent US far leftists who de…
From everyday encounters to geopolitical relations: The Tibetan diaspora in India
This article examines how Tibetan exile identity in India is shaped through the interplay of local social relations and broader geopolitical forces. It argues that Tibetan-Indian interactions have both everyday and geopolitical significance, influencing place-making, perceptions of India as Buddhism's homeland, and portrayals of Tibetans as exceptional refugees. After outlining continuities and changes in exile, we explore two case studies at dif…
Political science (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · History (6 works)