Farming pushes carpet-weaving to second spot for Tibetans

Far from home, the Tibetan refugees settled in Bylakuppe and Gurupura in Mysore district have over the last three decades turned seasoned agriculturists.

Their traditional craft of carpet-making has taken a beating and is now an off-season occupation for a small section of them.

When these people came as refugees with their spiritual leader Dalai Lama in 1959 following China's occupation of Tibet, the Government of Karnataka offered them lands in these two elephant-infested forests

Today, they have turned these lands into vast maize fields with colourful Tibetan flags dotting them, Tibetans riding past in their two-wheelers on the settlement mud roads and monks in their ochre robes walking to their beautiful monasteries.

To eke out a living when they came here, they took to carpet weaving and marketed their wares and produces through the co-operative society set up to help them.

A peace-loving and hard-working community with almost no cases of crimes against them, they levelled the forest lands and took up cultivation of crops like maize, cotton, tobacco, pulses and vegetables.

As a result, the first and the biggest settlement of Bylakuppe having a population of 17,000 has turned more prosperous than the other three Tibetan settlements at Gurupura, Kollegal and Mundgod in Karnataka.

Indo-Tibetan Friendship Society, Mysore Chapter, vice-president Pema Dorji tells Business Standard at Bylakuppe camp, "maize has become the major crop and generally fetches Rs 400-450 a quintal, but this time we are lucky we getting Rs 800 a quintal".

Maize is sold through the society to a Tamil Nadu factory, which turns it into by-products including animal feed.

"Carpet-making is no longer our main occupation. The carpet market is down. They are not in demand. Besides, we have to bring wool from Haryana, which makes it costly. Nepal continues to enjoy a good market," he says.

But the colourful carpet-making profession is not totally dead. In Gurupura settlement, Tibetans are seen engaged in weaving quality carpets, with traditional Tibetan motifs and now with the local and Indian figures, of which they have become a part.

Marketing of sweaters in Mysore and Bangalore has become a secondary occupation to supplement their incomes when rainfall is poor or when they cannot undertake cultivation because of the elephant menace.

Gurupura settlement representative Samten Phuntsok says elephant menance is rampant in the area. Farmers are afraid to take up cultivation. As a result, many settlers continue to remain poor, although most of them have lands. The settlement has a population of 4,000 Tibetans, almost double of what it was when it was established in 1971 over a 2,000-acre area with 1,615-acres of cultivable lands.

The Tibetan boys and girls are either studying in cities or looking for jobs in industries after their education. Many of them are jobless.

In South India, there are over 30,000 Tibetan refugees and they continue to aspire to return to their homeland one day, says chapter president Gp Capt (retd) H Rajagopal.