~RAI Research Seminar~

Whose Medicine? Sowa Rigpa between Tibetan Culture and Indian Geopolitics

Stephan Kloos, Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Are Tibetans losing control over their most important national symbol next to Tibetan Buddhism? This lecture examines the integration of Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan Medicine) into India’s AYUSH system following its 2010 recognition as an “Indian system of medicine”. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with practitioners and policymakers, I trace how Sowa Rigpa’s dual valuation – as a potential UNESCO “intangible cultural heritage” and a marketable healthcare asset – inserts it into India’s political and economic aspirations, while amplifying Tibetan fears of cultural dispossession.

I argue that India’s increasing efforts to develop traditional medicine as both a lucrative industry and a (geo-)political tool for nation-branding seek to erase Tibetan identity, but simultaneously depend on Tibetan expertise. Through the case of Sowa Rigpa, this lecture reflects on the cultural, economic, and geopolitical significance of industrialized Asian medicines and broader capitalist reconfigurations of culture, medicine, and nationalism. Can marginalized groups like the Tibetans retain control over their medical traditions, cultural heritage, and national symbols as these are incorporated into state bureaucracy and the capitalist market?

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This is a hybrid event.
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