Almost every Tibetan refugee talks about that hope of the "return" which will happen, according to the conventional wisdom, when the Dalai Lama and Beijing come to a compromise. In that event, how many refugees will actually return to the old country? Would the refugees be received open-heartedly by Tibetans who never left? The answers are by no means obvious.
There are presently about 120,000 Tibetans in exile. Most of them are in India, living in refugee camps or independently in places like Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Mussorie and Dehra Dun. There are more than 12,000 in Nepal, mostly in Kathmandu and some in refugee camps such as in Pokhara, Dhorpatan and Solu. In Bhutan, there are probably less than one thousand. In addition, there are 2000 or so Tibetans in Europe, 1500 in North America and smaller numbers scattered all over, from the Nordic countries to New Zealand.
One Nepali anthropologist believes that no more than fifty per cent of the diaspora will actually return in the ever… of a Chinese opening. He says, 'The more educated they are, the more westernised they become, the less likely they are to return. This is the experience of all South Asians who have settled abroad and Tibetans can be no exception."
But non-Tibetans who see well-adjusted, successful Tibetan refugees probably misjudge how deep the longing to return to one's own can be. While it is true that the younger refugees who were either born in exile or left Tibet in 1959 as infants have only their parents' memories to lead them back, it is clear that the pain and the insecurity of exile can never be entirely neutralised by economic security or a western-style education.