Tibetan Muslims of Nepal: a minority within a minority (Feature)

By Pratibha Tuladhar Sep 11, 2010, 4:04 GMT

Kathmandu - Ahmed Kamaal, 35, casually dressed in jeans and T-shirt, looks more East Asian than South Asian, as he sits in his Kathmandu office.

His Nepalese - sprinkled with English words - has a slight Tibetan accent.

Yet he represents one of Nepal's most established Muslim communities, even though it consists of barely 50 families.

Nepal's Tibetan Muslims are the descendents of Nepalese emigres who married Muslim women - for which they had to convert - while they were in Tibet.

Kamaal's grandfather was the offspring of one such union, and accepted Kathmandu's offer of citizenship, which is automatically extended to the descendants of any Nepalese man.

He moved to Nepal, his father's birthplace, but brought with him his mother's Tibetan language and customs, and her religion - Islam.

Since the 1960s, the political situation in Tibet has encouraged those in the same situation to claim Nepalese citizenship and return to the land of their fathers or grandfathers.

Mohammed, 28, says his great-grandfather, an officer in the Nepalese consulate in Lhasa, married a Tibetan Muslim there. His family returned two generations later, and has been living in Nepal since 1960.

The ranks of the Tibetan Muslims in Kathmandu today have swollen to around 400 individuals, who maintain their Tibetan language and Muslim customs, and seldom marry outside the community.

Mohammed, who asked that only his first name be used, has his great-grandfather's citizenship and his great-grandmother's faith.

But like many other Tibetan Muslims in Nepal, he was educated in a Christian missionary school in India's Darjeeling district, just across the border. At school, he said his prayers in a chapel and sang in the school choir.

'When I came home for holidays to Nepal - twice a year - I always said grace before my meals,' he smiles. 'As I grew up, I realized that my family did things differently. But a prayer is a prayer in any religion.'

Salima Khatun, 32, now works as a programme officer at the World Food Program. As a child, she attended a convent school in India, much like Mohammed.

'The trend of sending children to India for schooling was very strong when I was growing up,' says Kamaal, who was also sent to boarding school there.

'So the Tibetan Muslims, just like many Nepalese who could afford to, sent their children to Christian schools in India.'

Demographically, the Tibetan Muslim community in Kathmandu is dwarfed by the country's 1.2 million Muslims. But their sense of belonging is unshaken.

'In Nepal, a Tibetan Muslim could never be an outsider,' says Kamaal, recalling his childhood, when he was in boarding school in India. 'The moment we crossed the Indian border into Nepal, there was this sense of security. It felt like we were already home.'

Mohammed peers across the street from his office window to the Chinese embassy, the site of frequent protests by pro-Tibet activists. 'I sympathize with them, but I don't think of it as my cause,' he says. 'When I think of home, I think of Kathmandu and not Tibet.'

When his house was threatened by an angry mob in 2004, after 12 Nepalis were killed by Muslim militants in Iraq, Mohammed recalls how the local community came to their aid.

'It was our Hindu neighbours who stepped out of their house and confronted the mob to protect us,' he said. 'It was a shameful incident for a country like ours, where we've always prided ourselves on religious harmony.'

Nepal, formerly a Hindu Kingdom, declared itself secular in 2008 and national holidays include Hindu, Christian and Muslim holy days.

On the streets of Kathmandu, Buddhist stupas and Hindu temples jostle with mosques. Nepal's biggest mosque, Jame Masjid, stands barely 10 metres from one of the largest Hindu temples in the city.

'One of the best things about being Nepalese is that people never judge you for your religion,' Salima says.