David Atwill's Islamic Shangri-La is a fascinating study of two related and under-researched issues, the history of Tibetan Muslims (Tib. Khache), and Tibet as a state actor deeply involved in Himalayan Asia. The book proceeds in largely chronological fashion, starting with the reign of the Fifth Dalai Lama in 1617 through 1960, with brief and tantalizing glimpses of more recent Khache in the last chapter. Readers are rewarded with a “thick transregional history of the Tibetan Muslims” free from typical state-based national histories of Asia (p. 5). The story of the Khache also provides a nice case study through which we get a better idea of the larger political history of Tibet in Himalayan Asia, especially because the Khache perfectly reflect “Tibet's inter-Asian positioning” (p. 5).
Atwill provides a helpful introduction to the Khache and their place in Tibetan society in the first chapter, “Boundaries of Belonging.” Especially useful is his adoption of the notion of “arrested histories” to describe how the Khache have occupied a liminal position in Tibet for the past three centuries, “never entirely ignored but never fully integrated” (p. 12). Atwill does not intend his book to be a full history of Islam in Tibet; the Khache were not the only Muslims living in Tibet, and even the Khache community was far from monolithic. They are a good case study not just because they are largely unknown outside of specialist circles, but also because the Khache uniquely embody multiple, competing definitions of nation and citizen that are useful in rethinking Himalayan, Tibetan, and Asian history.
Chapter 2 builds on the introduction with Atwill's explanation of the evolution of the Tibetan term “Khache.” Atwill tracks the term from its first use as the name of the Himalayan region of Kashmir and the people who lived there to a term that meant all Muslims in Tibet, and to the third and final stage where Khache referred to resident Tibetan Muslims who were seen by other Tibetans as locals. How they evolved from Kashmiri to Khache is an important aspect of their history that is revisited in the last chapter, where we learn about the problems that they experienced when they emigrated out of Tibet and tried to settle in Kashmir in 1960.
The complex identity of the Khache, especially the acceptance in Tibet of Khache-Tibetan marriages, is underlined in the next chapter, “How Half-Tibetans Made Tibet Whole,” which focuses on the period between 1912 and 1950. Tibet's view and treatment of two other liminal groups, half-Nepalese (Tib. Khatsara) and half-Chinese (Tib. Koko), illustrate Tibet's agency as a Himalayan state. This chapter provides readers with rare information on the Khatsara and Koko, who are undoubtedly even less known outside specialist circles than the Khache. We also learn here that Republican China was largely absent from Tibetan affairs in that period, a fact seldom included in China's claims to Tibet made after 1949.
We pick up the Khache thread again in the last three chapters of the book, which focus on the more well-known events in Tibet starting in 1950, through the exodus of Tibetans to India and the new position into which the Khache were thrown in Tibet in their new diaspora homes. The chapter “Himalayan Asia” extends the argument about Tibet's agency in Himalayan politics made earlier and illustrates the major change in the status of Tibet's residents that came with the CCP's forced assimilation of Tibet into China after 1949. Now all Tibetan citizens were automatically viewed as Chinese citizens, and liminal people such as the Khache, Khatsara, and Koko were forced to make difficult choices about their national identity.
The last two chapters showcase the attack on Khache by other Tibetans in Lhasa in 1960 and the exodus from Tibet of some 80,000 people by 1962. As the final chapter, “Prisoners of Shangri-La,” vividly illustrates, the Khache were forced into a terrible dilemma during the events of 1960 and China's hardening position towards Tibet, having to choose between claiming Tibetan (aka Chinese) or Indian identity. Atwill's initial characterization of the Khache as neither ignored nor integrated comes full circle here in tracking the fate of Khache who left Tibet. They went from living as Tibetans among Tibetans to being “ambiguous, anonymous, and overshadowed” Muslims in their adopted homeland (p. 151).
Atwill's recovery of the story of the Khache is engaging, original, and a must-read for anyone interested in Asian history or contemporary affairs. It is also a solemn reminder that modern states’ obsession with defining and controlling citizenship by hard and exclusive categories provides no space or comfort for people whose history in a different time and place continue to shape their lives as liminal subjects.
