MUNDGOD, India – Growing up, Namgyal Yemphel knew little of the world beyond his Tibetan settlement in southern India. But he recognized the USAID stamps on the sacks of flour that his family cherished for its sweetness, and on the tin barrels of oil, sturdy enough to keep for storing grain.
Decades later, the logo is still with him – on the laptop in his office at a Tibetan school, where the U.S. Agency for International Development has supplied computers, printers and projectors, as well as fruit, eggs and meat for student meals. Down the road, a hospital relies on USAID-provided blood-testing machines and X-ray equipment.
For decades, U.S. funding has helped tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees from China, with their thriving community across the border in India representing a small but symbolic counterweight to Beijing’s rising power. The future of that support is now in doubt after sweeping foreign aid cuts by President Donald Trump.
More than 80 percent of USAID programs have been slashed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this month, concluding that tens of billions of dollars had been spent “in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.”
Anna Kelly, the White House deputy press secretary, said Trump was “eliminating foreign aid that failed to put America First, and the Department of State is still reviewing all foreign aid programs at his direction.”
Funding to the exiled Tibetan government has been cut by a third, freezing projects worth $12 million annually, according to Penpa Tsering, the leader of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA).
For many Tibetans, the loss is harder to quantify.
“I don’t have any hard feelings for any country that decides to put its people first,” said Yemphel, 52, sitting in his sunlit principal’s office in the southern state of Karnataka. “But while you may save some money, you will lose moral authority.”
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A ‘critical stage’
Chinese troops invaded Tibet in 1949, killing thousands of people and eventually annexing the Himalayan nation. After a failed revolt a decade later, the Dalai Lama – the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists – and 80,000 of his followers fled to the Indian city of Dharamshala, where the CTA is headquartered today.
When India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, urged state governments to provide land to the new refugees, Karnataka granted more than 3,000 acres of forest. Southern India is now home to the largest number of Tibetans in exile, and Mundgod is their largest settlement.
In autonomous communities like this one, Tibetans say, they have been able to pursue new economic opportunities while holding fast to their cultural identity. Inside gilded monasteries, rows of monks practice the guttural art of throat singing. On their days off, the robed men scroll Instagram in cafes and restaurants; Indian workers converse in Hindi with Tibetans drinking milkshakes and mojitos.
Nearly every compound – from a women’s cooperative that stitches school uniforms to a home for the elderly – bears the name of international benefactors: German Aid, the Dolma Fund from Nepal, and others.
From the start, American aid has been most pivotal. While the Central Intelligence Agency once trained Tibetan guerrilla fighters, current U.S. programs impart far different skills.
“We were using rope weapons and the CIA trained us in arms,” said Jigme Tsultrim, the CTA’s chief representative in the region. “Now, the U.S. is teaching us health information systems.”
The CTA has become a fully formed government in exile, with a parliament, auditors, a public service branch and an election commission. Tsering said the Trump administration’s cuts have now come at “a very critical stage in our history and our struggle.”
At 89 years old, the Dalai Lama is less able to travel and appeal for international support. Beijing has intensified efforts to control his succession and, since 2010, has refused to engage in direct talks.
The U.S. recognizes Tibet as a part of China. The State Department says American officials have “pressed Chinese authorities … to allow Tibetans to preserve, practice, teach, and develop their religious traditions and language without interference.”
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‘Music to China’s ears’
Washington initially froze four projects for the Tibetan community in exile, but after lobbying from Tsering, he said, $2 million in funding was reinstated.
Three other projects remain stalled, including $7 million for strengthening Tibetan health, education and cultural institutions; $2 million annually for digitizing Tibetan Buddhist scriptures; and $3 million per year for a program to modernize local governance.
Tsering, known as the Sikyong, said the programs weren’t charity, but strategic investments.
“This will be music to China’s ears,” Tsering said in the CTA’s New Delhi office. For the U.S. to counter Beijing, he added, “we can’t think only about programs that inflict pain, but also programs like ours.”
Kelly, the White House official, said “no one has been tougher on China than President Trump.”
U.S. backing for the CTA has historically had broad support in Washington: President George W. Bush oversaw the passage of the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002; nearly two decades later, in 2020, Trump signed a bill protecting the right of Tibetans to choose the next Dalai Lama – the only law of its kind in the world.
Critics have long contended that America’s foreign aid system has failed to generate economic growth in recipient nations, and in some places has created a culture of dependency. But Tsultrim said the programs suspended here were designed to teach self-sufficiency.
“The U.S. did not hand us the fish,” he said, sitting in the Mundgod settlement office, which oversees almost 17,000 people across 4,000 acres. USAID, he said, had encouraged the community to pursue business development services and market cooperatives.
Tsering said the CTA had enough funds to cover the first three months of frozen aid and was committed to preserving essential programs, including student scholarships, support for new refugees and public health programs.
Yemphel said his school is scaling back training for teachers and fending off contractors looking to be paid for construction work. He hopes that cuts to student meals aren’t imminent.
“We will be relentless in our efforts to reach out to the State Department,” Tsering said.
People in Mundgod also expressed concern about Trump’s recent dismantling of Voice of America, which he has accused of “leftist bias,” saying it remained a critical source of information for Tibetans still in China.
Tenzin Lodoe, a secretary in the Mundgod settlement office who fled to India when he was 11, recalled listening to VOA on his shortwave radio as a small child, hungry for news about the Dalai Lama and crackdowns by Chinese troops. His sisters and brothers back home – whom he hasn’t been able to speak to for more than eight years – were likely to still be “getting real information” from the broadcast, he said.
The freeze on aid has also endangered the work of groups that document Chinese political repression and human rights abuses, including the China Dissent Monitor at Freedom House.
“As far as China is concerned, the wholesale dismantling of USAID is the gift that keeps on giving,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Tibet’s exile community has already been squeezed by Beijing’s global ascension. Nepal, once a haven, has increasingly cracked down on Tibetan protests. And while India has remained a refuge for the CTA, it has also sought to avoid confrontation with China, at times limiting Tibetans’ political activism.
The community here has shrunk from over 100,000 in the 1990s to 70,000 today, as China cracked down on escape routes and more Tibetans migrated to the West, according to CTA officials.
For all their challenges, “Tibetans are not starving to death,” said Yemphel, as his middle and high school students painted signs representing the independence movement. The aid cuts, he said, were not existential, but could have a generational impact.
“In the innocent minds of the children, this shakes the core belief that America stands behind Tibet,” he said.
