Life Quality of Tibetans and Hindus: A Function of Religion

The article examines the life quality of Tibetans and Hindus in Himachal Pradesh in India. Tibetan refugee population has lived and worked among the indigenous Hindu population at the foothills of the Himalyas in Northern India for the past three decades. The Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959 forced the Dalai Larna, the embodiment of God, to leave Tibet. The article presents a study of a survey in which, 125 residents of Upper Dharmsala of the Himachal Pradesh province in India were the subject of individual field interviews conducted at homes, shops, and other work places during the Spring and Summer of 1983. All of those surveyed were male. A total of 59 subjects were Tibetan refugees (Mahayana Buddhists) and 66 subjects were native Hindu residents. The study found that Tibetan refugees displayed greater life satisfaction than Hindu natives despite language problems and fewer financial resources for the Tibetan participants. The high life quality reported by the Tibetan sample is interpreted in terms of their religious beliefs, which stress self-contentment and the pleasure of existing in the presence of the living God, the Dalai Lama