Young, Elena. ‘The Boundaries of Identity: The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Nationalism, and Ris med(non-sectarian) Identity in the Tibetan Diaspora’. M.A. thesis, McGill University, 2011. 107 pp. [official site]
Will Tuladhar-Douglas had a theory that the Ris med pas drew their inspiration from Lhasa Newars. Until we hear more on that, there’s Elena Young’s Masters’ thesis:
From the Abstract
This thesis examines the complex process by which Tenzin Gyatso (Bstan ‘dzin rgya mtsho), the fourteenth Dalai Lama, has publicly and consciously sought to rise above traditional structures of sectarianism in order to forge a coherent Tibetan identity in exile. […] I argue in this thesis that this “non-sectarianism” can be historically traced back to the nineteenth century ris med (“non-bias” or “non-sectarian”) movement, a trend spearheaded in the eastern region of Khams, Tibet. In this way, the current Dalai Lama’s efforts to unify Tibet under a rubric that delineates a non-sectarian identity, indeed parallels an earlier moment in the story of Tibet, one that was equally unstable and yet central to the historical narrative of Khams. Employing a historical and textual analysis based on primary and secondary sources, this thesis is a study of the fourteenth Dalai Lama’s appropriation of the historical ris med model, and an investigation of the techniques and modes of “non-sectarian” representation adopted and disseminated by this leader and his administration-in-exile.