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- Introduction. The Himalayas from its edges: networks, identities and
place-making
Authors: Dibyesh Anand, Swargajyoti Gohain, Nitasha Kaul, Sayantani Mukherjee
Abstract: While the perspectives of sovereign nation-states have tended to dominate how the Tibeto-Himalayan region has been shaped, viewed and lived in the last century, we argue for adoption of multidisciplinary perspectives that focus on flows and interactions rather than the limited frames of state-centred exchanges. Collating empirically grounded studies from different parts of the Himalayas, this special issue highlights the cross-border networks, negotiated identities and politics of place that are directly and indirectly enabled by state practices and are enacted in the lives of the people in the region. This issue offers a critical understanding of the tangled role of cultural, material, political and economic factors that have informed historical and contemporary processes in the Himalayas. In this introductory paper, we highlight the Himalayas as a productive site of contestation...
PubDate: 2024-07-31
- Editorial
Authors: Tristan Bruslé, Stéphane Gros, Philippe Ramirez
Abstract: When the EBHR was launched in 1991, the first editors – Richard Burghart, Martin Gaenszle and András Höfer – pointed out in their Editorial the need to mobilise European colleagues and to involve scholars from Himalayan countries in order for the Bulletin to be successful. This need persists today, especially in the ever-evolving landscape of academic publishing and of institutional support to area studies. In 2021 the EBHR celebrated the thirtieth year of its existence by transitioning into an online open-access journal, adapting to changes in the publishing environment and improving the dissemination of its content. We trust this will lead to renewed interest and will increase the EBHR’s attractiveness and broaden its readership. To remain true to its mission, the Bulletin needs to maintain its European foothold through both the involvement of individuals and institutional backing. For the past three de...
PubDate: 2024-07-31
- Hannah Uprety, Becoming a Migrant Worker in Nepal: The governmentality and
marketization of transnational labor
Authors: Ramesh Sunam
Abstract: If there is a key feature that broadly defines Nepal’s social and economic geography at this historical juncture it is migration and remittances. Although patterns may vary across the country's geography, castes, genders and ethnicities, hardly any rural and urban spaces have been left unaffected by migration and remittances. Added to this, the country’s overall economy and social structures have undergone some level of transformation, though Nepal is no exception in Asia as far as experiencing this type of change. Consequently, the country’s economy has been largely seen as a ‘remittance economy’ (Seddon et al 2002), and even rural villages have turned into ‘remittance villages’ (Sunam 2020). Despite the fact that these transformations are occurring in Asia and across the Global South, only a limited amount of research exists on the governmentality of labour migration. Uprety’s Becoming a Migrant Worker in Nepal...
PubDate: 2024-07-31
- John K Locke, Buddhist Monasteries of Nepal: A survey of the Bāhās and
Bahīs of the Kathmandu Valley
Authors: David N Gellner
Abstract: The UNESCO World Heritage sites of the Kathmandu Valley give pride of place to the temples and palaces at the symbolic heart of the three formerly royal cities: Kathmandu itself, Patan and Bhaktapur. What gives these ancient Newar cities their character, however, is not just the royal centres but the rabbit warren of lanes and courtyards that make up the rest of the urban fabric. Among these many courtyards, set back from the streets and crossroads, Buddhist monastic courtyards (baha and bahi) loom large. The Tibetologist David Snellgrove, visiting Patan in 1953–54, speculated that the city ‘must have been a kind of vast university-city, differing little in its mode of life from similar towns in mediaeval Europe. In fact, its traditions, its way of life, must have been modelled on the great monastic universities of central India’ (Snellgrove 1957: 102–3). Snellgrove was right that the Buddhism of the Kathm...
PubDate: 2024-07-31
- Michael Hoffman, Glimpses of Hope: The rise of industrial labor at the
urban margins of Nepal
Authors: Chris Crews
Abstract: Drawing on a series of ethnographic vignettes from fieldwork in Nepal, Michael Hoffmann takes readers from the lowland town of Nepalgunj in the Terai to the upland city of Pokhara while offering readers a glimpse inside Nepal's growing urban industrial labour scene. The book draws on research and multiple field visits between 2013 and 2020 to weave together a story of changing industrial labour relations and class formations, of the evolving power of Maoist unions, and the occasional foray into the world of spirits and occult economics. Through a mix of details about the daily routines of industrial workers and their bosses and reflections on the lasting impact of the Maoist revolution and Nepal's integration into global labour markets, Hoffmann gives readers insights into how labour politics, class consciousness, ethnic and Indigenous identities, gender politics, urban versus rural dynamics, and religious...
PubDate: 2024-07-31
- Jagadish Timsina, Tek Narayan Maraseni, Devendra Gauchan, Jagannath
Adhikari and Hemant Ojha (eds), Agriculture, Natural Resources and Food
Security: Lessons from Nepal
Authors: Olivia Aubriot
Abstract: It is great to see a book from a prestigious publishing house that is entirely devoted to agriculture in Nepal and, to boot, almost exclusively written by Nepalese people (experts, academics, practitioners). The very origin of the project explains the reason for this: in 2019, four of the editors set up, from Australia, a scientific cooperative association between Nepal and Australia. All have a very sound knowledge of Nepalese agriculture and have been specialists of the topic for 20 to 40 years. More than 60 contributors and 40 reviewers, a good number belonging to the ‘Nepalese scientific diaspora’, were involved in this book. The scientific editors' preface clearly announces the situation Nepalese agriculture is facing: ‘The past decade has been particularly unprecedented… as we see the country become a net food importer from a food exporter. … 15% (4.6 million) people [are] experiencing food access pro...
PubDate: 2024-07-31
- The old man by the waterfall: deep entanglements of culture, state-making
and geopolitics in Arunachal Pradesh
Authors: Kaustubh Deka
Abstract: Arunachal Pradesh, a state in Northeast India, is going through a phase of rapid infrastructural expansion, a phenomenon intensified due to the state’s geostrategic location. Despite the colonial enterprise of frontier-making and the resulting securitisation of space, the presence of the eastern Himalayan frontier has historically infused the region with elements of both steadfastness and dynamism, as its spatial fluidity persists in one form or the other. Meanwhile, despite being situated in a Himalayan corridor, the region finds itself entangled in the contentious politics in which states in South and Southeast Asia are locked. Drawing on ethnographic experiences from two geopolitically sensitive and spatially significant places, Menchukha and Namsai, situated on the eastern Himalayan slopes at Arunachal Pradesh, this article discusses the paradoxical conditions of ‘selective pe...
PubDate: 2024-07-31
- The gift of democracy: a Tibetan experience with democracy in exile
Authors: Tenzing Palmo
Abstract: Instituting democracy was one of the foremost engagements of the Dalai Lama in exile. The intricate connection drawn between democracy, the nationalist goal and the Dalai Lama gives a unique flavour to Tibetan democracy. Considered as a ‘gift’, democracy is conferred a sacred character by the Tibetan people which immunises it from the usual aspects of everyday democratic functioning of which discussion, dialogue, differences and dissent are an integral part. Drawing on theoretical concepts from the anthropological literature on democracy, gift and the public sphere, and putting them in conversation with the primary data obtained from field research, this paper first examines the complex relationship between democracy and Tibetan nationalism, and how democracy came to be constituted within a nationalist rhetoric. It then shows the characteristics of a Tibetan public sphere consider...
PubDate: 2024-07-31
- Dialogical decoloniality and Tibetan conceptions of indigeneity
Authors: Tenzin Desal
Abstract: Current discourse on entrenched differences within the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is defined in terms of evolving concepts of nationality and ethnicity. Tibetans are recognised as one of the 55 ethnic minorities distinct from the dominant Han Chinese (who comprise over 91% of the total population). This majority-minority framework has been cemented in China’s normative thinking as a multi-ethnic nation-state. Political movements among Tibetan exiles based in India advocate for greater autonomy within the framework of the constitution of the PRC and the Law on Regional National Autonomy (LRNA). Based on ‘patchwork ethnographic’ work, this paper seeks to investigate the refusal among Tibetan exiles to associate Tibet’s collective self with the concept of indigeneity. The PRC does not recognise the existence of indigenous peoples, although it voted in support of the 200...
PubDate: 2024-07-31
- A Tibetan window into the twentieth-century Himalayan world
Authors: Swati Chawla
Abstract: This article examines interconnections between parts of the Indian Himalaya and Tibet in the period encompassing the escape of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama to India in 1959. While Buddhism served as connecting tissue binding together communities across recently drawn national borders, networks linking families in Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet were also forged through monastic patronage, colonial education, intermarriage, seasonal migration and trade. Through a reading of colonial and postcolonial archives from Delhi, London and Gangtok, as well as the private papers of Indian political appointees in the Himalaya, the article shows how, far from blazing a trail, the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans who followed him into exile were treading well-worn migration routes and leaning on relationships forged over centuries. Archival evidence from press and parliamentary proceedings in the 1950s and 19...
PubDate: 2024-07-31
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