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- Convenors:
-
Miriam Wenner
(University of Zurich)
Mona Chettri
- Discussant:
-
Richard Whitecross
(Edinburgh Napier)
- Location:
- 27H35/36
- Start time:
- 24 July, 2014 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
Artificially divided by national boundaries, the central-eastern Himalayan borderland is undergoing massive political and social transformations, entailing contestations about politics, democracy and belonging. This panel addresses these contradictory processes from different perspectives.
Long Abstract:
On the periphery of the Indian sub-continent, the central-eastern Himalayan region is undergoing a massive transformation which is manifested in its physical, social and political landscape. This geographical continuity comprising eastern Nepal, Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan has since been a space of contested political, ethnic and social boundaries. Diversity in ethnic composition and a history of economic and social marginalization complicates understandings of development, culture, politics and progress as espoused in the rhetoric of the neo-liberal state. This has led to a re-definition of the ethnic and political identities of inhabitants which now raises questions of national identity, citizenship, political autonomy, and cultural belonging. The region is also a space full of contradictions: Processes of democratization run parallel to violence and state oppression; attempts to define identity in national terms are challenged by a re-definition in ethnic terms; demands for development become juxtaposed to the recognition of citizenship. These contestations on social, historical and political grounds have been accentuated by the extraordinary rules that were historically prevalent in the region creating 'states of exception' which affects the enactment of politics in the contemporary period.
The panel aims to explore these contradictions and contestations in the understanding of politics, development and culture in the central-eastern Himalaya from a variety of approaches and disciplines, stressing questions of state-society relations and opposition, borders and scales, regions and nations, tradition and modernity.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the politics of identity and belonging among young Tibetans living in the Himalayan state of Sikkim
Paper long abstract:
Since 1959 more than 120,000 Tibetans have followed the Dalai Lama into exile fearing religious, political and economic persecution and marginalization. Around 3,000 Tibetans continue to leave each year, crossing the Himalayas into Nepal and India. The majority of these refugees live in India which is also home to the headquarters of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), the government-in-exile established in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh.
Drawing on research undertaken in Gangtok and Ravangla undertaken during 2013/14, this paper explores the complex and increasingly contested issue of Tibetan culture, identity and politics in the context of Tibetan settlements in the Indian Himalayan state of Sikkim.
A significant proportion of Tibetans live in settlements established by the CTA with the support of the Indian authorities. Within these settlements, and the Tibetan community more generally, there is a strongly held view that the future of Tibet - and of Tibetan language, culture and identity - depends upon the next generation of Tibetans, most of whom have never visited their homeland and who feel politically, economically and socially marginalized in India and who are increasingly looking to take advantage of opportunities for resettlement in the US, Canada and Europe.
At the same time there are growing political differences between young Tibetans about the best way of securing a future for Tibet, exemplified by calls by the Tibetan Youth Congress for a move away from the Dalai Lama’s ‘Middle Way’ approach, and increasing incidences of self-immolation within Tibet, many involving young people under the age of 25.
These shifts raise important and as yet unexplored questions about the extent to which it will be possible to maintain a consistent narrative around Tibetan identity, language and culture and the ways in which any generational differences and differences between young Tibetan themselves might translate politically.
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates the political effects of the globalized banding of Darjeeling (across heritage tourism, tea certification and popular culture) on the contemporary movement for a Gorkhaland state.
Paper long abstract:
Is Darjeeling merely a label? What becomes of Darjeeling as a place when its commodified avatars take over the global imagination of the area? How does such processes of 'non-place-making', prevalent with reference to many locations across the world, condition local politics of place? This paper investigates the political effects of the globalized banding of Darjeeling on the contemporary movement for a Gorkhaland state. From homesick colonial longings for the helaty, calm and orderly hills to the contemporary tourism fantasies of Darjeeling as an 'Asian Switzerland', from Santyajit Ray's Kanchanjangha to Anurag Basu's Barfi! the paper documents the prevalent imagination of Darjeeling as a tranquil hills station. On this basis, the paper discusses tensions and alliances between this imagination and the imagination of a Gorkhaland state.
Paper short abstract:
Along the recent developments in Sikkim and Darjeeling, I will unravel the contestations in the struggle for protective rights, political power, and ‘identity’ within the Lepcha community in the various administrative and national regions they inhabit.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I will compare the self-understanding as 'Lepcha,' the strategies and political affiliation of the Lepcha associations in Sikkim, Darjeeling (India) and Ilam (Nepal) and discuss the contestations among them. The Lepcha community inhabits a region in the central-eastern Himalayas which is now separated by national boundaries and has been a hub for immigration and cross-border movements since at least the past 150 years. In India and to a certain extent in Nepal, development and the local understanding of ethnic identity is closely linked together through an elaborate system of protective rights. Therefore, 'indigeneity' and 'culture' are assets central to political negotiations among the Lepcha associations themselves and with the respective local governments. The different political environments influence their understanding of Lepcha culture, space and political strategies. The Lepcha associations negotiate alternative images of 'what Lepcha is' and discourses of belonging in interaction with the policies of protective rights applicable in the respective regions and depending on their political affiliations. This has increased in the recent years, as the Lepcha community has been at the heart of political turbulences. In Sikkim some Lepcha have protested against the building of dams and opposed the ruling government, while in the Darjeeling hills the Lepcha association stood up against the Gorkhaland movement to ask for their own Council. These movements have deeply affected self-understanding and portrayal of the Lepcha, split the community into different fronts and usurped the interactions between the Lepcha associations themselves and with the respective local governments.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on my study of the Gorkhaland movement the paper demonstrates that movements for new states are no unitary blocks challenging the state but rather mechanisms for local elite formation supported by the very state that the movement leaders claim to oppose.
Paper long abstract:
In 2007, the Gorkhaland movement in North West Bengal experienced a revival with the emergence of a new party, the Gorkha Liberation Front (GLF) that ended the 20 years lasting reign of the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), and raised hopes for a democratic and less violent political culture. The struggle for a new separate state in India including Darjeeling district and adjoining areas is mainly based on the Gorkhas' believe that it would guarantee them an Indian identity. However, although the movement appears as homogenous, a closer look reveals its manifold contradictions and fractions rendering Darjeeling not only a contested space between the West Bengal government and the movement but also between the different movement actors. Such contestations become visible in the often violent oppression of other Darjeeling based parties by the GLF, or the appropriation and distribution of development funds to a selected clientele, fostering a territorialization of the GLF's power. This utilization of "money" and "muscle" power seems only possible with the acceptance of the very state government which is challenged by the GLF's leaders. Situating the analysis in the broader context of contested political authority and state-society relations, I understand the struggle for Gorkhaland not only as an expression of autonomy aspirations but mainly as a mechanism for elite formation in Darjeeling supported by a state government which is outsourcing its sovereignty to alleged criminal leaders in order to maintain the territorial integrity of the West Bengal state.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the ways in which many Nepali-Bhutanese refugees—already exceptional to the Nepalese national order of things—were made into what I term “exceptional exceptions” through their illegal employment as English-speaking teachers in Nepal.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores, through the stories of male Nepali-Bhutanese refugees who worked as teachers in Nepalese boarding schools, the ways in which the intersections of global capital and transnational flows of people, discourses and labor open up existential spaces of exception in nation-states wherein refugees or migrant laborers may be employed in a quasi-legal fashion. The men in this study found that they could describe their personal refugee experiences as positive ones. The existential spaces these men inhabited were exceptional: outside the law, yet ultimately subjected to its rule. The spaces in which the male refugee teachers found themselves were also necessarily liminal ones: removed from the politico-legal structure, excluded from a structured, legible place in the symbolic order that organizes what we may call the Nepalese national space. These liminal spaces of exception come about through conflicts between different modalities of sovereignty and governance, global capital being the catalyst. I term these English-speaking refugee teachers exceptional exceptions. The idea of an exceptional exception, referencing Agamben's work, refers to a further exception to the original exception (the naming of the refugee) and its focus on the "exceptional" points to a qualified statement of value that comes into being outside of the jurido-political framework of the nation-state. It is this value, which is here tied to the discourses of global capital, attained through a knowledge of the English language, that makes these men exceptional exceptions. This exception to the exception is, in essence, a reinscription of value onto bare life.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the political dynamics provoked by large-scale hydropower development and its governance in the Himalayan state of Sikkim.
Paper long abstract:
In the Sikkim Himalayas recent hydropower development initiatives have provoked a remarkable change of tide in the state’s political climate. Popular political voice and contestation of state-led development activities have historically been limited in the former Himalayan kingdom, where state-society relations are characterized by entrenched ethnic divisions and patronage networks. However, contentions over hydropower have resulted in an unexpected politicization of prevailing state-society-development-environment links. This article studies the (anti-)politics accompanying the planning and implementation of three hydropower projects in Sikkim, to explain these political developments, looking at the dialectic between socio-ecological impacts, government strategies and popular resistance. Touching upon to the notion of an anti-politics machine that effectively restricts political space to contest hydropower, we suggest that anti-political strategies do not merely work one way, but provoke counter-hegemonic tendencies. These are manifest in the active and effective resistance of local communities and civil society organizations. With the use of empirical material from several Sikkimese communities and activist groups affected by hydropower development, and looking at recent political events, we show how the hydropower issue has transformed prevailing state-society relations, setting in motion the state’s deadlocked democratization process.
Paper short abstract:
This paper engages in a discussion of the relation between ethnic identity and democracy in Sikkim against the background of increasing instances of ethnic revivalism.
Paper long abstract:
Sikkim is one of the smallest states in the world's largest democracy. It made the political transition from monarchy to democracy in 1975 and is now well entrenched in the democratic practices of the country which also means that its citizens engage in the electoral process as a means to partake in the re-distribution of public goods.
Ethnicity has long remained a primary agenda of political parties competing for electoral victory and recent political trends in Sikkim highlight a strong tendency towards the ethnic articulation of socio-economic grievances. This development has been facilitated and legitimized by the state. In turn, this has led to an expansion in the number of ethnic groups seeking to negotiate with the state for greater access to its resources. Placating ethnic groups and their grievances has emerged as crucial for political parties seeking to establish a reliable support base. Thus, identity based politics has become a norm in Sikkim.
The paper seeks to address the nexus between democracy and ethnicity and questions what ethnic politics could actually mean in the Sikkimese context- does it represent a more inclusive politics that enables the agency of those who have been side-lined by traditional political structures or is it just another elaborate scheme to further institutionalize patronage politics. The paper will use the Sikkimese case study to discuss democratic practices on the periphery of the nation-state and understand its local interpretations which are interspersed with different meanings and expectations for different groups and individuals.