This book presents a close look at the growth, success, and proliferation of ethnic politics on the peripheries of modern South Asia, built around a case study of the Nepal ethnic group that lives in the borderlands of Sikkim, Darjeeling, and east Nepal. Grounded in historical and ethnographic research, it critically examines the relationship between culture and politics in a geographical space that is home to a diverse range of ethnic identities, showing how new modes of political representation, cultural activism, and everyday politics have emerged from the region.
This book presents a close look at the growth, success, and proliferation of ethnic politics on the peripheries of modern South Asia, built around a case study of the Nepal ethnic group that lives in the borderlands of Sikkim, Darjeeling, and east Nepal.
Introduction: Ethnic Identity and Politics in the Eastern Himalaya Why
Study the Eastern Himalayan Borderland? Studying the Eastern Himalayan
Borderland Facilitating Ethnic Politics
1. Locating the Nepali in the Eastern
Himalaya Becoming Nepali: Colonial History and Ethnic Group Formation Going
to Muglan: Emigration from the Kingdom of Gorkha to India Language and Ethnic
Group Formation Homogenization of the Nepalis and its Impact on Identity
Formation 1.1 Identifying the Nepalis of the Eastern Himalaya Gorkhaland:
Homeland for the Indian-Nepalis Deconstructing the Nepalis in Sikkim
Re-Claiming Limbuwan
2. The Ethnic Worldview: Framing Existential Grievances
Limbus of Eastern Nepal and the Politics of 'Jati and Nose' Discriminating
Against the Sons of the Soil: The Gorkhas of Darjeeling Fostering Culture of
Dependency in Sikkim
3. Ethnic Identity as Political Identity The Political
Resilience of the Brave Gorkha Neither Mongol nor Kirat: Asserting the Limbu
Identity Claiming Exclusive Identities in Sikkim
4. Manifestations of Ethnic
Politics The Dress Code: Looking Like a Gorkha Becoming a Tribe in Sikkim
Limbus as the Embodiment of the Indigenous Discourse
5. Constructing
Democracy Emergence of a New Patronage Structure The New Elites Expressing
Agency Through Ethnic Politics Regional Interpretation of Democracy
6. Being
Nepali Across Borders Of Ethnic Politics and democratic Cultures Ethnic
Politics as People's Politics.
Mona Chettri is a Next Generation Network Scholar at the Australia-India Institute, University of Western Australia. She is the author of Ethnicity and Democracy in the Eastern Himalayan Borderland: Constructing Democracy (Amsterdam University Press, 2017). Her current research focuses on infrastructure, urbanisation, and gender in the Sikkim-Darjeeling Himalaya. Willem van Schendel, Professor of History, University of Amsterdam and International Institute of Social History, the Netherlands. He works with the history, anthropology and sociology of Asia. Recent works include A History of Bangladesh (2020), Embedding Agricultural Commodities (2017, ed.), The Camera as Witness (2015, with J. L. K. Pachuau). See uva.academia.edu/WillemVanSchendel.
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