The Himalayan Border Region

The Himalayan Border Region PDF Author: Christoph Bergmann
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319297074
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
Drawing from extensive archival work and long-term ethnographic research, this book focuses on the so-called Bhotiyas, former trans-Himalayan traders and a Scheduled Tribe of India who reside in several high valleys of the Kumaon Himalaya. The area is located in the border triangle between India, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR, People’s Republic of China), and Nepal, where contestations over political boundaries have created multiple challenges as well as opportunities for local mountain communities. Based on an analytical framework that is grounded in and contributes to recent advances in the field of border studies, the author explores how the Bhotiyas have used their agency to develop a flourishing trans-Himalayan trade under British colonial influence; to assert an identity and win legal recognition as a tribal community in the political setup of independent India; and to innovate their pastoral mobility in the context of ongoing state and market reforms. By examining the Bhotiyas’ trade, identity and mobility this book shows how and why the Himalayan border region has evolved as an agentive site of political action for a variety of different actors.

The Himalayan Border Region

The Himalayan Border Region PDF Author: Christoph Bergmann
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319297074
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Get Book

Book Description
Drawing from extensive archival work and long-term ethnographic research, this book focuses on the so-called Bhotiyas, former trans-Himalayan traders and a Scheduled Tribe of India who reside in several high valleys of the Kumaon Himalaya. The area is located in the border triangle between India, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR, People’s Republic of China), and Nepal, where contestations over political boundaries have created multiple challenges as well as opportunities for local mountain communities. Based on an analytical framework that is grounded in and contributes to recent advances in the field of border studies, the author explores how the Bhotiyas have used their agency to develop a flourishing trans-Himalayan trade under British colonial influence; to assert an identity and win legal recognition as a tribal community in the political setup of independent India; and to innovate their pastoral mobility in the context of ongoing state and market reforms. By examining the Bhotiyas’ trade, identity and mobility this book shows how and why the Himalayan border region has evolved as an agentive site of political action for a variety of different actors.

India China

India China PDF Author: L.H.M. Ling
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472902520
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
Challenging the Westphalian view of international relations, which focuses on the sovereignty of states and the inevitable potential for conflict, the authors from the Borderlands Study Group reconceive borders as capillaries enabling the flow of material, cultural, and social benefits through local communities, nation-states, and entire regions. By emphasizing local agency and regional interdependencies, this metaphor reconfigures current narratives about the China India border and opens a new perspective on the long history of the Silk Roads, the modern BCIM Initiative, and dam construction along the Nu River in China and the Teesta River in India. Together, the authors show that positive interaction among people on both sides of a border generates larger, cross-border communities, which can pressure for cooperation and development. India China offers the hope that people divided by arbitrary geo-political boundaries can circumvent race, gender, class, religion, and other social barriers, to form more inclusive institutions and forms of governance.

At the Edges of States

At the Edges of States PDF Author: Michael Eilenberg
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004253467
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
Set in West Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, this study explores the shifting relationships between border communities and the state along the political border with East Malaysia. The book rests on the premise that remote border regions offer an exciting study arena that can tell us important things about how marginal citizens relate to their nation-state. The basic assumption is that central state authority in the Indonesian borderlands has never been absolute, but waxes and wanes, and state rules and laws are always up for local interpretation and negotiation. In its role as key symbol of state sovereignty, the borderland has become a place were central state authorities are often most eager to govern and exercise power. But as illustrated, the borderland is also a place were state authority is most likely to be challenged, questioned and manipulated as border communities often have multiple loyalties that transcend state borders and contradict imaginations of the state as guardians of national sovereignty and citizenship.

The Frontier Complex

The Frontier Complex PDF Author: Kyle J. Gardner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108840590
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Reveals how British imperial border-making in the Himalayas transformed a crossroads into a borderland and geography into politics.

China’s India War

China’s India War PDF Author: Bertil Lintner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199091633
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
The Sino-Indian War of 1962 delivered a crushing defeat to India: not only did the country suffer a loss of lives and a heavy blow to its pride, the world began to see India as the provocateur of the war, with China ‘merely defending’ its territory. This perception that China was largely the innocent victim of Nehru’s hostile policies was put forth by journalist Neville Maxwell in his book India’s China War, which found readers in many opinion makers, including Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. For far too long, Maxwell’s narrative, which sees India as the aggressor and China as the victim, has held court. Nearly 50 years after Maxwell’s book, Bertil Lintner’s China’s India War puts the ‘border dispute’ into its rightful perspective. Lintner argues that China began planning the war as early as 1959 and proposes that it was merely a small move in the larger strategic game that China was playing to become a world player—one that it continues to play even today.

Beyond Lines of Control

Beyond Lines of Control PDF Author: Ravina Aggarwal
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822334149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Ravina Aggarwal explores how the conflict over Kashmir between India & Pakistan has affected the Buddhist & Muslim communities of Ladakh, part of Kashmir that lies high in the Himalayas.

Boundaries and Borderlands

Boundaries and Borderlands PDF Author: Alka Acharya
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000608174
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
The Simla Convention of 1914, held between Great Britain, China, and Tibet, demarcated the border between India and Tibet and gave birth to the McMahon Line. This volume critically examines the legacy of the 1914 Conference and explores its relevance in scholarly discourse about the status of Tibet and Sino-Indian relations more than a hundred years later. The book discusses the significance of the Simla Conference both in terms of the geo-politics of boundaries as well as the people and the liminal borderlands they occupy, encapsulating the culture and diversity of the trans-Himalayan regions. It explicates how colonial legacies, viz., the 1914 Simla Convention, have become virtual straitjackets, hardening the positions on the boundaries between India and China. It also looks at the debilitating consequences of the nation-state framework on more substantial investigations of the borderlands. Rich in archival material and drawing from the authors’ fieldwork in the Himalayan regions, this book analyses muted voices of the inhabitants of the region to bring into focus the larger question of the political, economic, religious, ecological and social life of the Himalayan peoples, which has enormous implications for both India and China. This volume will be of interest to students of history, international relations, sociology, strategic studies, Asian studies and anthropology.

Trans-Himalayan Borderlands

Trans-Himalayan Borderlands PDF Author: Jean Michaud
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9048531713
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
The societies in the Himalayan borderlands have undergone wide-ranging transformations, as the territorial reconfiguration of modern nation-states since the mid-twentieth century and the presently increasing trans-Himalayan movements of people, goods and capital, reshape the livelihoods of communities, pulling them into global trends of modernisation and regional discourses of national belonging.This book explores the changes to native senses of place, the conception of border - simultaneously as limitations and opportunities - and what the authors call "affective boundaries," "livelihood reconstruction," and "trans-Himalayan modernities." It addresses changing social, political, and environmental conditions that acknowledge growing external connectivity even as it emphasises the importance of place.

Ethnicity and democracy in the Eastern Himalayan Borderland

Ethnicity and democracy in the Eastern Himalayan Borderland PDF Author: Mona Chettri
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9048527503
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Focusing on the Nepali ethnic group living on the borderlands of Sikkim, Darjeeling, and east Nepal, the book 'Ethnicity and Democracy in the Eastern Himalayan Borderland' analyses the growth, success, and proliferation of ethnic politics on the peripheries of modern South Asia. Based on extensive historical and ethnographic research, it critically examines the relationship between culture and politics in a geographical space which is replete with a diverse range of ethnic identities. The book explores the emergence of new modes of political representation, cultural activism, and everyday politics in regional South Asia. Being Nepali offers new perspectives on political dynamics and state formation across the eastern Himalaya which is fuelled by the resurgence of ethnic culture. NB CATALGUSTEKST CHICAGO: 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.

Caring for Glaciers

Caring for Glaciers PDF Author: Karine Gagné
Publisher: Culture, Place, and Nature
ISBN: 9780295744001
Category : Environmentalism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Set in the high-altitude Himalayan region of Ladakh, in northwest India, Caring for Glaciers looks at the causes and consequences of a transformation in people's relationship with the environment. It illuminates how relations of care and reciprocity-learned through everyday life and work in the mountains with the animals, glaciers, and deities that form Ladakh's sacred geography-shape and nurture an ethics of care for non-humans. The geopolitical context that has reconfigured Ladakh into a strategic border area in postcolonial India has transformed the fabric of everyday life. Simultaneously, the landscape of Ladakh is also being transformed by climate change. Ladakhi elders perceive this as a changing moral order, in which environmental depletion and social fragmentation are inextricably intertwined. As Glaciers Vanish contributes to the anthropology of ethics by examining the moral order that develops through the embodied experience of life and work in the Himalayas. While not divorced from Buddhist beliefs, this emerges not from religious doctrine but from beliefs and practices through which people engage with the environment. This book will be of interest to researchers in a variety of fields, including anthropology, geography, and sociology of religion. It will also appeal to scholars of Tibetan Buddhism and of borderland studies, to social scientists studying climate change, and to area studies specialists of India, South Asia, and the Himalayas"--