Imagined Places: Politics and Narratives in a Disputed Indo-Tibetan Borderland Público
Gohain, Swargajyoti (2013)
Published
Abstract
My dissertation concerns cultural politics and place-making in the "Monyul corridor", a Tibetan Buddhist cultural region comprising of Tawang and West Kameng districts in west Arunachal Pradesh, Northeast India. For nearly three centuries, Monyul was a "vassal state" of Tibet, and the Monpas, as the communities inhabiting this region are collectively known, were part of a trans-Himalayan trade and pilgrimage circuit. But following a colonial boundary in 1914, the fall of the Tibetan state in 1951, and especially after the boundary war between India and China in 1962, Monyul was integrated into India. Border passages between Monyul and Tibet were closed, and Monpas became "scheduled tribes" of India, entitled to affirmative action benefits. Since 2003, the Monpas, under the leadership of Tsona Gontse Rimpoche, influential religious leader and former member of the Arunachal Pradesh state cabinet, have been demanding autonomy for Monyul within Arunachal Pradesh, invoking the Sixth Schedule of the Indian constitution. In my dissertation, using "anti-essentialist" theories of space, I show how new ideas of community among the Monpas emerging through their politics of local autonomy, discourses of transnational origin and migration, and struggles over language and renaming, construct Monyul as a Himalayan Buddhist place, even as such spatial imaginations are consistently undercut by internal oppositions as well as external pressures of region and Monyul's status as a disputed border. Theoretically, I have been influenced by spatial theorists (e.g. Massey 1994) drawing on the ideas of philosopher, Henri Lefebvre, as well as by anthropologists and historians (Gupta and Ferguson 1997, Scott 2009, Van Schendel 2002, 2005) who have considered how displaced and marginal peoples articulate relations to place. By merging spatial theories and the scholarship on border, my work increases ethnographic understanding of the negotiations forced on people living in disputed border regions; and how these find expression in their politics and everyday practices.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ~ 1 ~
Chapter 2
ETHNOGRAPHIC PROFILE: MONYUL, ARUNACHAL PRADESH, AND NORTHEAST INDIA ~ 44 ~
Chapter 3
LOCALITY: TEXT AND CONTEXT OF THE MON AUTONOMOUS REGION ~ 64 ~
Chapter 4
CONNECTIONS: NARRATIVES OF TRANSNATIONAL ORIGIN AND MIGRATION ~ 112 ~
Chapter 5
SEPARATION: BUFFER POLITICS AND THE COLONIAL PRODUCTION OF MONYUL AS MARGIN ~ 157 ~
Chapter 6
PERIPHERY: RENAMING, NATION-MAKING, AND RESISTANCE AT THE BORDER ~ 200 ~
Chapter 7
REGION: TIBETAN REFUGEES AND MONPA "TRIBES" IN ARUNACHAL PRADESH ~ 234 ~
Chapter 8
CONCLUSION: CORRIDORS, NODES AND IMAGINED GEOGRAPHIES~ 278 ~
BIBLIOGRAPHY ~ 296 ~
LIST OF FIGURES
Chapter 1
1.1.Inset map of Arunachal Pradesh in relation to India ~ 2
1.2.The disputed border territories ~ 13
Chapter 2
2.1.Guide map of Tawang ~ 60
2.2.Map of Dirang ~ 60
2.3.Tawang monastery from a distance ~ 61
Chapter 3
3.1. Tsona Gonste Rinpoche in his chamber at GRL monastery, Bomdila ~ 84
3.2. Map of proposed Mon Autonomous Region ~ 84
3.3. Bhoti language and literature school, Tawang ~ 85
3.4. Road block at Thonglen ~ 85
3.5. MARDC badge with yak logo ~ 86
Chapter 4
4.1. Gyalsey Rinpoche and monk Sangey Leda ~ 144
4.2. Elderly person of Teli village, Tawang ~ 144
4.3. Chorten built by Bhutanese queen in Domkho village, Kalaktang ~ 145
Chapter 6
6.1. Plaque honoring a hero, Jaswant Singh memorial ~ 231
6.2. Plan of stupa to be built in memory of Sixth Dalai Lama ~ 231
About this Dissertation
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