Buddhist Monks and Border Minorities: New Imaginings of Cultural Identity in India's North East Frontier
Modern South Asia Seminar by Swargajyoti Gohain
The Monpas are an ethnic minority in North East India, adhering to Tibetan Buddhism. Inhabiting the Monyul region on the Indo-Tibetan borderland, the Monpas (a collective term for the communities) were once part of the Tibetan state and shared strong cultural and commercial ties with both Tibet and Bhutan. While a boundary demarcated by the British rulers divided Monyul from Tibet in 1914, Monpas retained their cross-border connections, and Tibetan officers continued to collect taxes from this region. However, after 1951, when the postcolonial Indian administration established its first offices here, and especially following the 1962 border war between India and China, Monpas were reoriented towards the Indian state, and had to adapt to hitherto unfamiliar social and political-economic networks. Since 2003, led by firebrand monk-politician, Tsona Gontse Rinpoche, a section of Monpas have been fighting for autonomy, not in the sense of territorial segregation but for self-rule within constitutional limits. This paper examines the discourse of autonomy to reveal connections between this “local” movement and a wider Buddhist community, particularly evident in the participation of monks, and the promotion of a cultural agenda in which the monastic community has greater stakes. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2008-2010 and ongoing research in Arunachal Pradesh, North East India, this paper analyses the cultural politics of a border minority to highlight incipient imaginations of community among Tibetan Buddhist populations of the Himalayan region.
About Swargajyoti Gohain
"I am a cultural anthropologist interested in issues of cultural politics, border studies, oral history, and urban transformations in relation to Northeast India and the Himalayan region. A native of Assam, I have done fieldwork in Monyul in west Arunachal Pradesh; and received my Ph.D. in Anthropology from Emory University, U.S.A. in 2013. I have previous M.A. and M.Phil. degrees in Sociology from Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University. As a postdoctoral fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden, the Netherlands, I am currently working to revise my Ph.D. dissertation into a book. My other interests include creative writing, and translating Assamese literature into English. "
IIAS profile page: www.iias.nl/profiles/swargajyoti-gohain