Heritage, Culture, and Politics in the Buddhist Himalayas

IIAS Lunch Lecture by Swargajyoti Gohain. This research presentation is based on fieldwork conducted in west Arunachal Pradesh in Northeast India between 2008 and 2010.

In constructions of nationalisms and other forms of cultural identity, various tropes are utilized in order to naturalize the relation between a people, heritage, and territory. In this presentation, I focus on idioms of blood and kinship in mediating the identity between people, place, and heritage. Drawing on oral narratives of origins and migration among the Monpas, an ethnic minority in Northeast India, I show how the Monpas, who straddle the borders between Tibet, India and Bhutan, narrate Tibetan and Bhutanese origins to articulate transnational belonging. Yet, given that the Monpas inhabit a disputed territory in an unresolved border dispute between India and China, stories of trans-border and particularly, Tibetan, origin have become a contentious issue. Hence, some individuals use a variety of narrative ploys, including invention of an indigenous lineage, to claim national belonging. 

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Next Lunch Lectures

1 AprilMasculinity, Autonomy, and Attachment in Buddhist Burma, by Ward Keeler (University of Texas, TX, USA)

15 April Restoration or Ruination? The Politics of Timurid Architectural Heritage in Samarqand, by Elena Paskaleva (Leiden University Institute for Area Studies)

6 May Somewhere in between. Hybrid forms of Chinese engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa by Romain Dittgen (Université Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne)

20 MayThe Returns of Faith: Engaging Sri Lankan Catholicism in an Italian Parish, by Bernardo Brown (Cornell University, NY, USA)

3 JuneTracing Absence: Work of Hope and Mediation of Transgenerational Emotional Suffering, by Ana Dragojlovic (Australian National University, Australia)

17 JuneTBA.

About IIAS Lunch Lectures

Every third Tuesday of the month (and temporarily also every first Tuesday), one of the IIAS researchers will present his or her work-in-progress in an informal setting to colleagues and other interested attendees. IIAS organises these lunch lectures to give the research community the opportunity to freely discuss ongoing research and exchange thoughts and ideas. Lunch is provided by IIAS.

Photo © ahinsajain: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yak_dance_Monpa.jpg