Himalayan Town Research Articles

Seeking Dhasa; Finding Lhasa: Liminality and Narrative in the Tibetan Refugee Capital of Dharamsala

This article explores the role of narrative and narrativity in stabilising identity in an exile setting, read here as a way to avert what Bjørn Thomassen calls the ‘danger’ inherent to liminality. It does this by analysing the shape and visualscape of the little Himalayan town of Dharamsala, which serves as the secular and religious ‘capital’ of Tibetan exile. It attempts to decode the narratives which allow ‘Dhasa’, as Dharamsala is colloquially known, to cohere and correspond to its metonymically aspirational other – Lhasa, the capital of old Tibet. There can be read in this act of assonant naming the beginnings of a narrative geared towards generating nostalgia for a lost homeland, alluding to the possibility of its reclamation and restitution in exile. This article explores how this narrative is evidence of the fact that it is in indeterminacy; in liminality in other words, that the ‘structuration’ that Thomassen proposes, becomes possible at all. Even as it alludes to the impossibility of transplanting cultures whole, the article also examines closely the Foucauldian notion of ‘trace residue’ inherent to ruptures in prior epistemes, treating this idea as central to creating new-‘old’ orientations for this refugee community in exile. Following Thomassen and Szakolczai, liminality is here treated as a concept applicable to time as well as place; individuals as well as communities, and social ‘events’ or changes of immense magnitude. It is this notion of liminality that the article proposes has to be a central concept in any exploration of exile groups which have to live in the spaces between the shorn identity markers of the past – rooted as these must be in a lost homeland – and the present, where they must be iterated or man-ufactured anew.

The Socio-Cultural Importance of the Worship of Shiva as Bhairava in the Kumaun Himalayas: A Historical Study of the Astha Bhairav Worship in Almora

Uttarakhand is abode of gods and home of Lord Shiva. Bhairava worshipped in Kumaun Himalayan town of Almora as most adored deity and worship is entirely different than other parts of Asia. Yet this speciality is still unrevealed for researchers and theologists. As several other towns are known for their Bhairava temples and attract devotees from different parts. Historic town of Almora is still waiting for its temples for popularity. Bhairava is worshipped as a god in the countries of South Asia including India and Nepal.

7 The reign of terror of the big cat: bureaucracy and the mediation of social times in the Indian Himalaya

This paper describes the arrival of a man‐eating leopard in a small Himalayan town in India and the local state's subsequent struggle to control the big cat. By focusing on what went on within the apparatus of the state during this period, this paper attempts to contribute to the study of modern time in bureaucracy. It argues that the startling inefficiencies in the effective governance and regulation of the big cat stemmed from a clash of various social times that were unfolding simultaneously. It outlines five distinct forms of social time that were in play during this period, which led to long periods of waiting and allowed for the articulation of a searing critique of the Indian state by town residents. Ultimately this paper contributes a rethinking of current theories of bureaucratic time that focus on the production of disempowered waiting, risk analysis, and anticipation. Instead it argues that a study of low‐level bureaucrats and citizens shows that a central task of bureaucracy is to attempt to mediate conflicting forms of social time. Moving away from accounts of bureaucratic indifference, this paper depicts failure as an impasse arising out of attempts to bring incommensurable forms and representations of time into congruence. These failures importantly imperil the legitimacy of bureaucrats and can lead to a radical critique of the state.

Collusion and bickering: landscape, religion and ethnicity in the central Himalayas

By considering bickering, gossip and similar artful kinds of talk that reproduce social categories in a central Himalayan town, it is possible to see that participants in such talk collude in constructing a social landscape that grounds the relational distinctions foregrounded in those conversations. Following on from discussions that suggest anthropology of the environment must consider other social relations, here it is proposed that the environment is inescapably part of relational social distinctions. Collusion in the production of such shared landscapes, it is argued, is a key aspect of achieving ordinary life and, in certain contexts, can become the basis for resistance to the imposition of unwanted categorical distinctions.

Chemistry of springwater in Almora, Central Himalaya, India

A field study was conducted to assess variations in physico-chemical characteristics of water of the springs located within the boundary of a Central Himalayan town where the springwater is used for drinking purposes. Monitoring of 12 springs was carried out for three seasons (winter, summer and monsoon). The results indicate direct influence of unplanned sewage disposal on the springwater quality as reflected by significant regional variations in the concentration of nitrates, chlorides, sulfates, sulfides and electrical conductivity. Population density varies within the town from 3110 to 14 137 persons/km–2 and has direct relationship with water quality. Springs located in the densely populated area had higher concentrations of all these compounds. Concentrations of nitrates up to 60 ppm were observed in some springs, making water unsuitable for human consumption. No significant changes were observed in springwater quality during different seasons.

The River Is Eternal: Nature Mysticism and Vedanta Philosophy in Ruskin Bond's Angry River

The River Is Eternal: Nature Mysticism and Vedanta Philosophy in Ruskin Bond’s Angry River Meena G. Khorana (bio) On February 18, 1993, the Sahitya Akademi of India presented Ruskin Bond the award for the most outstanding Indian writer in English. This recognition of Bond’s 35 years as a writer acknowledges his special relationship with India by virtue of birth, experience, and history. Born to British parents on May 19, 1934, in Kasauli, a small town in the foothills of the Himalayas, Bond grew up as an Indian with no division of loyalties, but as the inheritor of a dual culture. Unlike the children of most British colonials who were sent to England to study during their formative years—famous among them being Rudyard Kipling, Rumer Godden, and M. M. Kaye—Bond spent his early childhood in the princely state of Jamnagar, where his father served as tutor-guardian to the royal children; in the Doon Valley in the Himalayas, where his grandparents lived; and at Bishop Cotton School in Simla, the summer capital of the Raj. After completion of his schooling in 1950, like so many colonials at the time of Indian independence, Bond accompanied his relatives to England. However, he was lonely for the Himalayan mountains, and while still a teenager he wrote his first novel, The Room on the Roof (which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize awarded to a British Commonwealth writer under 30), in an attempt to capture the beauty and mystery of the Himalayas and, quite literally, to earn his passage home to India. Ruskin Bond, who has been living in Mussoorie for nearly 30 years now, has made the small Himalayan town a part of his life and work as a writer. He has given up lucrative job offers in the cities and outside India to live the simple, yet spiritually rich life the mountains have to offer, [End Page 253] because, as he says, “when you have received love from people, and the freedom that only the mountains can give, then you have come very near the borders of heaven” (“Writer” 1). He says he has become a part of the mountains, or at least of the particular range on which Mussoorie is situated. The very house in which he lives, Ivy Cottage, hugs the mountains and provides a dual vision of the highest Himalayan peaks towering above like gods and of the plains visible in the distance below. He regrets that in modern times the Himalayan ranges—the world’s greatest mountain mass—which have been celebrated and revered as sacred dwellings of the gods in Hindu, Buddhist, Sikkimese, Nepali, and Bhutanese legends and mythology, do not appear to have given rise to any memorable Indian literature, especially for children (“Writer” 1). While several Indian and Western writers employ the Himalayas as settings for their children’s novels, they (with the notable exception of Dhan Gopal Mukerji) 1 do not explore these mountains in a meaningful way. Ruskin Bond, however, finds endless material for stories in the trees and wild flowers, birds and animals, rocks and rivers, and simple hillfolk who are an integral part of the Himalayas. In writing about nature, he does not give just a pictorial description, but goes to the heart or spirit of the scene by providing an insider’s point of view. As Murli Das Melwani puts it, to Bond, “Nature is not merely a decorative background; it is a power that changes the personality; it is the repository of legends . . .” (39–40). In his many poems, short stories, and novels for children, Ruskin Bond’s characters come to a realization of their spiritual affinity with creation through a single manifestation of nature. Whether it is a cherry tree, a raindrop, a window on the roof from which to view the world, a hidden pool, or an old banyan tree, a single facet serves as a symbol of harmony with nature and a transcendental vision of life. In Angry River—which marked Bond’s transition from an adult to a children’s writer and which he considers his “first and probably best children’s novel” (quoted in Chatterjee 7)—the manifestation of nature is...

Environmental hazards of unplanned urbanization of mountainous terrains: a case study of a Himalayan town : Anbalagan, R Q J Engng GeolV26, N3, 1993, P179–184

Environmental hazards of unplanned urbanization of mountainous terrains: a case study of a Himalayan town : Anbalagan, R Q J Engng GeolV26, N3, 1993, P179–184

Environmental hazards of unplanned urbanization of mountainous terrains: a case study of a Himalayan town

Abstract Unplanned and non-systematic construction activities including road and building have been a major cause of environmental degradation in hilly terrains. Ill-conceived human urbanization over preciptous and critically stable hill slopes developed on geologically weak rock formations has often contributed to the instability of the slopes. The paper deals with impacts of human encroachment on the fragile ecological balance of Nainital, a famous hill resort of the Kamaun Himalaya, and discusses a scheme of mitigation measures to prevent further degradation of the environmental stability of the region.