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Being an assistant to a shaman
No full textThis article is built around the author’s experience as a shaman’s assistant. This autobiographical account touches upon the poverty, beliefs in ghosts, and shamanistic practices in a Limbu hamlet of Kalimpong, which is a piece of land between Sikkim and Bhutan. Starting with a brief discussion on who a shaman is, the author describes the situation under which he became an assistant to a shaman whom he had to fetch to deal with the sickness of his brother. The author also brings out the issue of the shaman, or phedaṅgmā in the Limbu language, becoming rare because one could not become one by wishing so or by undergoing training under a senior shaman. He says that to become a shaman is a destiny and the signs of becoming one start to show quite early in childhood in the form of abnormal behaviour in specific cycles of months and on partaking of certain foods. In the end, the author shows concern for the future of shamanism, as it seems to be losing out to organised religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity.Cet article est un récit autobiographique qui repose sur l’expérience de l’auteur comme assistant d’un chamane. Il aborde la pauvreté, la croyance aux mauvais esprits et les pratiques chamaniques dans un hameau limbu de la région de Kalimpong, située entre le Sikkim et le Bhoutan. Après avoir brièvement discuté l’état de chamane, l’auteur raconte comment il est devenu assistant du chamane qu’il avait dû quérir pour soigner son frère malade. L’auteur souligne également que les chamanes, ou phedaṅgmā en langue limbu, deviennent rares, car pour devenir chamane il ne suffit pas de le désirer ou de suivre une formation auprès d’un maître. C’est un destin, dont les signes se manifestent très tôt dans l’enfance, sous forme d’un comportement anormal à des moments clés du calendrier et par la consommation de certains aliments. Au final, l’auteur s’inquiète du devenir du chamanisme, qui semble perdre du terrain face aux religions organisées comme l’hindouisme, le bouddhisme et le christianisme
We are Van Gujjars
No full textThe chapter deals with the ungoing movement of the Van Gujjar nomads in India and their struggle for identity as one of the indigenous people of the country
Biogas in Nepal: bringing social contexts of energy innovation into view
No full textDomestic biogas digesters spread rapidly in Nepal from the 1990s as a renewable energy technology that reduced pressure on extracting fuelwood from forests. Very little social science research exists on this energy development story, and the chapter describes research undertaken during the COVID pandemic to situate the technology’s adoption within practical and symbolic effects for households. It questions the view of energy as primarily technical, or as a commodity, by exploring people’s perceptions of social value, and identifies limitations of energy transition thinking which neglect broader contexts of sustainable livelihood innovations, including intergenerational narratives of change
Hindutva futures
Full text linkIt is widely acknowledged that the presence and power of the Hindu-right are here to stay in contemporary India. Even in Northeast India, often viewed as a recalcitrant periphery from the gaze of the Indian state, the diffusion of the Hindu-right ideology has found fertile ground. Their activities are not only limited to party politics – with many of the Northeastern states now under the political orbit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – but their presence is also in cultural and social spheres, where once the distinctness of one’s identity was proudly asserted and now appears increasingly compromised. What are the implications and challenges and indeed what are Hindutva futures in this vastly complex and tempestuous region called the ‘Northeast’? This entry takes a programmatic approach to understanding the activities of the Hindu-right. In doing so, it explores how one might examine the overarching ideas of their ideology
Mental Health Help-Seeking in the Himalaya: Shifting Ecologies of Care in Post-Earthquake Nepal
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The truths of dispossession in the Western Himalaya
No full textIn this chapter I focus on the distinctiveness of the notions of property among the Gaddis, a pastoralist community in the western Himalaya, to understand the encompassment of property and ownership in structures of ordinary life, the different scales at which ideas and relations of ownership become manifest, the variety of modes, the temporalities and axes of ownership and accumulation and why ownership matters. I discuss Gaddi categories and concepts of property to explore not just the relational possibilities made by ownership but also to understand the obverse: dispossession and its political charge. I examine the different modes, scales and temporalities under which ownership works and property is accumulated and disaccumulated among the Gaddis, to understand the limits of the law and, in turn, the limits of the state
A Borderland’s Soul: Through the India–China Border and the Hidden Histories of Kalimpong: Review of ´Through the India–China Border: Kalimpong in the Himalayas by Prem Poddar and Lisa Lindkvist Zhang
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