TRANSCULTURAL ENCOUNTERS in the HIMALAYAN BORDERLANDS Kalimpong As a “Contact Zone”
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TRANSCULTURAL ENCOUNTERS IN THE HIMALAYAN BORDERLANDS Kalimpong as a “Contact Zone” Markus Viehbeck Editor HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING Transcultural Encounters in the Himalayan Borderlands Kalimpong as a “Contact Zone” Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality – 3 Series Editors: Reuven Amitai, Jerusalem; David Armitage, Harvard; Christiane Brosius, Heidelberg; Beatrix Busse, Heidelberg; Prasenjit Duara, Durham; Christian Henriot, Lyon; Madeleine Herren, Basel; Joachim Kurtz, Heidelberg; Joseph Maran, Heidelberg; Axel Michaels, Heidelberg; Barbara Mittler, Heidelberg; Sumathi Ramaswamy, Durham; Roland Wenzlhuemer, Heidelberg Transcultural Encounters in the Himalayan Borderlands Kalimpong as a “Contact Zone” Markus Viehbeck Editor HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie. Detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. This book is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY-SA 4.0). The electronic, open access version of this work is permanently available on Heidelberg University Publishing’s website: http://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de. urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heiup-book-301-8 doi: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.301.409 Cover image: The main road of Kalimpong in the 1940s (Courtesy of Kodak Store, Kalimpong). Text © 2017, by the authors. ISSN 2365-7987 (Print) ISSN 2365-7995 (eISSN) ISBN 978-3-946054-58-0 (Softcover) ISBN 978-3-946054-57-3 (Hardcover) ISBN 978-3-946054-56-6 (PDF) ISBN 978-3-946054-65-8 (ePUB) Acknowledgements This volume is the direct outcome of a conference held in Kalimpong from March 05 to March 08, 2015. Under the title Transcultural Encounters in the Himalayan Borderlands: Kalimpong as a “Contact Zone,” researchers with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds discussed important developments in the cultural history of the area with a focus on the first half of the twentieth century. But the book must also be seen within the context of larger efforts to investigate the Eastern Himalayan border region through new theoretical and conceptual approaches. One of these attempts was run from Heidelberg, as part of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context.” There, a project directed by Birgit Kellner and Markus Viehbeck, including Anna Sawerthal as a PhD student, focused on the region as an important space for “Encounters between Tibet and Western Modernity.” The connection to Tibet was also addressed in a panel at the Thirteenth Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies in Ulaanbaatar, which was organized by Markus Viehbeck in 2013. That same year, another group of researchers from the University of Toronto drew attention to the region with a workshop on “Lamas, Spies, Gentleman Schol- ars, and Trans-Himalayan Traders: The Meeting of Religion, Colonial ism, Politics, and Economics in Twentieth-Century Kalimpong.” In an attempt to tie together the different efforts in Toronto, Heidelberg, and several other places, the Eastern Himalayan Research Network (EHRN) was founded, which also allowed people to be reached beyond the limitations of individual areas of expertise. Many of the people represented in this volume are directly or indirectly connected with this network and we would like to thank above all Jayeeta Sharma for launching the initiative, but also for her theoretical and practical input in organizing the conference. On a more informal level, a much larger network of individuals emerged, driven by their common interest in the Eastern Himalayas. Listing all of these people would go beyond the scope of these brief introductory remarks, but we would like to single out and thank Isrun Engelhardt, who supported our own efforts in Heidelberg from the very start and was crucial in estab- lishing connections between many different individuals. An important aspect in the conception of the conference was that it should facilitate local involvement. Rather than having the conference con- ducted at a European University, we therefore opted to talk about Kalim- pong and the Eastern Himalayas in Kalimpong itself. Naturally, this com- plicated practical matters considerably, and it is only with local support that the conference could be conducted smoothly. Sandip C. Jain, editor of the Himalayan Times, was crucial in all aspects of local organization and we cannot thank him too much for all the work he invested in the project. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Further, a group of volunteers from Kalimpong College assisted in both the preparation as well as the running of the conference, all of whom we would like to thank wholeheartedly, as well as the college’s director Rajendra P. Dhakal. Nilam and David McDonald kindly opened their Hima- layan Hotel as an ideal venue for the conference, also linking up once more to the efforts of an earlier generation of scholars of the Himalayas. That the conference proved such a success, especially on a local level, could be seen not only in various media reports (articles about the event have been posted, among others, in the Himalayan Mirror, Sikkim Observer, and Hāmro Prajāśakti), but more importantly in the interest and enthusiasm of the audience. About 100 people joined the sessions every day, and, with their intellectual stimulus during formal and informal discussions, contrib- uted to the present volume. In Heidelberg, we would like to thank various people for turning the resulting manuscript into an actual book: our student assistant Dominik Wallner for standardizing the different contributions, Kim Friedlander and Malcolm Green for their meticulous work in proofreading the entire manu- script, our (anonymous) reviewers for their constructive criticism, Andrea Hacker for her advice and service as head of the Editorial Office at the Clus- ter, as well as the team at Heidelberg University Publishing for handling the final production of this book. Lastly, we would like to thank the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” for funding the conference and our project, and for making it possible to publish this volume in its series Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality. Markus Viehbeck, for the “Heidelberg Kalimpong Project” vi Table of Contents Markus Viehbeck Introduction: Cultural History as a History of Encounters— A “Contact Perspective” ..................................................................................... 1 Part I: Christian Mission, Educational Institutions, and Identity Formation .......................................................................... 23 Jayeeta Sharma Kalimpong as a Transcultural Missionary Contact Zone ............................ 25 Andrew J. May Our Miniature Heaven: Forming Identities at Dr Graham’s Homes ......... 55 Charisma K. Lepcha The Scottish Mission in Kalimpong and the Changing Dynamics of Lepcha Society ............................................................................................. 71 Part II: Public Spheres, Public Media, and the Creation of Public Knowledge ................................................................................ 93 Clare Harris Photography in the “Contact Zone”: Identifying Copresence and Agency in the Studios of Darjeeling .............................................................. 95 Anna Sawerthal and Davide Torri Imagining the Wild Man: Yeti Sightings in Folktales and Newspapers of the Darjeeling and Kalimpong Hills ........................................................ 121 Prem Poddar and Lisa Lindkvist Zhang Kalimpong: The China Connection .............................................................. 149 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Part III: Things that Connect: Economies and Material Culture ....................................................................................... 175 Emma Martin Object Lessons in Tibetan: The Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Charles Bell, and Connoisseurial Networks in Darjeeling and Kalimpong, 1910–12 177 Tina Harris Wool, Toothbrushes, and Beards: Kalimpong and the “Golden Era” of Cross-Border Trade ................................................................................... 205 Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa Sacred Economies of Kalimpong: The Eastern Himalayas in the Global Production and Circulation of Buddhist Material Culture ..... 223 Part IV: Scholars, Power, and Knowledge Production ......... 243 Trine Brox and Miriam Koktvedgaard Zeitzen Prince Peter’s Seven Years in Kalimpong: Collecting in a Contact Zone 245 Markus Viehbeck “The First Tibetan at a Western University?”—Entanglements of Scholarship, Buddhism, and Power in Kalimpong and Beyond .......... 273 Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia Looking Beyond the Land of Rice: Kalimpong and Darjeeling as Modern Buddhist Contact Zones for Sikkimese Intellectual Communities .................................................................................................. 301 Epilogue ....................................................................................................... 319 Prem Poddar and Cheralyn Mealor Kalimpong as Fiction or Ethnography? Gorkha/Nepali Sensitivities in the Himalayas ............................................................................................ 321 List of Contributors ........................................................................................ 347 viii Markus Viehbeck Introduction: Cultural History as a History of Encounters— A “Contact Perspective” Abstract This introductory essay lays out the conceptual