HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 39 Number 1 Article 24 July 2019 Himalayan Studies and Interdisciplinarity Workshop Priyanka Chatterjee Sikkim University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Chatterjee, Priyanka. 2019. Himalayan Studies and Interdisciplinarity Workshop. HIMALAYA 39(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol39/iss1/24 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This Conference Report is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. length, also engaged with meaningful presentations and interactions. In her inaugural speech, Maitreyee Choudhury (Director, CHS) stressed the need for interdiscipliarity to continue within Himalayan studies. The chief guest Sanchari Roy Mukherjee (Dean, Faculty Arts Commerce & Law, NBU) emphasized the growing importance of science and technological studies in the Himalayas and the consequential Himalayan Studies and politics of knowledge involved in Interdisciplinarity Workshop such developments in the context of the Himalayas. Anup K Dutta Centre for Himalayan Studies (CHS) (NBU) emphatically put forth the University of North Bengal (NBU), India need for conceiving the Himalayas December 11-12, 2018 as a multi-state formation and for defamiliarizing social science The World Mountain Day was research practices from the received uniquely observed at the Centre notions of borders and boundaries if for Himalayan Studies (CHS) at the Himalayan studies is to be continued University of North Bengal (NBU), in a persuasive manner. In his erudite India through a two-day workshop keynote address, Bani Prasanna (December 11-12, 2018) on the Misra (formerly with CHS, NBU) theme “Himalayan Studies and reflected upon the philosophy of the Interdisciplinarity.” The workshop’s social sciences and the grooming broad theme intended to create of interdisciplinarity in the social a space for dialogue among those sciences while elaborating on the who examine the Himalayas, with problems and prospects of particular reference to Nepal, from adopting interdisciplinarity in different disciplinary vantage points. Himalayan studies. Although the pitched theme attracted an expected mix of scholars from The first academic session began different disciplines such as History, with two significant presentations Political Science, Anthropology, on Nepal studies and the Himalayas. Sociology, Economics, Geography, Pratyoush Onta (Martin Chautari, and even Comparative Literature, the Nepal) shared his almost thirty gathering lacked scholars specializing years experience of editing an in ecology and security/strategic academic journal, Studies in Nepali studies. However, the workshop History and Society (SINHAS), and made a modest attempt to defy reflected upon the extent to which the truism that Himalayan studies SINHAS could attain the goal of scholarship emerged mostly out of interdisciplinarity while reflecting the contributions made from outside on the kind of Himalayan studies the Himalayas. With its declared scholarship the journal has been focus on Nepal, the workshop opened encouraging. Bhaskar Gautam (North up the floor for scholars, mostly from South Collectives, Biratnagar, Nepal) Nepal, to talk about Nepal. There examined the diverse perspectives were also scholars from elsewhere of understanding the Himalayas in on the Indian subcontinent who, general while focusing particularly having worked on Nepal at some on the perception adopted by the 238 | HIMALAYA Spring 2019 international development agencies an ethnographic study of the Raxaul to her, sets limits to the discursivity (ICIMOD, for example) to understand railway site on the Indo-Nepal border of anthropological practices in the Himalayas in particular. region. Chudamani Basnet (South the Global South. Discussant Jayjit Asian University, New Delhi) spoke Sarkar (Raiganj University, West The three papers presented in on intermarriage between Madhesi Bengal) queried Shakya about how the second academic session were men and Pahadi women in southern the theories of the Global South broadly focused on issues related Nepal, and examined the crisscrosses could assist our understanding of the to migration and social relations. between caste and ethnic boundaries Himalayas, which is conventionally Gaurav KC’s jointly authored vis-à-vis the typification of family driven by a tendency of reversing paper with Pranab Kharel (both relations through newer versions of the telos. Shakya maintained that of the Kathmandu School of Law, gendered prototypes. the telos not only needs to be Purbanchal University, Kathmandu) reversed but indeed needs to be attempted to make an historical There were three presentations in the overcome. Her engagement with the reappraisal of the tellurian foothold last session, followed by a roundtable theories of the Global South would of migrating Nepalis in northeast on the workshop theme. Mukund primarily be through a critique of India, Burma, and Tibet with a claim Giri (Sikkim Government College, developmentalism, she said. that much of our understanding Gangtok) made an interesting with respect to Nepali migration is presentation on the various One of the major attractions of the based on the standpoint of military dimensions of an interdisciplinary workshop was a roundtable on the history. As an alternative approach, approach and mapped out the workshop’s main theme of Himalayan they pitched the need for developing extent of interdisciplinary research studies and interdisciplinarity. a non-military and non-janajati in the existing studies on the Moderated by Pratyoush Onta, the historical approach to understanding Communist movement in Nepal. two-hours-long roundtable involved the Nepali exodus and its historicity. Based on a socio-historical approach, serious discussions on issues such The discussant Binayak Sundas Lokranjan Parajuli (Martin Chautari, as the need to promote regional (CHS, NBU), however, commented Kathmandu) discussed the intricate languages in Himalayan research, that the major problem with the stories—like cold war politics, to emphasize intra-institutional paper was that it had no reference ideological impetus, Indian interest, cross-disciplinary practices, to to any particular time frame upon and concerns for indigeneity in foster regional scholarship between which it was focused, which indeed higher education system—involved India and Nepal even in the absence glossed over the complex nuances in the foundation of Tribhuvan of adequate funds, to increase an of understanding such movements University, the first university of exchange of scholars and students being attached to periods. Sundas Nepal. The last paper of the workshop between both countries, and to focus also pointed out that in using the was presented by Mallika Shakya on empirical research more than on tool of oral histories, as embedded (South Asian University, New Delhi) abstract theoretical research. within family histories, the paper through audio-visual mode. Shakya’s The workshop ended with Tanka opened itself up to a classic problem video presentation focused on the B. Subba’s (North Eastern Hill of historical methods, one faced issues of being and belonging in University, Shillong) valedictory by Greek historians like Herodotus post-earthquake Nepal and the address, in which he raised three and Thucydides. This problem lies emerging politics of knowledge that important points to be addressed by in the fact that history, as such, evolved out of the ways in which the scholars studying the Himalayas: (1) becomes conditioned to a subject’s earthquakes and post-earthquake the inbuilt tendency of “home grown memory or being alive or even his scenarios were represented either in Orientalism” among practitioners conscious understanding of an event, the media or in the anthropological from within, (2) the unresolved so much so that anything beyond excursions made by various dilemma of subject-object dualism his subjective consciousness also foreign scholars. She compared the in social science research, and (3) remains beyond critical purview. In phenomenological experiences of the language of the social sciences another paper on the same panel, the earthquakes and the exuberance (implying statist language, subaltern Mithilesh Kumar (Tata Institute of of media-driven anthropological narration, bahunbadi (Brahmanical) Social Sciences, Patna) discussed an discourses with comparable discourses, gendered idioms, post- intriguing intersection of labour, situations of decolonization in social national expressions, and so on). In migration, and resistance based on sciences in Africa, which, according his note of thanks, Swatahsiddha HIMALAYA Volume 39, Number 1 | 239 Sarkar, the workshop coordinator, also noted the possibility of holding at least two similar workshops or conferences covering such areas like Indian Himalaya and Tibet-Bhutan Himalaya in the coming two years. The workshop formally ended with the screening of an award-winning documentary film, Voices of Teesta, and a discussion with the filmmaker, Minket Lepcha, followed by a short presentation by Minket Lepcha and her team on performative folk art forms in the eastern Himalayas. Priyanka Chatterjee Sikkim University 240 | HIMALAYA Spring 2019.