SIKKIM: COUNTER-MAPPING THE TERRAIN
2.1 In a Discontinuous Terrain
On starting out for Sikkim from Siliguri, one moves away from the tortuous crowded alleys of the city and hits the highway at Sevok, which is a straight 20 km drive till the Teesta River (Coronation) Bridge.(ILL. 2.3) Across this, lies the trifurcation leading to Darjeeling, places like Gangtok and Kalimpong, and
244 A.C Sinha, in discussing the future of Sikkim’s present democracy, states how the local elites, even while being gleeful of the prospect of transaction in the opening of the border routes for trade, caution that the authorities have to be careful of the Bhutia habit of indulging in barter across the border; this may still cause certain problems in the process of trade. Sinha, however does not elaborate on the pros and cons. A.C. Sinha, Sikkim: Feudal and Democratic (New Delhi:
Indus Publications, 2008), 78.
174 Assam. This is the spot which comes up as an argument for the geographical isolation of the entire north-eastern people; their only direct connectivity with the rest of India by land being through this constriction, popularly known as the
‘Chicken Neck’.
In Sikkim, the territory is not always indicative of the terrain. Measuring 70 x 40 miles across its axes, it is a relatively small state. The smallness is a result of warfare, land donations (e.g. ceding to the then ruling British power the entirety of Darjeeling245 and a part of Kurseong district in exchange for protection) and repeated encroachments by Nepal and Bhutan from the two sides (tales of which form the oral literature of Sikkim’s residents). Geologically, it is part of the eastern Himalayan region, whose constitution is still fragile, a characteristic feature of a young mountain. The territory is divided into north and south, not only by the gradation of terrain, with altitude ascending towards the north, but also by the river and drainage systems and the turns and thrust of the mountain range. These factors of wide variation in altitude and presence of many natural divides, have greatly determined the region’s settlement and culture, contributed to its biodiversity and to an extent, its physical discontinuity.246
There are also deep-set divides within the communities in Sikkim, which are not generally perceived by the historians of political processes, but are open to
245 Darjeeling was an administrative centre and a resting place for the British, and a coveted transit point, through which business could be conducted with Tibet and Mongolia. The resident officer Coleman McCauley in his mission statement explains the importance of the Tibetan passage, “The two great pontiffs of the Buddhist Church- [Dalai Lama and the Karmapa] who exercise boundless influence over the wild tribes of central Asia.” And, “Their influence is so great that the present dynasty of China has had to conciliate it in order to secure its own existence.”
P.R. Rao, Sikkim (New Delhi: Vikas, 1972), 68, 70.
246 “The variation includes the lesser and greater Himalayan regions with an elevation ranging from 65m (around Dudhia, Darjeeling District) through 800-1200m around Ranipol, Mangan, 1400m around Darjeeling, 1800–2200m around Gangtok, Pelling, Ravangla, to 2800–3200m around Kyangsla (near Nathula). Numerous streams and rivulets flow along the depression and finally join the trunk stream. In the higher Himalayan terrain topography is highly rugged, characterized by steep slopes and prominent gully erosion. The Teesta Rangeet water divide is the major water divide within Sikkim Himalayas. Another north-south water divide is between the Lachen Chu and Lachung Chu which starts at about 3000 meters and slowly increases upto 6700 meters… On the western part long ridges are present, but they are Talang Chu and Zemu Chu, water divide. The Sikkim Darjeeling Himalayas are part of the active Himalayan Fold Thrust belt (FTB), which is geologically and structurally complex… Peltic and Psammitic rocks over Mesozoic foreland rocks composed of tertiary sediments on the south.”
Indranil Chakraborty et al., “Earthquake induced landslides in the Sikkim-Darjeeling Himalayas- An aftermath of the 18th September 2011 Sikkim earthquake,” in Engineering Geology Division Report (Kolkata: Geological Survey of India, Eastern Region, 2011), 1.
175 anthropological enquiry. The communities are mainly three; Nepali, Bhutia and Lepcha. The Nepali community has different castes and tribes, such as Limbus, Sherpas and Mangars. Among the Lepchas and Bhutias, the Kaziis were the collaborators of the ruling clans (who belonged to the Bhutia community). As Melanie Vandenhelsken’s study of the Pemyangtse Monastery and its relational aspects with the temporal authority, expounds, there are deep divisions of status inside the Bhutia community. Then there are classes that exist within the Lamaist monastic order, thus establishing a parallel with the temporal authorities. The two hierarchies are perceived as buttressing each other for institutional benefits.
But, when we move away from the cities and administrative centres, we often find, depending on the location, the institutional religious order having to contend with and settle into cohabitation with local Bon religion (whose priests – Bongthings – are from the Lepcha community). Many entrenched anthropological works (G. Gorer, 1938, H.Siiger, 1967, and more crucially A.
Balikci, 2008)247 show how there is a collaborative spirit in most of the ritual practices of villages, which merge the borders of Shamanism and Buddhism and make a mixed practice that Balikci terms ‘village religion’. Orality and mythic memory often influence the everyday practices of ‘village religion’– like praying for greater farm yield, curing cough, cold and diarrhea; from things like getting success in life to the taking of public decisions like modifying the calendar, or cancelling out a dam project also come under the ambit of the village religion.248 The institutional religion of Buddhism is also divided; while a section of the lamas belong to the monastic orthodoxy, the classical question of renunciation does not bind another section of noncelibate lamas. They freely participate in acquisitive ventures after their training period, as is testified by several studies (Balikci, 2008; Vandenhelsken, 2009)249.
247 Geoffrey Gorer, Himalayan Village: An Account of the Lepchas of Sikkim (London: Michael Joseph, 1938); Halfden Siiger, Lepchas: Culture and Religion of Himalayan People, Part I and II (Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 1967); Anna Balikci, Lamas Shamans and Ancestors: the Village Religion of Sikkim (Netherlands: Brill, 2008).
248 Balikci, Lamas, Shamans and Ancestors, 30, 84.
249 Anna Balikci and Melanie Vandenhelsken, “Secularism and the Buddhist Monastery of Pemyangse,” Bulletin of Tibetology (2008).
http:// himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collection/journals/bot/pdf/bot.2003-01-05.pdf.
176 Beneath the surface of the rational and linear order of the everyday – harnessed by the modern system of governance – there lurks another sense of time informed by mythic or semi-mythic tales. This is a time governed by nature and its spirits, and ancestors who are believed to be residents of nature and can be communicated with. When this relation is disturbed, the traditional Lepchas get agitated. According to Kerry Little:
They (the Lepcha tales) are tales set in ancient landscapes, hidden places, and sacred spaces. Before long I discovered other, contemporary Lepcha stories;
protest narratives linked to the traditional stories by an ecological thread, for the new narratives are also about Lepcha landscapes. They are stories of hope, despair and conflict and move forward and backwards, coursing through the past, present, and future… Nature plays a leading role in these stories. In particular, the Teesta River, which originates from the Zemu glacier and flows throughout Sikkim, where at the West Bengal border it meets the Rangit River, then continues down to the plains.250 251(ILL. 2.4)
She further says about the Lepchas and what The Foundation for Deep Ecology promotes:
Recognition of the inherent value of all living beings and the use of this view in shaping environmental policies. Those who work for social changes based on this recognition are motivated by love of nature as well as for humans… The Lepchas’ knowledge of nature is vast and personal, and their connection to their land and everything that comes from it is a deeply held belief. Before Buddhism came to Sikkim from Tibet, the Lepchas were nature worshippers and this spiritual history remains at the heart of Lepcha culture. They are ‘part of the ecosphere’ just as intimately as part of their own society.252
250 Kerry Little, “Deep Ecology, Dams, and Dzonguland, Lepchas Protest Narratives about their Threatened Land,” The Trumpeter 25, no.1 (2009): 40.
251 The Sikkim government’s attempt to build a Hydro-Electric Power project in the heart of Demojong, on the sacred Rathong Chu River [a tributary of Rongnu (Teesta)] at Yuksum in West Sikkim is probably the most important and explicit example of ‘wrong doing’ performed against the sacred land to have occurred in Sikkim’s most recent history. Balikci, Lamas Shamans, 234.
252 Ibid., 6.
177 Apart from what appears in the official maps of Sikkim, another set of spatial relations seems to exist, common to both Bhutias and Lepchas. Real and imagined spaces cohabit as residences of various nature spirits; imaginary sites open up the gateway to the hidden land or Beyul, the five caves – of happiness, wealth, birth and knowledge and the final abode of Mount Kanchenjunga. This is further complicated by territorially driven spirits who have control over the spaces. This is the inner life of villages, while the city runs on a different, utilitarian fuel, if outwardly.
This establishes different communicative surfaces in a culture which is represented as homogeneous in official narratives. What actually exists is a different temporality that is not reflected in official discourses like the census of 2011, or the Sikkim government interim social survey in 2008.253