Table Of ContentTRANSCULTURAL 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
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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)
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ISBN 978-3-946054-58-0 (Softcover)
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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
