Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Ashoka University

Buddhist monks have become increasingly visible in environmental movements in the last few decades, including in Arunachal Pradesh, India, my fieldwork site. Monks in environmental protests have contributed to the popular representation of Buddhism as ecological. A review of existing literature suggests that what we are looking at is a re-interpretation of Buddhist traditional philosophy by modern environmentally conscious people and contemporary Buddhists. I argue that as anthropologists, we have to note that while Buddhism can help mobilise lay activism, local practices about the environment do not often overlap with Buddhist doctrine. I illustrate this through the example of the ban on yak meat in Arunachal Pradesh, which is linked to wider Hindu nationalist politics in India. Environmental activities in the Buddhist Himalayas cannot be understood simply through the lens of Buddhism and one has to adopt a more pluralistic approach that is accommodating of customs that do not fit within an imagined “environmental identity” (Sharma 2009). I propose Himalayan environmentalism as an alternative to Buddhist environmentalism, not to disregard the role of Buddhist belief but to show how Himalayan environmentalism goes beyond Buddhism in scope. Second, my intention is not to propose a uniform model for the Himalaya, but to point to the processes at work between culture, politics, and ecology, and to the role of power in fashioning environmental identities. I support my argument with empirical data from my own fieldwork and those of scholars working in other parts of the Himalaya.

Department of Sociology & Anthropology

New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies

HIMALAYAN ENVIRONMENTALISM: BUDDHISM AND BEYOND

Sociological Bulletin

Pandemic of Inequality and the State: A Response to Maitrayee Chaudhuri’s ‘COVID-19 and Structural Inequalities: Some Reflections on the Practice of Sociology’

This article focuses on the Tawang and West Kameng districts of Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India, collectively known as Monyul. It was ruled by Tibet for three centuries before the 1914 McMahon Line boundary included it in India. Even after that, cross-border exchanges between Monyul and Tibet continued until the 1962 Sino-Indian war, following which border passages between the two were closed. Today, Monyul is a marginal region, geographically distant from centres of industry and education, and lacking in terms of infrastructure. This article traces Monyul's marginality not simply to the border war, but to spatial practices of the British colonial state, beginning with the mapping of the boundary in 1914. It shows how Monyul was constructed as a buffer, despite being within a delimited boundary, first, by excluding it from regular administration, and, secondly, by pushing back the older Tibetan administration, thereby, making it (what I call) a ‘zone of difference/indifference’. But the buffer project was subject to contestation, mostly from the Tibetan religious aristocracy, whose temporal hold over, and material interests in, Monyul were challenged by the latter's incorporation into colonial India.

Modern Asian Studies

Producing Monyul as Buffer: Spatial politics in a colonial frontier

What makes a place remote? Is remoteness a factor of geography and topography, is it a construct of connectivity, or is it an outcome of politics and history? For the Monpas of Arunachal Pradesh in North East India, inhabiting the Indo-Tibetan borderlands, remote denotes multiple aspects: lack of material infrastructure and transport, improper communication and geographical isolation. Living an enclave existence far away from centres of commerce, governance and industry, Monpas consider themselves to be backward. Yet, Monyul, the traditional homeland of the Monpa communities, is of high strategic importance in the still unresolved India–China border conflict. Its present remoteness is woven into the politics of borders and frontiers. Through a focus on the particular history and politics of Monyul, I show how colonial and postcolonial policies transformed the region into a remote periphery. While infrastructure and connectivity can lead to the economic and political integration of a region, the withholding of the same makes a region appear remote. I bring the concept of selective connectivity to understand how road infrastructure is a particular form of exercising state control. © 2019 European Association of Social Anthropologists

Social Anthropology

Selective access: or, how states make remoteness

We live in a world of military metaphors. Military images, symbols, and technologies have invaded all aspects of public life and consumption practices. War-time terminology such as “collateral damage” and “engage the enemy” have entered popular jargon (Van Dongen 2015). 1 Security technologies such as surveillance cameras and metal detectors are now used by prisons as well as schools, shopping malls, and the tourist industry. Popular culture plays on military-themed entertainment and patriotic images (Weaver 2011: 684; Schepher-Hughes 2014: 645). © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Alexander Horstmann, Martin Saxer, and Alessandro Rippa; individual chapters, the contributors.

Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands

Introduction

This chapter goes beyond the common notion of borderlands as hybrid zones of movement, fusion, and fluidity by exploring the particular dynamics in a special kind of border region, namely, the disputed border region. By disputed border, I mean not only a linear boundary line whose 446exact position is contested, but an entire border region that is claimed by both the nation states between which it lies, and which remains highly militarized. Based on my research in a disputed border in the northeast frontier of India, namely the Eastern sector in the India-China border conflict, I show how social relations and practices in the disputed border complicate the notion of borderlands as spaces of flows. Subjected to surveillance and cultural integration programmes, people in disputed borders adopt different strategies for adapting and negotiating daily lives and identities. Rather than defying the state, people in disputed areas accommodate and compromise with the “state effect”. I focus on a political struggle for autonomy in the disputed border of west Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India to show how in such a region, a proposal for territorial change is also a negotiation with and adaptation to constitutionally circumscribed goals. © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Alexander Horstmann, Martin Saxer, and Alessandro Rippa; individual chapters, the contributors.

Bordered spaces: Spatial strategies in a “disputed border”

In the years following the India-China War (1962), Tawang underwent a significant makeover. In 1964, the Indian government sanctioned the construction of the Nehru Gompa monastery to commemorate Jawaharlal Nehru's visit to Tawang. Nehru Gompa is a symbol of the new relations between the Indian state and the Tibetan Buddhist institutions that were forged in the early postcolonial period in India's North East Frontier. This paper looks at the changing dynamics between the Tawang Monastery, the local population, and the state in this context, and focuses on how the Tawang Monastery negotiated with the local administration through the medium of official correspondence.