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Gorkhaland and the Politics of Autonomy

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Subnationalist Darjeeling’, American Anthropologist, 115 (4): 608–621.  

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Similar’, Economic and Political Weekly, 51 (5): 94–95.  

Sen, Debarati. 2012. “Illusive Justice: Subnationalism and Gendered Labor Politics in Darjeeling

Plantations.” (For edited anthology published in December 2012 titled New South Asian Feminisms: Paradoxes and Possibilities; Zed Books). 

Shneiderman, Sara, & Tillin, Luise. 2015. Restructuring states, restructuring ethnicity: looking across

disciplinary boundaries at federal futures in India and Nepal. Modern Asian Studies, 49(1), 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X1300067X 

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Movement in Darjeeling. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House.  

Wenner, Miriam. 2013. ‘Challenging the State by Reproducing its Principles: The Demand for

'Gorkhaland' between Regional Autonomy and the National Belonging’, Asian Ethnology, 72 (2): 199–220.  

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Darjeeling. Book chapter in Darjeeling Histories, Politics, and     Environments.                         Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman, editors.  New Delhi:  Oxford                                  University Press India.  

 

 

 

 

Ethnicity and Identity

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Chettri, Mona. 2014. ‘Interpreting Democracy: Ethnic Politics and Democracy in the Eastern

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Chettri, Mona. 2015. ‘Engaging the State: Ethnic Patronage and Cultural Politics in the Eastern

Himalayan Borderland’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 38 (4): 1–16.   

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its Subjects in Multicultural India’, American Ethnologist, 38 (2): 249–266.  

Middleton, Townsend. 2013. ‘Anxious Belongings: Anxiety and the Politics of Belonging in

Subnationalist Darjeeling’, American Anthropologist, 115 (4): 608–621.  

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Plantations.” (For edited anthology published in December 2012 titled New South Asian Feminisms: Paradoxes and Possibilities; Zed Books).

Sharma, Jayeeta 2015: ‘A Space to be Laboured On: Circulating Bodies and Mobile Passages across

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Wenner, Miriam. 2013. ‘Challenging the State by Reproducing its Principles: The Demand for

'Gorkhaland' between Regional Autonomy and the National Belonging’, Asian Ethnology, 72 (2): 199–220.  

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Labour: Tea, Cinchona and Fair Trade 

Besky, Sarah. 2007. Rural Vulnerability and Tea Plantation Migration in Eastern Nepal and

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Besky, Sarah. 2008. ‘Can a Plantation Be Fair? Paradoxes and Possibilities in Fair Trade Darjeeling

Tea Certification’, Anthropology of Work Review, 29 (1): 1–9.  

Besky, Sarah. 2013. The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair–Trade Tea Plantations in

India. Berkeley: University of California Press.   

Besky, Sarah. 2014. ‘The Promise of Fair Trade for Plantation Laborers.‘  For a Better World.               

Fair World Project: Portland, Oregon. Issue 9 (Fall): 15- 16.                                             (http://fairworldproject.org

Besky, Sarah. 2014. ‘The Labor of Terroir and the Terroir of Labor: Geographical Indication on

Darjeeling Tea Plantations.‘ Agriculture and Human Values 31(1): 83-96. 

Besky, Sarah. 2015. 'Inheriting the Hill Station', Edge Effects, May 19. 

Besky, Sarah. 2015. ‘Agricultural Justice, Abnormal Justice?  Fair Trade’s Plantation Problem            

Antipode 47(5): 1141-1160.  

Besky, Sarah 2016. ‘The Future of Price: Communicative Infrastructures and the                                

Financialization of Indian Tea.‘ Cultural Anthropology 31(1): 4-29. 

Besky, Sarah. 2017. ‘Tea as ‘Hero Crop’?  Embodied Algorithms and Industrial Reform in          

India.‘Science as Culture. 26(1): 11-31.  

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Migration and Settlement’, In Meena Radhakrishna (ed.), First Citizens: Studies on Adivasis, Tribals, and Indigenous Peoples in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.    

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Nag, Soumen. 2007. ‘The Role of Tea Planters in Creating the Demand of Separate Gorkhaland’, in

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Sen, Debarati. 2009. Fair trade organic tea production and women’s political futures in Darjeeling,

India. Himalaya. Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 27(1–2), 71–73. 

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in Darjeeling, India. PhD dissertation. New Brunswick: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. 

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Commodities: Promises, Pitfalls and Possibilities’, Environment and Society: Advances in Research, 2: 29–47.  

Sen, Debarati. 2012. “Illusive Justice: Subnationalism and Gendered Labor Politics in Darjeeling

Plantations.” (For edited anthology published in December 2012 titled New South Asian Feminisms: Paradoxes and Possibilities; Zed Books). 

Sen, Debarati. 2014. ‘Fair trade vs. Swaccha Vyāpār: Women’s Activism and Transnational Justice

Regimes in Darjeeling, India’, Feminist Studies, 40 (2): 444–72.  

Sen, Debarati. 2015. “The Affective Work of Marketing and Consuming Fair Trade Coffee.”

Anthropology of Work Review, Xxxiv (1): 37-41 

Sen, Debarati. 2016. ‘Affective Solidarities? Participating In and Witnessing Fair Trade and Women’s

Empowerment in Transnational Communities of Practice’, Anthropology in Action, 23 (2): 13–18.  

Sen, Debarati. Forthcoming. Everyday Sustainability: Gender Justice and Fair Trade Tea in

Darjeeling. Albany: State University of New York Press  

Sharma, Jayeeta 2006. 'British Science, Chinese Skill, and Assam Tea: Making Empire's Garden', 

Indian Economic and Social History Review, 43 (4)

Sharma, Jayeeta. 2009. ''Lazy' Natives, Coolie Labour, and the Assam Tea Industry', Modern Asian

Studies, 43 (6)

Sharma, Jayeeta. 2011. 'Making Garden, Erasing Jungle: The Tea Enterprise in Colonial Assam'. in

Deepak Kumar, Vinita Damodaran, and Rohan D'Souza (ed.), The British Empire and the Natural World: Environmental Encounters in South Asia, Oxford University Press, New Delhi

Sharma, Jayeeta. 2011. 'Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of India', Duke University Press

'Radical Perspectives' Book Series

Tamang, S. & Sitlhou, H. (2018). "Identity, Contestation and Ethnic

Revivalism among Nepalis in Darjeeling". http://www.epw.in/journal/2018/1/perspectives/identity-contestation-and-ethnic-revivalism-among-nepalis-darjeeling

Thapa, Namrata. 2012. Employment Status and Human Development of Tea Plantation Workers in

West Bengal: NRPPD Discussion Paper 11, pp. 41–42. Accessed March 11, 2013. http://www.cds.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2012/11/NRPPD11.pdf.  

Tirkey, Prem Lal. 2005. ‘Tea Plantations in Darjeeling District, India: Geo–Ecological and Socio–

Economic Impacts in Post–Independence Period’, Ph.D. diss. University of Manitoba.  

 

 

 

 

Regional Development and Class-Relations 

Banerjee, Abhijit, Pranab Bardhan, Kaushik Basu, and Mrinal Chaudahri Dutta. 2002. ‘Strategy for

Economic Reform in West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, 37 (41): 4203–18.  

Brown, Trent, Ruchira Ganguly–Scrase, and Timothy J. Scrase. 2016. ‘Urbanization, Rural Mobility,

and New Class Relations in Darjeeling, India’, Critical Asian Studies, 48 (2): 235–256.   

Brown, Trent. 2015. ‘Youth Mobilities and Rural–Urban Tensions in Darjeeling, India’, South Asia:

Journal of South Asian Studies, 32 (2): 263–275.  

Darjeeling Ladenla Road Prerana. 2003. Area and issue profile of Darjeeling and Sikkim. Report

prepared by Mashqura Fareedi and Pasang Dorjee Lepcha. Darjeeling: Regional Community Development Center Hayden Hall. 

Hazarika, Sanjoy and Reshmi Banerjee (eds.). 2017. Gender, Poverty and Livelihood in the eastern

            Himalayas. London.Routledge.

Mell, Ian C. and John Sturzaker. 2014. 'Sustainable Urban Development in Tightly Constrained

Areas: A Case Study of Darjeeling, India’, International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 6 (1): 65–88.  

Sarkar, Swatahsiddha. 2010.  ‘The Land Question and Ethnicity in the Darjeeling Hills’, Journal of

Rural Social Sciences, 25 (2): 81–121.  

Scrase, Timothy, Mario Rutten, Ruchira Ganguly–Scrase, and Trent Brown. 2015. ‘Beyond the

Metropolis– Regional Globalisation and Town Development in India: An Introduction’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 38 (2): 216–229.  

Sen, Debarati & Majumder, Sarasij 2015. Narratives of Risk and poor rural Women’s (dis)

Engagements with Microcredit-Based Development in Eastern, India.”Critique of Anthropology, 35(2) 121–141. 

Subba, Tanka B. 1985. The Quiet Hills: A Study of Agrarian Relations in Hill Darjeeling. Delhi: ISPCK.  

Subba, Tanka B. 1986. ‘Agrarian Relations and Development in Sikkim’, Paper presented in National

Seminar on Rural Development in Eastern and North Eastern India, Kolkata: IIM Joka Campus, 8–10 May.

 

 

 

 

The Environment, Water, and Forest

Anand, Nikhil. 2012. ‘Municipal Disconnect: On Abject Water and its Urban Infrastructures’,

Ethnography, 13: 487–509.  

Bisen, J.S. and A.K. Singh. 2012. ‘Impact of Inorganic to Organic Cultivation Practices on Yield of Tea

in Darjeeling Hills: A Case Study’, Indian Journal of Horticulture, 69 (2): 288–91.  

Boer, Liekel. 2011. Perennial Springs of Darjeeling: A Survey to Community Based Conservation.

Darjeeling: Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment.  

Darjeeling Waterworks Department. n.d. A Report on Water Supply System of Darjeeling Municipal

Area. Darjeeling: Darjeeling Municipality.  

Drew, Georgina and Roshan J. Rai. 2016. "Water Management in Post-Colonial Darjeeling:                 

The Promise, and Limits, of Decentralised Resource Provision. Asian Studies Review             40(3) 321-339.  

Johnston, Barbara Rose. 2005. ‘The Commodification of Water and the Human Dimensions of

Manufactured Scarcity’, in Linda Whiteford, and Scott Whiteford (eds.), Globalization, Water, and Health: Resource Management in Times of Scarcity, pp. 133–152. Santa Fe: School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series.  

Joshi, Deepa. 2014. 'Feminist Solidary? Women, Water, and Politics in Darjeeling Himalaya’,

Mountain Research and Development, 34 (3): 243–255.   

Mell, Ian C. and John Sturzaker. 2014. 'Sustainable Urban Development in Tightly Constrained 

Areas: A Case Study of Darjeeling, India’, International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 6 (1): 65–88. 

Noolkar-Oak, G. 2017. 'Geopolitics of Water Conflicts in the Teesta River Basin', JWHI Fellow, Both

ENDS The Netherlands.

 

 

Colonial Histories 

Bennike, Rune. 2017. ‘Frontier Commodification: Governing Land, Labour and Leisure in Darjeeling,

India’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 40(2).  

Chatterji, Joya. 1999. ‘The Fashioning of a Frontier: The Radcliffe Line and Bengal's Border

Landscape, 1947–52’, Modern Asian Studies, 33 (1): 185–242.  

Chatterji, A. 2007. Contested landscapes: the story of Darjeeling. Kolkata: INTACH.

Ganguly–Scrase, Ruchira, and Timothy J. Scrase. 2015. ‘Darjeeling Re–made: The Cultural Politics of Charm and Heritage’, South Asia: A Journal of South Asian Studies, 38 (2): 246–262.  

Harris, Tina. 2013. Geographical Diversions: Tibetan Trade, Global Transactions.. Athens: University

of Georgia Press.  

Banerjee, Sandeep. 2014. ‘‘Not Altogether Unpicturesque‘: Samuel Bourne and the                           

Landscaping of the Victorian Himalaya’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 42 (3):                       351–368 

Banerjee, Sandeep. 2015. ‘Secularizing the Sacred, Imagining the Nation–Space: The            

Himalaya in Bengali Travelogues, 1856–1901’, Modern Asian Studies, 49 (3):                609–649. 

Besky, Sarah. 2015. 'Inheriting the Hill Station', Edge Effects, May 19. 

Biswas, Sanjay and Barun Roy. 2003. Fallen Cicadas: Unwritten History of Darjeeling. Darjeeling:

Barun Roy.  

Cameron, Ian. 1984. Mountains of the Gods. London: Century. 

Caplan, Lionel. 1995. Warrior Gentleman: ‘Gurkhas’ in Western Imagination. New York: Berghahn

Books.   

Caplan, Lionel. 1995. ‘Martial Gurkhas: The Persistence of a Military Discourse on Race’, in Peter

Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia, pp. 260–81. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.   

Chatterjee, Piya. 2001. A Time for Tea: Women, Labour, and Post/Colonial Politics on an Indian

Plantation. London: Duke University Press.  

Des Chene, Mary. 1991. ‘Relics of Empire: A Cultural History of the Gurkhas, 1815–1987’, Ph.D. diss.,

Stanford University.  

Ghosh, Kaushik. 1999. ‘A Market for Aboriginality: Primitivism and Race Classification in the

Indentured Labour Market of Colonial India’, in Gautam Bhadra, Gyan Prakash, and Susie Tharu (eds.), Subaltern Studies X., pp. 8–48. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.  

Harris, Tina, Amy Holmes–Tagchungdarpa, Jayeeta Sharma, and Markus Viehbeck. 2016. ‘Global

Encounters, Local Places. Connected Histories of Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and the Himalayas—An Introduction’, Transcultural Studies, 12 (1): 43–53.  

Hussain, Imdad. 2003. ‘Soldiers and Settlers: The Recruitment of Gorkhas’, in Tanka Subba and A.C.

Sinha (eds.), The Nepalis in North-East India, pp. 67–105. New Delhi: Indus.   

Kennedy, Dane Keith. 1996. The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj. Berkeley:

University of California Press.  

Kenny, Judith T. 1995. 'Climate, Race, and Imperial Authority: The Symbolic Landscape of the British

Hill Station in India', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 85 (4): 694–714.  

Moktan, R. 2004. Sikkim: Darjeeling Compendium of Documents. Varanasi: Gopal Press.  

Mullard, Saul. 2011. Opening the Hidden Land: State Formation and the Construction of Sikkimese

History. Leiden: Brill.  

Pradhan, Kumar. 1991. The Gorkha Conquests: The Process and Consequence of the Unification of

Nepal, with Particular Reference to Eastern Nepal. Calcutta: Oxford University Press.  

O'Malley, L.L.S. 2001 [1907]. Bengal District Gazetteers: Darjeeling. Calcutta: Government of West

Bengal.   

Onta, Pratyoush. 1996. ‘Creating a Brave Nepali Nation in British India: The Rhetoric of Jati

Improvement, Rediscovery of Bhanubhakta and the Writing of Bir History’, Studies in Nepali History and Society, 1 (1): 37–76.  

Rhodes, Nicholas and Deki Rhodes. 2006. A Man of the Frontier: S.W. Laden La (1876–1936).

Kolkata: Progressive Art House.   

Sharma, Jayeeta. 2016. ‘Producing Himalayan Darjeeling: Mobile People and Mountain Encounters’,

Himalaya: the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 35 (2): 87–101.  

Sharma, Jayeeta. 2016: Special Issue, Journal of Transcultural Studies, ‘Global Encounters,             

Local Places: Connected Histories of Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and the Himalayas’:                   Published Summer 2016, 1/2016 

http://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/index.php/transcultural/issue/view/2358 

Sharma, Jayeeta. 2018. 'Kalimpong as a Transcultural and Transnational Missionary Space,' Markus

Viehbeck (ed.), Transcultural Encounters in the Eastern Himalayas – Kalimpong as a "Contact Zone, Springer Publishers/University of Heidelberg

Talukdar, Shashwati. 2010. ‘Picturing Mountains as Hills: Hill Station Postcards and the Tales They

Tell’. Tasveer Ghar: A Digital Archive of South Asian Popular Visual Culture http://tasveerghar.net/cmsdesk/essay/102/.  

Warner, Catherine. 2014. ‘Flighty Subjects: Sovereignty, Shifting Cultivators, and the State in

Darjeeling, 1830–1856’, Himalaya: The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 34 (1): 23–35.  

 

 

 

 

Tourism

Cameron, Ian. 1984. Mountains of the Gods. London: Century. 

Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press.  

Ganguly–Scrase, Ruchira, and Timothy J. Scrase. 2015. ‘Darjeeling Re–made: The Cultural Politics of

Charm and Heritage’, South Asia: A Journal of South Asian Studies, 38 (2): 246–262. 

Sen, Debarati. 2016. ‘Affective Solidarities? Participating In and Witnessing Fair Trade and Women’s

Empowerment in Transnational Communities of Practice’, Anthropology in Action, 23 (2): 13–18.  

Subba, T.B. 1989. ‘Sociological Consequences of Tourism in Darjeeling’, in S.C Singh (ed.), Impact of

Tourism on Mountain Environment, pp. 305–14. Meerut: Research India Publications.  

Urry, John. 2001. The Tourist Gaze: Second Edition. London: SAGE.

Bibliography

 

The opinions presented in referenced writings belong to the authors alone and do not necessarily represent those of the Darjeeling Studies Collective.

Links to Topics:

politics
Identity
Labour
Regional development
Environment
History
Tourism
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