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Offering a timely challenge to popular conceptions of Darjeeling, the 'queen of the hills', this collection of essays provocatively rethinks Darjeeling's place in the postcolonial imagination. Combining the best of the social sciences and humanities, Darjeeling Reconsidered sheds fresh light on the region's past and offers critical insight into the issues facing its people today. Doing so, it frames Darjeeling as a crucial site for South Asian and PostcolonialStudies.
List of contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms and Abbreviations
- Note on Language
- Introduction: Reconsidering Darjeeling
- Sara Shneiderman and Townsend Middleton
- Section I. Histories of Exception
- 1. Unwritten Histories: Difference, Capital, and the Darjeeling Exception
- 2. 'A Summer Place': Darjeeling in the Tourist Gaze
- 3. Himalayan Darjeeling and Mountain Histories of Labour and Mobility
- Section II. Politics and Social Movements
- 4. Electoral Competition and the Gorkhaland Movement
- 5. Virtuous Movements and Dirty Politics: The Art of Camouflage in Darjeeling
- 6. The Rowdies of Darjeeling: Politics and Underdevelopment in the Hills
- 7. The Quest to Belong and Become: Ethnic Associations and Changing Trajectories of Ethnopolitics in Darjeeling
- 8. The Promise of Class Analysis in Understanding Nepali National Identity in Darjeeling: An Engagement with Kumar Pradhan's Work and Thought
- Section III. Environments and Labour
- 9. Subnational Occupations: A Year in the Life of the Darjeeling Tea Management Training Centre
- 10. Connection Amidst Disconnection: Water Struggles, Social Structures, and Geographies of Exclusion in Darjeeling
- 11. Women, Fair Trade Tea, and Everyday Entrepreneurialism in Rural Darjeeling
- Afterword
- Tanka Subba
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Editors and Contributors
About the author
Townsend Middleton teaches in the Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
Sara Shneiderman teaches in the Department of Anthropology and School of Public Policy & Global Affairs/Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Summary
Darjeeling occupies a special place in the South Asian imaginary. With its Himalayan vistas, lush tea gardens, and brisk mountain air, Darjeeling was the consummate colonial hill-station. The romance with the "queen of the hills" lives on, as thousands of tourists (domestic and international) annually flock to the hills to taste its world-renowned tea, soak up the colonial nostalgia, and glimpse mighty Mount Kanchenjunga. Darjeeling's fame has now gone global and its legacy continues to fuel Hollywood and Bollywood fantasies. But this is only part of Darjeeling's story.
Darjeeling Reconsidered provocatively rethinks Darjeeling's legendary status in the postcolonial imagination. Mobilizing diverse disciplinary approaches from the social sciences and humanities, this definitive collection of essays sheds fresh light on the region's past and offers critical insight into the issues facing its people today. The historical analyses break with hackneyed colonial accounts to provide alternative readings of systems of governance, labour, and migration that shaped Darjeeling. The ethnographic chapters present cutting-edge accounts of dynamics that define life in 21st century Darjeeling: among them the realpolitik of subnationalism; Fair Trade tea; indigenous struggle; gendered inequality; ecological transformation; and resource scarcity. Through these eye-opening perspectives, Darjeeling Reconsidered figures Darjeeling as a vital site for South Asian and Postcolonial Studies-and calls for a timely re-examination of the legend and hard-realities of this oft-romanticized region and its people. The book seeks a place on the shelves of postcolonial theorists, on the syllabi of undergraduate and graduate courses on South Asia, and in the rucksacks of intellectually curious visitors from all over the world to Darjeeling.
Additional text
Darjeeling Reconsidered is an essential and timely book on a place of special significance in Northeast India. The essays within question the longstanding colonial and tourist romance surrounding the 'Queen of the Hills,' and examine the political, social, environmental, and labour movements that shape its contemporary life. With this collection, Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman upend outdated myths in favour of rigorous new scholarship. The reader is left with a portrait of Darjeeling that is as complex and dynamic as it is intricate.
