Chautari Book Series 78
This book illustrates an exciting approach to understanding both momentous and everyday events in the history of South Asia. It advances notions of rupture and repair to comprehend the aftermath of natural, social and personal disasters, and demonstrates the generality of the approach by seeking their historical resolution. The introduction of rice milling technology in a rural landscape in Bengal, the post-cold war global shift in international relations, the assassination attempt on a journalist in a rented city house in Kathmandu, the alternate and simultaneous existence of violence in non-violent movements, a flash flood caused by torrential rains in the plains of Nepal, the closure of a China-India border after the army invasion in Tibet, and the appearance of outsiders in an ethnic Tharu hinterland – scholars in this volume have analysed the origins, anatomies and development of these events as ruptures and raised interesting questions regarding their impact on the ways people live and earn, keep healthy, write and report, change regimes, and reproduce caste.
Contents
Acknowledgements - vii
Introduction - 1
- Ruptures and Repairs: A New Vantage in South Asian Historiography
Yogesh Raj
Chapters
- The 1954 Flood and the Ascendance of Monarchy in Nepal - 21
Sharad Ghimire
- Claiming “Our Commodity”: Geopolitics and the Transformation of Nepal’s Tourism Industry in the 1970s - 47
Mark Liechty
- Locating Violence in Nepali Politics - 77
Bhaskar Gautam
- An Attempted Assassination of a Journalist: Rethinking Periodization in Nepali Journalism Historiography - 103
Harsha Man Maharjan
- Changes in Rana Tharu–Pahadia Relationships: Land, Politics and Caste - 123
Lai Ming Lam
- Repairing Everyday Ruptures: Tibetan Medicine in Tawang, India - 145
Kei Nagaoka
Keynote
- Time, Space and Technology: Ruptures and Repairs Unknown - 167
Smritikumar Sarkar
- Notes on Contributors - 181