New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018. xviii, 316 pp. (Table, B&W photos.) US$50.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-19-948355-6.
This is an engaging book. It is also bound to be a rewarding book for social scientists in a range of disciplines. The introduction eloquently sets the balance between empirical accessibility and theoretical engagement, which is then carried through most of the volume. Its authors, Sara Shneiderman and Townsend Middleton—who are also the co-editors of the volume—draw the reader into a somewhat unusual topic for social science research. Darjeeling is a place, but not an area specialty for social scientists. Its location within India, and within the Indian state of West Bengal, belies the Himalayan focus—and in some cases, more specifically, a Nepal-centric training—that most of the contributors have. Yet it is the unusualness of Darjeeling as a topic that yields the rich theoretical and empirical bounty found in the volume. Reconsidering the histories, politics, and environments of Darjeeling by a new generation of social scientists, as Tanka Subba notes in his afterword, presents Darjeeling studies as a significant and maturing field of research.
The theme of Darjeeling’s unusualness or exceptionalism in historical perspective is the focus of the first section of the book. The first contribution in this section, by Townsend Middleton, traces the complex relationship between governance, private capital, and labour in Darjeeling primarily in the colonial period, contrasting it with the more regulated relationship that developed in nearby Assam. The contrast is both empirically and theoretically rich, although at times it seems that Middleton is making it more complicated than it need be. I found it unnecessarily confusing to find out “[w]hat […] these increasingly regulated relations between governance, planter capital, and labour in Assam have to do with Darjeeling” (42) after Middleton’s discussion of “Assam by Comparison” (38–42). The second chapter in the “Histories of Exception” section of the book, by Rune Bennike, traces the “tourist gaze” of Darjeeling from colonial to contemporary times, arguing that it still informs the politics of belonging as manifested in what is called the Gorkhaland Movement. First erupting in the 1980s and then again in the 2000s, the movement for a separate state for Gorkhas, i.e., Nepali speakers of the Darjeeling region, within the Indian federal union is the leitmotif throughout the volume—the pivotal Darjeeling episodes that define both its exceptionalism and its postcoloniality. Bennike, in my view, is not entirely successful in making the theoretical connection between Darjeeling’s history of exceptionalism in the tourist’s gaze and the postcolonial gaze of Darjeeling, over-relying on epigraphic quotes from John Urry to do the work for him. In the third and last contribution in this section of the book, Jayeeta Sharma returns us to the historical landscape, giving us a fascinating account of the British colonials’ ethnographic take on their “labouring subjects” and, more importantly, a subaltern history of “the agency that [Darjeeling’s] labouring subjects achieved through and beyond their encounters with imperial institutions” (75).
The five chapters in the second section of the book are all situated in Darjeeling’s contemporary political landscape, grouped under the title “Politics and Social Movements.” The first contribution, by Bethany Lacina, while lacking a provocative theoretical perspective, provides a welcomed chronology of the various phases of the Gorkhaland Movement. The more theoretically grounded contributions by Miriam Wenner and Mona Chettri are among the best in the book, in my view, for their analyses of the darker and more unsavoury side of Gorkhaland politics. Nilamber Chettri’s chapter is equally impressive, contributing a historically grounded update to Darjeeling politics with the turn away from Gorkhaland toward tribal politics. The last contribution in this section of the book is a bit of an outlier in that it is a textual analysis of a Darjeeling intellectual’s political engagement. Nevertheless, the authors do an admirable job of linking it to the topic of Darjeeling reconsidered.
The last section of the book, entitled “Environments and Labour,” does not cohere as well as the first two sections. I found the first contribution in this section, by Sarah Besky, difficult to follow as she begins her chapter interspersing somewhat disjointed descriptions of her fieldwork setting—e.g., the patio centrepiece initially situated presumably at ground level (197) later moves to rooftop (206)—with more theoretical generalizations. Nominally making the argument that the founders of a short-lived tea-management training centre were more political than the students, who are depicted as motivated more by neo-liberal values than Gorkhaland, Besky fails to provide convincing ethnographic evidence until toward the end of the chapter. The other two contributions in this section of the book, Georgina Drew and Roshan Rai’s discussion of the role of local neighbourhood societies in water access, and Debarati Sen’s portrayal of the agency of women engaged in fair trade tea production, relate well to the environment and labour theme. While the former is more empirical and the latter richer theoretically, both are laudable and informative.
The afterword by Tanka Subba, the doyen of Darjeeling studies, serves to highlight the relevance and interest the book is likely to continue generating. It is a must-read in my view for Himalayan and South Asian area specialists. It should also be on the reading list for those social scientists who are not South Asianists but whose research focuses on ethnopolitics writ large. Given the high quality and evenness of nearly all the chapters and the strong introduction, the book is accessible to students and should be a sought-after addition to course syllabi in a range of disciplines.
Selma K. Sonntag
Humboldt State University, Arcata, USA