Preface
This book is the first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, also known as Thami.1 They are a Himalayan community of approximately 40,000 who speak a Tibeto-Burman language. Their religion synthesizes aspects of shamanic, Hindu, and Buddhist practice. The Dolakha and Sindhupalchok districts of central-eastern Nepal are home to the largest concentration of Thangmi, with smaller numbers in Ilam, Jhapa, Ramechap, and Udayapur districts.2 There are also substantial populations in the Darjeeling district of India’s West Bengal state and the neighboring state of Sikkim.3 Cross-border circular migration between these locations, as well as to Nyalam county of China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), which immediately borders Nepal, is an important feature of Thangmi life. Thangmi experience forms of economic and social marginalization in all of the countries in which they live.
The ensuing chapters flesh out this brief description with ethnographic details that unfold across three countries over more than a decade, complemented by oral and archival histories that extend the narrative back still further. The story is told by many voices, of which mine is just one. It is a story of commonality and difference, specificity and generality, emplacement and mobility. I hope that Thangmi everywhere will recognize something of themselves in it.
I first traveled to Nepal’s Thangmi villages in 1998 with Mark Turin, a linguist and anthropologist then conducting doctoral research toward the first comprehensive grammar of the Thangmi language. We married in 2004, and much of the ethnographic research presented here was conducted collaboratively. The scholarly division of labor upon which we agreed means that the linguistic dimensions of Thangmi identity are not addressed comprehensively here; I direct interested readers to Mark Turin’s publications, which are cited at relevant points throughout the text.
The village setting of my early work in Nepal lent itself to the traditional ethnographic method of participant-observation, both of daily life and ritual practice. I also conducted many formal and informal interviews. I sought out guru (shamans) and village elders, as well as laypeople of all genders, ages, and class backgrounds.4 Most Thangmi with whom I worked asked explicitly to be recognized by name and place of residence. I therefore do not use pseudonyms in the text, although I occasionally omit personal names to honor the anonymity of those who requested it.
Throughout these encounters, I used photography to document events and to provide a springboard for discussion when I later returned photos to participants. Later, I incorporated digital video into my fieldwork practice. Recording video of practice and performance events in one location and showing it to people in others became a defining methodology of my multisited work. I organized small viewings in villages, as well as large public programs in Kathmandu and Darjeeling, at which I presented video footage and elicited comments. These programs, some of which are described in the chapters that follow, became forums for broad-ranging discussions among Thangmi who might not otherwise have met. My own role—and the role of ethnography in general—in “producing” Thangmi identity through such events is a central theme of this book. I can only reproduce a few photographs here, but I direct interested readers to two online portals where more audiovisual material is housed: Digital Himalaya (www.digitalhimalaya.com/collections/thangmiarchive) and the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (mms.thlib.org/topics/2823).
Sources and Languages
Throughout this book, I draw upon four compilations of writing published by Thangmi organizations: Nan Ni Patuko (2054 VS), Dolakha Reng (1999), Niko Bachinte (2003), and Thami Samudayako Aitihasik Chinari ra Sanskar Sanskriti ([2056] 2061 VS).5 I cite these by their titles (using the following one-word abbreviations, respectively: Patuko, Reng, Niko, and Samudaya). Although each publication lists the editor(s), articles are only erratically attributed, making it difficult to ascribe individual authorship in some cases. Several more recent Thangmi-published books and articles exist (notably a regular series of Thangmi language pieces in Nepal’s Gorkhapatra daily), along with many audio collections on cassette and CD, and documentary films on VCD and DVD—not to mention lively debates via social media. While I cannot analyze these in depth here, they constitute a rich archive for ongoing analysis.
Most speakers of Thangmi are bilingual in Nepali, the lingua franca in Darjeeling and Sikkim as well as the official language of Nepal, and my primary research language. Ritual practice is conducted largely in a special register of the Thangmi language in which I gained basic competence. To understand the details, I worked with Bir Bahadur, a Thangmi man my own age fluent in both Nepali and Thangmi. He provided on-the-fly translation as events or conversations unfolded, detailed transcription and translation of recorded materials, and a wealth of knowledge and analysis. The term “research assistant” does not adequately recognize Bir Bahadur’s contribution to this project over fifteen years, but I use it to describe the formal aspect of our relationship in the scholarly context of this book.
Frequently in India, and occasionally in Nepal, informants chose to speak with me in English or sprinkle their otherwise Nepali conversation with English words. Documents were in both Nepali and English. Sanskrit and Tibetan words also appeared occasionally. When possible, I indicate the language in which statements were made or in which a text was published, using single quotation marks to set off English words in otherwise non-English sentences. Non-English terms are presented in phonetic form without diacritics, in italics, with the following abbreviations: (N) Nepali, (T) Thangmi, (T*) Thangmi ritual language, (Tib) Tibetan, and (Skt) Sanskrit. Proper place, ethnic, and personal names (i.e., Kathmandu, Thangmi, Bir Bahadur) are capitalized but not italicized. I hope that specialist readers will understand my eclectic approach as an effort to make the work accessible to a broad interdisciplinary audience.
Terminology and Locations
“Nepalese” was once the commonly agreed upon English term for citizens of the nation-state of Nepal, as well as for the country’s lingua franca. However, many Nepali-speaking intellectuals view it as a colonial invention that does not match the ethnonym they use to talk about themselves and their language, “Nepali.”6 Others, however, seek to reclaim “Nepalese” to refer to citizens of Nepal, arguing that “Nepali” only fully includes mother-tongue speakers of the Nepali language, while excluding native speakers of the many other languages spoken within Nepal’s borders. For the most part, contemporary scholarship in English follows the convention