At the China-India Border: Himalayan Kalimpong

My project is about a border town, Kalimpong, in the eastern Indian Himalayas, and how the Chinese settled in that space experience and enact the cultural politics during the period between the 1940s and 1960s. This was also a time when Tibet is taken over and, along with the Dalai Lama, tens of thousands of refugees flow into border towns like Kalimpong. The research output of a project like this takes many forms, not least in terms of the public dissemination of the issues involved. I have spoken about and written articles in the popular press recently regarding the current border tensions between India and China, which are terrifying to conceive if they snow-ball into a full-scale war. The long term aspects of this discussion forms an integral part of my responsibility as a scholar.