Framing the image of Sikkim

Abstract

This article highlights the poetics and politics of visual culture and specifically tourist brochures and picture postcards that frame an indigenous Buddhist Sikkim for domestic and international tourists. Located in Northeast India, Himalayan Sikkim is a cultural mosaic constituted by almost 22 Indo-Tibetan and Indo-Aryan groups residing therein. It is argued that visual representations incisively frame Sikkim as a Buddhist landscape by selectively photographing mantras, sacred texts, saints, religious sites, murals and rituals that are connected with Buddhism. The growing efflorescence of Buddhism globally and the desire of tourists to experience Buddhist culture has given fresh impetus to imagining Sikkim as their living repository.

Notes

[1] This research was funded by a grant from the Beit Fund for Commonwealth History at Oxford (2001–2003) and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (2007). A section of this paper was presented at the International Planning History Conference, held in December 2006 at Delhi while an extended version was presented at the International Young Tibetologists Conference, SOAS at London in July 2007. Discussions with Marcus Banks and Elizabeth Edwards (Oxford), Mike Tomlan (Cornell), Amita Sinha (Illinois), Sanil (IIT Delhi), Patricia Uberoi (CSDS Delhi) and Manoj and Dawa at Gangtok in Sikkim have shaped and improved my argument. Comments from two anonymous referees have constructively sharpened the argument. Last but not least, I thank Manoj who generously gave me permission to reproduce three postcards to illustrate my argument and Darren Newbury who patiently waited and magnanimously extended the deadline while I recovered from bronchitis. The usual disclaimers apply.

[2] ‘Photographs are indexical (there is physical contiguity between image and the referent) that guarantee a fixity. This realist element and its documentary function is connected to the technical and practical foundation of the camera’ (Ball 2005, 504, emphasis added).

[3] The camera is never neutral (Grimshaw 2001, 5–7; see also Tagg 1988; Jay 2002) despite photography being regarded as the model of veracity and objectivity. Photographs are compositions and the photograph's social functions reveal that, ‘it is art that imitates art’ (Bourdieu 1990, 73, 77).

[4] Picture postcards have been used to illustrate, but unlike calendar art there has hardly been any research on picture postcards of contemporary India. My discussions with eminent visual anthropologists such as Patricia Uberoi and Marcus Banks form the basis of this observation.

[5] Other visual narratives available in tourist blogs and travelogues are not included in the analysis here.

[6] To an extent such a Buddhist framing is evident for Ladakh located in Northwestern India. Nonetheless socio-demographically, unlike Sikkim, Ladakh is predominantly inhabited by Buddhists.

[7] The custodians of Sikkimese culture often lamented the spreading tentacles of Nepali rock bands and Bollywood music, such that the youth showed a lack of interest in learning ‘authentic’ cultural performances.

[8] ‘If we want to experience Nepali culture then we will go to Nepal’; this sentiment was echoed repeatedly in my interviews with tourists. Nepali culture is not considered indigenous to Sikkim and the international tourists emphasised that they wanted to experience authentic traditional Buddhist culture.

[9] Sir Charles was educated at Oxford, so his family donated his collection there. Many of these pictures are available in the digital archive: http://tibet.prm.ox.ac.uk.

[10] There are barely two images of Nepali people working as labourers in Sikkim. Significantly it is during the tenure of Sir Charles Bell that the landmark law of Land Revenue Order number one was implemented. The construction of Bhutias and Lepchas as the indigenous inhabitants of Sikkim is evident in the picturing of Sikkim, while the immigrant Nepali presence is reinforced by their absence as subjects worthy of documentation. This law prohibits the sale and purchase of Bhutia and Lepcha lands by non-Bhutias and Lepchas, namely the Nepalis and the Indians.

[11] He was the First Political Officer of Sikkim and Sir Charles's predecessor.

[12] The Williamson collection is available at Cambridge.

[13] Communicated to me by the owners of Panorama Labs. Owners of other photographic shops at Gangtok corroborated this statement.

[14] Communicated by Sera Pillai, the daughter of the late Mr Pillai who used to run a photographic shop in Gangtok during 2001–2002. This was confirmed during discussions with members of the nobility.

[15] Communicated during personal interviews in 2006–2007.

[16] Manoj acknowledged the influence of Rajesh Lakhotia, a Marwari like himself who owns Hotel Tashi-Delek at Gangtok, in inspiring him to commercially produce and effectively market visual material on Sikkim and Darjeeling.

[17] Its back cover advertises that this is the ‘first comprehensive guidebook’ and is illustrated with 120 stunning pictures.

[18] Material objects are not inert but comprise social things actively enmeshed in social relations, not merely communicating cultural performances but taking new meanings on circulation (Appadurai 1986).

[19] Photographs taken by tourists serve as an ‘ideogram or allegories of experiences’ (Bourdieu 1990, 36).

[20] This was, incidentally, the fieldwork period for my doctoral dissertation. The eruption of these postcards onto the tourist scene ignited my interest in the visual culture of Sikkim. Since then I have been curating the photographic expansion of this picture postcard series, documenting the changing graphic content and tracking other visual distributional forms such as promotional CDs and guide-books produced by him.

[21] At the time of writing this article, Kuldeep Mukhia, who is an employee of an Indian public sector bank, was posted to Arunachal Pradesh.

[22] One US dollar is equivalent to approximately Rs 46.

[23] Posters range between Rs 500 and Rs 2000 depending on the size and the quality of paper and the frames used.

[24] Personally I have only three of this series that contains seven cards.

[25] A Lepcha word meaning bridge.

[26] A Tibetan word meaning masked dances.

[27] At the time of researching and writing this paper, Dawa was busy filming the havoc caused by the imposition of hydroelectric projects in North Sikkim and actively leading Lepcha opposition against the government of Sikkim's development plans.