Frontier Commodification: Governing Land, Labour and Leisure in Darjeeling, India

ABSTRACT

In the contemporary global imagination, Darjeeling typically figures on two accounts: as a unique tourism site replete with colonial heritage and picturesque nature, and as the productive origin for some of the world's most exclusive teas. In this commodified and consumable form, Darjeeling is part of a wide array of frontier places that are increasingly incorporated into the circuits of global capitalism. In the present article, I argue that Darjeeling is in fact an early and emblematic example of such incorporation. By connecting emerging literature on the pre-colonial history of the area with a critical reading of colonial sources, I trace the shifts and erasures that enabled Darjeeling's commodification—a process that involved its transformation from a ‘wild’ Himalayan frontier into a speculative wasteland and, ultimately, into a picturesque and productive ‘summer place’. Reading through a range of material and representational interventions, I uncover the particular assemblage of government and capital that enabled this transformation and highlight its potential resonances with contemporary cases of frontier commodification in South Asia and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Commodification
• Darjeeling
• frontier, land
• landscape
• tourism

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Sara Shneiderman, Townsend Middleton, Christian Lund, and Mattias Borg Rasmussen as well as the two anonymous South Asia reviewers for incisive comments on various drafts of this article. Research for the article was supported by the Asian Dynamics Initiative at Copenhagen University.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

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3. See, for example, Mattias Borg Rasmussen and Christian Lund, ‘Reconfiguring Frontier Spaces: Territorialization and Resource Control’, in World Development (forthcoming, 2017), p. 1.

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12. Ferguson, ‘Seeing Like an Oil Company’, p. 377; emphasis added.

13. Grubačić and O'Hearn, Living at the Edges, p. 14; and Shneiderman, ‘Are the Central Himalayas in Zomia?’.

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23. On the touristic commodification of landscapes, see, for example, Carolyn L. Cartier and Alan A. Lew, Seductions of Place: Geographical Perspectives on Globalization and Touristed Landscapes (London/New York: Routledge, 2005).

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26. Andrew Fitzmaurice, ‘The Genealogy of Terra Nullius’, in Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 38, no. 129 (2007), pp. 1–15.

27. Ibid., p. 4.

28. William Wilson Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. X: Districts of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, and State of Kuch Behar, 19 vols. (London: Trübner & Co., 1876), p. 40.

29. W. Newman and Co., Newman's Guide to Darjeeling and Its Surroundings (Calcutta: W. Newman and Co., 1900), p. 15.

30. Saul Mullard, ‘Reading Ethnic Conflict in Sikkimese History: The Case of the Assassination of Chancellor Bho Lod’, in Hanna Havnevik and Charles Ramble (eds), From Bhakti to Bon: Festschrift for Per Kværne (Oslo: Novus, 2015), pp. 367–80; Saul Mullard, ‘An Introduction to the “Testimony” of the Barfung (’Bar Spungs) Family: An Important Source for the Study of Sikkim's Social and Political History’, in Olaf Czaja and Guntram Hazod (eds), The Illuminating Mirror: Tibetan Studies in Honour of Per K. Sørensen on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verl, 2015), pp. 357–74; Richard Keith Sprigg, ‘1826: The End of an Era in the Social and Political History of Sikkim’, in Bulletin of Tibetology, Vol. 31, no. 1 (1995), pp. 88–92; and Catherine Warner, ‘Shifting States: Mobile Subjects, Markets, and Sovereignty in the India-Nepal Borderland, 1780–1930’, PhD Dissertation, University of Washington, 2014, pp. 154–93.

31. Mullard, ‘Reading Ethnic Conflict’, pp. 9–10.

32. Saul Mullard, ‘Negotiating Power in 19th Century Sikkim: The 1830 Covenant on Tax Exiles and Sikkimese Border Regions’, in Charles Ramble, Peter Schwieger and Alice Travers (eds), Tibetans Who Escaped the Historian's Net: Studies in the Social History of Tibetan Societies (Kathmandu: Vajra Books, 2013), pp. 179–208.

33. Sprigg, ‘1826: The End of an Era’, p. 89; Saul Mullard, ‘Regulating Sikkimese Society: The Fifteen-Clause Domestic Settlement (Nang ’Dum) of 1876’, in Jeannine Bischoff and Saul Mullard (eds), Social Regulation: Case Studies from Tibetan History (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 23–4; and Capt. J.D. Herbert, ‘Particulars of a Visit to the Siccim Hills with Some Account of Darjiling’, in Fred Pinn (ed.), Travelling to Darjeeling (Bath: Pagoda Tree Press, [1830] 2000), p. 18.

34. Major Lloyd, cited in Fred Pinn, The Road of Destiny: Darjeeling Letters 1839 (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 120.

35. L.L.S. O'Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers: Darjeeling (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, [1907] 2001), p. 25; italics added.

36. Ibid., p. 55.

37. Hunter, A Statistical Account, p. 48.

38. ‘Extract from a Report to Government on the Civil Administration of the Darjeeling District, by Welby Jackson’ (1853), cited in Anon., ‘Life and Labors of the Late Dr. Archibald Campbell’, in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 7 (1878), p. 386.

39. Kumud Ranjan Biswas, ‘A Summer Place’, in Government of West Bengal (ed.), Bengal District Gazetteer: Darjeeling by L.S.S. O'Malley (Kolkata: Government of West Bengal, 2001), p. xii.

40. Anon., ‘Life and Labors’, pp. 386–7.

41. W. Newman and Co., Newman's Guide, p. 46.

42. It should be noted that I draw out the distinction between empty land and wasteland here mainly for analytical purposes. In reality, the two notions are closely intertwined as wasteland indicates a lack of productive activity that is also highlighted by some perspectives on terra nullius.

43. Baden Henry Baden-Powell, The Land-Systems of British India, Vol. 1, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), p. 480.

44. Vinay Krishin Gidwani, ‘“Waste” and the Permanent Settlement in Bengal’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 27, no. 4 (1992), pp. PE39–PE46.

45. Samuel Baildon, The Tea Industry in India. A Review of Finance and Labour, and a Guide for Capitalists and Assistants (London: W.H. Allen & Co., 1882).

46. Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Harmondsworth: Penguin, rpr., 1966); and Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, [1963] 1996).

47. On the Permanent Settlement, see, for example, Gidwani, ‘“Waste” and the Permanent Settlement’; and Guha, A Rule of Property. On the ad-hoc governance of Darjeeling, see Townsend Middleton, ‘Unwritten Histories: Difference, Capital, and the Darjeeling Exception’, in Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman (eds), Darjeeling Reconsidered: Histories, Politics, Environments (forthcoming).

48. Manu Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 44.

49. Ibid.

50. Sherry B. Ortner, High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 102–3; and George Kotturan, The Himalayan Gateway: History and Culture of Sikkim (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1983), pp. 59–63.

51. Hunter, A Statistical Account, p. 103.

52. Kumar Pradhan, The Gorkha Conquests: Process and Consequences of the Unification of Nepal, with Particular Reference to Eastern Nepal (Lalitpur: Himal Books, [1991] 2009), pp. 212–3; Warner, ‘Flighty Subjects’; and W. Newman and Co., Newman's Guide, p. 3.

53. For more on the ‘adhocracy’ in Darjeeling, see Middleton, ‘Unwritten Histories’.

54. These figures are assembled from Hunter, A Statistical Account; O'Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers; Percival Joseph Griffiths, The History of the Indian Tea Industry (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967); and Piya Chatterjee, A Time for Tea: Women, Labor, and Post/Colonial Politics on an Indian Plantation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).

55. Cited in Baden-Powell, The Land-Systems, Vol. 1, p. 484.

56. O'Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers, p. 149; and Baden-Powell, The Land-Systems, Vol. 1, p. 500.

57. These restrictions included a measure that lease-holders should bring at least 15 percent of the leased area under tea cultivation in the first five years.

58. Pradhan, The Gorkha Conquests, pp. 212–3; Warner, ‘Flighty Subjects’; and W. Newman and Co., Newman's Guide, p. 3.

59. Townsend Middleton, ‘Beyond Recognition: Ethnology, Belonging, and the Refashioning of the Ethnic Subject in Darjeeling, India’, PhD dissertation, Cornell University, New York, 2010.

60. John Whelpton, A History of Nepal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

61. Sharma, ‘Producing Himalayan Darjeeling’.

62. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed; and Warner, ‘Flighty Subjects’.

63. O'Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers, p. 180.

64. Pradhan, The Gorkha Conquests; and Middleton, ‘Beyond Recognition’.

65. Besky, The Darjeeling Distinction.

66. Middleton, ‘Beyond Recognition’, p. 129.

67. O'Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers, pp. 43–4; and Hunter, A Statistical Account, p. 165. Michael Hutt states that over 90 percent of tea labourers in 1876 came from the hills of eastern Nepal. See Michael Hutt, ‘Being Nepali without Nepal: Reflections on a South Asian Diaspora’, in David N. Gellner, Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka and John Whelpton (eds), Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom: The Politics of Culture in Contemporary Nepal (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1997), p. 112. Kumar Pradhan estimates that 12–15 percent of the total Kirant (Rais, Limbus, Sunuwars) population of Nepal emigrated between 1840 and 1860. See Pradhan, The Gorkha Conquests, p. 211.

68. Hunter, A Statistical Account, p. 165; O'Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers, p. 94; and Dane Keith Kennedy, The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 53.

69. J.T. Kenny, ‘Climate, Race, and Imperial Authority: The Symbolic Landscape of the British Hill Station in India’, in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 85, no. 4 (1995), pp. 694–714; Shashwati Talukdar, ‘Picturing Mountains as Hills: Hill Station Postcards and the Tales They Tell’ [http://tasveerghar.net/cmsdesk/essay/102/, accessed Jan. 2017]; and Kennedy, The Magic Mountains.

70. Jayeeta Sharma, Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); and Kennedy, The Magic Mountains.

71. John Urry, The Tourist Gaze (London: Sage, 2nd ed., 2001), p. 148.

72. Hugh Rayner (ed.), Photographic Journeys in the Himalayas by Samuel Bourne (Bath: Pagoda Tree Press, 2009); and Sandeep Banerjee, ‘“Not Altogether Unpicturesque”: Samuel Bourne and the Landscaping of the Victorian Himalaya’, in Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 42, Special Issue 03 (2014), pp. 351–68.

73. Ueli Gyr, ‘The History of Tourism Structures on the Path to Modernity’ [http://www.ieg-ego.eu/gyru-2010-en, accessed Jan. 2017].

74. W. Newman and Co., Newman's Guide; Anon., ‘The Darjeeling Guide’, in Calcutta Review, Vol. LV (1857), pp. 196–225; E.C. Dozey, A Concise History of the Darjeeling District since 1835, with a Complete Itinerary of Tours in Sikkim and the District, Etc. (Calcutta, 2nd ed., 1922), pp. xxvi, 350, pl. 20; William Sproston Caine, Picturesque India: A Handbook for European Travellers (London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1891); Mary H. Avery, Up in the Clouds or Darjeeling and Its Surroundings, Historical and Descriptive (Calcutta: Newman & Co., 1878); A. Campbell, The Darjeeling Guide Including a Description of the Country and of Its Climate, Soil and Productions (Calcutta: Samuel Smith & Co., 1845); and F.L. Bussell, Darjeeling and Its Mountain Railway (Calcutta: Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway Co., 1921).

75. Gyr, ‘The History of Tourism’.

76. For a more comprehensive analysis of these representations, see ibid.

77. W. Newman and Co., Newman's Guide.

78. Dozey, A Concise History.

79. This distanced, outside perspective on Darjeeling, in fact, goes beyond touristic representations. Even government negotiations on state restructuring following the partition of India and Pakistan reiterated the perspective by focusing on the accessibility of Darjeeling from Calcutta. See Marcus F. Franda, West Bengal and the Federalizing Process in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968); and States Reorganisation Commission, Report on the States Reorganisation Commission (New Delhi: Government of India, 1955).

80. James S. Duncan and Nancy Duncan, Landscapes of Privilege: Aesthetics and Affluence in an American Suburb (New York: Routledge, 2004); and J.S. Duncan and N.G. Duncan, ‘The Aestheticization of the Politics of Landscape Preservation’, in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 91, no. 2 (2001), pp. 387–409.

81. Dozey, A Concise History, p. 1.

82. Middleton, ‘Anxious Belongings’; Sharma, ‘Producing Himalayan Darjeeling’; Besky, The Darjeeling Distinction, pp. 55–6; Shneiderman, Rituals of Ethnicity, pp. 98–127; and Middleton, ‘Unwritten Histories’.

83. Goswami, Producing India; Marian Aguiar, Tracking Modernity: India's Railway and the Culture of Mobility (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); and Caren Kaplan, Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996).

84. Caine, Picturesque India, pp. 350, 352.

85. W. Newman and Co., Newman's Guide, pp. 24–5.

86. Cited in Sharma, ‘Producing Himalayan Darjeeling’, p. 90.

87. D. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (Madison University of Wisconsin Press, 1984).

89. Rohini Banerjee, ‘Tourism Update: Savouring Darjeeling’, India Now (n.d.) [https://www.ibef.org/download/Tourism_Darjeling.pdf, accessed 30 Jan. 2017].

90. Ravinder Kaur, ‘Nation's Two Bodies: Rethinking the Idea of “New” India and Its Other’, in Third World Quarterly, Vol. 33, no. 4 (2012), p. 606.

91. Nicolas Papadopoulos, ‘Place Branding: Evolution, Meaning and Implications’, in Place Branding, Vol. 1, no. 1 (2004), pp. 36–49; and Kaur and Wahlberg, ‘Governing Difference’.

92. See India Brand Equity Foundation [www.ibef.org, accessed 14 Jan. 2017].

93. See ‘Darjeeling Tea to be Showcased at the Davos 2013 Meet: IBEF’ (18 Jan. 2013) [http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/darjeeling-tea-to-be-showcased-at-the-davos-2013-meet-ibef-187429771.html, accessed 14 Jan. 2017].

94. Middleton, ‘Unwritten Histories’.

95. On post-colonial colonialism in Kashmir, see Martin Sōkefeld, ‘From Colonialism to Postcolonial Colonialism: Changing Modes of Domination in the Northern Areas of Pakistan’, in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 64, no. 4 (2005), pp. 939–73..

96. B. Lacina, ‘The Problem of Political Stability in Northeast India: Local Ethnic Autocracy and the Rule of Law’, in Asian Survey, Vol. 49, no. 6 (2009), pp. 998–1020.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was supported by the Asian Dynamics Initiative at Copenhagen University.