Surviving Pemakö’s pluriverse: Kunga Tsomo, the goddess, and the LAC

ABSTRACT

This article traces a multi-generation history of Kunga Tsomo’s family, from the early 1900s when her grandmother migrated to Pemakö in the eastern Himalaya until the twenty-first century. Grandmother’s journey to Pemakö was part of a larger Vajrayana Buddhist migration to “hidden lands” in the southern Himalaya. This movement is most often framed as a religious event, but also involved the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, including the Adi of southern Pemakö. After coming to a negotiated settlement over land, the newly arrived Vajrayana Buddhists and Adi lived in neighboring villages within different ontologies. But soon after this settlement, a series of external states and institutions colonized Pemakö. The British and Qing Empires sent military expeditions in the 1910s. In the 1930s, the Tibetans annexed the territory. In the 1950s, it was bifurcated by the Sino-Indian border dispute. In the twenty-first century, it has become a site of a contest between international conservation campaigns and Chinese and Indian hydropower extraction. Despite the transformative effects of these external powers, this is not a story of cultural erasure. The article shows how the family’s commitment to Pemakö, its land and its multiple cultures has helped them survive and thrive.

KEYWORDS:

• Himalaya
• colonization
• extraction
• geopolitics
• ethnohistory

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Kunga Tsomo, Dechen Wangmo, and the rest of their family for their help writing this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Yangsangchu River is also known as the Nyigong River. Tibetan transliterations in this article accord with the THL simplified Tibetan phonemic transcription system. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. All bracketed spellings are of Tibetan words unless stated otherwise.

2 Vajrayana Buddhism is the form of Buddhism practiced throughout the Himalayas and Tibet.

3 Samuel 2020, 51–59.

4 Montgomery 2004, 201–207.

5 Sturgeon 2021.

6 Pad bkod ’chi med rig ’dzin 2016, 66.

7 Lazcano 2005, 41–63. Pad bkod ’chi med rig ’dzin 2016, 64–66. Grothmann 2012, 43.

8 Tape recordings, handwritten notes, and transcriptions are in possession of the author. These interviews were given in the context of my twenty-year friendship with Kunga Tsomo and her extended family. I was also told many of the family's stories in Pemakö Chen in March, 2017.

9 Blaser 2016, 552.

10 Kohn 2015, 313; Escobar 2018, 86; Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 22.

11 Povinelli 2016, 33.

12 Blaser 2014, 55.

13 Escobar 2018, 86.

14 Viveiros de Castro 2004, 4.

15 Blaser 2014, 50.

16 Bessire and Bond 2014, 444.

17 Yeh and Gaerrang 2021, 463.

18 Blaser 2009, 10–20; Blaser 2014, 50.

19 Yeh and Gaerrang 2021, 463; Blaser 2014, 55.

20 The family could not agree on what Grandmother's name had been. Their village's naming practices are complex. Everyone has a religious name, and a slightly derogatory nick name. Older people are usually referred to by their relationship to the speaker. When people as respected as Grandmother die, no one wants to use their nickname to refer to them, but they often do not know there religious name.

21 Kunga Tsomo, interview in Dewakoṭa, 2017.

22 McDougal 2016, 15.

23 Guru Rinpoche or Padmasambhava is a semi-mythical figure. Samuel and Oliphant 2020.

24 Samuel 2020, 55–56.

25 Rnam rgyal 1988, 83–97. Lazcano 2005, 41–63. Grothmann 2012, 21–52. Tsangla is an Eastern Bhutanese language. Most of these migrants were Rnying ma Buddhists and the Bhutanese state was Bka’ rgyud.

26 Also called gayal or drung oxen, this is a species of domesticated cattle widely found in the Himalayan region.

27 Many of the nineteenth century Dalai Lamas died as children and political control was held by Lhasa's aristocrats and senior monks. Mathes and Coura 2021, 1–17.

28 Pad bkod ’chi med rig ’dzin 2016, 64–66.

29 This prejudice is more than evident in the early descriptions of Pemakö. Huber 2008, 259–276.

30 Non-Buddhists were called lopa (klo pa); the Tangam, their allies, were “white lopa,” and the Shimong, their enemies, were “black lopa.” See Pad bkod ’chi med rig ’dzin 2016, 64–66.

31 Relyea 2015, 181–200. Sperling 1976, 10–36.

32 ’Gan ’khur ba U rgyan 1988, 27–43. Lazcano 2005, 41–63. Schwieger 2002, 227. Sperling 1976, 10–36.

33 Kingdon Ward 1926; Gamble 2019, 42–67.

34 Gardner 2021, 60–90; Simpson 2021, 63. As it turned out, the “riddle of the gorges” outlasted the Qing. It was only solved in 1913 when Bailey and Henry Moreshead (1882–1931) arrived at the bottom of the Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge in Pemakö. See Morshead 1914, 14.

35 Gamble in press.

36 See Relyea 2015, 181–200. For comments about civilizing, see pages 187 and 191.

37 Lewis 2012, 1–5. Lewis describes the construction of place in early China. See also Coggins 2019. Coggins looks at the relationship between pre-modern feng shui, Tibetan environmental management systems, and the PRC's current ecological civilization campaign.

38 McGranahan 2003, 39–60.

39 Sun 1922, 150–151.

40 Dechen Wangmo, private communication, March 2017.

41 Lazcano 2005, 41–63. Gamble 2019, 42–67. Huber 2008, 266.

42 Huber 2008, 266–267.

43 Ryavec 2015, 176–177.

44 Singh, Rallen, and Padung 2013, 712–735.

45 Early scientific assessments that jhum practices were inherently degrading to ecosystems have been replaced with more nuanced readings of its complicated relationship with local ecosystems and the impact displacement and movement restrictions have had on its use. Kerkhoff and Sharma 2006.

46 Pad bkod ’chi med rig ’dzin 2016, 118–121.

47 Srivastava 2009, 146–153.

48 The Adi maintain an intimate relationship with their ancestors and the fields and forests handed down to them. Unlike Vajrayana Buddhists, they have no proscriptions against hunting but do maintain rules about where and when animals can be hunted (see Janaki, Pandit, and Sharma 2021, 13–30). They hunt a wide variety of animals, many of which they sell at markets. Vajrayana Buddhists consume meat, which they usually acquire from non-Buddhists. Killing animals and digging are generally proscribed for Buddhists in sacred sites, and there are some areas, such as Dewakoṭa, where spitting, urinating, and defecating are also prohibited. Since its opening, religious figures and elders have stressed the site's sacrality, and even though their approach to the site is sometimes pragmatic, the social pressure to conform to its norms is intense. There are, furthermore, multiple stories of tigers attacking rule breakers. In addition, many commentators have noted the practice of hunting, particularly of takin, among Vajrayana Buddhists in China. See Schaller 2012, 211–237; Mayard 2018, 147; Huber 2005, 5–17.

49 Krishna 1994, 507–521. Chatterjee Miller 2013.

50 Khamtrul Rinpoche described his escape through the canyon to Baker 2006, 94–95.

51 Personal communications, March 2017.

52 Chakravorty 2017, 285–312.

53 Pad bkod ’chi med rig ’dzin 2016, 99–103. Grothmann 2012, 37–38. Many of these refugee camps are still there, nearly sixty years and several generations later. Other exiled Tibetans, like Dechen Wangmo's father, married local residents or found land to farm and stayed.

54 Baruah 2003, 915–939.

55 See Bérénice Guyot Réchard's exceptional study of this period on the emerging LAC. Guyot Réchard 2016.

56 Grothmann 2012, 21–52.

57 Blaikie and Muldavin 2004, 520–548. Chakraborty et al. 2021, 42–54.

58 McDougal 2020, 207–226.

59 Gamble in press.

60 Rnam rgyal 1988, 83–97. ’Gan ’khur ba U rgyan 1988, 9–27. Lazcano 2005, 41–63. Pommaret 2002, 177–196. These taxes also came up in conversations with the family about pre-1959 travel.

61 Yeh 2013. She describes the processes of collectivization in farms around Lhasa. Similar events are described in Bsod nams bkra shis 2011, 102–110.

62 Economy 2018; Roche, Leibold, and Hillman 2020, 1–21.

63 Lu et al. 2019, 2907–2914; Shen et al. 2012, 37–44.

64 Schaller 2012, 211–237.

65 Robin 2009, 56–64.

66 Tsing 2003, 5100–5106.

67 Williams 2020, 12882–12888.

68 Rodenbiker 2021, 1931–1948.

69 Geall and Ely 2018, 1182.

70 Rodenbiker 2021; Hansen, Li, and Svarverud 2018, 195–203.

71 Rodenbiker 2021, 1940.

72 Rodenbiker 2021, 1939.

73 Rodenbiker 2021, 1939.

74 Rodenbiker 2021, 1934.

75 Yeh and Gaerrang 2021, 463.

76 Yeh and Gaerrang 2021, 463.

77 In this way, it is similar to Salimjan 2021.

78 Salimjan 2021, 59–68.

79 These were announced in the 12th Five-year Plan (2010–2015).

80 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025). See Shan and Lin 2020.

81 State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China 2012.

82 The new Chengdu–Lhasa railway, Sichuan-Tibet Highway, G318, and the large “powershed” from the Yarlung Tsangpo hydroelectrical projects all pass through Nyingtri near Bayi.

83 Tibet's first golf course is being built at the Linzhi Hilton. Hilton Press Release 2017. Details about the Hilton Resort are available at: https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/hghlihi-hilton-linzhi-resort/. The local government is encouraging RV tours of the region, and has built a high-end resort to market to them, the Tibet Ranwu Lake International Self-driving and RV Camp (西藏然乌湖国际自驾与房车营地). Sohu.com 2020.

84 State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China 2012.

85 Sheng et al. 2021, 117447.

86 State Forestry Administration Government Network 2016.

87 State Forestry Administration Government Network 2016.

88 Gamble in press.

89 Gilio-Whitaker 2019, 93–106. Li and Shapiro 2020, chapter 2.

90 Longkumer et al. 2019, 281–297.

91 McDuie-Ra 2020, 133–155.

92 Gergan and Smith 2022, 361–382.

93 Chotia 2021, 410–434.

94 Nayak 2021, 511–532.

95 Sharma and Borgohain 2020, 17–20.

96 Duarah 2017.

97 Anand 2007, 257–269.

98 Chakraborty et al. 2021, 42–54.

99 There are examples of a conservationist approach that is very cognisant and respectful of local ways of knowing. For instance, Janaki, Pandit, and Sharma 2021, 13–30.

100 Karmakar 2019.

101 Aljazeera 2020.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by two Australian Research Council grants, a Discovery grant examining Tibet’s rivers and a DECRA fellowship examining the Himalayan cryosphere.

Notes on contributors

Ruth Gamble

Ruth Gamble is a Senior Lecturer and ARC DECRA fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. She is a historian of Tibet and the Himalayas, with a particular interest in this region’s rapidly changing environment.