Through the India-China Border

Auteur
Prem Poddar is Professor in Cultural Encounters at Roskilde University in Denmark and Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellow in Germany. He is former and founding Vice-Chancellor of Darjeeling Hills University, India. He is currently ICAS:MP Senior Fellow. His research interests include cultural theory, nationalisms, and the politics of the passport. Lisa Lindkvist Zhang is Postdoctoral Fellow at Tohoku University and Analyst at the Swedish National China Centre. She defended her PhD dissertation Re-thinking Indian Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century China at Heidelberg University in 2023. Her research focuses on philosophy and history in light of Chinese politics and China-India relations.

Texte du rabat
Through the India-China Border mobilizes rarely used documentary material from British, Chinese and Indian archives to shed new light on our understanding of the 'Tibet Question' in China-India relations. Focused on the Himalayan border town of Kalimpong from the 1920s to 1962, it unearths a history of espionage and political intrigue that challenges the way that remote peripheries are seen from the 'centres' of nations. The innovative use of postcolonial and transcultural theory demonstrates how a multidisciplinary framework augments our reading of imperial histories, postwar politics, decolonisation and frontier cultures. Kalimpong emerges from this analysis as a key node in Himalayan history and in the mid-century fashioning of India-China relations.

Contenu
Preface; Acknowledgments; Glossary; 1. Introduction: Kalimpong as Interface Post/colonial and Transcultural; 2. Kalimpong as Metonym: IndiaChina Correlation; 3. Chinese (and Tibetan) Certification in Himalayan India: Foreigner Registration Files 1940s1960s; 4. Espionage, Intrigues and Politics: Kalimpong Chung Hwa School as International Playhouse; 5. Shangri-la (Gyalthang) to Kalimpong: The Road of Trade, Transculture and Conflict; 6. Inconclusion: Not The Last Word; Bibliography; Index.