Trans-border Religion: Limbu Rituals in Nepal and Sikkim

This research project focuses on the role of the international Indo-Nepalese border on present-days re-composition of religious ideas and practices in the Limbu community. The Limbu, also known by the endonym Yakthungba, is an ethnic group whose language belongs to Tibeto-Burman, and whose traditional territory stretches across the border on eastern Nepal and western Sikkim (India). With the drawing of the border in the early nineteenth century, Limbus became trans-border peoples: for them, the political border does not coincide with an ethno-cultural divide. Limbu are part of the larger ethnic category of Kiranti, for the unity and prestige of which famous intellectuals developed a script and literature in the early 20th century, in opposition to Hindu domination. In more recent years, the struggle moved on to the domain of religion, and Limbu, in particular, engaged in a movement of re- composition of religious ideas and practices, that is to say, of re-interpretation and re-valuation of these practices. This movement is narrowly connected to political and societal dynamics, though in a different way in Nepal and Sikkim. The first hypothesis is that the re-composition of religious ideas and practices by the Limbus is fostered by the interactions across the Indo-Nepalese border, as it is the case among other groups in the region. This question also concerns belonging to a trans-border community or to the state: do Limbu on both sides of the border view their rituals as being connected and express through common deities, cosmology, or a shared ritual territory a common sense of belonging? A closer look at the womens perspective and practices will contribute to a clarification of these questions. The four-year research project (201720) will be implemented primarily through ethnographic fieldwork in Sikkim and in Nepal, including local area studies and mobile fieldwork focused on the trans-border flows of persons, objects and ideas. As the project is based at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research and Documentation of Inner and South Asian Cultural History (CIRDIS) of the University of Vienna, immediate digital archiving of all data will be carried out at the Himalayan Archive Vienna. The project promises original result on three levels: it is 1) a much needed documentation of contemporary cultural practices of the Limbu people; 2) a transnational ethnographic study of mobility and migration between Sikkim and Nepal, and 3) a contribution to a theory of trans-border processes. This research ultimately contributes to the clarification of the relationship between the state and transnational spaces in the contemporary globalised world, which is a central concern in international anthropological research today.

This research project focused on the role of the Indo-Nepalese border in the present-day re-composition of religious ideas and practices in the Limbu ethnic community. The Limbu became a borderland community when the border between northeast Nepal and Sikkim was defined in the early nineteenth century, and the consequent integration of the Limbu into two different countries led to intra-ethnic religious differentiation. Since the early twentieth century, Limbu ritual practices have been the subject of political claims in Nepal and in Sikkim (today part of India). This project aimed at exploring how both transborder connections and national division have influenced ritual dynamics among the Limbu and the corelated construction of their collective identity. This objective was intended as a contribution to an academic debate ongoing in the multi-disciplinary research field of border studies, which simultaneously challenges two assumptions: that ethnicity emerged only within the boundaries of modern nation states and that collective identities were now deterritorialised. Based on former researches in the region, the main hypothesis of this project was that the re-composition of religious ideas and practices by the Limbu was fostered by cross-border interactions despite nationalist politics. The main method of investigation planned for this project was ethnographic fieldwork. Archival study was also planned so as to contribute to the research on Limbu history and on the history of the eastern Nepali border, which are topics of particular interest to Himalayan research due to their connection to nation-state formation in the region (Tibet, Nepal and India). Twenty months of fieldwork in Nepal and Sikkim were carried out altogether by the three team members; the fieldwork documented both similarities and differences in Limbu ritual performances between Nepal and Sikkim, as well as concrete cross-border interactions between Nepali and Sikkimese Limbu. The central hypothesis of the project was validated and also complexified: fieldwork highlighted tensions between two main religious movements followed by the Limbu, i.e. a 'reform' and a 'shamanistic', which had close connections in the past. On both sides of the border, Limbu drew upon their common distant past to conceptualise their ritual practices and identity, and, for reasons related to national politics, constructed similar boundaries between these movements. Besides, archival research was complemented by Limbu oral history; this contributed to include a point of view 'from below' whereas the history of the region has so far mostly reported the point of view of the rulers. This project also contributed to Himalayan studies by documenting Limbu rituals in parts of north-east Nepal and West Sikkim where they had never been the focus of an ethnographic study. Fieldwork data will be released to the public after their publication.