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Producing Monyul as Buffer: Spatial politics in a colonial frontier

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2019

SWARGAJYOTI GOHAIN
SWARGAJYOTI GOHAIN*
Affiliation:
Ashoka University Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article focuses on the Tawang and West Kameng districts of Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India, collectively known as Monyul. It was ruled by Tibet for three centuries before the 1914 McMahon Line boundary included it in India. Even after that, cross-border exchanges between Monyul and Tibet continued until the 1962 Sino-Indian war, following which border passages between the two were closed. Today, Monyul is a marginal region, geographically distant from centres of industry and education, and lacking in terms of infrastructure. This article traces Monyul's marginality not simply to the border war, but to spatial practices of the British colonial state, beginning with the mapping of the boundary in 1914. It shows how Monyul was constructed as a buffer, despite being within a delimited boundary, first, by excluding it from regular administration, and, secondly, by pushing back the older Tibetan administration, thereby, making it (what I call) a ‘zone of difference/indifference’. But the buffer project was subject to contestation, mostly from the Tibetan religious aristocracy, whose temporal hold over, and material interests in, Monyul were challenged by the latter's incorporation into colonial India.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , March 2020 , pp. 432 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

This article is based on archival work undertaken in the National Archives, Delhi, in 2010 and the British Library, London, in 2015. However, the ideas and arguments that I propose emerged from my anthropological engagement with the Monyul region in northeast India. I conducted fieldwork in Monyul in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2013, supported by the Wenner Gren Foundation, USA, and Emory University, USA. Archival work in the British Library in July 2015 was supported by a Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship. I thank Professors Bruce Knauft, David Nugent, Joyce Flueckiger, Willem van Schendel, Toni Huber, and Michael Peletz for their comments on this article. I am grateful to the kind anonymous reviewer for constructive criticisms and insightful suggestions.

References

References

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Baruah, Sanjib 2003. ‘Citizens and Denizens: Ethnicity, Homelands and the Crisis of Displacement in North East India’, Journal of Refugee Studies 16 (1), pp. 44–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Bell, Charles [1924] 1992. Tibet Past and Present. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.Google Scholar
Bhargava, G. S. 1964. The Battle of NEFA: The Undeclared War. New Delhi: Allied Publishers.Google Scholar
Bhattacharjee, Tarun Kumar. 1992. Enticing Frontiers. New Delhi: Omsons Publications.Google Scholar
Bose, Manilal. 1979. British Policy in the North-East Frontier Agency. Delhi: Concept Publishing House.Google Scholar
Brenner, Neil. 1999. ‘Beyond State-Centrism? State, Territoriality, and Geographical Scale in Globalization Studies’, Theory and Society 28, pp. 39–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caroe, Olaf. 1964. ‘The India-China Frontiers: Review’, The Geographical Journal 130 (2), pp. 273–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandra, Uday. 2015. ‘Adivasis in Contemporary India: Engagements with State, Non-State Actors and the Capitalist Economy’, in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India, (ed.) Jacobsen, Knut A.. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 297–310.Google Scholar
Chatterji, Joya. 1999. ‘The Fashioning of a Frontier: The Radcliffe Line and Bengal's Border Landscape, 1947–52’, Modern Asian Studies 33 (1), pp. 185–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choudhury, D. P. 1978. The North-East Frontier of India: 1865–1914. Kolkata: The Asiatic Society.Google Scholar
Curzon, George N. [1907] 1976. Frontiers. Romanes Lecture Series, Oxford, 2 November 1907. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Devi, Lakshmi. 1968. Ahom-Tribal Relations. Guwahati, India: Lawyer's Book Stall.Google Scholar
Dutta, Sujit. 2008. ‘Revisiting China's Territorial Claims on Arunachal’, Strategic Analysis 32 (4), pp. 549–581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elwin, Verrier. 1959. A Philosophy for NEFA. Shillong, India: Navana Printing Works.Google Scholar
Ganguly, J. B. 2000. ‘The Modus Operandi of Trade between the Eastern Himalayan Subregion and Assam in the Pre-colonial and Colonial Periods’, in Border Trade: Northeast India and Neighboring Countries, (ed.) Das, Gurudas. New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, pp. 12–19.Google Scholar
Ghosh, Kaushik. 2006. ‘Between Global Flows and Local Dams: Indigenousness, Locality and the Transnational Sphere in Jharkhand, India’, Cultural Anthropology 21 (4), pp. 501–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giersch, Peter. 2006. Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China's Yunnan Frontier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Melvyn C. 1989. A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gordillo, Gaston. 2013. ‘Opaque Zones of Empire: Notes toward a Theory of Terrain’, Paper presented at the ‘Space and Violence’ panel, Association of American Geographers (AAG) Meetings, Los Angeles, 9 April.Google Scholar
Grothmann, Kerstin. 2012. ‘Migration Narratives, Official Classifications, and Local Identities: The Memba of the Hidden Land of Pachakshiri’, in Origins and Migrations in the Extended Eastern Himalaya, (eds) Huber, T. and Blackburn, S.. Leiden: Brill, pp. 125–152.Google Scholar
Guha, Amalendu. 1977. Planter Raj to Swaraj: Freedom Struggle and Electoral Politics in Assam 1826–1947. Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research.Google Scholar
Gupta, Akhil and Ferguson, James. 1997. Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gupta, Karunakar. 1971. ‘The McMahon Line 1911–1945: The British Legacy’, The China Quarterly 47, pp. 521–545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gupta, Karunakar 1974. The Hidden History of the Sino-Indian Frontier. Calcutta: Minerva Associate PublicationsGoogle Scholar
Guyot-Réchard, Bérénice. 2015. ‘Reordering a Border Space: Relief, Rehabilitation, and Nation-Building in Northeastern India after the 1950 Assam Earthquake’, Modern Asian Studies 49 (4), pp. 931–962.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, David. 1982. The Limits to Capital. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Harvey, David 2001. ‘Globalization and the Spatial Fix’, Geographische Revue 2, pp. 23–30.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Steven A. 2006. ‘Rethinking the Linkage between Tibet and the China-India Border Conflict’, Journal of Cold War Studies 8 (3), pp. 165–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, Toni. 2008. The Holy Land Reborn: Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of Buddhist India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, Toni 2011. ‘Pushing South: Tibetan Economic and Political Activities in the Far Eastern Himalaya, ca. 1900–1950’, in Buddhist Himalaya: Studies in Religion, History and Culture, (eds) McKay, A. and Balicki-Denjongpa, A.. Gangtok: Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, pp. 259–276.Google Scholar
Hutton, J. H. 1946. ‘Problems of Reconstruction in the Assam Hills’, Man in India 26, pp. 97–109.Google Scholar
Jha, Braj Narain. 1997. ‘Politics of Posa: A Case Study of Pre and Post Independence Scenario in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam’, in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Fifth Session, Madras University, 27–29 December 1996, pp. 446–457.Google Scholar
Jonsson, Hjorleifur. 2005. Mien Relations. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kar, Bodhisattva. 2009. ‘When was the Postcolonial? A History of Policing Impossible Lines’, in Beyond Counter-Insurgency: Breaking the Impasse in Northeast India, (ed.) Baruah, Sanjib. Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 49–77.Google Scholar
Kar, Bodhisattva. 2016. ‘Nomadic Capital and Speculative Tribes: A Culture of Contracts in the Northeastern Frontier of British India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 53 (1), pp. 41–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingdon-Ward, Frank. 1938. ‘The Assam Himalaya: Travels in Balipara’, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 25, pp. 610–619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingdon-Ward, Frank 1940. ‘Botanical and Geographical Exploration in the Assam Himalaya’, The Geographical Journal 96 (1), pp. 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamb, Alastair. 1966. The McMahon Line. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Mackenzie, Alexander. 1884 [2007]. The North-East Frontier of India. New Delhi: Mittal.Google Scholar
Majumdar, Aparajita. 2016. ‘The Colonial State and Resource Frontiers: Tracing the Politics of Appropriating Rubber in the Northeastern Frontier of British India, 1810–84’, Indian Historical Review 43 (1), pp. 25–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maxwell, Neville. 1970. ‘China and India: The Un-negotiated Dispute’, The China Quarterly 43, pp. 47–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McMahon, A. Henry. 1936. ‘International Boundaries’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts LXXXIV (84), pp. 2–22.Google Scholar
Mehra, Parshotam. 1979–1980. The North-Eastern Frontier: A Documentary Study of the Internecine Rivalry between India, Tibet and China, Vols I and II. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, J. P. 1947. ‘Tours in the Balipara Frontier Tract, Assam’, Man in India 26, pp. 4–35.Google Scholar
Mills, J. P. 1950. ‘Problems of the Assam-Tibet Frontier’, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 37, pp. 152–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Misra, Sanghamitra. 2011. Becoming a Borderland: The Politics of Space and Identity in Colonial Northeastern India. Delhi: Routledge.Google Scholar
Murty, T. S. 1971. ‘Tawang and “the Un-Negotiated Dispute”’, The China Quarterly 46, pp. 357–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nanda, Neeru. 1982. Tawang: The Land of Mon. Delhi: Vikas.Google Scholar
Reid, Robert. 1944. ‘The Excluded Areas of Assam’, The Geographical Journal 103, pp. 18–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, Robert [1942] 1983. ‘Balipara Frontier Tract’, in his History of the Frontier Areas Bordering on Assam: From 1883–1941. Delhi: Eastern Publishing House, pp. 269–303.Google Scholar
Sarkar, Niranjan. 1996. Tawang Monastery. Itanagar, India: Directorate of Research, Government of Arunachal Pradesh.Google Scholar
Scott, James. 2009. The Art of not being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale Agrarian Study Series.Google ScholarPubMed
Sharma, Jayeeta. 2011. Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Neil, 1992. ‘Contours of a Spacialized Politics: Homeless Vehicles and the Production of Geographical Scale’, Social Text 33, pp. 54–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperling, Eliot. 2008. ‘The Politics of History and the Indo–Tibetan Border’, India Review 7 (3), pp. 223–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trotter, H. 1877. ‘Account of the Pundit's Journey in Great Tibet from Leh in Ladakh to Lhasa, and of his Return to India via Assam’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 47, pp. 86–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsing, Anna. 1994. ‘From the Margins’, Cultural Anthropology 9 (3), pp. 279–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Frederick Jackson. 1921. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Van Schendel, Willem. 2005. The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia. London: Anthem.Google Scholar
Winichakul, Thongchai. 1994. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Wynne, Maggi. 2001. Our Women are Free: Gender and Ethnicity in the Hindukush. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Zou, David V. and Kumar, Satish. 2011. ‘Mapping a Colonial Borderland: Objectifying the Geo-Body of India's Northeast’, Journal of Asian Studies 70 (1), pp. 141–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Kameng District brochure of 1975’, 1970–79, 1–40 Misc. Files, BDL no. 1, Emergency Instructions (Kameng), Tawang Deputy Commissioner's Office, Arunachal Pradesh State Archives, Itanagar, India.Google Scholar
‘Proceedings of the Office of the Advisor to the Governor of Assam’, TR 48/43 AD, Arunachal Pradesh State Archives, Itanagar, India.Google Scholar
Cypher telegrams, 11th March 1943, 1st April 1943, 19th April 1943, from Government of India, External Affairs Department to Secretary of State for India, Ext 1810/43, Secret. British Library, London.Google Scholar
‘Express Letter from Political Sikkim, Lhasa to Foreign New Delhi, dated Lhasa 15 November 1936’, No. 6 (1)-P/36, L/PS/11/74. British Library, London.Google Scholar
Letter from R. Peel to O. Caroe, 22nd April 1943, Ext 1810/43, External Department, Secret. British Library, London.Google Scholar
‘Present Position with Regard to Tawang Area’, L/PS/11/74. British Library, London.Google Scholar
‘Report on the Tawang Expedition 1938, dated 3rd November 1938, from Basil Gould, PO Sikkim to the Deputy Secretary to the Government of India’, External Affairs Department, File no. 6 (3)-P/38), L/PS/11/74. British Library, London.Google Scholar
‘Tour Diary of Mr. Imdad Ali, Political Officer of the Balipara Frontier Tract. 1945–1947’, L/PS/12/4200. British Library, London.Google Scholar
Bailey, F. M. 1914. Reports on an Exploration on the North East Frontier, 1913. Simla: Government Monotype Press. Foreign and Political, Secret E, Nos. 76–83. National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
External Affairs, North East Frontier, Secret, 55-N.E.F. 1946, 21–22. National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
Extract of a letter from R. B. Norbu Dhondhup, British Mission, Lhasa to the P. O. Sikkim. No. 8(2) dated 18.12.1937. Indo-Tibetan Frontier, External Affairs, External, Secret, Nos. 561-X. National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
Foreign Political (Secret) Proceedings (India), May 1915, Nos. 36–50. National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
‘Policy to be adopted toward the Tribes on the North East Frontier’, January 1911. Foreign, Secret E, Nos. 211–240. National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
Report by the British Trade Agent, Gyantse and Officer-in-charge, British Mission, Lhasa. 1947. External Affairs, Secret, N.E.F. Nos. 8 (18). National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
Aris, Michael. 1980. ‘Notes on the History of the Monyul Corridor’, in Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson: Proceedings of the International Seminar on Tibetan Studies, (eds) Aris, M. and Kyi, Aung San Suu. Warminster: Aris and Phillips, pp. 9–20.Google Scholar
Bailey, Frederick M. 1957. No Passport to Tibet. London: Hart-Davis.Google Scholar
Bareh, Hamlet (ed.) 2001. Encyclopaedia of North-East India: Assam. Delhi: Mittal.Google Scholar
Baruah, Sanjib. 2001. ‘Clash of Resource Use Regimes in Colonial Assam: A Nineteenth-Century Puzzle Revisited’, Journal of Peasant Studies 28 (3), pp. 109–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baruah, Sanjib 2003. ‘Citizens and Denizens: Ethnicity, Homelands and the Crisis of Displacement in North East India’, Journal of Refugee Studies 16 (1), pp. 44–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Charles. 1930. ‘The North East Frontier of India’, Journal of the Central Asian Society 17, pp. 221–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Charles [1924] 1992. Tibet Past and Present. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.Google Scholar
Bhargava, G. S. 1964. The Battle of NEFA: The Undeclared War. New Delhi: Allied Publishers.Google Scholar
Bhattacharjee, Tarun Kumar. 1992. Enticing Frontiers. New Delhi: Omsons Publications.Google Scholar
Bose, Manilal. 1979. British Policy in the North-East Frontier Agency. Delhi: Concept Publishing House.Google Scholar
Brenner, Neil. 1999. ‘Beyond State-Centrism? State, Territoriality, and Geographical Scale in Globalization Studies’, Theory and Society 28, pp. 39–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caroe, Olaf. 1964. ‘The India-China Frontiers: Review’, The Geographical Journal 130 (2), pp. 273–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandra, Uday. 2015. ‘Adivasis in Contemporary India: Engagements with State, Non-State Actors and the Capitalist Economy’, in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India, (ed.) Jacobsen, Knut A.. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 297–310.Google Scholar
Chatterji, Joya. 1999. ‘The Fashioning of a Frontier: The Radcliffe Line and Bengal's Border Landscape, 1947–52’, Modern Asian Studies 33 (1), pp. 185–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choudhury, D. P. 1978. The North-East Frontier of India: 1865–1914. Kolkata: The Asiatic Society.Google Scholar
Curzon, George N. [1907] 1976. Frontiers. Romanes Lecture Series, Oxford, 2 November 1907. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Devi, Lakshmi. 1968. Ahom-Tribal Relations. Guwahati, India: Lawyer's Book Stall.Google Scholar
Dutta, Sujit. 2008. ‘Revisiting China's Territorial Claims on Arunachal’, Strategic Analysis 32 (4), pp. 549–581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elwin, Verrier. 1959. A Philosophy for NEFA. Shillong, India: Navana Printing Works.Google Scholar
Ganguly, J. B. 2000. ‘The Modus Operandi of Trade between the Eastern Himalayan Subregion and Assam in the Pre-colonial and Colonial Periods’, in Border Trade: Northeast India and Neighboring Countries, (ed.) Das, Gurudas. New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, pp. 12–19.Google Scholar
Ghosh, Kaushik. 2006. ‘Between Global Flows and Local Dams: Indigenousness, Locality and the Transnational Sphere in Jharkhand, India’, Cultural Anthropology 21 (4), pp. 501–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giersch, Peter. 2006. Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China's Yunnan Frontier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Melvyn C. 1989. A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gordillo, Gaston. 2013. ‘Opaque Zones of Empire: Notes toward a Theory of Terrain’, Paper presented at the ‘Space and Violence’ panel, Association of American Geographers (AAG) Meetings, Los Angeles, 9 April.Google Scholar
Grothmann, Kerstin. 2012. ‘Migration Narratives, Official Classifications, and Local Identities: The Memba of the Hidden Land of Pachakshiri’, in Origins and Migrations in the Extended Eastern Himalaya, (eds) Huber, T. and Blackburn, S.. Leiden: Brill, pp. 125–152.Google Scholar
Guha, Amalendu. 1977. Planter Raj to Swaraj: Freedom Struggle and Electoral Politics in Assam 1826–1947. Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research.Google Scholar
Gupta, Akhil and Ferguson, James. 1997. Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gupta, Karunakar. 1971. ‘The McMahon Line 1911–1945: The British Legacy’, The China Quarterly 47, pp. 521–545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gupta, Karunakar 1974. The Hidden History of the Sino-Indian Frontier. Calcutta: Minerva Associate PublicationsGoogle Scholar
Guyot-Réchard, Bérénice. 2015. ‘Reordering a Border Space: Relief, Rehabilitation, and Nation-Building in Northeastern India after the 1950 Assam Earthquake’, Modern Asian Studies 49 (4), pp. 931–962.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, David. 1982. The Limits to Capital. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Harvey, David 2001. ‘Globalization and the Spatial Fix’, Geographische Revue 2, pp. 23–30.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Steven A. 2006. ‘Rethinking the Linkage between Tibet and the China-India Border Conflict’, Journal of Cold War Studies 8 (3), pp. 165–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, Toni. 2008. The Holy Land Reborn: Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of Buddhist India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, Toni 2011. ‘Pushing South: Tibetan Economic and Political Activities in the Far Eastern Himalaya, ca. 1900–1950’, in Buddhist Himalaya: Studies in Religion, History and Culture, (eds) McKay, A. and Balicki-Denjongpa, A.. Gangtok: Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, pp. 259–276.Google Scholar
Hutton, J. H. 1946. ‘Problems of Reconstruction in the Assam Hills’, Man in India 26, pp. 97–109.Google Scholar
Jha, Braj Narain. 1997. ‘Politics of Posa: A Case Study of Pre and Post Independence Scenario in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam’, in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Fifth Session, Madras University, 27–29 December 1996, pp. 446–457.Google Scholar
Jonsson, Hjorleifur. 2005. Mien Relations. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kar, Bodhisattva. 2009. ‘When was the Postcolonial? A History of Policing Impossible Lines’, in Beyond Counter-Insurgency: Breaking the Impasse in Northeast India, (ed.) Baruah, Sanjib. Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 49–77.Google Scholar
Kar, Bodhisattva. 2016. ‘Nomadic Capital and Speculative Tribes: A Culture of Contracts in the Northeastern Frontier of British India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 53 (1), pp. 41–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingdon-Ward, Frank. 1938. ‘The Assam Himalaya: Travels in Balipara’, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 25, pp. 610–619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingdon-Ward, Frank 1940. ‘Botanical and Geographical Exploration in the Assam Himalaya’, The Geographical Journal 96 (1), pp. 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamb, Alastair. 1966. The McMahon Line. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Mackenzie, Alexander. 1884 [2007]. The North-East Frontier of India. New Delhi: Mittal.Google Scholar
Majumdar, Aparajita. 2016. ‘The Colonial State and Resource Frontiers: Tracing the Politics of Appropriating Rubber in the Northeastern Frontier of British India, 1810–84’, Indian Historical Review 43 (1), pp. 25–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maxwell, Neville. 1970. ‘China and India: The Un-negotiated Dispute’, The China Quarterly 43, pp. 47–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McMahon, A. Henry. 1936. ‘International Boundaries’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts LXXXIV (84), pp. 2–22.Google Scholar
Mehra, Parshotam. 1979–1980. The North-Eastern Frontier: A Documentary Study of the Internecine Rivalry between India, Tibet and China, Vols I and II. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, J. P. 1947. ‘Tours in the Balipara Frontier Tract, Assam’, Man in India 26, pp. 4–35.Google Scholar
Mills, J. P. 1950. ‘Problems of the Assam-Tibet Frontier’, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 37, pp. 152–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Misra, Sanghamitra. 2011. Becoming a Borderland: The Politics of Space and Identity in Colonial Northeastern India. Delhi: Routledge.Google Scholar
Murty, T. S. 1971. ‘Tawang and “the Un-Negotiated Dispute”’, The China Quarterly 46, pp. 357–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nanda, Neeru. 1982. Tawang: The Land of Mon. Delhi: Vikas.Google Scholar
Reid, Robert. 1944. ‘The Excluded Areas of Assam’, The Geographical Journal 103, pp. 18–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, Robert [1942] 1983. ‘Balipara Frontier Tract’, in his History of the Frontier Areas Bordering on Assam: From 1883–1941. Delhi: Eastern Publishing House, pp. 269–303.Google Scholar
Sarkar, Niranjan. 1996. Tawang Monastery. Itanagar, India: Directorate of Research, Government of Arunachal Pradesh.Google Scholar
Scott, James. 2009. The Art of not being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale Agrarian Study Series.Google ScholarPubMed
Sharma, Jayeeta. 2011. Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Neil, 1992. ‘Contours of a Spacialized Politics: Homeless Vehicles and the Production of Geographical Scale’, Social Text 33, pp. 54–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperling, Eliot. 2008. ‘The Politics of History and the Indo–Tibetan Border’, India Review 7 (3), pp. 223–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trotter, H. 1877. ‘Account of the Pundit's Journey in Great Tibet from Leh in Ladakh to Lhasa, and of his Return to India via Assam’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 47, pp. 86–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsing, Anna. 1994. ‘From the Margins’, Cultural Anthropology 9 (3), pp. 279–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Frederick Jackson. 1921. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Van Schendel, Willem. 2005. The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia. London: Anthem.Google Scholar
Winichakul, Thongchai. 1994. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Wynne, Maggi. 2001. Our Women are Free: Gender and Ethnicity in the Hindukush. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Zou, David V. and Kumar, Satish. 2011. ‘Mapping a Colonial Borderland: Objectifying the Geo-Body of India's Northeast’, Journal of Asian Studies 70 (1), pp. 141–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Kameng District brochure of 1975’, 1970–79, 1–40 Misc. Files, BDL no. 1, Emergency Instructions (Kameng), Tawang Deputy Commissioner's Office, Arunachal Pradesh State Archives, Itanagar, India.Google Scholar
‘Proceedings of the Office of the Advisor to the Governor of Assam’, TR 48/43 AD, Arunachal Pradesh State Archives, Itanagar, India.Google Scholar
Cypher telegrams, 11th March 1943, 1st April 1943, 19th April 1943, from Government of India, External Affairs Department to Secretary of State for India, Ext 1810/43, Secret. British Library, London.Google Scholar
‘Express Letter from Political Sikkim, Lhasa to Foreign New Delhi, dated Lhasa 15 November 1936’, No. 6 (1)-P/36, L/PS/11/74. British Library, London.Google Scholar
Letter from R. Peel to O. Caroe, 22nd April 1943, Ext 1810/43, External Department, Secret. British Library, London.Google Scholar
‘Present Position with Regard to Tawang Area’, L/PS/11/74. British Library, London.Google Scholar
‘Report on the Tawang Expedition 1938, dated 3rd November 1938, from Basil Gould, PO Sikkim to the Deputy Secretary to the Government of India’, External Affairs Department, File no. 6 (3)-P/38), L/PS/11/74. British Library, London.Google Scholar
‘Tour Diary of Mr. Imdad Ali, Political Officer of the Balipara Frontier Tract. 1945–1947’, L/PS/12/4200. British Library, London.Google Scholar
Bailey, F. M. 1914. Reports on an Exploration on the North East Frontier, 1913. Simla: Government Monotype Press. Foreign and Political, Secret E, Nos. 76–83. National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
External Affairs, North East Frontier, Secret, 55-N.E.F. 1946, 21–22. National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
Extract of a letter from R. B. Norbu Dhondhup, British Mission, Lhasa to the P. O. Sikkim. No. 8(2) dated 18.12.1937. Indo-Tibetan Frontier, External Affairs, External, Secret, Nos. 561-X. National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
Foreign Political (Secret) Proceedings (India), May 1915, Nos. 36–50. National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
‘Policy to be adopted toward the Tribes on the North East Frontier’, January 1911. Foreign, Secret E, Nos. 211–240. National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
Report by the British Trade Agent, Gyantse and Officer-in-charge, British Mission, Lhasa. 1947. External Affairs, Secret, N.E.F. Nos. 8 (18). National Archives, Delhi.Google Scholar
‘Kameng District brochure of 1975’, 1970–79, 1–40 Misc. Files, BDL no. 1, Emergency Instructions (Kameng), Tawang Deputy Commissioner's Office, Arunachal Pradesh State Archives, Itanagar, India.Google Scholar
‘Proceedings of the Office of the Advisor to the Governor of Assam’, TR 48/43 AD, Arunachal Pradesh State Archives, Itanagar, India.Google Scholar
Cypher telegrams, 11th March 1943, 1st April 1943, 19th April 1943, from Government of India, External Affairs Department to Secretary of State for India, Ext 1810/43, Secret. British Library, London.Google Scholar
‘Express Letter from Political Sikkim, Lhasa to Foreign New Delhi, dated Lhasa 15 November 1936’, No. 6 (1)-P/36, L/PS/11/74. British Library, London.Google Scholar
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