Typical Limbu house, Eastern Nepal, Captain C.J. Morris, 1926, RGS-IBG: rgs032216
"Khambé or Haanglele Haangsitlaang (main middle pole) in a Limbu House" (Community workshop, 2024)
Who imagines the archive?
Archives are not just repositories of memories and imagination, they are complex and contested sites of representation deeply shaped by histories of colonial encounters. Whose memories do we elevate, and whose do we obscure? Whose perspectives do we validate to frame our understanding of the world and whose do we suppress? The key to these questions lies in the power to represent the ‘truth’. Archives, therefore, are sites of power—the power to explain the world through dominant narratives.
For many colonised and Indigenous communities, this means that archives have historically been sites of exclusion, where memories are dispossessed, histories erased, and identities lost. However, communities possess agency and the will to alter these narratives and represent the world through their lens and worldviews. Thus, archives can also be sites for communities to reclaim the past and imagine hopeful futures, where acts of remembering and regeneration occur (Enwezor, 2008).
This dual capacity to reinforce and challenge power makes the archive a vital tool for reimagining the past, present and futures by centring the voices of marginalised communities.
Video clip from Climbing Mt Everest, the first film of Tibet by Captain John Noel from the 1922 British expedition to Mount Everest led by Brigadier General Charles Bruce, 1922, RGS-IBG/BFI.
Archives and colonial encounters in the Himalaya
The Himalaya is often imagined and memorialised through a Eurocentric notion of ‘discovery’ that romanticises the region as Asia’s majestic mountains, celebrated for its pristine landscapes and natural beauty – the utopic Shangri-La, remote and untouched by Western modernity. This perspective frequently portrays the Himalaya as a site of adventure, with Chajamlungma (Mount Everest in Yakthungpan or Limbu language) as a powerful symbol of life’s ultimate goal!
This dominant imagination of the Himalaya is rooted in colonial encounters, particularly with the British Indian Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries where colonial officials (surveyors, naturalists, geographers, anthropologists, military, and political officers) collected knowledge about the region, which became universalised as the dominant truth.
"During the past fourteen years, I have traversed portions of this region nearly every year, sketching, shooting, collecting and especially exploring the customs of the people on the frontiers of Tibet, and of Nepal - the land of warlike Goorkhas - where I lived in tents for four or five months of several successive years"
LA Waddell, Among the Himalayas, 1900, page v.
The archival materials on the Himalaya stem from this context, collected during various mountaineering and military expeditions, which often represented the region through the lens of Western experts, overshadowing the rich and diverse perspectives of the Indigenous communities.
“From the start, we find the recurring theme of Westerners being drawn to the Himalayan periphery less to find the people who resided there than to find the selves they wished to be — or imagined to have lost”
Mark Liechty, Far Out: Counter Cultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal, 2017, page 4.
East Nepal film by Tom Spring Smyth taken during the British Museum (Natural History) expedition to East Nepal 1961-1962, RGS-IBG
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Through the lens of diasporic indigeneity
This online exhibition aims to unsettle the "subjugation of historical memory" (Enzewor, 2003, 68) by (re)presenting the region from the perspective of its Indigenous communities within the UK diaspora. Adopting a decolonial approach, this exhibition aims to include contested memories and imaginations by privileging marginalised narratives and hidden histories, and to open up archives to underserved communities. This is done through community curating, relying on consultation, dialogue and archival workshops with community members, incorporating their concerns and viewpoints, thus enabling a common construction of history.
This exhibition thematically draws from the archival recaptioning and remapping activities during a community engagement workshop at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in May 2024. The reflections and responses from members of the UK-based Himalayan Indigenous diaspora regarding the displayed archival materials are presented as captions and quotes interwoven throughout this exhibition.
Since the Himalayan region is vast and diverse, the archival materials selectively focus on the Eastern Himalaya traversing present-day Nepal, Darjeeling Hills and Sikkim in Northeast India. It is intentionally transborder to signal an epistemology of relationality over border thinking.
“Seeing the photos invokes quite a mixed feeling…personally, it is like tracing the connection back home and to the community in the diaspora—quite an interesting feeling”
Community workshop, 2024.
Video clip from film British Museum (Natural History) Nepal Expedition 1961-62, RGS-IBG/BFI
Finding home in the archives
For the British in the 19th and 20th centuries, the high peaks of the Himalaya seemed to be a largely uncharted, unclimbed, and unmapped space – the final frontier of the British Empire. Given this imperial impetus, from the mid-1800s, British military officers, mountaineers, and scientists, including the likes of Hooker, Kellas, Younghusband, Northey and Morris, began to embark on adrenalin-filled adventures and expeditions into the Himalaya. While meticulously mapping the mountainous landscape, they also mapped the flora, fauna, people, and communities. Today, much of this is preserved as archives in the West, many of which are in the visual form of photographs, maps, and videos.
Engaging the communities with the archives, however, reveals an alternative understanding of the region, one that is rooted in their relationship to the land, community histories and identities. The archives can thus become a contact zone where colonial master narratives can be juxtaposed against the communities’ interpretations, which shift meanings, often reflecting the worldviews of diasporic indigeneity, whereby the communities’ archival encounter is akin to finding home in the archives.
This exhibition thematically juxtaposes three dominant colonial narratives against three counter-narratives in the following sections, as way to reimagine the Himalaya.
“Memories of home – हिमालय मेरो घर हो (The Himalaya is my home)”
Community workshop, 2024
From 'native' to 'ancestors'
In Among the Himalayas, an account of British military officer LA Waddell’s travels in the Eastern Himalaya, he observes the various ‘native tribes’ of Darjeeling, Sikkim, and Nepal:
“We are now passing, on their way to and from Darjeeling, many representatives of the various Mongoloid tribes of Nepal […]
"These comprise, in addition to the Goorkhas proper, the Khas tribe, the Mangar or Magar of the lower ranges, and the Goorungs, a nomad pastoral tribe of the uplands, and also the following non-Goorkha tribes […] the Newārs, who were the semi-aborigines and ruling race of Nepal until displaced by the Goorkhas […]
Somewhat resembling the Newars, but more purely Mongoloid and less civilised, are the Kirānti tribe of the wider valleys of Eastern Nepal. The Limboos, still more distinctly Mongoloid and intermarrying with the Kirānti […] In addition to several others, there are those semi-Tibetans, the Moormi or “Tamāng Bhotia” who also have adopted the habits and dress of the Hindooized Nepalese.”
Among the Himalayas, L.A. Waddell, 1899, page 307.
Anecdotes like this show that, through the colonial gaze, the diverse Indigenous communities of the Eastern Himalaya, including the Gurung, Rai, Magar, Limbu, Newar, Lepcha, and others, are framed through the colonial category of ‘native tribes’, who were seen as ‘aboriginal’ to various parts of the mountainous region.
The notions of ‘native’ and ‘tribe’ are, however, loaded terms often critiqued for carrying racialised connotations of exoticism and objectification of Indigenous communities. In the Himalayan context, such colonial construction of ‘native tribes’ was embedded in notions of ‘backwardness’ and ‘primitivity’, situating Indigenous communities in the lowest rungs of the civilisational ladder.
This was accompanied by the stereotyping of communities with certain essentialised racial traits based on which their labour was extracted. For instance, the Lepchas are frequently described as ‘born naturalists’ and employed as servants in expeditions, the Sherpas and Bhutias as ‘coolies’ suited to carry load due to their ‘natural’ mountaineering traits, while the Gurungs, Limbus and Rais as ‘warlike’ and ideal for the military. The archival materials from this context thus reproduce this notion of the ‘native tribes’ that continue to frame the region and its people.
However, upon reinterpreting archives through the lens of the diasporic Himalayan Indigenous communities, a distinct shift in meanings and representations occurs, moving away from the colonial category of ‘natives’ to the Indigenous notion of ancestrality, where the people in the archival images are seen as being directly related to them as their ancestors.
"Since arriving in the UK in 1991, it’s only after 34 years of living here that I have been able to see these very old photos and histories of our land and ancestors. This makes me very happy"
Community workshop, 2024
"So honoured to see archives of our older generations"
Community workshop, 2024
The notion of ancestrality is key to many Indigenous communities and their worldviews, not only in the Himalaya but also in other parts of the world. Ancestral stories are passed on through oral traditions maintaining genealogy and collective memory of the community, which can become invoked and awakened during their encounter with the archives. In contrast to the ‘native’ that is based on objectification, the idea of ‘ancestors’ is based on relationality with those pictured in the archives, thus transforming the archives into sites of healing through new imaginations and invoking lost ties.
From 'Gurkha type' to Gurkha diasporic identity
In The Gurkhas: Their Manners, Customs and Country, published in 1928, British officers Major Northey and Captain Morris observe:
"In appearance the Gurkha is decidedly Mongolian, and possesses the high cheek-bones and narrow almond-shaped eyes common to that race […]
Generally speaking the Gurkha is sturdy and thick-set, and he is the possessor of splendidly formed nether limbs, admirably adapted for the rough and pathless mountain country which is his home […]
Shy and somewhat reserved at first, he attaches himself very closely to those under whom he takes service, and the devotion and loyalty of the Gurkhas who enlist in our service to the British officers often tend to become what might almost be termed as a fault […]
A born soldier, the game perhaps delights the most during his childhood is that of playing at soldiers, and little groups of children can often be seen drilling each other or taking part in the mimic battles dear to the youth of most European countries."
Upon looking into the archives, another key theme that stands out in the colonial representation of the Himalaya is the racialised figure of the ‘Gurkha’ soldier. Rooted in colonial encounters, it is said that the British discovered 'Gurkha military prowess’ during the Anglo-Nepalese war 1814-1816 over territorial and boundary disputes with the Gorkha Kingdom of Nepal. This encounter was fuelled by the prevailing martial race theory, which drew heavily on military orientalism and scientific racism.
Through this lens, certain ethnic and regional groups, including the ‘Nepalese Gurkhas’, were seen as biologically and culturally predisposed to military service. Martiality was closely associated with geography, constructing the notion of ‘hardy mountainous race’. This resulted in large-scale recruitment of men mainly from hilly and mountainous villages belonging to the Gurung, Limbu, Rai, Magar, and other Indigenous communities, who were stereotyped for being brave and loyal and therefore fit for military service. Since then, Gurkha soldiers have served under East India Company, the British Crown, and the British and Indian armies within the Gurkha regiment and continue to do so even to this day.
This dominant script changes drastically when the archives are viewed through the lens of diasporic Indigenous communities. For the community members, the majority of whom still serve under the British Army and arrived in the UK with their families through this military-driven migration from Nepal (and Darjeeling), the ‘Gurkha’ transforms from being a racial type to a form of diasporic identity. For the communities, the ‘Gurkha’ identity is central to their diasporic experiences and life trajectories - of moving from Nepal to Hong Kong, Brunei and the UK, and their sense of community, friendships and familial relationships as British Nepalis. Thus, for the communities, the racialised category of the Gurkha is reclaimed as an identity that is deeply experiential and based on collective memories and shared experiences of the military and migration.
"Multiple photos of the Gurkhas and their families but no explanation of who ‘Gurkha’ is and their significance in history"
Community workshop, 2024
From buffer zones to maps of belonging
The British arrived in the Himalaya as part of the imperial endeavour to expand the Empire and facilitate trade with Tibet. They did this by manoeuvring their way into territorial disputes between the Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and Tibet through various treaties (e.g. Treaty of Sagauli, 1815 and Treaty of Tumlong, 1861) that formally demarcated hardened boundaries in previously fluid and largely undefined spaces. Thus, the Himalaya was constructed in the imperial imagination as a buffer zone – a term popularised by administrators like Lord Curzon, to denote its geopolitically strategic location as the easternmost frontier of the British Indian empire.
Demarcating the Himalaya as buffer zones involved drawing fixed and static borders, which were primarily facilitated through colonial cartography and map-making. Therefore, maps of the region have been drawn with great mathematical precision since the early 19th century, often conducted in parallel with military missions and mountaineering expeditions. These maps highlight the peaks and passes, rivers and forests, towns and villages, with clean, sharp and sometimes even colour-coded lines denoting tangible borders dividing an otherwise geographically and culturally continuous landscape.
These maps were not simply neutral reflections of a legible physical reality but rather tools of representation that charted the physical terrain of colonisation, thus informing how this space was conceptualised, organised, and experienced. This has served as the region's dominant framing while marginalising the Indigenous conception of space and their relationship with ancestral lands.
However, as Edward Said (1996, 27) states: “Geography is therefore the art of war but can also be the art of resistance if there is a counter-map and a counter-strategy". The archival engagement with communities brought to the surface alternative maps and imaginations of the Himalaya through the lens of Indigenous diaspora communities.
From the perspectives of the Himalayan Indigenous diasporic communities, a key theme in relation to the maps was their conceptualisation of the land as their ancestral home, reframing the imagination through subjective maps of belonging. Through this lens, the land is where their ancestral spirits reside, and where their mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, brothers and sisters were born. Land is the forests, mountains, hills, rivers and the nature spirit that transcend geopolitical borders, and whose stories they have heard about even from afar. Land is, therefore, seen through the lens of an intimate and even spiritual sense of belongingness, through an emotive map that invokes collective memories and re-tells histories and stories hidden by dominant representations of space. A fluid map that puts the past together in a new way and re-imagines the Himalaya differently.
“Ilam चिया बारी (tea garden), my birthplace”
Community workshop, 2024
“For me, I dream to go closer to the Himalayas and live there, अहिले को लागी हिमाल (for now, the Himal) is something I witness, my home, in my dreams”
Community workshop, 2024
"These rivers are the paths our ancestors followed"
Community workshop, 2024
Indigenising the Himalaya, decolonising imagination
The dominant public imagination of the Himalaya in the archives is largely shaped by a Eurocentric vision stemming from colonial encounters, particularly military and mountaineering expeditions. However, through the lens of diasporic indigeneity, the imagination of Himalaya shifts from being seen as a distant romanticised frontier to being seen as the communities’ ancestral homelands, attaching an intangible sense of belonging to the place. In indigenous-diasporic worldviews, archives, particularly images, awaken ancestral memories, bringing to life a sense of relationality with those pictured in the archives. Through such a shift in gaze, colonial-racialised military categories like ‘Gurkha’ also become reframed and reclaimed as a form of diasporic identity, reflecting their roots and routes of military and migration.
Thus, from the viewpoint of diasporic indigeneity, archives can act as tools in decolonising imagination as they have the power to re-member (put together again) and re-envision the past, present, and future in ways that recentre hidden narratives and ascertain Indigenous existence.
Archives are never innocent documentation of reality as they are imbued with the power to represent and construct dominant narratives and imaginations. At the same time, archives can also be reclaimed by communities, serving as powerful tools in recentring marginalised perspectives.
References
Enwezor, O., 2003. The postcolonial constellation: Contemporary art in a state of permanent transition. Research in African Literatures, 34(4), 57-82.
Enwezor, O., 2008. Archive fever: photography between history and the monument. Archive Fever: Uses of the document in contemporary art, 1, 11-51.
Liechty, M., 2017. Far out: Countercultural seekers and the tourist encounter in Nepal. University of Chicago Press.
Northey, W.B. and Morris, J., 1928. The Gurkhas: their manners, customs, and country. Asian Educational Services.
Said, E.W. (1996) Peace and its discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace process. New York: Vintage Books.
Waddell, L.A., 1900. Among the Himalayas. A. Constable and Company
About the project
This online exhibition is part of a British Academy-funded public engagement project titled Indigenising the Himalayas: Reimagining its Past, Present, and Futures, led by Dr Rohini Rai (Brunel University London) in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).
The project focuses on three key elements: archives, dance, and storytelling. These informed the creation of two major public engagement activities. The first was a Storytelling through dancing workshop held on 31 May 2024, which included an archival workshop with community members. Insights from this event contributed to the second activity, this online exhibition, which draws heavily on re-captioning and re-mapping exercises conducted during the archival workshop.
This collaborative project was developed in close partnership with three UK-based Himalayan Indigenous diaspora community organisations: Kirat Yakthung Chumlung (KYC Ashford, UK), Kirat Rai Yayokkha (KRY Ashford, UK) and World Newah Organization UK Chapter (WNOUK)
The Critical Himalayan Collective served as the community engagement partner for the project.
The Society is grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund and Rolex for their support for the Society’s Collections.
About the researcher
Dr Rohini Rai (she/her) is an interdisciplinary scholar of race, migration and racism with a keen interest in postcolonial and decolonial theories. She is currently working on race and racism in the UK (Himalayan and Nepali diaspora) and South Asia (Northeast India and Eastern Himalaya). She is also interested in creative approaches and community engagement.
All images © Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) unless stated otherwise
All text © Creative Commons BY 4.0