EVENTS

Abstract

The Gaddis living on the Kangra side of the Dhauladhars were OBC until 2002 when they successfully lobbied for ST status. My research explores the socio-cultural implications of political realignment; specifically the ways in which, the Gaddis of Dharamsala are negotiating the abstract criteria for ST with their everyday realities – Tibetan neighbors, economic shifts from pastoralism, slate mining and scratch farming to tourism work, and new forms of cosmopolitanism. The Gaddis of Kangra are nowadays looking less and less tribal, straining to reconcile a static government classification with disparate emic notions of what is a tribe. The proliferation of understandings of tribalness has something to do with the polysemy of the word itself. I also consider how the Gaddi community is now cleaved between high-caste ST and low-caste SC – the Sipis, Halis, Badis and Dhogris. How has political realignment further alienated these caste groups who exist in the tenuous peripheries of what it means to be a Gaddi?

About the Speaker

Stephen Christopher first came to India 11 years ago as a student at the University of Hyderabad and Banaras Hindu University. Although he’s worked in China and South Korea for some years, he remains in orbit around India. Jaipur, Leh and Dharamsala are his second homes. Stephen is a PhD student at Syracuse University and a Fulbright scholar for 2013-14. He is roughly halfway through his fieldwork and hoping for constructive criticism to inform his research agenda in Dharamsala in the upcoming months.