This article examines the role of food in the (re-)invention and reconstruction of Tibetan cultural traditions outside Tibet. Drawing on ethnographic research among Tibetan communities in Europe and Asia, it explores how culinary practices become key sites for representation of Tibetan identity. Through interviews, autobiographical reflections, participant observation and recollections of food and eating practices in Tibet prior to 1959, the study shows how these foodways become key sites for expressing ‘Tibetanness’, negotiating authenticity, and maintaining cultural resilience in new social and economic contexts. By placing present-day diasporic food practices in dialogue with memories of pre-1959 Tibetan food, the article highlights both continuities and transformations, revealing how adaptation shapes what is now presented as ‘traditional’ Tibetan food. Engaging with theories of invented tradition, the article argues that Tibetan culinary practices exemplify how displaced communities actively produce and adapt traditions, using food as a medium to sustain collective memory, identity, and continuity outside Tibet.
Lieux d'images, lieux de culte : les chapelles domestiques du Minyak Ce travail étudie six chapelles peintes du Minyak, une région des marges orientales du Tibet. La première partie présente ce corpus en décrivant les peintures murales et leur contexte de création. La plupart de ces chapelles familiales se situant dans des habitations, cette introduction esquisse les questions soulevées par la présence d'images dans l'espace domestique tibétain. La seconde partie de cette dissertation propose une interprétation du décor des chapelles. Interrogeant les questions de lisibilité et de visibilité, d'erreur, la relation entre lieu et images et la planification des décors peints, cette analyse permet également d'aborder la manière dont les images tibétaines sont traitées dans les études d'histoire de l'art.
Severely limited educational opportunities are a fundamental element of conditions of slavery, reflecting tacit acknowledgement of the transformative and subversive potential of education. The Kamaiya system of bonded labour was one of the oldest systems of slavery in the world until it was abolished by the Nepalese state in July 2000. This paper analyses the extent to which engaging in different forms of education before and after emancipation can be routes to resist oppression. Findings are organised around three research areas; education as resistance; emerging masculinities through educational investment; and the increase in formal education amongst the community. This paper draws on data collected as part of a 15-year longitudinal study that analyses the experiences of freedom in a Kamaiya settlement in far-western Nepal, therefore contributing to scholarship on both modern slavery and education. This paper ultimately addresses the transformations that emerge from changing patterns of education within communities that have survived slavery.
Rolwaling (Tib Rol ba mkha’ ‘gro’i gling) is a remote high-altitude valley bordering Nepal’s Khumbu region to its west. Named beyul (sbas yul) or ‘sacred hidden valley’ by the Tibetan visionary Rigdzin Gödem, it has a complicated religious history involving key Tibetan spiritual figures, Padmasambhava, Milarepa and Tashi Tseringma, along with two Tibetan Buddhist sects, Kagyu and Nyingma. Both its religious and secular history is reviewed here and then compared with that of nine other beyuls scattered across the Himalayas. Rolwaling’s distinctive features, including its religious heritage, geographical isolation and late settlement by Sherpas in the 1870s, are highlighted along with its egalitarian self-government. Currently, it is an almost abandoned nature conservation area inhabited mostly in summer by a monastic community faced with the threat of catastrophic flooding by Nepal’s largest glacial lake at its eastern end.
The Himalayan region where the Tibetan plateau meets Nepal is a strategic corridor for trade routes between India and Tibet. Local border permeability in this region has traditionally been essential for the survival of communities residing in remote areas of the world’s highest mountain ranges. However, since the demarcation of modern states, territoriality has been exercised through the imposition of an increasing number of regulations to control cross-border movement. With the PRC’s growing economic self-assurance and political confidence, former bilateral negotiations over border control are turning into unilateral Chinese decisions. In accordance with China’s long-term goal of securing its border, restrictive measures along the border have been reinforced. This paper examines the changes in border mobility regulations at the former Nepal–Tibet and current Nepal–China frontier and the shift in decision-making hierarchies related to China’s growing influence in the region. It especially focuses on the period of complete border closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, which China managed to extend by up to four years, and how this affected cross-border mobility rules and the lives and livelihoods of the frontier population.
This interview with actor-producer Asha Magrati and writer-director-producer Deepak Rauniyar situates their partnership in Nepali cinema and the transnational circuits that increasingly shape production and reception. From early collaborations such as Highway (2012) and White Sun (2016) to the more recent Pooja, Sir (2024), they explore how caste, Madhesi marginalisation, colourism and linguistic hierarchy inform both narrative and form. In this wide-ranging discussion, Magrati and Rauniyar discuss ‘personal cinema’ as method and unpack directorial choices around genre, performance, multilingual dialogue, translation and colour grading, emphasising how power lives in speech, subtitling and the rendering of skin. The conversation also traces the political economy of film-making in Nepal – censorship and script approval, self-censorship, financing constraints, distribution gatekeeping and fragile infrastructure – offering a powerful account of aesthetic labour, negotiation and endurance.
This article is basically a comparative study of the positions of Nepal’s elites and major political parties with regard to the opinion of the general public in the context of the recent transformation of Nepal’s political system to the adoption of republicanism, secularism, multilingualism and federalism. The promulgation of the 2015 Constitution of Nepal formally concluded the most radical transformations of a political system in recent history: from a monarchy to a republic, from a Hindu state to a secular state, from a unitary state to a federal state, and from a unilingual state (Nepali-only) to a multilingual state. Though, taken together, these four reforms constituted the transformation that was eventually codified into the new constitution, the general Nepali public opinions did not form a coherent package in every respect. A series of nationwide public opinion polls conducted between 2004 and 2012 revealed that public opinion had not rallied behind all four reforms. Despite the fact that the majority of Nepalis still wanted Nepal to be a Hindu state, still preferred a unilingual policy (the Nepali language as the only official language), and were still unaware of the issue of federalism, the elected Constitutional Assembly formally abolished the unitary form of governance, Hindu state identity and unilingualism when it endorsed the new constitution on 20 September 2015. This revealed that the political elites from the major political parties played a role in the transformation of the country’s political system. Overall, the promulgation of the 2015 constitution formally proved that the political elites of Nepal were the benevolent guardians of political tolerance and minority rights.
