This workshop initiates constructive and critical deliberation on theories, methods, epistemologies,
and practices of documentation of and research on the languages, cultures, and histories of trans-
Himalayan regions. The unique cultures of the Trans-Himalayan region reflect significant diversity
that offers valuable insights into the history of the people in the region and the world in general.
In most cases, the spoken languages are the only remnants of these invaluable living heritages.
Sadly, many of these languages are spoken by only a small number of speakers—ranging from
just a few hundred to a few hundred thousand.
In this and analogous contexts, language documentation enables communities to safeguard their
cultural heritage in state-of-the-art archives, which have gained renewed importance due to the
rapid endangerment of these cultures, driven by modernisation and the dominance of major
languages such as English and Hindi. This method involves audio-video recordings of
conversations about culture, which are then systematically annotated using current technology
with proper metadata, making them a rich and versatile resource. The outcome is vital for multiple
purposes: it supports community-driven literature development while also benefiting academic
scholars, including linguists, speech scientists, historians, and social scientists.
Additionally, documentation and research on languages require critical attention to extant
methodologies and epistemologies through which the relation between language-culture-people is
approached. The category of “Trans-Himalayan” not only names and gathers a range of languages
and cultures but also constitutes an ongoing interrogation of and engagement with extant
categories. It is an index of how the studies of the Himalayan regions have grappled with
interdisciplinary reconceptualisations borrowing from theoretical postulations of the “Zomia”
(Schendel 2002, James Scott 2009, Jean Michaud 2010), “Himalayan Triangle” (Pachuau and
Schendel, 2022), “Highland Asia as world-region” (M. Heneise and J.P. Wouters, 2022) “the
Himalayan massif” (Shneiderman, 2010), to notions of “competing frontiers” (J. Guite 2018).
These reconceptualisations reflect the centrality of questions around borders, belongingness,
crossings, migrations, statehood, and statelessness that are congruous to the formation of the
regions, in particular the intellectual history of what ‘Himalayan’ studies are. Focusing on the
plurality of movements, mobilities, and migrations, theorists have settled on “Trans-Himalayas”
as a framework that operates beyond binaries and constructed borders. Dan Smyer Yü and Jean
Michaud locate the term “Trans-Himalayas” in Swedish explorer Sven Hedin’s (1865-1952) work,
Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, as the first instance of its usage. Thepositioning of the trans-Himalayas today far exceeds this geographical limit. The frame of
reference extends from northeast India, upland Bangladesh, mainland southeast Asia, southwest
China, and Northwest China to the Tibetan Plateau (Scott, 2009; Yü and Michaud, 2017).
Considering this fibrous network of continuities, discontinuities, and “multi-state” lifeworlds, the
workshop contributes to scholarship that seeks to inquire the uneasiness of addressing questions
of and from the regions, which also evidences a problematics in naming. The workshop will be led
by invited speakers and panelists from diverse disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas, including
linguistics, literature and folkloristics, art and museology, and social sciences, whose work and
practice reflect the processual nature of the trans-Himalayas. Alongside lectures and panel
discussions, the workshop offers interested scholars new methodologies of documenting
languages.
Conveners:
Prof. Sahiinii Lemaina Veikho & Prof. Divya Dwivedi
Co-Conveners:
Haidamteu Zeme Florence Laldinpuii Nove C
For queries, please write to: huz218157@iitd.ac.in