‘From Mangoes to Apples’: Exploring Belonging in New Tehri

Autor/innen

  • Saakshi Joshi

Schlagworte:

belonging, displacement, visthapit, development, Uttarakhand, Himalayas, India, Tehri, dam, New Tehri

Abstract

When the Tehri Dam in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand submerged the town of Tehri, the locals found themselves turned into visthapit (the ‘displaced’). This new position, a consequence of dam induced displacement and relocation to new geographies, triggered recollections of their previous lives in Tehri. Often recalled as a local cultural centre for surrounding villages, the old town appears in daily conversations of its former residents. By discussing Tehri, the oustees return to a place they can now experience only tangentially. This article explores how displacement and belonging come to be expressed through a place that has no existing cartographic coordinates – a place living in memories. My ethnographic work in the town of New Tehri, a namesake built for the purpose of relocation, guides these arguments.

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Veröffentlicht

2019-09-18

Zitationsvorschlag

Joshi, S. (2019). ‘From Mangoes to Apples’: Exploring Belonging in New Tehri. Ethnoscripts, 21(1). Abgerufen von https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/ethnoscripts/article/view/1417

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