The predicament of the Tamangs in search of identity

It is in the frame of recent nation-centric politics – in patterns of ethnic (caste/tribe/religion/language) strategizing common to greater South Asia – that pan-Himalayan Tamang identity begins to be more forcefully asserted in Nepal and India. To examine the nature of formation and assertion of Tamang identity is to revisit the debate over the relationship of ethnicity, identity politics, religion and other aspects of culture in defining and redefining the nature of communities in the South-Asian nation-states. In the history of modern India as in other parts of greater South Asia, the concept and reality of ‘nation’ has acquired very great importance. It is true of both colonial and post-colonial experience. Alongside, the notions of tradition and traditionalism, modern and modernism, ethnicity as construction and ethnicity as reality have gained renewed importance in considerations of socio-economic and cultural realities in today’s world