Centre for South Asian Studies

Description

At the arrival of each monsoon, landslides carve the slopes and riverbanks of Jogbuda, a small Himalayan valley at the Farwestern Nepal-India border. The seasonality of landslide events punctuates time and space in Jogbuda. It reminds residents of the cyclical processes underlying the formation of the valley’s physical environment. But it also raises apprehension about the land’s propensity to move. In this talk, I describe how residents of Jogbuda Valley ascribe meaning to the movement of soil, rock, and water in relation to their own mobilities. For centuries, the Jogbuda was a conduit for movement between the uplands and the lowlands, providing a pathway from the Farwestern Hills to Indian market towns in the Plains. Yet, in the second half of the twentieth century a number of land reform policies and environmental changes, such as malaria eradication, gave an impetus for people to begin permanently settling Jogbuda. Those coming from the steep, rocky slopes of the Mahabharat Range reportedly found the valley’s softer gradients desirable despite their tendency to erode and deposit sediment into the watershed, consequently damming streams, flooding fields, and collapsing slopes. Yet, now the rate of landscape change is perceived to be increased, as well as the associated risks. In this context, I examine how multiple temporalities—the duration of a human life, the deposition of a valley bottom, and the pace of seasonal erosion—are drawn together to constitute Jogbuda’s geo-sociality. By doing so, I give attention to the ways landslides participate as meaningful interlocutors for navigating history, cementing belonging, and knowing and anticipating the movement of earth in a Himalayan valley.

This seminar will be chaired by Dr Mikael Attal, GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh