A 'Remote' Town in the Indian Himalaya

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A lsquoRemotersquo Town in the Indian Himalaya

NAYANIKA MATHUR

Modern Asian Studies FirstView Article October 2014 pp 1 - 28DOI 101017S0026749X1300053X Published online 22 October 2014

Link to this article httpjournalscambridgeorgabstract_S0026749X1300053X

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A lsquoRemotersquo Town in the Indian Himalayalowast

NAYANIKA M ATHUR

Department of Social Anthropology University of Cambridge UKEmail nm289camacuk

Abstract

This article studies the impact of the creation of a new state in northern Indiathrough an analysis of space The space under consideration is the town ofGopeshwar which serves as the administrative headquarters of a district in thestate of Uttarakhand Uttarakhand was created as a distinct Himalayan statein 2000 after a prolonged period of mass agitation to this end The movementfor statehood had emphasized historical neglect coupled with exploitation ofthe mountains of Uttarakhand by the plains Beginning with an analysis of thetown plan this article moves on to describe how this place is made into a spaceby everyday practices In particular it concentrates on the narratives of agentsof the state who express a longing to escape this lsquoremotersquo town Through aninterrogation of the trope of remoteness this article argues that the creationof the new state has served ironically enough to accentuate the traditionalcharacterization of the Himalaya as a backward inferior space within India

Introduction

Space is space life is life everywhere the same1

Provincialism or provinciality is a space recognizable instantly2

lsquoA remote townrsquo this is how the Himalayan town of Gopeshwarthe district headquarters of Chamoli in the North Indian state ofUttarakhand is almost universally defined Situated at a height

lowast Acknowledgements This article began life as the first chapter of my PhD thesisand has hence not only gone through multiple iterations but has also been readandor heard by numerous people Thanks are due to Amita Baviskar Franck BilleJames Laidlaw Sian Lazar Tapsi Mathur Perveez Mody Sara Shneiderman andaudiences at the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh and the London Schoolof Economics and Political Science I am particularly grateful to David Sneath for hisconstant enthusiasm for this piece and to Veena Das and the anonymous reviewersat Modern Asian Studies for pushing me to arrive at the point

1 Coetzee J M (2004) Waiting for the Barbarians Vintage London p 172 Kumar N (2006) Provincialism in Modern India the multiple narratives of

education and their pain Modern Asian Studies 402 pp 397ndash423 p 397

1

2 N A Y A N I K A M A T H U R

of 1308 metres above sea level covering an area of 142 squarekilometres with a population of 19833 according to the 2001 Censusof India Gopeshwar is to be found at a distance of 280 kilometresfrom Dehradun (the capital city of Uttarakhand) and 235 kilometresfrom the nearest railhead Rishikesh3 Given the distance from largeurban centres its location on Indiarsquos border with Tibet the difficultterrain and the poor transportation infrastructure it is not altogethersurprising that the English word lsquoremotersquo is often used to describe thistown and by extension the district An introductory pamphlet toChamoli for instance describes it as being filled with sacred Hindutemples lsquounique nature reservesrsquo and lsquoscenic beautyrsquo lsquoEducationallyand economically however the region was poor since it had been aremote neglected part of the larger Garhwal district for the previous100 yearsrsquo4 This pamphlet issued by the organization creditedwith spearheading the celebrated Chipko movement (andolan) onlymentions the past 100 years5 Local accounts describe present-dayChamoli as a place that has since time immemorial been distantfrom the centre a distance that remains to be overcome

In 2000 under pressure from a mass agitation for a distinctHimalayan state Uttarakhand was carved out from its parent stateof Uttar Pradesh Analysts of the Uttarakhand statehood movementare united in their opinion that the demand for secession from UttarPradesh was launched and fought on the basis of the spatial fact ofthe mountains (pahar) As Kumar notes lsquoThe Uttarakhandi identityhas in fact been developed and shaped because it has remained ageographically isolated region from the plains of Uttar Pradeshrsquo6 Theargument went that the developmental demands of the mountainsare of a very particular nature which cannot be fathomed by distantplainsmen (maidanis) who were ruling over the pahar7 The belief

3 httpchamolinicin [accessed 21 August 2014]4 Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal (DGSM) (1997) Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal

Micro Mint Dehra Dun p 65 lsquoChipkorsquo translates literally as lsquoto hugrsquo The Chipko movement was thus named

because it advocated the practice of hugging trees in order to prevent their felling forcommercial purposes The movement was sparked off in 1974 in Chamoli district Itis worth noting that the current description of environmentalists as lsquotree huggersrsquo hasits roots in the Chipko movement

6 Kumar P (2000) The Uttarakhand Movement Construction of a Regional IdentityKanishka Publishers New Delhi p 106

7 Mawdsley E E (1997) Nonsecessionist Regionalism in India the UttarakhandSeparate State Movement Environment and Planning A 2912 pp 2217ndash2235 KumarThe Uttarakhand Movement

A lsquo R E M O T E rsquo T O W N I N T H E I N D I A N H I M A L A Y A 3

expressed by the movement was that lsquothe developmental problemsof the remote hill areas would be taken care of only if a new (lsquopaharirsquo)state was createdrsquo8

I conducted 16 months of doctoral fieldwork from 2006 to 2008in this new Himalayan state of Uttarakhand The first ten months ofthis period were spent living in Gopeshwar Given that the state wasformed in order to overcome a lsquogeography of inequalityrsquo9 within thenational boundary of India then a spatial analysis of the impact of thenew state is in order Here I propose such an analysis through a focus onwords narratives affects bodily dispensations buildings town plansand a brief history of Gopeshwar and this Himalayan region I aminterested in exploring how the place of Gopeshwar is converted intoa lived-in space with the overarching characteristic of being remotefor certain segments of the town population Definitionally I followde Certeau in thinking of place as an ordering of elements in arelationship of coexistence with each other and space as lsquoa practicedplacersquo10 I find it useful to draw upon the work of everyday theorists dueto their emphasis on the meaningfulness (or the lack thereof) of spacebeing created through practice11 The first contribution of this articlethen is to arrive at a historically situated ethnographic expositionof present-day Gopeshwar an unknown town located high up in theHimalaya which would normally be dismissed as too unimportant towarrant a serious study

Secondly and relatedly my effort to take space seriously leads me toidentify and foreground the trope of lsquoremotenessrsquo which is ubiquitousin all discussions of Gopeshwar It is present in British colonialaccounts in local self-descriptions in the statehood movement as wellas in everyday chatter among a cross-section of town residents Insteadof taking the word lsquoremotersquo to denote a harmless geographical fact Idraw upon the now-exhaustive work on space place and territory thathighlights the cultural and political work involved in rendering spaceswith a seemingly natural and self-evident geography12 Specifically

8 Kumar P (2001) Uttarakhand one year after Economic and Political Weekly3651 pp 4692ndash4693 p 4692

9 Ludden D (2012) Spatial Inequity and National Territory remapping 1905 inBengal and Assam Modern Asian Studies 463 pp 483ndash525

10 De Certeau M (1988) The Practice of Everyday Life University of California PressLondon p 117

11 Ibid Lefebvre H (1991) The Production of Space Blackwell Oxford12 See for example Massey D (1994) Space Place and Gender Polity Cambridge

Strange C and A Bashford (eds) (2003) Isolation Places and Practices of Exclusion


I contribute to the discussion on the creation and perpetuation oflsquospatial inequityrsquo in India13 Ludden has made the point that spatialinequity in contemporary India is neither new nor haphazard as issometimes believed and the task remains to lsquofocus on inequality asan historical process to isolate the specific newness of the presentrsquo14

I attempt in this article to do so through a focus on Gopeshwar andmdashby extensionmdashChamoli district in Indiarsquos Uttarakhand I begin thisarticle by providing a brief history of Uttarakhand Chamoli districtand the establishment of Gopeshwar as a district headquartersAn analysis of the manner in which the town plan of Gopeshwarhas developed leads me to argue that it possesses morphologicalsimilarities to the British institution of the hill station even as itemerges as a rather poor post-colonial cousin I go on to describeeveryday life in the town In particular I dwell on the narratives ofagents of the state who express a longing to escape this lsquoremotersquotown Through an interrogation of the trope of remoteness I arguethat the creation of the new state has served ironically enoughto accentuate the traditional characterization of the Himalaya as abackward inferior space within India

Uttarakhand the mountains (pahar) and Chamoli

At the time of Indiarsquos independence from British rule in 1947 theregions that were then known as the princely states of Tehri-GarhwalBritish Garhwal and Kumaon division of the United Provinces ofAgra and Oudh were incorporated into the large North Indian stateof Uttar Pradesh In Uttar Pradesh the same Himalayan region wasdivided into eight mountain districts of which five were placed underthe Garhwal Regional Commission and three under the authority ofKumaon Regional Commission15 From 1947 onwards intermittentdemands for a separate hill-state were made but they were largely

Routledge London and Moore D S (2005) Suffering for Territory Race Place andPower in Zimbabwe Duke University Press Durham and London

13 Ludden Spatial Inequity and National Territory14 Ludden D (2012) Imperial Modernity history and global inequity in rising

Asia Third World Quarterly 334 pp 581ndash601 p 58215 Rangan H (2000) Of Myths and Movements Rewriting Chipko into Himalayan History

Verso London


restricted to urban-based elite groups and individuals16 In the mid-1990s there was a sudden flare up in the demand for the firsttime cutting across a much larger swathe of the statersquos populationincluding its rural residents The rhetoric that informed this separatistmovement was one that emphasized the geographical specificityof the mountains (pahar) which required a very different form ofdevelopmental effort from the type that is efficacious in the plains(maidan) This lsquoself-evident factrsquo was it was claimed by the agitatorscampaigning for a new state one that the development plannersand implementers of Uttar Pradeshmdashprimarily plainsmen (maidanis)sitting in distant Lucknow the capital of Uttar Pradeshmdashwere quiteunable to comprehend17 On 9 November 2000 the government ofIndia acceded to these demands detaching the Himalayan portionof Uttar Pradesh to create the twenty-seventh state of the federalIndian Union to be known as Uttarakhand Present-day Uttarakhandconsists of 13 districts divided between the administrative divisions ofGarhwal and Kumaon

In an interesting spatial analysis of social movements in LatinAmerica Davis has highlighted what she terms lsquothe power of distancersquoThrough a focus on location or territorial dynamics she argues thatlsquothere is compelling evidence of a relationship between territorialisolation or physical distance from the institutions practices andprojects of the national state on the one hand and social movementradicalism on the otherrsquo18 Indeed it was precisely the articulationof a discourse of distance or what I prefer to study as lsquoremotenessrsquothat underpinned the demands for statehood Residents of Chamolidistrict actively participated in this movement with many proudlytelling me of their travels down to the big cities in the plains toparticipate in agitations for the new state A specifically pahari identitycoalesced around the rhetoric of neglect of the pahar by the non-paharis The vocabulary of the struggle was one that emphasized thelsquoessentially secular shared attribute viz the specificity of belonging tothe mountains and the distinctiveness of mountain societyrsquo19

16 Mawdsley E E (1998) After Chipko from environment to region inUttaranchal The Journal of Peasant Studies 254 pp 36ndash54 Kumar The UttarakhandMovement

17 Ibid18 Davis D (1999) The Power of Distance re-theorizing social movements in Latin

America Theory and Society 284 pp 585ndash638 p 60619 Jayal N G (2000) Uttaranchal same wine same bottle new label Economic

and Political Weekly 3549 pp 4311ndash4314 p 4311


Systematic neglect coupled with exploitation of the Himalaya forits rich natural resources such as timber and minerals is seen to havebegun during British colonialism and continued unabated throughwhat is often described as a lsquoform of internal colonialismrsquo by thepost-1947 Indian state20 The maltreatment of the pahar goes hand-in-hand with a stereotype of the pahari as lazy and profligate As AGazetteer of Garhwal Himalaya noted a long time back lsquothe indolenceof the Garhwali and his proneness to falsehood have been insistedupon by all writersrsquo21 The pahari identity is of course not uniformas differences between Garhwal and Kumaon are often articulated22

Within Garhwal itself there is a subtle differentiation To quote theGazetter again lsquoThe Garhwali of the outer ranges is often a miserablecreature abject in poverty truculent and offensive in prosperity orin the enjoyment of a little brief authorityrsquo23 A century on fromthe Gazetterrsquos observations the description of remote Chamoli beinginhabited by backward lazy alcoholic men and long-suffering hard-working industrious women was one that was commonplace amongnot just state officials but also middle-class residents of Gopeshwar

Perhaps the one time the outer region of Uttarakhand shoots toprominence is when its role in forming the Himalayan bulwark ofthe land of India is considered Chinarsquos occupation of neighbouringTibet and the felt need to better police the Himalayan borderregions led to the creation of Chamoli as a separate district withinUttar Pradesh On 24 February 1960 a newspaper advertisementmade this news public and named Gopeshwar as the new districtrsquos

20 Pathak S (1997) State Society and Natural Resources in Himalaya dynamics ofchange in colonial and post-colonial Uttarakhand Economic and Political Weekly 3217pp 908ndash912 p 908

21 Walton H G (1910) A Gazetteer of the Garhwal Himalaya Natraj PublishersDehradun p 68 Looking down on hill people is a generic feature of hillsminusplainspolitical cultures as the word lsquohillbillyrsquo indicates It derives from the dominant viewcirculating from the plains and as an anonymous reviewer of this article has pointedout this is true not just for India andor Uttarakhand For instance Li notes thathill people in Indonesiarsquos upland Sulawesi frontier also judge each other by a setof standards derived from and centred on the coast Much like the mountains ofUttarakhand in Sulawesi too the further away in the mountains people live themore lsquobackwardrsquo they are generally considered to be Li T M (2001) RelationalHistories and the Production of Difference on Sulawesirsquos Upland Frontier The Journalof Asian Studies 601 pp 41ndash66

22 The differences were temporarily subsumed under the common category of thepahar during the movement for statehood Jayal Uttaranchal same wine same bottlenew label

23 Walton Gazetteer of the Garhwal Himalaya p 69


administrative headquarters24 In 1960 however there was no townof Gopeshwar merely a tiny village bearing this name located 12kilometres northeast of the small town of Chamoli across the riverAlaknanda The district headquarters could not be located in Chamoliitself due to its unfavourable location along the banks of the Alaknandariver which subjects it to frequent flooding Gopeshwar the villageevidently derived its name from the Gopinath (Shiva) temple which isestimated to have been built between the ninth and eleventh centuriesAD The town of Gopeshwar has grown up all around the templecomplex but particularly to its north This has led to the templeserving as the unofficial boundary between Gopeshwar gaon (village)as it continues to be called and Gopeshwar shehar (town)

The district headquarters were eventually moved from Chamoli upto Gopeshwar only in the early 1970s when the new town was deemedfit to serve as the location of the local state apparatus In crucial waysGopeshwar is seen by residents of Chamoli district as an embodimentof the state (sarkar) in material terms looming large over them fromits mountain-top location which in turn requires this town to functionas an exemplar of what the modern nation-state of India should anddoes possess within itself25 The developmental intent on the partof the planners of the state comes across for instance in an officialnotification issued on 3 June 1967 by the lsquoHousing Departmentrsquo ofUttar Pradesh of which Chamoli was a part until November 2000The notification reads

Whereas the state Government is of the opinion that the following area in thevillage of Gopeshwar in district Chamoli requires to be regulated under theUttar Pradesh (Regulation of Building operations) Act 1958 (UP Act NoXXXIV of 1958) with a view to prevent bad laying out of land haphazarderection of building or growth of Sub-standard colonies and also with a view tothe development and expansion of the same according to proper Planning26

24 Pahari R (2005) Aniket Janpad Chamoli Ank Valley Offset Press Dehradun p19

25 In a similar vein James Holstonrsquos analysis of the modernist capital city ofBrasilia in Brazil makes the point that the idea of a capital city serving as a seatof administrative power is not appealing enough to its planners It must in additionfunction as an exemplary centre by serving as a model for the nationrsquos futuredevelopment Holston J (1989) The Modernist City An Anthropological Critique of BrasiliaUniversity of Chicago Press Chicago

26 Government of Uttar Pradesh (1995) Chamoli-Gopeshwar Mahayojana Praroop(1995ndash2016) Municipal Corporation Publications Gopeshwar-Chamoli p 18


The lsquoproper Planningrsquo envisioned by the state government led to thetransformation of the village of Gopeshwar into the current districtheadquarters of Chamoli which come equipped with a hospitalschools a college a library a veterinary centre sports facilitiesincluding a gym for policemen a petrol pump a bazaar a post office acomputerized railway reservation centre an official tourist rest housea maidan (large open piece of land for among other purposes holdingpublic assemblies and conducting military exercises) and brand-newoffice buildings for every wing of the state that is functioning inthe district Somewhat ironically the template for the formation ofGopeshwarmdashthis local statersquos outpost in the nationalist post-colonialstate of Indiamdashappears to be none other than the colonial institutionof the lsquohill stationrsquo

The hill station versus the mountain town

Hill stations in India were a rather unique urban entity followingneither the traditional Asian city pattern nor the colonial onewhich consisted of the installation of a regimented grid of civiland military cantonments27 Rather their architecture was distinctlyAnglicized and comprised cottages gardens and orchards and thebuilding of high quality infrastructuremdashroads railways bridgesmdashfrom scratch lsquoEuropeanrsquo institutions such as hospitals lsquoconvalescenthomesrsquo orphanages schools hotels and missionary headquarterswere set up The British lived in the elevated areas along the ridgecrests and flanks while the native Indian towns were located at lowerlevels such as the bazaar area and further below28 The growingpresence of the British led to a large influx of Indians into hill stationsin order to service them Physical distancing of one community (theBritish and the lsquonativesrsquo) from another was much more acute in themountains than was possible in colonial towns in the plains due tothe fact of the vertical layering of the hill station This racializedsegregation through the morphological nature of hill stations is nicelybrought out in Kanwarrsquos study of Simla which functioned as thesummer capital of the British Raj in India Simla was divided into

27 Kennedy D K (1996) The Magic Mountains Hill Stations and the British RajUniversity of California Press London King A (1976) Colonial Urban DevelopmentCulture Social Power and Environment Routledge London

28 King Colonial Urban Development


two sections the station inhabited by the white colonial masters andthe bazaar inhabited by the brown natives In tracing the gradualdevelopment of Simla Kanwar makes the important point that lsquothetown was the spatial embodiment of a social system the process ofurbanization expressed the colonial dynamic at the level of spacersquo29

Within the white station area too an elaborate layout of houses andoffices was constructed which bore in mind the rank of the officialsresiding within them Not just the size and architectural style of thebuildings but also the locations were fought over30

Hill stations are pre-eminently believed to be nostalgic spaces wherethe British could briefly escape lsquothe three constraining influences ofldquothe stationrdquo ldquothe heatrdquo and ldquothe nativesrdquorsquo31 This image helpedgloss over their increasing importance as sites from which the imperialpower more and more often went about governing its colony Kennedytraces the lsquoshift in the bureaucratic axis of the imperial state from theplains to the hillsrsquo as from the second half of the nineteenth centuryhill stations became centres of power from which political and militaryorders were issued by the guardians of the Raj32 Under the Britishcolonial state then hill stations became places that the ruling elitewished to escape to33 Gopeshwar which is also a town in the hills onthe other hand is a place only worth escaping from claim senior agentsof the state Gopeshwar is not termed a lsquohill stationrsquo even though itis a town in the hills and shares many of the characteristics of a hillstation34 Rather it is just another pahari shehar (mountain town) Yetthere are striking similarities in the physical layout of Gopeshwar andhill stations

29 Kanwar P (1990) Imperial Simla The Political Culture of the Raj Oxford UniversityPress Delhi p 250

30 Kennedy The Magic Mountains31 King Colonial Urban Development p 17032 Kennedy The Magic Mountains p 933 It is worth pointing out that these retreats to hill stations were not necessarily

convenient Thus in the case of the summer capital of Simla the entire governmentof India would travel over 1200 miles from Calcutta across the length of the Indo-Gangetic plain Interestingly Kanwar writes that this move was criticized on manygrounds one of them being lsquothe remoteness and isolation of the bureaucratic machinefrom the realities of the plains below for more than half the yearrsquo Kanwar ImperialSimla p 43

34 Lal speculates that the employment of the term lsquohill stationrsquo is linked to thespacersquos associations with notions of retreat pilgrimages and prestige or the achieve-ment of a certain lsquostationrsquo in life See httpwwwsscnetuclaedusouthasiaHistoryBritishHillStationshtml [accessed 21 August 2014]


The first and most obvious similarity between hill stations andGopeshwar is the physical distancing of those who wield state powerfrom the lsquonativesrsquo or the local residents The agents of the state liveand work in the upper crests of the hill on which Gopeshwar is spreadout monopolizing the land ostensibly for affairs-of-state The localslive below in and around the crowded bazaar area Two-thirds of theway into the town one comes across a petrol pump constructed at aturning with a small landing around it The sole petrol pump in town itis a critical orienting landmark in the town Directions in Gopeshwarare almost always delivered in relation to it Hence such and suchofficeshopperson is below the petrol pump (petrol pump ke neeche) orabove it (upar) The petrol pump functions as a de facto cut-off markbetween lsquostate landrsquo (sarkari zameen) and lsquonon-state landrsquo (gersarkarizameen) Only government offices and residences are to be found on theascent up from the petrol pump The first major office directly after thepetrol pump is the Development Office (Vikas Bhawan) followed by thePublic Works Department the District Court the Forest Departmentand finally the district magistratersquos office or the Collectorate On thesummit are located the official residences for all the state personnelwho manage these offices The district magistrate (DM) the mostpowerful government official in the district resides in a colonial-style bungalow commanding the best view of the Nanda Devi (7817m) the second highest mountain in India and the patron-goddess ofUttarakhand

The second similarity between the colonial hill station and thepost-colonial district headquarters shifts beyond a reading of thespatial tactics described above to a consideration of the tangiblestructures comprising the state-space of the town These include anarray of offices residential areas for the officials a club for socializingparks in which they can play badminton and cricket a library anda residential colony for officials Following the model of hill stationsthese amenities have been built into Gopeshwar too That is wherethe similarities end The club the parks the library the hospitalwith their newly constructed look all stand out in the town Despitetheir newness they remain almost entirely unused lending them afaintly haunted air In all the time that I spent in Gopeshwar theclub was utilized on just one occasionmdashNew Yearrsquos Evemdashto host aparty for the district officials In a town where almost nobody speaksthe English language the library possesses uncannily English classicssuch as the complete works of Oscar Wilde Unsurprisingly then ittoo wears a desolate look Although possessing the requisite physical


buildings the space above the petrol pump (upar) remains empty(khali)

Living in the lake residing lsquoaboversquo

The emptiness of the space above is starkly evident on the very summitof the hill in the residential area called Kund colony which is anexclusive preserve of government functionaries According to localfolklore there used to be a lake (kund) up there that mysteriouslydried up one fine day The colony was constructed around and withinthe dry bed of this mythical lake Just as Gopeshwar the town isdivided into twomdashthe state and the nonstatemdashby the petrol pumpso is residence in the town partitioned One either lives lsquoin Kundrsquoor lsquoneechersquo (below or down there) To say that lsquoI live in Kundrsquo (meinKund mein rehata hoon) in Hindi literally translates into English as lsquoIlive in a lakepondrsquo In Gopeshwar however Kund does not denotelsquolakersquo it implies an association with sarkar (the state) that smallbut powerful and prestigious state apparatus in Chamoli and henceoperates as a mode of distinguishing oneself from the rest of theinhabitants of Gopeshwar Residence in Kund is offered primarily tothose who are transferred into Chamoli from without and are situatedhigher up in the statersquos bureaucratic hierarchy The colony itself issegregated and ordered on the basis of the same hierarchical systemThe top-ranked employeesmdashClass I as they are officially termed by thegovernment of Indiamdashreside in the centre of the colony in the basinin three-bedroom apartments The sizes of the residences decreaseas one moves outwards from the basin of Kund to the peripherywhere the lowest level employeesmdashthe Class IVsmdashlive in single-room multi-storied accommodation Just as the split into lsquoaboversquo andlsquobelowrsquo allowed for a segregation between senior agents of the stateand commonplace town residents the status hierarchy of the statemachinery itself is quite literally mapped onto the buildings locatedlsquoaboversquo be it the offices or the residences of the officials Reminiscent ofthe spatial formations of hill stations Gopeshwar attests to Luddenrsquosrecent claim that the end of imperialism and the onset of nationalsovereignty has not eliminated lsquoimperial forms of territorialityrsquo whichcontinue de facto35

35 Ludden Imperial Modernity p 584


There is just one exception to the centreminusperiphery assemblage inKund This is the seemingly strategic location on the highest pointof Kundrsquos boundary of a large colonial-style bungalow designatedfor the superintendent of police (SP) the top police official in thedistrict The backyard of this residence is carved onto a protrudingedge overlooking the town below From here you can look down ontothe town level by level almost until the maidan It would be difficult toidentify individuals at that level but it is easy enough to observe thegoings-on of Kund colony and the movements of people until the petrolpump In the evenings the SP would often seat himself just behindthe edge of the wall in his backyard so that nobody from below couldsee him nursing his lsquoEnglish whiskyrsquo while watching the goings-on ofthe town The SP was my landlord and I often would be invited over tohis bungalow for a chat as he indulged in this lsquohobbyrsquo as he describedit to me36 lsquoMy job never endsrsquo he would sigh dolefully lsquofor I have toconstantly keep an eye on these useless (nalayak) Gopeshwar-wallahsrsquoAn argument can be made for the SPrsquos backyard being the real-worldrealization of Foucaultrsquos principle of Panopticism The arrangementof the backyard did impose a visibility on the residents of the state-space of Gopeshwar while holding onto the invisibility of the SP Hekept a close eye on the goings-on of some particularly lsquodangerouspeoplersquo (khatarnak log) the Nepalis who lived in shacks just under hisbungalow the young men who would play cricket and then smokeor drink some old men who were forever gambling unmarried youngwomen or the particularly lsquodolled uprsquo (bani-thani) married ones and ofcourse his own policemen and other government officials However itwas common knowledge among those living in Kund that the SP mightbe observing them Power was certainly visible in the shape of theprotruding backyard with its low wall from behind which one could bespied upon but unverifiable in that the SP might be at home watchingthemmdashbut then again he just as well might not be Yet it did notseem lsquoto induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanentvisibility that assures the automatic functioning of powerrsquo which iswhat Foucault considers to be the major effect of the Panopticon37

36 I lived in a single-room police barrack adjoining the lsquoservant quartersrsquo in the backgarden As my research involved working with the local state officials Kund was aperfect residential location for me

37 Foucault M (1995) Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison Random HouseNew York p 201


In fact I would argue that in Gopeshwar there was a very differentform of surveillance in operation Here no one individual was the soleobservermdashrather everyone with no exceptions (including the SP withhis panoptical backyard) was watched by everyone else The gazeof all upon all was constant and all-encompassing in that everyoneseemed to be acquainted with all the townspeople and were bizarrelywell informed of each otherrsquos daily movements through the townNovels and travelogues set within small towns in India describe sucha form of surveillance in humorous detail38 The fact of the verticallayering of a mountain town such as Gopeshwar aids the observation ofindividuals moving about especially on levels below onersquos own locationIn addition there are few destinations as such in this tiny town Oneis either at workschool or at home or in the bazaar or taking anevening walk in the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya public park at the edge oftown or paying obeisance to the lord at Gopinath mandir In a sensethen there is a surveillance of all by all

This aspect of being ceaselessly inspected by the residents of thesmall town lsquosuffocatedrsquo the senior functionaries of the state Theyfelt that they were constantly in the public gaze which stifled themby disallowing that much-required relaxation into the private selfAs the young chief development officer (CDO) a member of thehighly revered Indian Administrative Service grumblingly told me(the only person in the entire district who dared to address him byhis first name) he was lsquotired of being CDO-sahib twenty-four-sevenrsquoI suggest that this feeling of exhaustion caused by being constantlyscrutinized by residents of this small town in India did not lead somuch to a Foucauldian disciplining of the self as it did to a self-imposed seclusion a shuttering away of the self a conscious distancingof oneself from the wider social world of the town which all the seniorofficials in the town practised religiously It was considered too riskyto remove the official face of the state which the bureaucrats worein their daily professional lives and allow the very people they weresupposed to rule overmdashtheir subjects so to speakmdashto peep into theprivate self that lay behind the mask In Shooting an Elephant Orwellhas compellingly describes the white manrsquos pain as he finds that heconstantly has to present himself as a sahib during the British Raj lsquoHe

38 See for example Mishra P (1995) Butter Chicken in Ludhiana Travels in SmallTown India Penguin India Chatterjee U (1988) English August An Indian StoryFaber and Faber London


becomes a sort of hollow posing dummy the conventionalized figureof a sahib he wears a mask and his face grows to fit itrsquo39

Posing as a sahib aside even with their co-workers it was difficult forthe more senior bureaucrats who work within this highly hierarchicaland formalized local state set-up to relinquish the structure of theirofficial life and forge ties of genuine friendship with their colleaguesand neighbours in Kund A distinction between the public and theprivate was coherently articulated to me by many of them on numerousoccasions They believed that it was acceptable to have their workmdashtechnical and managerialmdashput under public scrutiny but they longedto be able to lead their private lives with some measure of seclusionThey did not think was possible in a small provincial town such asGopeshwar in contradistinction to the modern urban experience oflife in Dehradun or Delhi Simmel refers to the crowdedness of cities aslsquo a technique for making and keeping private matters secret suchas earlier could be attained only by means of spatial isolationrsquo40 It wasprecisely through the means of spatial isolation that the bureaucratsposted from larger cities attempted to hold onto their private selvesThe layout of the town aided this process Officials living in Kund didnot have far to go in terms of their work place which was usuallyjust a level or two below their own homes Further most of them wereprovided with official vehicles that would transport them up and downAs they had government-appointed domestic help to look after thehousehold requirements they rarely if ever went into the crowdedbazaar area Life for them remained largely upar (above the petrolpump) This isolation lack of privacy and confinement to a smallportion of the hill on which Gopeshwar is set led to a sense of beingincarcerated stifled and entrapped In their own words life (zindagi)as it should ideally be lived is not to be found here it is elsewhere

lsquoLife is elsewherersquo

In official circles there is a well-known fact about Chamoli which isthat only one of the three Ps can bring you here The three Ps arepromotion probation or punishment Most commonly Chamoli is a

39 Orwell G (1950) Shooting an Elephant and other Essays Secker and WarburgLondon p 6

40 Simmel G (1950) The Secret and the Secret Society In The Sociology of Georg Simmeltrans and ed KH Wolff The Free Press New York p 337


lsquopunishmentrsquo posting sometimes a promotion (as was the case withthe DM who was posted to Chamoli just before I left but who told methat he wished he had not been promoted if living in Gopeshwar waswhat it entailed) or occasionally a probation posting that will measureyour resilience and your willingness to work The three Ps are directlyrelated to the level of remoteness of the region The most juniorofficials or those who are being punished are posted to far-flung borderdistricts such as Chamoli Those next on the senioritypunishmentscale are posted to the belt adjoining the outlying district and so on inan increasing order of seniority and decreasing level of punishmentas one comes closer to the capital Only the chosen fewmdashthe mostsenior the most deserving and those with the best connectionsmdashgetto remain in Dehradun A posting to Chamoli is thus held in very lowesteem by state functionaries

The CDO of Chamoli was one such official who considered Chamolithe ultimate punishment posting More specifically he described hisposting as a lsquocursersquo and as divine retribution for uncharitable thoughtshe had once harboured He loved recounting this story to me duringhis training at the Indian Administrative Service Academy he hadcome to Chamoli for a trek with his colleagues On the way up thetrail they had met an old man who on learning that this IndianAdministrative Service officer was of Uttarakhand cadre had kindlysaid that it would be nice if he was to be one day posted in ChamoliHe would only half-laughingly tell me

At that moment I had cursed the old man and mentally thought that I woulddie if I was posted here in the back of beyond Lo and behold I finish mytraining and guess what my first posting was going to be My parents scoldedme saying that god was punishing me for having cursed that old man and forhaving had thoughts of killing myself I think they are right

lsquoWhat is wrong with Chamolirsquo I would ask The CDO never failedto be amused by what he perceived to be the naivety of this questioncoming as it did from someone who had lived her life in metropolises

This place is so remote There is nothing here (yahan kuch nahin hai)Everything is lying empty (har cheez khali pada hua hai) Nowhere to go nothingto do Dehradun is 10 hours away and my work does not allow me to leave mystation as often as I would like to My friends and families are so far away Itis such a dead place all my colleagues are living it up in their areas Haveyou seen the condition of my official residence or the club or the marketplace

The lack of entertainment options such as cinemas and shoppingmalls and the poor quality of the infrastructure including their


own residential quarters in Gopeshwar were always comparedunfavourably with what could be found in the large towns in theplains Thus in Dehradun one would live in better residential areashave access to educational and health facilities be able to eat out inrestaurants shop in malls and go to the cinema The lsquoemptinessrsquo(khalipan) that bureaucrats repeatedly spoke of in reference toGopeshwar was first a very literal and material one This tangible lackof quality infrastructure contributed to and exacerbated the secondsort of emptiness that of the near total absence of families

In my very first conversation with the incredulous DM of ChamoliI was warned off living in Gopeshwar as it was too lsquoremotersquo a place fora young woman of my class background to live in By way of examplehe told me that his own wife and children lived in Dehradun as didthe families of all other officials who had been posted into the districtAll the senior officials in Gopeshwar were men The only wives to beseen were those who were recently married and did not yet have anychildren Hence during the time I lived in Kund out of the 30-plusinhabitants only one officerrsquos wife lived with him for the majority ofthe time period She too told me though that she would lsquorun homeas often as possible for it is so deadly boring herersquo Given the factthat everyonersquos families were not here half the officialsrsquo attention andtime was turned towards Dehradun or the other cities in the plainswhere their families lived These bureaucrats repeatedly told me howdifficult they found it to lsquomanage both frontsrsquo

Their apparent incarceration in the mountains seemed to be puttinga strain on the families especially the marriages of all the officialsA senior forest official told me that he was in a real bind because hiswife hated it in Gopeshwar and his ageing parents would not evensurvive the strenuous drive up here to lsquothis nothingnessrsquo With realearnestness he told me that his wife was threatening to divorce himif he did not get posted out soon Another forest official told me howGopeshwar is not a place where one can lsquokeep a familyrsquo (family korakh sakte hai) Yet another forest official told me that his wife nevervisited him in Gopeshwar for lsquowhen we got married she knew that wewould spend most of our lives in jungles But a jungle in the paharin this remote region is more than she had bargained forrsquo A sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) of the district told me how his wife couldnot endure living in Gopeshwar for more than two days as she hadgrown up in Delhi and was unused to the lsquobackwardness of a remoteregion such as Chamolirsquo Another official told me how his parents-in-law were aghast when they discovered he was going to be posted


lsquoin the paharrsquo (pahar mein) and said that had they known of this inadvance they would never have allowed their daughter to marry himTwo unmarried officers told me that they were being compelled to godown the path of arranged marriages as they did not want to remainbachelors forever and naturally there was no chance of ever meetinglsquoanyone interesting up herersquo

The intersection of gender and class was particularly striking insuch discussions of Gopeshwar especially when compared to colonialhill stations where Kennedy has argued lsquoform followed function thelives led in the hills replicated the social experiences of the uppermiddle classes at homersquo41 These were intensely social spaces filledwith events such as teas picnics balls fetes strolls social calls andthe intrigues gossip and romances these social activities led tomdasha lifethat novels set in the British Raj vividly depicts42 The creation of ahome-like space had allowed for a large population of British women tobe in residence in hill stations In Gopeshwar by sharp contrast therewere almost no women in the state-space Quite unlike the officialorder issued by the government of Uttar Pradesh which declared thenew district capital ready for residence in the 1970s the families ofbureaucrats never deemed Gopeshwar fit to be inhabited the hospitalin town had no regular medical staff and offered minimal facilitiesthe various schools were not of the standard that would appeal tothe relatively well-off bureaucrats the bazaar was judged inferior andprovincial there were no cinemas and restaurants The absence ofwives and children greatly contributed to the sense of emptiness thatofficials referred to as looming over the town

Women officials in general are spared being posted to Chamolidue to the hardships it entails The gendering of the state-spaceof Gopeshwar thenmdashthe offices and Kundmdashwas distinctly andoverwhelmingly male If women were posted up to Chamoli theytended to go on long or medical leave The only woman official Iencountered in the district was Ruchi a new young recruit of theprovincial civil services who was posted as the SDM of Joshimatha tehsil of Chamoli that lies along the Tibetan border She told methat she had been posted there since lsquothose old men in Dehradunrsquo

41 Kennedy The Magic Mountains p 542 For instance Kipling R (1987) [1888] Plain Tales from the Hills Penguin

Harmondsworth Scott P (1968) The Day of the Scorpion Heinemann London FarrellJ G (1981) The Hill Station An Unfinished Novel and an Indian Diary ed John SpurlingWeidenfeld and Nicolson London


(referring to the senior officials who had ordered her posting) didnot think that shemdasha young single woman hailing from the plainsmdashcould manage it and she was intent on proving them wrong Ruchibelongs to the category of the lsquoother backward classesrsquo but she wascertain that it was not her supposedly lower caste affiliation thathad led to this terrible posting which had led to her being packedoff to the most remote sub-division of remote Chamoli Rather shebelieved it was because she was a young woman from a large townin the plainsmdasha maidanimdashand this had made her as she repeatedlydescribed it to me lsquoa victimrsquo She described her posting to Chamoli asone filled with such hardships that it had ended up eliminating all fearfrom her

I can battle wild bears and leopards walk up vertical inclines in the snow toidentify dead bodies travel as the only woman with contingents of louts dealwith all sorts of pressure especially that of the local goondas (thugs) youname it and I can deal with it for I have no fear of anyone or anything left inme Living here all alone in the middle of nowhere having to deal with theissues and people that I have to I am now scared of nothing I am not happyabout this for to remain human one must fear something at the veryleast fear god But I fear nothing Perhaps these massive mountains havemade me inhuman

Ruchi ascribed her distaste for her posting to the harshness of life inthe high Himalaya peopled as it is with the stereotypical pahari maleIn other words she highlighted her maidani origins and identity Atleast half of the 30 or so bureaucrats who lived in Kund hailed from thepahar Strikingly there was little difference between their impressionsof ChamoliGopeshwar and those of the maidani bureaucrats The topbureaucrats of the districtmdashthe DM SP CDO SDM DFO (divisionalforest officer)mdashwere in fact paharis Nevertheless they voiced almostidentical narrations on the remoteness and backwardness of ChamoliPigg has described the process of overcoming distinctions such asregional origins among civil servants charged with administeringbikas (development) in Nepal and their amalgamation into a distinctclass with shared desires and outlooks on life43 The section ofstate agents living in Kund which I similarly study as a class-unto-itself evaluated Gopeshwar and the pahar per se as abackward step in their lives For them this was not a place where

43 Pigg S L Inventing Social Categories Through Place social representations anddevelopment in Nepal Comparative Studies in Society and History 343 pp 491ndash513


the lifestyle the public amenities that shape the consumptionpatterns of the middle class in contemporary urban India andcodes of behaviour and interactions with others matched those theyaspired to

Everyday work in Chamoli too possessed many a trying feature Theyatra (pilgrimage) season to the prominent Hindu temple of Badrinathis an example of this The Badrinath temple remains open from Mayto November The throwing open of the portals of the temple in earlyMay is followed by a veritable deluge of pilgrims aboard buses truckscars motorbikes with the most pious making the pilgrimage on footNear Badrinath stands Hemkund Sahib a Sikh gurdwara (temple) thatadds heavily to the volume of pilgrims The fact of the yatra is a sourceof pride for local residents for this is a time when the magnificenceand sacredness of this part of the Himalaya is openly acknowledgedby all of India For the bureaucrats however the grumbling aboutGopeshwarChamoli continues throughout this period As it was hardto call Gopeshwar lsquoremotersquo and lsquodeadrsquo when half of India is itching toget here the complaints during this period were directed at the sortof work they had to undertake The bureaucrats were constantly onlsquoVIP dutyrsquo which involved making painstaking logistical arrangementsand escorting senior state agentsmdashbureaucrats politicians judgesmdasharound Badrinath and Hemkund Sahib Further this was a timewhen their administrative unit came under the critical scrutiny of theaforementioned VIPs While local residents took great pride in whatthey possessively considered to be lsquotheirrsquo temple senior bureaucratswere left exhausted by the stresses associated with its location withintheir area of command

At the end of the yatra season came an even more demanding periodin their lives in Chamoli the onset of the monsoons In early July whenthe yatra was ongoing though not at the frenetic pace of May and Junethe heavens literally opened up The result was mayhem Landslidesdestruction of houses and fields trees and boulders falling downwaterfalls springing up in the unlikeliest of places rivers swelling upto alarming proportions failure of telecommunications and power fordays on end road accidents blockages of milk vegetable cooking gasand newspaper supplies coming up from the plains became the normChamoli went overnight it seems from being the cosmic centre of theHindu universe to being once again a lsquoremotersquo land that struggled toprovide basic amenities of lsquomodernrsquo life in India Newspaper articlesscreamed headlines such as lsquoChamoli returns to the age of primitivemanrsquo lsquoEven in the 21st century no road no electricity no water no


food in the Abode of Godsrsquo44 accompanied by constant talk of the lackof development (vikasheen) deprivation (vanchit) and backwardness(pichadapan) of this region Officials were left to run from one accidentsite to another Chaos reigned supreme a chaos that was hard forthe senior officials to control given the limited physical and humanresources at their command and the unpredictability of the rains inthis ecologically fragile region During both the yatra season and themonsoons senior officials were held up as being directly responsible forthe events that were unfolding before their eyes When things wentwrong as they did all the time the officials were held accountablefor it and were targeted by name and designation by the vernacularpress and the general public alike Expectations of senior officials inGopeshwar were indeed great

Escaping Gopeshwar

A posting to Gopeshwar was often described as being sent to kalapani (literally lsquoblack waterrsquo) After the 1857 uprising the Britishestablished the Andaman Islands as a penal colony In order to get tothe cellular jail located there convicts had to cross the lsquoblack watersrsquoor travel across the Bay of Bengal British officials assumed that thejourney across the sea led to lsquocaste pollutionrsquo and hence functionedin and of itself as a form of punishment Kala pani is now used ineveryday speech to signify a punishing exile from home or a form ofisolation45 A posting away from Gopeshwar is similarly describedmetaphorically by officials as a release from prison When I wentaround the various offices in the town to make my farewells at thetime of my own departure from the town nearly all the officialscongratulated me on having lsquoserved my time in jailrsquo At farewellparties for officials the speeches were always loudly congratulatoryon the richly deserved release the escape from the constraints of

44 The lsquoAbode of Godsrsquo is Uttarakhandrsquos chosen sobriquet for itself45 Anderson notes that the British representation of lsquocastersquo and the lsquolosing of castersquo

through travel across the supposedly polluting waters was not fully shared by theconvicts After Independence in 1947 nationalist historiography popular culture(Hindi films such as Kala Pani) and the post-colonial statersquos representations has hadthe paradoxical effect she convincingly argues of resurrecting the colonial statersquosdiscourse of the power of kala pani Anderson C (2003) The Politics of ConvictSpace Indian Penal Settlements and the Andaman Islands in Strange and Bashford(eds) Isolation


this lsquoremotersquo lsquounderdevelopedrsquo place The relief was visible on thefaces of those who were lsquoescapingrsquo In Dehradun I often met up withofficials formerly posted in Gopeshwar Shuddering visibly they woulddescribe their time in Gopeshwar as a dark depressing lonely periodMany would thank Lord Badri (Vishnu) for blessing them by not onlyallowing them to escape from this particular station but also for lettingthem come away in one piece

The narratives and remembrances of Chamoli that I recount abovecan be seen as voiced lsquospatial storiesrsquo in that they lsquocarry out alabour that constantly transform[s] places into spaces or spaces intoplacesrsquo46 The narratives related above were transforming a placemdashthe town of Gopeshwar designed by urban plannersmdashinto a spacemdashan empty space that must be escaped from The uniformity of thebuildings of Kund colony (constructed in the modernist architecturalstyle characterizing all Public Works Department buildings incontemporary India) their shuttered windows and derelict gardensthe silence that pervaded were at odds with the hustle-and-bustle oflife below in the bazaar and the residential colonies there As a spacein de Certeaursquos sense of the term Kund was dead These narrativesabout life in Chamoli district were always accompanied with matchingbodily and affective gestures such as grimaces droll rolling of theeyes exhausted rubbing of the eyes or foreheads the drooping of theshoulders sarcastic turning of the lips mournful sighing despairinglooks cast heavenwards as if to ask why the gods had chosen topunish them so These non-linguistic expressions lent colour to thestories woven around Gopeshwar and the district convincing me oftheir veracity Well beyond discussions in which I would expressly askofficials questions about the district or the everydayness of life theirresentment at being sent there was all too evident The very wordlsquoGopeshwarrsquo for instance would often bring a light frown to theirfaces their brows would furrow at being reminded of the constantpain of living there While reading the local newspapers detailing thetravails that beset the district they would shake their heads and oftendramatically read aloud a few lines When setting off on holiday orgoing to Dehradun on yet another uncalled-for lsquobusiness triprsquo therewould be a spring in the step merry giggling naughty condolencesshouted at those who were left behind

46 De Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life p 118


I have thus far concentrated on the experiences of residents ofKund Given the elite positioning of this mobile sarkari community inlocal terms it might not be altogether surprising that they dismissGopeshwar as a mofussil town47 Their descriptions of Gopeshwaras a remote backward place were shared however by many othermiddle-class residents of the town as well especially by the youngergeneration The poor quality of its educational institutions and lack ofemployment opportunities in Chamoli were the most pressing reasonsfor this Those who could afford it would send their children to schoolin towns in the plains such as Dehradun and Hardwar Failing thatthey were sent to Srinagar Nainital or Almora When the time camefor college education however the urgency with which outlets weresought increased vastly Funds were gathered relatives and contactsferreted out colleges and polytechnics identified and children wereshipped off to make a life for themselves elsewhere The pressureon young men to find educational andor job opportunities wasparticularly intense As someone who had experience and knowledgeof the world beyond the pahar my informants in Gopeshwar wouldfrequently consult me on the best way for their children to find a wayout Many a chai (tea) time conversation in the government offices wasspent discussing exit strategies for the next generation When I wasnot in the government offices I would spend time with three smallNGOs The NGOs were staffed by residents of Chamoli all of whomwere resident in Gopeshwar All three employed women and menin their twenties who held at the least a Bachelor of Arts degreeIn NGO offices workshops and trips to villages for events such asawareness creation or village meetings the conversation would moreoften than not turn to possible options for leaving Chamoli eithervia employment or by enrolling for further studies In the case ofthe unmarried women there was the further option of their parentsfinding them a groom who lived in the plains NGO jobs were oftenseen as a stepping stone to finding a better paid and more stable jobin Dehradun or even one of the metropolises While I was living inGopeshwar I thought these conversations were always held with meas I was able to act as a good lsquobhagne-ke-chaare-ka consultantrsquo (running-away-options consultant) as it was once memorably put I did notice

47 Mofussil is a common word used in India to describe a place as provincial or out inthe sticks It originally meant regions that were outside the command of the East IndiaCompanyrsquos capitals of Bombay Calcutta and Madras hence it carries connotationsof being beyond the properly governed space and lsquowildnessrsquo


though that even when I was sitting on the sidelines or during thoselong shared Sumo or bus rides to Dehradun the NGO-workers wouldbe constantly discussing exit options among themselves Before mydeparture from Dehradun in January 2008 I noted that four of theNGO-workers had successfully exited Gopeshwar On my return toDehradun in the summer of 2009 I met up with them and they reeledout a long list of those who had succeeded and who had failed in theirattempts to escape Again I noted just how quick the turnover hadbeen and how these educated aspirational young men and womenhad devised channels through which they could as they would oftenput it bhago (run away) The ones who remained lsquostuckrsquo (phase hue)in Gopeshwar were regarded pityingly The educated younger peoplewho worked with the NGOs then agreed with the sarkari elite that alife should be sought out away from Gopeshwar Their motivations forwishing to leave however differed somewhat Apart from the moreprosaic reasons such as access to better educational and employmentopportunities these young people had a curiosity to savour the life ofthe lsquohappeningrsquo bit of India in Dehradun and other maidani towns Yetagain as with officials hailing from the mountains I did not discernamong this set of paharis a pahari identity that manifests itself in asense of attachment to the mountains48

The younger generation middle classes and officials located in thehigher levels of the administrative hierarchy were then I have arguedseeking to escape to overcome the distance they constantly positedby using the word lsquoremotersquo However the melancholia of Kundrsquostemporary inhabitants with their dreams of escaping Gopeshwar wasat odds with many who lived neeche (down below) These long-termresidents of Gopeshwar andor this region of Uttarakhand experienceda lsquospecial sensual and intimate attachmentrsquo to the mountains whichallowed them to feel as if they were in lsquotheir proper placersquo (saheen jagahmein hai) a feeling that Gray expresses with the phrase lsquobeing-at-home

48 Pathak has noted precisely this lack of belonging as a reason for the weak anti-Tehri Dam movement He writes lsquoIt must be also understood that outmigration forthe last 100 years has made the people of Uttarakhand careless and insensitive abouttheir roots They can leave their mountain home land pasture forest and culture forjust a house in Tarai-Bhabhar and Dun areas or in the plains anywherersquo Pathak S(2005) Submersion of a Town Not of an Idea Economic and Political Weekly 4033 pp3637ndash3639 p 3639


in the hillsrsquo49 To show this more explicitly I offer a short life historyof someone who lived neeche Mr N

Mr N and I shared a desk in the Gopeshwar office where I conductedmy fieldwork At the time that I met him he had been doing hisjob for the past 28 years in this office in Gopeshwar Mr N hailedfrom a small village in Chamoli district A Pahari Pundit (mountainBrahmin) by caste his father owned a sizeable piece of cultivableland in their village which fell in the valley The relative wealth ofhis family allowed him to attend Garhwal University in the town ofSrinagar where he was awarded a Bachelors of Arts degree Armedwith this Mr N set off to make his life and fortune in Indiarsquos capital cityNew Delhi in the mid-1970s In Delhi his uncle helped him get a jobfairly quickly with a private legal practice in Hauz Khaz an upmarketSouth Delhi enclave Back home his family was ecstatic at their sonrsquosevident success and promptly arranged his wedding to a suitable youngwoman of the same caste from a neighbouring village The young MrN came back home briefly to get married before returning alone toDelhi and his accounting job at the law firm

Six months later Mr N ran away from Delhi Every time he wouldtell me about his running away he would laugh aloud lsquoI ran awayfrom that madhousersquo (mein woh pagalkhane se bhag gaya) he would tellme again and again between loud chuckles as if he could not believehis good fortune at having done so Needless to say Mr Nrsquos parentswere less than impressed by the rashness of their sonrsquos decision toquit his comfortable sinecure in the heart of the country What madehim do so It seems that he could not bear the loneliness of life inthe metropolis located as it is at such a distance from his family inthe village The crowds and the traffic perplexed him the rudenessof his colleagues and the abruptness of his superiors upset him hismaterial living conditions were poor for he shared a small room withtwo other young men both recent migrants to the city and both equallybewildered by it Mr N is convinced that had he remained in lsquothemadhousersquo (pagalkhana) as he termed Delhi he too would have lsquogonemadrsquo (pagal ho jata) Hence he decided to leave and return home inthe pahar to his outraged family He knew he ran the risk of beingunemployed forever as secure jobs are very hard to come by in themountains but he preferred that fate to the one he was certain awaitedhim in Delhi On his return he struggled to find a job for nearly three

49 Gray J N (2000) At Home in the Hills Sense of Place in the Scottish Borders BerghahnBooks New York and Oxford p 3


years In the end however lsquoLord Badri (Vishnu) came to his rescuersquoand Mr N won the most prized of jobs in the mountainsmdasha sarkarinaukari or a salaried government jobmdashin his very own district

Mr N looks on his job in the District Rural Development Agency ashis reward from god for having the courage of his convictions It hasallowed him to build a life and a home in Gopeshwar close to his natalvillage and his parents Mr N is not alone in his devotion to ChamoliMany other permanent local staff who lived neeche in the district officehad shunned the option of leaving the mountains and going to citiessuch as Dehradun or Delhi Many had like Mr N returned homeafter brief unsuccessful stints in such places For the returnees fromthe big cities in the plains Gopeshwar was the place where life couldbe lived In that sense they were diametrically opposed to the moresenior state agents or aspirational young NGO workers for whom lifewas most emphatically elsewhere anywhere but there The case ofMr N and several of his colleagues in the district office who could notimagine leaving Gopeshwar indicates how experiences of place aredifferentiated across diverse subject positions

The incessant production of remoteness

The point of this article is not onlymdashor even primarilymdashto show howGopeshwar comes to be understood and defined by a certain elitesection of its populace as a lsquoremotersquo place It would be limiting tolook at GopeshwarChamolithe mountains of Uttarakhand merelyas a place that fails to meet the requirements of the agents of thestate Rather a fairer way to look at this region would be as a placethat has been failed by the state that has been cast aside as lsquoremotersquoand therefore inconsequential that has been denied access to thoseprocesses that are allowing the plains belt in Uttarakhand to lsquodeveloprsquoor modernize rapidly As Gupta and Ferguson rightly observe lsquospaceshave always been hierarchically interconnected instead of naturallydisconnectedrsquo50 GopeshwarChamoli has always been connected tothe plains of Uttar PradeshUttarakhand but in an entanglement ofpower relations that casts the former dominantly in a particular lightThis relationship of power many paharis assert continues to deny

50 Gupta A and J Ferguson (1992) Beyond lsquoCulturersquo Space Identity and thePolitics of Difference in Gupta A and J Ferguson (eds) Culture Power PlaceExplorations in Critical Anthropology Duke University Press Durham pp 8 33ndash51


the pahar access to the very same opportunities that are currentlybeing offered to the maidan of Uttarakhand Figures attest to theskewed growth of Uttarakhand The gross state domestic product ofUttarakhand grew by 116 per cent between 2000minus05 due to thesurge in the manufacturing and service sectors This growth has beenrestricted to the three plains districts of the state with the remainingten hill districts which constitute 53 per cent of the statersquos populationremaining more or less untouched by these two industries51

Statistics on out-migration or figures on regional economic growth inUttarakhand do not I believe tell the whole story And neither for thatmatter does the historical literature on the region that has somewhatromantically highlighted the paharisrsquo capacity to protest52 Rather onemust turn to the everyday practices that as Lefebvre would have itproduce space53 I argue that it is in and through everyday narratives ofremoteness and the omnipresent desire among prominent inhabitantsto seek a life elsewhere that Gopeshwar is produced as an emptylsquobackwardrsquo space Remoteness manifests itself and is experienced dailythrough various means through the sheer emptiness of the statespace the shuttered windows and lonely evenings inside crumblinghouses spatial stories grimaces and muttered expletives Themelancholia of Kundrsquos temporary inhabitants and the dreams ofescape harboured by the younger generation of paharis need to betaken seriously as central to the production and reproduction ofGopeshwar as a certain type of a space Further the unquestioningacceptance and description of Gopeshwar as lsquoremotersquo needs to becritically interrogated In this respect the comparison with hill stationsis salutary The then-remote Himalaya were seen by the colonial rulersas a place of escape as a place to be actively developed made habitableand lived within The Himalaya were valued for their beauty andclimate and their distance from the steaming thronging plains ofIndia54 This image of the mountains allowed certain hill stations to

51 Mamgain R P (2008) Growth Poverty and Employment in UttarakhandLabour and Development 132 pp 234ndash261

52 For example Guha R (2000) The Unquiet Woods Ecological Change and PeasantResistance in the Himalaya University of California Press Oakland Pathak S (1985)Intoxication as a Social Evil Anti-Alcohol Movement in Uttarakhand Economic andPolitical Weekly 2032 pp 1360ndash1365

53 Lefebvre The Production of Space54 Arnold has highlighted the role played by Romanticism in the love and admiration

that the British often professed for the Himalaya lsquoFew Europeansrsquo he writes lsquowereunmoved by the Himalayarsquo Arnold D (2005) The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze IndiaLandscape and Science 1800ndash1856 Delhi Permanent Black p 102


flourish Gopeshwar in contrast is dismissed as remote and almostundevelopable for the post-colonial inheritors of the state apparatusit is quite simply a place to be escaped from

In line with the argument of this article villagers and lower-leveldevelopment workers in Chamoli often equated their marginalizedand underdeveloped conditions with its low status as a placederiving from its lsquoremotenessrsquo One of the primary reasons for thefailure of development attempts according to local accounts is thedisengagement of state officials and NGO workers alike who areinterested only in finding ways out of this remote land Their opendisgust at their location exemplifies the point that residents ofChamoli know only too well there is a pervasive hegemonic discourseof the remote lsquobackwardrsquo pahar in which the skilled the rich and thepowerfulmdashmaidani and pahari alikemdashwould never live there for longerthan they can help it There is as I mention above a long history to thisdiscourse The movement for statehood was publically fought on thegrounds that it would overturn precisely this damaging conception ofthe pahar The cruel irony is that the creation of Uttarakhand has donenothing to attenuate this discourse in Chamoli In fact by makingthe contrast between the maidan and the pahar even starker withinthe smaller circumference of the new state it has I argue in factaccentuated it

It was estimated that many people would move to Gopeshwar fromthe surrounding villages to take advantage of the superior facilitiesit was to offermdasha 1995 assessment by the government estimatedthe population of Gopeshwar would increase to 27897 by 200655

The Census puts its actual population at a figure that is almost one-third lessmdash1988356 This too is a misleading number as it refers toindividuals who registered as hailing from Gopeshwar but who do notactually reside there throughout the year Due to high migration to theplains especially seasonal migration by men in search of employmentlocal estimates put a much lower number to the long-term residents ofthe town In startling contrast the population of the towns in the plainsof Uttarakhand has increased exponentially ever since the creation ofthe new state in 2000 While reliable statistics on migration from thehills to the plains after the creation of Uttarakhand are hard to come

55 Government of Uttar Pradesh Chamoli-Gopeshwar Mahayojana Praroop (1995ndash2016)

56 httpwebarchiveorgweb20040616075334httpwwwcensusindianetresultstownphpstad=Aampstate5=999 [accessed on 9 September 2014]


by the common perception in Chamoli is that the only real lsquoeffectrsquo ofthe creation of the supposedly Himalayan state in northern India hasbeen that the Himalaya it was meant to nurture are being depopulatedAn oft-heard aphorism delivered with sadness by the older generationof paharismdashlsquoThe mountains are endingfinishing (pahar khatam ho rahenhai)rsquomdashneatly catches this sense

The point of this article is to bring to light such everyday chatteraffective responses and commonplace grumbling about this regionof India There is an enormous power and far-reaching consequencesof self-perpetuation condensed into a single adjectivemdashremotemdashthatis perennially attached to this place By unfailingly and uncriticallydescribing Gopeshwar as lsquoremotersquo one is not I believe merely statinga lsquofactrsquo in terms of a literal distance from widely accepted centralpoints Rather one is condemning Gopeshwar and by extension thedistrict of Chamoli to remain so in perpetuity

I opened this article with an inner thought of Coetzeersquos chiefprotagonist in Waiting for the Barbariansmdasha magistrate administeringa frontier settlement for an unidentified empire One evening he setsoff to find lsquo in the vacuousness of the desert a special historicalpoignancyrsquo Even as he does so the magistrate is aware that lsquoThespace above us here is merely space no meaner or grander thanthe space above the shacks and tenements and temples and officesof the capital Space is space life is life everywhere the samersquo57

Contra Coetzeersquos protagonist for many residents of Gopeshwarmdashandespecially for agents of the state posted in from withoutmdashthe space oftheir frontier district is starkly different from other more desirablespaces particularly that of the capital city where every structure heldgreater poignancy Life in Gopeshwar is not really life it is locatedelsewhere

57 Coetzee Waiting for the Barbarians pp 17ndash18

Introduction





Escaping Gopeshwar


Modern Asian Studies page 1 of 28 Ccopy Cambridge University Press 2014doi101017S0026749X1300053X

A lsquoRemotersquo Town in the Indian Himalayalowast

NAYANIKA M ATHUR

Department of Social Anthropology University of Cambridge UKEmail nm289camacuk

Abstract

This article studies the impact of the creation of a new state in northern Indiathrough an analysis of space The space under consideration is the town ofGopeshwar which serves as the administrative headquarters of a district in thestate of Uttarakhand Uttarakhand was created as a distinct Himalayan statein 2000 after a prolonged period of mass agitation to this end The movementfor statehood had emphasized historical neglect coupled with exploitation ofthe mountains of Uttarakhand by the plains Beginning with an analysis of thetown plan this article moves on to describe how this place is made into a spaceby everyday practices In particular it concentrates on the narratives of agentsof the state who express a longing to escape this lsquoremotersquo town Through aninterrogation of the trope of remoteness this article argues that the creationof the new state has served ironically enough to accentuate the traditionalcharacterization of the Himalaya as a backward inferior space within India

Introduction

Space is space life is life everywhere the same1

Provincialism or provinciality is a space recognizable instantly2

lsquoA remote townrsquo this is how the Himalayan town of Gopeshwarthe district headquarters of Chamoli in the North Indian state ofUttarakhand is almost universally defined Situated at a height

lowast Acknowledgements This article began life as the first chapter of my PhD thesisand has hence not only gone through multiple iterations but has also been readandor heard by numerous people Thanks are due to Amita Baviskar Franck BilleJames Laidlaw Sian Lazar Tapsi Mathur Perveez Mody Sara Shneiderman andaudiences at the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh and the London Schoolof Economics and Political Science I am particularly grateful to David Sneath for hisconstant enthusiasm for this piece and to Veena Das and the anonymous reviewersat Modern Asian Studies for pushing me to arrive at the point

1 Coetzee J M (2004) Waiting for the Barbarians Vintage London p 172 Kumar N (2006) Provincialism in Modern India the multiple narratives of

education and their pain Modern Asian Studies 402 pp 397ndash423 p 397

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Escaping Gopeshwar












































Introduction





Escaping Gopeshwar


A 'Remote' Town in the Indian Himalaya

Documents

Transcript of A 'Remote' Town in the Indian Himalaya