From Acquiescence To Agency- Transformation of the Lepcha Political Self

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Dialectics of ethnicity and politics is universal. This work traces the transformation of the collective political self of the Lepcha people over a long span of time, from early part of 17th century to the present. Inclined to acquiescing to the over-powering nexus of the state and the local dominant community, the marginalized Lepcha autochthons have only recently turned to their collective political agency to re-claim their entitlements. The work blends historical anthropology and contemporary political sociology.

The author has been a close observer of the Lepcha community since the early 1980s. As a teacher in a college in Kalimpong, he gained the trust of the Lepcha leadership as well as the common people. This he has combined with formal training in social science research. Field research data and archival records provide the empirical basis of this work. The research was funded by the University Grants Commission. Tapan Kumar Das is an Associate Professor of Political Science in Dum Dum Motijheel College, Kolkata.

The present monograph is a unique document prepared by a teacher-scholar who, unlike many professional researchers bound by time and terms, got genuinely immersed into the problem being discussed out of a fantastic passion fortified by his long stint amidst an encapsulated ethnical spectrum. His field of research is broadly Darjeeling district of West Bengal, and erstwhile Kalimpong sub- division in particular, which was later declared as a district since February, 2017. The people covered in this sustained research introspection were the Lepcha, a scheduled tribe settled primarily in West Bengal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal. In the author's study area in West Bengal this autochthonous human group historically enjoyed a label of indigenity and numerical marginality; suffered a relative political depravity by the state apparatus on the one hand and by the dominant encroaching Nepalis on the other; and finally, carried in their cultural ethos an element of nativity as well as utter simplicity.

**Contents and Sample Pages**