Introduction: Ruination and duress in the Himalayan borderlands

The borders that Himalayan states today contest and defend are largely the legacy of an imperial world order that was ostensibly dismantled in the mid-twentieth century (Cribb & Li, 2004). The continued violence of these borders (Jones, 2017), and their ongoing capacity to wreak ruination on the living (Stoler, 2013) disproportionately impact the region's most vulnerable populations (Hughes, 2011; Gamble, 2019). This chapter examines how this violence against vulnerable populations manifests as domination and oppression in relation to languages. I argue that states achieve this violence, in part, by enlivening a political substrate below the hyper-visible surface activity of state policy and international relations (Davis et al., 2021), by animating and manipulating political projects carried out across state borders by non-state actors, and by drawing on narratives and legacies that tap into histories predating both state and empire.

I examine this phenomenon through an exploration of how Tibetans exert linguistic dominance over other populations throughout the transnational Himalayas. Tibetans may seem like an unlikely, and perhaps unimportant, political agent in a region characterized by the rising super-states of China and India: Tibetans are currently spread throughout the states of the region, fragmented into enclaves and islands, interned within the physical and political margins of states. In every country where Tibetans live today, they are a demographic and political minority, and their languages are subordinated and oppressed.