Earthquakes, cyclones, and volcanic eruptions are prime examples of an unruly environment. The 9/11 (18/09/2011, 18.10 IST) Himalayan earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale had its epicenter in the Kanchenjunga Conservation area on the border of Sikkim in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Southern Tibet. The devastation of their dwellings, the destruction of many sacred landscapes and their monasteries is something the affected locals are neither going to ignore nor forget. The lamas and shamans residing in the earthquake affected areas regard the recent earthquake to be a serious message about unsustainability of mega hydropower projects, a response to willful desecration, and a sign of resistance to being colonized. Some sites of my doctoral fieldwork conducted in 2001-02 were devastated and wiped out by the 2011 Great Himalayan earthquake. The disappearance of sites of historic memory such as Tholung monastery in North Sikkim is an epic one.
I document the voices of the marginalized tribal groups residing in North Sikkim who are protesting at the denial and neglect of their plight. Who talks about the aftermath of the Sikkim earthquake in Delhi or Bombay or Bangalore? The lack of rehabilitation measures and progress in reconstruction of North Sikkim after the 2011 earthquake has escaped any credible scrutiny. The remote location and political marginality of this area in the national imagination has not begotten public attention. My analysis highlights the social construction of disaster memory in the national imagination and how disaster magnitudes are measured in terms of loss of human lives. My paper analyzes these struggling voices and marginalized communities that are sited in the mountainous landscape and the basin of River Teesta in Sikkim. The 2011 catastrophe has evolved into a timely opportunity for self-reflection, need for reconstruction of landscapes and scattered communities, and engendered wider debates on scalar and the direction of Sikkim’s development. My analysis is based on extended fieldwork in the region and a review of the relevant literature.