Through the India-China Border: Kalimpong in the Himalayas

Prem Poddar & Lisa Lindkvist
Through the India-China Border: Kalimpong in the Himalayas
Cambridge University Press, 2024
ISBN: 9781009499347
284 pages, EUR 105.04

Through the India-China Border mobilizes rarely used documentary material from British, Chinese and Indian archives to shed new light on our understanding of the 'Tibet Question' in China-India relations. Focused on the Himalayan border town of Kalimpong from the 1920s to 1962, it unearths a history of espionage and political intrigue that challenges the way that remote peripheries are seen from the 'centres' of nations. The innovative use of postcolonial and transcultural theory demonstrates how a multidisciplinary framework augments our reading of imperial histories, postwar politics, decolonisation and frontier cultures. Kalimpong emerges from this analysis as a key node in Himalayan history and in the mid-century fashioning of India-China relations.