Mana, an Indian Village Across The Frontier

The harsh, rocky climate of the upper Himalayas, with its desolate plateaus and hidden valleys, hides a bewildering diversity. The history of this vast region is extremely complex, and not only because the Sino-Indian border dispute that hangs above much of that area is enmeshed in the labyrinthine cobweb of New Delhi’s and Beijing’s claims and counterclaims on where the lines on the map should be drawn. Above all, the ethnicity and culture of the peoples in this area are much more diverse than the dry climate and monotonous environment would suggest. 

One such place that attests to this diversity is the village of Mana/Dhindran.

There are two reasons why my thoughts have returned to this village. First, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Sino-Indian war that was fought over the control of some of these Himalayan regions. Second, a book I am currently reading – and certainly recommend – allowed me to dive into other, more historical, but equally complex aspects of this area. The book is Kyle J. Gardner’s “The Frontier Complex” and while it focuses on the roots of the Sino-Indian border dispute, it inspired me to return to Mana – at least in my mind. Gardner’s conclusion about Ladakh – currently a hotly contested area between India and China – is that while there was the Kingdom of Ladakh until the 19th century, as a region it was far less homogenous than the British perceived it to be. I have the same to say about Mana. 

Sometimes referred to as the “last village in India” (the last before arriving in China, that is), Mana straddles various divides. First of all, a geographical one: The population of the village lives half the year in a village located lower in the mountains, and half the year in an upper one. The latter, Mana, is just a few kilometers up from the sacred Hindu site of Badrinath. The road leads through a canyon-like, gently rising rocky valley, and while this makes the upper village easily accessible, the off-bounds border with China extends above it, and the environment makes it very hard for the people to survive in the cold season. This kind of shifting of a population is a common occurrence in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, where the village – both of them, in fact – are located. The population stays in the upper settlement, Mana, in May-October when the weather is warm enough, and moves to the lower one, Dhindran, for winters. 

Second, the people of Mana used to traverse the border itself. The inhabitants of this village are Tibetans who have been crossing between what is now India and Tibet for centuries. Living off trade, they would mostly transport produce like clarified butter, salt, and wool, spending months traveling but taking a break for the monsoon season. The Chinese annexation of Tibet affected this community as well. For most Tibetans, this aggression meant the end of independence and an autocratic foreign rule that continues to this day. Thousands of other Tibetans were forced to flee and become refugees in other countries (such as India). Even though, contrary to the above groups, this particular community was already partially based in India, for the Tibetans in places like Mana, the Chinese invasion was a disaster as well. The PRC eventually closed most of the mountain passages through which the local trade with Indian territories took place. This included the killing of trade through the Mana pass, above the village. The population of the village was thus not only cut off from its ethnic homeland but also from its traditional way of living and earning money. It is also worth adding that the local inhabitants told me that some Tibetans fleeing the Chinese invasion in the 1950s crossed through the Mana pass route, but only one person decided to remain in the Mana village – the rest proceeded further into India. 

Third, the people of Mana traverse cultural and religious divides. While they are Tibetans by community and language, they are also Hindu, not Buddhist, by religion. The people I talked to referred to themselves, and the language they use, as Rongpa. Thus, my interlocutors avoided the term Bhotiya, commonly used in India for Tibetan communities traditionally living on the Indian side of the Himalayas. At the same time, they write their variety of the Tibetan language not in the Tibetan script, but in Devanagari, commonly used in India for such major languages as Marathi or Hindi (and originally for Sanskrit). The two elementary schools in Mana, a government and a private one, teach in Hindi, while the local tongue is spoken at home. This is the solution applied all across India – a school is primarily to teach the language of a given state (and thus a dominant language of a region), and of course, English, while the local tongues and dialects are learned by children through interactions within their family and community. 

But perhaps most interestingly, the people of Mana worship Hindu gods. When asked whether, apart from this, they retain any elements of Tibetan Buddhism, such as gompas, my interlocutors replied in the negative. These are not their places of worship, I was told. Their gods and sacred sites are Hindu, which includes the cult of the goddess Parvati (a name literally meaning “belonging to the mountains”), the consort of the god Shiva.

As if the Himalayas were not complex enough as a region, the people of Mana, as well as other such Tibetan groups living in India, add one more layer to this diversity. While the better-known Tibetan communities in India are the ones that were forced out of their motherland by Chinese aggression, the communities that live in Mana and other such places have been connecting India and Tibet for centuries. Contrary to the refugees, they are not only Indian citizens but also worship Hindu gods. And yet this community is nearly forgotten and largely neglected. Most struggle to make ends meet, living off leading tourists (or carrying them), as well as labor, selling textiles or local plants. Their language is on the cusp of dying, with the younger generations shifting to Hindi. Their culture, an amalgam of Tibetan language and ethnicity and Hindu culture, could be used by India as one more way to counter Chinese propaganda, but remains largely hidden away in the mountains.