Engaging the State: Ethnic Patronage and Cultural Politics in the Eastern Himalayan Borderland

In the eastern Himalayan borderland, state-led initiatives have led to the transformation of pre-existing patronage networks and placed ethnic identity at the core of regional politics. Based on ethnographic research in Sikkim, the paper illustrates the prolific rise of affirmative action politics and its relationship with ethnic identity, which has altered the social, political and religious landscape of Sikkim. The paper introduces a new approach to understanding borderlands as dynamic political spaces and contributes to a nuanced understanding of emerging forms of political agency and interaction on the peripheries of regional South Asia.