Bordering between Sikkim and Nepal: The Making of the Limbu as a Borderland People

This chapter focuses on the interplay between, on the one hand, Singalila borderlander’s sense of belonging (to their community) and membership (to the state), and, on the other hand, territorialisation, i.e., the continuous delimitation of a state territory as a means of controlling people within it. It approaches this question by taking a close look at the effects of the imposition of the border between north-east Nepal and Sikkim on the Limbu community, whose home region—on both sides of the Singalila ridge—was divided by the border following the treaties of Sugauli (1816) and Titalia (1817).
So as to highlight these effects, this chapter revisits the history of this community shortly before and after the establishment of the border from and anthropological perspective, and based on archival documents in Nepali and Limbu languages. It firstly discusses the pre-colonial concept of Limbu community and its construction as a trans-local people, which entails looking at the first elements that linked the Limbu to the territory of ‘Far Kirant’ before the Gorkha conquests. It subsequently shows how this link transformed after the conquests of the Limbu territory by the Gorkha. It then sheds light on the border disputes between the kingdoms of Nepal and Sikkim from the Treaties of Sugauli and of Titalia until the mid-19th century, and on how this contributed to durably marginalise the Limbu of Sikkim, making them both natives and foreigners. This chapter shows how both the border and its instability shaped the community, its unity and integration in the new nation-states of Nepal and Sikkim.