Unlimited!
This is a collection of pages related to Darjeeling, Sikkim and Tibet aimed against neglect and hush. Time and again, it has been the ambition of those in power to re-write history according to their own taste, not least in order to justify their questionable claims. Both, Tibet as well as the Kingdom of Sikkim, once de facto sovereign international entities, fell prey to the aspirations of their equally powerful and agressive neighbours. Pacified by centuries of Buddhist practice, they were easily overrun by their adversaries giving higher appreciation to the power of guns, mass immigration and exploitation than to tolerance and compassion.
Today, reduced to a minority in their ancestral homeland, the natives face suppression not only of their proprietary rights but also of their freedom of expression, so much so, that it has become almost unthinkable even for themselves to talk plain language and to put things straight. Otherwise, they run the risk to be termed communal, anti-national or even racist. That's the smashing argument of the intruders to ultimately invert the facts, making the offender a victim and the victim an offender.
This is the stage for the unheard voices, for the silenced minority, for the ignored reasonings and the accounts of the powerless presenting the other side of the coin. They do not necessarily have to be right. Their version may be biased. They may belong to the 'wrong' political camp. They may rise the relevant points drawing the wrong conclusions. They may be politically incorrect.
They are mirrored here as witness accounts of the dramatic changes this area has undergone and still faces, changes that too often violate the basic principles of truth and trust. And as an act of resistance. Those in power will be displeased that, despite all their attempts to remove such statements from public perception, they have ...
... not disappeared.
Photo Credit: © Steve McCurry, Magnum - Design by Amnesty International