Mona Chettri

Mona Chettri is a researcher from Gangtok, Sikkim, with a PhD in South Asia Research from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She is the author of Constructing Democracy: Ethnicity and Democracy in the Eastern Himalayan Borderland (Amsterdam University Press, 2017) and the series editor of the Eastern Himalaya Series (Rachna Books and Publications). Her research focuses on the intersections between gender, development, labour, ethnicity and politics in the eastern Himalaya of India and Nepal.

What really makes a Sikkimese?

India’s Supreme Court set off a storm by describing Sikkimese-Nepalis as people of “foreign origin.” As “Indian” Old Settlers fight for new rights, Sikkim’s Bhutia-Lepcha and Nepali communities face a reckoning over belonging and identity.

May 01, 2023

Latest Articles

In Mizoram, a refugee crisis highlights Mizo tribal affinities and hostility

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In ‘Agra’, a grim portrait of the repressed Indian man

Director Kanu Behl’s Hindi feature film examines the sexual obsession and frustration of men, mental health and the transactional nature of human relationships in a patriarchal society where space is in short supply

When neoliberalism came to the Indian farm

With a focus on agricultural policy since the 1990s, 'Distress in the Fields' demonstrates how neoliberal interventions sowed the seeds of the crisis faced by farmers today