Sonali Gurung
Tekton
Tekton Volume 12, Issue 1, June 2025
pp. 34 – 47
Sonali Gurung is a PhD candidate under the mentorship of Dr. Meghal Arya and a visiting faculty member at CEPT University, Ahmedabad. Her research lies at the intersection of heritage studies, postcolonial theory, and colonial urbanism. Her current doctoral work investigates the absent and subaltern spatial narratives of hill stations, with a particular focus on Darjeeling. She brings over eight years of combined experience in academia and professional practice.
sonali.gurung.phd23@cept.ac.in
ABSTRACT
Maps are not a neutral depiction of space but active instruments of power that construct redefine, and often erase landscapes. This essay examines colonial cartography’s role in reshaping Darjeeling’s spatial and cultural identity, reinforcing hegemony by erasing indigenous place names, redefining boundaries, and transforming the land into a colonial site of interest. Analysing maps from 1815 to 1940, it foregrounds the erasure of Lepcha, Bhutia and Nepali toponyms, which carried deep cultural and spiritual meaning, as a central to this reconfiguration. The imposition of colonial nomenclature and infrastructure, including plantations and military camps, emerges as a deliberate strategy to marginalize local identities. Juxtaposing the Lepcha concept of Mayel Lyang; a sacred borderless perception of land with the colonial impulse to fix boundaries, the essay situates tea plantations (kamaans) as sites of subaltern geographies and suppressed indigenous histories. Drawing on postcolonial theory, semiotics, and spatial historiography, this study critiques colonial maps as mythmaking tools that obscured indigenous spaces and asserts the need for a decolonial reading to recover the region’s layered histories of resistance
KEY WORDS
Darjeeling, Mayel Lyang, Kamaan, Colonial Cartography, Erasure, Subaltern Geographies, Spatial Control
