Theorizing racialization through India's "Mongolian Fringe"

The "Mongolian Fringe" extending from India's Northwest Himalayas to the hill regions of the Northeast frontier, was conceptualized by British authorities as a site of geopolitical and racial anxiety given its proximity to China and Southeast Asia. Suspicion and anxiety continue to inform the relationship between the Indian state and its northern frontier territories. Drawing on a collaborative research project with college students from Ladakh in the Northwest Himalayas, we argue that racialization offers a crucial yet underutilized framework with which to understand contemporary tribal identity in India. Building on critical theorizations of race and indigeneity, we demonstrate how racism functions for those at the intersections of race, tribe, and nation in postcolonial India, and the broader functioning of racialization as a process both global and contextually specific that is inflected by movement: of colonizing forces, of state projects, but also of young people between home and away.