Building the Sherpa’s New Present in the Age of Globalization

The central concern of this book is a detailed examination of both the strategy and the means employed whereby the Sherpas have been successfully managing the creation of a novel tradition beyond the narrow confines of their traditional particularism and, in firm association, a new wider, i.e. all-embracive, collectivity and a corresponding greater, pan-Sherpa identity. This achievement proves to be of crucial importance in their dealings not only with other citizens within the nation-state of Nepal but also in their diasporic communities where Sherpas celebrate their major festivals with other Tibetan Buddhists and live together with other Nepalis in a larger neighbourhood of South Asians. This innovation is being achieved at a new site in a new framework and, most significantly, through the solemn performance of certain major Tibetan Buddhist ritual celebrations. Thus, the actors clearly demonstrate their remarkable capacity to carve out a suitable niche in the globalized world of the 21st century while initiating and also realizing a veritable renaissance of Sherpa Buddhism, culture and society that, for long, seemed to be a seriously endangered species, spoilt by its own tremendous material success and its inevitably concomitant grave cultural loss and alienation and an alarming state of environmental degradation.