Globalisation and identity: case of the lepchas in Sikkim

Abstract

The process of social change in India under the influence of external forces like Westernization, modernization and the globalization has produced vast sociological literatures covering the philosophical understanding of Indian society encountering with the political economy of modernization and globalization. The process has provoked a wide-range debate among the academic community on the issues of national character, the idea of nationalism and romanticisation of fragmented identities. The journey of democracy, development and the celebration of plural identities in postcolonial India has paradoxical in character in which both the resistance and co-operation between the local and national is the reality. This paper is an attempt to conceptualize the nature of identity formation, the value of cultural symbol and the local subsistence as found in case of Lepcha Movement in the state of Sikkim, particularly when