Lahore Tira Baralida: Notes on Nepal-Punjab connections, 1800–1850
- Shubhanga PandeyDetails
6 September 2026/२१ भदौ २०८३ (आइतबार, दिउँसो ३ बजे)
Research Seminar Series
Lahore Tira Baralida: Notes on Nepal-Punjab connections, 1800–1850
Shubhanga Pandey, PhD Candidate in History, University of California, Los Angeles.
Abstract
In the first half of the nineteenth century, a varied cast of characters moved between Nepal and Punjab: the occasional diplomat between the Sikh and Gorkhali capitals, men offering military labour, pilgrims and mendicants drifting across sacred sites, and all manner of soldiers, scribes and spies. Some of them, in fact, managed to play a number of these roles at once. Fortunately for us, few of them left behind records of their activities and ideas, or were consequential enough to be memorialized or surveilled. What can such records add to our stock of historical knowledge, and what puzzles may they help us address? This talk focuses on one side of that traffic — the one facing the Sikh capital of Lahore — and suggests a few answers. It begins by offering a thicker account of connections between Nepal and Punjab than the ones that currently exist. Bringing together voices from Nepali, Sikh and British archives, it argues that this empirical base may allow us to tackle some interesting problems of political, intellectual and social history. It asks if such materials can help us reassess histories of intelligence gathering, geopolitical thought, kingship and military labour in South Asia of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
About the Speaker
Shubhanga Pandey a PhD candidate in History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research looks at histories of information, ideas and political order. He is interested in how and why historical actors pursue activities like surveying, data collecting, mapping, archiving, compiling and chronicling. His dissertation takes this approach to write a forgotten history of diplomacy, statecraft and political thought in South Asia between the decline of early-modern empires and rise of European colonial states. Before graduate school, he spent several years working as a journalist, and was the editor of Himal Southasian. His writings have been published in various popular outlets including New Left Review's Sidecar, World Politics Review, and the Caravan.