FINNISH MISSION HISTORY: A STUDY ON SOCIO-CULTURAL IMPACTS MADE BY FINNISH MISSIONARIES IN THE NORTH-EASTERN HIMALAYAS, INDIA

Once Winston Churchill rightly said and I quote: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” History is not just a past to remember but history is an opportunity to explore new things and learn from it. With a great vision and mission-heart, Finnish missionaries came in the Himalayan belt in the early nineteenth century. They had a vision of entering Tibet as soon as they set foot on Indian territory. They stayed and lived difficult lives since India is riven by caste, creed, and regional backwardness, which a few of them (missionaries) correctly termed as "darkness." The Himalayan people are living considerably more comfortable lives after several decades, yet the efforts and services of Finnish missionaries are still mostly unknown among Himalayan natives. Few of numbers of published articles and books are here to describe their major contributions and chronological evidences of Finnish missionaries’ arrival to India. In this article, a thorough analysis of the socio-economic repercussions of Finnish missionaries in the Himalayan belts and Buxaduars regions of Indian states West Bengal and Sikkim was conducted using collected primary and secondary data. Therefore, this article carry out this study by collecting data (qualitative and quantitative) and information from various sources viz. Published and unpublished articles and notes, collection of primary data/information from various sources remained in India and Finland and through analysis of historical documents of Finnish Mission History. KEYWORDS:Finnish missionaries, Himalayas, Socio-economic, mission history, education, community, Scandinavian Alliance Mission, Education, Livelihood, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Buxaduars.

Treading Poetic Borders in Southwest China and Northeast India

Since the 1980s ethnic minority poets writing in the borderlands of Southwest China and Northeast India emerged on the world stage from within currents of dramatic environmental, political, economic, and demographic change, cresting in momentum by the 2010s. Within these borderlands of the Eastern Himalayas, burgeoning populations, propelled by sociopolitical agendas, ecological disasters, and other factors, stress borders and resources in areas increasingly open to exploitation by regional and international corporations and governments. Minority poetic voices throughout the region often respond to these radical environmental and cultural shifts with imagery of the environment delivered in very personal terms. Poets not only assume individual voices but also take on metonymic personae, speaking for concerns of their own groups via print, live performance, and digital formats. Mutual awareness of these cross-border poetries is slowly emerging, revealing that themes of poems from within these border areas are often parallel, with common concerns, though local characteristics. Cultural shifts and accommodation to new or revised modes of living and reactions to increasingly severe challenges to the local and regional environments surface repeatedly in the poetry. Some poems tread boundaries between the human and nonhuman inhabitants of these border areas, speaking for—or as—plants, animals, and geographic features.

Taxonomic scale dependency of Bergmann’s patterns: a cross-scale comparison of hawkmoths and birds along a tropical elevational gradient

Bergmann’s rule predicts a larger body size for endothermic organisms in colder environments. The contrasting results from previous studies may be due to the differences in taxonomic (intraspecific, interspecific and community) and spatial (latitudinal vs elevational) scales. We compared Bergmann’s patterns for endotherms (Aves) and ectotherms (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae) along the same 2.6 km elevational transect in the eastern Himalayas. Using a large data spanning 3,302 hawkmoths (76 morpho-species) and 15,746 birds (245 species), we compared the patterns at the intraspecific (hawkmoths only), interspecific and community scales. Hawkmoths exhibited a positive Bergmann’s pattern at the intraspecific and abundance-weighted community scale. Contrary to this, birds exhibited a strong converse Bergmann’s pattern at interspecific and community scales, both with and without abundance. Overall, our results indicate that incorporation of information on intraspecific variation and/or species relative abundances influences the results to a large extent. The multiplicity of patterns at a single location provides the opportunity to disentangle the relative contribution of individual- and species-level processes by integrating data across multiple nested taxonomic scales for the same taxa. We suggest that future studies of Bergmann’s patterns should explicitly address taxonomic and spatial scale dependency, with species relative abundance and intraspecific trait variation as essential ingredients especially at short elevational scales.

Squirrels and Tribes – A Cultural Analysis From Indian Eastern Himalayas

Based on an ethnozoological study carried out from December 2018 to November 2019, this paper attempts to document the usage of squirrel species for various purposes by the Adi, Idu Mishmi, Miju Mishmi, Tangsa, Chakma and Monpa tribe living near the villages adjoining the protected areas located in the districts of East Siang, Lower Dibang Valley, Dibang Valley, Lohit, Changlang and West Kameng of Arunachal Pradesh, India. The paper also describes the use of certain squirrel species as a part of their traditional culture and lists their names in English, Vernacular and Latin names. The study has led to an understanding that eight squirrel species are used by the tribes for cultural, food and medicinal purposes. This work contributes to ethnozoological research by describing a knowledge system of squirrel species use and the association of squirrel species with the cultural believes of the tribes.

Platylomia kohimaensis n. sp.—a new cicada species (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) from the Naga Hills in the Eastern Himalayas

A new cicada species, Platylomia kohimaensis n. sp., belonging to the Platylomia radha group is described from the Naga Hills in the eastern Himalayas. It is a dusk singing, large-sized cicada that calls for a short window during the evening twilight hours. Timbalisation is in the form of a continuous and regular cackling. Photographs of adult male and female along with genitalia illustration and distribution map are provided. A sonogram along with Acoustic Identification Card is also provided.