Prophetic Quote about the Bhotiya

The following quote appears in the conclusion of Vinita Hoon's seminal work on the Kumaon Bhotiya. While the language is rough, the fact that the border trade was identified as the locus of Bhotiya culture so early is remarkable. That the border was closed due to China's conquest of Tibet and the subsequent Sino-Indian War has set in motion the annihilation through assimilation pressures cited by Batten:

Traffic is the life and soul of the Bhotiyas and were the trade between the hills and Hoondes to become closed (though the wants of the Tibetans and their dependence on India for so many of the necessaries and luxuries of life may always be supposed to render such an event improbable) he would soon become an half-starved savage, or abandoning altogether his present station at the outposts between human endeavour and the extreme horrors of unconquerable nature, would rapidly merge into the common herd of Chinese Tartar or the Khasia Paharees.

Bratten, J.H. (1843). "Report of JH Batten Accompanying Settlement Papers of the Bhote Mehals and Northern Pergunnahas to GW Lushington" in Reports of the Revenue Settlement of the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency under Regulation IX, 1833, Vol. II, Part II, Medical Hall Press, Benares.

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