A heart-wrenching appeal by a young Lepcha in support of his Vanishing Tribe, by: Uttam Lepcha, Gangtok. Today the Lepchas are shattered – their tears mingle with the Teesta waters, and their pleas echo in the mountains they worship. We are the Lepchas, dwellers of the mountains or the ravine folk – the distressed natives of Sikkim, our homeland. Very soon they will call us history. Why – yesterday they spoke of Human rights, the right to work, eat and live that befits a human. And today they say we have no right to keep our home as we plead it to be. Yesterday, the Supreme Court adjudged that we are the indigenous inhabitants of Sikkim; and today some are trying to flush us out of our last surviving home, our sacred land Dzongu. They speak kind words (developmental purpose they say) while their motives are sinister. Yesterday they had assured us that Dzongu was a protected reserve of the Lepchas, our emblem of origin and culture – our hallowed land. And today, i...
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