March 2024

By Amitava Banerjee  Only Organisation from India to win  this award A self-learning app developed by the Rongring Lepcha Culture and Welfare Society (RLCWS), Kalimpong, to keep alive and propagate the endangered Lepcha language has bagged the coveted World Summit Award (WSA) in the culture and heritage category. The organisation is the only one from […]

By Vivek Chettri The Kalimpong-based Rongring Lepcha Culture and Welfare Society has been awarded World Summit Awards 2023 by the Austrian body which is co-funded by European Union An initiative to conserve the Lepcha language — Rongring, classified as “definitely endangered” by Unesco — has received recognition on a world stage. The Kalimpong-based Rongring Lepcha

By Jordan Kinchum Tshering Namchu Being alienated from their mother tongue is not a novel phenomenon for the Lepcha tribe who are considered to be the first inhabitants of the Sikkim and the West Bengal districts of Darjeeling and Kalimpong (the Darjeeling Hills). This is true especially for the Lepcha population domiciled in the Darjeeling Hills as compared to Sikkim. The forces of colonialism, migration, modernity and the Nepali language as the lingua franca can be argued