Of Education, Humanism and Civilizational Progress: An Explorative Study of Jaya Prithvi Bahadur Singh’s Life and Work from the Perspective of ‘Global Intellectual History’

Abstract

The Himalayas have long been perceived as a region at the margins between South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. Since the turn of the 21st century, however, the area received continuously more scholarly attention, particularly with regards to historiography and historical research. Researchers started to explore the manifold historical connections, entanglements, and interdependencies of the Himalayas with its neighboring regions and the rest of the world, which have long been disregarded due to the prevalence of implicit methodological nationalism, historiographical isolationism, and exceptionalism. Anticipating these changing perspectives, my paper explores the life and works of Jaya Prithvi Bahadur Singh in an attempt to render the global historical connections of the Central Himalayas further visible and enrich broader debates from the perspective of ‘Global Intellectual History’. At the intersection of this newly emerging discipline and the intellectual history of the Himalayas, my paper seeks to address the research questions: Who was Jaya Prithvi Bahadur Singh and why is his life and work relevant for a better understanding of the multifaceted historical entanglements of the Central Himalayas? I argue that Jaya Prithvi’s thoughts, specifically those on education, humanism, and civilizational progress will add new thematic dimensions, empirically diversify and, thus, broaden the scope of contemporary discourses on ‘Global Intellectual History’ as well as Himalayan History.