Graven in the Rock – The Story of Past Cataclysms and River Disasters that are embedded in the Tista Valley (Tista Input From Jeta)

A consideration of the very complicated Lacustrine or Tso habitats found in the permanently glaciated areas on North and West Sikkim, or the equally complicated hierarchy of primary, secondary and tertiary Chhu drainages that distribute the precipitation and snow-melt from the glaciated region into the complicated drainage channels that drain out the Tista Valley Basin point towards the occurrence of major river catastrophes in the past, even without the impact of a major recorded GLOF event like that of 2023.

The signs of these past catastrophes can be found in the place-names preserved in the cultural memory preserved by the Tista Valley people – in the legend of Mount Tendong which saved the ancestral Lepcha people from a watery death when the Tista Flood climbed to unimaginable levels, to places like Rangnuo and Rangli Rangliot, where the Lama commanded the river-flood to cease its incessant rise, and to fall away to a more livable level.

The 1968 Tista Flood possessed all the signs of a river GLOF, without being labelled as such. The long-term development of complicated interbraided primary, secondary and tertiary river terraces or River-‘Tars’ along the entire length of the Tista Valley provide ample evidence that the Tista at several points in the past had tried to outflank the river bottlenecks and tried to scour out an unimpeded course to channel its outflows.

The coming of Hydel dams froze this process and made the river turn into a caged beast.

For the spiritual beliefs of Sikkim and its original people warn that if the mountain spirits and deities are trifled with, without reverence being shown to them, great calamities will befall the Land of Sikkim.

How, in this event, are all the admonitions and warnings vis-a-vis the Tista being ignored by Government planners in Sikkim?

Why are the sane and spiritual citizens of Sikkim being led up the garden path with imaginary promises of a bright and wealthy future up ahead?

Do the Tista people, the Tista drainages, the mountains and valleys that enshrine the spiritual heritage of Sikkim agree with this?

Has their voice and the social conscience of the people of the Tista Valley been silenced forever?

To Learn More… 

Watch the video by visiting https://youtu.be/d-ItbYORyQA?si=xs9YcHXj1m_gzkMl