Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt

People

Name	Years	Field	Known for
Tenzing Norgay	1914–1986	Mountaineering	Reached the summit of Everest with Edmund Hillary in 1953 and then spent the rest of his working life in Darjeeling as the first director of field training at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, which turned a single ascent into an institution and a profession for a generation of hill climbers.
Thutob Namgyal	1860–1914	Ruler and chronicler	The ninth Chogyal, who with Maharani Yeshay Dolma compiled the History of Sikkim in 1908 — the first sustained written account of the kingdom's own past, assembled from monastic records and oral genealogy.
Te-ongsi Sirijunga Xin Thebe	1704–c. 1741	Scholar and language reviver	Revived the Limbu script, taught it with the Mundhum across Limbuwan and west Sikkim, and was killed in west Sikkim in the 1740s. The script now carries his name, and its twentieth-century revival began from the manuscripts he left.
Sarat Chandra Das	1849–1917	Tibetology	Travelled into Tibet in 1879 and 1881 and compiled a Tibetan–English dictionary that remained standard for a century, working from Darjeeling — which is how this ridge, rather than any metropolitan university, became the first centre of Tibetan studies in India.
Gergan Dorje Tharchin	1890–1976	Publishing	Printed the Tibet Mirror at Kalimpong from 1925 to 1963 — the first sustained Tibetan-language newspaper, set and printed on a hand press in a hill town, and for decades the main source of outside news reaching Lhasa.
Agam Singh Giri	1928–1971	Poetry	The Darjeeling poet who put the condition of the Indian Nepali — labour, belonging and the sense of being read as foreign at home — at the centre of modern Nepali verse in India.
Indra Bahadur Rai	1927–2018	Fiction and criticism	Novelist, short-story writer and critic from Darjeeling, awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for Nepali, and the driving figure behind Leela Lekhan, the region's own literary-theoretical movement.
Parijat	1937–1993	Fiction and poetry	Born in Darjeeling and later based in Kathmandu; her novel Shirishko Phool changed the register of Nepali fiction and made the interior life of a woman its subject.
Lain Singh Bangdel	1919–2002	Painting and art history	Born in the Darjeeling hills; introduced modernist painting to Nepali art and then documented the theft of Himalayan stone sculpture in a series of books that made the trade internationally visible.
Danny Denzongpa	Born 1948	Film	From Sikkim; a four-decade career in Hindi cinema and the first performer from the eastern Himalaya to be a household name across India, who also recorded Nepali songs at the height of his film work.
Bhaichung Bhutia	Born 1976	Football	From Tinkitam in south Sikkim; captained India, played professionally in England, and made football the sport through which the eastern Himalaya is visible in Indian public life.
Prajwal Parajuly	Born 1984	Fiction	From Gangtok; writes in English about Nepali-speaking lives across Sikkim, Darjeeling, Nepal and the diaspora, a subject Indian English fiction had largely left alone.

People from Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills who shaped its history, arts, science, sport and public life. (12)