Restoring a Nyingma Buddhist monastery, Nepal

This chapter reports on a collaborative community project to restore a Tibetan Buddhist monastery (gompa) in the village of Langtang, Nepal. The restoration work has been entirely local led and executed by traditional artisans. Through a combined analysis of selective changes to the materiality of the gompa, as well as 19 unstructured interviews with local monastery users, the relationship between materiality, antiquity and authenticity will be explored from an indigenous standpoint. These investigations are a move towards framing a Langtangpa (people of Langtang) notion of heritage. Such local representations are timely for heritage policymaking in Nepal, which has seen an increase in ethnic politics in the last decade, as a counterbalance to centralised government authority.