Numerous peraluminous and porphyritic granitic bodies and augen gneisses of granitic compositions occur in the nappe sequences of the Lower Himalaya. They are Proterozoic-to-lower Paleozoic in age and have been grouped into the ‘Lesser Himalaya granite belt’. The mode of emplacement and tectonic significance of these granites are as yet uncertain but they are generally considered to be sheet-like intrusions into the surrounding rocks. The small and isolated granite body (the Chur granite) that crops out around the Chur peak in the Himachal Himalaya is one of the more famous of these granites. Several lines of evidence have been adduced to show that the Chur granite has a thrust (the Chur thrust) contact with the underlying metasedimentary sequence (locally called the Jutogh Group). The Chur granite with restricted occurrence at the highest topographic and structural levels represents an erosional remnant of a much larger sub-horizontal thrust sheet. The contact relations between the country rocks and many of the other granite and granitic augen gneisses in the Lesser Himalaya belt are apparently similar to that of the Chur granite suggesting that at least some of them may also represent thrust sheets.

The small leucogranite plutons occurring in linear belts in the Higher Himalayas have formed due to post-collision partial melting within the Himalayan crust. Several studies have documented that the Sr isotopic ratios in the granite bodies show chaotic variation and meaningful Rb-Sr isochron ages are difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. In tectonically overthickened crust, the depth-temperature profile (geotherm) remains strongly transient for the first tens of millions of years. It is proposed here that the intersecting relations between the transient geotherms and activity-dependent solidus/melting curves may generate small pods of magma at different depths and at different times. Each of these pods will have its unique Sr isotopic ratios. Coalescence of these small pods of magma without any effective homogenization due to deformation-induced fast segregation, ascent and emplacement may lead to pluton-wide extreme heterogeneity in Sr isotopic ratios.