Nationalism and the Janajati

National unity will come from embracing diversity, rather than by imposing uniformity.

Some politicians call us dogs. But we Janajatis are not dogs, we are as much Nepali as anyone else, and we deserve to be treated as full citizens of this country." With these words , Suresh Ale Magar, the General Secretary of the Nepal Janajati Mahasangh (the Nepal Federation of Nationalities), began his address to the national conference of the Newar association, the Nepal Bhasha Manka Khala, held in Kathmandu in October 1992.

Some politicians dismiss words like these as the rhetoric of a few disgruntled or power-seeking individuals, insisting that there is no "ethnic problem" in Nepal. However, an increasing number of Nepalis recognise the spread in rhetoric like this as a signal of Nepal's growing "ethnic problem", one that will soon require but a single match to set off a conflagration. As Padma Ratna Tuladhar, a Left member of the House of Representatives, argues, "the problems of the Janajatis are one of the most serious problems faced by Nepal at the moment."

Whether it is a new problem that emerged in the wake of democracy or the latest expression of a tension that has been simmering just beneath the surface for a long time, many Nepalis fear that this recent growth in the expression of ethnic interests represents a form of ethnic separatism that could split Nepal apart in a fashion so recently demonstrated in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Man Mohan Adhikari, leader of the Opposition in Parliament, expressed a widely held view in a recent interview when he suggested that "the expression of ethnic and communal interests might weaken us all." He went on to observe, "Of course, it is a democratic right to form associations and parties. But we must realise and understand that we are one nationality despite our ethnic and religious diversity."

The Janajati leaders and others challenge assertions like this that seem to oppose their national and ethnic interests. In their view, the assertion of ethnic interests, far from weakening the nation, can only strengthen it. They insist that there is no "ethnic problem" that stands apart from and threatens the nation. Rather, the expression of the interests of the multiple "nationalities" is essential to the formation of a nation.

Parshu Ram Tamang, General Secretary of the Nepal Tamang Ghedung, argues that "the restoration of democracy opened up the opportunity for the creation of a wider collective identity." In his view, Nepal can only emerge as a nation-state by fully embracing, rather than suppressing, its religious, linguistic, ethnic, and cultural diversity. K.B. Singh, Acting Director of the Administrative Staff College in Kathmandu, succinctly articulated the problem facing Nepal. "We are not a nation," he observed, "we are a nation in the making." The failure to recognise and confront this may pose the greatest threat to Nepal's quest for national unity.

One Nation, or Many Nationalities

The October 1992 Nepal Bhasha Manka Kala conference was one of many similar conventions held recently throughout the country, the most recent being the national conference of the Nepal Tamang Ghedung in early April. Twenty of these national associations are members of the Nepal Janajati Mahasangh, founded in July 1990 (see box). Others represent the perspectives of a variety of regional, religious, and oppressed groups.

While these ethnic associations have come into the public eye in the aftermath of the 1990 Jana Andolan, the growth in the number of these associations is but the most recent manifestation of a long process. Formal ethnic associations have existed at least since 1950: the Tharu Kalyan Karini Sabha, which now supports local associations in 22 districts, was first registered in that year, the Nepal Tarnang Ghedung was first formed in 1956; the Nepal Bhasha Manka Kala was organised in June 1979; and the Nepal Magar Langali Sangh and the Thakali Sewa Samiti in 1982. Predecessors to the Mahasangh include the Nepal Sarvajatiya Adhikar Manch (Forum for the Rights of All Nationalities), organised in 1986, and the Bibidh Dharma, Bhasha, Jati tatha Janajati Sangharsha Samiti (Various Religions, Languages, and Nationalities Action Committee), which was active in 1990 during the Jana Andolan.

The term "janajati" as interpreted and applied by the Nepal Janajati Mahasangh, has both inclusive and exclusive aspects. A significant indication of the Janajatis' conception of themselves and of the nation is their insistence on translating the term as "nationalities" rather than the previously more-frequently used "tribals". This change indicates a shift to self-definition from externally-based identification, and draws attention to their conviction that Nepal consists of a number of equal nationalities which collectively constitute the nation rather than a set of tribals who stand in opposition to the nation. The gloss "nationalities" may also be preferred for the ambiguity suggested by its two dictionary definitions. It can refer simply to "groups of people, each of which has a common and distinguishing linguistic and cultural background and form one constituent element of a larger group (as a nation)," though it also suggests that each of these aggregations of people may be "potentially capable of forming a nation-state."

In an attempt to incorporate the widest possible number of "nationalities" and to avoid discriminating against any linguistic or cultural group, the Mahasangh avoids defining "janajati" in terms of some Kirat/Mongoloid/Khas/Indo-Aryan divide, and, instead defines it in opposition to the Hindu Varna system and Hindu caste groups. Janajatis are described as "fundamentally non-Hindu", where Hindu is understood to mean those who accept a place in the Varna system of hierarchy. This explicit anti-Hindu definition reflects the recent tendency of many of these ethnic associations to actively agitate for a return to their indigenous cultures and to reject the influence of year of Hinduisation.

While the Janajati leaders openly acknowledge that many individuals among these groups practise Hindu rituals, they categorically dismiss any classification of Janajati groups that uses the Varna categories of Sudra or Vaisya. Ironically, then, while they broadly define "janajati" so as to include a wide range of groups with differing ways Of life, world views, customs and territory, they base this definition on a negative characteristic which exclude from membership any group which has or accepts a place in the Varna system. In practice, any tribal and ethnic group in Nepal seeking membership in the Mahasangh has been accepted. Hindu caste groups including untouchable communities, and Christian or Muslim-based groups, have not been considered eligible.

The founders of the Mahasangh also mean for the term to have a positive definition, indicating the "aborigines" of Nepal, who, in their view, share common interests because of the treatment their cultures have received since the formation of the Nepali State. This assertion that Janajatis are the aborigines of Nepal is intended to support the view expressed by Suresh Ale Magar that "we Janajati deserve to be treated as full citizens of this country," but is sometimes unfortunately interpreted by Parbatiya Hindus to imply that, in the opinion of the Janajatis, Hindu caste groups are not as entitled as the Janajatis to their citizenship.

The barely submerged hint of exclusion or separatism occasionally bubbles to the surface when the emphatic flair with which Janajatis express their point that "we, too, are Nepali" is often misinterpreted by Parbatiya Hindus, who hear them saying "we are the only Nepali". This misunderstanding lends a high emotional content to the rhetoric on all sides of this issue which threatens to obscure the substance of the debate and the possibilities for understanding and solving the problem. "We have never said that Bahuns are not part of the nation," argues Tamang. "We have only insisted that Janajatis be equally acknowledged." He adds that "as long as Hindus continue to insist that Nepal is a nation and not a nation in the making, it is clear that they mean that this is their nation, a Hindu nation."

Nevertheless, Tamang acknowledges that within the Janajati communities there are some individuals who take more extreme positions, arguing that political parties should form along ethnic lines and should insist on full territorial autonomy.

But while talk of separatism may reflect the consideration of hypothetical action, most Janajati leaders agree with the calmer and more practical view expressed by Tamang. Subash Nembang, an attorney and member of the Upper House of Parliament, argues that "we need to be practical about demands for autonomy since the ethnic groups are so intertwined and dispersed." This preference for a single nation composed of numerous nationalities is reflected in the stated goals of the Mahasangh, which are "to respect the freedom, equality, and fraternity of other Janajati organisations; to encourage different cultures to flower since diversity, not unity, is a global fact; and to make a single sovereign state of nations."

Numerous other ethnic, linguistic, religious and regional groups not belonging to the Mahasangh also object to the reigning definition of the nation, the narrowness of representation, or the limited and precarious provision for the rights of minority communities in Nepal. Among these, the Utpidit Jatiya Utthan Manch (Uplifting Forum for the Oppressed Castes), with organisations in 50 districts, was organised in 1987 to focus on the interests and rights of the untouchable castes of the Tarai and the hills.

Like the Mahasangh, the Manch wants a secular state and opposes Hinduism as a system because it endorses discrimination against untouchables. However, as Pradam Lal Bishwakarma, the General Secretary of the Manch, argues, "Untouchables are oppressed by all other groups in Nepal. We do not want to reform Hinduism, we want a nation where we are free to be Nepalis in any way we choose. We want equality and human rights for all, and to make ourselves citizens. While the law provides for equality, this does not extend in practice." As long as the laws allow for "traditional discrimination" and provide insufficient means for legal recourse, says Bishwakarma, the untouchable community will continue to face serious disadvantages.

The lack of accurate census data and the uncertain level of local support presents serious difficulties in analysing the strength of each of these associations. "The biggest problem in analysing the question of ethnicity is data," says Anand Aditya, lecturer in political science at Tribhuvan University. In the absence of reliable data, each grouping or federation can, and indeed, does claim to represent a majority of Nepal's citizens. The Government figures have it that more than 80 percent of its citizens are Hindu; the Mahasangh believes that Janajatis represent approximately 70 percent of the population of Nepal; the Manch maintains that untouchables account for 60 percent of the total population; and the Sadbhavana Party estimates that the Tarai contains half the Nepali population. In Aditya's opinion, "these figures are based more on sentiment than data."

Behind the cacophony of rising demands is a need for a framework that allows for more equal and open competition.

Making Nepal

Nations are, in the words of Benedict Anderson, "imagined political communities". Ernest Gellner (Nations and Nationalities) observes that nations are not "inscribed into the nature of things", though they may be built upon the existing flotsam and jetsam of culture: they are not discovered, or awakened, but made. Nationalism is "the striving to make culture and polity congruent."

One of the most surprising and perplexing problems of late twentieth century politics has been the difficulty of reconciling the ideals of cultural, linguistic, and ethnic homogeneity in the nation-state with the realities of ethnic and cultural pluralism. Politicians have usually concluded that national unity depends upon the creation or maintenance of a notion of cultural homogeneity.

Dor Bahadur Bista, in Fatalism and Development, has noted that in Nepal "(o)ne of the main arguments put forward for the elimination of the various ethnic cultures is the need to develop a strong national identity. Some pundits are arguing that this can only be possible with cultural homogeneity — with the complete institution of caste values." But as Gellner notes, "(states) can only become ethnically homogenous if they kill, expel, or assimilate" those who do not fit the national mould.

All too frequently, the obsession with homogenisation emerges from the desire for national unity. This pathological drive for an exclusive and homogenising nationalism is what led Albert Einstein to declare nationalism "an infantile disease, the measles of mankind."

Is there an alternative path to the 19th century ideal of a culturally homogenous nation-state? If, as Gopal Singh Nepali claims, "Parbatiya culture will no longer work as a model for nationhood," then "the search is on," as Prayag Raj Sharma noses (Himal May/Jun 1992), "for a single cultural identity that would make Nepal a nation-state rather than merely a state." Can this search uncover or create an identity that is equally cognisant and respectful of all the multiple cultures of Nepal? Is Bista correct in his claim that "pluralism is not necessarily a problem for the development of…a nation"?

The recent changes in Nepal —specifically the overthrow of the partyless Panchayat system, the writing of anew democratic constitution, and the political dialogues of the past three years — have underscored the fluid and malleable character of the discourse underlying the artifice of the Nepali nation, and drawn attention to the always ongoing process of forming and transforming societies.

In the years following Prithvi Narayan Shah's conquests, the Gorkhali aspiration to make their Kingdom a true "Hindustan" faced external threats from the British and the Mughals, and internal threats posed by geography and religious, ethnic and political differences among their subjects. In addition to the creation of an institutional administration, state-building required the formation of a national ideology. With the fall of other Hindu principalities in South Asia to the British, Gorkha saw itself as the only remaining independent Hindu realm and acted to preserve the purity of that realm.

In the ensuing years, finding common ideological ground was even more difficult. As Andras Hefer has noted, within the possessions of the Gorkha kingdom were a wide array of social groups speaking more than 40 distinct languages; three historically and regionally distinct caste hierarchies, a number of loosely defined groups in the middle hills, and culturally distinct Tibeto-Burman speaking populations along the northern frontier. Over the years, strategies employed to create a Hindu nation out of disparate populations included persuading these populations to adopt sonic Hindu practices, broadening the definition of 'Hindu', and outlawing the conversion of Hindus to other religions. Since the late 18th century, the language and culture promoted by the State has been that of the Hindu population of the hill regions.

One significant step in this process was taken in 1854, with the codification of a national hierarchy that ascribed a status to each of the categories of social groups named in the Muluki Ain. This civil code served a dual purpose by distinguishing Nepal's society from foreign societies and cultures, and by justifying the placement of the rulers at the top of the hierarchy. This new social universe ranked high Hindu castes at the top, followed by an array of non-Hindu hill groups, Bhotes, and, at the bottom, untouchables.

The legal code put forth the country's laws on diverse social, religious, economic and administrative matters in 163 categories in order to ensure that all subjects were treated according to their offense and their status. Its inclusion of legislation on commensality and physical contact, and provision of different sorts of land tenure and trading rights to different groups, imbued ethnic labels with a significance they did not formerly have. The incorporative model set up by the Muluki Ain whereby a group's legislated difference from other groups was the very principle by which it was integrated into society has had lasting effects in Nepal that have outlived the legal hierarchy.

Contested Futures

It is a testimony to the years of state formation that underneath all the current conflict about the national culture, there is an almost unquestioned acceptance that there is a Nepali nation. The disagreement that rages, rages over the nature and character of the nation. The attempts of the Parbatiya elites to establish a Hindu nation succeeded in the establishment of a State and, to some degree, an abstract notion of nationhood, but the removal of the last institutional support for the old regime has allowed the power of the elite and the definition of the nation to be brought into question. The emerging dissonant voices heard in Nepal, for the most part, are not embryonic nationalisms that threaten to compete with Nepali nationalism -there is no Tamang nationalism, Gurung nationalism, or Janajati nationalism, for instance. What they represent is differing visions of Nepali nationalism.

As in Eastern Europe, the authoritarian system in Nepal managed to submerge rather than resolve the regional and ethnic animosities in an ethnically diverse population. Not surprisingly, these differences reemerged as the suppression was lifted. And in as much as the Parbatiya Bahuri-Chhetri culture is identified with the State, it is not surprising that the Janajatis and others try to distance themselves from this culture.

The Janajati associations have perhaps been most forceful in their criticism of, and opposition to, the notion of Nepal represented by the 1990 Constitution and current Government .policies.

Most Parbatiya Hindus point to the new Constitution to refute the Janajatis' claim that Nepal has yet to provide them respect and equality. In fact, the Constitution does make a complete break with the historical model of national integration and acknowledges the cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity of the Nepali population. However, while the rights provided by. Article 12 are the cornerstone on which ethnic, regional, linguistic and religious dissent can be built, many Nepalis argue that the rights provided by the Constitution for these communities arc severely limited and precarious. Most particularly, they argue that the religious freedoms mentioned in Articles 2 and 11, and spelled out in Article 19, are undercut by the assertion in Article 4, that Nepal is a Hindu Kingdom. How can this be, they ask, if the nation is constituted by "the Nepali people irrespective of religion" (Article 2)?

Furthermore, they argue, the right of each community to preserve and promote its own language, script, and culture, and to operate schools up to the primary level in its own mother tongue, is impotent without the provision of Governmental financial support. Meanwhile, the declaration of Nepal as a Hindu Kingdom and Nepali as the national language allows the Government to spend its financial resources for the support of Hindu temples, a Sanskrit university, and Nepali, even as it ignores the cultures and languages of the other communities. "This is why," explains Padma Ratna Tuladhar, "whenever I am branded a communal politician, I respond that it is the Government which is communal."

Despite the tribute in Article 2 to the multiethnic and multilingual character of Nepal, many Nepalis see the 1990 Constitution as another attempt to impose a national identity based on the cultural and linguistic heritage of one minority.

The perception that Nepal's Hindu elite are determined to impose a national identity based on their own culture has been reinforced by the controversial drive last year to make Sanskrit a compulsory subject in schools. Such actions fuel the belief that high-caste Hindus are interested in making Nepal "their country" and ignoring the cultures of others.

While most Nepalis feel that there is a need to maintain Nepali as a national language, many feel that it is time to move away from the process of sanskritisation that has characterised the development of the language. Some, like Bal Krishna Pokharel in 1964 and Rishikesh Shaha in 1982, have suggested that much of the vocabulary needed to enrich Nepali could be adopted from existing Nepali dialects or from other Nepali languages like Newari. As Shaha observes, "words borrowed from Sanskrit do not always have the same natural vigour, simplicity and raciness as the expressions borrowed from the dialects."

Since contested futures are the hallmark of democracies, might Nepal avoid ethnic strife and find national unity by embracing diversity rather than by imposing uniformity? In a garden whose diversity now exceeds the four caste divisions and 36 tribes of Prithvi Narayan, there seems to be no consensus on what is a weed and what is a flower, which plants are to be watered, and who is to be the gardener.

Mahakabi Laxmi Prasad Devkota may have set an appropriate example when he incorporated words from Tamang, Newari and other languages into his writings, and also embraced jhyaure, a formerly disparaged folksong meter. If national unity depends on the acceptance of a framework in which multiple cultures or flowers are allowed to compete without one dominating the whole system or garden, then it may require the resurrection and embracing of indigenous "sprouts"

…planted unseen in our fields

May in bloom and wither, as God wills,

but grant me this, brother! don't trample it underfoot —

let it flower and bear fruit! Invite the spring,

and scorn not the jhyaure, dear sir…

Nepali seed and Nepali grain, the sweet juicy Song

watered with the flavour of Nepal

What Nepali would close his eyes to it?

If the fountain springs from the spirit

what heart will it not touch?

W.F. Fisher teaches anthropology at Harvard University. Fluid Boundaries, his book on ethnicity and nationalism in Nepal, with particular reference to the Thakalis, is due out soon.