Articles

---

• Arjun Guneratne

  The Tax Man Cometh: The Impact of Revenue Collection on Subsistence Strategies in Chitwan Tharu Society
  Studies of peasant societies have drawn attention to the control of land as a centrally important aspect of peasant subsistence. However, many households of Tharu peasants in Chitwan, Nepal, during the first half of this century, assured themselves of subsistence, even where land was readily available, by eschewing control of land to work as servants for landholding households. In effect, they were landless by choice. Because labor was scarce, they could negotiate favorable terms, and avoid the taxation and exploitation by revenue collectors (jimidars) to which landholding peasants were subject. The jimidar, usually himself a Tharu, was, as agent of the state, not external to Tharu society, but was structurally pivotal, standing at the nexus of its moral, social, and economic dimensions, and linking it to the larger polity. I argue in this paper that to understand the choices that peasants make, we must first delineate the parameters of the larger system of social and economic reproduction of which they are a part.
  Return to 1(1) Contents

• Pratyoush Onta

  Creating a Brave Nepali Nation in British India: The Rhetoric of Jati Improvement, Rediscovery of Bhanubhakta and the Writing of Bir History
  This essay studies the crafting of the foundation of two of the central tenets of dominant Nepali nationalism: Nepali language and Bir (brave) national history. While Rana rulers of Nepal and their intellectual bards did not build a historical genealogy for the Nepali nation, in a different political context, a small group of Nepali proto middle-class men in British India did exactly that via the self-conscious fostering of the Nepali language and the writing of a bir history of the Nepali nation. Their work is the subject of this essay. In the first two decades of this century a discourse of self-improvement designed broadly around the two themes of general education and the progress of the "Gorkha language" was generated from Banaras by a small group of Nepalis. Its force was found to be compelling in Darjeeling which, by the early 1920s, became an important site for the production of "the rhetoric of improvement". From the mid-1920s this rhetoric was applied toward familiarising the putative Gorkha jati (community/nation) with its own history, both literary and political. Darjeeling-based Nepali language activists made a more decisive effort to rename their language as Nepali and they rediscovered Bhanubhakta as a potent icon for this purpose. In the 1930s and the 1940s, these jati advocates rendered Nepali history in the bir mode by constructing and disseminating the pantheon of brave warriors from the 'unification era' (1740s to 1816) - from Prithvi Narayan Shah to Balbhadra - as independent Nepal's national heroes. Thus these Nepalis first identified the Nepali language as an essential element of a unifying historical narrative for their own self-identity as a community. Later they rendered Nepal's non-colonized past in a bir mode as another essential element of that narrative. Hence, for this group of Nepalis, the Nepali language and a bir history of the Nepali nation formed a set around which projects of inculcating self-consciousness and promoting self-improvement of the Nepali jati could be organized. These cultural discourses later became available to larger groups of Nepali nationalists situated in multiple locales in Nepal and India and were adopted by the post-Rana and Panchayati states in Nepal for their own purposes.
  Return to 1(1) Contents

• Abhi Subedi

  Literary and Artistic Response to Panchayat Utopia
  My article is about the unique and tacit discourse between 'Modernist' trends in Nepali literature and art, and Nepali politics that came into existence after the political change of 1960. The concurrent developments are not mere coincidences, they are related in a number of ways. The mode of search for utopia as adopted by the polity was mainly shaped by its need to define and project its identity through the medium of indigenous and very 'native' sememes such as village, roads, language, education, dress, single party legislature and so on. This need of the Panchayat polity to define its identity became, interestingly enough, also the need of the highly educated Western-trained intelligentsia who tried to justify the existence of the polity in terms of its relevance as a socio- political norm of the times, one flexible enough to incorporate the times (which in fact it did only ostensibly). The literary and artistic response to this existential Utopia was one of a tacit nature. This article explores the unique pattern of response of the writers and artists - unique in the sense that they responded to the above Utopia through the adoption of a semiotic structure of art and literature which the critics have put under the rubric 'modernist', considered as a unique mode of expression and dialogue.
  Return to 1(1) Contents

• Mary Des Chene

  Ethnography in the Janajati-yug : Lessons from Reading Rodhi and Other Tamu Writings
  This article argues that foreign anthropological practice requires fundamental change if its ethnographic products are to be of value in contemporary Nepal. The first section reviews standard anthropological practice from three angles: the relation of theory to practice, the cultural location of foreign ethnographers, and the limitations of ethnographic depictions of Nepal. It argues that the current focus on nationalism and ethnic consciousness requires an anthropology that goes beyond face-to-face fieldwork, and one that pays close attention to indigenous social analysis in its many forms. The second section exemplifies these points through a discussion of recent Tamu (Gurung) writings on Tamu society and on janajati (ethnic minority) problems more generally. Particular attention is paid to debates over minority languages. The third section compares recent janajati cultural movements with those of Nepali jati activists early in this century. It argues that, precisely because the successes of earlier Nepali cultural movements created the cultural hegemony that janajatis now protest, those non-janajati Nepalis who are the inheritors of that cultural tradition are well-placed to comprehend the motivations and struggles of cultural minorities. Thus a mutual rethinking of Nepali history, by janajati activists and non-janajati Nepali intellectuals is needed today. This section is addressed mainly to a Nepali audience, but also argues that foreign ethnographers need to be broadly conversant with Nepali social history in order to study contemporary ethnic politics.
  Return to 1(1) Contents

• Mark Liechty

  Paying for Modernity: Women and the Discourse of Freedom in Kathmandu
  For the middle class in Kathmandu, "freedom" is a key concept in the debates over what it means to be both gendered and modern. The debate is especially relevant for women who, if they cannot claim a space for themselves in the rhetoric of freedom, risk being frozen out of the emerging public sphere. This paper presents women's experiences with, and critiques of, the new "freedoms" in Kathmandu following the 1990 restoration of democracy.Return to 1(1) Contents

• Lazima Onta-Bhatta

  Street Children: Contested Identities and Universalizing Categories
  This paper analyzes how different conceptions about street children in Nepal have evolved, and how various actors such as the state, development organizations, the media, and the street children themselves have contributed to the processes of creating and consolidating street children's identities. While terms such as "children of the street" and "children on the street" have been adopted to locate Nepali street children within internationally established categories, the word khate has been widely used and accepted as a collective identity of all street children. These generalizing conceptions are created by the state, the media, and child development organizations in the processes of designing policies and programs, and raising public awareness on child rights and the situation of the street children. Such attempts to give meaning to the realities of the street children have, however, not been sensitive to the differences among the street children or to their perceptions of themselves. The street children contest these generalizing categories for blurring the differences among them, resent them for demeaning their very existence, but also utilize them to take advantage of immediate circumstances for long or short-term personal gains. Return to 1(1) Contents

Commentary

---

• Krishna Bhattachan

  Teaching and Learning Process in Social Sciences at Tribhuvan University: A Need to Move from a Boot-Camp to a Bazaar Model
  The social sciences are among the most popular degree programs at Tribhuvan University, yet they are not doing an adequate job of providing graduates who can effectively address the many social problems of Nepal. This paper sets out the practical barriers to effective social science training at the national campus of Tribhuvan University in Kirtipur, and proposes a series of steps to bring that training into accord with the needs of the country. It is based on experience as a student during the 1970Õs and as a faculty member since the late 1980Õs at Tribhuvan University. A top-down administrative structure and the politicization of education are identified as the fundamental barriers to effective social science training. Specific strategies to overcome these problems are proposed including curricular reforms, administrative changes, greater departmental autonomy, and a number of proposals to facilitate faculty research, faculty-student interaction, and student participation in decision-making processes. I argue that the pedagogical and administrative models must change from a Òboot campÓ approach to a ÒbazaarÓ model in which both faculty and students can tailor the system of teaching and learning to the needs of particular disciplines and toward effective analysis of Nepali social issues.Return to 1(1) Contents

Literature Review

---

• Bikas Joshi

  Diagnoses of the Nepali Economy
  This review essay examines several recent publications on the structural adjustment and liberalization policies initiated in Nepal from the mid-1980Õs and particularly after the establishment of democratic governance in 1991. The two publications reviewed in detail are Bishwambher PyakuryalÕs Impact of Economic Liberalization in Nepal (Kathmandu: Santosh K. Nair, 1995) and Structural Adjustment in Nepal: Impact on Workers (Kathmandu: NEFAS, 1996) edited by Anand P. Shrestha and Nav Raj Dahal. Despite their different orientations and theoretical assumptions, both publications are found to be sorely inadequate to their topic. Careful examination of their limitations is taken as an opportunity to reflect more broadly on the inadequacies of economic research in Nepal, and on the kind of studies needed in order adequately to assess the effects of the new economic policies. Specific methodological deficiencies and politicization of research are identified as particular problem areas.Return to 1(1) Contents

---