Book Review Pages
The Kathmandu Post Review of Books
Vol. 3, No. 23
Issue Coordinator: Anil Bhattarai
Martin Chautari for
CSRD and The Kathmandu Post
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Essay
Reviews
- Nature and the Orient : The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia. (Richard H. Grove, Vinita Damodaran and Satpal Sangwan, eds.)
- Economic Liberalization in Nepal: Sequence and Process (Keshav P. Acharya, Nara Bahadur Thapa and Shiva Sharma)
- Ascètes et Rois: Un Monastère de Kanphata Yogis au Nepal (Véronique Bouillier )
Legitimating Marginalized Voices
Seira Tamang
The fact that book reviews in the Kathmandu Post are being read and discussed by readers located in various parts of the globe in electronic news and discussion forums, highlights the manner in which the nature of knowledge production concerning Nepal and Nepalis has reached a certain juncture. While not seeking to over-emphasize the importance or indeed the impact of such commentaries, it is clear that authors encased in the ivory towers of academia, the world of bikas or the book publishing industry (none of these categories being mutually exclusive), can no longer continue to function as islands of privileged and unchallenged producers of "truth" and "knowledge".
However, what has also become clear is that while critiques and commentaries from various different sources may be taking more innovative and accessible forms, underlying structures of power that gird the manner in which "knowledge" is found to be "legitimate" remains unchanged. Nepalis may be creating spaces from which to be heard, but their voices and concerns continue to be marginalized.
For example, in a recent issue of The Nepal Digest (TND), an electronic news and discussion bulletin, Princeton University Professor Vincanne Adams responded to a review of her book "Doctors For Democracy" by Kathmandu Model Hospital's Dr. Saroj Dhital - a review originally published in the Kathmandu Post Review of Books, but re-posted on TND. Her response included the following sentence: "I also resist the urge to incite and further intellectual hostilities at a time when nearly every position adopted by Nepali and/or foreigner working in Nepal is interpreted as self-aggrandizing political profiteering."
It is apparent then, that while there is much talk about the need to create political spaces and exchange ideas and opinions, the questioning of one's work by the "natives" still can not be construed legitimately as "constructive criticism". It can but only be "intellectual hostility". Such a standpoint is not surprising given the history of Nepali intellectuals' uncritical adulation of material produced by Westerners, embedded of course, in institutionalized hierarchies of subjects and knowledges - the Occidental and the Oriental, the scientific and the superstitious, the civilized and the primitive, the developed and the underdeveloped. Nepalis actively critiquing work - and that too negatively - does indeed threaten to destabilize the old order.
That much of Dhital's review questions the import of Adams' underlying premises suggests that these destabilizing voices may less be concerned with "self-aggrandizing political profiteering" than sharply probing to discover what, if anything, an academic study has to offer to those immersed in the pressing problems it purports to describe and analyze. For example, he states "Adams seems intrigued by the thinness of the boundary between the use of politics for people's health, and the vulgar politicizing of medicine. She tries hard, through most of the book, to justify the political actions of medical professionals. In the Nepali context, this fact is so obvious that her exercise was not necessary at all."
That the issue is one of difference in the subjective opinions and subject positions of the two authors is very clear. What is of interest here is Adams' response to Dhital's questioning of her research premises - "Readers unsympathetic to the ways that scholars contest scientific universalisms and acultural objectivism will be confounded and perhaps irritated by this reading." So it is that while both their stances are based on their personal, subjective interpretations and subject opinions, Adams recourse to scholastic methodology and vocabulary both renders marginal Dhital's concerns and places her agenda on the higher ground. In so far as theory derives its substantiation from lived reality, surely her proclaimed goals of writing to "raise questions and place issues on the map for discussion, not just for Nepalis but many others who are questioning the nature, forms, and possibilities for democracy in the late 20th century", cannot be done without engaging in the fundamental questions of the relevance of research to experienced materiality.
The negating of native concerns as it threatens one's authority to speak on their behalf is made all the more clear in another conversation that took place on the TND over a year ago. This particular encounter involved fiction writer Khagendra Sangraula and his critique (again re-posted on TND from the KP Review of Books) of Michael Hutt's translations of Nepali literature. It would seem obvious that regardless of the number of years one studies or "immerses" (whatever that means) oneself in an foreign language, there is always the possibility of missing some nuanced meanings. Indeed, given that Hutt is British and teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London which limits his visits to Nepal; and that he has articulated feeling awkward about "bothering" his Nepali friends and teachers with pesky linguistic queries; and that he has said in England most Nepalis are either waiters or such others who are not interested in Nepali literature thus limiting his recourse to help whilst at home (these views expressed by Hutt at a Martin Chautari meeting some years back), questions of linguistic competence (as well as knowledge of the heterogeneity of the ethnically Nepali population in the England that is outside of SOAS) should be natural.
However, faced with criticisms of mis-translations and therefore mis-portrayals of Nepali literature and society from a Nepali writer renowned for his literary skill, style and powerful social critiques, Hutt's response is encapsulated in his statement concerning his rendition of a particular stanza: "I simply cannot see what is wrong with this translation." It is also clear that Hutt is unable to see how language and its meanings are embedded in specific, socio-historical contexts, and how thus not having lived through certain periods, and lived them with the historical burden of being an inhabitant as opposed to a visitor, might impede on one's ability to fully comprehend certain facets of a country's literature.
What he can and does see, however, is Sangraula's essay as a racially motivated rant. But in so far as literature develops within the context and content of society and its historical changes, is not the tyranny of de-nuanced, sanitized, sterilized, incorrect and perhaps even flippant translations as they strip and rob one of the felt joys, anguish and pain of shared societal experiences and realities, legitimately worthy of a passionate response? And isn't the mentioning of race by Sangraula less illustrative of a "racist agenda" than an awareness of the dynamics of living in a post-colonial, late capitalist world where structured inequalities permeate action and discourse at every level? For why else has "the foremost foreign expert on modern Nepali literature" hitherto not been reviewed by a jury of his peers (in the true sense) - Nepali or otherwise?
To end, it is interesting to note that in the preface of the 1997 book "Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom", the editors thought it appropriate to put in the following sentence: "As foreign academics our job is simply to provide a record and analysis. It is for the Nepali people themselves to determine their own political destiny." Very analogous to Adams' own assertion that her "effort was not prescriptive but descriptive", such statements only serve to reinforce the "objective, scientific, and rational" stance from which they claim to produce "legitimate knowledge" , while reinforcing the dichotomy of who provides the theory (them) and who provides the practice/action (Nepalis). To question the relevance as well as the accuracy of work produced on Nepal is to challenge such dichotomies and the theoretical categories by which Nepal and Nepalis have and continue to be framed. It is furthermore to attempt to theorize lived experiences in conceptual frameworks which are actually relevant and make sense.
(Seira Tamang is student of Political Science at American University, Washington.)
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Nature and the Orient : The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia.
Editors: Richard H. Grove, Vinita Damodaran and Satpal Sangwan
Publisher: Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988
Price: Rs. 2000
Environmental History of the Orient
Jagannath Adhikari
South and Southeast Asia present a unique opportunity to environmental historians due to their diverse ecology, ancient civilizations and their complex history of colonization. Nature and Orient is a latest attempt to discuss the environmental history of this region from a variety of perspectives – general history, history of science, archaeology, bio-geography, human geography and environmental studies. The book contains 31 research articles from leading scientists and scholars of this region. The book covers not only a wide geographical area, but also a long time span – from 50,000 BC to the present.
Even though South and Southeast Asia is a vast geographical space with diverse cultures and landscapes, various countries in this region exhibit one commonality: they were once the colonies of European countries. As a result, scientists in these ruling countries were able to experiment with their own prescriptions regarding conservation and utilization of natural resources. The scientific discourses in ruling countries thus affected the natural resource management in colonized countries. In this context the book aims to achieve two objectives: to study the development of colonial discourses about nature, risk and the control of natural resources, and to build a picture of the indigenous response to changing patterns of environmental control, both under the colonization and in the post-colonial period. The articles presented here are concerned with constructing a history of environmental transformation and natural resources management before the colonial rule, during the colonial rule and in the present independent period. Despite the general title, the impact of colonial forestry regulations on the society, particularly on the livelihood of local people in India is the main concern of most of the articles.
The book is able not only to present detailed information on various aspects of environmental change in South and Southeast Asia, but also to dispel some ong-held myths. Most importantly, this study questions glorious and romantic history reconstructed by scholars about customary management of common property without state interference during the pre-colonial period. The writings of archaeologists reveal this fact. Similarly, a few articles follow a line of argument that treats forest history not only as a history of resistance, but as a history of collaboration. These articles show that mercantile capital had already penetrated, and hill forest tracts were already colonized by the lowland Hindus even before the establishment of East India Company. Therefore, these articles argue that it is a misleading concept to consider the colonial forest policy in a vacuum.
The book also departs from many others in that some articles take a sympathetic look at the colonial forest policy. These articles, contrary to common belief, argue that colonial forestry was not very ecologically destructive, as scientific discourses on forestry during colonial period were conducive for the preservation of forests. For example, the scientists at that time had the firm belief that forests are essential for air quality, rainfall, climate control and the like. The only major alternation that took place was the monoculture in forestry and reduction of species diversity.
Even though the book does not deal directly with Nepal, it contains information that enriches our understanding of Nepal's forest history and the state's intervention in forest management. The scientific forestry introduced by British colonial rulers in India was basically German and French technology, which emphasized state control over forest land and a bureaucracy to handle the control and management of the forest. This technology had emerged within the social and economic milieu of the then Germany, where timber demand for the industrial development outpaced the supply. Therefore, the origin of German forestry lay in rationalism. The book describes how this German forest technology was introduced in India through the use of German consultants in Forestry Departments and in Training Institutes including that in Deharadun, where Nepali foresters were also trained. Thus it seems that that a scientific approach to forest management may have been introduced in Nepal, not only through British influence on Nepal's administration, but also through the training of Nepali foresters in German techniques in colonial Dehradun.
The book is also important for Nepali forest historians to evaluate the impact of infrastructural expansion (mainly railways) in India and other colonies on the deforestation in Nepal. In one of the articles, it is reported that 1760 sleepers were required for a mile of railroad. From the information provided in the article, it is estimated that about 300 trees were required for a mile of railroad. As India had few species suited for that purpose, pressure was mainly on the sal and teak forest of north India and on the sal forest of Nepal. The book reveals the damages done to forests of India while extracting the suitable trees. For example, it indicates that most of the wastage was not utilized and left in the forest and that trees in less accessible areas were simply cut and left to rot. These practices, as reported in the book, increased the fuel load of the forests leading to big forest fires. Similar damages was also done to Nepal's Tarai forests, but not much information is available as to how extraction for sale to India affected the rest of the forest and the people who were virtually dwelling in the forest at that time. This needs to be explored by the ecological historians.
(J. Adhikari is a researcher based in Pokhara)
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Economic Liberalization in Nepal: Sequence and Process
Authors: Keshav P. Acharya, Nara Bahadur Thapa and Shiva Sharma
Publisher: National Labour Academy and OXFAM GB-Nepal, 1998
Price: Price: Nrs 100/US $5
Sequence sans Consequence
NAMA
Writes the editorial of The Economist (December 19, 1998) : "The mix of unstoppable technological change with the apparently unanswerable intellectual defeat of central planning has made globalization appear inevitable: only its speed and its consequence seem open to debate." In a world of rapid technological change, ideas like self sufficiency and independence have been replaced by the concepts of interdependency and comparative and competitive advantages. It will be an intellectual madness to think about a closed door, Robinson Crusoe type economy."
Commensurate with the changes in the global economy, Nepal too had adopted economic liberalization programme since the mi- eighties and its tempo accelerated further after the reinstitution of multi party democracy in the early nineties. With the mid term poll debacle in 1995, the liberalization policy was put to illiberal tests by the successive incoming and outgoing governments - a total of six governments within a span of five years. In Economic Liberalisation in Nepal : Sequences and Processes, some Nepali intellectuals have sought to answer the question: what has happened to Nepal's liberalization policy? In fact, an appropriate question would have been: what will happen to Nepal's liberalization policy in future?
Valid lessons can be drawn both from success and failure stories; looking backward is not a bad idea. However, evaluating the impacts of a policy decision is a very difficult proposition for a number of reasons. First, a policy may not be a conscious decision, it had to be taken commensurate with the changing time and sequence. One may not find an alternative policy to compare. It is often difficult to judge a course of action by saying that, had we taken this way instead of that way, we would have been better off by this much. Second, hosts of exogenous variables may influence the policy outcomes. Third, there are complex interaction effects, making it difficult to isolate the consequences of each policy decision. Liberalization as a policy has speed, process, sequence and consequence. It is very difficult to capture all these at one time.
The researchers who undertook the study on the impacts of economic liberalization in Nepal are very much aware of this fact. That may be the reason for saying, "the study does not outline the impacts of each policy change. It conjectures towards some broad indications" (p. 10). By expressing that "the arguments put forward here are of the proponents of the liberalization experts rather than those of the authors' themselves", the authors have implicitly hinted themselves to be the opponents of the liberalization and spared an impartial, an unbiased reader from deriving the benefits of reading a research work. The academic/professional bias of the researchers is also reflected by the heavy concentration on financial sector liberalization when, in fact, they claim the real sector to be the ultimate end. The study report is replete with broad, unsubstantiated generalizations. Deductive findings are all phrased in sentences like "difficult to say", "seems to have", "should have", "expected to have" and "appear to have". Turn to the recommendation section, and you will end up with more questions than answers. However, one must admit the frankness and honesty of the authors when they call the study " a loose one".
It is fairly easy to criticize this work. But the researchers have done a commendable job of neatly classifying and documenting almost twenty-nine liberalization policy measures into financial, external and real sectors. Although they failed in explaining the consequences of the policy measures, the researchers have explained what, when and why and how those policy measures have emerged in Nepal. The book will definitely provide a starting point for researchers interested in the field of evaluating policy decisions in future.
It is difficult to understand why a charity organization like OXFAM is interested in undertaking the study of this kind. Was it meant to provide relief to poverty in Nepal from the liberalization programme? If it is so, one hardly finds any conclusive evidence. May be Tony Blair will take a note on this.
(NAMA's writings, serious and satirical, on economic planning, occasionally appear on the editorial page of The Kathmandu Post)
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Ascètes et Rois: Un Monastère de Kanphata Yogis au Nepal
Author: Véronique Bouillier
Publisher: CNRS Editions, Paris 1997
Ascetics and Kings
Anne de Sales
Véronique Bouillier's first publications on ascetics in Nepal go back at least twenty years. She became interested in the subject almost by chance, when as a young anthropologist, she visited a village in central Nepal (Kattike). Her hosts, a family, claimed that they belonged to a caste of Sannyasi. This seemed to be a contradiction in terms: a renouncer is after all supposed to repudiate society in general and reject any affiliation to caste society in particular. Bouillier tackled this paradoxical situation in her first book, Naître Renonçant (To Be Born a Renouncer), in which she analysed how the Nepali caste system allows the reintegration into society of certain people who have chosen to spend periods of their lives outside it. Her observation and description of this concrete case questioned stereotypes about the caste system, which is, too often, represented as a juxtaposition of airtight categories with impermeable boundaries.
In Ascètes et Roi (Ascetics and Kings) Bouillier follows up her research on ascetism as a religious tradition but, as the title makes clear, develops a study on the relationship between Yogis and Hindu kingship in the history of Nepal. It seems that certain Yogis, far from being outside society, were on the contrary very close to political centres. This was especially the case with the Kanphata -- the split-eared yogis -- who owe their name to the tradition of wearing rings through the cartilage of their ears.
The book is presented as a monograph of the most famous monastic temple of this sect, located in Caughera, in the Dang valley, not far from the Indian border. There the Yogis observe the cult of the saint who founded the monastery, Ratannath, and his guru, Gorakhnath, a pure form of Shiva, who is believed to have established the practice of Hatha Yoga.
The first part examines the enigmatic identity of Ratannath. The saint is not one of the heroes in the legendary corpus of the Nath, such as the famous Gopicand. He is, however, widely celebrated in the North-west of India and as far as Afghanistan, where Islam is dominant. Ratannath¹s hagiography in Caughera, as it appears throughout literary sources, oral legends and wall paintings, provides several leads.
The account that may be the most widespread presents Ratannath as a hunter-king who shoots a deer and pursues the wounded animal into the heart of the forest, where the quarry metamorphoses into Gorakhnath himself. The saint preaches non-violence (ahimsa) to the penitent king and bestows initiation on him. The new yogi king recieves the vase of the liquor of immortality (amritpatra) that is now kept in the sacred centre of the monastery.
Recalling that hunting and war are part of a king's functions in Hindu ideology, the author wonders why the saint blames the king for carrying on his legitimate activities. She attributes the passage to Buddhist influence and compares it with a similar scene in the biography of Milarepa, the 12th century Tibetan saint, that takes place in a hermitage in Nyeshang (Manang),in the north of Nepal.
But Ratannath's hagiography also reveals a Sufi influence. Sufism shares with Nathism certain psychophysiological techniques of communication with divinities. Bouillier cites Muslim sources in which Ratannath appears as Ratan Hajji (the epithet implies of course that he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca). He also is mentioned as the founder of a temple devoted to Gorakhnath in Peshawar, probably on the site of Gorkhatri, known at the time as an important pilgrimage center and Nath temple.
This area is known to be a sort of cultural crossroads. It was from there that Buddhism spread to Central Asia and Tibet, and from there too (as early as the 8th century) Sufism entered India. A hypothesis is gradually emerging: "Ratannath is located at the meeting point of these influences, geographical as well as thematic. Whether he was originally a Sufi or a Yogi, it is clear that both traditions adopted him and spread his image and his cult in their respective milieu."
Concerning the presence of the saint in the Dang Valley, the author suggests that the cult might have been introduced there along with a dynasty of Rajputs who came to settle in the Himalayan foothills as a result of the Moghul occupation of India: "Could it be that kings and yogis came together, both working towards their mutual legitimation, and founded the cult of Ratannath?"
It is precisely this reciprocity between kings and ascetics that is the main subject of the second part of the book. The estate of the monastery in Caughera is a royal gift (the 1870 edict refers to a much older donation). "The king gives material benefit in the hope of spiritual benefit", the latter signifying Ratannath's blessing that will in turn materialise as the prosperity of the kingdom. In this process the Yogis appear as privileged intercessors who have to be supported and fed. The political dimension of the royal gift of land (guthi) is clear from the fact that the monastery contributed to bringing land under cultivation at the same time as it acted as a Hindu centre. Caughera is located in a borderland that was at the time threatened by Muslim influence. The worship of Ratannath managed by the Yogis is part of a package along with the Hindu kingship that they served. The analysis rests on a thorough description of the rights and duties of the monastery towards the people living on its land as well as towards the State.
The book reads easily, successfully straddling the conventional frontier between anthropology and history. As we become familiar with daily life in Caughera, and the rituals performed there, now as in the past, a close look at the paintings on the wall of the monastery takes us to Mediaeval India in search of Ratannath, where we discover the saint participating in the mystical movement that once united Sufism and Nathism. We then come back to the Nepali Tarai where the Rajput kings are assisted in their conquest of the tribal lands by the Yogis, their ambassadors, magicians and counsellors. The popular image of yogis as unworldly renouncers evaporates after this revelation of the Yogis' instrumentality in the making of Nepal. What Bouillier's book helps us to understand in the end is that kings could not have achieved much in this world without access to that other reality.
(Anne de Sales is an anthropologist who has done research on the Chantels of Dhaulagiri.)
(N.B. An article by Veronique Bouillier, providing a synthesis of the core arguments of this book for English readers, will appear in Studies in Nepali History and Society, Vol. 3, No. 2)
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