Rituals of Ethnicity - Sara Shneiderman Contemporary Ethnography

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Much of this positioning has to do with the historical effects of what Mary Des Chene (2007) calls Nepal’s “condition of non-postcoloniality.” Ironically, while the fact that the country was never fully colonized is one of the central tenets of Nepali nationalism, it also accounts for the country’s near absence from the English-language historiographic record15 and Nepal’s subsequent marginalization within South Asian studies.

      I contend here that processes of state and ethnicity formation in Nepal cannot be adequately understood in isolation. Rather, they must be situated within more expansive transregional conversations that both acknowledge the reality of cross-border mobility on the ground and make use of conceptual categories from South Asian studies to develop comprehensive analytical frames. At the same time, work on Nepal has great potential to deepen the empirical basis and theoretical purchase of analyses emerging from India. Nepal offers an alternative, non-postcolonial South Asian vantage point, at once shaped by similar long-term cultural trajectories as its southern neighbor yet possessing a very different modern political history. The story of Thangmi ethnicity formation engages in South Asian conversations on ethnicity, caste, class, and the politics of marginality, not as an anomalous case from Nepal conceptualized as somewhere “other” but rather by probing how such discourses extend beyond the political borders of India to influence dynamics of subject formation in South Asia writ large.

      Beyond South Asia, both political and cultural Tibet (Goldstein 1998:4) have been important points of reference for Thangmi over time. As described in Chapter 4, the border between Nepal and the TAR is only a few miles away from several of the largest Thangmi villages. Many members of the community regularly travel across it, making use of the “border citizen” card issued jointly by the Nepali and Chinese governments that allows them to engage in cross-border travel without a passport or visa (Shneiderman 2013b). In such contexts, contemporary Thangmi generally refer to the political entity north of them as “China,” although older individuals at times still use “Tibet.” When describing the geopolitical entity, I refer to the territory directly north of Nepal as “China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region,” or “TAR.” I use “Tibetan” to describe broader cultural, religious, or linguistic concepts that relate to the Tibetan cultural world but are not necessarily limited to the boundaries of political Tibet. Chapter 3 explains how the complexes of Tibetan language and Buddhist religion perceived to originate across the border to the north figure prominently in Thangmi ideologies of synthesis, providing an important counterpoint to the Nepali and Hindi languages, as well as Hindu religion, emanating from the south.

      My initial intentions to conduct research in an equally balanced manner between Thangmi communities in Nepal, India, and the TAR never came to fruition. I could not secure research permission for more than one month in the TAR. The people represented in this book are, therefore, primarily those whom I describe as “Thangmi in Nepal” and “Thangmi in India” (although “Thangmi in China” make brief appearances, especially in Chapter 4).

      Brian Axel pinpoints the potential problem with such terminology in his ethnography of the Sikh diaspora: “One would be hard put to say that, preferring the local to the global, there are no diasporas, rather Chinese in New York or, for example, Sikhs in London” (2001:1). He opts instead for the doubled “Sikh diaspora as a diaspora” (8) to reiterate that it is the diaspora itself that is his object of study, not “exemplary” members of it in any particular location (1). Chapter 6 explains why the Thangmi case complicates such definitions of diaspora. My point here is that focusing on a diaspora, or any other type of multisited community, as the object of one’s study does not obviate the need to evaluate carefully how various members of it orient themselves within specific nation-state frameworks at specific historical junctures.

      For me, the word “in” locates a set of actions within the ideological framework of a nation, not a body within a bounded physical territory. When I write “Thangmi in Nepal,” I mean “Thangmi acting in relation to the nation-state of Nepal as a primary frame, although they may have spent time in India, or at other times have acted in relation to the nation-state of India as a primary frame, and/or may be aware of the relationship between the two frames in shaping their actions, even if they have not actually visited the other country.” “Thangmi in India” means the converse. By “Thangmi in Nepal” or “Thangmi in India,” I do not intend to imply “Thangmi who have never left Nepal” or “Thangmi who have a certain essential quality because they were born in, or live in, India.” Sometimes, I use “Thangmi from Nepal” when referring to “Thangmi acting in relation to the nationstate of Nepal as a primary frame, but who are physically present in India at the point of action,” and “Thangmi from India” when I mean the opposite.

      Why do I not simply use the more obvious “Nepalese Thangmi” or “Nepali Thangmi,” and “Indian Thangmi”? As described in the Preface to this book, for political and legal reasons that must be taken seriously, each of these terms is rejected by some subset of those ostensibly described by it.

       Historical, Political, and Personal Contexts

      The Thangmi story unfolds against the backdrop of large-scale political transformations, revealing the far-reaching impacts, as well as the limits, of the discourses and practices of democracy and communism in Nepal, India, and the TAR. The ethnographic present of this book spans a decade, from 1998 to 2008, with the broader time frame primarily that of remembered history. I made special efforts to work with older people who could recount details from personal experience dating back to the early 1940s in some cases. This locates the beginning of my narrative at the very end of colonialism in India, the final phase of Rana rule in Nepal, and the years immediately preceding the assertion of Chinese control in Tibet. Supplementing ethnography with documentary evidence occasionally allows me to project further back into the past, locating the roots of political transformations that occurred during the period of my research in ongoing processes of state formation and ethnic classification that began much earlier.

      In the wake of Indian independence in 1947, followed by the Constituent Assembly of 1948–1950, democracy became an important vector shaping political subjectivity across South Asia. In a novel application of a core concept of liberal democracy, the Indian constitution enshrined a commitment to the “upliftment” of marginalized communities. However, the implementation of such ideals in administrative practice remains a contentious issue, underlying debates over affirmative action, usually called “reservations” in India, which in turn point to larger questions about the nature of political subject formation.

      The year 1951 saw the beginnings of Nepal’s first experiment with multiparty democracy, as activists from Nepal used their exile base in India to overthrow the Rana oligarchy in collaboration with King Tribhuvan. This first phase of democracy came to an end in 1959, when King Mahendra acceded to the throne, banning political parties and establishing the so-called panchayat partyless democracy. The 1962 constitution legally defined Nepal as a unitary nation with only one culture and one language. Much later, in 1990, the country returned to multiparty democracy, after what is commonly referred to as the first jana andolan (N: People’s Movement). Only after the 1990 constitution officially recognized Nepal as a multicultural, multilingual state (although still a Hindu one) could ethnicity and other forms of cultural difference be discussed publicly without fear of persecution.

      Communism was a simultaneously important ideological and political force in both Nepal and India. It constituted a site of cross-border linkage between the two countries, as well as with China. In South Asia, communism and democracy are not always radically opposed ideologies nor sequential forms of governance, as in much of what is now referred to as the “postsocialist” world. Rather, democracy and communism are parallel, mutually influential political trajectories that intertwine in often unexpected ways over time to shape localized forms of political consciousness.

      Founded in the 1920s, the Communist Party of India (CPI) played a crucial role in early nationalist politics. In the 1960s, the Communist Party of

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