The ambiguities of practising Jat in 1990s Nepal: elites, caste and everyday Life in development NGOs

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Notes

This passage, as with all narratives of the field in this paper, is based on my field notes but may cover several days. All details are as recorded at the time of fieldwork and verbal exchanges are verbatim.

Ramji used the Nepali expression ‘citta halne’, which refers to the act of sprinkling water over one's self for purification after contact with low castes. This would often happen to staff as they returned from site: local shopkeepers would sprinkle water on them to purify them from the pollution they would have gained through their contact with low caste beneficiaries. Staff would often comment on this practice which they saw as ‘superstition’.

Nepali for ‘I won't eat’.

D.N. Gellner, ‘Introduction: Ethnicity and Nationalism in the World's Only Hindu State’, in D.N. Gellner, J. Pfaff‐Czarnecka and J. Whelpton (eds), Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom: The Politics Of Culture in Contemporary Nepal (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), pp.3–32.

Literally ‘species’ or ‘kind’, jat is rendered in the literature as both ‘caste’ and ‘ethnic group’. The distinction between caste and ethnic group as Höfer notes was introduced by Western researchers and administration, but in general usage both ethnic group and caste were referred to as jat. See A. Höfer, The Caste Hierarchy and the State in Nepal (Innsbruck: Universistatsverlag Wagner, 1979). In development circles today, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘ethnic group’ are used in the sense of ‘non‐Hindu and speakers of Tibeto‐Burman languages’. Here, I have followed local usage of the terms ‘caste’, ‘ethnicity’, jat and jati.

A. Béteille, ‘Caste and Family in Representations Of Indian Society’, in Anthropology Today, Vol.8, no.1 (1992), pp.13–18; and A. Béteille, ‘Caste in Contemporary India’, in C Fuller (ed.), Caste Today (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp.150–77.

D.B. Bista, Fatalism and Development: Nepal's Struggle for Modernization (Calcutta: Orient Longman Ltd, 1991).

Béteille, ‘Caste in Contemporary India’, p.176.

D. Quigley, ‘Is a Theory Of Caste Still Possible?’, in M. Searle‐Chatterjee and U. Sharma (eds), Contextualising Caste (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), p.37.

J. Fabian, Power and Performance: Ethnographic Explorations Through Proverbial Wisdom and Theatre in Shaba, Zaire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).

J.L. Austin, How to Do Things With Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).

Both performing gestures and actions associated with a jat and speaking of jat are seen as ways of ‘doing’ jat. In this I follow Bourdieu's point that a given practice and the discourse on that practice are both products of the same principles. See P. Bourdieu, The Logic Of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).

C. Heaton, ‘NGOs as Thekadars or Sevak: Identity Crisis in Nepal's Non‐Governmental Sector’, in European Bulletin Of Himalayan Research, Vol.22 (2002), pp.5–36.

Newar refers to an ethnic group found predominantly in and around the Kathmandu Valley. Newar are considered to be one of the more privileged ethnic groups, and considerable numbers of the Newar jat are found in the middle level personnel of the bureaucracy in both local and central government bodies, alongside the high caste Bahun and Chetri (Nepali equivalents of priestly and warrior castes) which still dominate the judiciary, army, and the majority of senior political posts today. See L.T. Brown, The Challenge to Democracy in Nepal: A Political History (London and New York: Routledge, 1996).

A. Kondos, ‘The Question Of “Corruption” in Nepal’, in Mankind, Vol.17, no.1 (1987), pp.15–29; Bista, Fatalism and Development; and V. Adams, Doctors for Democracy: Health Professionals in the Nepal Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

E.C. Banfield, The Moral Basis Of a Backward Society (Chicago: The Free Press, 1958).

The term is from Bista, Fatalism and Development.

L. Caplan, ‘Cash and Kind: Two Media Of “Bribery” in Nepal’, in Mankind, Vol.6, no.2 (1971), pp.266–78.

Bista, Fatalism and Development.

C. Heaton, ‘“Our Differences Don't Make a Difference”: Practising Civil Society in Nepal's Non‐Governmental Sector’ (unpublished PhD thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2001).

Ibid.; and Heaton, ‘NGOs as Thekadars or Sevak’.

See K.P. Malla, The Road to Nowhere (Kathmandu: Sajha Prakashan, 1979); and Adams, Doctors for Democracy.

On the significance of ‘the outside’, generally considered a suspect and dangerous place throughout the South Asian region, see for example D. Chakrabarty, ‘Open Space/Public Space: Garbage, Modernity and India’, in South Asia, Vol.14, no.1 (1991), pp.5–31; and S. Kaviraj, ‘Filth and the Public Sphere: Concepts and Practices about Space in Calcutta’, in Public Culture, Vol.10, no.1 (1997), pp.83–113.

In an earlier period of development work, the social distance between beneficiary and benefactor would have been accompanied with specific patterns of deference. There was still, on the part of older NGO fieldworkers, an expectation that they should be ‘respected’ by project beneficiaries. While in government service, some told me, beneficiaries would kill a chicken and cook it for the field worker; ‘they would call you hajur (sir) and offer you rice beer with both hands’, one reminisced.

D. Holland, D. Skinner, W. Lachicotte Jnr. and C. Cain, Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds (London: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp.1–29.

M. Sökefeld, ‘Debating Self, Identity and Culture in Anthropology’, in Current Anthropology, Vol.40, no.4 (1999), pp.417–47.

C. Busby, The Performance Of Gender: An Anthropology Of Everyday Life in a South Indian Fishing Village (London: The Athlone Press, 2000).

See for example M. Marriott, ‘Hindu Transactions Without Dualism’, in B. Kapferer (ed.), Transaction and Meaning (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1976), pp.109–40; M. Marriott, ‘Constructing an Indian Sociology’, in Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol.21 (1989), pp.1–39; and M. Marriott and R. Inden, ‘Towards an Ethnosociology Of South Asian Caste Systems’, in K. David (ed), The New Wind: Changing Identities in South Asia (The Hague: Mouton, 1977), pp.227–38.

C. Osella, ‘Making Hierarchy Natural: The Cultural Construction Of Gender and Maturity in Kerala, India’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1993); and E.V. Daniel, Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

Following Goffman, ‘fronts’ are understood as those ‘clues’ from which informants ‘read’ others, such as their speech, their clothing, their gait. See I. Goffman, The Presentation Of Self in Everyday Life (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1959), p.32.

Staff were expected by NGO management to be models of behaviour for members of the local society: clean, hardworking, with high moral standards. There was to be no ‘women, alcohol and betting’.

Most jat will use their thar (clan/lineage) name as a surname, but this is often an indication of the jat status of the individual. Untouchables, on the other hand will use their jat name as surname.

Béteille, ‘Caste in Contemporary India’.

A common term in Anglo‐Indian. The Hobson‐Jobson defines ‘peon’ as a Portuguese word meaning ‘footman, foot soldier’ and by extension, ‘orderly or messenger’. H. Yule and A.C. Burnell, Hobson‐Jobson: A Glossary Of Colloquial Anglo‐Indian Words and Phrases, and Of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive (London: John Murray, 1886).

The women in the office would wash on the first day of the menses and then again on the fourth day, and often might not change clothes between these days. Only after the bath on the fourth day could they enter the kitchen without polluting it.

Dharma, in both senses of the word, as ‘religion’ and ‘way of life’, was considered a key dimension of jat. Different jat were seen to be characterised by a way of life that was proper to them, and practitioners of ‘world’ religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity were also seen to constitute discrete jat.

Jati is the social referent of jat, ‘a people’.

As C. Osella shows, jokes often serve to confuse the issue of hierarchy, rather than reassert it. The joke here allowed staff to deny that jat had any meaning for them, that they were ‘only joking’, in effect. See C. Osella, ‘Friendship and Flirting: Micropolitics in Kerala, South India’, in Journal Of the Royal Anthropological Society, Vol.4 (1998), pp.189–206.

Also see A. Strathern, ‘Veiled Speech in Mount Hagen’, in M. Bloch (ed.), Political Language and Oratory in Traditional Society (London: Academic Press, 1975), pp.185–204.

J.F. Fisher, Himalayan Traders: Economy, Society and Culture in North West Nepal (London: University of California Press, 1986); E. Manzardo, ‘To Be Kings Of the North: Community Adaptation and Impression Management in the Thakalis Of Western Nepal’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1983); and N.E. Levine, ‘Caste, State and Ethnic Boundaries in Nepal’, in Journal Of South Asian Studies, Vol.46, no.1 (1987), pp.71–88.

J.L. Thompson, ‘Unmasking Culture: Women and Beauty Salons in Kathmandu, Nepal’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1997).

A. Cohen, The Politics Of Elite Culture: Explorations in the Dramaturgy Of Power in a Modern Society (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1981).

C.A. Rubenberg, ‘Ethnicity, Elitism and the State Of Israel’, in J.F. Stack (ed.), The Primordial Challenge (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp.161–84.

A.P. Cohen, ‘Belonging: The Experience Of Culture’, in A.P. Cohen (ed.), Belonging: Identity and Social Organisation in British Rural Cultures (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), p.17f.

Heaton, ‘ “Our Differences Don't Make a Difference” ’.

C.J. Fuller writes: ‘under…contemporary circumstances…the social fact of caste appears increasingly ambiguous, inconsistent and variable. What people mean when they identify themselves as members of castes…is itself changing in diverse ways and the same…applies to the identification of others’. C.J. Fuller, ‘Introduction: Caste Today’, in C. Fuller (ed.), Caste Today (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), p.26.

By this was meant mixed caste specifically; sharing water would not have been acceptable between low caste and high caste and in such mixed caste areas, project staff would have to form two users' groups; one for low caste and another comprising high caste beneficiaries. This would be written into the initial project design.

J. Ferguson and W.F. Fisher have both used the expression ‘antipolitics’ to refer to the tendency of development discourse to depoliticise or ‘define away’ the political nature of practices. See J. Ferguson, The Antipolitics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticisation, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and W.F. Fisher, ‘Doing Good? The Politics and Antipolitics Of NGO Practices’, in Annual Reviews in Anthropology, Vol.26 (1997), pp.439–64.

Between 1960 and 1990, Nepal was governed by a system of ‘guided democracy’, the Panchayat system. Under this system, all powers of government were vested in the king, while the national assembly, the Rastriya Panchayat, possessed only advisory powers. A main feature of Panchayat democracy was a ban on all political parties. It is the lifting of this ban that was the basic goal of the 1990 Movement for the Restoration of Democracy or MRD. See M. Hoftun, ‘The Dynamics and Chronology Of the 1990 Revolution’, in M. Hutt (ed.), Nepal in the Nineties: Versions Of the Past, Visions Of the Future (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp.14–27.

F.H. Gaige, Regionalism and National Unity in Nepal (London: University of California Press, 1975). Gaige reported that the state would put land confiscated in the wake of the 1964 land reforms predominantly into the hands of hill people, and were more lenient in cases of illegal land clearance and settlement when it was carried out by hill people rather than plains people. The progressive encroachment by high caste Hindus onto Gurung lands has been documented in D. Messerschmidt, The Gurungs Of Nepal: Conflict and Change in Village Society (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1976); onto Magar land in J.T. Hitchcock, The Magars Of Banyan Hill (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966); and onto Limbu lands in L. Caplan, Land and Social Change in East Nepal: A Study Of Hindu‐Tribal Relations (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1970).

Discrimination on the basis of caste in education, employment and in the courts was made illegal with the introduction of a new law code in 1963. Although observers have noted that, generally, caste practices were little affected by this, in some cases awareness of caste increased and attitudes towards observance of caste rules hardened. See B.C. Bishop, Karnali Under Stress: Livelihood Strategies and Seasonal Rhythms in a Changing Nepal Himalaya (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p.154.

K.B. Bhattachan, ‘Ethnopolitics and Ethnodevelopment: An Emerging Paradigm in Nepal’, CNAS National Seminar on State Leadership and Politics in Nepal (Kirtipur, Nepal, 29–30 June 1994), identifies three phases in the history of writing on ethnicity in Nepal by social scientists. From 1950–1970, both western and Nepali social scientists focused on the ethnographic study of single ethnic/caste groups and largely ignored issues of conflict. Between 1970 and 1990 Western social anthropological studies highlighted conflict. See for example L. Caplan, Administration and Politics in a Nepalese Town: The Study Of a District Capital and its Environs (London: Oxford University Press, 1975); P. Caplan, Priests and Cobblers: A Study of Social Change in a Hindu Village in Western Nepal (London: Intertext Books, 1972); Gaige, Regionalism and National Unity in Nepal; and P. Blaikie, J. Cameron and D. Seddon, Nepal in Crisis: Growth and Stagnation at the Periphery (London: Routledge, 1983). But in the same period Nepali anthropologists continued to stress inter‐ethnic harmony. Bhattachan's final phase is the post–1990 period.

K.P. Dahal, ‘Grasping the Tarai Identity’, in Himal, Vol.5, no.3 (1992), pp.17–18.

S. Shah, ‘Throes Of a Fledgling Nation’, in Himal, Vol.6, no.2 (1993), pp.7–10.

Ibid.

Janajati refers to both non‐caste, ‘indigenous’ people and low caste groups.

W.F. Fisher, ‘Nationalism and the Janajati’, in Himal, Vol.6, no.2 (1993), pp.11–14.

Reported in T. O'Neill, ‘Peoples and Polity: Ethnicity and Identity in Nepal’, in Contributions to Nepalese Studies, Vol.21, no.1 (1994), pp.45–75.

Until 1990, all formal organisations were regarded with suspicion as harbouring undesirable subversive potential, while the administrative hurdles to the establishment and operation of non‐governmental associations were considerable. The post‐1990 period, on the other hand, has seen an explosion of non‐governmental activity of all kinds.

See for example P.R. Sharma, ‘Bahuns in the Nepali State’, in Himal, Vol.7, no.2 (1994), pp.41–5. Overt identification would have been counterproductive as the constitution of 1990 stipulates that no party, formed on the basis of ethnicity, can partake in national political life. Article 113 (3) of the 1990 constitution states: ‘The election committee shall refuse to register any political organisation or party which pre‐judicially restrict any citizen of Nepal from becoming its member on the basis of religion, caste, tribe, language or sex or if the name, objective, symbol or flag indicates as belonging to any particular religion or being communal or of a nature tending to disintegrate the country’.

Kathmandu Post (24 Nov. 1996).

J. Pfaff‐Czarneka, ‘Vestiges and Visions: Cultural Change in the Process Of Nation Building in Nepal’, in D.N. Gellner, J. Pfaff‐Czarnecka and J. Whelpton (eds), Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom: The Politics Of Culture in Contemporary Nepal (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), pp.419–70; A. Macfarlane, ‘Identity and Change Among the Gurungs (Tamu‐Mai) Of Central Nepal’, in D.N. Gellner, J. Pfaff‐Czarnecka and J. Whelpton (eds), Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom: The Politics Of Culture in Contemporary Nepal (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), pp.185–204.

See Gellner, ‘Introduction: Ethnicity and Nationalism in the World's Only Hindu State’, pp.177–8 for an account of anti‐Brahmanism after 1990.

Ibid., pp.3–32; and O'Neill, ‘Peoples and Polity: Ethnicity and Identity in Nepal’.

K.P. Malla, ‘Bahunvada: Myth or Reality?’, in Himal, Vol.5, no.3 (1992), pp.22–4.

In 1992, the state supported 16 years of free education for Bahuns cultivating the Sanskrit language. Annually, the state supported 690 students at a cost of NR45,000 per student at the Mahendra Sanskrit University, while students in other disciplines in the various private campuses in Kathmandu were not entitled to financial support from the state. See Malla, ‘Bahunvada: Myth or Reality?’.

Bista, Fatalism and Development.

A. Pahari, ‘Fatal Myth: A Critique Of Fatalism and Development’, in Himal, Vol.5, no.1 (1992), pp.52–4; D.P. Bhandari, ‘Archetype not Stereotype’, in Himal, Vol.5, no.4 (1992), pp.4–5; Dahal, ‘Grasping the Tarai Identity’; Malla, ‘Bahunvada: Myth or Reality?’; S. Sharma, ‘Book Review: D.B. Bista Fatalism and Development’, in Himalayan Research Bulletin, Vol.XI, nos.1–3 (1991), pp.139–41; Y. Luintel, ‘Hindu Values and Kathmandu’, in Himal, Vol.2 (1992), p.1; T. Laird, ‘Corruption and Fatalism’, in Himal, Vol.5, no.2 (1992), p.1; E.M. Bennett, ‘Is Pahari Being Defensive?’, in Himal, Vol.5, no.3 (1992), pp.4–5; S.L. Mikesell, ‘Misnomered Development’, in Himal, Vol.5, no.4 (1992), pp.3–4; and N. Molin, ‘Personal Faith and Public Doctrine’, in Himal, Vol.5, no.4 (1992), p.4.

See for example P.R. Sharma, ‘Bahuns in the Nepali State’; Malla, ‘Myth or Reality?’; and P.R. Sharma, ‘How to Tend This Garden?’, in Himal, Vol.5, no.3 (1992), pp.7–9.

See for example Shah, ‘Throes Of a Fledgling Nation’; and G.S. Nepali quoted in Fisher, ‘Nationalism and the Janajati’.

Cohen, The Politics Of Elite Culture; and Rubenberg, ‘Ethnicity, Elitism and the State Of Israel’.

See for example S.L. Mikesell, ‘The Paradoxical Support Of Nepal's Left for Comrade Gonzalo’, in Himal, Vol.6, no.2 (1993), pp.31–3.

Béteille, ‘Caste in Contemporary India’.