The Khachchara of Kathmandu – mobility, situatedness and ethnic identification

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the role of mobility and settlement in reworking ethnic identification among the Khachchara in Kathmandu, Nepal. The Khachchara are a small group of around 350 families, the descendants of Tibetan mothers and Newar fathers, who predominantly worked and lived as traders in Tibet. After the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Khachchara had the option of obtaining citizenship, yet many returned to Nepal with their spouses and children. On relocating to Nepal, caste considerations of purity came into play for the descendants of mixed marriages, forcing the Khachcharas to re-evaluate their ethnic identities as well as their place in Nepali society. Exploring Khachchara genesis through their history, mobility stories and their present hybrid affiliations shows how mobility disembeds identity and engages elective belonging. In this paper, the paradox of Khachchara ethnicity negotiating common ground in terms of their distinctiveness as a group, particularly through self-help organisations such as the skyid sdug (Tib.), and their assimilation into other ethnicities, is set in a discussion of translocal and transnational geographies, addressing both situatedness and de-territorialisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobility
• ethnicity
• transnationalism
• situatedness
• Khachchara

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to my Tibetan interpreter, Chimey Dhonden, for his invaluable support as well as to the Khachchara who kindly participated in the interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. A note on transliteration: For English phonetisation of Nepali terms I have used “The concise dictionary of Nepali language” (Singh 2010). There are several styles of phonetisation of the Nepali term such as Khatsara. Kha tsa ra in Tibetan. For Tibetan terms, the Wylie transliteration model has been applied. However, skyid sdug is pronounced and often phonetizised into kidu (Mühlich 1997) or kyiduk (Ellingsen 2010).

2. This refers to my Ph.D. fieldwork on the cultural appropriations of the city by the Newar, the dominant ethnic group, and Tibetan refugees.

3. Take for example, the known Khachchara scholar Tsering Shakya (The dragon in the land of snows, 1999).