“Let's See What Happens”: Hope, Contingency, and Speculation in Nepali Student Activism

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes Nepali student activists’ resistance and resilience as strategies that foreground their aspirations within existing political constructs. While they may enter into party politics through student organizations, they downplay their roles as political party foot soldiers. By focusing on their creative strategies and coping mechanisms during the political movement that ousted the monarchy in 2006, I highlight the nature of hope in youth political action through a common phrase they use: “Let's see what happens.” Using the concept of “subjunctive instrumentality” and ethnographic engagement, I analyze students’ internal micro-politics alongside public protests to demonstrate how they interweave the categories of idealism and opportunism, simultaneously inhabiting both in a way that makes politics personal and the personal political. These student activists’ “not-yet” orientation, in which they mobilize political, temporal, and symbolic contingencies, provides alternative templates for the present and visions for the future.

Keywords:

• Activism
• democracy
• youth
• hope
• transgressive humor
• subjunctive instrumentality

Acknowledgments

I thank the five anonymous reviewers for their invaluable suggestions as well as Thomas Fenton and Robert Shepherd for their editorial guidance. I am also indebted to feedback I received from Anna Stirr, Iván Arenas, Laura Kunreuther, and Anne Allison.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Amanda Snellinger is a political and legal anthropologist whose research focuses on South Asia, particularly Nepal. She is currently a research associate at the University of Oxford's School of Geography and the Environment.

Notes

1 Student leaders’ age typically ranged from late-twenties to late-thirties while student cadres age typically ranged from late teens to late twenties. For a detailed analysis of the meaning of youth in Nepali politics see Snellinger 2009.

2 This analysis does not include the Maoist student wing, the All Nepal National Independent Student Union (Revolutionary) ANNISU(R), for two reasons. The first is that their history and ideological orientation vis-à-vis democracy differ from that of other student wings. The second reason is that the ANNISU(R) did not participate in the seven other student union's joint protest during the Movement Against Regression because they were underground fighting in the Maoists’ People's War against the Nepali state.

3 cf. Paley 2002.

4 Rancière 2004. I want to emphasize the importance of making this conceptual shift in the context of Nepal's politics. Many have considered Nepal's democracy on the brink of failure since the beginning of the 1996 civil war because they judge it according to the standards of formal democratic governance (Fund for Peace 2013; Jaiswal 2013; Riaz and Basu 2007). However, if we consider Nepal's political process in radical democratic terms, then we see Nepal is thriving. Its political history has been an ongoing contestation over distribution and meaning that has generated new interpretations and voices, which are then incorporated into the debate, or sidelined by it.

5 cf. Stoler 2009, 105–111.

6 Stoler 2009, 106.

7 For a detailed background on students’ political role during the Rana and Panchayat eras see Hoftun, Raeper, and Whelpton 1999; Ojha 2012; Snellinger 2015; and Whelpton 2005.

8 See Thapa and Sijapati 2003, 44 for a detailed diagram of the Communist Party of Nepal's complicated history of splits and mergers.

9 Every mainstream political party has a student wing, most of which are registered with the Free Student Union and actively participate on various campuses depending on their size. The number of student organizations varies due to splits and mergers between political parties. During my research I worked with the student wings of all the major political parties, which ranged from seven to nine registered student unions. The Maoist student wing ANNISU(R) was surreptitiously present on campuses during the war and did not officially join the Free Student Union until 2007 after the peace talks.

10 In 1970 the Panchayat Government tried to ban Free Student Union on campuses but the Nepal Supreme Court deemed the move unconstitutional, ruling that student unions were part of the Free Student Union and not political organizations. For more details on the history of the Free Student Union in Nepal see Snellinger 2005.

11 For background on the 1990 People's Movement see Hufton, Raeper, and Whelpton 1999 and Oguro 2001. For development of political culture, party building institutions and citizen state relations see Gellner 2003; Hachhethu 2002; Joshi and Rose [1966] 2004; Rana 1995; and Whelpton 2005. For an overview of the development of the Maoist People's War see Thapa and Sijapati 2003.

12 This dynamic is familiar in South Asia. Across the continent student politics has provided a gateway into national organized politics, in which students are socialized into party politics, build networks, and ascend through the parties’ rank and file (Hazary 1987; Verkaaik 2004). Although over the last few decades, Indian campus politics has become less of a pathway into party politics due to liberalization of university campuses and national political parties investing less in student politics (Jeffrey 2010a; Krishnan 2007; Lukose 2005).

13 Hachhethu 2002.

14 The seven parties were: Nepali Congress, Communist Party of Nepal – Unified Marxist Leninist, Nepali Congress (Democratic), Nepal Sadbhavana Party (Anandi Devi), Jana Morcha Nepal, United Leftist Front, and The Nepal Workers and Peasants Party.

15 For details on the ongoing political situation please see Shneiderman and Snellinger 2014 and Snellinger 2015.

16 The arguments I make here are focused on the student unions affiliated with the democratic parties that participated in the Movement Against Regression. While I did research with the Maoist student wing, their organizational history diverges from the professionalizing trends I analyze here. Nonetheless, the Maoists have also succumbed to the opportunistic elements of politics since they shifted from revolutionary to mainstream party in 2008 (see Hachhethu 2009 and Snellinger 2012).

17 The World Development Indicator database reports that in 2004 Nepal's higher education Gross Enrollment Rate was 5.6 percent and Gender Parity Index was 0.4.

18 While there are no reliable statistics on the caste and gender makeup of student unions, it is generally known that high-caste men dominate them, which is buttressed by demographic data of higher education, political party leadership, and government sectors. For higher education statistics see Bhatta et al. 2008; for political society and government see Hangen 2007 and Lawoti 2005; for political party leadership see Gellner 2007 and Hachhethu 2002.

19 Lakier 2007; Lawoti 2007; Subedi 2010.

20 cf. Ollieuz 2011.

21 Bista 1991; Hachhethu 2002.

22 The assertion of “voice” has been a defining feature that transformed the general public during the 2006 People's Movement (Kunreuther 2010).

23 The 2008 national youth policy defined the youth demographic as 16–40.

24 Some scholars critique this agenda of multi-party politics as an uncritical extension of the Panchayat state project that strived to make every citizen first and foremost “Nepali” in the image of the high-caste state ideal, leaving little room for ethnic and caste difference in the public sphere. (Bista 1991; Burghart 1984; Gellner, Pfaff-Czarnecka, and Whelpton 1997; Hangen 2010; Hutt 2004; Lawoti 2005; Tamang 2000).

25 Paley 2008.

26 Durham 2004, 592.

27 Fornäs 1995, 1.

28 Cole and Durham 2007, 13; cf. Jeffrey 2010a; Johnson-Hanks 2002.

29 Bucholtz 2002, 528.

30 Johnson-Hanks 2002; Mains 2007.

31 Liechty 1995.

32 cf. Bourdieu 1984; Jeffrey 2010b.

33 Cole and Durham 2007, 6.

34 Hughes 2014; Koch Anderson 2013; Luckose 2005; Verkaaik 2004.

35 Jeffrey 2010a and 2010b; Katz 2004; Mains 2007; Masquelier 2005; Ralph 2008.

36 Chakrabarty 2000, 256 in Jeffrey 2010a, 12. “Not yet” has been central to Nepali national development discourse since the Rana regime. Political elites have declared Nepali citizens are not ready for literacy, democracy, republicanism, or more recently, ethnic federalism. I thank Anna Stirr for this insight.

37 Jeffrey 2010a.

38 Chua 2011.

39 cf. Bloch [1959] 1986.

40 cf. Rancière 1999.

41 The Nepali word for anthropology is manabshrasta, which translates to the science of man.

42 Stoler 2009, 110.

43 LiPuma and Lee 2004, 43.

44 Ibid.

45 Sharkansky 1999.

46 Bista 1991, 77.

47 Snellinger 2005, 2009.

48 Ahearn 2001, 116.

49 Delegates were chosen on campuses and at district conventions. These delegates were expected to participate in the convention and vote for student union's central committee leaders. Thus, it was considered irregular if an appointed delegate was not on the voter list.

50 cf. Rancière 1999.

51 Riles 2010.

52 Vaihinger [1924] 2001.

53 Riles 2010, 5.

54 Ibid., 6.

55 cf. Johnson-Hanks 2005.

56 Shade 2001, 11.

57 Ibid.

58 Boyer and Yurchak 2010, 212.

59 Democracy Day marks the date (February 18, 1959) when King Mahendra formally announced that national elections would occur. A year later he dismissed the first elected Parliament and instated the Panchayat system of government, which lasted thirty years.

60 NSU (K) Nepal Student Union (Koirala); ANNFSU (Akhil) All Nepal National Free Student Union (United); ANNFSU (Ekikrit) All Nepal National Free Student Union (Unified); ANNFSU (ML) All Nepal National Free Student Union – Marxist Leninist; NPU Nepal Progressive Union; Nepal Student Front (Sadbhavana); and Nepal Revolutionary Student Union (Nepal Laborers and Farmers Party).

61 Hufton Raeper, and Whelpton 1999; Rana 1995.

62 cf. Sharma 2002.

63 Barnal 2013, 307.

64 Verkaaik 2003, 16.

65 April 29, 2004.

66 The Shah dynasty unified the state of Nepal as a Hindu Kingdom in 1768. In 1846, the Rana family established a hereditary prime ministership and reduced the monarchy to a figurehead. They did, however, retain the moral authority of the Shah monarchy. The Muluki Ain (civil code) of 1854 and the code of religious endowments of 1866 defined Nepal as a Hindu Rajya (Hindu Kingdom) unified and protected by Vishnu's incarnate, the Shah King, (Sharma 2002). The Rana regime bestowed the King with the title Shri Panch Sarkar (five times illustrious ruler), symbolically recognizing the King's higher and holy status. In contrast, the Rana prime minister's title was Shri Tin Sarkar (three-time illustrious ruler) demonstrating deference (Whelpton 2005, 61–62). Until 2008 when the Constituent Assembly declared Nepal a democratic, secular republic, all the ruling regimes since 1768 attached political and religious significance to the monarchy, designating the King as the symbol of national unity, who maintained the spiritual authority to protect Nepal's sacredness.

67 Boyer and Yurchak 2010.

68 Battaglia 1997, 507.

69 Bloch 1986, 117.

70 Greenhouse 1996, in Miyazaki 2004, 146.

71 Shade 2001, 76.

72 cf. Fornäs.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant, a Fulbright IIE-USEF Nepal research grant, and Cornell University.