Modernization and development are the two logical and practical instruments of the State or the state-makers. Through these two instruments, the state-makers not only promote their own culture, language, religion and economic mode of production but also expand their politico-economic and cultural hegemony simultaneously colonizing over other cultures and economic systems. On one hand the State implements all these in the name of state-making and development of nation, the same process imposes colonial impacts upon other cultures and societies on the other. On the whole such a process unsuccessfully tries to create a homogenous ‘nation-state’ by incorporating and assimilating ‘other’ cultures and societies into the state-makers’ ‘own’ culture, religion, language and economic mode of production. In this regards, the state making process, if it is controlled by a certain hegemonic cultural group, remains an incomplete political process in light of the political movements of autonomy and cultural rights by the indigenous peoples against the state and the state-makers. Therefore, the state-making process is viewed as a colonial expansion in the eyes of the indigenous peoples whose cultural as well as economic modes of productions are either incorporated into the one owned by the state-makers or in the verge of collapse because of exploitation by the state.
The history of Nepalese state-making is not exception to what has been mentioned above in general about the relationships between the ‘nation-state’ makers and the nation losers. From its very genesis the goal of modern Nepalese state making was to create asli hindustaan as its founder king P.N. Shah proclaimed, which was consequentially going to be created at the cost of other non-Hindu indigenous cultures and societies. Therefore making of the Nepalese state seemed an essential, emancipating, modern as well as developmental political process for those Hindu high caste groups, namely the Chhetris -the power holders- and the Bahuns – the knowledge owners- whereas the same process proved to be colonialist and exploitative for those Adivasipopulations with their own language, polity, culture and economic modes of lives entirely different from what had been envisaged by the founder of the asli hindustaan. This paper will deal with the politics of Limbuwan, which I shall present here as politics of difference in juxtaposition to the unitary and homogenizing politics of the Nepalese state. The quest for political and cultural autonomy began in Limbuwan ever since the Limbu territory was annexed by the Gorkha King under his Hindu Gorkha kingdom in the 1770s through a conciliatory agreement with the Limbus. This paper will answer how and why the Limbus even today claim to be culturally, historically, economically and politically different society from those of the state-makers’ societies. This paper will present ethnographic cases of the Limbuwan’s political movement to showcase their claim of difference based on their cultural as well as collective rights.