Aspirations of an individual are an important factor in determining whether individuals can move out of persistent poverty. Various forms of socio-economic statuses need to be taken into account, especially in a country like Nepal, where an individual’s identity and aspirations are influenced by various factors, such as caste, education, social roles, and economic status. Appadurai (2004) emphasizes that aspirations are not merely content to an individual, but they are shaped via interaction in the ‘thick of social life’. Therefore, this paper attempts to juxtapose these socio economic statuses with the multiple forms of aspirations, such as social, economic, and educational. Caste and ethnicity remain the major source of cultural identity in Nepal. A People’s aspirations may be influenced by their ethnic background, cultural values, every day practices, and…

  The state in its various avatars through the ages has always tried to keep a count of its citizens, initially for taxation, labour service, and conscription, and ostensibly for formulating policies and development planning. Census is conducted periodically, generally every ten years. From a superficial level, the census is carried out to make a note of the population dispersed all over the country and to record their socio-economic conditions, which reflects the social reality of the nation, but it also actively constructs that reality. It creates that reality through categorisation of and attribution of characteristics to the people. This construction of reality is prompted by and serves the ‘interest of particular historical and/or social context’. Through this construction of reality, the state and/or its ruling elite have the means…

The scant academic work on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community of Nepal concentrates on the LGBT movement, their legal status after the recognition of Transgender people as the ‘third gender’ by the Supreme Court and considerations to recognise same-sex marriage. This acknowledgement is considered historic for the community, ideally paving the way for greater social acceptance. Research in many parts of the world have shown that the LGBTs are still excluded and hidden from the social sphere, and ‘coming out’ can be a decision fraught with lasting emotional, physical, social challenges for the LGBT persons and their families. The exclusion starts within the most intimate aspect of people’s lives: their families. Past studies have disclosed that parents tend to react in a negative fashion upon the disclosure about…

BP Koirala’s claims that we understand his literary persona as anarchist and his political persona as socialist has allowed for an easy location of his figure in Nepali historiography, often separately, within literature and within politics.1 His insistence that we resolve any dilemma over his persona by bifurcating him into the literary and political is difficult to take unquestioningly. The lines of continuity between the literary and political beg further investigation. This paper asks whether it is possible to place BP squarely within self-claimed intellectual camps through an investigation of his treatment of the question of gender. It is over the question of gender, that the blurred boundaries between the political and the literary BP become evident. Revisiting BP’s writings, both fictional as well as autobiographical, in which he tells…

Nepal, one of the underdeveloped counties of South Asia with a population of 26.5 million, used to be a zone of peace. But the recent history of Nepal is full of violent political upheavals. Within the last two decades Nepal experienced some violent political uprisings. After a decade long brutal Maoists insurgency in Nepal, Madhesh (also known as the “Terai” region of Nepal, touches the border of India in the western, eastern and southern region of Nepal) launched a violent political campaign called ‘Madhesh Uprising’ in 2007 demanding complete regional autonomy, rights of self-determination, and a single Madhesh province (Ek Madhesh Ek Pradesh). The Madhesh uprising not only took lives and damaged properties, it also disturbed the ethnic harmony and social cohesion in Madhesh. Millions of Madheshis (the inhabitants of Madhesh who…

Music, both as a form of arts and a cultural element, is considered a powerful tool of peacebuilding, and the peacebuilding activities incorporating music in such form are widely popular at local level in post-conflict societies. In Nepal, such peacebuilding activities gained popularity during the post-conflict phase when a significant growth in local level peacebuilding activities was observed. However, scholars argue that such peace-building initiatives have not been adequately studied to examine local people’s understanding and engagement in such programs. In this context, this paper presents a case of a music education program in a village in Udayapur district in Nepal to explore local people’s experiences and engagement with the program. The music program, initiated in 2009, is run by a local community school with financial support from an international non-profit organization. Based on the study of this particular peace-building…

  This paper explores the environmental and socio-economic factors affecting households’ propensity to send a member to migrant. Specifically, the linkages between perceptions of climate variability, access to natural resources and subsequent livelihood decision making is examined. The research does not confirm a clear deterministic link between environmental change and contemporary human mobility in the Tarai, and yet warrants circular migration as a vital adaptation mechanism to secure household welfare amidst changing social and environmental conditions. Given its fertile soils and favourable climate, the Tarai have provided a rich agricultural landscape and a haven for internal migrants who lost their livelihood to environmental hazards, and those wanting to escape harsh conditions on the hills. Although the Tarai once provided comparatively better opportunities for the hill migrants, social inequalities continue to…

This paper, based on longitudinal public opinion surveys conducted between December 2004 and April 2012, argues that though majority of the Nepali people was in the favour of retaining the institution of monarchy till a few months prior to the declaration of republicanism by the first sitting of the Constituent Assembly in May 2008, the majority people (though not by a big margin) have approved the republicanism by April 2012. Analysis of the longitudinal data also helps giving insights on the relationship between political events and public opinions. A large segment of the Nepali populace came to think that monarchy was not necessary after the successful end of the Jan Andolan II in April 2006 because Seven-Party Alliance and the UCPN (Maoist) had already declared abolishing of monarchy after the…

The Tiwa are one of the many aboriginal tribal groups in North-East India. Settled in Morigaon, Nagaon, Kamrup and Karbi Anglong districts of Assam and Ri Bhoi district of Meghalaya, they have long been referred to as “Lalung” by other neighbouring groups (Khasi-Jaintia, Karbi) and in colonial records. The people in question however refer to themselves as Tiwa. They are divided into two cultural and social divisions- those settled in the plains, speak Assamese, follow a patrilineal descent system and bear Assamese patronyms, and those residing in the hills, speaks a Tibeto-Burmese language of the Bodo-Garo group, are primarily matrilineal and divided into clearly identified clans from which they trace their descent. Thus the Tiwa follow a bilineal descent system or more specifically an ambilineal descent. The hill Tiwa are…

In post-1990 Nepal, it seems to be quite easy for an ethnographer to find the local sociocultural situation, within janajati societies among others, in which essentialistic praise of one’s own tradition and culture in the discursive level has coexisted with various attempts of sociocultural reform on the one hand, and easily observable sociocultural transformations on the other. To sort out this complex situation ethnographically, it is necessary to investigate how people have conceptualized what anthropologists have treated as their “culture” and “tradition”, without presupposing such Western concepts as well as their Nepali quasi-equivalents. In this presentation, I deal with this task by scrutinizing usages and connotations of the compound noun “thumcharu”, a Byansi term which has been used among Rangs in Byans, Far Western Nepal and adjacent regions.  Byans is…