Human rights organisations draw on the language, institutions and norms of international human rights law. They invest considerable time, expertise and resources to monitor, screen and document cases of torture and ill treatment. The documentation of torture and ill treatment is challenging not only because of limited political space available for this work and the lack of protection for survivors as well as human rights workers, but also because the very practice of documentation is not straightforward. In their attempt to gather reliable and persuasive evidence that are often used for ‘naming and shaming’ strategies, human rights organisations have to make decisions on where to focus, how to identify and document cases of torture and ill treatment. This gets pronounced in the context of low-income countries that have a few…

The proposed paper is an inquiry into the psychology of caste and identity in Nepal. It asks whether inter-caste marriage can change the way in which people think of caste, and if so, how and to what extent. The vast majority of people in Nepal view caste and ethnicity as categories of identity which are acquired at birth and which remain stable throughout an individual’s life course. This way of thinking represents a striking display of “psychological essentialism”, a cognitive bias well-known among psychologists (e.g. Gelman 2003), and which has come under recent anthropological scrutiny (e.g. Bloch, Solomon, and Carey 2001; Astuti et al. 2004; Regnier 2012). Endogamy is believed to play a central role in the emergence of psychological essentialism (Gil-White 2001). Caste endogamy, therefore, likely forms an important…

In this paper I will examine the most commonly cited reason for Christian conversion in Nepal – healing – and place it in the context of ethical and theological understandings in churches; I will also relate it to wider social and cultural developments. Prayer-based healing in Bhaktapurian churches does not tend to happen in a single moment; rather, it is a process which involves not only the person healed but also the wider church community. Much of church practice in Bhaktapur is oriented towards building supportive relationships with and praying for those who are physically or mentally afflicted. This is evident in healing crusades, medical work, and group prayer in house fellowships, and it reflects ethical understandings of suffering that are distinctive in the context of Bhaktpaur’s traditional culture. I…

This paper investigates the effects of the lack of state recognition of Tibetan medicine in Nepal. Although scholars have investigated the relationship between Tibetan medicine and state institutions, discussions on the different trends of modernization of Tibetan medicine induced by the lack of state recognition is missing. It is based on the ethnographic study (participant-observation) of three Tibetan clinics and a 10-day training course in Tibetan message therapy (called Kunye) in Boudha, Kathmandu, conducted from the second week of February until the last week of April in 2015. A total of 17 interviews were conducted with the doctors and the clinic staff, and other relevant actors—local and foreign patients and officials of the organizations promoting Tibetan medicine in Nepal. The interviews were based on structured, semi-structured, and unstructured questions as…

The British army remains one of the most attractive career paths for young men in Nepal. Recruitment for first the East India Trade Company in the 1800s, later the British Imperial Army and today, the British and Indian armies has long provided an economic incentive that has shaped the way that young men in Nepal make decisions about their career paths. Following World War II, however, as the number of Nepalis in the British army has declined, the selection process has become more challenging. Furthermore, the promise of British citizenship for anyone who serves more than six years has swelled the number of applicants. In 2015, out of 6,000 applicants between the ages of 18 and 22, only 230 were selected. In the hope of improving their chances, thousands of…

We are concluding two years of DFID and Wellcome Trust-funded disaster mental health intervention research in Nepal, having worked with over 700 persons in five earthquake and flood affected communities throughout the country. We describe this innovative mental health integrated disaster preparedness intervention, share research results, and consider lessons learned. Preliminary data outcomes indicate that the 3-day community intervention increased disaster preparedness behaviors and preparedness self-efficacy, decreased symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress, and increased mental health related help-giving and help-seeking. In addition to quantitative data based on a randomized controlled trial and cluster comparisons, we share qualitative feedback from focus groups emphasizing firsthand accounts from local community members about the impact of natural disasters on well-being and reactions to the intervention. We hope to encourage discussion about how to…

How do people use public spaces in big cities in Nepal? The capital city, Kathmandu, has grown very fast since the eightees. Since 2010, a big program of widening of roads has changed the urban scape. In 2015, whereas the works were in progress, two big earthquakes destroyed houses, infrastructures and heritage. In April and May 2015, the two earthquakes of more than 7,8 on Richter scale destroyed a big part of the UNESCO world heritage sites (almost 80% of some sites). In this difficult period, Nepalese are demonstrating a tremendous resilience despite the situation is getting worse since the blockage of supplies coming from the indian border. This contribution propose to give a new lighting on urban sociology in Nepal in a globalised context. Through an ethnographic description of…

The damage caused to the perimeter wall of the Narayanhiti Palace by the 2015 earthquakes revealed the construction site of the republic memorial (Ganatantra Smarak), to anyone walking past the North East corner of the palace compound. The design competition was launched in 2009 with initial fanfare by the (then Maoist-led) government (and the entries and process critiqued by members of the architectural community); since then construction and design has continued concealed behind the palace walls. This paper will examine the design competition (including the intentions of those who entered)1 and process to date, to reveal the politics of this difficult project that embodies the problems of re-imagining the nation and proposing a credible resolution to the recent conflict. The foundation stone of the (as yet uncompleted) republic memorial was…

The Nepali nation-state that emerges in the late eighteenth century, like most nations of the world, bears a definitive male signature. However, the patriarchal historiography of the nation and its subsequent contestations and problematization have seldom been attempted in the Nepali or international academia using the folk corpus in the form of Tīj songs: an archive that continues to remain in the periphery of the margin as writing continues to be privileged over speech, written literature over orature in the international academia that ‘commonsensically’ associates folklore with atavism, primitiveness, pre-historicity and rusticity. The recourse to the Nepali folk archive seems all the more urgent as the indigenous academia still predominantly controlled by the upper caste, male scholars tends to dismiss these songs as āimāiko rā͂ḍiruwāi i.e. the crone’s cry in…

Plantations share a tiny slot in the colossal Himalayan space but have encapsulated adequate scholarly attention. One among the many peculiarities of plantations that ensued from their colonial roots is attributed to the presence of the women who actually outnumbered their male counterparts as the major constituting body of the labour force. The fact that Sikkim plantations preclude a colonial legacy nevertheless they do also share the same phenomenal presence of the women workers may lead one examine the plantations of this region from gender perspective. This paper claims that the women workers of the Himalayan belt may not share a similar past, they may vary even in several other respects, but they do share a common misfortune of being a plantation woman. Drawing experiences from Darjeeling hills and Sikkim…