Modernization, the State, and the Construction of a Tharu Identity in Nepal

Abstract

In the lowlands of nainital district in northwestern Uttar Pradesh, occupying discrete and adjacent territories, live two ethnic groups known as the Tharu and the Buxa.1 Both are indigenous to the area. They have much in common, in their dress, language, and ritual practices, and their origin myths even posit a shared ancestry for both groups (Hasan 1979). Despite these similarities, the two groups consider themselves to be distinct peoples or jāt (Stewart 1865, 148; Hasan 1979); they do not intermarry, although elopements (socially disapproved unions) are not uncommon. Both are listed as Scheduled Tribes in the Indian Constitution, a status that entitles them to special protection and benefit in education and government service. The Buxas live in the westernmost part of the district, while the Rana Tharu to their east also live in large numbers in the adjacent Nepali district of Kanchanpur.

Rural livelihood change? Household capital, community resources and livelihood transition

“…The government also provided land to migrants ranging from 4 bighas (1 bigha = 0.68 hectares or 1 hectare = 1.5 bigha ) to 100 bighas by clearing the dense forest (Shrestha, 1990). Currently, the Valley is inhabited mostly by in-migrants, especially from the Hill and the high Hill as well as other Terai districts including India (Blaikie, Cameron, and Seddon, 2000; Guneratne, 1998). The Valley now is home to diverse ethnic communities that range from Terai Janajati (indigenous) (e.g.…”

Developmental Idealism

“…In fact, considerable evidence indicates near saturation levels of key DI belief and value statements in many populations. Ethnographic data from China, Egypt, India, Nepal, New Guinea, and places in Sub-Saharan Africa indicate that many citizens of these areas understand the concepts of development and developmental hierarchies and use them to describe the world (Abu-Lughod 1998; Ahearn 2001; Amin 1989; Blaut 1993; Caldwell et al 1988; Dahl and Rabo 1992; Ferguson 1999; Guneratne 1998, 2001; Hannan 2012; Justice 1986; Osella and Osella 2006; Pigg 1992, 1996; Wang 1999). …”

Malaria, Tarai Adivasi and the Landlord State in the 19th century Nepal: A Historical-Ethnographic Analysis

“…I should point out here that Waddell's emphasis that these "wild aborigines… will undertake no hired service" suggests that the indifference Dhimal and other forest dwellers had toward wage labor (their refusal, in other words, to become wage labor subjects within the colonial economy) may also have made them appear "wild" (in the sense of not domesticable) in the eyes of colonial officers. This image of malaria resistant aborigines as "wild beast" echoes the idea of 'jungali' or 'jangli' (in Hindi) widely used in the South Asia to describe people mostly belonging to the 'tribal' or ādivāsi community who subsist by foraging or who live in the fringes of the forest as "primitive" and "uncivilized" people (see Skaria, 1998;Guneratne, 1998) The Tarai ādivāsi, contrary to popular representations of them as "savage dwellers of a primeval forest" (Krauskopff, 2000, p. 35), who are presumed to be "faceless in history" (Panjiar, 1993, p. 20-21), were actively involved in the emergent political transformations in the Indo-Gangetic and the Himalayan regions. Long before the rise of the present day nation-state of Nepal, the hill kings as well as the British colonial regime encouraged and relied primarily on Tarai ādivāsi like the Tharus to reclaim the Tarai forests for cultivation and settlement (Krauskopff and Meyer, 2000).…”

“…The image reiterates the dominant geographical imagination that depicts the Tarai as merely, until recently, a swampy, malaria-ridden, unhealthy, and wild place without history and civilization. That both Nepal's dominant groups and British colonial scholars often discriminately referred to the Tarai ādivāsi as "primitive" and "wild people" (jungali people) bolsters the image of the Tarai as Kala Pani (see Guneratne, 1998;Müller-Büker, 1997;Regmi, RK. 1985).…”