Muslims in the Hindu Kingdom of Nepal

Muslims in Nepal: The Local and Global Dimensions of a Changing Religious Minority

“…The history of Islam’s arrival in Nepal is recounted in a number of essays (Ansari 1980, 1988; Dastider 1995, 2000; Gaborieau 1972, 1977, 1993, 1995; Sharma 1994, 2004; Siddique 2001; Sijapati 2011). 2 The first record of Muslim presence in the current territory of Nepal is found in an inscription from the period of the Malla Kings, recording a brief invasion of the Kathmandu valley in 1349 by Sultan Shams ad‐Din Ilyas of Bengal (Acharya 1973).…”

“…Throughout Nepal’s northern hill regions once finds mosques, madrasas, and saints’ shrines ( mazars ). Saint veneration was, and continues to be, an important component of Islam practiced by Muslims in this region (Gaborieau 1972, 1993, 2003). The hill regions are home to unique local forms of Islamic practice such as the veneration of Ghazi Miyan in the western hills, which combines Hindu, Shia and Sufi narrative and ritual components (Gaborieau 2003), The northern hill city of Pokhara was home to the celebrated Nepali Muslim poet Ali Miyan (d. 2006).…”

“…Of the few studies on Islam and Muslims in Nepal, all have taken up the topic of identity. Gaborieau, the first scholar to publish work on the topic of Islam in Nepal, first wrote about Muslim identities and Hindu–Muslim relations when he encountered Muslims during fieldwork in Nepal’s western hills (Gaborieau 1972). His interest was in Muslim identity in the strict Hindu caste‐based social world of village Nepal, and later, in the caste of bangle makers, the so‐called Churaute.…”

“…His interest was in Muslim identity in the strict Hindu caste‐based social world of village Nepal, and later, in the caste of bangle makers, the so‐called Churaute. He found that Hindu villagers perceived of Muslims as entirely ‘other’, ‘ ulto bhayo ’ or ‘backwards’, and that a certain marginality was assigned to Muslims in Nepal’s earliest legal code, the Muluki Ain , of 1854 (Gaborieau 1972). 8 His focus on Muslim identity in the Hindu context was further developed in his own subsequent essays (1993, 2003) and by others such as Dastider (1995), who authored a monograph on Buddhists and Muslims and their place in the politics of Nepal, Sharma (2004) in an essay based on fieldwork in Krishnanagar (in the Tarai), and a recent study of religious revival and Muslim identity in the Kathmandu valley (Sijapati 2011).…”

Book Reviews

“…It would be excellent if they took more account of textual materials in more languages (one might refer here to recent French work (Gaborieau 1972) which, to understand the Nepalese caste system as it operates in the hills, makes good use of the national legal code (MulukT Ain, first edition 1859)). It is good that social anthropologists should be looking for new sorts of field research in addition to the now traditional agricultural village monograph (not that there is no longer need for high-standard work within this genre).…”