So what should constitute "identity"?

I recently spent a week working with a Tharu folkloricist and cultural activist named Ashok. In his sixties, he has spent years researching various aspects of his own Dangaura Tharu culture, with a special attention to texts such as folk stories and epic songs. For him, these texts contain a Tharu philosophy of life, the key to a distinct Tharu cultural identity. 

Ashok’s activities are not unique. Nepal is a country with significant cultural diversity; one pair of scholars estimates there to be over 100 distinct cultural groups, each with their own language (not just a dialect of the Nepali language). But with a 250+ year of Hindu rule, and an especially intense time of Hindu monarchial hegemony between 1960 and 1990—the country only emerged as a democracy in 1951—this cultural diversity was heavily downplayed in an attempt to create a pan-Nepali identity, based around high-caste Hindu norms. After two people’s movements demanding democratic rights (1990 and 2006) and a ten-year Maoist civil war (1996-2006—where the Maoists were quick to capitalize on the marginalization of various groups, creating ethnic fronts in addition to their People’s Liberation Army), the political climate within Nepal now heavily emphasizes distinct ethnic identities. There is a public celebration of ethnic and cultural diversity which was not present when my family lived here in the 1990s (like a the Newar cultural festival in my Patan neighborhood before Tihar, complete with live handicraft demonstrations; or a mela in Kathmandu during Maghi, the Tharu new year, where provided refreshments include pork, small crayfish, and roasted rat--all Tharu delicacies!). Lots of groups are now seeking to regain cultures they believe to have been lost or taken away from them during previous nation-building projects.

Among the people Ashok introduced me to, he noted who also made Tharu culture their priority. He commented at one point that it might be fruitless to ask questions concerning significance or meaning to some performers—they just saw music and dance as entertainment, or a way to have fun, rather than “a philosophical thing.” Hence, many Tharu people had left off some performances, because they saw “no utility” in them. His job, as he sees it, is to inform the Tharu people that these cultural performance traditions are “Tharu self-things”—if they leave off performing them, they leave off the things that make them a distinct people, and gives them an identity.

Ashok does have a concept that culture changes—at one point, he described Tharu culture to me as a river. A river winds through several geographic areas, carrying a variety of things from many places. There were things that were now part of Tharu culture that had not been there before. Take Christianity for an example. There were lots of Tharu congregations now—some villages had more than one—and while this had come from another place, many Tharu had adopted it as their own. However, Ashok also viewed too much change as a loss of identity. Take all these performances we were looking at. Younger Tharu could not sing or dance or act or express the way that the older generation could. Some learned more from popular culture than their own traditions, and were better at a Pahadi (hill—the Tharu live in the flat Tarai area of Nepal) style of dancing and singing than a Tharu style. They couldn’t even pronounce their own Tharu words right—according to Ashok, the Tharu language has no dental sounds, only retroflex. But since Tharu children attend Nepali schools from a young age, their mouths become accustomed to making dental sounds and they employ these indiscriminately in pronouncing their own Tharu words.

In our conversations, Ashok indirectly asserted that identity needs to be based on something that is unchanging and reliable. For him, culture needs to be that thing—while some aspects may change, culture should have an unchanging core.

But the very nature of culture is that it’s changing, transient, porous—unreliable. With these characteristics, culture makes a weak cornerstone for identity. As a TCK (now ATCK), I’ve tried that one on for size and it’s failed every time. Don’t get me wrong—I love culture and I think it is important; I wouldn’t have embarked on an academic career in the subject if I thought otherwise. And culture does have a place in identity (a huge place—and something the church should reflexively recognize, but that’s for another blog entry). And while change is not intrinsically good, the Bible does teach that change should be a good thing—God takes us as we are, but then makes us, changes us, to be more like Christ. We’re works in progress until His return (my mother recently purchased a new Mac Mini; in moving files from her old Mac to new Mac, she has been constantly complaining to me about all the changes in the operating system. I told her that as a Christian, she should be all about change—not to mention the whole experience as a sanctifying opportunity to “count it all joy” [James 1:2,3] and “do everything without complaining and arguing” [Philippians 2:14]. Maybe she now regrets having me memorize those verses as kid…).

But for something like identity—as Ashok recognizes—a reliable, unchanging foundation is needed. Scripture makes it clear that Christ is the only unchanging entity in existence.  In a world where change—good and bad—is inevitable, Christ makes the only reliable bedrock to an otherwise transient existence (not to mention does much to keep a person sane!).

The song “Here Am I”—based on imagery from Isaiah chapter six—has become a favorite reminder to me that being consumed by God’s glory is where my primary identity lies as a Christian. The primary reason I exist is to worship and give glory to the one, true God; change and culture fall into place in light of that truth.

Here Am I

(as performed by Enfield)

Here in your presence

We are consumed

We gather to lift up your name

The train of your robe

Surrounds us here

We join seraphim in refrain

Holy, Holy, Holy

The whole earth is full of His glory

Woe is me!

For I am undone and my lips are unclean

But you chose me

To carry your word till the end of my days

For my eyes have seen the king

Of all kings

Here in our presence

You are enthroned

We gather and request this

Ignite our hearts

With a passion to match

The coals that kiss these lips

Holy, holy, holy

The whole earth is full of His glory

Woe is me!

For I am undone and my lips are unclean

But you chose me

To carry your word till the end of my days

For my eyes have seen the King

Of all kings

Woe is me!

For I am undone and my lips are unclean

But you chose me

To carry your word till the end of my days

For my eyes have seen the King

Here am I, send me!

A witness to splendor and great majesty

You chose me!

To carry your word till the end of my days

For my eyes have seen the King

Here am I, send me!

A witness to splendor and great majesty

You saved me!

The cross is the coal that has cleansed me to sing

I’m safe in the grace of the King

Of all kings

How to Celebrate Dashai

My first morning in Dang, I came downstairs to the grandmother distilling rice liquor (raksi) over a wood stove outside. For each batch, the grandmother would first fill a clay pot, then cover it with leaves and set it aside in the family puja (worship) room. These, Kopi (my host) told me, were for the deuta, or deity. This alcohol was not tasted, to see if it was good or not. These would later be used in puja.

The grandmother made new batches about every three days. “You’re making rasksi again?” I asked at one point. Where did they put in all? One night, when the electricity was out, the grandmother began preparing the still on the inside kitchen; passing me on her way in, she gleefully exclaimed to me in Tharu, “mahi phe raksi banaitum! [I’m making raksi again!]” She also told me that I should drink some—everyone drank raksi, ate dhikiri, and pork meat, at Dashai. How else was I going to celebrate?

Once Dashai started, numerous guests began to drop by. Sabita—Kopi's wife, and the daughter in law—kept a variety of curried vegetables and meats on hand, ready to be served up in small, separate bowls formed from leafs. She had made a special trip to the forest a few days before to pick these. Once the guests left, these bowls were thrown behind the house to decompose. Alcohol was served in brass bowls, or in leaf bowls, depending on how many people dropped by at one time.

One morning, a group of schoolgirls came by, singing a ditty. I was out back finishing my bath when they came to our door, so I did not see what Sabita gave them. What did they want? They were begging raksi, Sabita told me. Did you give them raksi?! I asked, horrified. She laughed—yes, of course! They were collecting it in an empty 2-litre soda bottle; they would later sell it to make money. Sabita and her friend had done that during Dashai when they were young. Later, a group of boys—between the ages of eight and twelve—came by, singing the same ditty. Kopi—Sabita’s husband—brought out leaf bowls of raksi, which the eldest two drank. The boys then moved on to the next house. The grandmother wasn’t joking when she said that everyone drank raksi at Dashai.

Another item the grandmother made was called jar. As far as I understood, these were fermented rice cakes, first dried out then mixed with water; the extract was then drunk. The affect was some kind of drug; the grandmother described these to me as ausadi or medicine. She decided to dry these fermented rice cakes in window in my room, on the lid of a bucket. Thankfully, I was away in another village for the night; they stank so badly. When I came back, they had bite marks in them; the grandmother was upset that the mice had gotten to them. My sympathies went out to the mice—how their stomachs must feel after eating that stuff!

One evening, I went with Sabita to her maiti ghar (parent’s house). There in the front yard, among the bison, a man was sleeping. Turns out, he had been eating jar; Sabita’s dad mentioned that his companion was sleeping inside. The guy woke up and started stumbling around. Binaram—Sabita’s youngest brother—was home and in the yard at that time; he took the guy back to his sleeping place and had him sit down again. The guy started caressing the new bison calf—which the calf seemed to like, he laid down real quiet and put his head closer to the guy—and sweet-talking to it, telling it what a beautiful bison it was. Binaram went inside and woke up the other guy, and pulled him outside. As I was sitting right next to the house door, he commented to me on his way out that people who ate jar were like this. Eventually, he got them out of the yard; they stumbled off down the road.

On the evening of Dhikiri Puja day, I went with Kopi down to the village shrine for a community ritual. The head of each house brought barley sprouts, sage leaves and a clay pot of raksi as an offering to the village deities, and received white tikka from the guruwa—the Tharu traditional healer and priest. After these formalities, the men all sat around drinking the alcohol offered to the deities. Later that evening, presiding as priest in his own house, Kopi offered the household deities their favorite foods: raksi (distilled from rice), dhikiri (steamed rice dough), roti (flat bread made from rice flour and deep fried in oil) as well as several cups of uncooked, husked rice. Apparently, Tharu deities are fond of rice.

That night, I went with Sabita to watch the sakya/paiya naach in their own village. Unmarried girls dance and sing portions of the love story between Krishna and Radha—two Hindu deities—each night for about a month before Dashai, accompanied by men on madals (two-headed drums). These performances take place in the front yard of the matawa, the village leader. The night before I had gone to the neighboring village to see the performance, where drinking had been prevalent. While it wasn’t as ubiquitous tonight, there was one guy stumbling around the middle of the dance circle without a madal; when he got a madal, he kept yelling “shabas! (good work!—what you tell a little girl or boy when they’ve obeyed)” between the girls’ sung phrases. Shyam—another one of Sabita’s brothers—and a couple of other men ended up pulling him off to the side and out of the matawa’s yard to the road, disappearing in to the dark.

In the morning, my curried vegetables reeked of raksi; the taste filled my mouth. I asked the grandmother what she had cooked the vegetables in. She looked at me like I was crazy, and simply replied, “pani! (water!)”