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!)” 

In the Shadow of Other Anthropologists

It was my first night in the village of Sukrawar. I had just arrived at my host’s house, and was sitting on a beri—a circular woven mat—on the adobe floor of the first room in the house. I was kept company by my host’s friend, a man who had come back to the village to visit his parents for a few days. He worked construction in town. As he enjoyed my host’s hospitality—a brass bowl fill with about four shots of home-brewed liquor—he asked me why I had come. I said that I worked with an office in Kathmandu affiliated with my host’s office, but I had come to Dang to do research on Tharu music. This neighbor said something in reply; I didn’t understand what he had said so I asked him to repeat it. He was giving me an English name—Christian McDonaugh. The anthropologist? I asked. Yes, he had come and done research in Sukrawar years ago, when this neighbor was just a boy. He had lived with his uncle. He had lived with them, eaten with them, even drank with them. He spoke really fluent Tharu; he in fact was Tharu. Did I speak Tharu? Well, I should learn. Did I drink raksi [alcohol]? No? Why not? Oh, do Christians in your country not drink alcohol either? He commented that Christians here in Nepal don’t drink alcohol at all.

My host had work to do at the District Development Office—did I want to come and meet Dr. Govinda Acharya? This music scholar cum government employee worked there. Well, of course I did. Govinda was sitting with a few of his fellow office workers, passing the last hour or so before they were allowed to return home with kura kani [conversation]. I introduced myself. Yes, Lochan—a mutual friend—had called and told him that I would be coming to do research on Tharu music. He had just arrived back from Kathmandu himself; he had wanted to meet me, but he had been so busy, and a little unwell, so he did not contact me. He was glad to see me in his office. Would I have tea? I declined, since I would not be staying long, and sat down across from his desk as indicated. Where was I staying? Sukrawar? Oh, had I read Christian McDonaugh’s work? I replied that I had not been able to obtain a copy of it, though I was very aware of it. No worries, he would contact another friend, Ashok Tharu, who could obtain a copy for me. He assured me that I would find it very helpful.

He then started going on about a relative of his, a young man who was a really good flutist. He had married a foreign researcher who been looking at dohori git—did I know dohori git [duet songs]?--anyway, what was her name? How about “Anna,” I offered. Yes! Anna! Did I know her? No, I replied, but I had read her dissertation…

I met Ashok Tharu at a community meeting concerning the current status of the guruwa institution—traditional Tharu healers. Ashok was excited to meet me. A mutual friend of ours, Ed, had called him several weeks ago and said I was coming out to Dang; he was so pleased that someone was coming to study Tharu music. He had worked as research assistant to the anthropologist Giselle Krauskopff back in the seventies; had I read her dissertation? I replied that I was aware of it, but it was in French, and I had been unable to find an English translation. He had an English translation; he would make a copy of it and give it to me. I would find it very helpful, he was sure.

Later, when I stayed two days at his house, found out that Ashok had not only worked with Giselle, but at least three other prominent anthropologists who had done work on the Dangaura Tharu (which, there aren’t that many foreign anthropologists who have looked at the Tharu anyway). I asked him what he thought of all these foreigners coming to study his culture. He replied that it was a good thing—it made people in other countries aware of the Tharu, and stirred up the Tharu to look at their own culture as well. Take him for example—he had been a school teacher before meeting Giselle; he found research so interesting that he quit his job to work with her. Now, he was a prominent folkloricist and cultural activist—one person had even likened him to Salman Rushdie.

He then mentioned that he was writing his autobiography; he had a chapter for each foreign researcher he had worked with. Now, he would get to add a new chapter—one about the American scholar who had come to look at Tharu music.

These instances spaced throughout my three weeks in Dang humbled me considerably. Yet, as much as Dang seemed combed over by foreign researchers, whose presence was still alive in the memory of several people, I was a “first contact” for others. Durga—a Pahadi (non-Tharu) woman—invited me to her maiti [parent’s home] one day, to introduce me to her family. As we sat outside eating beloti [guavas] from the tree in front of the house, her father began to ask her what I ate. Did I eat rice? Vegetables? Yoghurt? Meat? Yes, Durga replied, I ate all those things. I had eaten dinner at her house last night; she had witnessed me eat herself. He commented that was all very good.

My mind turned to the article by Vivieros I had read in one of my anthropology courses: When the Europeans began to come to the New World, the Indians were checking out the Spaniards to see if they were human or not just as the Spaniards were checking out the Indians for the same reason. Their inquiries took different forms: the Spaniards wondered if the Indians had souls, the Indians wondered if the Spaniard’s bodies putrified like theirs upon death or not. The Spaniards took to converting the Indians to Christianity, attempting to save their souls primarily by ascetic means; the Indians killed a few Spaniards and threw their bodies into a lake to see if their bodies would putrify. While I was here to check out Tharu music, I in turn was being checked out by the community. At least their tests weren’t as deadly as the Indians’…

Amused by this conversation, I asked Durga if she had ever spoken to foreigners before. She laughed and shook her head—she had seen white foreigners in the bazaar, but had been really afraid of them. I was the first foreigner she had ever spoken to.

On the way back to Kathmandu, the bus stopped at a roadside teashop for a meal. After using the restroom and washing my hands, the bus driver cornered me—did I speak Nepali? Yes? Well, did I want to eat? I sat at a table with two women who had been seated at the front of the bus (I, being the last person to buy my ticket, had been given the very rear seat of the bus). The women intermittently asked questions as we ate—where was I from? What work was I doing in Nepal? Not wanting to go into detail about my research, I just told them I worked for an NGO and our branch office was in Dang. One of the women commented on how good my Nepali was; the other woman and said, “remember that foreign girl who sang with Kamala [Oli—a well known commercial dohori singer]? Her Nepali was really good.”  

How many more shadows will I walk across in my time here? And what shadows will I leave once my current phase of research is done? 

Review on "The Lives We Have Lost: Essays and Opinions on Nepal" by Manjushree Thapa

Manjushree is the daughter of a high-ranking Nepali official who served in various capacities under three Nepali kings (Mahendra, Birendra, and Gyanendra). Much of her own higher education was abroad, and she has split much of her recent time between Nepal, India, Canada and the United States. She is one of the generation of younger Nepali elite who has seen Nepal from inside and outside, growing up in an almost ethereal third-space. Her writings—fiction, opinion pieces, literary reportage—are not only vibrant and engaging but resound with and give voice to much of how those of her generation have experienced Nepal. As an adult third-culture kid (ATCK) from Nepal, I count myself among those.

One of her more recent works is a collection of her opinion pieces written and published in various newspapers, journals, or magazines from 2003 to 2010. This work can be seen as a follow-up to probably her best-known non-fiction work Forget Kathmandu: Eulogy for Democracy (2005), which traces the history of Nepal. These opinion pieces follow the events leading out of Nepal’s Maoist insurgency: ending the war in 2006, deposing the 240-year-old monarchy, the drawn-out process of electing a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution, the Maoists moving from a geurilla force to the elected leading political party in Nepal, the integration/non-integration of the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) into the Nepal Army; and the roles of foreign aid, the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), and (begrudged) big-brother India in the (non-existent?) peace process. In these pieces, she not only touches on what democracy, republicanism, and ethnic federalization, mean for Nepal, but weaves or unravels her own thoughts, reactions, and personal actions during these unfolding events.

While these pieces themselves are well written, the book itself transparent in its construction. The introduction provides a chronological overview of the events in which these pieces were written. Each piece then is bookmarked with a summary of the context in which in was written, and the date and publication in which it was originally published. The result is a well-framed a commentary on the overarching Nepali political situation, grounded in distinct personalities and events. The collection ends with a piece recounting and reflecting on Manjushree’s visit to the Narayanhiti Palace Museum—the former residence of Nepal’s monarch, turned into a museum upon their deposition. This piece serves to reorient the events in the book back on her and her family’s experiences. While Manjushree in no way sets up herself or her family as representative of how other Nepalis have internalized these events, it provides the reader with a picture of how these events have affected a Nepali family.

Two essays that I found particularly applicable to my own situation as a foreigner in Nepal were “Educating the Influential Foreigner” and “Some Home Truths for the Donors.” Her biggest critique is that these influential foreigners, be they diplomats, donors, or aid workers, do not inform themselves about Nepal’s complex history and current cultural and political situation. Most of their information comes from “cocktail-hour chatter [rather] than…in-depth study” (pg. 79). She quotes one aid industry consultant who described this situation as the development sector in Nepal having “no historical memory” (pg. 80). That bodes bad when the majority of Nepal’s GNP comes from foreign aid (with family remittances in close running). Manjushree shows that this lack of historical memory causes diplomats and aid workers to misread where the majority of Nepalis stand, and end up on the wrong side of political situations. For example, the international community in Nepal had much of its weight thrown behind the monarchy—Manjushree described them as “cooperating with a repressive absolute monarchy, helping to uphold it against the interests of peace and democracy in Nepal” (pg. 84)—and were shocked to realize that the majority of Nepalis thought differently when that monarchy was deposed. Manjushree’s solution to this lack is for “influential foreigners here to read, read, read—and not just newspapers [the English-language ones read like bad gossip columns--TD]. Actual books. And if there aren’t enough good books around, then support the intellectual ferment gathering force today: invest in new scholarship” (pg. 81). She also indirectly tells donors to get out of Kathmandu and see for themselves how things are in other parts of Nepal, rather than just hob-nobbing with the Nepalese elite in Kathmandu. Manjushree herself has traveled widely in Nepal. Many of the pieces included in this collection are from visits she made out West, and she has another collection of writings commenting on development in the Mustang region of Nepal, entitled Mustang Bhot in Fragments.

A foreign friend recommended Manjushree Thapa’s work to me when I asked for something to read during my stay in Nepal in 2010. Manjushree quickly became one of my favorite commentators on Nepal. There is a growing number of good scholarly works on Nepal, but I find Manjushree’s candid and considerate observations and opinions, not veiled or overwhelmed by anthropological theory, to be refreshing. They both confirm and challenge my own thoughts on where Nepal is going as a country, and what role I, as a foreigner, should or should not have in these developments.