Building ethnicity in the 1990s and 2000s

Nepal's nineteenth-century rulers sought to frame their diverse subjects within a broadly Hindu framework. This was formalized under Jang Bahadur, the first of the hereditary Rana prime ministers, with his Muluki Ain or country law code of 1854.Footnote ¹² This complex legal hierarchy was based on Hindu law codes but supposedly inspired by the Code Napoléon following Jang Bahadur's visit to London and Paris in 1850.Footnote ¹³ The various castes and ethnic groups subject to the king of Nepal were slotted into one of five macro categories in a unitary hierarchy: (1) wearers of the sacred thread (tāgādhārī); (2) non-enslavable alcohol-drinkers (namāsinyā matwālī); (3) enslavable alcohol-drinkers (māsinyā matwālī); (4) water-unacceptable groups (pāni nacalne); and (5) untouchables (pāni nacalne choi chito hālnu parne).Footnote ¹⁴ Within each category there were many castes with a prescribed hierarchy between them (no distinction was made between castes and ethnic groups: all were equally jāt). It was possible for groups to move up from category (3) to (2), following exemplary service and/or petitions to the crown. Interactions—social, commensal, sexual, marital—between categories and castes were closely regulated, with particularly severe punishments for low-caste men who had relations with higher-caste women.

Following the fall of the Ranas in 1950–51 this legal framework for inter-group relations lapsed and was replaced, finally, in 1963 with a new code which made no reference to caste and assumed a body of equal citizens. However, unlike in India, no measures of positive discrimination were undertaken on behalf of those at the bottom of the hierarchy, whether Dalits (as untouchables are now called) or Janajatis (who used to be called ‘(hill) tribes’ and correspond to what are officially classed as Scheduled Tribes in India). At the same time, the Nepalese state started referring to itself as officially Hindu and upheld the right of groups to maintain their traditional customs; if high castes had it as a traditional custom to exclude certain categories of people from temples or water taps, there was little the latter could do. Unlike in India, Dalits had no recourse to law and since they had virtually no representation in the police or the law courts, and not much more in politics or the bureaucracy, they were unable to win any systematic improvements to their condition during the 30 years (between 1960–1990) of guided democracy known as the Panchayat system.Footnote ¹⁵ Janajatis, though not as severely disadvantaged as Dalits, likewise faced systematic discrimination.Footnote ¹⁶ During this period political parties were banned and the emphasis was on nation-building. Ethnic, cultural, and linguistic difference was discouraged in the public sphere, remaining largely confined to cultural activism, private performance, and folk songs played on the radio.Footnote ¹⁷

All this changed after the revolution or ‘People's Movement’, as it is known in Nepal, of 1990, which brought in a system of constitutional monarchy and a new constitution.Footnote ¹⁸ Political parties were permitted to organize (they were only banned from contesting elections if formed on a ‘communal’ basis). The public sphere was no longer tightly controlled; it opened up to all kinds of organizations on all sorts of bases. People from ethnic backgrounds affirmed that they felt as if a great weight had been lifted from their shoulders. What began in the 1990s, and gathered pace thereafter, was a dynamic process of ethnicity formation and intensification driven by the interaction of several factors: (a) activism (inspired by international examples, by Nepal's history of structural inequality, and by the experience of underground leftist activism during the Panchayat regime), which reached out to the grassroots and mobilized new community events in a rapidly urbanizing society; (b) a changing and increasingly favourable international human rights environment backed by the UN; (c) recognition and support on the part of the state; and (d) political competition and a ten-year civil war.

Initially, in 1991, just seven representative organizations of what previously would have been called tribes joined together to form the Nepal Federation of Nationalities (Nepal Janajati Mahasangh in Nepali). In 1994 a specially formed committee of intellectuals and relevant organizations, responding to the UN's declaration of a Year of Indigenous People (later extended to a Decade), decided that in the Nepalese context ‘nationality’ (Janajati) and ‘indigenous’ (ādivāsi), though not synonyms, referred to the same groups in the Nepali context.Footnote ¹⁹ It was only a decade later, in August 2003, that the name of the organization was adjusted to include the key term: it became the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities or NEFIN.Footnote ²⁰

The term Janajati was borrowed from Hindi (where it was a neologism invented to translate the English ‘tribe’).Footnote ²¹ It was almost wholly unknown in Nepal before 1990 and would have been recognized only by a handful of intellectuals. Even today many people are vague or confused about its exact referent, often taking it to be a synonym for ‘low caste’ (sāno—literally ‘small’—jāt). This is in marked contrast to the term Dalit, which also came into usage in Nepal only after 1990. Everyone knows and uses the word ‘Dalit’ as the politically correct term to refer to categories (4) and (5) of the Ranas’ classification, that is, in traditional Hindu terms, to the ‘impure’ and ‘untouchable’. With ‘Dalit’—in contrast to ‘Janajati’—there is unanimous usage and no vagueness.Footnote ²² In the past those now classified as Janajati were called, and even today still sometimes refer to themselves as, matwāli (‘alcohol-drinkers’), following the Rana law code; or alternatively (a more modern usage) as ‘Mongolian’. They are sometimes referred to as ‘ethnic groups’, a colloquial usage that we also follow here, since—though clearly in a more sociological sense all hereditary groups are equally ethnic—in the popular perception, some groups (just as in the West) are more ethnic than others.

A key change that followed 1990 was that the decennial national censuses began to collect and publish information on the ‘caste or ethnic group’ of all citizens (in contrast to Indian censuses, which collect this information only for Scheduled Castes as a collective category, without counting individual castes, and for Scheduled Tribes). Before 1990 it was necessary to guess at the size of particular Nepali groups; the nearest proxy was mother tongue, but this was deceptive as so many members of Janajati groups no longer spoke their ancestral language and had adopted Nepali. After 1991 and in each subsequent decennial census the percentage make-up of the country was public knowledge, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

Population breakdown of Nepal (2011 census) (total: 26,494,504) with figures for hill minority language loss (based on 1991 census figures).

Notes: Dalits = former Untouchables; Janajatis (underlined) are mainly those who were formerly called tribes. Estimated figures for language loss are taken from Whelpton, John. 1997. ‘Political Identity in Nepal: State, Nation, and Community’. In Gellner et al., eds. Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom, p. 59. All figures and some labels are likely to be disputed. The total of all Janajatis, when Tarai Janajatis are also included, is 35.8% according to the 2011 census. The label ‘Madheshi’ is particularly disputed. Bahun and Chhetri Parbatiyas (including hill Thakuri, Dasnami, and, sometimes, Dalits) have recently (2012–13) come to be labelled ‘Khas-Arya’. For details, see Tamang, M.S., Chapgain, P.S. and Ghimire, P.K. 2014. Social Inclusion Atlas of Nepal: Ethnic and Caste Groups, Vol. 1. Kathmandu: Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Tribhuvan University, pp. 6–9.

The existence of precise figures enabled calculations to be made about the respective shares of positions in government, in academia, the law, the army, and so on, and to demonstrate systematic imbalances—the result, it was claimed, of structural inequality and discrimination that needed strong government action to be taken. The most pressing and obvious imbalance was the fact revealed by figures published in 2001: Bahuns and Chhetris, comprising 31.6 per cent of the population, occupied 77 per cent of the top positions in the judiciary, tertiary education, and the bureaucracy, and well over 50 per cent in most other fields, and were under-represented only in commerce and industry.Footnote ²³ If one were to look at Bahuns alone (12.2 per cent of the population in 2011), the differences would be more striking still. By contrast, Janajatis (minus Newars, who, like Bahuns, have representation several times higher than their caste ratio), who were 22 per cent of the population by Neupane's calculation, had only 1.7 per cent of leading jobs in the judiciary, 1.2 per cent of leading civil service posts, and so on. These imbalances fuelled the Janajati movement and meant that that one of its main aims was to have reservations (affirmative action) imposed and other government resources to assist in overcoming ‘backwardness’.

The dominance of Bahuns in the political parties, the universities, the judiciary, and the media gave the Janajati movement the character of a strongly anti-Brahman movement, as in Tamil Nadu over a century earlier and in other parts of south India from the 1930s. The term bāhunbād or ‘Brahmanism’ entered public discourse in Nepal with the publication of Dor Bahadur Bista's book Fatalism and Development in 1991.Footnote ²⁴ Bista, a Chhetri, was regarded as the most senior anthropologist of the country until his still-unexplained disappearance in 1995. Bista's thesis was that all backwardness in Nepal could be explained by certain fatalistic attitudes inculcated by Bahuns. The implication was that if Janajatis and, by implication, Chhetris and Dalits, and perhaps also individual Bahuns, could rid themselves of Bahun ideological hegemony, entrepreneurship and egalitarianism would flourish in Nepal. This message, dressed up in some simple ethnographic data about how Nepali interpersonal networks function, seemed to provide an instant explanation for all the frustrations faced by development professionals in Nepal. Thus, the book enjoyed an enormous success among the expatriate community. At the same time, it also provided sustenance to the Janajati movement and fed into a much wider and deeper critique launched by Janajati intellectuals, which involved a complete reassessment of Nepali history, often using the concept of internal colonialism.Footnote ²⁵

The wider Janajati movement fed directly into campaigns by particular ethnic organizations (for example, by the Nepal Magar Sangh for Magars to return their language as ‘Magar’ and their religion as ‘Buddhism’). While many Janajati organizations had their roots in the 1980s or before, many others came into existence only after 1990 and often with the encouragement of NEFIN. The 1991 census counted 60 groups; in the 2001 census this had grown to 103 groups, and by 2011, to 125 groups. In 1996 the Ministry of Local Development commissioned a report which was prepared by a committee of six, chaired by development sociologist Professor Sant Bahadur Gurung and including three politicians, the under-secretary to the Ministry, and the well-known anthropologist and Janajati advocate Krishna Bhattachan. Although the report recommended the creation of a national foundation, the Ministry first established a National Committee for the Development of Nationalities. It drew up a list of 61 Janajati groups, but with amalgamations these quickly became 59. In February 2002, the government granted them official recognition as Janajatis, though 16 had not been included in the previous year's census.Footnote ²⁶ In 2009 Professor Om Gurung, a senior anthropologist at Tribhuvan University, led a government-appointed committee to re-examine the official list of Janajatis; following field investigations, the committee submitted a report recommending that the list be expanded to 81 groups. However, perhaps because of its timing, the report proved to be controversial. It was shelved, and never published.

In February 2002 the National Foundation for the Development of Indigenous Nationalities (NFDIN) Act was passed. It established the official government body for Janajati issues that NEFIN activists had long been seeking. Sant Bahadur Gurung became its first head. NFDIN was tasked with supporting indigenous languages and cultures, preserving indigenous knowledge, and devising development programmes to ‘enhance the economic and social status of the poor and marginalized groups among the indigenous nationalities’.Footnote ²⁷ The official definition of Janajati stressed their possession of a distinct language and culture, non-participation in the Hindu caste system, exclusion from the state and power, self-identification as Janajati, and inclusion on the government list.Footnote ²⁸ Subsequent definitions also included the criterion of prior settlement.Footnote ²⁹ While NFDIN is a government organization and therefore staffed largely by bureaucrats, and NEFIN is a campaigning activist organization recognized as the main national representative body for Janajatis, there is a considerable overlap in their aims and expertise, with concomitant exchange of personnel and ideas between the two organizations.Footnote ³⁰

In 2003, the weak non-party government of Surya Bahadur Thapa, seeking legitimacy as well as feeling under pressure to counter the insurgent Maoists’ declaration of ethnically based autonomous states (described below), adopted the general principle that there should be reservations, as in India, for posts in the civil service. As amended in 2007, the Civil Service Act (1993) specifies that 45 per cent of posts are to be reserved for disadvantaged groups: 33 per cent for women, 27 per cent for indigenous nationalities, 22 per cent for Madheshis, 9 per cent for Dalits, 5 per cent for disabled people, and 4 per cent for the backward regions.Footnote ³¹ Similar policies are in place elsewhere in the public sector as well as for university places, mainly for highly competitive technical subjects. In addition, there is provision for financial support for members of ‘endangered’ Janajati groups, currently Rs 1,000 a month. Dalits and people from Karnali Zone receive Rs 500 per month Old-Age Allowance when they reach 60; all Nepalis receive it after turning 70.Footnote ³²

Both NFDIN and NEFIN were successful in winning large contracts from the British Department for International Development in 2004, worth 45 million and 190 million rupees respectively. (Scandinavian countries, such as Norway and Denmark, put considerable sums into social inclusion projects as well, as did the EU.) These contracts were part of the Department's ‘Enabling State’ programme aimed at assisting in promoting good governance and social inclusion.Footnote ³³ The fact that the Janajati-affiliated government office, NFDIN; the confederal body, NEFIN; and the latter's constituent ethnic organizations were able to attract such large-scale foreign funding proved controversial both within Janajati circles (Mongol National Organization graffiti attacking NEFIN could be seen for some time in 2009 in Pulchok, Patan) and beyond, once the Bahun-Chhetri movement got going.Footnote ³⁴ Bahun-Chhetri groups accused donors of funding projects that, in the name of empowerment, in fact threatened communal harmony and Nepal's national integrity. In June 2012 they formed a task force, led by Dr Nanda Bahadur Singh on behalf of the ‘Joint Struggle Committee for National Integrity and Ethnic Goodwill’ (described further below), which submitted protest memorandums (gyāpan patra) to major donor offices and diplomatic missions in Kathmandu.

As background to these various mobilizations, it is important to note that the rise of the Janajati movement coincided with (a) the spread of the internet, (b) mass labour migration from Nepal to India, the Gulf, and Southeast Asia, and (c) the development of sizeable diaspora Nepali populations in Europe, North America, and Australia. All three processes are linked. Activists inside Nepal were and are able to draw considerable and increasing sustenance from international networks.Footnote ³⁵ The internet has proved a valuable tool for mobilizing support and spreading activist messages. The anonymity permitted by the internet also means that there is a considerable amount of material online, some vitriolic, that has yet to be studied systematically as a source for ethnic interaction.

The role of the Maoist insurgency/civil war

The political background to the rise of ethnic politics was the Maoist ‘People's War’, otherwise known as the Maoist insurgency. Without this rupture, it is highly unlikely that the ethnic issue would have risen so fast and so high on the political agenda. In the ten years between 1996 when the war started and 2006 when a final ceasefire was declared, there were 13 different governments in Kathmandu. Even when the Congress Party won a majority, in the 1999 election, internal factional fights ensured that no government was secure or lasted longer than 14 months. After King Gyanendra dismissed Prime Minister Deuba in October 2002, there was a series of non-party governments, as the king endeavoured to turn the clock back to the officially partyless days of his father Mahendra. He succeeded only in driving the parties and the Maoists into each other's arms, ultimately ensuring the monarchy's demise. From 2001 when the Maoists’ People's Liberation Army attacked the Royal Nepal Army directly, it became increasingly clear that the Maoists rather than the government had a free run in most of the countryside, at least in the hills. In many districts the army controlled only the district headquarters.Footnote ³⁶

The Maoists’ military success enabled them to divide the whole country into nine autonomous regions and, during the course of January and February 2004, they declared ‘people's governments’ in elaborate ceremonies which many thousands of people were forcibly made to attend. The inaugurations were filmed and put on the internet. In only one of the nine regions—that based in the centre of the country—were they unable to hold such a ceremony. Of the nine regions, six were named after the ethnic group of which they were the eponymous homelands: Magarat (Magars), Tharuwan (Tharus), Tamuwan (Gurungs), Tamsaling (Tamangs), Newa (Newars), and Kirant (Rais, Limbus, and others).Footnote ³⁷ Less than two years later, on 25 November 2005, the Maoists signed a 12-point agreement with the Seven-Party Alliance. The Maoists agreed to respect parliamentary elections and to merge their People's Liberation Army with the national army. They then joined hands with the parties in a ‘People's Movement 2’, as it is called in Nepal, in April 2006. The king was forced to cede power, the Maoists came ‘above ground’, the 1999 parliament was reinstated, an interim constitution was agreed and promulgated, and a new parliament of nominated members was instituted to prepare for new elections. In this revolutionary situation, a great deal of radical change was achieved through Maoist (and Madheshi) pressure: the interim parliament voted—in advance of any constitution being agreed—that Nepal would be secular, that is, no longer ‘the world's only Hindu kingdom’ (18 May 2006), and that it would be a republic and federal (28 December 2007). The newly elected Constituent Assembly voted at its first meeting on 28 May 2008, with only four votes opposing, that Nepal should become a secular republic.Footnote ³⁸

The Maoists dissolved their largely ethnically defined ‘autonomous regions’ and ‘people's governments’ on 18 January 2007. But the support that they had given to issues of Janajati rights was very influential in raising the hopes and expectations of Janajati activists. In June 2007 NEFIN held a successful two-day Nepal band or general strike, putting forward 20 demands, one of which was ratification of ILO 169, the main instrument by which internationally advocated indigenous rights are recognized as legal within nation-states. Subsequent negotiations laid the groundwork, so that, when the proposal was put to the new parliament on 22 August 2007, the Convention was ratified unopposed. Thus, Nepal became the first and so far only country in Asia to sign (from Oceania, Fiji has also signed). Subsequently, on 13 September 2007, Nepal also voted for the less binding but more radical UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007.Footnote ³⁹

Encouraged by steps such as these, Janajati activists had high hopes that the new constitution would institutionalize a strong form of ethnic federalism. They hoped, among other things, (1) that the different states or provinces would be named after the ethnic group whose ancestral home they were; (2) that 51 per cent of seats in the state assembly as well as the position of chief minister would be reserved for that group regardless of population size; (3) that the ‘home group’ would have prior rights (agrādhikar), for example, preferential access to natural resources within ‘their’ territory; (4) that everything except currency, foreign affairs, and defence would be devolved to the federal states; and (5) that states would have the power to tax non-locals at higher rates than locals.

These hopes of ethnic federalism were to be disappointed. By the time the constitutional committees started to do their work, ‘ethnic’ federalism was replaced with ‘identity-based’ federalism. Of the five demands or aspirations of ethnic activists, only the first, highly symbolic one, remained, and even that proved too controversial for the Bahun and Chhetri activists to accept. This distinction between the two forms of federalism was often ignored—many ethnic activists believed deliberately so—by the NC and UML.Footnote ⁴⁰

Backlash: Bahuns and Chhetris seek to become indigenous

For many years Bahuns and Chhetris had paid little attention to ‘ethnic’ issues. That Janajatis should organize and campaign was perhaps natural. But the Bahuns and Chhetris did not see much connection to themselves. A maverick intellectual like Dor Bahadur Bista might imply that the Chhetris should return to their Khas identity, rather than seeing themselves as Hindu Kshatriyas. (‘Khas’ is the old name for Chhetris, and in some usages includes Bahuns also; the old name for the Nepali language is khas kurā, ‘speech of the Khas’.) Some Janajati activists, such as Keshab Man Shakya and Ang Kaji Sherpa, might encourage Chhetris to see themselves as Khas, to reject Hinduism, and to join an anti-Bahun alliance,Footnote ⁴¹ but few knew of this, and fewer still cared. This all changed as the rules for the first Constituent Assembly election became clear and the date for the first election was fixed. It was initially planned for June 2007, was put off once till November 2007, and finally took place in April 2008.

The new Constituent Assembly nearly tripled the number of representatives in parliament, from 205 to 601. The justification for this was the introduction of a mixed system of direct (first past the post) and proportional representation. First past the post seats were increased to 240 (to accommodate the increasing population of the towns and the Tarai), and there were to be 335 proportional representation seats, with a further 26 appointed by the Council of Ministers. There were complex rules for ensuring proportionality among the candidates. All parties standing in more than 30 per cent of national seatsFootnote ⁴² were obliged to select candidates from their proportional representation list in line with representation in the country: 50 per cent women, 13 per cent Dalits, 37.8 per cent Janajatis, 4 per cent from remote regions, 31.2 per cent Madheshis, and 30.2 per cent from ‘others’. (These percentages remained valid in 2013 as well.) Obviously, since these figures sum to well over 100 per cent, it is only possible to satisfy these conditions thanks to intersectional double or triple counting: thus, a female Dalit Madheshi can be listed under ‘women’, ‘Dalit’, and ‘Madheshi’.

The original intention in the interim constitution of 2007 was for the 30.2 per cent ‘others’ category to include minorities not covered by any of those explicitly mentioned (for example, Muslims). But it was quickly taken to constitute a quota or entitlement for the larger categories that were not Dalits, not Janajatis, and not Madheshis—in other words, for Bahuns, Chhetris, Thakuris, and Sannyasis. In 2013, Election Commission lists put ‘Khas Arya’ against the names of candidates from Bahun, Chhetri, and similar backgrounds.

Bahuns and Chhetris felt increasingly under attack and vulnerable. Reservations in the bureaucracy and army were seen as restricting their traditional avenues of employment; reservations in elections were limiting their political representation. On top of this, they became the target of aggressive political rhetoric.Footnote ⁴³ The town of Pokhara in west Nepal, where there are large numbers of Bahuns and Chhetris, as well as Gurungs, became a focal point. According to local people, in 2006 Maoist leader Dev Gurung made a speech in Pokhara in which he declared that the country would not progress unless the ‘pointy-nosed’ people (Bahuns and Chhetris) had their noses cut off (a highly dishonouring traditional punishment) and were banished from the country. Janajati processions began to chant slogans such as ‘Send Bahuns to Kashi [Benaras, India] and Chhetris to phāsi [death by hanging]’ (alternative version: ‘Go to Kashi or face hanging’). Alarmed by such threats locally and nationwide, Bahuns and Chhetris began to organize.

Meanwhile, in the Tarai in January and February 2007, there was a massive uprising against the Maoists, against Pahadis (all hill people—Bahun-Chhetris, Janajatis, and hill Dalits—considered, here, as one), and against the Nepalese state, sparked by the killing of a young Madheshi activist by a Maoist. King Gyanendra had been overthrown and the interim constitution was about to be declared, which would set the framework for new elections and a radical new constitution, with federalism on the cards. In this context, the Madheshis finally rose up against what they saw as decades, indeed centuries, of oppression and humiliation by a Pahadi-dominated state. They took to the streets, blockaded access to the capital, and, following some shocking violence, forced the acceptance of a federal structure that would recognize Madheshi interests. Madheshi armed groups began to target hill people as a category, who consequently felt increasingly vulnerable.Footnote ⁴⁴ In response a new regional movement, called the Chure-Bhawar Rastriya Ekta Samaj, developed in 2007, led by Keshav Prasad Mainali, who left the Nepali Congress to form this new party. It represented the interests of the Pahadi settlers, including Tamangs, in the central Tarai (on the southern slopes of the Chure-Bhawar hills), who were deeply threatened by the rise of the Madheshis.Footnote ⁴⁵

In eastern Nepal (where there is a history of inter-ethnic tension and occasional violence)Footnote ⁴⁶ anti-Bahun-Chhetri activities included even more aggressive slogans such as ‘We will cut down Bahuns and Chhetris, lick their blood, and stick them on a wall.’Footnote ⁴⁷ It is claimed that many Bahun-Chhetris were induced to leave their villages by assaults and harassment both during and after the Maoist insurgency.Footnote ⁴⁸ The fear of local persecution, combined with a crisis of identity at the national level as undifferentiated ‘Others’ without a designated province in the proposed federal set-up, forced Bahuns and Chhetris to think about their collective identity and to mobilize. In this context several Bahun and Chhetri organizations emerged spontaneously in different regions.

In Pokhara, the Brahman Samaj Kaski, led by a local university teacher Narayan Adhikari, was formed on 5 June 2009. Adhikari (no relation of the author) related:

In October 2009, 12 Bahun organizations from all over Nepal met in Devghat and decided to merge to form one national organization, the Brahman Samaj Nepal (BSN). It spread rapidly, forming branches in 68 of Nepal's 75 districts, omitting only the Himalayan region where few Bahuns live. The BSN claims over 200,000 members throughout Nepal, including strong representation in the east of the country. Between October 2009 and May 2012 the BSN organized many programmes, ranging from peaceful demonstrations with religious hymn-singing to more politically aggressive ‘torch’ rallies (masal julus) and general strikes (band). A torch and motorbike rally held in Pokhara on 5 February 2012 is claimed to be the largest demonstration that city has ever seen.

The main demands of the BSN were and are: (1) an end to discrimination on the basis of caste/ethnicity; (2) the removal of Bahuns from the non-indigenous ‘Others’ group and granting them recognition as mulbāsi (‘original dwellers’ or indigenous people); (3) the promotion of a reservation system based on class not caste/ethnicity; and (4) not naming federal states (provinces) after particular castes/ethnic groups. And indeed these were the main slogans chanted at BSN demonstrations: ‘Himal, Pahad, Tarai—no one is “other”’ (himal, pahād, tarai—kohi chhaina parai); ‘Register Bahuns as adivasi’ [Bahunlai ādivāsimā dartā gara]; ‘Cancel caste-based reservations’ (jātiya ārakshan khārej gara); and ‘We don't want ethnic provinces’ (jātiya rājya cāhindaina).

Several grassroots Chhetri groups merged to form larger organizations. Although relatively more Chhetris are organized and mobilized in Chhetri organizations than Bahuns in Bahun organizations, unlike the Bahuns, the Chhetris never managed to unite behind a single organization. The largest, claiming 500,000 members, and the most widely mobilized, is the Kshatree Samaj Nepal (KSN) based in Pokhara and originally led by Professor Dil Bahadur Kshetry. In response to the changing political scenario, in Kathmandu various kin-based (gotriya) Chhetri organizations federated in order to form the Khas Chhetri National Federation. However, this went through multiple splits. More effective was the Khas Kshetri Unity Society-Indigenous Nationalities (KKUS-IN). Established in 2006 and led by former UML leader Yuvaraj Karki, the KKUS-INFootnote ⁵⁰ is based in Biratnagar in eastern Nepal, though it claims to have branches in 48 districts. The KKUS-IN differs fundamentally from other Chhetri groups in that it argues that Chhetris are Adivasi Janajatis; hence it revives the title ‘Khas’ in its name. KKUS-IN is in favour of identity-based federalism and seeks to have a separate Khasan State, which is rejected by KSN who argue that Chhetris are indigenous (adivasi or mulvasi) but not Janajati.Footnote ⁵¹ The latter argues for national integrity, and rejects any ethnicity-based division of Nepal. The views of KKUS-IN leaders—that Brahmanical ideology ruined the country during the 240 years of Shah-dynasty rule—were closer to those of NEFIN than to other Bahun-Chhetri groups. In fact, a large faction of the KKUS-IN, led by Durga Chapagain, which did not agree with the pursuit of Janajati status and ethnic federalism, broke away and formed a rival KKUS in 2009.

Efforts were made to unify the various Chhetri groups but without much success. An alliance named the Khas Chhetri National Front was formed in 2009 which allocated regions to different organizations, but this did not operate well. The KSN continued to grow and became dominant in terms of size and ability to pressure the government. On the 22 May 2010, KSN's agitation, in particular a relay hunger strike, culminated in negotiations with the government which reached agreement on two points: (1) there should be further study regarding the eligibility of Chhetris to be an Adivasi (but not Janajati) group; and (2) the government's reservation policy should be based on class, not ethnicity. A task force was formed, led by the KSN chairman. On 11 February 2012, at the head of a cultural procession, he submitted a 130-page report to the minister of local development Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, documenting the indigenous character of the Chhetris.

Figure 1.

The evolution of Chhetri ethnic (caste) organizations in Nepal.

In 2012 it became clear that alliances were needed as time was running out and a new and federal constitution was—so everyone assumed—likely to be declared. Despite some differences over the question of reservations, the KSN and BSN, along with 11 smaller groups, eventually managed to forge an alliance based on two main points: (1) ethnicity-based federalism is not acceptable, and (2) the Khas-Arya community must be removed from the ‘Other’ castes category and granted full rights as indigenous peoples. The alliance of 13 groups, named the Joint Struggle Committee for National Integrity and Ethnic Goodwill (JSC-NIEG) (rastriya akhandata ra jatiya sadbhavko lagi samyukta sangharsh samiti), was formed under the leadership of KSN chairman Dil Bahadur Kshetry. The members of the alliance were: KSN, BSN, KKUS, the Thakuri Society Federation Nepal, the Nepal Dashnami Society, the Bived Mukti Progressive Society, the Dalit Jagaran Sewa Sangh, the Nepal Rajput Service Society, the Bhumihar Society, and the Nath Yogi Sampradaya. Some small Dalit groups also participated in JSC-NIEG on the grounds that Dalits too are members of the Khas-Arya family and were made stateless in the proposed federal models despite being ‘indigenous peoples’ of Nepal. However, KKUS-IN, in line with its anti-Brahman stance, did not join the alliance.

Initially the JSC-NIEG organized regional programmes and a three-day sit-in (dharna) in front of the Constituent Assembly in Kathmandu. Then, on the 10 and 11 May 2012, it organized a Kathmandu general strike and launched other regional struggle programmes. The government invited the group for dialogue, but, disappointed at the failure to implement previous agreements with KSN, the JSC-NIEG insisted on negotiating directly with Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai, in the presence of the leaders of all major political parties. Not receiving immediate agreement, they continued the strike on 12 May, bringing business to a complete halt. To force the government to accept their conditions, the JSC-NIEG called an indefinite nationwide strike, at which point they were called in for negotiations with the government. Eventually on 17 May the government and the JSC-NIEG team signed a two-point agreement: (1) federal provinces would not be named after ethnic groups or language; if agreement could not be reached in the Constituent Assembly, naming should be decided later by provincial assemblies themselves and if that failed, it should be decided through a local referendum; (2) Bahuns, Chhetris, Thakuris, and Sanyasis should not fall into the ‘Other’ category, but they and hill Dalits should all be recognized as ‘Khas-Arya’ and as indigenous (adivasi).

As the deadline was approaching and proposals to create ethnic provinces were progressing through Constituent Assembly committees and commissions, people (mainly Bahun-Chhetris) from all over the country began to organize and protest in favour of ‘undivided regional provinces’. These included: Undivided Far West, Undivided Mid West, Lumbini Ekata Samaj, Greater Chitwan Front, Birat State, and Undivided Morang. Of these different movements, the Undivided Far West became the most prominent and influential. The indefinite shutdown organized by the struggle committee for an undivided Far West particularly targeted the Maoist proposal to include Kailali and Kanchanpur districts in the proposed Tharuhat province; there was a counter-strike organized by Tharuhat groups. Combined together the strikes lasted for 32 days; this was the longest of all the various strikes affecting the country in this period. Eventually, on 16 May, the government and the Undivided Far West group signed a four-point agreement, including an understanding to keep the nine districts of the Far West undivided.

NEFIN flatly rejected these agreements and on 20 May called for an indefinite nationwide shutdown which resulted in sporadic violence that targeted the press. On 22 May, five days after signing the agreement with JSC-NIEG, the government and NEFIN reached a nine-point agreement, one of which was the disallowing of the recognition of Parbatiya groups as indigenous which had been agreed five days earlier.Footnote ⁵² The KKUS-IN also protested against the placing together of all ‘Khas-Arya’ groups into one category, and called for the recognition of only the Khas-Chhetris as indigenous. On 26 May the JSC-NIEG restarted their street protests, organizing mass meetings in Kathmandu's open theatre and elsewhere. Many Bahun-Chhetris, particularly educated Bahun-Chhetris from the Kathmandu Valley who had never previously participated in such protests, joined these programmes. On 27 May, the final day by which the constitution was supposed to be agreed, supporters of both NEFIN and JSC-NIEG went to encircle the Constituent Assembly.Footnote ⁵³ When JSC-NIEG protesters reached the site, all sides of the Constituent Assembly building had already been occupied by NEFIN supporters. The number of people on the JSC-NIEG side both exceeded the expectations of the organizers and outnumbered NEFIN protesters. Through the police, they sent a message to NEFIN leaders to vacate one part of the area next to the Constituent Assembly building, which was done. Large numbers of police were mobilized to prevent any possible clashes. The situation became tense towards evening and the security forces had to fire rubber bullets to pacify the crowd.

After three extensions of the Constituent Assembly term, on 25 November 2011 the Supreme Court agreed to a final extension and imposed a non-extendable deadline of 27 May 2012 for the completion of the new constitution. On 28 March 2012 Baburam Bhattarai's government sought a reconsideration from the Supreme Court, but it refused. On 24 May the Court issued an interim order to prevent the government from extending the Constituent Assembly. The political parties continued to hold marathon negotiation sessions but failed to reach a minimum deal. The Constituent Assembly sat all day but the Speaker failed to appear and no vote could be taken. At midnight on 27 May Bhattarai addressed the nation on television and declared the dissolution of the house. The government remained in place, but, as a caretaker government, it lacked legitimacy. Bhattarai immediately announced new elections for November 2012, but it was to be another year before they could take place.