These two “companion” volumes are outcomes of a three-year project titled “Vernacular Religion: Varieties of Religiosity in the Nepali Diaspora” undertaken between 2009 and 2012 under the direction of David N. Gellner in collaboration with the Centre for Nepal Studies UK, based on a survey of 300 Nepali households in Britain. I take them up in turn, beginning with Vernacular Religion.
Understanding the Nepalese diaspora is increasingly critical to understanding Nepal, as between 10 and 20 percent of its citizens live abroad. Vernacular Religion includes ten chapters published between 2012 and 2016 that, as Gellner states in the book's preface, “focus primarily on the interlocking questions of religious self-definition, the construction of communities, and rituals of everyday practice” (Vernacular Religion, p. xii). The Nepalese diaspora constitutes one of the newest ethnic minority communities in the United Kingdom, one that has created a plethora of community organizations in a remarkably short period of time. As Sondra L. Hausner notes, conducting this research “lays out in unusually clear terms the emergence of social worlds at the moment of their formation” (Vernacular Religion, p. 195).
In pursuing answers to the questions they address, these authors deploy a variety of conceptual oppositions: category/practice (pertaining to aspects of religion as conceptualized and engaged); performance/practice (religious activity); collective/individual, private/public, and lay/virtuosic (religious practice); singular/multiple and fixed/variable (identity); multiple/unitary (belonging); ecumenicism/polytropy (engagement with and attitudes toward distinctions among religious traditions); official/demotic (discourse pertaining to religion); as well as categorical oppositions particular to the material at hand, such as Hindu/Buddhist and Shamanic/Buddhist. The best of the chapters in this volume undermine the oppositions they deploy as heuristic devices.
Diasporic communities might be distinguished from their counterparts in Nepal in that they “mobilize around singular religious identities” (p. 31), “building new movements around the premise of singular religious belonging” and often actively participating “in social processes that reify categories of religious ascription” (p. 30). In contrast with identities constructed in the “performance” of movement building, self-ascribed identity and “practice,” as evidenced in “private” shrines, is more complex; it is likely to be “multiple” or “polytropic.” Gellner and Hausner observe that “[i]n the Nepali case, it appears that we have evidence for the malleability of religious identity; interestingly in an inverse relation, religion—that category widely interpreted in Western scholarship as fixed—is variable, while ethnicity is fixed” (p. 44). Any sophisticated understanding of ethnicity knows ethnic identity to be malleable and dependent on context, as Gellner suggests. I am less comfortable with the assertion that unitary notions of religion have prevailed in “Western” scholarship, which has devoted considerable attention to Catholic Santeristas and practitioners of Vodun, for example.
Scholars of South Asian religion have not suffered under this illusion of religious “singularity,” and two such scholars are repeatedly cited in this volume. Mark Chaves critiques what he calls the “religious congruence fallacy,” stating that “apparently related ideas and practices rarely cohere into logically unified, mutually reinforcing, seamless webs.”Footnote 1 He adds that “[i]n the vernacular practice of most people in South Asia, such varied belief and practice according to context is very much the norm, and arguably always has been” (p. 55). Michael Carrithers coined the term “polytropic religion” for this situation.Footnote 2 The authors usefully suggest that “multiple religious belonging” is so common in South Asia (and, I would add, elsewhere) that “we might better ask how we came to notion of religious singularity” (p. 55). In light of these insights, the title of this collection poses a question: is “religion” part of the vernacular, or is it a category that Nepalis typically encounter only in the face of censuses, political movements, and surveys?
Other heuristic oppositions that the authors in this volume productively make complex, if not break down altogether, include “category/practice” and “performance/practice.” Gellner and Hausner conclude their chapter, “Category and Practice as Two Aspects of Religion,” with the observation that “categorization is a particular kind of practice, one that is particularly associated with governments and nation-states, but that can also be advocated by individuals—political or charismatic—who wish to make claims for difference or empowerment” (pp. 50–51). Hausner seeks to preserve the usefulness of the “performance/practice” opposition—mapping it onto the opposition between groups and individuals—but also argues that “performance probably encompasses all forms of ritual [i.e., practice], private and public, individual and collective, for the individual is almost certainly performing it to him or herself” (p. 194).
This collection demonstrates that the natures of the organizations, ritual activities, celebrations, and self-identifications that members of the Nepalese diaspora create and maintain differ with historical and geographical contexts in the diaspora in relation to historic and ongoing developments in Nepal. Hausner observes that the split between Gurungs who insist that their ethnic identity is tied to Buddhism, thereby distinguishing themselves in “singular” fashion from hegemonic Hinduism, and those Gurungs who identify with an “indigenous” pre-Buddhist Bon “shamanic” religious orientation, “blossomed” as it traveled to Britain. This distinction became relatively irrelevant in Belgium, however, where Nepalis are fewer in number and party politics provides a more salient organizing principle (p. 182). Hausner and Gellner note that Limbus in the United Kingdom, on the other hand, tend to gloss over differences that are points of tension in Nepal. Some adhere to the teachings of Phalgunanda, who preached the virtues of nonviolence, celibacy, and serving others, and others honor shamanic traditions and practice sacrifice. As animal sacrifice is not possible in Britain, the differences between them are less salient there (p. 47).
Florence Gurung, discussing Nepali religious associations in the United Kingdom, points to the paradoxes that the UK Tamu must navigate to form communities in the diaspora. She notes that “[f]or organizations that see themselves as purely religious, involvement in politics is inappropriate, and yet they cannot divorce themselves from the political context which has encouraged the development of particular religious identities.” Both religious and ethnic identity are context dependent, and in the diaspora, that context includes the country that one has left, yet can never leave.
Global Nepalis includes nineteen original chapters organized in sections that describe three waves of diasporic formation: “The Old Diaspora: South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Beyond,” “The New Diaspora 1: Transnational Urban migrants in Singapore, the Gulf, and the USA,” and “The New Diaspora 2: Ethnicity, Caste, and Religion in the UK.” A fourth section is titled “Uniting the Diaspora and having an Impact in the Homeland.” Gellner provides essentially the same introductory chapter in both volumes, in which he describes the three waves of Nepali diasporic formation since the nineteenth century.
In her afterword, Hausner suggests that this volume demonstrates that “[o]ur scholarly understanding of a diaspora, and the implicit claim or presumption that a dispersed population from a shared place will have shared characteristics . . . does not readily map on to all members of the diaspora's vision of Nepal” (p. 508). She argues that “this volume expands the range of definitions about what a diaspora can be. . . . it is not necessarily to be long assimilated elsewhere . . . the place of origin is not necessarily thought of as a homeland, nor . . . is it invariably about a feeling of loss” (p. 509). Rather, the “chronology, territory, trajectory, labour conditions, and class or caste status of Nepali migrant populations overseas will . . . determine—and variegate—what it means to have a Nepali diaspora consciousness” (p. 510). These chapters demonstrate Hausner's claim that “migration throws into relief the culture-making process” through which “new configurations of nation, ethnicity, community, and self” are produced (p. 511).
The first five chapters are devoted to the first wave of diaspora formation. Jeevan R. Sharma's chapter focuses on Nepali diaspora communities of India that are marginal in a variety of ways, generally earning the least, while Melanie Vandenhelsken's on Sikkimese Gurungs examines the roles that ethnic politics in Nepal and affirmative action policies in India have played in identifications, state categorizations, and religious changes that pertain to them. Perhaps the clearest example is the influence of some janajati inclinations to identify their religion as unambiguously Buddhist and the strategic value of claiming such an orientation in the quest for achieving Scheduled Tribe status.
The last three chapters in this section concern populations that are relatively disconnected from Nepal. Sushma Joshi notes of the religious life of the now Buddhist Gorkhalis of Myanmar that his interlocutors distinguished between their Fatherland (Nepal) and their Motherland (Myanmar), gendered allegiances that betray a greater affective bond with the latter. Anil Sakya, in his chapter on Thailand, distinguishes between People of Nepali Origin and Non-Resident Nepalis and focuses on the former, who often create “Nepali ethnoscapes,” maintaining “their caste and ethnic-group practices as family and communal traditions” while at the same time being “committed to Theravada Buddhism as a spiritual system and as the national religion of Thailand” (p. 132). The last chapter, by Krishna P. Adhikari and Bhimsen Sapkota on Fiji Nepalis, notes that they have largely assimilated into the community of Fiji Indians (p. 138). In Fiji, class prevails over caste, and religious and jat exogamy is common. Even so, their Nepali-ness is marked by some key cultural features, including the way of celebrating Dasahara (Dasain), and their consumption of alcohol.
Kelvin E. Y. Low's chapter on the experiences of Nepali Gurkha families on returning from Singapore begins the section on the “New Diaspora” formed outside the United Kingdom. The children of Gurkhas serving in Singapore, usually born there, who are then forced to leave (usually returning to Nepal), are not returning to Nepal as their parents are, and need to develop a sense of belonging, while their parents’ performance of belonging focuses on their Gurkha identity, one that they did not have when they left Nepal. In showing how popular music helps assert presence and group solidarity among Nepalis in Bahrain, Anna Stirr tells us that folk music conveys “an idealized version” of Nepal that its fans may never have experienced themselves. She sees participation in these musical performances as political acts, a form of “resistance as individuals refuse to be defined only as labourers, insisting on their personhood” (p. 209).
Tristan Bruslé engages the experience of migrants in Qatar who do not see their status as being a matter of choice. As he puts it, migration is nonetheless “a way of asserting one's agency in a world where family logic (concerning work, marriage, residence) still determines a large part of an individual's destiny” (p. 222). Writing about three Nepali organizations in New York, Susan Hangen concludes that “social structures and political trends in Nepal influence [their] formation, orientation, and dissolution . . . and the debates that take place within and between them” (p. 230).
Bandita Sijapati's chapter on how Nepalis in the United States “understand the transformation of Nepal from a Hindu monarchy to a secular republic” (p. 249) finds three dominant understandings of secularism among them: “1. as a form of political recognition in opposition to state sponsored Hinduism 2. an essential foundation of democracy and liberalism 3. or as antithetical to Nepali culture and beliefs” (p. 253). He concludes that “the process of imagining secularism itself is mediated by experiences in the host society, transnational linkages, and associations between home and host societies, as well as the enduring influences of early-life experiences” (p. 270), adding that “transnational and local are not distinct categories as they are generally represented to be” (p. 269).
The last chapter in this section, by Sienna R. Craig and Ngawang Tsering Gurung, “explore[s] the ways people from Mustang, Nepal, now living in New York City, perform acts of everyday religion in an effort to maintain a sense of well-being and belonging in diaspora” (p. 275). The authors begin with poignant vignettes from their interlocutors’ lives and, in making sense of them, provide a useful overview of the theoretical perspectives that other authors in these two volumes have deployed to understand the Nepali diaspora.
The second section on the “New Diaspora” focuses on the United Kingdom. Krishna Adhikari and Chandra Laksamba review the attempts to describe the Nepali population in the United Kingdom and the challenges faced by the Centre for Nepal Studies UK in undertaking its 2008 census. It found high numbers of Nepalis who professed multiple religious orientations and a growing number of “particularist membership groups” that have emerged in the United Kingdom. Bal Gopal Shrestha and Gellner address the religious divisions that have emerged among Limbus with the development of the Satyahangma religion, dating to the 1930s, which opposes the use of shamans, alcohol, animal sacrifice, and the extravagant expenses of life-cycle rituals that are essential to “Kirat religion,” itself a category created for Nepal's 1991 census. Though the authors argue that “Satyahangma can be seen as a reformist and nativist movement that emphasizes Limbu identity and Limbu pride” (p. 343), they also note that traditionalists criticize Satyahangma for adopting “Hindu” practices, thus compromising the Limbu identity category.
The difficulties of dealing with death in diaspora is a theme in many of the chapters. Florence Gurung's chapter on Gurung death rites in the United Kingdom notes the “extent to which people feel it is possible to carry out satisfactorily the required death rites and customs, can be indicative of their sense of belonging in their adopted home . . . forcing migrants to negotiate and engage with local systems and customs and reinforcing connections within the diasporic community” (pp. 360–61). But it is also a context in which divisions between Gurungs who seek Buddhist lamas as funeral officiants and those who prefer shamans emerge. These divisions have become newly crystallized through ethnic politics in Nepal and interfere with the process of building a Gurung diasporic community.
In discussing the migration of Nepali nurses to the United Kingdom, Radha Adhikari focuses on how “new communication media have helped people create ‘virtual neighborhoods’Footnote 3 and ‘comfort zones’” (p. 392). She finds that “Nepali nurses and their families in diaspora belong to a new and peculiar or parochial type of cosmopolitan culture in the UK” (p. 403), constantly chatting with friends and family thousands of miles away and seamlessly performing life-cycle rites, with priests in Nepal officiating over rites devoted to children in Britain. Mitra Pariyar, discussing Nepali Dalits in England, discovers that though Dalits “did indeed suffer some prejudice at the hands of local residents . . . ironically, they felt more threatened by other Nepalis!” (p. 405), because the colonial enterprise of Gurkha recruitment, which used caste-based criteria, led to rampant caste-based exclusion and discrimination (p. 410), the legacy of which Dalits in the United Kingdom experience today in the attitudes of their fellow Nepalis, Dalits among them!
Krishna Adhikari and Gellner's chapter on the Non-Resident Nepali (NRN) Movement, which begins the next section, examines its failure to count more than 1 to 2 percent of NRNs among its members (p. 464) and suggests this may be due to its being seen as a “rich men's club,” and because the NRN “mostly focuses its activities on Nepal” neglecting “ the welfare of diaspora Nepalis themselves” (p. 465). The outmigration of the Tamang, the subject of Kathryn March's contribution, has been late, and its consequences extreme. Forty percent of village households are now headed by women. The push of poverty compelled mostly male Tamang to leave, and the chapter explores how Tamang systems of sex and gender have changed as a result. March identifies two sources through which Tamang women formulate new concepts of female virtue, value, and valour”: popular Tamang song and the emergence of Tamang ethnic pride in the public political sphere (p. 504).
Gellner is correct in claiming that “[these] case studies . . . amply illustrate . . . , the very diverse kinds of Nepali diaspora population [sic] now in existence around the world” (p. 21). This diversity is hardly surprising given the ubiquity and propinquity of diverse populations in Nepal, which is only exacerbated as Nepalis establish themselves around the globe. These volumes usefully engage the diversity of theories that have been applied to understanding diaspora populations and the various dimensions with respect to which they seek common ground and create distinctions among themselves.
