In challenging, “the popular belief that castes that are considered impure according to the Brahmanical hierarchy, nevertheless participate willingly in their own degradation,” (Gupta 2004, 410, see also Moffat 1979) Gupta suggests that the social action in which Dalits engage is poorly understood. Similarly, in Nepal, Dalit issues remain in the nearly invisible undercurrent of contemporary identity politics. This paper examines micro-level identity politics as they relate to the Dalit jats, Kami, Sarki and Damai in Central and Western Nepal. The paper attempts to fill in some of the uncharted area of local political action by depicting various strategies employed by Dalits to negotiate local political landscapes. Several dimensions of Dalit identity strategies are examined including inter- and intra-jat processes, the politics of inclusion and exclusion and the politics of anonymity. Manipulation of caste identity includes strategies making use of origin stories and manipulating inter-caste boundaries. Specific techniques involve alternately asserting and obscuring identity via collective actions of political organization and openly challenging caste structures to shifting use of last-name identification, assuming higher jat status, and using powerful social positions (e.g. faith healer) to override inter-jat restrictions and to lay claim to resources normally withheld from Dalits.
This paper examines the little-understood question of Dalit1 identity politics in Nepal. A major controversy is whether Dalits have internalized their low status so much that they reinforce it through their behavior. A brief review of recent literature on Dalit status suggests that in India this issue is still unresolved and in Nepal it is barely of interest to scholars. In an attempt to illuminate questions of Dalit social action at the local level, I flesh out dimensions of identity politics, including a set of actions I call the politics of anonymity (and related strategies), to attempt to further comprehend Dalit resistance to their social oppression. Three still-open issues are salient:
The earliest ethnographies to include details of Dalit life in Nepal did not appear until more than two decades after Nepal was opened to the west and the ethnography of Nepal was flourishing. Caplan (1972) and Borgstrom (1980) examined the effects of local politics on inter-caste relations with high castes and Hofer (1976) published an account of smithy among Kamis. Not until the 1990s was there an expansion in ethnography specifically focused on Dalits. Much of this focused on specific ritual roles, such as shaman (Maskerinek 1995), Damai musicians (Tingey 1994) and Gaine minstrels (Weisethaunet 1998). Cameron’s (1998) examination of the status of women of several low-castes in far western Nepal is remarkable for its focus on daily routine. I have recently contributed to literature on hill Dalits, examining how they are marginalized by higher status caste and ethnic groups in the processes of development and tourism (Folmar 2004, 2005, 2008). Parish (1996) examined caste structure and resistance to it among the Newars of Kathmandu Valley. More recent interest comes from Nepali scholars whose foci are on the application of research to development concerns by Bhattachan, et al. (2002), Dahal, et al. (2002) and Kisan (2005), himself a Dalit. This list of publications is quite short when compared to similar reviews for the high castes or for ethnic groups in Nepal.
Research on Nepal’s Dalits has been sparse, partly because of the personal challenge of working among them. A similar difficulty is found in India, where scholars have demonstrated a very real, personal aversion to “the method,” as Moffat (1979) calls living among Dalits. He noted that the prospect was so daunting that, after having set up residence in a Dalit village, he nearly forsook his research:
I was not at the time…prepared for the psychological stress of the method, and after about three months of intermittent residence in the Parangudi Harijan hamlet, I left the village and the region with the intention of abandoning my fieldwork in India (Moffat 1979: xxiv).
Moffat eventually decided to live outside the Parangudi Harijan hamlet. Even from a distance, he encountered problems of social stigma that interfered with his work. The very idea that he wanted to understand the culture of Dalits was considered “outlandish,” by locals (xxviii). The major obstacle was that contact with “untouchables” impeded access to people of clean castes. Two and a half decades later Clark- Deces (2005) would encounter similar difficulties in Tamil Nadu and in order to manage considerations of purity and impurity chose not to reside with the Dalits she studied.
Cameron, confronted by the same difficulty in her study of low caste women in far western Nepal, lived with a high caste family, reporting, “I had to make many concessions to continue with my research” (36). She “had to obtain permission from [her] landlady before the low caste interviewee would be allowed inside [her] quarters,” (36). Tingey (1994) too decided to forego the option of living in the home of a Damai musician, the group with whom she was working, in favor of staying with Newars, who were higher in status. So unusual is it for ethnographers to live among Dalits that when my students and I stayed in Jharuwarasi, a low caste village in Kathmandu Valley, a television station found it worthy of doing a story on us for that very reason.
Each ethnographer must consider the payoff when making such a choice. As Dalits do live in a caste system, studies of their social standing must be conducted with reference to the other, higher status groups. For Tingey (1994) and Cameron (1998) living among high castes restricted their access to the Dalits who were the central focus of the work. This was also a concern for me in Sirubari in 2002, when I attempted to understand the intricacies of Damai involvement in the local Gurung-run Village Tourism Project. In an odd living arrangement of rotating among Gurung households every other day, I had to reach out to the Damai musicians by making twice daily trips to Damai Tol, a pattern that then restricted my access to important, high status Gurungs. Actually living among Dalits makes access to higher status individuals even trickier. Living in Jharuwarasi among Dalits conferred automatic Dalit-like status to me and created situational ambiguities difficult to negotiate with elites, such as gaining entry to areas forbidden to Dalits, in particular tea shops. As a consequence of having this status conferred on me (although in no way as onerous as actually being Dalit), I gained some insight into the social and psychological challenges their status entails.
The study of Dalits of Nepal has also been secondary to other scholarly concerns. One approach, which will be mentioned only briefly here, is to consider Dalit issues in Nepal as contributing little to what we can learn through the robust interest in Dalits of India3. Another is to view Dalits’ concerns as secondary to current issues of global interest to the academic community or to emergent socio-political events in modern Nepal; in contrast, Dalit issues are seen as chronic and perhaps uninteresting.
As political and social events of the last decade of the 20th century unfolded, Dalit social issues remained mired in an ethnographic no-man’s land. This was true even though the social problems that suddenly gripped scholarly attention had characterized Dalits for ages. An upsurge of interest in women’s issues mirrored a global urgency to address feminist issues. During the same timeframe, another global concern was to quell the spread of HIV/AIDS, leading to plentiful funding and scholarly activity. The Maoist uprising provided a compelling, local, social phenomenon for academic attention. There is no argument about how important these and other issues are and, ironically, Dalit status was related to all of these. In gender issues, Dalit women are recognized as doubly disadvantaged both by low caste and gender status. Dalits are suggested targets of HIV intervention because of their high risk profile. Maoist rhetoric referred to issues of poverty, powerlessness and marginalization, all concerns for Dalits, who were said to have swelled the Maoists ranks, although there is no firm evidence to confirm that. Even so, Dalit issues continued to be swept aside by these more current affairs – they had the one thing that Dalit issues lacked, the appeal that comes with the new discovery. Dalit issues are just the opposite; they are age-old, rooted, some argue, in the very genesis of the caste system, and identified as a concern of Indian, rather than Nepali scholarship.
Scholars agree that castes are hierarchical, but dispute whether ranking is based in the symbolic separation of clean from unclean (Dumont 1970) or in the exertion of economic, political or materially-based power (Hocart 1950, Quigley 1993). Gupta (2005) recently raised the question of whether caste is more about identity than system. He asserts that the caste system has remained fundamentally the same but that avenues for resisting and challenging it have opened up, making it more an issue of identity. Beteille (1965) cautions us not to overlook other hierarchies, such as class, that operate alongside caste and can either work in tandem with caste or cut across it, thus weakening it. A focus on Dalits begs yet another question about whether caste is a unified system or is composed of several micro-systems of ideology and social practice (Moffat 1979). No one definition suffices for caste, since it describes a wide range of cultural situations across time and space. The caste system has such social potency and ability to resist change (though change does occur) because it is all these things, symbolic and material, one system and several, overlapping other hierarchies such as class, race (Hangen 2005), gender (Cameron 1998) and even modernization (Bista 1990). Beteille notes that until recently caste was a system of cumulative inequalities: in “the traditional structure the cleavages of caste, class, and power tended much more than today to run along the same grooves” (1965: 4). In reinforcing each other, they were far more difficult to resist.
This view of “traditional” systems of caste has led scholars to accept the marginalization of Dalits uncritically. According to Karanth, by stressing “institutional similarities among the Untouchable castes and the so-called ‘higher’ castes scholars like Dumont and Moffat attribute a passive acceptance of low status by the former” (2004: 138). The view that Dalits thus reinforce their low status is consistent with self-identity theory, which posits that in any hierarchical social system, “low ranking people often feel they have a stake in the hierarchy…a lowly position and a strong sense of duty are neither incompatible nor contradictory” (Hatch 1989: 351). But the pivotal moment in Dalit history in Nepal was the imposition of untouchability, pani nachalne, onto low castes, as defined by the Rana rulers in the Muluki Ain of 1854 (Hofer 1979). According to Kisan (2005), an organized Dalit social movement began at least 60 years ago, in 1947, to oppose their degradation.
Gupta has recently reviewed this issue for Indian Dalits (2005) and edited a volume exploring how they relate to people of higher caste (2004). In these pieces, he and his colleagues challenge Moffat’s (1979) thesis that untouchables accept their low status and act in ways to reinforce it. A process that is said to exemplify internalization of self-degrading behavior is Sanskritization, wherein low castes replicate practices of higher castes. But this is a matter of interpretation. It could also be argued that copying the behavior of elites is a way to elevate status. The biography of Dr. Ambedkar, whose emulation of high caste behavior initiated the entire Dalit social movement in South Asia would attest to that (see Jaffrelot 2004). By the same token, the meaning of other socalled self-degrading acts can cut both ways. For instance, one can construe passive resistance of the kind described by Parish (1996) as self-debasing or as a subtle exercise of subversive power.
In a recent study of low-caste musicians in Tamil Nadu, Clark-Deces (2005) shows how behavior both accepts and resists low status. Dalits in Tamil Nadu tell the story of Virajampuhan, the first Paraiyar, at the cremation grounds. The telling “is neither cathartic nor elevating, as is the case (at least partly) in dirges and death songs, but restrictive and downgrading” (Clark-Deces 2005; 131). She goes on:
To the question of how they felt about their lowly condition… men replied that they were not angry, because the great god Siva had fated them to be Paraiyars. As one petitioner told me, ‘God created me in this caste. I have no resentment (kurai) about that. Who I am today is god’s creation and design (Clarke- Deces 2005; 132).
The dirges, however, are densely multivocal; they praise patrons (104), “secure esteem” for the singer (105), provide an arena for competition among singers (106-107) and teach lessons (115). They are tragic and comic (115) and, in fact, are so irreverent that by singing them, men strive to, “tip the hierarchical world of the Tamil day-to-day life in their favor, even if their caste is low” (121).
This theme, of the subversive masked by subservience, continues one established by Freeman in the landmark personal history of the untouchable, Muli (Freeman 1979). Muli frequently contributed to his own misery, not because he willed it, but because of structural barriers to his advancement. Following on Berreman’s assertion that, “no group of people is content to be low in a caste hierarchy” (1973, 405), Freeman explains: “Mulmi and other Bauris have failed, not because they embody expectations of failure or accept their lot, but rather because the Bauris face social and economic disabilities that they are presently powerless to change” (1979: 397).
The same is true of Viramma (2002), a Dalit woman who describes how she and other Dalits silently accept restrictions on their singing by high caste patrons: “When we work for the Reddiar, there’s no question of us singing. We keep our mouths shut out of respect for the Reddiar” (2002: 191). But:
Towards midday, as soon as the Reddiar goes home to eat, I start up with the first song. After our husbands, the Reddiar are the people we respect and fear the most. We are their serfs. It’s different with other landowners, we sing as much as we want and anyway, they like it. Sometimes when we work for the Naicker, we joke with him. We can even make fun of him (2002, 191).
The relationship between structural control and latitude for open resistance becomes clearer in her remarks that, “We make fun of Brahmins as well” because “Brahmins own nothing…apart from Temple land. We never go work for them, they employ only Kundiyanar. That’s why we can make fun of them” (2002: 192).
The social and political strategies Dalits employ in everyday life to bow to, quietly accept, dissent to or resist high caste domination are numerous. At times a single action embodies several goals, even polar opposites, behaviors that seemingly accept the system but subtly challenge it.
A primary form of dissent, according to Karanth (2004) is replication, which has been viewed by others, including Ambedkar (Jaffelot 2004), as acquiescing to low status. However, Karanth argues that it is the economic system of patronage in village Karnataka that maintains economic and ritual hierarchy, not the act of replication. Empirically, this point is played out at the town well, the use of which is a point of contention between untouchable Holeyas and landowning Okkaligas. One Holeya says, “After all, my people live here and I do not want to antagonize the members of other castes. But I am hopeful that the Okkaligas will realize that the old order is changing and will stop treating us the way they are doing now” (Karanth 2004: 156). But Karanth comments that the dominant prevail: “if [the Holeyas] oppose the ideas of segregation as prescribed by the dominant and ruling faction, they are not likely to get what they want,” (2004, 158).
Moffat (1979) sees replication quite in the opposite way of reinforcing low status. By thoroughly copying the institutions that Brahmins bar them from, Dalits further marginalize themselves from the system in which they seek membership. This view depends heavily on Moffat’s assumption that Dalits and Brahmins share one cultural system (Gellner 2001). Karanth (2004) disagrees; replication is not a form of acquiescence to a low status position in a seamless social ethic, but is a strategy of dissent. People who perform service can disagree with the system, but may have little power to resist it. Regardless of caste, village headmen and elders vigorously uphold a social system that serves their own needs. Cameron (1995) concludes similarly, showing how Dalits select Bahuns to perform their rituals – through married women’s natal male relatives. Although this might appear to be replication, it is in fact only so in that Dalits get the ritual work done; otherwise, they sidestep caste Bahun authority.
In my experience, Dalit views of self depart significantly from how high castes view them. Although the Bahun may recoil at the mere thought of taking food from a Dalit’s hand, the Dalit is not reluctant to make such an offer, for he does not think he is dirty or achut, but recognizes that others see him this way. The offer is not one merely of food but as a chance to negate notions of impurity.
Because of acts like this, Dalits are often described as anti-establishment, in that they resist Hindu hegemony by turning to deities that reign beyond the central moral order, and drawing power from sources that defile the high castes (Kinsley 1993). One particularly powerful and potentially subversive Goddess is Kali. The subversive elements “of Kali worship have long been at the core of the religious practices and world views of aboriginal, Tantric, low caste, and village traditions,” (Caldwell 2003). Devotion to Kali is widespread among low castes, precisely because of her subversive nature, her destructive capabilities and her potential to transform society. Kathmandu Valley contains the holy shrine of Dakshinkali, where the masses sacrifice to her and which validate certain local forms of shamanism and faith-healing, ritual positions of power open to Dalits. Shamanism and faith-healing are conducted as such and are examples of Dalit attempts to wrest power for themselves though innovative practices of resistance to an unmerciful social order (see, e.g. Maskerinec 1995).
Another way to resist caste hierarchy is to reconfigure Vedicbased origin stories into jati puranas (Gupta 2005), which posit an origin of caste equality. The latter openly question Brahmanical claims to high status and challenge the validity of hierarchy. Alternate origin stories are not uncommon. Badri (2004) recounts, for example, how Dalits create stories that realign present day claims to status through valorizing the past. A case in point, the story of Uman Devi honors Dalits’ place in history and legitimizes their present. Even Moffat (1979) records the story of Aadi Draavida, the primordial Dravidian, claiming the position of the first born of caste ancestors. In a similar vein, Dalits, reject Hinduism outright in favor of other religions favoring equality, such as Buddhism, sometimes believed to be the original religion of Dalits (Jaffrelot 2004).
In another cultural domain, Agrawal (2004) describes how caste can be reordered through the manipulation of kinship rules. These rules are designed for central moral codes, not codes of prostitution, the caste-based occupation of Bedia women. Through artful twists of caste logic, Bedia claim high jat status for their offspring sired by high caste men. In quite a different manner, Quigley (1993) and Gray (1995) touch briefly on how naming and manipulation of kinship identity are employed both as a means of assigning and resisting caste identity in Nepal, a topic that is explored below.
Another area of resistance is physical space, made exclusive by constructing symbolic and physical boundaries to exclude low-status individuals from high status areas. Beteille (1965) shows how the physical structure of the village in South India mirrors its power structure: “the agraham … is not only a cluster of habitations, but also the centre of social life for the Brahmins,” whereas, “the Pallacheri…is not just another quarter of the village; it is a place which no Brahmin should enter.” I have also observed how higher status groups manipulate geography to exclude Dalits (Folmar 2008) and by so doing, create spaces that Dalits control because of their potential to pollute the pure. Low castes control their space by a sort of proxy power relinquished to them by people who want to avoid its capacity to pollute. Ironically, that which defines Dalits as low and powerless imbues them with the subversive power of untouchability. A Brahmin who enters Pallacheri risks becoming defiled and hence barred entry to Brahmin-only spaces.
Three features of cultural geography, tea shops, water taps and temples are the focus of changing inter-caste relations in Nepal today (see Kisan 2005) and figure significantly in current identity politics.
There is no simple answer to the question of whether Dalits are achieving social equality in Nepal today. The current legal code prohibits caste discrimination, but, as Kisan (2005) points out, they are not enforced and have loopholes that allow for continued oppression on numerous grounds. Often the conversation centers on whether a specific change signals deeper, more fundamental shifts in the social fabric of Nepal. Speculation falls into three categories: that material improvement is possible despite caste affiliation, that Dalits now have access to occupations they once did not, and that restrictions on specific prohibitions are easing. All these are true; I have seen examples of each, but it is just as easy to conclude that very little is changing and to employ the same examples as evidence.
These discussions point to the complexity of what constitutes real change. Toppling the caste hierarchy into a set of distinct but socially equal identity groups is not expected by anyone. Nearly three decades ago, Kolenda concluded that for Dalits of India hierarchy was not vanishing; “untouchables are not advancing as rapidly as the legislated quotas originally forecasted” (1978: 132). If anything, in Nepal, change for Dalits lags behind India. Nepal’s Dalits lack the political force to instigate meaningful change and for many Nepalis, the goals are less grand, formulated as a desire to loosen the system up for individual- and group-level social mobility. Ideas that have traction focus on tangibles, like educational and occupational opportunities. Key symbolic changes in oppression, such as access to once-forbidden cultural spaces, in particular temples, tea shops and wells, working in jobs once unattainable and side by side with non-Dalit colleagues without fear of discrimination are debated. They are argued over both as evidence for positive social change and as examples of superficial changes that obscure the fact that things are changing very little. This theme, that evidence is ambiguous, pervades my observations from working among Dalits in Nepal.
I now summarize ethnographic observations I have made on issues of Dalit agency, or their culturally constrained ability to act (Ahearn 2001). For Dalits, agency is referenced specifically in relation to people of higher and dominant status, including castes and ethnic groups. It also refers to a particular kind of socio-political action that is akin to identity politics, within which sphere I will discuss the multiple ways identity is illuminated and claimed as well as how it is altered and even masked, and how each action is employed as a strategy to regulate relations with others. I call the altering and masking of identity, the politics of anonymity. Its overt, tactical structure is opposite to identity politics, and the two can work at cross-purposes, that is, masking identity can be viewed as thwarting the goal of asserting rights through identity. I specifically address two interrelated topics. One is how Dalits conceptualize their status as Dalit and the other is how they manage their behavior toward other jats, especially those higher in the social order. First though, I set the stage by briefly assessing the broader socio-political climate in which Dalits struggle to acquire an “equal” standing among other groups in the caste system.
Eliminating social and political barriers to low castes (and others, such as women, janajati, etc.), is one of the salient issues of the day. In today’s activist social climate attaining equality is frequently discussed. Nepal has been highly politicized for as long as I have worked there, beginning in 1979. Even then, in urbanizing Pokhara, Dalits of Damai Tol voiced an intense dissatisfaction with their low standing at the time of the Referendum of 1980 on the multiparty status of the government. One interview I had with a Damai man in his 30s particularly stands out. Although my project only dealt peripherally with inter-caste relations, it was prominent in his mind. His comments centered on the injustice in the many restrictions heaped upon low caste people. He peppered his remarks with reference to the equality (barabar) he felt was inherent in all people, essentialized by the sharing of one blood. “Mero ragat chha. Bahunko ragat pani chha. Mero haat khatera ragat auncha. Bahunko haat khatera, ragat pani auncha.” (I have blood. A Brahmin also has blood. When my arm is cut, I bleed. When a Brahmin’s arm is cut, he also bleeds).
In the nearly three intervening decades, the Dalit cause has been taken up on official and informal fronts. The Government of Nepal includes the improvement of Dalit social, economic, educational and political status in its Tenth Five-Year Plan, in which social justice for Dalits is officially designated as a goal deserving of an entire chapter:
All around development is possible only if multi-ethnic groups, multi-lingual and various groups and communities within the country develop in proportionate manner. Such type of development will help to utilize their inherent skill, ability and knowledge in the national development process on the one hand, and on the other, assist to uplift the living standard of the Dalits, neglected, downtrodden and oppressed classes by creating employment opportunities through the mobilization of local resources (Government of Nepal 2002, 28:1).
Although the plan does not precisely define Dalit, the government has established a National Dalit Commission to protect Dalit rights that were granted legally in 1963. The plan advocates a joint effort to offer social justice to Dalits via a strategic goal urging, “the government, NGOs, and private sector, to put an end to caste discrimination by identifying discriminator situation against dalit community (sic)” (Government of Nepal 2002, 28:3). Efforts to identify the specifics of discrimination against Dalits have been made, notably by Dahal, et al. (2002) and Bhattachan et al. (2003) who show that it remains pronounced and includes over 200 specific ways of discriminating against Dalits.