New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016. xiii, 491 pp. (Illustrations.) US$55.48, cloth. ISBN 978-0-19-946772-3.
In 2007, following the ten-year People’s Movement that led to Nepal’s king relinquishing power, the former Hindu kingdom of Nepal became a secular republic. It was not clear, however, what this meant for its ethnic and religious minorities, its Hindu majority, and the state. To what degree would religion remain at the core of the state apparatus and identity? Would Nepalis become less religious? What would be the future of Nepal’s religious communities and traditions both inside and outside the dominant high-caste Hindu fold?
Religion, Secularism, and Ethnicity in Contemporary Nepal, an edited volume by David N. Gellner, Sondra L. Hausner, and Chiara Letizia, developed out of a 2012 workshop at the University of Oxford to “reflect on the trajectories Nepal would take in a state divested of its officially religious status” (xi). The resulting volume is a collection of methodologically and topically varied yet consistently superb case studies by scholars with extensive field experience and/or textual expertise in Nepal. Together, the essays demonstrate the continued salience, malleability, and pervasiveness of religion in Nepal, whether at the textual, ritual, symbolic, or real politik level. The volume provides rich examples, across contexts, of how religion is front and center in processes and problems involved in navigating the challenges of contemporary life and the forces of modernity. The essays here illustrate that religion remains indisputably central to people’s adaptations to pressures and changes wrought in the aftermath of civil war, migration, and urbanization. The essays also reveal a fascinating disconnect between state-level and other official discourses surrounding secularism and the lived religious lives of Nepali communities and individuals.
The book’s introductory essay by Gellner and Letizia discusses theories and models of secularization and the historical developments from the Panchayat era onwards that led to the state’s adoption of secularism in 2007. Nepal’s politicians appear not to have known enough about what they were endorsing when they supported secularism and soon found themselves surprised, even rudely awakened, to this fact by their constituents. Does being secular mean the state should de-fund long-standing cultural festivals that the public expects, or instead sponsor religio-cultural festivals for each community? The 2015 constitution, which finally provided the state’s definition of secularism, offered little clarity. So far in Nepal, as in India, “secularism has not entailed secularization” (15), but what is observable, Gellner and Letizia note, is an increase in individualism and middle-class values (16), a continued increased production of new identities in the public sphere (18), and the transformation and reform of ritual traditions (23).
Following the introduction, the volume is organized into two sections, “Contrasting Urban and Rural Views: Secularism, Individualism, and Blood Sacrifice” and “Ethnic Traditions Confront a Changing State and Society,” comprising six essays each. Letizia’s essay discusses varying communities’ conceptions of secularism in the Kathmandu Valley and Tarai, including Maoists, lawyers, Muslims, cow-protection agitators, and Hindus. Despite the wide semantic and symbolic range of the term secular (dharma-nirapeksa), Letizia shows that across communities the general sense of its meaning is an increase of public religiosity (festivals, for example) and increased state support for religious activities.
Religion is always in flux, but certain historical periods and social events generate more significant degrees of accommodation and adaptation than others. This volume makes clear that the People’s Movement and its aftermath is one such period. Some of the most compelling discussions in this volume are of cases in which people have transformed aspects of religious practice and/or belief to achieve certain ends, including the preservation of religion itself. Ina Zharkevich documents the impact of the People’s War and Maoist wartime policies on religious beliefs and practices in Thabang, mid-western Nepal, where the Maoist “people’s government” ran as a parallel state from 1997. There were unexpected consequences to “the ambiguous nature of Maoist (anti-)religious policies during the war” (79) for religious practice: the gods were understood to have fled the place and people gave up following the ways of their ancestors. However, the ritual practice of desamar was transformed as puja was shifted to the family home so that families could avoid attack from the Maoists. Gerard Toffin maps new religious movements (NRMs) in the Kathmandu Valley, which center around guru figures and tend to offer members means for pursuing happiness and expressing individualism, without requiring a break with their ties with traditional religion. Pustak Gimire’s essay provides further evidence of religious adaptation as Rai non-high-caste women achieve gains in social status through possession by the goddess Bhagavati, who is perceived as of higher status than Rai ancestors, specialists, deities, and local spirits (183). Axel Michaels’s essay on transformations and criticisms of blood sacrifice in Nepal, Astrid Zotter’s essay on replacing the king in the state’s performance of the (formerly) royal ritual of the Pacali Bhairav sword procession, and Gellner and Krishna Adhikari’s essay on ancestor worship and sacrifice in the central and western hills together offer rich documentation of the complexities at work in maintaining the practice and legitimacy of long-standing religious rituals that assert status hierarchies and forms of authority now contested.
Other essays document processes of homogeneity and heterogeneity in religious performance, ritual, and affiliation among ethnic groups, such as the Tamang Lhocchar festival, discussed by David Holmberg, and in varying attempts to redefine Kiranti religion, discussed by Martin Gaenszle. At stake is the production of identity and pursuit of recognition. Tamang are the focus of Brigitte Steinmann’s essay on confrontations between Maoists and Buddhists and of Ben Campbell’s essay on Christianity in Tamang social life. Both essays document fluidity of beliefs, values, and religious (and non-religious, or quasi-religious) affiliations. In Tamang songs, Campbell explains, Christianity “is presented not as a great rupture with the past, but as the next generation’s suitably modern mark of difference” (404). The afterward, by Rajeev Bhargava, offers a theoretical discussion of secularism and considers Nepal’s commitment to secularism in a global era when other states are becoming increasingly anti-secular.
Though no volume can cover everything, some readers may wish that the religious traditions and cultures of the Tarai had received more proportionate attention in this volume. And though a minor quibble, the volume could have benefitted from its thirteen long essays being organized into smaller and thematically focused sections, instead of two large sections. But none of this detracts from the superb quality of each essay, the value of having them all together in one volume, and the critical importance of the volume as a whole for documenting and interrogating religion in contemporary Nepal. Religion, Secularism, and Ethnicity in Contemporary Nepal is a tremendous resource for scholars and students of religion in Nepal and South Asia.
Megan Adamson Sijapati
Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, USA