Contemporary Ethnography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. xvi, 305 pp. (Figures, maps.) US$75.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8122-4683-4.
Theoretically informed (but never pompous), attractively and clearly written (but not over-written), ethnographically grounded (but never boring), multi-sited and boundary-crossing, politically aware, engaged, and reflexive, Sara Shneiderman’s ethnographic monograph makes a significant, indeed brilliant, intervention in Himalayan anthropology, one that is (or ought to be) just as relevant for specialists of India as it is for scholars of Nepal.
Shneiderman’s people are the Thangmi/Thami ethnic group, around 40,000 people found principally in Nepal, in a small way just over the border in Tibet (People’s Republic of China), and importantly in Darjeeling, with a satellite settlement in the southeast Nepali border district of Jhapa. Before the work of Shneiderman and her linguistic anthropologist husband, Mark Turin, put them on the map, the Thangmi were as unknown and obscure to scholars as they were to most Nepalis. In the past Thangmis were classic hybrid Zomians—avoiding the control and gaze of the state as much as they could, remaining so far below the radar that even now few have heard of them. Shneiderman’s story focuses on how an entirely new kind of politically assertive identity emerged, focused on literary production, public performance, and making claims on the state. It began in Darjeeling and then moved to Nepal (the activists in the two places crucially being in dialogue and mutual support). Shneiderman’s theoretical bent is to stress how this new form of identity is (when understood more profoundly) in deep continuity with older ways of being Thangmi, not least in its focus on sacred origins and symbols.
Shneiderman traces the history of organized Thangmi/Thami ethnicity in Darjeeling, Jhapa, Dolakha, and Kathmandu, starting in the 1930s. The infamous Piskar incident of 1984, in which policemen shot dead two villagers celebrating a festival, on the grounds that they were singing subversive songs, occurred in a Thangmi village and the victims were all Thangmis, though this was not evident to many people at the time. Shneiderman shows how the build-up to the incident was intimately connected to underground communist organizing in the region. At the same time, very different campaigns were taking off in India, for OBC (Other Backward Class) and ST (Scheduled Tribe) status, which required middle-class activists who no longer spoke Thangmi or had any experience of shamanic traditions to prove the “backwardness” of their group; at one point, in order to prove “primitive traits,” there was a campaign for a “return” to eating mouse meat, a practice that only one leader of the relevant organization in Darjeeling actually claimed to be distinctively Thangmi.
Shneiderman is well aware of, and highlights, the multiple ironies that ensue when activists seek to make public points for a political purpose about cultural practices they are not very familiar with. The second national convention of the Nepal Thami Samaj was held to coincide with the key annual Bhume festival in Dolakha. Shneiderman comments, “The fact that the leadership could schedule [the convention] to conflict with Bhume Jatra, a ritual event that all of their publications proclaimed central to their ethnic identity, demonstrated that the activists had in fact constructed a parallel universe for the ritual production of ethnicity through political action” (167). The activists had timed their convention deliberately: they preferred not to have the ritual gurus present; it was easier to construct their own world, for all that it depended symbolically upon the existence of the gurus and their traditions, without the competition around. Meanwhile, in India, activists both needed the Nepal-based “traditional” Thangmis to provide material for their claims to “primitive traits,” yet simultaneously needed to downplay links to Nepal in order to make their claims as Indian citizens. These same activists are simultaneously proud of their ancestors’ traditions and embarrassed by the associated “primitive traits” (drinking the blood of sacrificed animals, acting as demons in a Devi festival, eating beef).
Yet another irony is that Shneiderman’s description of the Devikot festival, published in 2005, was submitted in evidence as part of the Darjeeling Thangmis’ application for SC status; the article argued, using high-flown theory from Judith Butler, that the Thangmis’ participation, though apparently subordinating, actually transmuted ritual power and asserted the pre-eminence of the Thangmis, thus explaining why Thangmis themselves viewed it as the key ritual defining Thangminess. Just a year after she published the article and submitted it to activists in Darjeeling, the Thangmis back in Dolakha stopped participating in the festival on the grounds that they were being exploited. Shneiderman candidly admits that this sudden decision shook her faith in her ethnographic analysis.
Perhaps because the Thangmi are a relatively small group, Shneiderman seems to have been acquainted with all the activists in every location. This gives her account of ethnogenesis—or better, ethno-transformation—a completeness that most other monographs lack. But, as her account makes clear, this did not mean (as in some even smaller groups) that this work of ethnic creation was accomplished by one man alone. On the contrary, as Shneiderman indicates (even if she does not always go into detail), there were fierce debates and differences on many issues. What is less clear is whether there was a yawning gap (as there certainly is in other larger ethnic groups) between the activists’ perspectives and many of those on whose behalf they claim to speak. Nor does Shneiderman tackle the question—a very difficult one for Janajati activists to face or even admit to—of the relationship between Thangmis and Dalits in Dolakha and Sindhupalchok (the more relaxed situation in Darjeeling is mentioned).
Rituals of Ethnicity is a subtle and important contribution to discussions of ethnicity everywhere. It will be particularly significant for scholars and students of the Himalayas. As such, the University of Pennsylvania Press should make it available in paperback and in an affordable South Asian edition as soon as possible.
David N. Gellner
University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
pp. 698-700