A Transcultural Interrogation of Nepali Identity in India: Race, Ethnicity and Contemporary Literature

In this paper author intends to reach a more streamlined understanding of the history behind the Gorkha Identity in India and to interrogate the subsuming of their ethnicity. Using trans culturalism as a method of penetrating the discourse, author will refer to contemporary Nepali literature in India and Nepal which plays a seminal role in cultural dissemination.

Breaking free from this dominant form of representation requires intimation with the problem of double consciousness faced by the Gorkhas. ‘The problem of double consciousness of the deterritorialisedGorkha subjectivity is torn between two seemingly conflictual impulses of a primordially constructed notion of the Gorkhajati (community) and the demands of a modern nation-state.’ The fabric of the Gorkha community is unlike the one realized in Nepal under the reign of Narayan Shah; where he posited a Hindu way of living and the caste system began to take root which set the Bahuns (Brahmins) in the highest stratum of the society. This religious unification consequently reduced the non-Hindu and the non-Khas (Nepali language) speaking groups like Tamangs, Newars, Gurungs, limbus to second class citizens in their own country. Each of these groups had their own unique languages and customs which were subsumed within the giant overhaul of the demands of a unified Gorkha kingdom. These diverse ethnic groups migrating to India from Nepal around the late 18 th century embraced the umbrella identity of Nepali in India as well. The shared way of life in Darjeeling was significantly different from their neatly demarcated villages in Nepal and as many contemporary scholars say, a Tamang may not come across another Tamang but he will come across another Nepali like himself. The very many layers to the term ‘Nepali’ and the shared history of Nepal and India in this context along with the new surge for questioning established norms of identity make way for the need to constitute an interactive discourse. One is yet to find a cornerstone other than which the Britishers provided, ‘A lot has been written about the short, broad chested, flat faced, snub-nosed men with their khukuris’ (Golay 28-29).

The already conflicting grounds upon which identities lie in the modern world is further shaken up when its inherent plurality is bottlenecked with a single stand-for-all signifier. ‘The difference in Ethnicity among the Nepali community in India and Nepal, can be attributed to the phenomenon where national identities shift into primary position for the individuals in relation to ethnic, caste and racial identities’ ( Gahatraj 31). Ethnicity is a comparatively new phenomenon in the academic scene, though the term itself has been in use in English language for a long time. In tandem with Stuart Hall’s idea of identity as a continuing process subject to history and culture, the identity of the Nepalis in India needs to be reimagined. The problem with modernity is the predetermining power it invests upon history, heavily informed and affected by the colonial narratives, long after independence was achieved. The Gorkhas are portrayed as the race discovered by the British post their military performance in the Anglo-Nepalese war (1814-16) and it is within this perimeter that all discourses regarding their identity continue to emerge. This reductionist narrative curtails the acknowledgement of various social and cultural developments within the Nepali community. In addition to this, not all casts or tribes were included in the military recruitment; strict hierarchical caste system in Nepal rendered certain sects as ineligible and the British sought the Mongoloid race within the Gorkha community as the best fighters. The physical features were given an uncanny importance hence the popular notion of all Nepalis as having small eyes and high cheekbones stand.

Arianna Dagnino sees Trans culturalism as ‘a mode of reflective identity and a critical perspective that sees culture as relational webs and acknowledges the transitory, confluential, and mutually transforming nature of cultures. It is imperative to reflect upon the history of Nepalis in Nepal before situating their identity within India. The ethnic groups within the Nepali community i.e., Kiratas, Newaris and the Tagadharis had their own scripts and languages which were lost when they conformed to the dictates of Shah’s Nepal where Nepali was an imposed language. The Nepali Diaspora comprises of the Tibeto-Burman Group. The percentage of the Nepali population with Nepali as their mother tongue was barely twenty percent and the rest were the previously mentioned ethnic and tribal communities who had their own languages. Despite this, all these different groups of people living adopted Nepali as the lingua franca because unlike having their own separate villages in Nepal the shared living scenario in India was significantly different. The ethnically hybrid community encountered a vast ‘other’ in India which brought the Nepali community together as a whole. The difference of traditions, customs and way of life within the people was sidelined and they embraced the Nepali language as a means of communication understood by all amongst them.

The term Gorkha does not have unanimity regarding its origins. Popular notions are of the term denoting a cluster of villages (Garkha is a Tibeto-Burman word which means the same), the writer SuryabikramGyawali linked the term to the khas word garkha which meant revenue area; however, there is one interpretation of the term which raises concern. Gorkha, when deciphered as being a derivative of the term ‘Go-rakkha’ or the cow-protector undermines the existence of the practicing Buddhist sect within the community. The emphasis on a Hindu centred nation during the Rana regime is echoed when the government authorities take the liberty to define Nepali community as being essentially Hindu. The religious hegemony thus created isn’t radically different from the authorial monarchy which happened in Nepal. The colonial narrative is worked on by the ones in power to serve the political demands of the nation. And because of the relative freedom the Nepalis experienced in India which was further realised by the mixed marriages within various ethnic subgroups, the Nepali community came together as one with adoption of Nepali as their common language. The miniscule space occupied by them in the geo-political space of India made the educated members of the community realise the need of solidifying their identity if they were to make their demands met. This idea was materialised with the demand for a separate state which bore the slogans like, ‘Lepcha, Bhutia, Nepali- hamisabaiGorkhali (Lepcha, Bhutia, Nepali- we all are Gorkhalis’ (B.Subba).

In the words of Paul Brass, ‘the process of creating communities from ethnic groups involves the selection of popular dialects or religious practices or styles of dress or historical symbols from a variety of alternatives available’. For a long time, this idea was favoured under the Gorkhaland Movement in the 1990s and the self-reflective mode of this fundamentally transcultural circumstance emerged only after the failings of the Gorkha Hill Council when its chairman SubhashGhisingh was forced to resign after losing support of the people. The shift from Nepali national identity to a more distinctive ethnic identity happened after 1933 with the Mandal Commission’s efforts regarding the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes. The Nepali community encompasses within itself racial (Mongolians), cast- based (Hindu caste system) and ethnic groups. As we saw, the meaning making of identities is a continuous process which is subject to diachronic changes with the passage of time. Prof.BidhanGolay makes an important point when he asks for historical narratives to be questioned for it majorly plays a role in the current situation of the Nepalis in India. As Trans culturalism posits in the most basic sense for a harmonising relation among the hybrid cultures which the socio-political ambitions of the community among the Indian Nepalis did succeed in achieving. The overarching question which yet remains to be asked is, how one would seek to engage with the consequent submergence of the racial and ethnic members of the community in the endeavour to progress in a modern nation-state which itself is in the verge of collapse.

Before I attempt a modest enquiry into Indian Nepali literature, it is required to understand what is meant by Indian Nepali. Simply put it denotes the ethnically and linguistically distinctive community of people who are of Nepali origin and are Indian citizens (Gahatraj). Prior to the period when the Indian Nepalis began to write, there was an eminent figure in Nepali literature born in 1814, the time frame which was pivotal to shaping their identities for a long time. Bhanubhakta Acharya translated the Ramayana from Sanskrit to Nepali. The great epic which also stands as an uncontested source of code conduct for Hindus was made accessible to the Nepali counterpart of the Indian Hindus. For a long time the literature in Nepal was reflected the experiences of the Brahmins and the elites. The case of Indian Nepali writings stood in contrast where it began ‘with the sawais penned mainly by Gorkha soldiers stationed in Assam and the laharis composed by Nepali Labourers working in the tea gardens of Darjeeling’ (Gahatraj 36). The former were folk poems while the latter were emotions expressed in the form of popular songs. These building blocks set the foundation upon which the writers of the twentieth century built their fort. Lakshmi Prasad Devkota’s writings spoke of his immense love and sense of belonging towards India. While enquiring into the Nepali literary world we find a progressive atmosphere of greater inclusivity. Unlike the past where it was dominated by the learned Bahuns or Brahmins it now has representatives of various ethnic groups like Newars, Limbus, Thakalis and Tamangs. The conscious awakening on the part of the Indian Nepalis to forge their identities as rightfully separate and distinct from the Nepalese is seen as unnecessary by most. Michael Hutt in ‘Himalayan Voices: An Introduction to Modern Nepali Literature’ says’ ‘in more recent years, Darjeeling Nepalis have been concerned with establishing their identity as a distinct ethnic and linguistic group within India and with distancing themselves from Nepal.Writers are sometimes described as a ‘Darjeeling poet’ or a ‘Kathmandu poet’ as if the twocategories were in some way exclusive.’ He also reduces the difference between the two as a ‘minor difference in dialect’.

BhupiSherchan’sGhantaghar translated by Michael Hutt,

The Clock Tower

Some were torn, some chewed by mice,

Some were given to friends and relations,

One by one, one way or another,

The old army jackets have gone.

Two beloved emblems

Of army life have been saved:

On its chest a huge pocketwatch hangs,

Made to an old design,

On its head there sits an ancient hat.

Like an old soldier, pensioned off,

Who spends the long sad days of old age

Pretending to catch fish,

It stands forever on the bank,

Its line cast into Rani Pokhari,

And the clock tower pines away.

The poem inherently imbibes the history of Nepal with the comparison of the clocktower in Kathmandu with the waning days of a war veteran. The tower is symbolic of the passage of time; Rani Pokhari was built by King PratapMalla in the memory of his son. Time erased those people from these spaces and as the old veteran gazes at the lake reminiscing his past, he too will soon disappear. One of those poets who were always critical of the Shah rule in Nepal, this poem has very obvious differences with the works of the Indian Nepali poets.

The Nepalis in India experienced an othering under the colonial rule unlike the one faced by the people of Nepal under monarchy. Their quest for identity is an ongoing process in a nation where they are deterritorialised. In the words of Agam Singh Giri, a poet who best represents the angst of the Indian Nepalis,

You have become unrecognisable here

Blood in your cheeks has dried up

You look like a child who has fallen asleep, sobbing

Like a prisoner tortured long

The ill-fated whose morsels are snatched away

And the house dispossessed

I have come only to see whether you are ‘You’

But you have become unrecognisable.

Embracing one’s ethnicity and accessing one’s own nomenclature are but baby steps in the journey of self-discovery of the Indian Nepalis. The Gorkha identity, as mentioned before, relied much on the pre-colonial construction based on bravery and glory as fighters. The Gorkha Identity is nothing without the almost romanticised symbol of the Khukuri (the traditional knife with a short, curved blade used by the Gorkhas), not just in India but all over the world. The attempts to set free from this colonial narrative has created newer subjectivities of identities in its aftermath. These are reconstituted from the same discourse from which they had originated. The probable methods of tapering down this discord would be to supplant newer perspectives on the Gorkhas as a martial race situating it outside the imperium of the colonizers. Equally important is the need to make peace with the historical ancestry they share with Nepal because it is not possible to completely uproot the Indian Nepalis from the soil of Nepal. Amidst all this, the greatest challenge in front of this is nation-state’s weapon of domination which brands the demand for identity as simply a case of ‘ethnic exclusivism and separatism.’

1. Hutt, Michael. Himalayan Voices: An introduction to Modern Nepali Literature. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1993.

2. Golay, Bidhan. Rethinking Gorkha Identity: Outside the Imperium of Discourse, Hegemony and History. Indian Nepalis: Issues and Perspectives, New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 2009

3. Ghataraj, Deepika. Identity Formation and Identity Crisis: Nepalis in India. South-Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, pp. 27-42.

4. Subba, T.B. Are you from Nepal? : Interrogating the Monolithic Identities of Nepalis in India. Identity, Cultural Pluralism and the State: South Asia in Perspective, New Delhi: Macmillan Publishers, 2009

5. Sherchan, Bhupi. The Clock Tower. Translated by Michael Hutt, Journal of South Asian Literature, Vol. 29, Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University, (Winter, Spring) 1994, p. 104.

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