Race and the politics of identity in Nepal

Abstract

While many anthropological studies on race have focused on dominant uses of race, race can be a powerful form of oppositional identity. Subaltern people may assert racial identities for political mobilization. This article investigates why a small political party that sought to mobilize Nepal's ethnic groups chose to redefine them as members of the Mongol race. By tracing the historical and contemporary meanings of race and other discourses of identity in Nepal, the article analyzes the meanings of this construction of race, and shows bow using race appeared to be an effective political strategy. (Race, strategic essentialism, identity politics, Nepal) ********** In east Nepal in 1997, activists of a small political party called the Mongol National Organization (MNO) held a rally on a windy village hilltop. Seated on the ground was an audience of about 50 children and adults from many of the ethnic groups who live in this part of Nepal: Rai, Limbu, Sunuwar, Magar, and Gurung. Among the first speakers of the day was the president of the MNO's district committee, a stout Rai man in his thirties. Broadcasting over a loudspeaker rigged to a car battery, he explained to the crowd what it meant for them to be Mongol: We are a Mongol community, we are not a caste either; we are Mongol. For example, in this world there are three types of people. One is white with white skin like Americans, for example like sister here [referring to me].... The other has black skin and is called Negro. The other is called the red race like us: short like us; stocky like us; with small eyes and flat noses like us. Altogether you find these three types of people in the world. So from these three groups, we call one group Mongol. Mongol, meaning, we are this country's Mongols. People called Mongols are found in many places in the world. One [group of] Mongols is also found in China and other Mongols are found in Malaysia. There are Mongols in the world but we are not those foreign Mongols. We are the Mongols of Nepal. We are Nepal's Mongols and our fight is with the Hindu rulers here. By asserting that these peoples were Mongols, this MNO leader defined them as a race. He argued that they are members of one of the major biological groups of people in the world, and that Mongols in Nepal could be identified by a specific set of physical features that they shared with Mongols in other parts of Asia. The idea that this heterogeneous group of people belonged to a Mongol race was a recurring theme in MNO communications during my research in the mid-1990s. These frequent references to the racial identity of Mongols were necessary because it was an uncommon way for people to identify themselves in Nepal. Many of the people that the MNO sought to mobilize in east Nepal had never thought of themselves as Mongols prior to the arrival of the MNO. One young Magar man expressed what many other party supporters would say in conversation: "We didn't know that we were Mongols until the MNO came here." Previously, the peoples that the MNO began to call Mongols had thought of themselves as belonging to a jati, a caste or ethnic group; in this framework, it was not biological differences but cultural practices, language, religion, and their social ranking below high-caste Hindus that were the key attributes of identity. By a process of racialization (see Barot and Bird 2001), this group of people came to be represented and categorized in racial terms as part of the mobilization of the MNO (Omi and Winant 1986; Winant 1994). This essay analyzes why the MNO asserted a racial identity for this diverse group of people, and the meanings of the MNO's invoking race in this political and historical context. In addition, it deepens anthropological understanding of uses of race by people who are subaltern; i.e., economically and politically subordinate within a society. It was not inevitable that the MNO would define the population it sought to mobilize as a race. …