Nepal: The Other Hindus

Writing in 1875, Swami Dayananda Saraswati defined the boundaries of Aryavarta:

The Himalayas in the north, the Vindhya in the south; and ocean on the east and the west. Or in the west the Sarasvati river (river Attak or Sindh), in the east, the Drsadvati (Brahmaputra) which rises in the eastern hills of Nepal and flowing in the east of Bengal and Assam, and in the west of Burma falls into the Southern Sea (Bay of Bengal).

Expanding these boundaries, VD Savarkar demarcates the geography of the same as the area beyond the Indus River, between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean.

Hindu imagination of ‘their land’ is rooted in these assumptions of cartography, wherein we reminisce about the ancient boundaries of Bharatvarsha, Aryavarta and Akhand Bharat while simultaneously affirming loyalty to our respective modern nation-state. How this disparity – between the imagined ‘land of the Hindus ‘and the reality of nationhood – adds to the complex process of Hindu identity formation is rarely explored.

This is perhaps because this lacuna between ancient Bharatvarsha and modern South Asia is more relevant in its impact on Hindu identity in Nepal than in India. Of these two Hindu majority countries, India, by the virtue of its size and history, has become central to the idea of all things Hindu, while Nepal, despite its history, recedes to the periphery.

The interaction between politics and Hinduism in Nepal is fascinating. But it often falls through the cracks of academia. Most scholars interested in political Hinduism tend to focus on India, while scholars who study Nepal don’t pay much attention to Hinduism (or do so as epiphenomenal to the more immediate concern about ethnicity) – an odd negligence given that it was once the only Hindu state in the world.

When Nepal declared itself a secular country in 2006, there were legitimate fears that this diverse society, perhaps for the first time in its democratic history, will divide itself along religious lines. But these religious fissures proved to be largely exaggerated. Even so, when they do exist, they often hide deeper shortcomings in the society that originate from unaddressed social, political, economic and ethnic grievances.

Nepal has remained a sovereign nation outside the direct control of the British Raj and even the ambit of the Indian state while being firmly placed in the “land of the Hindus.” It was this fact that made Prithvi Narayan Shah, the King of Gorkha who unified Nepal in mid-18th century, to declare his dominion as the ‘asli Hindustan’—unconquered by, and different from Mughal-ruled India. While the courts and the military in Nepal did mimic the Mughals, much of the population was largely untouched by Islamic civilisation. It instead developed a unique syncretic form of Hinduism that mixed and matched, learnt and forgot, ideas from different cultural and religious streams.

However, Hinduism was also always central to those wielding the stick of authority. While the Shah dynasty used Hinduism to justify and embolden their rule in ‘asli Hindustan’ to keep the Mughals and the British at bay, the Rana regime developed and implemented the ‘Muluki Ain’, or the Code of Law, based on Hindu dharmashastras and customs in 1910 Bikram Sambat (BS) (around 1853 AD) which institutionalized social exclusion and discrimination.

By the 1990s, when the about three-decade rule of autocratic monarchy finally came to an end, the political and cultural landscape of the country had changed. The Constitution of 1990 stated that the Nepali nation—though still a Hindu Kingdom—was “united by a bond of allegiance to national independence and integrity of Nepal”. No longer was the monarch, the absolute authority on paper.

But even by the 1980s, according to scholars like Raeper & Hoftun, the perception that Nepali society was undergoing a moral crisis was quite common. Propelling this crisis was the fact that Hinduism, the religion of the majority, which ought to have been a succour to the masses in those times, was itself being used as a political tool by the monarchy and its cronies to maintain their hold.

Once people realized that the centrality and divinity (for the King was considered an avatar of Lord Vishnu) of the monarch could and must be challenged, things began to fall apart. For example, Hill ethnic communities, who had previously followed some tenets of Hinduism, and were assimilated into the caste system, now denounced these in favour of the more egalitarian folk traditions and even conversion.

Theoretically, while social concerns are part of the Hindu ethos, its implementation in Nepal has been deplorable. The importance of social service, which became the hallmark of the 20th-century Hindu revivalism in India, had no Nepali counterpart. As the politics of dominance was so closely tied to Hinduism, it was never used as a liberating ideology to resist and fight the various forms of dominance as done by reformers in India.

With the reintroduction of multi-party democracy and the acknowledgment of the plural nature of Nepali society, the two main relics of an unequal and exclusionary past, monarchy and Hinduism, had to go. This happened after the second “Jana Andolan”, People’s Revolution, in 2006, when the interim constitution declared Nepal, a republic and secular state. In a country where conservatives supposedly dominate politics, secularism was declared without much debate or sustained protests. Hindus, who linked their political identity with the fortunes of the monarchy, found, and I believe still find, themselves between two stools. They are unable to decide on what basis they can reaffirm their Hindu self in a progressive post-monarchy world without compromising on their democratic credentials or their nationalism.

While the right wing party, Rastra Prajatantra Party (Nepal), championing the cause of the Hindu state under the Hindu King, was indeed voted as the fourth largest party, it remains a fringe player without mass support. Its demand for the restoration of Nepal as a Hindu state under a (ceremonial) Hindu monarch is so dull and remote a prospect that most (including Hindus) are put off by it.

Nepali Hindus ought to have realized that the problem of Hindu confidence in Nepal will not be solved by bringing back symbolic institutions that have very little meaning and usefulness for the larger community and nation. These are institutions that have feared critical engagement with our history, society and selves, and relied instead on feeding the already demoralized with mantras of intellectual subservience.

The dominant form of Hinduism in Nepal has always been a fascinating mix of Buddhism, Shaivism, Shaktism, classical Hinduism, Vaishnavism and animistic elements. This diversity, coupled with the political history of Hinduism, does not lend itself to organisation as attempted by groups like the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), VHP, and the RPP (Nepal) which makes them follow the work done by the RSS and the BJP in India. And neither does this syncretism permit the easy acceptance of an “us vs. them” division of society that they so often think will work to galvanize Nepali Hindus.

This is also a reason why a more sustained demand for the restoration of the Hindu rastra has come not from within the country but from the Nepali hand within the Sangh Parivar. Even so, the Sangh Parivar, especially the RSS and BJP, have their own constraints in Nepal.

For the RSS, the definition of the “rastra” is the modern Indian state and not the Hindu rastra of old. The BJP, even though linked with pro-Hindu sentiments in Nepal, is reluctant to, at least overtly, push for a Hindu state. This fact was brought home when Sushma Swaraj made it clear during her July 2014 trip that she, having taken the oath of office as per a secular constitution, could not advocate for a Hindu state in a neighbouring country.

It is due to this cartographical incongruity that organisations like the HSS, started in the early 1990s, though growing, don’t seem to have much of a presence in Nepal’s politics or society. When the BJP swept to power in May 2014, many anticipated that the RPP (Nepal) and HSS would use the growing rate of Christian conversion in Nepal to stroke a feeling of ‘us vs. them’ to push their own definition of the Hindu agenda. This did not happen, not because of the lack of trying, but because Hindus (and non-Hindus) in Nepal seem to have other anxieties.

Fuelling this intellectual dullness is the inferiority complex of the Nepali Hindu vis-a-vis their more enlightened Hindu cousins across the border in India. For Nepali Hindus, despite the undeniable contributions to and preservation of Sanatan Dharma’s rich heritage, see themselves only as a passive receiver of knowledge and culture. It is this failure to even voice their share in the gifts of the Hinduism that allows many in India, the West, and even Nepal to use India as an appropriate synonym for all things Hindu. Yoga becomes “India’s gift to humanity”, and Hindu philosophy becomes “Indian philosophy”. While the Hindus in India make the argument that there is a major overlap between Hinduness and Indianness, the Hindu political right in Nepal is hesitant to make a similar argument of the overlap between Nepaliness and Hinduness.

In the struggle to redefine Nepal, there is a conscious attempt by non-Hindus and Hindus alike to move away from all things Hindu. A ludicrous narrative that dominant Hindu groups of Nepal—the Bahun (Hill Brahmin), the Chetris, and Madheshis, in southern Nepal bordering UP and Bihar—migrated from India and, therefore, not ‘wholly’ Nepali also fuels a strange ‘anti-India, anti-Hindu’ nationalism that goes largely unexamined.

Even today, on the cusp of the declaration of yet another constitution, organisations that push Hinduism as the state religion, with or without the King, don’t find many takers. The Nepali state has proved itself an unworthy patron of Hinduism and used it only as a tool to promote its vested material interests. There is not much to suggest it won’t do the same. A Hindu state with intellectually demoralized Hindus is a good bargain for a secular state with intellectually and morally empowered Hindus.

The ongoing process of restructuring of the old order, with its share of guilt and shaming, has left most Hindus discouraged. The only solution is the recognition of its past failures and mistakes, and work to lay the foundation of a Hindu community in Nepal, that recognizes it uniqueness, but shuns its exclusionary and elitist grab while embracing dharma’s lessons in personal and mutual integrity, respect towards all and self-confidence.

The challenge for the Nepali Hindus is how to construct a new Hindu identity, without being consumers of the politics of Hindu identity in India. They also need to find a way to balance the political realities of secular nationhood without compromising on the common bonds of faith. Modern India, after all, is the not the same as Bharatvarsha, and yet the idea of Bharatvarsha is central to Hindu identity. So, how do modern Hindus both in India and Nepal go about tackling this lacuna?