18 Nepal and the Eastern Himalayas (Language and National Identity in Asia)

4.1 Introduction

Questions of language and national identity have coloured the history of Nepal and the
eastern Himalayan region for decades. But since the 1980s they have emerged
at the forefront of political movements – sometimes violent – which have underscored
the ethnic, religious, and social fault lines of the area. The relationship between
language and identity is complex even at the level of smaller ethnic groups; when
combined with the questions of nation and nationalism it has proved fraught with
danger. In the mid-1980s Darjeeling’s separatist Gorkhaland movement played on
language as the unifying strand of Indian Nepali society while insisting on a clear
separation from the state of Nepal. Nepali Wnally gained recognition as a national
language of India in 1992, the culmination of almost a century of campaigning. By this
time Nepal’s own ‘people’s movement’ had brought an end to the monarchist
Panchayat regime, opening a Pandora’s box of ethnic and linguistic claims. The
collapse of the central autocratic system brought with it a loss of faith in the simple
‘one language, one country’ nationalism that had been promoted for decades. Ethnic
grievances and spurned calls for linguistic rights have since been seized on by Maoist
insurgents as further aids to recruitment in an intensifying war. In Bhutan, mean-
while, the 1980s saw the Dzongkha language deployed as one element of a rigid state
nationalism. By the start of the 1990s the teaching of Nepali had been banned and
much of Bhutan’s Nepali-speaking population displaced to refugee camps.

This chapter provides an overview of issues of language and national identity in

these regions. Following a brief introduction to the languages of the area it examines
the history of language and politics in Nepal, Darjeeling, Sikkim, and Bhutan
and the various ways in which language has become entwined with national identities.
At the outset it is important to note that we should hesitate before using terms such as
‘nation’ and ‘national’ unthinkingly. These are neither universals nor do they neces-
sarily have exact equivalents in languages other than English. In Nepali, for example,
a sense of shared identity would be ascribed to a jati, a term which can stretch from
a single ethnic group to the entire human race, encompassing regional or national

identities in between. Nor do nation-states have a long pedigree in the region as a form
of polity. ‘National’ groups are neither homogeneous nor do they tend to be contained
neatly within the boundaries of a single state. Indeed, this is a region of multiple
identities: within Nepal there are Hindu Nepalis, Buddhist Nepalis, plains Nepalis,
Nepalis of any number of distinct ethnic groups; beyond the boundaries of Nepal
itself we Wnd Sikkimese Nepalis, Indian Nepalis, Assamese Nepalis, Bhutanese Nepalis,
and so on. This chapter aims to unravel some of these complexities and highlight the
key issues and current trends that underlie the increasingly sensitive debates around
language and identity that are taking place throughout the region. Most space is
devoted to discussion of Nepal, whose population is many times greater than that of
Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan combined.

4.2 The Area

The Himalayan region has a turbulent history. For centuries it was an area of

uctuating political control, with petty principalities struggling to extend their

inXuence while sandwiched between the great powers of north India and China. It
was only following the late eighteenth-century uniWcation of Nepal and its bruising

( T I B E T )

SIKKIM

Nepal and the Eastern Himalayas

war with the British East India Company in 1814–16 that states were contained
within strict boundaries. Before its military clash with the British, the small state of
Gorkha had in the space of a few decades politically united a swathe of territory
along the Himalayas from the river Sutlej in the west to the Tista in the east.
The 1816 settlement saw Nepal’s territory reduced and its borders demarcated. It
was contained within the Mahakali to the Mechi rivers, a stretch of some 885 km,
and it occupies much the same territory today. Geographically the country can be
divided into three bands: the high mountains that form its northern frontier, the
central hills, and the southern plains (Tarai) that stretch along its open border with
India.

Immediately to the east lie Sikkim and Darjeeling. Sikkim, a small state bordering

Tibet which British India treated as a protectorate, acceded to the Indian Union in
1975. Darjeeling and its immediate area had been gifted to the British by Sikkim in
1835; this area was extended in 1865 by the incorporation of Bhutanese territory
annexed by the British after a punitive campaign. Despite separatist struggles, Darjee-
ling remains a district of the Indian state of West Bengal. Bhutan lies to the east of
Darjeeling and Sikkim and remains a sovereign state, albeit highly dependent on India
and obliged by treaty to manage its foreign aVairs in collaboration with New Delhi.
Although much smaller in area, Bhutan’s geography is similar to that of Nepal, also
encompassing high mountains, hills and some low-lying plains on the border with
India. Despite limited recent moves towards democratization Bhutan remains a
hereditary monarchy, the current king Jigme Singye Wangchuck being the fourth
member of a dynasty established in 1907.

Nepal is not only the largest of the areas under discussion but by far the most

populous. According to the 2001 census its population had reached some 24 million
and population growth remains high. Indian census Wgures of the same year indicate
that Sikkim’s population had only just crossed the half-million mark while Darjeeling
district as a whole counted some 1.6 million inhabitants. The enumeration of Bhutan’s
citizens is not so simple. The topic itself is politically sensitive and in the absence of
recent census statistics best estimates indicate a total of between 600,000 and 1 million
(see section 4.7). The population of all of these areas is very diverse and this is reXected
in the remarkably high linguistic diversity outlined in the following section. The
people of the Himalayan region encompass Hindus and Buddhists, animists and
Muslims, highland pastoralists and lowland agriculturalists. Despite one signiWcant
division between speakers of Indo-Aryan languages (generally caste Hindus) and
Tibeto-Burman languages (generally distinct upland ethnic groups with shamanist
or Buddhist traditions), the relationship between the diVerent caste, ethnic, linguistic,
and national groups of the Himalaya is far too complex to admit simple categoriza-
tion. Historical patterns of language and religious shift have been compounded by
migration and intermarriage to produce a much more mixed population than census
statistics imply.

R. Chalmers

4.3 The Languages

Linguistic diversity is one of the most striking features of Nepal and the eastern
Himalayan region. This area lies at the meeting point of two great language families,
the Indo-European and Tibeto-Burman, as well as including small communities of
speakers of Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic languages. While the larger languages are
well established and deWned, with several enjoying long literary traditions and others
in the process of standardization, there are dozens of smaller languages that have
yet to be well described and documented. Many of these are endangered and some
have become extinct in the recent past. Given the diYculty of separating languages
and dialects (categories which admit to no absolute deWnition) it is understandable
that estimates of the total number of distinct languages spoken in the region vary
considerably. Within Nepal, however, where the tradition of descriptive linguistics
now stretches back well over four decades, most experts agree on a Wgure of
somewhat over one hundred languages. Among these, Indo-Aryan languages claim
the most speakers but the Tibeto-Burman group includes a far larger number of
distinct languages.

The dominant language in the region as a whole is Nepali, the national language of

Nepal and mother tongue of around half of its population. In both Sikkim and the hill
areas of Darjeeling, Nepali has long been the prime lingua franca, and also functions
as an oYcial language. Bhutan is home to a range of Tibeto-Burman varieties, some of
them very close to standard Tibetan, and the last two decades have witnessed a
determined government campaign to strengthen Dzongkha as the oYcial language.
It is worth noting that there are areal features shared across language families and the
great religious traditions, especially as expressed in Sanskrit and Tibetan, that have
had an impact on vocabulary and other features of language use. Across this region,
English also plays an increasingly important role as a second language and educational
medium.

4.4 Language Shift, Migration, and the Roots
of Language Politics

Nepal and the eastern Himalayan region have been shaped by signiWcant language
and population shifts. A long-established pattern of eastward migration – primarily
for economic reasons – has been accompanied by the displacement of minority
languages. In general the shift has been to Nepali, and this shift is most pronounced
in the erstwhile migrant populations which now dominate Sikkim and Darjeeling.
In Bhutan, the presence of large numbers of Nepali speakers has, however, been one
of the main reasons behind moves to strengthen Dzongkha as the national language.

For good surveys of language in Nepal and the Himalayas, see the following: van Driem (2001), Hutt

(1988), Kansakar and Turin (2003).

Nepal and the Eastern Himalayas

The spread of the Nepali language – in limited functions as an oYcial language but

more signiWcantly as a lingua franca – has been a continuing trend since at least the
eighteenth century, and from before the uniWcation of Nepal. External factors such as
the large-scale recruitment of ethnically diverse Nepalis into the British Indian Army
provided added impetus to the adoption of a shared language. By the late nineteenth
century a vibrant Nepali publishing industry had been established in Banaras and as
the twentieth century progressed formal education within India and Nepal greatly
increased the use of the language. Under the autocratic Panchayat regime (1960–90)
the promotion of the Nepali language became an integral part of the uniform national
culture which the state sought to impose on its subjects, epitomized by the slogan
‘one country, one dress, one language’.

Yet Nepal was characterized by nationism rather than nationalism: it was the state

that was in search of a nation rather than vice versa. As several recent historians have
noted, the conquests of King Prithvinarayan Shah of Gorkha in the late eighteenth
century uniWed the country politically but not socially or culturally. This is not to say
that Nepalis did not share identities wider than the purely local: ties of religion,
region, or ethnic community were all present to diVering extents across the geo-
graphical territory of the country. But even the early rulers of the united kingdom did
not think in ‘national’ terms and their diverse subjects probably did not enjoy any
broad sense of cultural community that could be labelled as incipient national
sentiment.

In retrospect, then, the eruption of ethnic politics and linguistic movements follow-

ing the introduction of multi-party democracy to Nepal in 1990 is hardly surprising.
In the process of reassessing the foundations of the state, language has come to occupy
a central, if often symbolic, position. The struggle for minority linguistic rights has
become emblematic of a wider intellectual and political eVort to redeWne Nepal as a
culturally pluralistic state. For the ethnic associations which mushroomed in the
immediate aftermath of the democracy movement recognition of linguistic diversity
has become a totemic issue. Although many members of Nepal’s ethnic groups have
adopted Nepali as their primary language, demands for mother tongue teaching and
the use of minority languages in oYcial contexts have formed a central plank of ethnic
politics.

Ironically, it was only beyond Nepal’s borders that a proto-nationalist consciousness

developed around the shared use of Nepali. Waves of emigrants had populated
Darjeeling (in British India), established themselves as the majority group in the
protectorate of Sikkim, settled in large numbers in the south of Bhutan and built up
sizeable communities in the western Himalayas, northeast India, and urban centres
such as Banaras and Calcutta. These communities – especially the hundreds of
thousands of Nepalis who made Darjeeling their home – were ethnically mixed and
initially included many non-Nepali speakers. Yet the Nepali language rapidly eclipsed

For a history of nationalism in Nepal, see Onta (1996), and also Burghart (1984).

R. Chalmers

other mother tongues and formed the base of a composite culture Xexible enough to
include people of divergent linguistic, religious, and ethnic origins yet resilient enough
to retain its own distinctiveness. Nepalis in India struggled for decades to have their
adopted language recognized at regional and national levels. In Bhutan, on the other
hand, language issues have contributed to a bitter divide over national identity as state
eVorts to impose an oYcial culture of Dzongkha language and national dress have led
to the marginalization and stigmatization of many communities, especially Bhutanese
Nepalis.

4.5 Nepal: from Pre-Nationalism to Post-Nationalism?

In Nepal today, language Wnds itself at the heart of a battle for the soul of the state.
After centuries of rule by a small and exclusive elite, the post-1990 democratic period
has brought to the fore calls for a more inclusive national culture. The supporters of a
pluralistic conception of national identity have had to confront a legacy of top-down,
prescriptive state nationalism. In doing so they have often characterized the Nepali
language as symbolic of state oppression, pointing to its widespread adoption as the
outcome of a deliberate policy of cultural domination. In place of its erstwhile
position as one of the oYcial symbols of national unity, ethnic activists have been
successful in associating Nepali with high-caste Hindu hegemony. Their revisionist
reading of history holds that Nepal’s uniWcation was actually a process of conquest
and subjugation of independent indigenous minorities.

4.5.1 Nepali as National Language

The question of how Nepali gained its supremacy as a national language is politically
charged. Proponents of Panchayat-style nationalism argued that its pre-eminence was
both natural and essential if Nepal wished to retain its sovereignty and national pride.
Opponents of this viewpoint hold that successive regimes have knowingly promoted
Nepali in an eVort to undermine diversity. Both of these positions, however, require
critical attention. The rise to prominence of Nepali was neither wholly accidental
nor wholly planned, and it was also propelled by factors beyond the control of Nepal’s
leaders.

The state that was created by Prithvinarayan Shah’s expansionist campaign was

deWned more by strategic goals and military culture than by any sense of inherent or
incipient nationhood. Prithvinarayan’s personal ambitions were in harmony with the
wider logic of creating a uniWed territory large enough to resist incorporation into
the ever-expanding domains of the East India Company. Certainly suspicions of the
British fuelled further conquests after Prithvinarayan’s death in 1775. But the military
campaigns generated their own momentum, not least because the payment to oYcers
was in the form of land grants, which added an extra economic imperative to territorial
expansion. The Shahs’ campaigns and administration did not, however, reXect deep

Nepal and the Eastern Himalayas

concerns about language or culture. Their language was used as the de facto means of
communication and administration but was accorded no special symbolic value.

In 1846 there was a dramatic shift of power as the dynamic young oYcer Jang

Bahadur seized the prime ministership and instituted a century of rule by his family.
The Shah monarchy was relegated to a titular role while real power lay with
the hereditary Rana prime ministers. Jang Bahadur redeWned the concept of the
state with his introduction of an overarching legal code (the Muluki Ain, 1854).
Here the Hinduization of Nepal was formalized with the ranking of all ethnic
groups – whatever their actual religious practices – within a unitary Hindu caste
hierarchy. Yet the Nepali language was still accorded no particular position and its
usage was based on custom rather than any oYcial status as a national language.
Administrative structures throughout the Rana period were minimal and the primary
aims of the Rana rulers were extractive: they were far more interested in personally
appropriating all economic surplus than in imposing any particular linguistic and
cultural vision of national identity.

In fact, when support for the Nepali language Wrst started to be linked to a wider

social consciousness it was viewed as a threat by the Ranas. The pioneering Nepali
language activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were inspired
by emerging nationalist sentiment in India. Their view of language development
was modernizing, linked to education and publishing, and as such a challenge to
the ossiWed Rana regime which sought to ensure that its population remained
illiterate and ignorant. While most Nepali language activities took place outside
Nepal (see section 4.6) their eVect was eventually impossible to ignore in Kathmandu.
The government agreed to the establishment of a language council in 1914 and started
to publish a limited number of textbooks. But the language was still described as
‘Gorkha’ and the progressive eVorts led by an emerging, formally educated middle
class continued to meet with stiV state resistance. In 1930 the Gorkha Language
Publishing Committee Wnally changed its name to Nepali, marking a small step
towards a more formal linkage between language and state.

Indian independence in 1947 presaged the end of the British-backed Rana regime

and it Wnally surrendered full power in 1951. A new democratic era was promised and
initial signs were that linguistic pluralism might prevail. Radio Nepal was founded in
1951 and from the outset it broadcast news in Newar (the Tibeto-Burman language of
the Kathmandu area) and Hindi (the national language of India and lingua franca of
the Tarai) as well as Nepali. But the promised elections were delayed time and time
again and a more centralist vision of the state took root. In 1956 the National
Education Planning Commission recommended the nationwide imposition of Nepali
medium instruction in an attempt to displace other languages, and the 1959 Consti-
tution enshrined Nepali as the sole oYcial language.

Hints at democratic pluralism

survived – in the parliament elected in 1959 the Nepali Congress government

Article 70 reads ‘The national language of Nepal shall be Nepali in the Devanagari script.’

R. Chalmers

supported the use of Hindi alongside Nepali – but the democratic experiment as a
whole was to be short-lived. In December 1960 King Mahendra dissolved parliament,
arrested political leaders, and instituted three decades of royal rule. During this period
a state-sanctioned oYcial nationalism took shape and was forcefully propagated
through all means at the state’s disposal, in particular the expanding school system,
state radio, and print media. This brought clear economic incentives for adopting
Nepali – for example, access to government employment – and added a coercive edge
to the existing patterns of Nepali lingua franca usage. Census statistics show a
consistent fall in the speakers of other languages as the shift to Nepali gained pace.

4.5.2 Putting the Case for Other Languages

The idea that a single language should dominate all others across the state had no
historical precedent in the region and prompted concerted opposition from an early
stage. The medieval Newar kings of the Kathmandu valley had happily turned to
Sanskrit and Maithili for literary and oYcial purposes; later they used Nepali in
inscriptions well before the Gorkha conquests stripped them of their kingdoms.
The Shah kings had also adopted Farsi as the language of regional diplomacy and
Farsi terminology still infuses legal and governmental Nepali registers to this day. In
general, attitudes towards language use were pragmatic and determined by circum-
stance. But by the end of the Rana regime educated speakers of languages other than
Nepali were aware that their mother tongues were slipping into second class status.

The new freedom of the 1950s enabled other language communities to organize and
put language rights on the political agenda.

Immediately on the fall of the Rana regime, regional and ethnic tensions within

Nepal began to be vented. The Nepali Congress, the largest party, was faced with a
rebellion by its ethnic Limbu and Rai leaders in eastern districts, while the Tarai
Congress formed in 1951 focused the separatist sentiments of the more India-oriented
plains people.

From the outset the Tarai Congress called for recognition of Hindi

as a state language. By 1954 Newar language teaching had been instituted and
1956 saw the foundation of a number of ethnic and caste movements, including the
umbrella Backward Classes Organization and a Magar ethnic association.

However,

the National Education Planning Commission’s recommendations were quickly
implemented, with Nepali imposed in all secondary schools from 1956 and in primary

In some cases there had been deliberate repression, notably of Newar in the early twentieth century.

Again this was linked to wider political fears: the growth of reformist Theravada Buddhism among
Newars was seen as a potentially serious threat to the Rana regime. Publishing in Newar was banned until
1946.

One of B. P. Koirala’s most diYcult tasks as home minister in the Wrst post-Rana government was to

reassert control of the east of the country where the Congress Mukti Sena commander Bal Bahadur
Chemjong had led a rebel movement which declared an independent state (Koirala 2001: 143–4).

This included the Gurung Kalyan Sangha, Tharu Kalyankari Sabha, Kirat League, and Dalit Sangha.

Nepal and the Eastern Himalayas

schools from 1957. This language policy became embroiled in widespread controversy.
In January 1957 the Pallo Kirat Limbuwan Representative Group of east Nepal
submitted a petition to the government including demands for Limbu radio broadcasts
and a proposal for a school in which Limbu would be taught alongside Nepali.
By September of that year a Nepali Promotion Congress had been formed to counter
pro-Hindi activism and violent street clashes were reported.

The Tarai Congress’s

‘Save Hindi’ campaign received support from the leaders of mainstream parties
including the Nepali Congress, Communist Party of Nepal, United Democratic
Party, and Praja Parishad. Meanwhile in the capital the Patan District Committee of
the Nepal National Students’ Federation was demanding that Newar be used in local
schools.

The government found itself on the back foot, surprised by the intensity of feeling

against a monolingual nationalism. In January 1958 a new government directive
reversed the requirement for the immediate introduction of Nepali in all primary
schools. In the general elections of February 1959 the Tarai Congress failed to garner
support, with every one of its candidates losing their deposit in the Wrst-past-the-post
system. Once King Mahendra had seized full power he introduced a series of
measures to reverse the small gains made by language activists in the 1950s. In 1961
a new National Education Commission recommended that Nepali be the medium
of instruction for all grades, a measure promptly enforced by the 1962 Education
Act. In this year the new national constitution, establishing the Panchayat system of
government, reaYrmed Nepali’s status as sole state language and required that
applicants for citizenship by naturalization be able to write and speak Nepali. Further
measures followed. The 1964 Nepal Company Act required all companies to keep
records in either Nepali or English and the following year the government decreed
that all signboards in the country must be in Nepali. Radio Nepal’s ten-minute news
broadcasts in Newar and Hindi were also terminated, prompting some protests from
Newar organizations.

The success of the Panchayat’s repressive measures convinced many that its

ideology had won full acceptance and that ethnic, regional, or linguistic movements
would not rise again. But the Panchayat system itself was not secure. Although
political parties were banned they continued to organize underground and rally
opposition to the regime. By the end of the 1970s, student protests forced the
government to announce a referendum on the system of government. At this
juncture the Nepal Bhasa Mankah Khalah, a signiWcant Newar language organization
that is still active, was founded. Language had not disappeared from the political
agenda and nor had the Panchayat vision of uniform national identity won the day.
While the government scraped a victory in the referendum, the 1980s witnessed

On 19 November 1957 Save Hindi Committee and Nepali Pracharini Sabha demonstrations clashed in

Biratnagar leaving at least 25 injured. For a description of key events in the Hindi campaign see Gaige
(1975).

R. Chalmers

a steady rise in organization along ethnic lines with the birth of associations such as
the Forum for the Rights of All Nationalities and the Oppressed People’s Upliftment
Forum. On the eve of the return of democracy the Nepal Bhasa Mankah Khalah held
its convention in Kathmandu (28–29 July 1989). It approved a ten-point resolution
demanding, inter alia, equal constitutional status for minority languages, rights to
mother tongue education, and representation of all languages in the media. The
stage was set for an upsurge of ethnic and language issues at the heart of national
political debate.

4.5.3 After 1990: Ethnopolitics and Language Activism

The fall of the Panchayat system opened the political Xoodgates. Apart from the
triumphant return of the major parties, dozens of smaller parties and campaigning
groups were formed. These included many ethnic organizations, almost all of which
made language a central symbolic issue among their demands. The Nepal National
People’s Liberation Front, representing hill ethnic groups, was the Wrst political party
founded after the success of the ‘people’s movement’ and it was followed by the
inXuential Nepal Federation of Nationalities (NEFEN), which remains the undisputed
umbrella group for ethnic associations. Some groups were more extreme (such as
Khagendra Jang Gurung’s National Janajati Party and Hit Bahadur Thapa Magar’s
Magarant Liberation Front), while there was a mushrooming of cultural and literary
organizations (such as the Council for Tharu Literature) that were not expressly
political but which nevertheless mobilized linguistic groups in the public sphere. The
new 1990 constitution made notable concessions to a pluralist view of the state,
describing Nepal as multi-ethnic and multilingual. It also declared that while Nepali
was to remain as the state language (rastrabhasa) other languages would enjoy the
status of ‘national languages’ (rastriya bhasa).

The new constitution did, however, ban ethnically based political parties. The Mongol

National Organization and the National Janajati Party were refused registration by the
Election Commission and the Limbuwan Liberation Front opted to boycott the 1991
general election. Nevertheless, some parties slipped through the net and Welded candi-
dates on an ethnic or regional platform. Gore Bahadur Khapangi’s Nepal National
People’s Liberation Front put up Wfty candidates but won no seats; the Tarai-based
Nepal Sadbhavana Party (the ideological successor to the Tarai Congress of the 1950s)
won six seats. The Nepali Congress, which emerged the clear winner, promised a
reformist agenda which would address some of the demands of language and ethnic
groups. However the Congress’s actual record during its three years in oYce set the
pattern for a failure by successive elected governments to deal with the fundamental
questions raised by language activism.

See Sonntag (1995).

Nepal and the Eastern Himalayas

The principal demands of language activists can be grouped into six main categor-

ies: (i) at a symbolic level, recognition of the equality of all languages; (ii) mother
tongue teaching in schools and other state educational support for language study and
research; (iii) some usage of languages other than Nepali in government, either at
local levels or as alternative national languages; (iv) employment opportunities in
government not to be dependent on Nepali language competence; (v) radio broad-
casts and other media development in minority languages; (vi) more accurate census
reporting and professional surveys of language usage.

The 1991–4 Congress government realised that calls for linguistic rights could not

be ignored entirely. With the start of the UN’s Decade of Indigenous People approach-
ing in 1993, ethnic politics was challenging traditional views of the state. January 1993
saw the introduction of Maithili language broadcasts on Radio Nepal and in May a
National Languages Policy Recommendation Commission was set up, with a broad
mandate to investigate the role of Nepal’s many languages and recommend ways in
which the government could support their development. In 1994, as the Commission
published its report, a further nine languages were added to Radio Nepal broadcasts.
But members of the Commission were already worried that the government was not
genuinely interested in their work: they had received only a minimal budget and
administrative support and in the event the vast majority of their recommendations
were simply ignored. A few concrete steps did include the establishment of a
Department of Linguistics in the national university but topics such as mother tongue
teaching were only paid lip service. Meanwhile both major political parties were also
swayed by a high-caste Hindu conservative backlash. In 1993 the Congress govern-
ment made Sanskrit a compulsory subject in secondary schools; in 1995 its successor,
a communist minority administration, introduced Sanskrit news broadcasts.

4.5.4 Language and the Continuing Divisions over National Identity

The surge of post-1990 optimism that had fuelled language activism was turning into
frustration and anger. The spirit of the pluralist constitution and the promise held out
by democratic governance seemed to have been betrayed by the entrenched mono-
lingual and monocultural conservatism of governing circles. The change of regime
had not, after all, led to a change of mindset on national identity nor to a shake-up of
the ruling elite. In August 1997 the battle lines were drawn as Kathmandu’s city
council decided to introduce Newar as a parallel language of local government. In
November a Tarai front was opened with Dhanusha District Development Commit-
tee and Rajbiraj Municipality similarly deciding to use Maithili in local administration.
The government response was swift. Local administrations were warned that such
policies – even though they retained Nepali as the primary oYcial language – were
considered unlawful. The Supreme Court supported this line in an interim ruling and
in June 1999 handed down its Wnal verdict that the use of languages other than Nepali
in government oYces was unconstitutional and illegal.

R. Chalmers

In most regards, the divisions between the two opposing sides on this issue have only

deepened in the following years. The Supreme Court ruling focused all ethnic activists
on language as a primary cause to campaign for and led to the formation of a Joint
Language Rights Action Committee. In March 2000 NEFEN brought together seventy-

ve organizations in a National Conference on Linguistic Rights which adopted a

declaration whose major demands remain, unsurprisingly, unmet. Slow progress on
some technical fronts – for example, there has been more work on documenting
minority languages and producing mother-tongue teaching textbooks – cannot obscure
the fact that the wider debate over national identity is yet to reach a conclusion. In
practice, language activists appreciate that many of their demands are primarily sym-
bolic: Nepali cannot be replaced as a national language and it is indeed the main
medium for most ethnic discourse. The widespread adoption of Nepali has enabled a
uniWed national political life and, ironically, helped create the conditions that enable
challenges to its supremacy to be aired eVectively. But attitudes to language, and in
particular to linguistic pluralism, reXect core beliefs about the nation itself.

Multiparty democracy has been suspended since October 2002 and an intensifying

Maoist insurgency threatens the state. But even as questions of national identity
assume ever more signiWcance the chances of them being constructively debated
recede. For a brief period of three decades Nepal’s Panchayat presented the image
of a country united by a strong, shared nationalist sentiment symbolized by the sole
national language. The democracy movement has ushered in what could be termed a
post-nationalist era where certainties have given way to unresolved wrangling over
the true nature of Nepal as a state and, still potentially, as a nation.

4.6 Darjeeling and Sikkim: Linguistic Unity and the Struggle
for Recognition

Darjeeling and Sikkim are, perhaps surprisingly, more Nepali-speaking than Nepal
itself. This is despite the fact that their large Nepal-origin populations came over-
whelmingly from non-Nepali-speaking backgrounds. The rapid shift to Nepali, and
subsequent campaigns for its oYcial recognition within India, illustrate the eVects of
political and economic factors on language and identity. More recently, moves to gain
special status for ethnic groups have demonstrated the instrumental incentives of
reservations rather than ethno-linguistic sentiment. It is only in Sikkim that minority
languages have been actively nurtured, oVering a model that language activists in
Nepal and Bhutan view with some envy.

When the British East India Company persuaded Sikkim to grant it Darjeeling as a

gift, the area’s population was minimal. However, it had been under Nepal’s control
between 1789 and 1815 and the Gorkha army had established forts in strategic
locations. In any case it was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that

For further discussion, see Hoftun, Raeper and Whelpton (1999).

Nepal and the Eastern Himalayas

Darjeeling’s population exploded with the birth of the tea industry. This labour-
intensive business drew in tens of thousands of labourers, most of them from
Nepal. By the time of the Wrst census in 1872 the district had 94,712 inhabitants and
this Wgure went on to triple over the next Wve decades. The social, ethnic, and caste
composition of the majority Nepal-origin population diVered signiWcantly from that
of Nepal as a whole. Ancestral Nepali-speakers – primarily the high and low caste
Hindus of the hills – formed only one Wfth of the Nepali population as a whole.
Furthermore, the economic dominance of the higher castes was not replicated in the
migrant community and increasing educational opportunities from the late nine-
teenth century onwards gave countless members of minority ethnic groups a chance
to leapfrog their way into the ranks of a nascent middle class. It was primarily this
middle class that, as in many other language movements, drove eVorts to gain status
for Nepali.

The adoption of Nepali as a lingua franca among Nepalis of diverse origins was a

natural process given added momentum by the migrants’ sense of being a very small
minority in a very large country. The feelings of solidarity generated by shared
vulnerability were enhanced by the relatively Xat caste and class structure of the
early settlers’ communities. Most were unskilled economic migrants and most were
not traditionally Hindu, more willing to intermarry between groups and less rigid at
observing the caste diVerences enforced by law within Nepal. Still, there were vast
cultural diVerences between the Nepal-origin groups: some were predominantly
Buddhist, some shamanist, some had traditions of polygamy, some of polyandry. In
short, there was no way that the Nepali community as a whole could conform to a
unitary ethnic identity. But the role of the Nepali language, as the one tangible
cultural feature that all came to share, rapidly became a crucial symbol of the Nepalis’
distinct identity. Language rights were sought for their own sake and then became
a rallying point for wider political demands as Nepali-speakers developed a sophisti-
cated sense of a supra-ethnic, but sub-national, identity.

Campaigns for Nepali language recognition in India date from the start of the

twentieth century. By 1911 Nepali had been approved as a second language for
matriculation in the United Provinces by the University of Allahabad. In 1918 Calcutta
University granted it status as a vernacular for composition in matriculation, inter-
mediate, and BA examinations. Coupled with the targeting of higher education
institutions were eVorts to introduce Nepali as a medium of school education and
to develop the textbooks necessary for this. Gradually these eVorts saw success, and in
1935 Nepali was approved for teaching and examination in all primary schools in
Darjeeling district with a majority of Nepali students. In 1949 it became the medium
of instruction up to middle and high school level in the predominantly Nepali-
speaking areas of Darjeeling.

Beyond regional recognition, however, campaigners had long dreamed of winning

national status. But a major obstacle to this was the perception, voiced publicly by
Indian prime minister Morarji Desai in 1977, that Nepali was a foreign language and

R. Chalmers

belonged solely to the state of Nepal. The fashioning of a distinct Indian Nepali
identity was thus not only an internal necessity but became an important element of
Indian Nepalis’ public image. Links between Nepalis in India and their ancestral
homeland had, despite geographical proximity, weakened signiWcantly soon after
the Wrst waves of migration. By the twentieth century most migration to Darjeeling
and Sikkim had come to a halt and their populations developed their own cultural and
social structures. But opinions were sharply divided on how best to pursue the quest
for recognition.

Darjeeling’s violent Gorkhaland movement for a separate state peaked between

1986 and 1988. The main grievances of the rebels were economic and administrative
but language played an important mobilizing role. Decades of eVort to secure oYcial/
national language status for Nepali within India had been continually rebuVed and the
Gorkhaland leaders were determined that no one in Delhi should doubt the patriot-
ism of Indian Nepalis. To eVect a clear symbolic separation between the neighbouring
states, India and Nepal, the ‘Nepali’ language in Nepal was, like its speakers, dubbed
‘Gorkha’. For this there was indeed historical precedent but the urgent motivation
was entirely contemporary – a means of demonstrating that India’s Nepalis had
separated all links with their country of origin and had no aYnity with its national
identity. The Gorkhaland movement ended in compromise, with the formation of a
Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council of limited powers and still within the state of West
Bengal. Meanwhile Darjeeling’s new rulers were set to clash with the rest of the
Indian Nepali community, whose campaign for national recognition of Nepali was
gaining a decisive momentum. The Chief Minister and member of parliament for
neighbouring Sikkim spearheaded the Wnal push, and in August 1992 Nepali was
added to the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution as one of eighteen oYcial
national languages (see also Amritavalli and Jayaseelan, this volume, chapter 3).

The dominance of the Nepali language in Darjeeling and Sikkim has not precluded

the retention of other identities. Indeed, Sikkim has led the way in seeking to preserve
and promote minority languages. In 1977 it declared its three oYcial state languages
to be Nepali, Bhutia, and Lepcha and to these were added Limbu (in 1981) and then
Newar, Rai, Gurung, Magar, Sherpa, and Tamang (in 1995). The teaching of Limbu
and Lepcha in Sikkimese schools has probably played an important role in their
revitalization, but the addition of the six further languages in 1995 was for pure
symbolic value. In Sikkim, as in Darjeeling, almost no Nepali-speakers retain any
knowledge of their ancestral mother tongues beyond a few words, often kinship
terms, which are used to supplement standard Nepali vocabulary. The major impetus
for asserting ethnic identity in India has been the system of state reservations which
entitles certain ‘backward’ groups to quotas in government jobs and other beneWts
such as educational scholarships. The scramble among Nepal-origin ethnic groups to
claim such status has led to a certain resurgence in ethnic identity and politics but has
threatened neither the position of Nepali nor the foundations of Indian Nepali
identity.

Nepal and the Eastern Himalayas

4.7 Bhutan: Language and the Ethnicization of
National Identity

In Bhutan, the government has attempted to invest Dzongkha with something of the
same status possessed by Nepali in Nepal, but this has encountered much greater
obstacles. The obstacles include the fact that Dzongkha remains a minority language
even within Bhutan, lacks a developed modern literature, and is identiWed by many
with culturally conservative and isolationist elements within the country. The ‘Dzong-
khaization’ drive, which is inextricably linked with Bhutan’s conception of itself as a
Buddhist kingdom possessing a unique and distinctive cultural identity, runs in
parallel with programmes and policies inspired by forward-looking pragmatism. As
a result, while the status of Bhutan’s other languages has been downgraded in favour
of the national language Dzongkha, since the 1960s the medium of all school
education in Bhutan has in fact been English. The question of Dzongkha’s position
and role in Bhutan has therefore become somewhat controversial, with ‘traditional-
ists’ and ‘modernizers’ lined up on either side of the argument.

Although the language of Bhutan’s rulers for centuries, Dzongkha was not oYcially

declared the country’s national language until 1961. At this stage most Bhutanese
education was actually being conducted in Hindi with the help of Indian teachers and
textbooks. Despite the nominal status accorded to Dzongkha, both Tshangla (in the
east) and Nepali (in the south) remained major rival lingua francas in Bhutan, while
English was chosen to replace Hindi in schools. The drive to develop Dzongkha dates
more from the 1980s, a period in which a series of government measures attempted to
impose a rigid, approved national identity on Bhutan’s diverse population. A highly
restrictive citizenship law enacted in 1985 was accompanied by orders to all citizens to
adopt traditional national dress and a national code of etiquette. In 1989 the teaching
of Nepali as a subject in Bhutanese schools was subsequently banned, and the
following years witnessed the departure of up to 90,000 ethnic Nepalis to refugee
camps in Nepal. Most refugees claim they were forcibly evicted from their homes in
Bhutan, while the Bhutanese government insists that the majority were not Bhutan-
ese citizens in the Wrst place and left voluntarily.

In Bhutan language has thus played a decisive and divisive role in the attempt of the

state to dictate a national identity on its own terms. However, Bhutan’s continuing
linguistic diversity and the state’s own modernizing emphasis on English education
and economic development suggest that Dzongkha will actually not play as central a
role in the future development of national identity in the country as its proponents
currently envisage.

See Hutt (2003) for extensive discussion of the Xight of refugees from Bhutan and its connections to

nation-building.

R. Chalmers

4.8 Conclusion

The diVerent conWgurations of language and national identity in the adjacent areas
covered by this chapter illustrate the signiWcance of political and economic factors as
much as linguistic trends. They also represent diVering approaches by the various states.
Nepal’s decades of oYcial nationalism have left a mixed legacy, with its strong mono-
cultural emphasis unable to stamp out linguistic diversity and now prompting a strong
backlash by minority groups. The Indian Himalayas, on the other hand, were not subject
to such a straightforward government language policy. As a result, the language-identity
conWgurations in Darjeeling and Sikkim reXect more closely their communities’ own
attempts to forge linguistic identities that protected aspects of their culture but also
ensured economic survival and educational opportunities. In Bhutan the state has recently
attempted to follow a line similar to Nepal’s earlier state nationalism but allied to an even
more strictly exclusive view of the nation and criteria for membership within it.

Our consideration of language issues here raises a fundamental question about

communities in the Himalayas: are national identities in this region truly viable or
plausible? In the case of Nepal and Bhutan the answer may be positive but the
relationship with language is far from central. For Nepal, many now argue that
national identity will be strengthened the more it is allowed to be Xexible and not
tied to a single linguistic or cultural model. In Bhutan, Dzongkha lacks the advantages
that Nepali had in terms of its long-standing use as a lingua franca, and whatever the
level of support the state provides for Dzongkha, its continued status as a minority
language within Bhutan and the monopoly of English as educational medium suggest
that it can only play a tangential, symbolic role in a national identity for the country.
In Darjeeling and Sikkim the question is one of of local, regional, and state identities
within a much larger federal country, India. Darjeeling’s separatists never sought
complete secession from India and Sikkim’s people are largely resigned to the fact that
their former status as an independent Himalayan kingdom is now a historical
curiosity. Here language has only ever formed one element of local identities which
have to struggle for their continued recognition in competition with some of the
world’s largest languages, such as Hindi and Bengali. Ironically, however, it is here that
the strongest linguistic solidarity has been built around shared use of Nepali.

The patterns of language use and identiWcation outlined in this chapter are subject

to constant, and increasingly rapid, shift. The ever expanding role of English, espe-
cially as an educational medium and the perceived language of status and economic
opportunity, will colour future developments. In this it will be aided to some extent by
the further spread of electronic media and other technological developments. But
activists working to revitalize endangered languages have also realised that these tools
can be turned to their advantage. Identities in this region have never been singular and
they are likely to remain complex in future. Even as trends of language shift hint at the
formation of larger, more unitary, national communities, linguistic diversity acts as a
rallying point for supporters of political and cultural pluralism.

Nepal and the Eastern Himalayas