Tarai-Madhes Searching for Identity Based Security

Situation Update:                                                                    88 October 14, 2009

Tarai-Madhes :Searching for Identity Based Security

• • Bishnu Pathak, PhD*
• • Devendra Uprety**

Peace, justice and freedom must be major components of any future security in Nepal. However, Nepal’s transition is deepening in crisis due to the growing ranks of rebel forces, particularly in the Tarai-Madhes. While the State fails to deliver security to the ordinary people, particularly in countryside, the peace process of Nepal is endangered, justice is delayed, and freedom is restricted. The migration of hill-and-mountain dwellers out of the Tarai-Madhes has not stopped. The people who remain in such places have had much to fear. The cases of extra-judicial killings, forceful disappearances, torture, extortions, rapes and so forth continue. To understand this unfortunate state of affairs, it is necessary to delve into a brief history of the region.

Understanding the Tarai-Madhes

Nepal is divided into three areas topographically; Mountains1, Hills2, and Tarai-Madhes3. The Tarai-Madhes, though the flattest and most accessible part of the country, remained isolated until the mid 20th century due to malaria-infestation4. This area stretches from the Indo-Gangetic plains to the Himalayan foothills and connects the plains culture to the hill culture. Constrained between the Mechi River in the east and Mahakali River in the west, it makes up about 23 percent of the total land area of the country. With an average elevation of less than 100 meters (in sharp contrast to the highest Mountains in the world), the average length and breadth of the Tarai-Madhes are about 900 km and 70 km respectively5. The Tarai-Madhes incorporates 20 out of 75 districts, including close to half the 26 million population of the country. The region was annexed into Nepal during the unification period, beginning in the mid 1770s, by Prithivi Naarayan Shah. However, much of the ancient Tarai-Madhes areas, ruled by various kings and principalities for centuries, are now in the Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states of India6. The Anglo-Nepalese war between 1814 and 1816, and the resulting Treaty of Sugauli and subsequent treatieswith British India further reduced the Madhes region. The outer Madhes areas south of Dang and Chitwan valleys were previously under Indian Territory7. Banke, Bardia, Kailali and Kanchanpur districts within this region were once called the ‘New Nepal’ as they were ceded to Nepal by the East India Company in appreciation of the service of Nepali Gurkhas in suppressing India’s independence movement. The label “Tarai-Madhes” is of relatively recent public socio-political discourse in Nepal. The word “Madhes” is derived from the Sanskrit word Madhyadesh8 (middle country), collectively called Madhises or Madhesiyas. Even Manusmriti and Vinayakpitak, have indicated that it is attached to ancient historical traditions9. The Madhyadesh distinguishes the plains from the hill region or Parbat, from which is derived the meaning of Pahade (hill and mountain dwellers) in modern Nepal. A Madhesi, therefore, originally meant an inhabitant of this region10. Similarly, the Tarai (Nawalparasi to Kanchanpur districts) refers to the fertile strip of low-lying land sandwiched between the hills of southern Nepal.

In recent days there has been an issue of severe contention. Tharu, being of native origin, prefer to call the region the Tarai, whereas some others in the region prefer to call it the Madhes. In Tharu language ‘Tar’ means low, leading some to claim that the word “Tarai” is derived from the Tharu language.11 Others obviously disagree, as Wikipedia states:

“The Terai (“moist land”) , or (“foothill”) in Persian language, is a belt of marshy grasslands, savannas, and forests at the base of the Himalaya range in India, Nepal, and Bhutan, from the Yamuna River in the west to the Brahmaputra River in the east12.”

The resolution of this issue is beyond the scope of this update. However, the issue itself serves to highlight one of the overarching socio-cultural conflicts; the struggle for national identity between the indigenous ethnicities of the Tarai-Madhes, and the relatively recent immigrants from India (since the eradication of malaria). Tarai- Madhesi groups interact with each other, immigrants from the hills, and the rest of the country, in different ways.

Literature

The Tarai-Madhes is a less recognized area of study than many others in Nepal13; however, there are several works on the Tarai-Madhes that have been studied time and again by non-native and native scholars. Among the non-native scholars, Gaige14 (1975), Byrne15 (1999), Krauskopff16 (2000), Guneratne (2002)17, Anderson (2004)18, Bernando (1999)19, and among the native Bista20 (1991), Dahal21 (1996), Hachhethu22 (2007), Gupta23 (2004), Jha24 (1997), Lawoti25 (2001), Chaudhary (2065 BS) 26, Chaudhary (2064 BS)27, Panjiar28 (2000), Yadav29 (2003), Pathak (2007)30 Yadav (2060BS)31, can help in understanding the multiple dimensions of the region.

History of Discrimination and Injustice

In 600 BC, Shakya kings ruled the mid western Madhes. Gutam Buddha, who was born in 563 BC belonged to the Shakya (Tharu) dynasty. Similarly, Tarai-Madhes kingdoms were established in Simraungarh in the present day Bara district32. Indeed, several kingdoms were established and ruled by many dynasties. These states perished with time and the land was reclaimed by forests33. Gaige writes: “The ancient and medieval history of this region is a cyclic one in which men and forests havedominated in turns34.” King of Mithila, Hari Singh Dev, defeated by Mugals in 1324, arrived in Bhadgaon (present Bhaktapur) and formed an army of Mithila. Approximately 240 years ago, during the unification of the small warring states, Prithvi Narayan Shah defeated the Sen dynasty Kings of Madhes and then captured Kathmandu valley. When Prithvi Narayan Shah attacked Kathmandu in 1774, Jaya Prakash Malla countered with a 12,000 strong Mithila army, that had been known as Tirhoot army. Shah demolished the Tirhoot army upon conquering it. Following this, the dispute with the East India Company and greater Nepal intensified while the post-Prithvi regimes continued to attack weak principalities. Soon, the dispute of Butwal triggered the Anglo-Gorkha War 1814- 1816 AD. It seems somewhat unclear whom the local people supported, but the literature indicates that Madhes dwellers were closer with the British East India Company35. W. Brook Northey writes that a large number of undisciplined volunteers fought against Gorkha during the Anglo-Gorkha war36. The Treaty of Segowlee (Sugauli Treaty) presented on December 8, 1816 states “the Rajah of Nipal agrees to refrain from prosecuting any inhabitants of the Tarai, after its severance to his rule, on account of having favored the cause of the British Government during the war”. So, it seems there was a lot of dissatisfaction among native Tarai dwellers against the ruler of Gorkha37. Though Article 7 of the memorandum on the Sugauli Treaty mandated that the Nepali government would not take any action against the people living in the Madhes, many Madhesi dwellers were, nonetheless, ill-treated, tortured, and punished on the charges of treason. In this way, the consequences of the actions of the elite landlords overflowed to the common Madhesi. The Madhesi were alleged to be ‘followers of British and adversary of Nepali’ and their recruitment into the army was stopped38. It had not been resumed in the later regimes until now. The Madhesi have felt this an insult, as they were excluded from the national security force (and more likely to suffer brutality as a result). Subodh Kumar Sing writes that after the unification, Shah Rulers saw the virgin Tarai as a source of revenue and distributed land to the king’s family members, courtiers, and to army generals and colonels to garner their support39. Just after the Tarai integration into the Gorkha Kingdom (present Nepal), a number of conflicts erupted with the native Taraian people. Native Saptari people seemed to be uncooperative with Gorkhali at the beginning of 1774. A letter of Abhiman Simha from the period states that for salaries to troops and to meet other expenses, the revenues had been collected in the Tarai areas from Ambarpur and Vijayapur40. During the Rana Regime, prior to 1950, because of their strong relationship with the British, the latter was silent about the ill-treatment of the Madhesis. One form of discrimination toward the Tarain-Madhesi at the time was that they had to obtain visas to visit Kathmandu issued by the elite Kathmandu-based government from the Badahakim (Regional Administrator)41. Mahesh Chandra Regmi writes that both the pre-Rana and Rana rulers viewed the Tarai as a colony, and regularly granted large tracts of land to others. Sometimes even whole areas were captured for themselves, their families and their Bhardar as Birta (granted land) to loyal senior officials.42 However, the ruling elites, both Shah and Rana, did not have an interest in developing the Tarai in their long-term perspective. They feared that such development would not only attract a flood of British colonialism, but were also afraid that it would open the door to revolutionary ideas from south India.

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Once we were farmers

Once we were farmers Caste and class dynamics in the Tarai — historical baggage DAULAT JHA Nepal is an agricultural country, we were told continuously in our social studies classes as children. The syllabus of the time was rooted deeply in the Panchayat-era worldview. Since then, there have been tectonic shifts in the patterns of economic activity, mirroring the caste structure, as Nepal moved from being a fiefdom to becoming a modern nation state, even as agriculture remains the most common vocation of ordinary people. Still, the Panchayat system deserves credit for the modernization of Nepal as a state, though there were no other options to modernization at that period apart from choosing the path of ‘gross national happiness’, towards which Mahendra Shah did give a hesitant shot. In this article, I will look at the gradual evolution of the caste and class dynamics in the Tarai which have an indelible influence on current politics. At the onset of modernization, we were a nation of villages. The sole concern of the power center was taxation to raise revenues, mostly to maintain the army and the lavish lifestyles of the powerful. Thus, villages were little more than sources of income. There were no attempts to provide any public services or build infrastructure. The long list of reforms that we were made to rote-learn in those same social studies classes (complete with dates) were either rudimentary reforms limited to the capital (a school, a zoo, a fire brigade) or vital industries that would bolster the income of the Ranas (jute mills, matchstick factories). Vast swathes of dense malarial forests covered the areas where there were no farmlands and villages. By the third generation, agriculture had become the last vocation in the Tarai, something one did when one could not do anything else. With the opening up of foreign labor markets, the middle and lower castes found greener pastures abroad. That feudalism was the most suited political system for the Shahs and Ranas of the period was natural, given their sole interest in raising taxes without the necessary bureaucratic structure. Since the inception of Nepal as a nation-state by Prithvi Narayan Shah, an ad-hoc mechanism to raise taxes was maintained, which also had the added advantage of being politically expedient by letting local rulers maintain their power in their areas while being responsible for paying annual dues to Kathmandu. In villages where no large landowner existed, powerful families from further south, almost exclusively consisting of high-castes, were lured with large land grants and handed the responsibility of tax collection. Similarly, the Ranas also gave large grants of lands at their personal whim, either to thank people for their loyalty or to sideline political rivalries. Communities like the Tharus, that owned land collectively, were also subjugated to similar structures, by either co-opting a powerful Tharu family or bringing in new landlords. We may have moved on from the basise and chaubise rajyas, but we were essentially still ruled by many kings, or tax collectors with private armies, to be accurate. Then, in the 1960s, the USAID-funded malaria eradication program played a pivotal role in the clearing of the Charkose forest, which spelled further bad news for the malaria-resistant indigenous populations like the Tharus. Another impetus for the clearing of the forests was the expansion of the railroad system in northern India with large amounts of timber needed to lay the tracks. Not surprisingly, some of the most densely populated towns of the Tarai correspond to important railroad junctions of northern India. With large tracts of forests now cleared and suitable for farming, it was time for some ingenious land reform and resettlement acts. The primary objective of the Panchayat regime, and in fact the Shah dynasty, had always been the consolidation of power over this fixed territory called Nepal. The biggest threat to this came from ethnic diversity. The favored political theory of the time maintained that nations needed identities which were created by commonalities, a far cry from today’s ‘imagined communities’. Mahendra was well aware of this, and using some of the brightest men of that period, set about the task of homogenization. The key to this would be the land reforms supplemented by resettlement acts. And of course, Israel was to play the advisory role. Families of upper-caste Pahadis with political patronage were resettled in the new cleared forests of the Tarai, some prominent examples being Jhapa, Chitwan and Dang from which some of our most influential politicians hail. By now the stage had been set for inequalities of caste, class, and ethnicity that still plague us today. As we have seen, there were now a few large land-owning families and a large landless population. The worst-hit were the Dalits and the indigenous populations. Upper-caste, and to some degree, middle-caste Madhesis continued to own land, and thus power at the local level. Mahendra recognized the threat, and under the guise of the much-needed land reform, introduced land ceilings, which was particularly to benefit the upper-caste Pahadi population. Families with access to power were tipped off of the impending policy, who were then swift to invite relatives from the hills, thus dividing the land on paper. It was the Madhesi landlords who lost out on the deal, albeit without much benefit to the landless Madhesis, Dalits and indigenous populations. Not surprisingly, it is the Madhes-based parties that today oppose land reforms, which is as urgently needed today as ever before. Despite Mahendra’s large-scale efforts, many upper- and middle-caste Madhesis continued to own large farming lands. The geography and demography of small villages in the Tarai were built upon asymmetrical relationships of castes. Each village typically has upper-caste, middle-caste and lower-caste quarters, each separated though not isolated. It is not hard to guess where basic infrastructure (such as the VDC office, primary schools, health posts etc.) is located at. As generations passed, the land was divided and re-divided into smaller plots, at a remarkable speed, thanks to our healthy fertility rate. As these land saga played out, Mahendra was also instituting the modern bureaucracy. He needed educated people to run the government. This period coincided with the growing awareness of the need for education among the upper-castes of both Madhesi and Pahadi communities, along with political awareness due to the proximity with India. This was also the period when radios were becoming reasonably cheaply available. Many families sent their children to study in India to produce the first mass-educated class in Nepal. Many of the Madhesi upper castes subsequently joined the civil service. However, with the population steadily increasing, a large upper-caste landed population continued farming, thus perpetuating the historical land inequities among the lower castes. The lower castes, meanwhile, honed on their artisan skills (building houses, constructing government-sponsored projects such as roads) or became migrant labors. By the third generation, agriculture had become the last vocation, something one did when one could not do anything else. With the opening up of foreign labor markets, the middle and lower castes found greener pastures in the Gulf states, Malaysia and other labor-starved economies. The upper castes and some of the middle castes found themselves either in dead-end government jobs (where the most important asset is political patronage) or private businesses, having no inclination towards agriculture or menial labor, nor the capacity or capital to explore other possibilities. Today, we are witnessing a radical shift in caste and class relationships in the Tarai. I have tried in this article to examine some of the historical baggage that we still carry as market forces trump cultural and religious prejudices. In the next article, I shall explore the political, economic, and social ramifications of the rearranging of class and caste structures resulting due to the changes in land-owning and economic productivity patterns, focusing on the Madhesi community. daulat.jha@gmail.com

Federalism: A Way Forward for Nepal

Federalism: A Way Forward for Nepal

Hari Bansh Jha, PhD Executive Director, Centre for Economic and Technical Studies (CETS)

At the global level, there are over two dozens of federal nations in which 40% of the world population live. In Nepal, Kulanand Jha of Terai Congress for the first time in the country’s history in 1951 raised his voice for the introduction of federal system. Later on, Raghunath Thakur is on record to have put the demand for federal structure in 1958. In 1967, Madheshi Mukti Andolan echoed the voice in favor of federalism. After the political change in 1990, Nepal Sadbhavana Parishad under the leadership of Gajendra Narayan Singh raised voice in favor of federalism. But federalism emerged as a strong issue only when the UCPN-Maoist initiated debate for the introduction of federalism in the country in 2003.

Subsequently, it was the Madhesh uprising of January-February 2007 that helped give concrete shape to federalism. The uprising forced the then government led by G.P. Koirala to amend the Interim Constitution 2007 twice within a very short period time to address such issues as federalism, proportional representation (PR) based on population size and increasing the number of seats from 43 per cent to 49 per cent in Terai constituencies.

The Madhesh-based parties, including SP, MJF and TMDP entered into agreement with Prime Minister G.P. Koirala on 28 February 2008 for the formation of federal system in Nepal. In Article 2 of the agreement, the government accepted Madheshi people’s call for “Autonomous Madhes” and other people’s desire for a federal structure with autonomous regions.” In the same article, the two sides agreed for a federal structure with provision of autonomous regions keeping the sovereignty and integrity of the country intact. There was also a provision made for the formation of high-level monitoring committee to monitor the implementation of the agreement, which, however, is not yet formalized.

Following the CA elections on 10 April 2008, Nepal was declared federal republic on 28 May 2008. Except Rashtriya Jana Morcha (the party that secured 1.4% of the popular vote and 4 seats in CA) all other political parties in CA favored federal form of government. This was a kind of political consensus among the parties for the introduction of federal  structure in the country.

As a sigh of relief, the great majority of the Nepalese population, especially the disadvantaged groups have developed a feeling that only federalism would empower them. Certain groups of people have regarded federalism as recognition of religious, linguistic and ethnic diversity.

Federalism, however, should not be taken as panacea of all the ills. It does not necessarily guarantee the development of a society. What it does is that it creates conducive environment of self-rule and thereby generates development opportunities.

In the existing unitary form of structure, the past governments remained largely reluctant towards Terai in making proper allocation of resources, despite significant contributions made by the custom, excise and income tax offices to the national exchequer. Perhaps, this is the reason why several districts in Terai remained most backward economically. Such mistake is likely to be addressed under the federal structure.

However, the federal units in the country need to be made on the solid ground of geography and economy or what might be called geo-economic. Federalism, if implemented correctly on this approach, will unite the country rather than divide it. Complications, however, might arise if priority is given to ethnic, linguistic or other such considerations in the restructuring of state in the place of geo-economic realities.

The geo-economic factor should be supreme in deciding the number of states. Economic viability is most important for the survival and autonomy of the states. Equally important is the administrative cost of a federation. Formation of more states means greater allocation of resources on administration at the cost of development activities. Also, it will be a mistake if the states as proposed by CPN-UML or Maoists are based on ethnicity. It is possible that the formation of ethnicity-based states may help certain elements in the short run, but it would be a disaster in the long run.

It would, therefore, be worthwhile if only three states are established in the country on be basis of geo-economic structure i.e. the Terai State, the Hill State and the Himalayan State. Within each of these States, there could be provision of ‘sub-autonomous regions.’ Accordingly, there is no reason why some four regions such as Mithila, Bhojpura, Awadhi and Tharuhat cannot be established in a single Terai State. Similarly, different regions could be developed within the Hill and Himalayan States as well. The economy and ecology-based comparative advantage of the three belts can be harvested if the states are organized horizontally.

source:http://telegraphnepal.com/news_det.php?news_id=6399