Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-05T12:17:13.825Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Subjects, Selves, and the Politics of Personhood in Theravada Buddhism in Nepal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2010

Lauren G. Leve
Get access

Extract

On june 30, 1990, between twenty-five and thirty thousand people took to the streets of downtown Kathmandu to protest the possibility that a new constitution, then being drafted, might reassert Nepal's official legal identity as a Hindu kingdom. Carrying banners and chanting slogans, they demanded the country's redefinition as a secular state. The march was arguably the largest demonstration in modern Nepali history, with protestors representing a range of religious, ethnic, political, and cultural groups. Even more significant, the marchers explicitly rejected the longstanding alliance between religion and the state in Nepal by challenging the interpolation of Brahmanical Hinduism into the country's political and civil institutions, and its centrality to Nepali nationalism as a collective identity.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , August 2002 , pp. 833 - 860
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Adams, V. 1996. Tigers of the Snow and Other Virtual Sherpas. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, V. 1998. Doctors for Democracy: Health Professionals in the Nepalese Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, B. 1983, 1991. Imagined Communities. London and New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. 1986a. “Is Homo Hierarchicus?” American Ethnologist 3(1):745–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appadurai, A. 1986b. “Theory in Anthropology: Center and Periphery.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 28:356–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asad, T. 1993. “Pain and Truth in Medieval Christian Ritual.” In Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bechert, H., and Hartmann, J.. 1988. “Observations on the Reform of Buddhism in Nepal.” Journal of the Nepal Research Center 8:1–30.Google Scholar
Bhattachan, K. B. 1995. “Ethnopolitics and Ethnodevelopment: An Emerging Paradigm in Nepal.” In State, Leadership, and Politics in Nepal, edited by Kumar, D.. Kathmandu: CNAS.Google Scholar
Brass, P., ed. 1996. Riots and Pograms. New York: New York University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brass, P., ed. 1997. Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breuilly, J. 1994. Nationalism and the State. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Buddha Jayanti Celebration Committee. 2001. 2545 Au Buddha Jayanti Smarika (2545 V.S. Buddha Jayanti Souvenir). Kathmandu: Anandakuti Vihar Buddha Jayanti Celebration Committee.Google Scholar
Burghart, R. 1984. “The Formation of the Concept of Nation-State in Nepal.” Journal of Asian Studies 44:101–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burghart, R. 1996. The Conditions of Listening: Essays on Religion, History, and Politics in South Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, S. 1982. Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravada Buddhism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dalmia, V., and Von Stietencron, H., eds. 1995. Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity. New Delhi and London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Daniel, E. V. 1984. Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Das, V., ed. 1990. Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots, and Survivors in South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dharmacharya, D. A. 1927. “Nepalese Language and Literature.” Buddhist India 1:219–27.Google Scholar
Dharmaloka, B. 1980. Pilgrimage to Great China. Lumbini: Dharmodaya Sabha.Google Scholar
Dirks, N. 1987. The Hollow Crown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dirks, N. 1992a. “Castes of Mind.” Representations 37:56–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dirks, N., ed. 1992b. Colonialism and Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doherty, V. S. 1978. “Notes on the Origins of the Newars of the Valley of Nepal.” In Himalayan Anthropology, edited by Fisher, J. F.. The Hague and Paris: Mouton.Google Scholar
Dumont, L. 1970. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ewing, K. P. 1997. Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and Islam. Durham and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, W. F. 1987. “The Re-Creation of Tradition: Ethnicity, Migration, and Social Change among the Thakalis of Central Nepal.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1973. The Order of Things. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1980a. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1, An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1980b. “Two Lectures.” In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–77, edited by Gordon, C.. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1983. “The Subject and Power.” In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, edited by Dreyfus, H. and Rabinow, P.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fox, R. G. 1985. Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Freitag, S. B. 1989. Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaborieau, M. 1982. “Les Fêtes, les tempes, et l'éspace: structure du calendrier hindou dans sa version indo-népalais” (Festivals, time, and space: The structure of the Hindu calendar in its Indo-Nepalese version). L'Homme 22:11–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geertz, C. 1973. “After the Revolution: The Fate of Nationalism in the New States.” In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. 1980. Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gellner, D. N. 1986. Language, Caste, Religion, and Territory: Newar Identity Ancient and Modern. Archives of European Sociology 27:102–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gellner, D. N. 1992. Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and its Hierarchy of Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gellner, D. N. 1995. Introduction to Contested Hierarchies: A Collaborative Ethnography of Caste among the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, edited by Gellner, D. and Quigley, D.. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gellner, D. N. 1997a. “Caste, Communalism, and Communism: Newars and the Nepalese State.” In Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom: The Politics of Culture in Contemporary Nepal, edited by Gellner, D. N., Pfaff-Czarnecka, J., and Whelpton, J.. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Gellner, D. N. 1997b. “Introduction: Ethnicity and Nationalism in the World's Only Hindu State.” In Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom: The Politics of Culture in Contemporary Nepal, edited by Gellner, D. N., Pfaff-Czarnecka, J., and Whelpton, J.. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Gellner, D. N., Pfaff-Czarnecka, J., and Whelpton, J., eds. 1997. Nationalism and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom: The Politics of Culture in Contemporary Nepal. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Gellner, E. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gombrich, R., and Obeyesekere, G.. 1990. Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Original edition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Guneratne, A. 1998. “Modernization, the State, and the Construction of a Tharu Identity in Nepal.” Journal of Asian Studies 57:749–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gurung, H. 1994. Nepal Main Ethnic-Caste Groups by Districts Based on Population Census 1991. Mimeographed report. Kathmandu: n.p.Google Scholar
Hangen, S. 1997. “Becoming ‘Not-Hindu’: A Gurung Community's Move to Buddhism and Ethnic Politics in Nepal.” Paper presented at American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Washington D.C. November.Google Scholar
Hangen, S. 2000. “Making Mongols: Emerging Identities and Ethnic Politics in Nepal.” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Hartmann, J. 1993. “Some Remarks on Caste in the Theravada Sangha of Nepal.” In Nepal Past and Present: Proceedings of the France-German Conference Arc-et-Senans, June 1990, edited by Toffin, G.. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. J. 1990. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hofer, A. 1979. The Caste Hierarchy and the State in Nepal: A Study of the Muluki Ain of 1854. Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner.Google Scholar
Holmberg, D. H. 1989. Order in Paradox: Myth, Ritual, and Exchange among Nepal's Tamang. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Horowitz, D. L. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hutt, M. J. 1988. Nepali: A National Language and Its Literature. London and New Delhi: School of Oriental and African Studies and Sterling Publishers.Google Scholar
Inden, R. 1990. Imaging India. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Juergensmeyer, M. 1988. “The Logic of Religious Violence: The Case of the Punjab.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 22:66–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapferer, B. 1988. Legends of People, Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Kloppenborg, R. 1977. “Theravada Buddhism in Nepal.” Kailash 5:301–22.Google Scholar
Kondo, D. K. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kooij, K. R. v. 1978. Religion in Nepal. Leiden: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
Leichty, M. 1994. “Fashioning Modernity in Kathmandu: Mass Media, Consumer Culture, and the Middle Class in Nepal.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Leve, L. G. 1999. “Contested Nation/Buddhist Innovation: Politics, Piety, and Personhood in Theravada Buddhism in Nepal.” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University.Google Scholar
Levine, N. 1987. “Caste, State, and Ethnic Boundaries in Nepal.” Journal of Asian Studies 46:71–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, R. I. 1990. Mesocosm: Hinduism and the Organization of a Traditional Newar City in Nepal. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, T. 1984. “The Tuladhars of Kathmandu: A Study of Buddhist Tradition in a Newar Merchant Community.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University.Google Scholar
Lewis, T., and Shakya, D. R.. 1988. “Contributions to the History of Nepal's Eastern Newar Diaspora Settlements.” Contributions to Nepalese Studies 15(1):25–65.Google Scholar
Malla, K. P. 1982. Classical Newari Literature: A Sketch. Kathmandu: Educational Enterprise.Google Scholar
Marriott, M. 1976a. “Hindu Transactions: Diversity without Dualism.” In Transactions and Meaning, edited by Kapferer, B.. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.Google Scholar
Marriott, M. 1976b. “Interpreting Indian Society: Diversity without Dualism. “Journal of Asian Studies 36:189–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marriott, M. 1989. “Constructing an Indian Ethnosociology.” Contributions to Indian Sociology, n.s. 23.Google Scholar
Marriott, M., and Inden, R.. 1977. “Toward an Ethnosociology of South Indian Caste Systems.” In The New Wind: Changing Identities in South Asia, edited by David, K.. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Mauss, M. 1973. “Techniques of the Body.” Economy and Society 2:70–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McHugh, E. 1989. “Concepts of the Person among the Gurungs of Nepal.” American Ethnologist 16:75–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McHugh, E. 2001. Love and Honor in the Himalayas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mines, M. 1994. Public Faces, Private Voices: Community and Individuality in South India. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nepal Vipassana Centre, n.d. “Vipassana Meditation: An Introduction.” Pamphlet distributed at the Nepal Vipassana Centre. Kathmandu, Nepal.Google Scholar
Onta, P. 1996. “Ambivalence Denied: The Making of Rastriya Ithias in Panchayat Era Textbooks.” Contributions to Nepalese Studies 23:213–54.Google Scholar
Owens, B. M. 1989. “The Politics of Divinity in the Kathmandu Valley: The Festival of Bungadya/Rato Matsyendrath.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University.Google Scholar
Pandey, G. 1993. “Rallying Round the Cow: Sectarian Strife in the Bhojpuri Region, c. 1888–1917.” In Subaltern Studies II: Writings on South Asian History and Society, edited by Guha, R.. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Parish, S. M. 1994. Moral Knowing in a Hindu Sacred City. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Pfaff-Czarnecka, J. 1993. “The Nepalese Durga-Puja, or Shaping a State Ritual in Quest for Legitimacy.” In Anthropology in Tibet and the Himalaya, edited by Ramble, C. and Brauen, M.. Zurich: Volkerkunde Museum.Google Scholar
Pradhan, K. 1991. The Gorkha Conquests. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Prakash, G. 1992. “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Indian Historiography is Good to Think.” In Colonialism and Culture, edited by Dirks, N. B.. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Quigley, D. 1987. “Ethnicity without Nationalism: the Newars of Nepal.” Archives Europeéennes de Sociologie 28:152–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raheja, G. 1989. “India: Caste, Kingship, and Dominance Reconsidered.” Annual Review of Anthropology 17:497–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, L. E. 1971. Strategy for Survival. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosser, C. 1960. “Social Mobility in the Newar Caste System.” In Caste and Kin in Nepal, India, and Ceylon, edited by Furer-Haimendorf, C. V.. New York: Asia Publishing House.Google Scholar
Sanderson, A. 1985. “Purity and Power among the Brahmins of Kashmir.” In The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, edited by Carrithers, M., Collins, S., and Lukes, S.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Seneviratne, H. L. 1999. The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Shrestha, B. G. n.d. “The Newars: The Indigenous Population of the Kathmandu Valley in the Modern State of Nepal.” Unpublished paper.Google Scholar
Slusser, M. 1982. Nepal Mandala: A Cultural Study of the Kathmandu Valley. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Stiller, L. F., S.J., 1989. Prithwinarayan Shah in Light of the Dibya Upadesh. Kathmandu: Himalaya Book Center.Google Scholar
Swidler, Ann. 1977. “The Concept of Rationality in the Work of Max Weber.” Sociological Inquiry 43(1)35–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamang, M. 2000. “Representation of Diversity in School Textbooks: Implications for Politics of Culture and Identity in Nepal.” Himalayan Research Bulletin 20:14–16.Google Scholar
Tambiah, S. J. 1976. World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tambiah, S. J. 1984. The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tambiah, S. J. 1986. Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Tambiah, S. J. 1992. Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Tambiah, S. J. 1996. Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trawick, M. 1990. Notes on Love in a Tamil Family. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Der Veer, P. 1993. “The Foreign Hand: Orientalist Discourse in Sociology and Communalism.” In Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, edited by Breckenridge, C. A. and van der Veer, P.. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Van Der Veer, P. 1994. Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vergati, A. 1995. Gods, Men, and Territory: Society and Culture in the Kathmandu Valley. Kathmandu: Manohar Press/Centre de Sciences Humaines.Google Scholar
Viswanathan, G. 1998. Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Von Stietencron, H. 1995. “Religious Configurations in Pre-Muslim India and the Modern Concept of Hinduism.” In Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity, edited by Dalmia, V. and von Stietencron, H.. New Delhi, London, and Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Whelpton, J. 1997. “Political Identity in Nepal: State, Nation, and Community.” In Nationalism and Ethnicity in the World's only Hindu Kingdom: The Politics of Culture in Contemporary Nepal, edited by Gellner, D. N., Pfaff-Czarnecka, J., and Whelpton, J.. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.Google Scholar