The Partial Revolution: Labour, Social Movements and the Invisible Hand of Mao in Western Nepal 9781785337819

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
Introduction. The Maoist Victory Rally
Part I. Politics in the Town
Chapter 1. Urban Festivals and Post-Confl ict Patronage
Chapter 2. The Occupation of Symbolic Space in Town
Chapter 3. Learning to Protest
Chapter 4. Maoists and Labour Unions in Town
Part II. Labour Relations in a Brick Factory in the Hinterland
Chapter 5. Red Salute at Work in a Brick Factory
Chapter 6. The Revolutionary Legacy and Debt Bondage
Conclusion. The Partial Revolution
Appendix
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Partial Revolution

DISLOCATIONS General Editors: August Carbonella, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Don Kalb, University of Utrecht & Central European University, Linda Green, University of Arizona The immense dislocations and suffering caused by neoliberal globalization, the retreat of the welfare state in the last decades of the twentieth century, and the heightened military imperialism at the turn of the twenty-first century have raised urgent questions about the temporal and spatial dimensions of power. Through stimulating critical perspectives and new and cross-disciplinary frameworks, which reflect recent innovations in the social and human sciences, this series provides a forum for politically engaged, ethnographically informed, and theoretically incisive responses. For a full volume listing, please see back matter

The Partial Revolution Labour, Social Movements and the Invisible Hand of Mao in Western Nepal

_ Michael Hoffmann

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2018 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2018 Michael Hoffmann All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78533-780-2 hardback ISBN 978-1-78533-781-9 ebook

CONTENTS

List of Tables

vii

Acknowledgements

viii

Note on Transliteration

xi

Introduction The Maoist Victory Rally

1

Part I. Politics in the Town Chapter 1

Urban Festivals and Post-Conflict Patronage

43

Chapter 2

The Occupation of Symbolic Space in Town

69

Chapter 3

Learning to Protest: The Freed Kamaiya Movement

92

Chapter 4

Maoists and Labour Unions in Town

123

Part II. Labour Relations in a Brick Factory in the Hinterland Chapter 5

Red Salute at Work in a Brick Factory

149

Chapter 6

The Revolutionary Legacy and Debt Bondage

169

Conclusion

The Partial Revolution

187

Appendix

195

Glossary

199 –v–

vi | Contents

Bibliography

203

Index

213

Photographs follow page 114

TABLES

1.1

Caste/ethnicity in Tikapur

50

2.1

Type of employment undertaken by freed Kamaiya in Ramnagar, May 2009

77

6.1

6.2

Advances given to various categories of brick kiln workers

174

Average wages for different jobs in Gokul’s brick factory

175

– vii –

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has taken a long time to write and I owe a lot of people a great deal of gratitude. My greatest debt is to the people of Tikapur and its surrounding villages, who welcomed me into their homes, invited me for a meal and sometimes even hosted me for a few nights, often at great personal expense. Without their help and patience in answering my questions, this book project would not have been possible. I sincerely hope that if anyone from Tikapur and its surrounding villages in Kailali district in far-western Nepal ever reads this book in the future, he or she will feel that I have done justice to the complexities of both the impact of the Maoist revolution and the transformation of bonded labour to new forms of labour relations in their area. I should also thank all those respected state bureaucrats, members of various political parties, labour unionists, labour contractors and local industrialists who received me and hosted me. To respect my informants’ privacy, settlement names have been changed throughout the book and all personal names have been turned into pseudonyms apart from those of well-known public figures. I have called the ex-bonded labourers’ settlement where I spent most of my time ‘Ramnagar’, which is literally ‘Ram’s village’ in English – invoking a Hindu deity that is commonly associated with strength and braveness. This was done as many of the formerly bonded villages that I got to know over the years carry the names of powerful Hindu deities to indicate to outsiders the unity, strength and braveness of their communities. I am also deeply indebted to the various institutions that funded me during various stages of the research and writing of this book. Throughout my Ph.D. studies at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences I received a travel fund from the University of London and departmental grants from the Department of Anthropology to support my field research. I also received an Alfred Gell Memorial Scholarship from the Department of Anthropology and the Bagri Fellowship at the Asia Research Centre of the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. During my postdoctoral work at – viii –

Acknowledgements | ix

the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, the Department of Social Anthropology and the Global South Studies Centre at the University of Cologne, I was generously funded, allowing me to proceed with the writing of this book. For all this financial and institutional support I am very grateful. I would additionally like to thank a number of people for their generous support in Nepal, the UK and Germany. I am particularly indebted to my Ph.D. supervisors Prof. Jonathan Parry and Prof. Laura Bear from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. Both have guided me through the process of preparing and writing a doctoral thesis with great skill. Their questions and comments on my work were always sharp and insightful. I would also like to thank Alpa Shah and Geert de Neve for reading and commenting on my work about western Nepal. Likewise, the comments of the anonymous reviewers at Berghahn Books helped me clarify some of the arguments presented in this book. Throughout the early stages of my work, I also benefited from the stimulating and fruitful discussions at the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences weekly ‘writing up’ class and the biweekly seminar series on ‘Ethnographic Perspectives on Work and Labour’. The many comments and suggestions offered on various chapters of this book have helped to sharpen its analytical focus and to enrich the writing process. For this I thank the seminar participants: Maxim Bolt, Thomas Boylston, Kimberley Chong, Alana Cant, Katherine Fueberg-Moe, Aude Michelet, Luca Pesc, Denis Regnier, Dave Robinson and Miranda Sheild Johanson. As I went on to postdoctoral studies I had the privilege to work in the research group ‘Industry and Inequality in Eurasia’ at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Here I met academic colleagues with whom I could engage in insightful discussions about my work on Kailali district in far-western Nepal and I benefited from frequent exchanges on our common interests in labour issues. Amongst others I would like to thank particularly Catherine Alexander, Dina Makram Eibeid, Chris Hann, Eva Kesküla, Dimitra Kofti, Andrew Sanchez, Christian Strümpel and Tommaso Trevisani for their comments and their reading of some of the work that this book is based upon. While there are more friends and colleagues in Nepal than can be named here, I would like to express my particular gratitude to Mr Uttam Adhikari, who provided much hospitality, humour and intellectual support while staying in Tikapur. A debt of gratitude is also owed to Mr Pushba Chaudhary for his extremely valuable help and

x | Acknowledgements

enthusiasm while working as a research assistant throughout the main portion of fieldwork that this book is based upon. I also extend my thanks to Mr Kucchat Chaudhary, who worked with me as a research assistant on later field visits. Both of them have always been generous and unselfish collaborators and I always had very stimulating and insightful discussions with them throughout my time in Nepal. I am also deeply indebted for the many inspiring and stimulating discussions with friends both during and after my fieldwork in Nepal, and I owe them much for their hospitality and friendship: Nikhil Archaya, Eirini Avramopoulou, Thomas Boylston, Irene Calis, Giovanni Dascola, Ankur Datta, Tommaso Dolcetta, Cesar Estrella, Kiran Hacker, Safik Iraki, Leonidas Karakatsanis, Tobias Kecht, Nicolas Martin, Durlap Pun, Rocco Santangelo, George St. Claire, Hans Steinmüller and Thomas Rodgers. Finally, I would like to thank Kjersten Lato for her affectionate support and encouragement, and for her great interest into my work.

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

The first instance of all Nepali, Hindi and Tharu words are italicized, and thereafter italics are dropped. For the sake of simplicity, the plural of Nepali, Hindi and Tharu words is denoted by the addition of an ‘s’. English translations have been used where they are adequate to convey the meaning of the originals. Financial costs are given in the original currency, either Nepali Rupees (NR) or Indian Rupees (IR). The exchange rates in 2008 and 2009 were approximately 1 Nepali Rupee to £0.008 (€0.0095) and 1 Indian Rupee to £0.013 (€0.015). Likewise, land area is given in Nepalese khatta, with one khatta being equal to approximately 339 square miles or 3,645 square feet.

– xi –

– xii –

Nepal and Kailali district

INDIA

Tikapur

KAILALI DISTRICT

Dhangadhi

Nepal

Kathmandu

TIBET

PA L

-I N

DI A

BO

RD ER

Union Office

Rickshaw Drivers Meeting Point

Tikapur and its rural hinterland

NE

Tikapur

LA

I-T

K

M

R PU A IK

D RO A

– xiii –

HI HI GH WA Y

Occupied Airport

Municipal Hall

ND RA

Festival Site

MA

Chambers of Commerce

Occupied University Land

K

L NA R A

ER IV IR

INTRODUCTION

_ The Maoist Victory Rally Two white jeeps appear on the horizon. As they slowly approach the city along the dusty road, two figures standing on their decks become visible, recognizable as the popular local UCPN Maoist politicians Rulpa Chaudhary and Saikdheja Chaudhary, both young women belonging to the Tharu ethnic group. They are followed by thousands of Maoist sympathizers, supporters and party cadres. While walking, cheering and dancing along, many hold aloft their Maoist flags and sing victory songs. The cavalcade moves along at a walking pace, stopping repeatedly as supporters reach out to shake the hands of the two politicians. The scene has the feeling of a heady celebration. It is mid April 2008, four days after the historic Constituent Assembly (CA) elections, and we are in Tikapur, an unremarkable town in Kailali district, in the western lowland region of Nepal. The election represented a major milestone in the political history of the country. After a decade-long civil war from 1996 to 2006 and two subsequent failed attempts to hold elections, this one was decisive. It would ultimately determine Nepal’s future constitution. Before the victorious candidates arrived in Tikapur, a large group of Maoist supporters gathered next to a square in the city centre. Among those waiting was Gunaraj Lohani, who led the Maoist All-Nepal Teacher’s Organization. The Maoist supporters cheered in eager anticipation of the arrival of the victors and threw red vermillion powder onto Lohani to bless him. Within the crowd were other familiar faces, leaders of the local slum-like settlements of Ramnagar and Ganeshnagar, which were inhabited by Mukta Kamaiya (freed bonded labourers). This book focuses on these individuals, who, until the Nepali government put an end to the practice in 2000, served as Kamaiya (debtbonded labourers). The decision to abolish this system came after –1–

2 | The Partial Revolution

a decade of agitation by a host of nongovernmental organizations that together constituted the Kamaiya liberation movement. After the government resolved to end bonded labour in the western Terai region and threatened to fine landlords who retained such workers, many of the latter became free men and women overnight. They came to form a landless proletariat, a section of which would go on to organize a Kamaiya-led movement, the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj (Freed Bonded Labourers Society). Throughout the second half of the ‘people’s war’ between Maoists and the state, this movement captured public land in urban areas and in rural community forests in the western Terai (lowland) region. In Tikapur, a local airport, parts of the university campus and a high school compound were occupied and six settlements for ex-Kamaiyas, known locally as bastis (slums), were established. The freed Kamaiya had come to join the victory rally of the Maoists, though none of their leaders were members of the Maoist Party. All of them had been sympathetic to the Maoist cause, however, and particularly to the Maoist politician Rulpa Chaudhary’s idea to distribute five khatta (1,690 m2) of land to each freed Kamaiya household in the region. It was no surprise then that they had joined the victory rally and supported the Maoists. A few days before, following the elections, a freed Kamaiya had told me, ‘[e]ven though openly we [the freed Kamaiya] have no candidates, we all secretly support the Maobaadi (Maoist) Party’. I was eager to document this historic event by taking pictures of the Maoist caravan entering the city. Passing the heavily fortified outpost of the local armed police, a large crowd of a few thousand Maoist supporters entered the town. They cheered enthusiastically when they saw me, a foreigner, documenting their historic victory. The rally moved slowly in a circle through the town, passing the shopkeepers in the bazaars and the local municipality building. Alongside were many silent and curious inhabitants of Tikapur, observing the parade from outside their homes. The three local leaders of the Mukta Kamaiya, Jagdhish, Daniram and Bishnu Chaudhary, were standing on the roadside waiting to greet the Maoist politicians. Upon the procession’s arrival, ‘Jagdhish Sir’, as supporters in his settlement used to call him, walked over to the jeep and gave flower garlands and tikka to the two successful candidates. Rulpa and Saikdheja were from different social backgrounds. Mrs Rulpa Chaudhary, the local Maoist direct candidate, came from a so-called martyr family; her brother and father had been killed during the conflict by government security forces. Moreover, Rulpa’s husband was a senior PLA (People’s Liberation Army) com-

Introduction | 3

mander at a camp about 15 km from the town. Saikdheja, meanwhile, had worked as a domestic child servant during her youth, and prior to her entry into the Maoist Party had served as an active member of the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj. The purpose of the UCPN (Maoist) rally was not only to celebrate their landslide victory in the election, but to also give a clear demonstration of their power in the local area. In this historic event, the former guerrilla-turned-electoral party demonstrated its ability to draw together a vast crowd of supporters, thereby flexing its political muscles in front of the urban middle classes. This book builds upon this observation and examines how political mobilizations and labour relationships are reshaped by armed revolutionary conflict, and how a feudal system of bonded labour is transformed into new forms of labour relations that involve neo-bondage. At the first level, the book is intended as a descriptive analysis of how the changing political context following Nepal’s Maoist revolution has affected political mobilizations and labour relations among former debt-bonded labourers (Kamaiya) in the urban municipality Tikapur in Kailali district in the far-western Terai region of the country. The first part of the book is concerned primarily with exploring how the Maoist attempt to capture state power at the local and the national levels altered forms of political expression and experience among former bonded labourers. The second part considers the new forms of labour regimes that have emerged out of the period of revolutionary change. The ‘red threat’ that runs through both parts of the book is a discussion of the everyday, indirect and in some ways invisible transformations that have been brought about by Maoist politics and presence in the rural lowlands of western Nepal.1 At a second level of analysis, this book is also the first major study of the end of a feudal system of bonded labour, the role of a revolutionary movement in that process and the transformation of that system into new forms of labour relations that involve neo-bondage. It focuses on how this transformation from bonded to new forms of labour relations is embedded in the wider revolutionary context. This is because the Maoist rebellion has helped to produce a young, mobile and urbanizing working class that feels increasingly secure in claiming new social spaces for its emerging pleasures, pastimes and practices vis-à-vis existing hierarchies and customs. In the following pages I begin by exploring how the Maoist attempt to capture state power has altered forms of political expression and the experiences of former bonded labourers and assess the

4 | The Partial Revolution

new forms of labour regimes that have emerged out of the period of revolutionary change. The book’s main contention is that the Maoist attempt to capture state power has allowed former bonded labourers to experience greater inclusion in Nepal’s polity at the local and national levels and to mediate the new forms of unfree labour that have emerged during the reconstruction of the economy after the conflict. This is argued from two different ethnographic angles. The first part of the book provides an ethnographic description of different aspects of the political life of freed bonded labourers: their exposure to a new urban setting and the patronage of their former masters; the politics of community formation and local development in the neighbourhood; the contentious politics of the freed bonded labourers’ movement; and their engagement with local trade unions. The second part of this study explores the everyday politics of labour that freed Kamaiya are subjected to in a brick kiln on the town’s periphery. Here, I suggest that the contemporary post-conflict situation limits the brick kiln managers’ attempts to bind labour and structures the everyday politics of work in the brick factory. One of the central aims of what follows surrounds the question: ‘Did the Maoist revolution work?’ To what extent did the Maoist attempt to capture state power actually succeed in empowering the poor and working classes of Nepal’s society? One of the main contentions of this work is that the Maoist attempt to capture state power contributed significantly to the elimination of some of the worst evils of the old regime and continues to profoundly influence the lives of freed bonded labourers, albeit in unintended ways. The story told in this book is partly an upbeat one, partly a jeremiad. From a worm’s eye view in Kailali the Maoist revolution remains a partial revolution. But before elaborating on this argument in more detail, the next sections will introduce the more general context of Nepal’s Maoist revolution and the ways in which anthropologists have approached it so far.

A Brief History of the Nepali Maoist Revolution By launching its jana yudha (people’s war) on 13 February 1996, the Nepal Maoist movement entered a violent armed conflict with the state’s security forces that lasted nearly a decade.2 Their principal revolutionary goal had been to overthrow the old state power and construct a new state (CPN 2004: 154). According to their long-term vision, this naya Nepal (new Nepal) would eventually lead to the for-

Introduction | 5

mation of a naulo janbad (new people’s democracy), one that would be based, in the words of its party chairman, Pushba Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda), on a ‘true multiparty democracy’ (Hoftun, Raeper and Whelpton 1999; International Crisis Group (ICG) 2005: 2). Exploiting power vacuums mainly in the western highland districts of Rolpa and Rukkum, the movement began to establish itself as a revolutionary force through attacks on local police stations and the extrajudicial killing of enemies. As Ogura (2007: 336) reports for both districts, the ‘strategy of attacking police stations in the villages … was successful since almost all the police posts except that in the district headquarters had been evacuated by the middle of 2002. In the absence of any state authority, the Maoists were easily able to establish their rule over the people’. This centring of their activities in the western highland areas led many commentators to initially dismiss the movement as a minor communist splinter group capable of little more than spreading unrest in remote mountainous areas (see ICG 2005). In fact, the Nepali state tended to downplay the movement as a ‘law and order problem’ (Shah and Pettigrew 2009), which certainly facilitated its rapid expansion across the country. In addition, their targeting of exploitative money lenders and landlords, their attempts to curb domestic violence and their introduction of campaigns against alcohol abuse helped the movement gain popularity (ICG 2005: 15). These early efforts were soon complemented by other campaigns; the Maoists began to draw heavily on caste and ethnic issues to garner support and even lobbied against the high tuition fees in private schools to gain the backing of the middle classes. This strategy proved successful, as reports from the ICG suggest that at the end of the conflict, the Maoists had an astonishing support base of around fourteen thousand political workers and one hundred thousand supporters (ICG 2005). In military terms, the movement first drew on Mao’s concept of a ‘protracted People’s War’, achieved by encircling towns from the rural areas (ICG 2005: 21). This meant that the movement fought its battles mainly in the villages and the countryside and only occasionally came into the towns. The strategy worked for a while, mainly because the Maoists were initially fighting against a poorly equipped local police force. However, after their second national convention in February 2001, the movement changed tactics. The revolutionaries announced they would follow the new ‘Prachanda Path’, which essentially meant that they decided to come into power and also embrace capitalist development. The new ideology required the complementing of rural revolution with a ‘people’s rebellion’ in the city,

6 | The Partial Revolution

as well as the development of nonviolent forces ‘to make continuous interventions in national politics, to use fraternal organisations to carry out strikes and street demonstrations, to foment revolt within the RNA and to seek to polarise sympathetic and opposed political forces’ (ICG 2005: 14). As many human rights organizations have documented, after the first ceasefire ended in November 2001, the Maoists began to confront the Royal Nepali Army and claimed to have reached a stage of ‘strategic balance’ in their revolutionary process. According to their estimations this meant that the state’s influence had been significantly weakened and their own regime had turned into a viable alternative. Multiple and simultaneous attacks followed, including assaults on army barracks. The fighting increased significantly and peaked when the state reacted by declaring a state of emergency. In 2004 the Maoists released a press statement declaring that they had successfully established ‘base areas’ that, according to reports, included the western highland districts of Rukkum, Rolpa, Salyan, Jajarkot, Kalikot and Phutan. Though Prachanda declared in a press interview that ‘all rural Nepal had become a Yenan’, my ethnographic material will suggest that Kailali was less a base area than a ‘guerrilla area’ ‘where Maoists and the State are in constant flux’ (ibid.: 25). After the second ceasefire collapsed, the conflict escalated further. With support in the form of weapons and military training from the US, India, the UK and Belgium, the state began to crack down heavily on Maoist guerrilla squads, while the Maoists retaliated with heavy attacks on the district headquarters of Bhojpur and Beni in March and April 2004.3 On 31 August the Maoists entered into their ‘third’ and final stage of the revolution: ‘the strategic offensive’. Heavy fighting continued, but the conflict ended only in November 2006, when the Maoists and the Nepali state signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. This essentially meant the end of the insurgency period that had resulted in the deaths of more than 13,000 people, the widespread use of torture, the displacement of approximately 200,000 people, the conscription of about 4,500 child soldiers4 and the disappearance of 1,619 ordinary citizens whose fate remains largely unknown to this day (Human Rights Watch 2007; OHCHR 2012; Pettigrew 2013: 13). After the conflict officially ended in 2006, the Maoist guerrilla movement turned into a political party. Their armed wing, the People’s Liberation Army, was confined in central cantonments (each with three satellite camps) in seven districts of the country, and their weapons were monitored by United Missions in Nepal (UNMIN). Out of the 30,000 self-declared PLA soldiers who entered the UN-

Introduction | 7

controlled cantonments, 19,602 were subsequently verified as fighters by the United Nations (Pettigrew 2013: 15). In popular media the Maoists were criticized for doubling the number of PLA soldiers before entering the camps and also charged for removing PLA leaders to strengthen their paramilitary-like youth organization, the Young Communist League (YCL) (ibid.: 15). In the following elections for the Constituent Assembly held in April 2008, the Maoists managed to secure 220 out of 601 seats and formed the largest political party in the Assembly. One of their first actions in this new political arena was to press for the end of monarchy and in May 2008 the country became a Federal Republic. In August 2008, the Maoist leader Prachanda formed a new coalition government and became the new Prime Minister of Nepal. He resigned, however, only eight months later after a dispute with the president of the Constituent Assembly over the rejection of the cabinet’s decision to sack the chief of the army. After Prachanda’s resignation the government became unstable. First, a UML (United Marxist Leninist) leader became Prime Minister but resigned in June 2010. Then the country was without a Prime Minister for seven months until Jhala Nath Kanal was elected. He resigned in August 2011 and UCPN-Maoist vice chairman Baburam Bhatterai took over. Throughout Bhatterai’s period as prime minister, the PLA army was dissolved and only a small fraction of former PLA soldiers were later integrated into the Nepalese Army in September 2012, due to ineligibility, reversed decisions and disenchantment (Pettigrew 2013: 17). The debate around the dissolving of the PLA army also contributed to a split in the Maoist movement into two parties. On 19 June 2012, a dissident group around UCPN-M vice president Mohan Baidya (alias Kiran) announced the formation of a new Maoist party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M). The latter accused the leadership of the UCPN-Maoist as opportunistic and corrupt, and therefore decided to form a new Maoist movement. However, despite the CPN-M’s efforts to block the second CA elections, in November 2014 new elections for the Constituent Assembly were finally held in which the UCPN-Maoists only came in third, and the former old political class – embodied by members of the Nepali Congress (NC) and the UML-Party – once again took power in the country. Writing about the Maoist revolution in the face of constant political transformation is challenging. Hence, this monography focuses largely on the period between January 2008 and July 2009, when fieldwork was conducted.

8 | The Partial Revolution

The Nepali Maoist Revolution through the Anthropologist’s Eye For some time now, anthropologists have analysed various facets of Nepal’s Maoist revolution, though a serious engagement with the phenomenon has been a long time in coming. In the early 1990s, as David Gellner has pointed out (2003: 18–20), surprisingly few anthropologists were aware of the coming rebellion.5 In fact, only two anthropological publications of this period succeeded in drawing attention to the potential revolt (see Nickson 1992; Mikesell 1993). The reason for this oversight remains largely unexplored, but it may be related to the academic reluctance to engage in speculative predictions about potential armed revolutions, or even to anthropology’s tradition interest in exploring cultural and religious issues rather than focusing on issues of inequality, exploitation and power politics (Pfaff-Czernecka 2005). With the revolution unfolding from 1996 onwards, the conduct of fieldwork within Maoist operational areas came to be seen as increasingly dangerous. Few anthropologists dared to venture out of the comfort zone of the country’s capital to observe the relationship between the Maoist movement and local society first-hand. However, most of this handful of researchers were actually working in those remote areas prior to the revolution and witnessed the revolution arrive on their doorstep (De Sales 2002; Fujikura 2003; LeComte-Tilouine 2004; Pettigrew 2004; Shneiderman and Turin 2004: 84). Only since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the UCPN (Maoist) and the state in November 2006 has access to field sites become easier, and we have witnessed a surge in anthropological literature on the Nepali Maoist revolution, with several edited volumes and anthropological monographies on Nepal’s Maoist conflict being produced (Lawoti and Pahari 2009; Shah and Pettigrew 2009; Lecomte-Tilouine 2013; Pettigrew 2013). Next to this body of anthropological work sits a wide range of other literature on the Maoist revolution across the social sciences (Karki and Seddon 2003; Hachhethu 2004; Sharma 2004; Pyakurel 2007; Upreti 2008; Adhikari 2014). Generally speaking, the emerging body of literature related to Nepali Maoism can be divided between accounts that examine the revolution itself and narratives that focus on its wider effects. Among the former, anthropologists have begun to engage seriously with the politics (Gellner 2007; Lawoti and Pahari 2009), history (Ogura 2004, 2007), gender relations (Manchanda 2004; Pettigrew and Shneiderman 2004) and revolutionary governance (Ogura 2008; LeComte-

Introduction | 9

Tilouine 2010) of the Maoist movement. These narratives tell us much about the emergence, organization and subsequent transformations of the movement at different stages of revolution; such accounts make it clear that the Nepali Maoist movement has been essentially intellectually driven since its inception, led by middle-class activists and dominated by Brahmin leaders.6 However, these authors’ explicit focus on the movement itself replicates the more general idea that a revolution is simply the outcome of a revolutionary political force, rather than a transformation of an entire social structure. Within the second group of literature, which is more concerned with the effects of the revolution than with the uprising per se, the emphasis has primarily been on political violence (Shneiderman 2009; Thapa, Ogura and Pettigrew 2009), conflict-related fear (Pettigrew 2009) and a ‘climate of terror’ (LeComte-Tilouine 2009), and thus seems concerned chiefly with the ‘iron fist’ of the revolution. For instance, Judith Pettigrew (2013) and those coming in her wake (Lecomte-Tilouine 2013) argue that rural villagers became suspicious of outsiders in general, and remained careful to not associate themselves with either members of the Maoist movement or with outsiders throughout the insurgency. The insurgency told the rural villagers not only with whom and when to speak, but also when to remain silent. Everyday relations among villagers thus evidently profoundly changed and the mistrust level among villagers could only decline in the aftermath of the conflict. In line with this intellectual legacy, one of the central aims of this book is to engage with this literature by providing further observations on how Maoism affects the lives of ‘ordinary’ people. It contrasts with the aforementioned existing scholarship on Nepal’s Maoist revolution in at least three distinct ways. First, unlike the body of literature cited, my ethnography is based on an urban municipality. It provides a detailed ethnography of the social, political and economic transformations that are taking place in the wake of the Maoist revolution in Nepal. Thus the book provides valuable insights into a sociopolitical context that is in a high state of flux and change, and therefore offers an invaluable snapshot of the immediate after-effects of a major Maoist revolution in a small city. Second, rather than focusing on the already researched themes of violence, fear and intimidation,7 this book takes the politics, institutions and labour regimes in an urban municipality and its rural hinterland as its starting point. By focusing on the everyday politics of a group of freed bonded labourers, the book provides an understanding of the ways in which ordinary, but poor and marginalized,

10 | The Partial Revolution

citizens are affected by Maoist politics and what gains and losses the revolution has brought them. Third, the book aims at making a valuable contribution to the anthropological study of contemporary labour relations and labour regimes in Nepal, and in particular to the study of unfree labour and debt bondage under capitalist production. The second part of the book traces both the disappearance of an older Kamaiya system of rural bonded labour and the continuation of bonded labour – albeit in a much different form – in contemporary brick kilns on the margins of Tikapur. Here the book not only spells out how bonded labour is changing in practice, but also how its current forms are shaped by the wider politics of the Maoist movement. Beyond Nepal, this book also questions Eric Wolf’s (1969) and James Scott’s (1977) claim that in revolutionary-like situations it is the ‘middle-peasant’ (village-dwellers with landed property) who is most liable to be caught up in revolutionary activity. Comparing the roots and realities behind six cases of revolution – Mexico, China, Russia, Vietnam, Algeria and Cuba – Wolf (1969) argued that middle peasants were the transmitters of social unrest, as they neither held any vested interest in maintaining the status quo that benefited rich peasants, nor suffered from the political impotence that characterized subsistence farmers. Similarly, Scott (1977) identifies the middle peasant as the one most prone to become a revolutionary, as he views the lower classes as lacking in the cultural and social-organizational autonomy to resist elite hegemony. The ethnographic material foregrounded in this book, however, is less positive about such a theory of revolution that casts property-less peasants and wage-labourers as impotent, helpless agents swept along in the wake of revolutions. This is because one of the core arguments of this book is that revolutions can challenge the balance of power and allow former serfs to act militantly and assertively. This becomes most evident in Chapter 2, which shows how formerly bonded labourers have occupied highly symbolic spaces in urban terrain throughout the revolutionary period. Moreover, while Skocpol (1979) views revolutions as overtly structural, this book emphasizes the complexities of political organization and stresses the key role of political ideology within a revolutionary-like situation. Accordingly, one of the key insights of the book is that the Maoist movement – seen through the narrow lens of my field site Tikapur – seemed primarily concerned with the eradication of practices and symbolism associated with feudalism while only secondarily working on behalf of the working classes.

Introduction | 11

Revolutionary State Capture Recent anthropological scholarship on ‘the state’ has focused on the ‘everyday state’ (e.g. Joseph and Nugent (1994) in Mexico; Fuller and Harriss (2001) in India; Krohn-Hansen and Nustad (2005) more generally). For example, Fuller and Harris’s seminal work focused on what the state actually means and represents for a given group of people, and how ordinary people often imagine the state as at once an idea and a system (Fuller and Harriss 2001: 2–5). While this kind of research emphasizes the everyday interactions and ‘ordinariness’ of the state and politics, it does not explicitly focus on the fact that certain groups within society also aim to appropriate and alter the state (as both an idea and a system), a phenomenon that political scientists have described as ‘state capture’ (see Hellman, Jones and Kaufman 2000). The discourse of state capture, then, is something that is perhaps not adequately described within frameworks of the ‘everyday state’. Akin to this observation, it should be highlighted that conflict zones are frequently divided into armed rebel/revolutionary actors and state actors. However, in the case study foregrounded in this book (which focuses largely on the period between January 2008 and July 2009), it is difficult to maintain such a clear-cut dichotomy for a very obvious reason: while up until the end of the ceasefire the Maoists were an armed group with a strong revolutionary outlook, in its aftermath part of the political wing of the wider Maoist movement became part of the state, while other parts (e.g. the PLA and paramilitary-like Young Communist League) remained outside of it. It is therefore difficult to place the Maoist movement at either end of such a dichotomy. Similarly, following a broad range of scholars (e.g. Gellner 2002; Shah 2008), the Nepali Maoist revolution has commonly been understood as a form of armed resistance against the state, rather than as an attempt to capture state power at both local and national levels through the use of a variety of revolutionary tactics and practices. As a consequence, the peace agreement between Maoists and the state is often equated with the end of the revolution, instead of being viewed as a transitional phase leading to a continuation of the revolution through different means, as in the Maoists’ self-description. In this book I adopt the latter perspective, suggesting that the Maoists’ attempt to capture state power at both the local and national levels has changed the regional balances of power, and that this, in

12 | The Partial Revolution

turn, has had various unintended consequences for local politics and labour regimes. My use of the term ‘revolutionary state capture’ connotes two different levels. First, the elections of April 2008 became a means for Maoists to capture state power. As mentioned previously, they managed to secure the majority of the available seats, thereby expanding the party’s political representation within the state. Second, revolutionary state capture works by exerting influence over existing state institutions according to one’s own interests. In Chapter 4, for instance, I describe how the Maoists mobilized freed Kamaiya and Sukhumbasi (landless people) in town in order to put political pressure on a local police officer to submit to their will. In so doing, they were attempting to reform an existing state institution, the local police, according to their own interests. I suggest, therefore, that the Maoist attempt to capture state power is qualitatively different to the attempts of any other political elite to influence existing political institutions to their own advantage. This is due to the fact that for the period considered, as a recent report by the Crisis Group notes, the Nepali Maoist movement continued to regard itself as a revolutionary party; it retained a strong belief in the usefulness of political violence and armed struggle and maintained an armed military unit to give weight to their demands (ICG 2010: 7). In short, despite the Maoists’ stunning election victory, it regarded itself as an antagonist to the state whose aim was to ‘capture state power’. The book thus highlights how the unique revolutionary-like configuration of two groups (i.e. state and Maoists) competing for power forced ordinary citizens to position themselves somewhere between these power centres. In the literature this phenomenon of siding with either the Maoists or the state is well documented. During the revolutionary period, as the work of anthropologist Judith Pettigrew (2004) demonstrates, ordinary people often became trapped between these two poles of power, and the boundaries between Maoists, state agents and ordinary people were frequently blurred. Similarly, a report by the Crisis Group suggests that during the post-insurgency period citizens had to side with political parties in order to seek protection (Crisis Group 2010: 20). In several chapters of this book, I also illustrate how freed bonded labourers appropriated the changing balances of power by directing their own politics towards these two poles. It is only against this backdrop that we can explain how, for example, a group of disempowered former debt-bonded labourers were able to capture such highly symbolic sites as an airport, a university campus and a high school compound.

Introduction | 13

In this sense, I conceptualize the Maoist revolutionary movement as an important structural and symbolic reference point for ordinary citizens. This is a central theme throughout the book. For instance, in Chapter 3 I explore the contentious politics of the FKS (Freed Kamaiya Society) and argue that freed bonded labourers had partially adopted Maoist rhetoric in order to advance their own agenda. Strategizing upon the presence of the Maoist movement was not limited to the poor. The rich elite also had to deal with this unique new power configuration. In Chapter 1 I show how powerful businessmen and landlords organized popular festivals in order to portray themselves as benevolent patrons of the town. Similarly, Chapter 6 describes how brick kiln managers and owners were careful to limit their attempts to re-bond labour due to their fear of the Maoist presence. This principal scenario is not unique to Nepal; rather, it represents a model that is applicable to, and perhaps characteristic of, different revolutionary-like contexts around the globe. The way in which one acts, communicates and strategizes to achieve one’s own ends depends heavily upon local power dynamics. Given this, the presence of a revolutionary force in a locality will foster certain modes of behaviour, a phenomenon that I have termed the ‘invisible hand of Mao Tse-tung’. Recognizing the importance of the political context, the notion of the ‘invisible hand of Mao Tse-tung’ represented an attempt to grapple with this continuous revolution-like situation and its side effects. The inference is that the larger political context of the Maoist movement limits the possibilities of other actors; the choice of the term ‘invisible hand’ is intended to convey the more obscure qualities of the Maoist movement rather than the violent spectacles that it perpetrated in the past, and in which it continued to engage sporadically at the time of fieldwork (for statistics and discussion of Maoist violence, see INSEC Yearbook 2007, 2008). In several chapters of this book I will demonstrate that it is both the size and muscle power of the Maoist movement, as well as the rumours regarding its strictly hierarchical, highly organized and well-informed network of party cadres and supporters, that underpinned its political clout in town and limited the decision-making of other actors. To unravel these conflict-related socialites is a difficult task for the ethnographer. It requires a sound knowledge of local power structures. But as Gellner has succinctly stated, a ‘crucial point that emerges from ethnographic study is of course that its [Maoist revolution’s] impact is different in different places. National political movements always work through, and are understood locally in terms of, pre-existing social relationships’ (Gellner 2003: 18). The new forms

14 | The Partial Revolution

of sociality thus entail structural continuities with the past. In other words, it would be reductive to claim that all social relationships in a locality are dependent on and shaped by a change in the balance of power. But much of it also depended on Maoist politics, as I demonstrate in the next section.

The Maoist Politics of Bonded Labour From its inception, the UCPN Maoist Party was in support of the liberation of the Kamaiya. However, the Kamaiya were not initially a distinct focus of Maoist demands. When Maoist Baburam Bhatterai handed over a forty-point list of demands to the Nepali government, led by Sher Bahadur Dheuba, prior to the onset of the insurgency in 1996, point twenty-seven declared that ‘[t]hose who cultivate the land should own it. (The tiller should have the right to the soil he/she tills.) The land of rich landlords should be confiscated and distributed to the homeless and others who have no land’ (ICG 2005: 41).8 Only later, in the form of two press statements issued during the insurgency period, did the underground movement articulate its support more clearly. First, in 2003 the UCPN Maoist stated in their ‘Negotiating Agenda’ under Section III that ‘[a]ll types of bonded labour system, including Kamaiya, Harwa, Charwa, etc., should be abolished with a guarantee of employment and settlement. All homeless persons should be provided with proper housing’ (ICG 2005: 44). This suggests that for Nepal’s Maoists, bonded labourers like the Kamaiya qualified as a distinct category of people.9 Second, in 2004 the Maoist Party claimed in the ‘Revolutionary Worker’, that ‘[s]ince the People’s War reached the Terai (lowlands), it has greatly inspired the masses of the people, especially the dispossessed and the downtrodden, who rose up to reclaim their ancestral land’ (Revolutionary Worker 2004: 1). They argued for ‘land to the tillers’ and ‘land to the landless’, both necessary steps for the establishment of Maoist socialism. Importantly, the party claimed to empower Kamaiya: ‘In 2002, the parliament under the king declared the Tharu people free from the Kamaiya system even as these people had already rebelled and had begun to retake their property – with many of the landlords already in full flight – under the impetus of the Maoist advances in the southwestern region’ (Revolutionary Worker 2004: 2). The implications of this Maoist politics of bonded labour are far from clear, however, and have received little in-depth ethnographic

Introduction | 15

scrutiny. In this book I explore how the Maoist attempt to capture state power alters forms of political expression and experience among former bonded labourers and reflect on the new forms of labour regime that have emerged out of the period of revolutionary change. I will examine, for instance, the capture of urban terrain by freed Kamaiya under shifting dynamics of power (Chapter 2), the ways in which the Maoist movement gave political leverage to a freed Kamaiya organization (Chapter 3) and how the symbiotic relationship between the Maoists and local trade unions allowed freed Kamaiya to engage in trade unionism (Chapter 4). The central analytical concern of the book is to open up a grounded scholarly discussion on the unintended consequences of the Maoist attempt to capture state power. I want to move the debate beyond stereotypical positions, such as the assertion that the Maoists did little or nothing for freed Kamaiya. Instead, I argue that Nepal’s Maoists are agents of modernization who have contributed significantly to the creation of structural and symbolic conditions for the disruption of traditional local hierarchies and forms of power. As a result of this action, traditional local allegiances were replaced by new brokerclient relationships that continue to be influenced by the presence of the Maoist movement to this day. Much of this regulation, as the book suggests, depends on Maoist ideology. For example, while the Maoists tolerate capitalist production in brick factories, their presence also limits the managers’ attempts to restore older forms of bonded labour. This prompts the hypothesis that the Maoist movement acts according to the party’s general understanding of the political economy of Nepal. It seems primarily concerned with the eradication of practices and symbolism associated with feudalism, while only secondarily working on behalf of the working classes. This, I propose, is related to the iconic nature of bonded labour in the region, which epitomized the old feudal order. To this end, the next section revisits the forms and practices of the Kamaiya system in the region.

The Kamaiya System of Bonded Labour Revisited Several NGO-sponsored reports (e.g. INSEC 1992; Robertson and Mishra 1997; Sharma and Thakurathi 1998) and a handful of ethnographies (e.g. Gurung 1992; Krauskopff 1999; Rankin 1999; Karki 2002; Guneratne 2002; Fujikura 2007) have documented the forms and practices of the Kamaiya system of bonded labour that was widespread

16 | The Partial Revolution

in the western Terai region (including the districts of Kanchanpur, Kailali, Bardiya, Banke and Dhang) until its abolition in 2000. What all of these accounts share is the fact that the Kamaiya system emerged when high-caste Pahadi (hill dwellers) outsiders began to migrate in large numbers to the lowland Terai region causing the local Tharu community to experience land loss and displacement. As Kunwar, for example, explains: [T]he pahadi used to come down to the Terai every winter season. During the whole winter, they used to live there. While staying in the Terai, they, but not all, established ritual friendship, mit, with the Tharus. These miteri relations made it easier for the hill people to take shelter in the Tharus’ house. While staying with the Tharus, they worked, gambled and drank together. Due to the indulgence in gambling and drinking, the Tharu male members were constrained to take loans either from the Tharu landlords or pahadi mit or other hill migrants. The prevailing proverb, jahan Tharu wohan daru (where there is Tharu, there is alcohol), also highlights the above mentioned scenario. (Kunwar 2000: 40)

Through losing their own small pieces of land for cultivation and taking out loans from their Pahadi landlords, many Tharu became Kamaiya. According to Kunwar, ‘in a survey completed in 1995, the government recorded more than 85,000 from 16,000 Kamaiya families, whereas surveys conducted by NGOs (BASE10 and INSEC11) estimated the number of Kamaiya population to 200,000 from 40,000 families’ (Kunwar 2000: 42). Though the numbers of the total population of the Kamaiya community vary vastly according to different sources, most reports cite Kailali as the district with the highest share of the total Kamaiya population and the highest absolute number of resident Kamaiya. The NGO Base, for example, reported that 44,944 persons worked as Kamaiya in Kailali district in 1995. However, for the same year, as Karki has pointed out, official government sources estimated the size of the Kamaiya population around 30,463 (Karki 2002: 76). Given that in 1992 the Nepali census counted an estimated total population of 417,891 (GON 2011: 13), approximately 7.3 per cent to 10.8 per cent of the overall population most likely worked as Kamaiya in Kailali district. These figures implicitly point to the fact that not all Tharu were bonded labourers. Indeed, my fieldwork data suggests that some of the masters of the Kamaiya were Tharu themselves, a fact that is often understated within the regional literature. Yet, my fieldwork data also suggests that none of the larger farms in Kailali district were owned by Tharu, and that owners of large numbers of Kamaiya are said to have mainly originated from the hills.

Introduction | 17

Most generally, the Kamaiya system of bonded labour functioned as follows. It began with an agreement to work as a Kamaiya for a landlord based on an oral and renewable contract that lasted a minimum period of one year, usually forged at the popular Maghe Sankranti that takes place annually around January. Here Tharus negotiated with their landlords over a period of days whether to continue their work or shift to another landlord who would then compensate their first master. Often, however, landlords would not only negotiate with the Kamaiya about their contracts, but with each other as well. According to popular understanding, landlords in the region traded Kamaiya similar to cattle, buying and selling according to the estimated yearly demand of farm work. After the festival, the landlord would pay out an advance in quintals of rice to the Kamaiya. The owner of the Kamaiya noted the amount of this saunki (debt) and calculated the value in monetary terms, most frequently causing the relationship between master and Kamaiya to turn into one of debt dependency. Undoubtedly, while these debt dependencies varied according to individual experience, many Kamaiya at my field site reported a variety of unfair practices that increased their debt. For example, one ex-Kamaiya reported to me that an equivalent of one daily wage was added to his saunki when he did not show up for a working day. Rankin, based on her fieldwork in Kanchanpur and Kailali in the 1990s, highlights the important diversity of Kamaiya practices and labour arrangements that existed, thereby refuting the popular understanding of the Kamaiya system as one uniform set of relations (Rankin 1999: 28). Her work indicates that those Kamaiya working as labourers for kisans (petty farmers who are commonly subsistence producers) were living in better conditions than those working for jamindars (agricultural entrepreneurs). This was mainly because ‘the combination of profit motive and unchallenged power have given jamindars completely free reign to control and enslave Kamaiya labour through overtly as well as symbolically violent means’ (Rankin 1999: 38). In fact, jamindars used ‘threats of being framed for theft, murder or rape’ (Rankin 1999: 37) to obtain the lands of small Tharu landowners, only to enslave them as Kamaiya, and sometimes to even ‘exercise rights to the wives and daughters of their Kamaiyas’ (Rankin 1999: 37). While Rankin’s account perhaps gives too much weight to the relationship between class differences and coercive power, it is certainly a fact that many Kamaiya suffered from physical exploitation and psychological abuse by their landlords. Kamaiya were not only

18 | The Partial Revolution

hassled to pay fines when falling sick but also compelled to perform unpaid corvée labour, such as house construction, or work on village roads and bridges, in addition to their agricultural work. Sometimes they were even seriously maltreated by their employers. Guneratne, for instance, notes the following: ‘While interviewing people in half a dozen different villages in western Dang, I recorded three instances of suicide by Tharu servants following maltreatment at the hands of their landlords; according to statistics kept by BASE, there had been eighty-three such suicides in the area in 1989 and 1990’ (Guneratne 2002: 98). Many of the former Kamaiyas living in the Tikapur area, whom I discuss below, knew of such incidents and often distinguished between ramro (good) and kharab (bad) landlords. The good ones offered some sort of benign patronage such as food, clothing and shelter; the kharab were those that imposed hefty fines in case of absence or tried to sexually abuse Kamaiya women and girls. Whether working for a good or bad landlord, what seemed to bother nearly all former bonded labourers was the pressure they had been under on the farms. Even outside the peak agricultural season, the Kamaiya were required to work on other jobs for up to eighteen hours a day, a fact that was mentioned frequently by those with whom I spoke. It comes as little surprise that under such exploitative conditions the term Kamaiya changed its meaning rapidly and led to resistance. As Fujikura (2007) has highlighted, since the arrival of NGOs in the region from the early 1990s onwards, the term Kamaiya – which in Tharu language simply means ‘hard workers’ – has become increasingly associated with bonded labour. Despite many efforts by the various NGOs to abolish the Kamaiya system, all attempts to organize the labourers remained unfruitful.12 The turning point came on 1 May 2000, when nineteen Kamaiya decided to file a court case against their landlord, Mr Shiva Raj Pant, in Geta VDC (Village Development Committee), Kailali district.13 The event signified the beginning of the end for the Kamaiya system and represented the first ever successful use of existing legal provisions against a powerful local landlord. This incident and local reactions to it have been described at length by various scholars (Guneratne 2002; Fujikura 2007; Lakier 2007) as well as in NGO reports (See Action Aid 2005), and thus it is sufficient here to offer only a brief summary of the complex chain of events. The nineteen Kamaiya working on Shiva Raj Pant’s farm undoubtedly experienced brutal forms of physical exploitation that fuelled their motivation to challenge their landlord.14 When the nineteen Kamaiya

Introduction | 19

finally confronted their landlord, they received little sympathy from the local bureaucrats and politicians. Lakier succinctly summarizes: The CDO, Tana Gautam, ‘insulted the Kamaiyas and supporting organisations’. In response the Kamaiyas ‘immediately began a sit-in in front of the CDO office, on May 12. Two days later the sit-in had grown to encompass thousands – according to BASE sources, it numbered as many as 7,000 to 8,000. (INSEC 2000 in Fujikura 2007: 350)

The sit-in was supplemented by demonstrations throughout the bazaar. Demonstrators marched with black cloths tied around their mouths to signify the government’s refusal to listen, while bearing lanterns to symbolize their search for justice. ‘[on] other days the demonstrators beat drums, pots and pans proclaiming that they were trying to wake up the conscience of the government officials … after twelve days of sit-in, the landlord, Shiva Raj Pant, gave in’ (Lakier 2007: 258). In the aftermath of their liberation the Nepali government promised to compensate the Kamaiya community through a rehabilitation and resettlement scheme. Everyone who had previously worked as a Kamaiya was promised a small sum of money and a parcel of land in the Bonded Labour (Abolishment) Act of 2001. The main issue of contestation, however, had been that the government neither conducted a survey to count how many people worked as Kamaiya in the western Terai region, nor took the rehabilitation and resettlement agenda particularly seriously. Many Kamaiya settled on unregistered pieces of land and, as I describe in subsequent sections (Chapters 3 and 4), soon began occupying parts of urban municipalities. The description of the Kamaiya system as it operated in the region suggests that bonded labour had become an important and iconic cultural marker in the local landscape, one that, I argue, the Maoists had to recognize. Moreover, this section suggests that the book also covers some familiar sociological terrain, namely the transformative process from bonded to free wage labour. I hope to show how freed Kamaiya experienced and conceptualized this process and to demonstrate how its outcomes had been forged by the specific political context.

Kailali and its History Kailali district is situated in the far-western Terai region of Nepal. It covers a total of 3,235 sq. km and borders the Indian State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) as well as the Nepali administrative districts of Kan-

20 | The Partial Revolution

chanpur, Bardiya, Dhoti and Surkhet. The area is divided into the steep and arid slopes of the Sikwali Mountains to the north and flat and fertile lowlands to the south. The main crops here are paddy, wheat and vegetables, though their cultivation is not without risk; during the monsoon period (between June and September), Kailali often witnesses heavy rainfall and severe flooding15 that can destroy crops and lead to food shortages. The climate in the district varies between the cold and frost of the winter months from November to February and the hot season from May to September. In 2005 a local weather station recorded the lowest winter temperature as 6.4 °C, while the summer temperature peaked at 40 °C. Rainfall is relatively rare outside the wet season. In 2005, for example, there was between 0 and 87.3 mm of rain in the winter and hot seasons, whereas the rainy season saw between 90.9 and 414.2 mm. For administrative purposes, Kailali district is divided into fortytwo VDCs and two nagar palikas (municipalities). The latter include the administrative headquarters of Dhangadhi to the west of the district and Tikapur in the southeast, close to the Karnali River to the east and the border town of Tikunia to the south. The district’s population is almost exclusively Hindu, though Christians, Muslims (around Dhangadhi and Tikapur) and Buddhists are also present. There were a total of 616,697 inhabitants at the 2001 census (rising to a projected 805,542 in 2008), which far exceeds the total populations found in neighbouring districts. Over the past two decades the population in Kailali has been steadily rising,16 with an almost three-fold increase between 1981 and 2001. In the same period the population density in the area has nearly tripled from 79.7 people per sq. km to an estimated 249 per sq. km in 2008, due largely to high birth rates, decline in death rates and in-migration. However, these figures are still much lower than for the neighbouring Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where the population density is approximately 792 people per sq. km. For most of its recent history, Kailali district had been an isolated jungle area filled with wild animals, such as elephants, tigers and leopards, and remote in relation to Nepal’s political centre, Kathmandu. Indeed, before the establishment of the Chichapani Suspension Bridge,17 which spans the Karnali River in the eastern part of the district, in 1996, Kailali remained cut off from Kathmandu throughout the rainy season due to flooding. Older residents of the district often remember how inhabitants needed up to three days to reach Kathmandu, often having to travel by train through India before re-entering Nepal and catching a bus to the capital.

Introduction | 21

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many people today adhere to the view that Nepal’s Kathmandu-based political class historically ‘dominated’ the region by neglecting to invest in its development. This belief is supported by historical evidence. Initially the government of Nepal had little interest in the region. In 1817, Nepal’s government gifted Kailali to the Indian Nawab of Oudh,18 along with the present-day districts of Kanchanpur, Bardiya and Banke (Whelpton 2005: 43). Only after the assistance of Nepal in the Indian mutiny of 1857–58 were the districts returned to the Kingdom as a gesture of gratitude. This was, as Gellner (2007: 1824) suggests, because ‘the British colonialists had allowed the Nepalese state to retain this strip of territory in order to ensure that Nepal was economically viable’. However, as he goes on to explain, ‘the Ranas in the nineteenth-century were concerned only with expanding the revenue base, and were not at all interested in what language their tenants spoke. They encouraged settlers to move in from further south with five and ten year tax breaks’ (ibid.: 1824). At first, few settlers were willing to engage in such initiatives, being understandably reluctant to enter an area where malaria was prevalent for much of the year. Only a few Rana Tharu to the west and Kshatriya Tharus to the east lived in the area, working as shifting cultivators or semi-pastoralists in the thick jungles. Being ancient sons of the soil, the Tharus were said to have developed a resistance to malaria and were used to the extreme heat of the hot season between March and October (Fujikura 2007). The deadly malaria kept them isolated in the summer months, while in the winter highland landlords (mainly related to the ruling Rana families) roamed the area. With the government eradicating malaria in the 1960s, this frontier region of Nepal was opened up to new settlers. There were two distinct streams of colonization. The first wave of immigrants, arriving in the 1960s from Dhang district, were the so-called ‘Dhanghaura Tharu’. These were mainly Tharus who fled from the Pahadi influx (McDonaugh 1997) in the hope of finding unregistered and unclaimed pieces of land in the area (Fujikura 2007: 327). However, their dreams of escaping Pahadi domination did not last long; a second wave of immigration (from the adjacent Pahadi districts of Acham and Dhoti in Kailali) occurred almost simultaneously. Thus, Fujikura’s observation for Dhang applies equally to Kailali: The rate of immigration by hill people into the Terai accelerated rapidly after the Malaria eradication programme of 1960s. Most of the pahadi migrants were able to obtain and register land in the Terai, and many of the Tharus lost their land. Many contemporary residents of the Terai, both pahadi and Tharu, speak of cheating and coercion involved in this process – as many pahadis use

22 | The Partial Revolution

their literacy and close connections with government officers to their advantage. (Fujikura 2007: 327)

From the 1980s onwards, migration numbers increased, placing significant pressure on the little 80 km wide strip of largely fertile lowland in Kailali district. The region became attractive for new arrivals from all over Nepal, who began to buy land on the basis of property speculation. As a result of the increased influx of immigrants, urbanization processes accelerated, transforming the landscape of the far-western Terai and turning many of the small VDCs along the East-West Highway into semi-urban towns. Having established the general context of this study, the next section looks at how, over the past two decades, the balance of power in the region has changed. As I demonstrate, this is largely a result of the emergence of the Maoist movement in the area. The Maoists had established themselves in both the villages and towns of the district and began to challenge state power, bringing with them an alternative worldview and an agenda to empower the poor.

Challenging the Balances of Power in Kailali As part of their nationwide campaign to consolidate their movement during the first phase of the people’s war, the Maoists expanded their area of operation to Kailali in the late 1990s. Although it would be speculative to suggest a precise date for the Maoists’ arrival, one of their first major activities in the region, as recalled by many educated elites, was the robbery of a private bank in Dhangadhi in 1998. Following the heist, the seven perpetrators sought refuge in a nearby village close to Pahalmanpur VDC, where all but one were subsequently discovered and killed by the local police. Ever since this incident, the Maoists have continued to expand their organization in the area, operating with the help of guerrilla tactics developed by Mao Tse-tung and Che Guevara. While the group was initially said to have enjoyed widespread support among the local population as they sought to outlaw immoral practices such as drinking, gambling and corruption, the escalating violence soon put many people off. This was particularly evident during the second half of the insurgency period between 2001 and 2005, when conflict in the region intensified and Kailali was transformed into a bloody battleground. Various nongovernmental organizations specializing in conflictrelated issues, such as the South Asia Analysis Group (See Annex 1,

Introduction | 23

INSEC (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006)) and OHCHR (2012), have documented some of the worst cases of violence in the region. The ‘notes’ of the South Asia Analysis Group, for instance, list all conflictrelated incidents for the period between October 2003 and December 2004 (see Annex). These cases highlight the frequent fighting between Maoists and police, with major clashes occurring almost every month. As the table in the Annex shows for Kailali, Maoists are alleged to have killed police officers and private security personal, looted property, indoctrinated teachers and even abducted about 200 school students. As in many conflicts, some of the Maoist actions during the insurgency period had a highly symbolic character intended to demonstrate to the state their strength and determination to fight. In Kailali, three attacks were particularly iconic: first, on 11 July 2004 the mayor of Dhangadhi, Dhan Bahadur Bom, was shot dead as he left his office; second, the jeep of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Dheuba was ambushed as it travelled along the Mahendra Highway; and third, four local landlords were beheaded and their heads displayed on a post near the village of Pahalmanpur. Taken together, these three acts suggest that the Maoists wanted to intimidate local state agents. These symbolic attacks soon came to the attention of international news agencies. In 2005, for example, the BBC issued the following report: Its [Dhangadhi] mayor was shot dead and it has suffered more insecurity than any other large town in Nepal. Last February, two thousand Maoists stormed its [Dhangadhi] central prison, freeing over one hundred and fifty prisoners including seventy Maoists. Seven guards were killed. (BBC 2005)

But the Maoist attacks on state security forces represented just one dimension of the ‘people’s war’ in Kailali. Simultaneously, the Maoists attempted to change the regional balance of power in at least three distinct ways. First, they seized the property of landlords in the region. As a recent report by the Kathmandu Post claims, ‘[t]he landowners and the local administration say that about 1,300 hectares of land in Kailali is under Maoist control’ (‘Then or Now, It’s All the Same’ 2011). According to all parties involved, the land occupied by the Maoists was given to party cadres and landless people. Where there is less consensus, however, is on the matter of the share in income from production. The Kathmandu Post article claims that local farmers have to give twelve quintals of rice for each bigha of farmland cultivated, yet it also quotes the Maoist district in charge, who stated that less than twelve quintals of rice will be given to the party.

24 | The Partial Revolution

Second, the Maoists in Kailali also attacked existing state institutions. In Chapter 1 I list various state institutions that were targeted in Tikapur. The town is not exceptional in this regard; in Dhangadhi the state-owned agricultural development bank was attacked, and in some villages Maoists destroyed the village administration offices. Third, the Kailali Maoists demonstrated their determination to construct parallel institutions. Near Dhangadhi, for instance, a ‘people’s court’ was established that is said to have operated throughout the second half of the insurgency period. Furthermore, as a report by the Crisis Group notes, the Maoists in Kailali operated a small weapons factory that supplied local cadres with arms throughout the insurgency period (ICG 2005: 19). Through the seizure of property from affluent landlords, the destruction of existing state institutions and the building of new institutions, the Maoists fundamentally altered the local topography of power. Did such efforts continue after the CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement) between the state and Maoists? It is important to note that although Maoists promised to return the seized lands to their rightful owners, to stop building parallel courts and to introduce ‘power sharing’ (Falch and Miklian 2008) in Kathmandu, in Kailali few of the changes were actually enacted. The people’s court closed its doors, but land seized during the insurgency remained under Maoist control. Moreover, in accordance with the CPA, four PLA camps were established in Kailali, which served as a constant reminder of the Maoists’ capacity for violence.19 And as the remainder of this section demonstrates, Maoist-state violence continued, suggesting a continuation of the antagonism between state and Maoists in the ‘post-conflict’ period.20 Let me begin my illustration with the story of a kidnapping that occurred on 25 June 2009 and quickly turned into an issue of national importance. Shuva Chaudhary, the six-year-old grandson of the local industrialist and brick-factory owner Kharna Pratab Rana (KPR), was abducted from his school. According to newspapers and local gossip, his kidnappers had come to the Ganesh Baba Boarding School during the lunch break (around 10 am) and asked a local teacher for permission to see the brothers Shuva and Laba. When a teacher brought the boys over, the kidnappers offered them cookies and tried to convince them to come along with them. When Laba refused, the kidnappers seized Shuva and sped off on a motorbike. Only later, when Shuva had not returned to the classroom, did his teachers become alarmed. The news spread quickly that the boy had been kidnapped and the police started a search operation. Meanwhile, the kidnappers contacted Shuva’s family via an Indian mobile phone and demanded a

Introduction | 25

ransom of NR 1.5 million (15,000 Euros). Police, teachers and local residents of the town began to search for Shuva in the nearby forests. Within two days, the local police inspector Mr Prem Khadka had arrested nine of the kidnappers and brought them to a temporary cell at Tikapur’s police station. The police and media published the names of the kidnappers and rumours spread in town that one of the men had been a direct relative of the brick-factory industrialist Kharna Pratab Rana. Shuva had been taken across the Nepali-Indian border by the gang. On the same day, however, the local Tikapur Industrial Chambers of Commerce ordered the shops, businesses and local transport services to close down in town. Members of the local Chambers of Commerce accused the police inspector of not acting appropriately towards the kidnappers. A crowd of about two hundred people began to gather around the police station, demanding that the arrested kidnappers be handed over to them. The police refused, and a battle broke out between local residents, political party activists of various stripes and the local police. Locals began to throw stones at the police station. Shortly after this, the police came out and began to hunt down, beat up and arrest the perpetrators. According to two close Maoist informants, their retaliation was directed mainly against the local Maoists. Among the latter, one man, who went by the nickname Bin Laden, was seriously beaten up by police officers. This provocative police attack led to a severe crisis. The following morning, local Maoists retaliated against two members of the local police force, who were ambushed by the side of the main road and beaten up. According to one Maoist informant, Mohan, the Maoists called local Young Communist League members to gather their supporters in town. The stage was set for a larger clash between the Maoists and the police force. The local area in-charge informed Maoist district leader Hem Rash Giwali about the incident and demanded immediate action by the DSP (Deputy Superintendent of Police). The DSP, after realizing the severity of the incident, apologized to the Maoists and sacked the local police inspector and several of the other police officers responsible. The story shows that the violent conflict between Maoists and the police continues in the post-conflict period and illustrates the capacity of the Maoists to quickly organize YCL supporters in the region.

The Tharuhat and the Politics of Ethnicity Another important sociological phenomenon in the region was the formation of a Maoist splinter movement – popularly referred to as

26 | The Partial Revolution

the Tharuhat – following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2006. The movement, which aims ‘to make the revolt of the indigenous people successful’ (SATP 2008: 1),21 was founded by Laxman Tharu (aka Roshan), a former People’s Liberation Army Fighter, and gained national media recognition throughout the period of my fieldwork. Specifically, the Tharuhat organized two long-lasting bandhs (a form of protest usually associated with shutting down a market) in the first half of 2009,22 during which local activists blocked access to main roads – often violently by burning motorcycles, jeeps and buses – and closed down schools and market places in order to achieve their three main aims: the establishment of an autonomous Tharuhat state; adequate representation of Tharu in the new constitution; and state recognition of Tharu as a distinct ethnic identity (see Housden 2009; Maycock 2011: 85). According to local Tharuhat activists, Laxman formed the Tharuhat movement after a dispute with senior Maoist cadres, during which he accused them of acting in the interests of high castes. Following this encounter, Laxman resolved to establish his own Maoist splinter group, uniting several ex-PLA soldiers around him and campaigning for broader political support. Throughout the fieldwork period, the movement was said to be most active in the districts of Dhang and Kailali. The latter was widely considered to be the stronghold of the movement, partly because Laxman hailed from the district, but also because of its sizeable Tharu population. Since its inception, the movement has stressed its capacity for violence. For example, in a press statement in the weekly magazine Nepali Times in 2007, Laxman Chaudhary claimed that the group was in possession of armed weapons (Nepali Times 2007). By 2008, leading Tharuhat members claimed to be in the process of forming their own army. In fact, as Maycock reports, ‘the Tharuhat ordered four thousand uniforms from a uniform factory in Kathmandu’ (Maycock 2011: 86) in order to establish their own Tharuhat Liberation Army. Within the Nepali media, Laxman’s declaration of his military intentions has been widely discussed, and during my time in Nepal I met several Tharuhat activists who claimed that the Tharuhat Liberation Army really existed and was currently based in the forests of eastern Kailali. Despite being asked by some Tharuhat members whether I could provide military training, none was ever willing to lead me to the alleged army training camps. The point of significance here, however, is not whether the Tharuhat Liberation Army actually existed, or whether it was just part of the activists’ strategy to gain political clout in the region. What

Introduction | 27

matters is the much wider question of why the local Maoists tolerated the formation of a splinter group that had the potential – at least theoretically – to undermine their own political power.23 Of course, it could be argued that given the Nepali Maoists’ support of other ethnic movements (See De Sales 2002) there should be no reason to question their tolerance for potential rivals. But I suggest that the case of the Tharuhat is slightly different than that of other ethnic movements; the activities of the Tharuhat were not only considered with great suspicion by some local Maoist cadres, it was also sometimes referred to as a secret agent acting on behalf of royalists and their supporters. This was because the two bandhs organized by the movement in the western Terai led to large fuel shortages in Kathmandu, thus creating popular resentment against the newly elected Maoist government in the capital. In this light it seems fair to ask why the Maoists tolerated the activities of the Tharuhat, and I suggest that there were several possible reasons for this. First, while the Tharuhat activists claimed that the Maoist movement represented an upper caste interest group, the data presented here contradicts such claims. Although it is true that senior Maoist cadres in Kathmandu hailed largely from high caste backgrounds, in Kailali the political representation of Tharu was quite different. Here, only the district in-charge, Hari Giwali, and the leader of the Maoist-affiliated Tharuwan movement, comrade Archanda, were from a Pahadi background. However, four of the six Maoist CA candidates were Tharu and sons of the soil. This largely contradicts what Tharuhat activists claimed about the ‘Bahunness’ of the Maoist movement. Second, there were no major skirmishes between the Maoist movement and Tharuhat activists, most likely because at the time of fieldwork there were frequent reports of other splinter groups being formed elsewhere in Nepal, and a serious confrontation between the two movements would have brought the risk of further conflict with one or more of the latter 24 (e.g. with the Limbuwan Liberation Front in Limbuwan). Third, my freed Kamaiya informants were generally opposed to the Tharuhat movement, as they claimed that influential former Kamaiya masters were involved in it, and they would never side with their former masters. Moreover, as shown in Chapter 2, many freed Kamaiya in Tikapur worked in the informal economy and regarded the chance of obtaining sarkari naukri (government work) as little more than a pipe dream. For these individuals the Tharuhat activists’ promise to provide state-sponsored employment in government and schools lacked credibility compared to the Maoists’ pledge to instigate land reform.

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These observations afford some fundamental insights into the changing relationship between ethnicity and class in contemporary Nepal. Much has changed since the pre-insurgency period. In terms of life chances, freed Kamaiya – who are almost exclusively from the Tharu community – have more in common with other garib manche (poor people), such as the Sukhumbasi (landless people who are often from Dalit communities in the hill regions) than they do with members of their own ethnic group. As my informants repeatedly emphasized, in contemporary Kailali there were two distinct types of Tharu: the affluent middle class and the poor. While the former commonly worked as teachers or were members of large landowning families, the latter usually worked in the informal economy and were often former Kamaiya. Thus, there was a pronounced hierarchical class distinction within the Tharu ethnic group. And, at the risk of oversimplifying, it should be noted that it was generally those more fortunate (i.e. middle class) Tharus who supported the Tharuhat movement, while the majority of ex-debt bonded labourers and landpoor Tharus in villages remained sympathetic to the Maoist promises of social transformation and the building of a ‘new Nepal’. While this might indicate a more general shift from ethnicity to class – and would thus seem to be in line with the general trajectory that Liechty recently suggested for Kathmandu (2003) – this book also demonstrates that ethnicity remains important both in politics and at work. For example, Chapter Two argues that one of the reasons why contemporary business elites organize large-scale festivals in Tikapur is to dampen the cross-sectional appeal of the Maoist and Tharuhat movements by overplaying existing ethnic divisions within the town. Moreover, the chapters on Tikapur’s informal economy (Chapter 2, 6 and 7) demonstrate how one’s ethnic background was crucial to obtaining a job in the region. This was because managers recruited their workforces less on the basis of skill than according to ethnic stereotypes, with different castes and ethnic groups assigned positive or negative attributes (see Chapter 5). But distinctions between different types of Tharu had little salience anymore (see Chapter 2). What mattered was whether one was a Tharu, not whether one was a Dhanghaura or Kshatriya Tharu. It would be wrong to argue that these general trends suggest something akin to Dumont’s ‘substantialization’ thesis, where castes are transformed from interdependent units in a holistic order into homogenous ethnic groups competing against each other (see Dumont 1970). Instead, what seems to occur is the formation of ethnic blocks accompanied by an ‘increasing differentiation of status, power and

Introduction | 29

wealth within each caste’ (Fuller 1996: 12). As Parry argued, it is this process of ‘intra-caste differentiation [that] makes it increasingly difficult to sustain a strong sense of inter-caste difference’ (Parry 2007: 485). Thus, this book contends that the Tharuhat movement will most likely fail to unite the Tharu as a homogenous block because it underestimates class differentiations within this ethnic group.

Into the Field After four months of failing to obtain permission to carry out a longplanned study of one of the Special Economic Zone (SEZs) in Kutch, Gujarat, I arrived in Tikapur on the foggy morning of 28 January 2008. I had come with the intention of spending a few days with a former study-mate and friend who worked for a local small nongovernmental organization in the town. However, this short trip turned out to be the starting point for my eighteen months of fieldwork in Kailali. Upon my arrival, I was introduced to Gyanu, a local-born Bahun (Brahmin) and teacher at a prestigious high school in town. He offered me a room to rent in his middle class bungalow in the town centre, where I stayed for the next six months. In conversations with Gyanu, I was intrigued to hear about the freed Kamaiya and how they had begun squatting on the highly symbolic terrain in town during the insurgency period. Our exchanges over dinners aroused my curiosity, and after a period of two weeks I decided to switch field sites from Kutch, Gujarat to Kailali, Nepal. Over the course of the next eighteen months I carried out research in two phases at various sites, including the town and its rural hinterland, and took two ten-day long trips to India. The first year-long phase of research was spent mainly in Tikapur, where I frequently visited two Kamaiya neighbourhoods (Ganeshnagar and Ramnagar) and followed the activities of their leaders. I joined freed Kamaiya from the bastis at two larger town festivals, socialized with many of the basti inhabitants and witnessed several forms of protest and modes of solidarity of the Mukta Kamaiya Society, which I deal with in Chapters 3, 4 and 6. During this period my primary aim was to gather information on the politics within the town, the freed Kamaiya settlements and the Freed Kamaiya Society. The first phase of research was followed by five months of observation in a brick factory in the town’s rural hinterland, lasting from January 2009 until June 2009. This was broken up by a week-long field trip to Bihar, India, in April and a ten-day excursion to a chicken

30 | The Partial Revolution

factory in Maharashtra, India, in June. Throughout this second phase of my research I was particularly interested in the everyday work of former bonded labourers; I spent substantial amounts of time with freed Kamaiya working in the local construction industry and as rickshaw-walas. Choosing where to be and with whom to socialize was a challenge I faced on a daily basis. I often divided my day into three periods, spending mornings at the brick factory, afternoons with the construction workers and evenings with the rickshaw drivers in the Kamaiya neighbourhoods. Although these various field sites may appear disconnected, I was following the trajectories of freed Kamaiya living in the neighbourhoods of Tikapur. Given that most anthropologists with a serious interest in the anthropology of labour in South Asia tend to stay at one particular place, this ‘multi-sited’ (Marcus 1995) approach may seem unusual. By adopting such a method, I exposed myself to the risk of ending up with data that might be shallow and superficial. However, I felt that the variety of work practices in which freed Kamaiya engage in contemporary Nepal should be reflected in my research, and I therefore sought to document their three most common occupations: brick factory work, construction and rickshaw driving. It was to my advantage that the first year of fieldwork in the basti and with the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj had brought me some small fame among the freed bonded labour community in Tikapur and its hinterland. Many of the freed Kamaiya had seen me participating in protest rallies with the FKS or heard about my research before I had even met them, which facilitated access to their places of work. Among the main interlocutors throughout my fieldwork were the FKS basti leaders Jagdhish Prasad Dhangharua and Daniram Chaudhary (from Ganeshnagar and Ramnagar respectively). Introduced to them by my Brahmin friend Gyanu, they welcomed my plans to conduct ‘research’ in their settlements and were always very helpful in answering my questions. Visiting the bastis on an almost daily basis, I was also able to spend time with other members of the FKS. Moreover, during the CA elections in April 2008, I met Saikdheja Chaudhary from the UCPN Maoist and FKS when she visited Ganeshnagar. She was thrilled by my interest in the issues faced by freed Kamaiya and over the next few months we developed a friendship. Later I was invited to visit her when she went to work as a CA member in Kathmandu. Around the same time, I also met Pashubathi Chaudhary, the freed Kamaiya leader. Our first meeting took place at the FKS office in Dhangadhi. Like Saikdheja Chaudhary, Pashubathi was enthusiastic

Introduction | 31

about my research on freed Kamaiya. He would often stop by my house in town when coming to visit the freed Kamaiya settlements. The fact that I had bought a Yamaha Crux motorbike at the beginning of my fieldwork aided my relationship with Pashubathi, who was the only person in the FKS to own a motorbike (given to him by the Maoist Party). On several occasions during the first year of my research he asked me to drive Saikdheja or Daniram Chaudhary to one of the Freed Kamaiya settlements. Together, we visited the bastis near Lumki, Pahalmanpur and Ranikunda. And by chauffeuring Pashubathi, Saikdheja and Daniram, I was able to demonstrate my support for their movement. As a result of these friendships, I had extensive access to FKS meetings in the bastis of Tikapur and also participated in various forms of collective action organized by the FKS. In May 2008 the group shut down the municipality building for two days, in November 2008 a five-day series of protests was organized (culminating in a rally in Dhangadhi) and in June 2009 there was a militant protest against local state representatives. As I describe in detail in Chapter 3, I participated in all these actions. Moreover, in September 2008 I witnessed how members of the local elite planned protests for the eviction of freed Kamaiya from the university campus, an event described in Chapter 4. Although after the first year of research I kept in contact by regularly visiting freed Kamaiya bastis in town and saw FKS leaders informally around the tea and samosa shops in the freed Kamaiya neighbourhoods, by January 2009 I had changed the course of my fieldwork. Gokul, a powerful local businessman with whom I had made friends, opened a brick factory on the town’s periphery, with a large part of his workforce being recruited from Ganeshnagar and Ramnagar Kamaiya camps. He invited me to the factory’s inauguration ceremony and I asked for permission to visit the factory every so often. While my relationship with Gokul and other industrialists in the area was initially cordial, it soured over time. To avoid trouble, I often visited the factory when Gokul was attending to his other business in town. Even then, I managed to attend on a near-daily basis for the next five months, spending long periods of time socializing with the manager in his office and with workers inside the factory. Among the latter, I became particularly good friends with the brick burners Narayan, Raj Kumar and Kishor, and shortly before the summer season they invited me to travel with them to India. This last part of my fieldwork comprised a ten-day trip to an industrial chicken processing unit on the outskirts of Baramati, India. Here I observed

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how former bonded labourers and their descendants entered and experienced an industrial workplace. Their journey was an attempt to escape their poorly paid factory jobs back in Nepal. The last two chapters of this book reflect this course of my fieldwork and discuss the working environment of the brick factory. Although it was not the main focus of my fieldwork, part of my time in Nepal was dedicated to exploring the role of freed Kamaiya in labour unions. When visiting the union office of the local CUPPEC (Central Union of Plumbers, Painters, Electrical & Construction Workers of Nepal) in May 2008, the union’s chairman was at first surprised to hear that an anthropologist was interested in the participation of freed Kamaiya in union activities. But by demonstrating to him my affiliation with a prestigious Western university, I was granted permission to conduct interviews with staff at the local labour union office and to attend meetings of CUPPEC and of a rickshaw-wala union in town. Towards the end of my fieldwork, I also witnessed the organization of a labour union rally in town, an ethnographic description of which forms the core of Chapter 4. Throughout the fieldwork period, my presence as a young, foreign anthropologist with a broad interest in the region made me highly visible and attracted a lot of attention. To avoid the dilemma of having to side with one particular group, I told everyone that I was interested in the broad social history of the region and the culture of the Tharu. Being aware of the political sensitivity of the times, I introduced myself early in my fieldwork to the local police chief, Mr Kanak Rawl, and paid occasional visits to the local police office to find out about the security situation in the area and also the links between the economic elite and the local police (see Chapter 1). On occasion, I was able to chat further with influential members of the town’s economic elite over dinner at a local hotel. Apart from getting to know Saikdheja through the Kamaiya basti, my access to the local Maoist cadres had been facilitated by a local Maoist who ran a small business. I often went to visit his shop to talk about politics in general. Gradually I developed more quality relationships with the Maoists. What seemed to play a crucial role was not only that I spent so much time with the FKS, but also that my background was German. For instance, after my first interview with local Maoists at the office, I was asked by one of the leaders about my background. I replied that I was from Germany, which brought a smile to the leader’s face. ‘Germany is the mother of the revolution!’, he enthused.

Introduction | 33

For the first six months of my fieldwork I lived in Gyanu’s house in the town centre, but having spent so much time at the freed Kamaiya bastis, I was keen to move in with a family at the camp near the airport. The leader of the basti advised against this, suggesting that I rent one of the small middle-class houses next to the neighbourhood. He told me that their houses were already cramped and it was unnecessary for me to live with them in these conditions. After a while I conceded and settled in a small bungalow next to the camp together with my research assistant, Pushba Chaudhary. Soon, I began to receive visits from freed Kamaiya and my Acchami neighbours; some of these experiences are described in Chapter 2. My language skills limited access to people, however. While it was easy to speak with government officials, high-caste middle-class residents and some of the local Maoists in English, it took a long time before I could have rudimentary conversations with my interlocutors. To compensate for this deficit, I spent many nights learning Nepali at home, as well as hiring a research assistant, who helped me with the more difficult interviews. Although for a great deal of my time in Tikapur I rarely conducted interviews and relied almost exclusively on daily participant observation at the various sites described, the research also involved two surveys carried out towards the end of my fieldwork. The first took place in April 2009, when I had planned to survey two freed Kamaiya bastis (see Chapter 2). The second was carried out in May 2009 and focused on wages and debt bondage in the local brick factories (see Chapter 6). A key task for every ethnographer is to reflect upon whether their field site is representative of a larger area, region or even nation. According to my observations, many of the small towns along the EastWest Mahendra Highway in Kailali had freed Kamaiya settlements, though the economic conditions for the inhabitants were worse in camps located in the forest, due to their limited access to the informal economies of nearby urban centres. In fact, the harsh economic and social conditions in these settlements tempted one to argue that the real areas of deprivation in Kailali were such forest slums. I also think that the particular ethnic issue in Tikapur is particular to the region. In Dhanghadi, the Pahadis were largely from Dhoti and were said to be less ‘cunning’ than most people consider the Accami population to be. One important political aspect that was not centrally considered in this book was the role of the Tharuhat in local politics. Though I met

34 | The Partial Revolution

various Tharuhat members in the pre-CA election period, and visited two local Tharuhat members at various times to gather information, it was beyond the scope of this book to deal with the politics of the Tharuhat more explicitly, but I will return to this subject at several points in the book.

Book Outline Chapter 1 gives a brief overview of the geographical setting of Tikapur. It then introduces the politics of the town’s economic elite by presenting ethnographic accounts of the social organization of two popular town festivals. By focusing on the production and consumption of these two festivals, I argue that such novel events represented sites where the post-conflict urban elite could exercise and enact patronage. By linking the latter to the changing balances of power in the region, I show how the town’s elite used patronage of local festivals as a political strategy to re-establish their power base. In contrast, the former bonded labourers experienced these urban festivals both as integration into the urban polity and as exclusion, depending on their class position. This chapter thus seeks to provide a more nuanced understanding of local politics in post-conflict Nepal by offering an ethnographic description of how the enduring Maoist legacy continued to wield influence upon local politics. Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of political action among freed bonded labourers by looking in detail at processes of community formation in one of the five Mukta Kamaiya bastis in town, thereby further highlighting the importance of the political context. More particularly, I examine how the revolutionary context allowed freed bonded labourers to occupy highly symbolic urban territory, and how this, in turn, shaped community politics within the Mukta Kamaiya basti. Through ethnographic accounts of work and politics within one specific settlement, I show how the capture of urban terrain had brought about significant changes in the contemporary work practices of former bonded labourers, as well as in the political subjectivity of pockets of this urban community, and relate these changes to the broader political context. I argue that such territorial capture was facilitated by past antagonism between the UCPN Maoist and the state in the region, and that this – together with subsequent support from non-Maoist NGOs – has partially empowered former bonded labourers. In other words, I contend that the act of capture has enabled former bonded labourers to challenge contemporary urban

Introduction | 35

spatiality and escape the grips of their former agricultural masters, but that it also led to the formation of a new political elite within the community that pursued a gender-exclusive politics to the detriment of young women. Unravelling these rather unintended corollaries of the Maoist revolution, this chapter seeks to avoid the pitfalls of totalizing approaches that view the impact of revolutions on community formation as either empowering and unifying or destructive and destabilizing. The Mukta Kamaiya Samaj and the local trade unions were important formal political organizations for freed bonded labourers in Tikapur. Chapter 3 begins by examining the history of the Kamaiya movement, paying close attention to Maoist attitudes towards different Kamaiya organizations. I argue that the Maoists’ policy regarding such organizations provided political conditions that benefited the growth of the FKS but were detrimental to BASE. As a result, the Freed Kamaiya Society emerged as a powerful grass-roots movement among ex-debt bonded labourers. Having addressed this issue, I examine the FKS’s organizational practices and structure, before giving detailed ethnographic descriptions of two mass protests undertaken by the FKS; namely, a large rally in Dhangadhi and a militant protest in Tikapur. I go on to argue that these represented rituals of confrontation with the state that were intended to make the local government more responsive to the demands of the FKS. As I further explain, they are also emblematic of a struggle for visibility. The penultimate section of this chapter explores how this andolan (demonstration) against the state was experienced and comprehended by its participants. Finally, I suggest that the FKS confrontation with local state bodies resonates with the broader UCPN Maoist aim of reforming the local state, but while there is an overlap of interests, both struggles discussed here are seen as operating separately. Freed bonded labourers also engage in the labour politics of local trade union organizations. In Chapter 4 I give a brief description of the history of Nepal’s labour movement and the emergence of Maoistaffiliated unions from the late 1990s onwards. Against this backdrop, I then examine the history and politics of labour unionization in Tikapur. Here, the Maoist movement and non-Maoist-affiliated labour unions co-resided within the boundaries of the town in a symbiotic relationship. I highlight how, while Maoists claimed to represent labour in Tikapur, their actions focused largely on the protection of a specific segment of the town’s labour force; Maoists offered political patronage to freed Kamaiya neighbourhoods but neglected other labour issues. This political vacuum surrounding the representation of

36 | The Partial Revolution

labour had instead been filled by two non-Maoist-affiliated labour unions that emerged in the wake of the insurgency period. I document the development of these groups and look at the various forms of collective action they employed, which included strikes, the mediation of labour disputes, monthly union meetings and the institutionalization of collective bargaining procedures. I suggest that an important effect of the new trade unionism in town is the incorporation of freed Kamaiya – and Tharu more generally – into the unions’ power structures, as discussed in the final section. In Chapter 5 I move away from the town to explore the everyday politics of labour that freed bonded labourers experience in a brick kiln in the rural hinterland. I give an ethnographic description of the labour relations and informal work culture found in this factory, and argue that despite radical changes in the local balances of power, work relations had scarcely shifted towards egalitarian solidarity, and that hierarchy remained the core organizational principle, leaving little space for industrial democracy in the workplace. I go on to argue that the perpetuation of these hierarchical relations is related to religious practices and everyday forms of play in the workplace, which served to obscure and disguise the more structural and exploitative relationship between owner and workers. I then outline some of the changes in the daily routine of kiln work in the wake of the Maoist revolution. It is argued that the Maoist rebellion helped to produce a young, mobile and urbanizing working class that in the changed political context felt increasingly secure in claiming new spaces for its own emerging pleasure, pastimes and sociality vis-àvis existing hierarchies and customs. I further show that there was a broad base for solidarities among more and less skilled people within this proletariat, though such solidarity does not yet seem to reach beyond ‘ethnic’ and linguistic boundaries. In Chapter 6 I examine practices of debt bondage that, despite the prohibition of all forms of bonded labour under the Kamaiya Abolition Act of 2001, continued to be a common feature of brick kiln work in Tikapur’s hinterland and the district as a whole. But this system of unfree labour was accepted by employers and workers only as long as it remained within certain boundaries. Apart from the economic reasons, the strong political clout of the Maoist movement in the aftermath of the revolution had imposed a limit on the practice of binding labour once again. I then propose that the Maoist movement at that time presented a new structural and moral barrier to the attempts of kiln managers to force adult workers into relations of severe dependency.

Introduction | 37

Notes 1. Some of the anthropological literature has stressed how people try to continue with everyday life projects in order to cope with the psychological dimensions of armed conflict during and after hostilities. Thus writing on the Mozambican civil war, Stephen Lubkeman (2008) explores how ‘culturally-scripted’ life projects are realized under the conditions of war (ibid.: 14). Similarly, Ivana Maček’s account of the lived experience of ordinary people in war-time Sarajevo in the period between 1992 and 1996 emphasizes how ‘a “normal life” was a description of how people wanted to live’ (Maček 2009: 5). In contrast, this book stresses how armed conflict can also provide people with both the opportunity and the motivation for a major reorientation of their life projects as discussed in Chapter 2 in more detail. 2. As Ogura (2007: 335) has pointed out, already by 1995 the Maoists had organized two mobilization campaigns in the hilly districts of Rolpa and Rukkum that included the exchange of cadres, performance of revolutionary songs and dances and the construction of roads and schools. 3. The ICG report reads as follows: ‘The attack on Beni was well planned and executed on different fronts: for perhaps the first time the Maoists showed that they could use mortars effectively in a classic night-time assault on a fixed defensive position, while their detailed preparations included the commandeering of stretchers and medical supplies and setting up of field medical posts. This was an important military development given the garrison nature of most RNA deployments in rural Nepal. Very few civilians were caught in the carefully executed assault; most had been warned by the Maoists in advance that an attack was in preparation. What most impressed one senior Western military expert was that the Maoists were able at the last minute to bring forward their timetable by 48 hours, “a remarkable feat for any army”’ (ICG 2005: 26). 4. According to the Human Rights Watch (2007) ‘the Maoists operated a “one family, one child” program whereby each family had to provide a recruit or face severe punishment’. 5. Orin Starn pointed out a similar situation in the Peruvian Andes, where ‘for hundreds of anthropologists working in the thriving sub-speciality of Andean Studies, the rise of the Shining Path came as a complete surprise’ (Starn 1991: 63). 6. Dillip Simeon (2010) makes a similar point about the nature of the Indian Maoist movement. 7. Nor have more recent ethnographies of post-conflict processes acknowledged the impact on labour practices. Instead, the current trend in the field is to examine local concepts of justice and reconciliation (Viane 2010), debate the impact of conflict on notions of gender (Moran 2010), or demonstrate how the fear of interpersonal persecution creates political leverage in conflict (McGovern 2009). 8. The forty point demand list was subdivided into three categories; namely, demands related to nationalism, to the public and its well-being and to people’s lives. The above demand is listed as the first demand related to people’s lives, indicating the importance the Maoist leadership originally gave to it. 9. The fact that bonded labour should be a distinct category for Maoist mobilization in Nepal is hardly surprising. Maoist strategy and tactics have primarily been a fight against semi-feudalism and a quintessential marker of semi-feudal relations for the Maoists is bonded labour. Nevertheless, the following two paragraphs are necessary to document briefly how Maoist articulated their support for Kamaiya as a distinct category. 10. BASE (Backward Education Society). 11. INSEC (Informal Sector Service Centre).

38 | The Partial Revolution

12. This is not to belittle the Kamaiya resistance struggles that existed pre-1990. The finegrained historical work of political sociologist Arjun Karki (2002) lists a number of Kamaiya rebellions against landlords in the western Terai from 1951 onwards that occurred sporadically and ended in the brutal suppression of the agitators, largely because large landowning jamindars maintained control over local police organs. 13. Though there is a general tendency amongst scholars to emphasize that the abolishment of the Kamaiya system was an outcome of sustained NGO activism, there are several other dimensions to bear in mind. For instance, the larger political context suggests that the Nepali Congress liberated the Kamaiya to prevent Kamaiya joining the Maoist insurgents en masse. Moreover, the increasing mechanization in agriculture through the use of tractors, fertilizers and irrigation systems suggests that less labour power was in need, suggesting a decline in the Kamaiya system. 14. A report by Anti-Slavery International, for example, quotes one of the workers as he recalls how Shiva Raj Pant physically abused both him and his son: ‘As he was bringing them in, one of them lagged behind, and the landlord asked where it was. Although B.R. [his son] said it was coming, Shiva Raj Pantha [sic] started beating both of us so hard that our backs were severely bruised for weeks thereafter making it difficult to work. Subsequently, Shiva Raj Pantha forced B.R. to look after the cows for no wages or food’ (Anti-Slavery 2000). 15. Locals widely remember the flood catastrophe of 1984 when large parts of Kailali were swamped. More recently, 2006 and 2007 have seen heavy flooding, as well as throughout the period of fieldwork in September 2008. 16. Nepal has conducted a census every ten years since 1911. The census of 1981 counted 257,905 inhabitants in Kailali district, while the census of 1991 counted 417,891. 17. The most significant marker of modernity has been the construction of the East-West Mahendra Highway, and this, as many of the elders in the district recall, came with unusual difficulties. Local legends tell of how the Indian contractors who built the suspension bridge at Chichapani sacrificed a kidnapped girl to the goddess Kali during the construction process, and how, when the bulldozers passed by the Ghora/ Ghore lake, they were attacked by a swarm of snakes seeking to protect a local Tharu holy site. 18. The kingdom of Oudh was a province in British India. Together with Agra, it would later be reconstituted as the present-day state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). 19. Kailali is one of seven districts where PLA camps were established. The others are located in Surkhet, Rolpa, Palpa, Kavre, Sindhuli and Ilam (INSEC 2005: 10). 20. As in other conflict regions, it is difficult here to distinguish facts from opinion (see Harriss 2009: 4). The Maoists remain secretive about their past actions and, in cases of brutal murder, are often reluctant to take responsibility. For example, the Bhandeba area of Kailali district came to international attention in June 2005 when OHCHR published a comprehensive investigative report, including site inspection, interviews with witnesses and meetings with relevant authorities (OHCHR 2005: 3). OHCHR notes that during the early hours of June 14 2005, ‘a group of assailants entered a cluster of houses one hundred and fifty metres from the APF Badimalika base and abducted six victims. They were marched to a nearby forest area, abused and murdered. They were found with their hands tied behind their backs and the throats had been cut’. It goes on to report that ‘no group has claimed responsibility for the incident, and allegations of the CPN (Maoist) involvement have been denied by the CPN (Maoist), principally in a press statement’ (OHCHR 2005: 3). 21. As pointed out by Maycock, ‘[t]he wider Tharuhat movement is mainly composed of the Tharuhat Autonomous State Council (TASC) and Tharuhat Joint Struggle Committee (TJSC)’ (Maycock 2011: 80).

Introduction | 39

22. In Tikapur the first Tharuhat bandh took place from 1 to 12 March 2009. According to a Tharuhat district-level member, more than one hundred motorbikes were burnt in the districts of Kanchanpur, Kailali, Bardiya, Banke and Dhang, and two protestors were shot dead in clashes with the police in Chitwan district. The second mayor bandh took place in May 2009. 23. This question touches upon a much broader theme, namely the ‘revolution in the revolution’. James Scott (1979) has developed this concept to highlight that within perceived homogenous communist revolutionary movements there are often groups that have a differing vision of order and justice that threaten the very existence of the revolutionary movement. 24. In the post-insurgency period several Maoist splinter groups were formed that claimed that ethnic demands put forward by the Maoists were mere rhetoric. New ethnic militant movements emerged, such as the Janatantrik Terai Mukti Morcha ( JTMM), an armed Madeshi Group, which are united by the principal goal of achieving ethnic autonomous zones. These militant movements could only surface and emerge in the aftermath of the conflict as public security remained weak and local governance could best be described as ‘patchy’. The frequently cited ‘culture of impunity’ enabled these groups to gain ground. Up until 2010, not a single prosecution had been made for war crimes, and such a climate facilitated the growth of militant movements.

PART I POLITICS IN THE TOWN

– Chapter 1 –

URBAN FESTIVALS AND POST-CONFLICT PATRONAGE

_ Introduction A small, dusty road winds its way through the rice fields of farmers and sharecroppers in the far-western lowlands of Nepal, stretching from the East-West Mahendra Highway to the southern border with India in Kailali district. Following the road, one passes through three small villages, a swathe of lush green fields and a forest full of valuable sal (timber) and sacred pipal trees1 before reaching the outer limits of Tikapur municipality, where the route is guarded by a heavily armed outpost of the AP (armed police). Just next to the road, about 5 km before one comes to Tikapur, lies the land of Gokul, a widely known member of Tikapur’s urban economic elite and local ‘son of the soil’ from the Chetri caste. Here, Gokul had a small brick factory (established in January 2009), which he managed along with a retail trade shop in town and various rural plots of land elsewhere in the district. Like other small-scale industrialists and landlords in the region, Gokul led a lavish lifestyle compared to the urban middle classes. He spent large amounts of his money on conspicuous goods, such as a mansion in the centre of the town, an expensive Hero Honda motorbike and Scotch. Gokul also paid frequent visits to the local police station to have a cup of chai and played feather ball with the local police officer, with whom he maintained good relations. His daily life was characterized by spending most of his time meeting clients in his small retail shop or visiting local state institutions in the district capital, Dhangadhi.

– 43 –

44 | The Partial Revolution

Gokul came from an affluent family. He had three brothers, two of whom were involved in non-agricultural businesses: Som Paneruu owned a brick kiln near Tikapur; Subhash Chandra was the owner of a hotel in Nepalgunj; while the oldest brother lived off the profits from his agricultural fields. More than anything else, these four sons of an influential landlord and a Nepali Congress politician were interested in maximizing their income from agriculture, trade and local industries in order to maintain their lavish lifestyles, which they defined as the ramro jiwan (good life). In contrast to their father, none of the four sons was directly involved in local party politics, which had become a dangerous activity in recent years, particularly after the end of the insurgency period in November 2005.2 Instead, as members of the local urban economic elite, Gokul and his brothers participated in the activities of the local Chambers of Commerce, which they regarded as a powerful vehicle to represent their entrepreneurial interests, and which maintained close ties with the local Nepali Congress Party branch. During my fieldwork, Gokul became the vice chairman of the local Chambers of Commerce and, throughout the months of October 2008 and January 2009, he was heavily involved in organizing two large festivals (for yoga and business respectively) on behalf of the Chambers of Commerce. These spectacular events stand at the heart of this chapter. The festivals, I argue, present an ideal opportunity to explore how the Maoist revolutionary movement continued to wield influence on local politics. Their study allows us to pose some interesting questions. For example, why did Gokul (together with other local industrialists and agricultural lords) spend a substantial amount of his time and effort organizing these two urban festivals? Was it only for economic reasons? Was it to form relationships with high-profile politicians in Kathmandu? Was it to win local prestige, and if so, among whom? Or was it to demonstrate to the UCPN Maoist, its youth organization YCL (Young Communist League) and various Maoist splinter groups that he behaved exactly as a member of a ‘national bourgeoisie’ should do – that is, by reviving local economies? And how did others in the town react to this display of power by an urban elite after their exposure to a ten-year long Maoist discourse on equality and visions of a ‘class-free society’? Was there a need for new elites akin to the observation by the British sociologist Thomas Bottomore (1964), who claimed that ‘the need for “charismatic” leaders and elites seems to be most keenly felt wherever complex and difficult changes are taking place and familiar ways of life are disappearing’ (Bottomore 1964: 72)?

Urban Festivals and Post-Conflict Patronage | 45

This chapter first gives a brief overview of the general setting of Tikapur. It then turns to the politics of the town’s economic elite by presenting ethnographic case studies of two popular festivals. Focusing on the production and consumption of these events, I argue that these new urban festivals represent sites where the post-conflict urban elite exercised and enacted urban patronage. By linking the latter to the shifting dynamics of power in the region I show how Tikapur’s elite used urban patronage of festivals as a political strategy through which to re-establish their power base. In contrast, former bonded labourers experienced these urban festivals as either integration into the urban polity or exclusion therefrom, depending on their class position. This chapter thus seeks to provide a more nuanced understanding of local politics in post-conflict Nepal, presenting an ethnographic description of the means by which the enduring Maoist legacy continued to wield influence upon local politics. Before doing so, however, it is helpful to consider the theoretical underpinnings of this chapter.

Urban Festivals as the Locus of Politics Urban festivals have a long tradition in Nepal and assume many forms. They can be divided into two broad categories: ritual and secular. Ritual festivals originated several centuries ago and have since acquired a fixed place in the urban calendar. The great majority are celebrated annually and require extensive preparation (Majupuria 1981: 1); many involve communal offerings to a festival’s deity, a gesture that maintains continuity between the living and the dead. In contrast, secular festivals are those that have a predominantly political, economic or social character, and place less emphasis on religious practices, such as the worship of deities. Undoubtedly, the boundary between these two types of festivals is often blurred, but it is important to stress that secular festivals had only recently surfaced in the Nepali public sphere at the time of fieldwork. During the period of Panchayat democracy from 1960 to 1990, as Burghart (1993: 8) explains, the Nepali state not only claimed a monopoly over the expression of force but also ‘a monopoly in the legitimate expression of public service’. In practice this meant that ‘[e]very local meeting, publication and procession that was not sponsored by a state organisation required government approval’ (ibid.: 8). Religious festivals posed little threat to the political order during the Panchayat period. Secular festivals, however, were regarded as threatening and

46 | The Partial Revolution

were restricted to small annual cultural programmes, including those held at schools for parents’ day and Saraswati Puja (Mottin 2010: 55). Thus, political activism and the expression of opposition and discontent by civil society rarely took on a large, spectacular form, but were instead manifested in small, obscure and at times bizarre events. For example, Burghart noted how ‘the student union at one of the campuses of Tribhuvan University, being run by one of the underground parties, would organize a clean-up of the town. The students would meet inside the campus and go on procession throughout town cleaning up rubbish from the roadside … in such cases the police invariably arrested the students’ (Burghart 1993: 9). With the end of the Panchayat democracy after the Jana Andolan (People’s March) in 1990, the urban public centres offered an alternative space to express political activism, opposition and discontent. This new urban oppositional politics has been variously analysed, celebrated and decried in recent scholarship (see Lawoti 2007 for an overview). The politics of the Federation of Transport Entrepreneurs Nepal (Lakier 2007), the Kathmandu-based student union (Snellinger 2007) and environmental movements in the city (Rademacher 2009)3 recently formed the subject of a volume on Contentious Politics and Democratization in Nepal by Mahendra Lawoti (2007), a political scientist with an interest in the ‘little’ politics of the commoners rather than the ‘great’ traditions of the elites (Redfield 1960). While Lawoti makes clear the variety and diversity of these recent urban oppositional politics through a discussion of a range of different actors, they also share a common ground in their fixity on violent and spectacular ‘contentious politics’ against the state. How, then, should we conceptualize the organization of urban festivals as a locus of politics? After all, in popular discourse, urban secular festivals, such as those concerned with business or yoga, appear sociologically interesting only in the sense that they signify either a silent Indianization or increasing commercialization of the Nepali public sphere. Cultural and economic explanations for the emergence of urban secular festivals are plausible but tell us little about the wider context in which such events take place. Given this, it makes sense to turn our gaze to anthropological analyses of festival politics in neighbouring India. Here, a seminal article is Geert De Neve’s ‘Patronage and Community’ (2000). De Neve views urban festivals as sites where one can observe acts of patronage by wealthy industrialists. Through such acts, the latter have become central in shaping the nature of ‘community’ within small urban centres in South India. To substantiate his argument, he uses examples of celebrations associated with village

Urban Festivals and Post-Conflict Patronage | 47

goddesses in two small towns in Tamil Nadu, South India, showing how the local industrial elites appropriate these religious festivals in order to portray themselves as ‘big men’ before the urban community. He further argues that the community boundaries created during these festivals cannot be understood ‘outside the context of the wider social and economic relationships, in this case, the labour relations which lie at the heart of South Indian textile industries’ (De Neve 2000: 501).4 In the present chapter, I attempt to analyse the two festivals organized by the Chambers of Commerce in Tikapur in a similar theoretical vein. It should be stressed that the festivals described here are not the only urban rituals, rites and processions that I witnessed during my fieldwork; there were other equally spectacular events, such as the festival of Moharram, which marked the martyrdom and suffering of the Muslim leaders Hassan and Hussain. The latter involved a dazzling public pageant in town with processions and beautiful ornate tazias. Bare-chested young men struck their bodies with chains in order to recall the pain and torture that Hussain had suffered. The participants in this dramatic procession were mainly local Muslims, many of whom worked as butchers in the town. Other large public events that I witnessed included daily political rallies in the period preceding the CA Election, labour union demonstrations, victory parades by the student unions, the celebration of the Chambers of Commerce elections, Easter festivities organized by the local Christian community, the religious festivals of Holi and Maghi and the Tikapur’s Professors Union celebration of the declaration of the republic. Needless to say, it would be possible to expand the analysis further to include these other ‘minority’ festivals; however, this study is concerned primarily with those events that were organized for the entire community. Having introduced the relevant theoretical background, the next sections will introduce the setting of the town more generally and describe the town festivals and the ways they are represented. This will allow me then to explore in more depth what urban festivals produce according to local folk theory; namely, new forms of urban patronage and the construction of a town-wide community.

A Bird’s-Eye View of Tikapur Tikapur is an urban municipality located in Kailali district in the far-western Terai region of Nepal. Until the mid 1990s it was listed

48 | The Partial Revolution

in the Nepali Census as a VDC (Village Development Committee), acquiring the official status of a nagar palika (municipality) in 1996. There were two widely given accounts of the naming of the town. According to the first, the land where Tikapur was established was previously covered with thick forest; this was cleared to make space for the settlement, leaving a treeless patch in the round shape of a tikka (Intensive Study and Research Centre 2008: 318). In the second version of events, the town acquired its name from the time of the year when the forest was cleared, which coincided with the Hindu festival Vijaya Dashami or Tika (ibid.: 318). Many locals also refer to Tikapur as naya sahar (new town) in order to emphasize the town’s short history (less than four decades). According to popular local legend, the town’s foundation began with an accident. In 1968, Nepal’s King Mahendra visited Shuklaphanta National Park in neighbouring Kanchanpur district. After days of hunting, Mahendra began to make his way back to the royal palace in Kathmandu. He did not make it very far, however, as he suffered a heart attack near some Tharu and Magar hamlets in Kailali district. The royal doctor advised him to stay and rest for three weeks and his loyal servants and vassals were quick to build a makeshift camp for the ailing king. A small plot of land was cleared, and for the next three weeks Mahendra ruled over his kingdom from this makeshift sanatorium. Before leaving he ordered some of his loyal servants to stay and construct a park to commemorate his recovery from serious illness. About one year later, the king returned to Shuklaphanta Park together with the queen in order to undertake another hunting trip in the area. This second trip ended with a near-fatal tragedy: a bullet that had been aimed at a tiger, missed its target, and struck the queen. The news of this tragedy spread quickly to Kathmandu. One of the royal servants who came to assist the king and queen was Home Minister Kargh Bahadur Singh. He hired a car and driver in order to quickly rush to the site and assist the royal family. Passing the newly established King Mahendra Park, which had been poorly maintained, Kargh Bahadur Singh allegedly had the idea to build a large city in this remote part of the western Terai. Upon arrival at the king’s hunting retreat, he appealed to the king to grant permission for the construction of Tikapur. In 1975 Singh’s efforts were rewarded when the two Panchayat villages of Mauraniya and Manikapur were merged to form Tikapur. For almost two decades Tikapur remained little more than a village. When I arrived in January 2008, however, it was a prosperous

Urban Festivals and Post-Conflict Patronage | 49

municipality known widely for the now beautiful King Mahendra Park and its modern town planning. Most of its inhabitants described Tikapur as sundar (beautiful), as the town was scenically located in the foothills of the Sikwali Mountains of the Himalaya. Its town centre was the bazaar, where a wide range of modern consumer goods were sold, particularly to shoppers from the emerging middle class. These goods, which were often imported from India or China, included TVs, refrigerators, motorbikes, women’s handbags and saris. Next to the bazaar were many colourful middle-class bungalows, an Internet cafe and about two dozen private and public educational institutions, as well a private university campus and two radio stations. In contrast to Kargh Bahadur’s vision, the town remained unindustrialized apart from a handful of rice and sawmills and some brick kilns in its hinterland. Like many urban centres across South Asia, its transformation from village to town was best described as urbanization without industrialization. Its economy was largely informal, and there were daily bus connections from Tikapur to Dhangadhi, the prospering administrative capital in western Kailali, as well as to large urban centres such as Kathmandu and Pokhara via the urban town of Nepalgunj in Banke. According to the Municipality Profile of Nepal (2008), Tikapur was the twenty-fourth largest urban area in the country and accounted for 1.2 per cent of the national urban population. In 2008 it had an estimated 51,369 inhabitants (Intensive Study and Research Centre 2008), compared to 38,722 in 2001. This rapid transformation from village to urban centre can be seen as resulting from two main factors. First, since its early days the town had a reputation for being an aspiring ‘educational city’. Every school child knew the names of the town’s most famous academic institutions, Birendra Vidhya and the Kadhar Memorial Boarding School. These schools were among the most prestigious in Nepal, and in the 1970s and 1980s they attracted many migrant families from all over the country. Second, during the Insurgency Period from 1996 to 2006, many migrants arrived from the northern highland area of Accham. They moved into the lowlands for different reasons; many sought to avoid being trapped in the conflict following the horrific battle between state security forces and the Maoist People’s Liberation Army on 16 February 2002 in Mangalsen (Accham’s district capital), which resulted in major casualties.5 In terms of ethnic and caste composition, the town has four main groups: Brahmins, Chetri, Tharu and Kami (Table 1.1).

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Table 1.1 Caste/ethnicity in Tikapur (Intensive Study and Research Centre 2008: 321) Caste/ Ethnicity Tharu

42%

Chetri

Brahman Hill Kami

Thakuri

Unidentified Magar Caste Damai

18%

11%

4%

3%

10%

3%

2%

While there is a lack of statistical data regarding the origins of these different castes and ethnic groups, the Nepali Census of 2001 states that one in three Tikapuri residents was an outsider. Locals, however, often estimated the percentage of the Acchami population in town to be much higher (up to 70 per cent), claiming that the town represented a sort of ‘mini Accham’. Visitors coming to Tikapur for a few days might easily compare the town with the ‘salad bowl’ model,6 in which different ethnic, regional and religious groups live in peaceful coexistence.7 But the extent to which Tikapur’s inhabitants accepted and were open to the customs and habits of different groups varied; xenophobia was definitely too strong a term, as it implies aggressive and irrational hatred. But as various sections in this book will demonstrate, Tikapur was a town marked by group antagonism, one in which regional ethnicity continued to play a significant role. In everyday life, differences between ethnic groups manifested themselves in language, diet, dress code and worship of deities. The celebration of Holi reflected what appeared to be the most significant division between the inhabitants of Tikapur: it was celebrated first by the Acchami community and then a day later by the Tharu community. The Acchami community celebrated in a field and thereby demonstrated their cultural presence, whereas the Tharu celebrated in their homes and neighbourhoods. Stereotypes about different groups circulated freely in Tikapur. In the most extreme cases, local ‘sons of the soil’ equated Acchamis with haramis (bastards), or describe them as ‘cunning’ and ‘dominating’; the few Deshis (Indians) in town were often referred to as ‘clever’ and Tharus were said to ‘have nothing else in their head than singing and dancing’, as a local shopkeeper put it to me. The opposition between the Acchami and Tharus was a consequence not of individual temper, however, but rather of real political stakes; Acchamis and high caste Bahun/Chetris were considered to hold a dominant position within the town. Their dominance was based on access to key local institutions, above all the police, the bureaucratic network, the university campus management committee and one of the major high schools. Within this particular setting of ethnic, regional and caste identities there was a relationship between space and status; Tikapur con-

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sisted of exceptionally demarcated spatial segments that reflected local status. The space/status nexus was invisible in the administrative division of the town into fourteen different wards. However, this structure was readily apparent in the demarcation of the basti. Similar to other urban centres in South Asia (Sharma 2003), Tikapur was a town where geographical boundaries corresponded to sociocultural markers. The people of Tikapur differentiated between different bastis in the town. However, what was more important to them was the name of the basti and the meaning attached to it. For example, according to most people, the naya basti (new neighbourhood), which was located between the town centre and Tikapur Mahendra Park and had a predominantly Acchami population, was so renowned for its strong unity that even local police did not dare to enter it. Though municipality staff members described Tikapur as a ‘tourist paradise’ and ‘educational city’, the town itself contradicted this image in at least two distinct ways. First, such a perspective glosses over the fact that throughout the revolutionary period Tikapur was a contested battleground between Maoists and state security forces. The Maoists would come to the town at night and plant explosive devices, such as pressure cooker or pipe bombs, in state institutions around the area. These included the local police station, the agricultural development bank, the Tikapur Development Committee (TDC) and the local municipality building. Apart from the latter, all of these attempts to destroy state institutions were successful, and the ruins of these buildings at times of fieldwork bore witness to the town’s violent past. The Maoists also targeted and bombed two private banks and a local private high school8 in protest against high tuition fees in private schools. Probably the most spectacular attack was that against the armed police camp on 6 April 2001. As the South Asia Analysis Group (2001: 1) reported, ‘about three hundred armed Maoist insurgents destroyed portions of six buildings being constructed to house about two thousand personnel of the armed police force. The insurgents also looted Rs. 40,000 in cash and six vehicles and damaged some construction equipment’. While the Maoists were said to have used violence discriminately, the state security forces often reacted to these attacks with arbitrary arrests and beatings of people in the rural villages of the hinterland. As in other parts of Nepal, villagers were often scared of becoming trapped between the Maoists and the state security forces (Pettigrew 2009). In the Terai region, however, the latter were said to have stayed mainly in the safer urban area of Tikapur, and thus a power vacuum was created in the hinterland that the Maoists filled without much

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resistance from the local population. In town, meanwhile, the Maoists and their supporters had to be careful, as the state security forces arrested both potential Maoist suspects and their sympathizers. For example, Amnesty International reported the case of Yogesh Rawal, a journalist for the Kathmandu-based newspaper Rajdhani, who was arrested by around twenty armed police security personnel in Tikapur bazaar on 24 October and held without charge in the local police station (Amnesty International 2003). Second, describing Tikapur as an ‘educational city’ or ‘tourist paradise’ was also cynical given the many shanty settlements in and around the town, which remained largely absent in census statistics and official maps. There were two types of ‘squatter camps’: those for freed Kamaiya and those for Sukhumbasi. The three main locations of these bastis were the occupied Tikapur airport, parts of the Tikapur University campus and the grounds of a former high school. The freed Kamaiya (Mukta Kamaiya) settlement at the airport was known as Ramnagar. The settlements at the university campus were Ganeshnagar and Jiddinagar, while adjacent to the campus there were two more freed Kamaiya camps. Also on campus were three Sukhumbasi settlements. The occupied high school compound was a freed Kamaiya settlement. We can pause here in our description of Tikapur. I will give more detailed ethnographic descriptions of the town, the Freed Kamaiya bastis and a nearby brick kiln in the five chapters that follow. For now let us return to the celebration of the festivals organized by the Tikapur Chambers of Commerce.9

The Festivals Yoga camps and town festivals were commonplace in North India and Nepal’s Terai region. They had become part of popular culture and were frequently shown on television channels throughout the region. Though these two distinct forms of festival were born of different traditions, namely the early twentieth-century teachings of postural, embodied yoga propounded by Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo10 (Alter 2008: 38) and rural melas organized by travelling merchant castes, both can be seen as manifestations of the same processes: ‘karma’ and ‘commodity’ capitalism. Unlike elsewhere in the region, these two faces of contemporary capitalism landed in Tikapur during the period of my fieldwork. When they took place in November 2008 (Yoga Shivir) and January 2009 (Tikapur Maha

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Utsav), both festivals were being celebrated for the first time in the town’s history. The festivals’ innovative and spectacular character contrasts with the monotony of the everyday; for many participants these festivals provided, among other things, an alternative means to ‘pass time’ (Jeffrey 2010) and kill boredom. For the middle classes in particular, the events offered a novel form of entertainment in contrast to more habitual patterns of killing time, such as ghumne (walking around), drinking chai in small tea shops, eating in hotels or paying a visit to the local Tikapur Park or Cinema Hall. In terms of the number of attendees, many inhabitants of the town regarded the festivals as successful. The organizers from the Chambers of Commerce estimated the number of attendees for the Yoga Shivir and the town festival to be about 35,000 and 50,000 respectively. Organizing such large-scale public events was time-intensive and costly, which is why the Chambers of Commerce asked various institutions, including schools, neighbourhood committees and the local municipality, for contributions in the form of money or labour to help set up the festivals. Though I do not have exact data on the extent of financial donations, I will shed more light on the contributions of the Kamaiya bastis in the two sections that follow.

The Yoga Camp The beginning of the yoga shivir (camp) fell in the middle of November 2008, after the celebration of the Hindu festival of Diwali. The Chambers of Commerce invited the yoga guru Luv Dev, renowned throughout Nepal, and half a dozen of his disciples to teach at a weeklong yoga shivir specially constructed for them. Luv Dev was a disciple of the Indian guru Ram Dev, who was one of the most successful entrepreneurs in South Asia’s ‘karma’ capitalism. Ram Dev, according to various sources, had his own television programme on an Indian TV channel and was part of the India-based Pantanjali Yoga Society. His student-master relationship with Ram Dev had brought Luv Dev enormous popularity in Nepal, and he was said to have attracted a considerable number of followers to previous festivals held in the country. In preparation for the yoga festival, which was held in a large field in the town, usually used for a weekly market, the local Chambers of Commerce asked neighbourhoods (wards), schools and businesses to contribute either money or manpower. A contractor hired by the

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Chambers of Commerce visited Ramnagar and asked its inhabitants to help construct the wooden stage for the festival. Though there had been conflicting opinions about whether or not to contribute, a good dozen of the inhabitants of the basti volunteered to help construct the stage and the bamboo lighting rig. In the two Kamaiya bastis with which I was most familiar (Ganeshnagar and Ramnagar), the yoga festival was highly anticipated. Many of my informants took part in the daily yoga classes held between 4:30 am and 7:30 am, so as to avoid being late for their work in the various informal economic sectors of the town (see Chapter 2). Upon arrival at the site of the yoga camp, the freed Kamaiya sat down on their blankets and chatted with other visitors while they waited for Luv Dev to begin his teachings. Luv Dev would then sit down on the wooden stage and announce his teachings via a microphone; his disciples imitated his movements on smaller wooden stages set up across the yoga camp, and the rest of the crowd in front of the stage would follow. The scene bore more resemblance to a military drill camp than a sophisticated and serious engagement with yoga practices. Luv Dev repeatedly stressed that yoga was for ‘anyone in town without regards to his class, caste or ethnic affinities’. Furthermore, he emphasized the curative effects of yoga, stating that a yoga practitioner could live up to four hundred years when following the teachings correctly. The freed Kamaiya enjoyed the teachings and took part in the exercises with some amusement. It was a welcome opportunity for them to escape the monotony of their everyday lives and some of them continued to practise yoga even after the end of the festival. Luv Dev was generally seen as a well-intentioned person who wanted to help the masses. His disciples practised side by side with members of the local civil society, while Gokul, the brick kiln owner, participated as a ‘volunteer’ overseer of the yoga camp. His job was to help those who might not understand the instructions and, along with the other volunteers from the Chambers of Commerce, to see that everything was progressing smoothly. Unlike the well-healed Chennai capitalists described by Fuller (Fuller and Assayag 2005), what most attracted freed Kamaiya to the guru was not his pious and learned demeanour but his idea of using yoga as a practical tool to improve their health. The few of those who continued to practise yoga following the festival repeatedly told me of the healing aspects of yoga, ‘it is good as it helps to improve our health’, was how Ram Pal, a freed Kamaiya who owns a small barber shop near the basti, bluntly put it.

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The last of the seven days of the festival was the busiest. The event was recorded by a film crew and later broadcast on an Indian TV channel, which was said to air in several countries. Local and national media came to town to report on the festival. On that day, the chairman of the Chambers of Commerce sat right next to Luv Dev on the stage, while the other members were seated towards the back. Malas (flower garlands) were given to the honourable citizens of the town, who were thanked for their achievements, before the chairman and vice chairman gave speeches in front of the masses. They spoke of the beauty of Tikapur, the communal harmony and peace promoted through yoga and the fact that yoga was for everybody in town. Every community that participated in the festival was thanked, and then the event ended.

The Tikapur Town Festival The Tikapur Maha Utsav (great festival) took place between 24 January and 1 February 2009 and attracted thousands of day visitors from the town and elsewhere in the region. Its main initiators had been members of the Tikapur Chambers of Commerce, including the small-scale industrialists and businessmen mentioned previously. It was the first town festival of its kind, Tikapur having previously only hosted large-scale religious celebrations and one yoga event. In the past, commercial melas were largely restricted to the countryside and were much smaller in terms of the number of attendees and participants. Local ‘sons of the soil’ tended to be nostalgic when asked about the old melas, such as the ‘bangusra mela’ celebrated annually near Thapapur VDC in Kailali district. They described these melas as sites of gambling, drinking and sexual enjoyment, rather than of consumption of basic goods, suggesting a different moral order to these older festivals. In order to get the Tikapur Maha Utsav started, the Chambers of Commerce again asked all communities in the town to make a donation of either money or manpower. In almost every ward, banners welcomed visitors to the town, the four main entrance points to which had been turned into welcome gates. In the neighbourhood where I was living, my Acchami neighbour Mr Rawl asked other Acchami residents to pay a sum of NR 20 towards the cost of the welcome banner; similarly, about a dozen members of the local Christian community contributed to the festival by ‘donating’ their labour power for an afternoon to help clean up the town, while the basti leaders of the

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Sukhumbasi and Kamaiya camps sent small working groups of about fifteen to twenty men and women to help erect the bamboo welcome gates. Although the Kamaiya leader Sher Bahadur and his workers claimed they had been promised payment for this activity, a local Sukhumbasi leader explained otherwise; when asked why he sent his people to work when they did not receive money for the clean-up, he remarked that it might be wise to follow the demands of the Chambers of Commerce, as they held a great deal of power in Tikapur. In order to celebrate the festival, an open field in the south of the town was temporarily transformed into a small arena. From the outside the festival area appeared much like a brightly coloured European fortress with a palatial tent at its entrance. Within its boundaries, modern consumer goods were displayed at many ‘business stalls’. Local and regional entrepreneurs showcased their new products, which included tractors, motorcycles and household goods. The inner part of the arena also featured various circus acts (mainly from Mumbai), a specially constructed traditional Tharu village and a large stage for political guests and cultural dance programmes. The celebrations for the Tikapur Maha Utsav began on 23 February, one day before its official inauguration with a grand cultural parade. The participants, who were mainly members of various local cultural associations, gathered in front of the large palatial tent at the starting point of the procession. The pageant began to move along the parallel road into the town centre, passing the market and returning to the starting point via the main road back into the town. Several times the pageant stopped in order to allow journalists to take pictures. At the end it moved back to the Maha Utsav and entered the tent-like structure. The pageant was divided into different blocks, each of which bore a banner that carried the name of the relevant cultural association. Most of the blocks represented either Acchami or Tharu culture; there were, however, other associations involved, including a Badi organization,11 a Tikapur-based ‘Brahmin society’ and a group of followers of the religious sect ‘Om Shanti’. The latter had organized a spectacular truck to carry them through town. The event was spectacular and attracted a great number of people from both within and outside the town. The organizers of the event actively encouraged all communities in the town to take part in the opening processions on 24 January. The festival entry fee was NR 15 for students and NR 20 for adults. One could also purchase a ‘season ticket’ for NR 125, which carried Gokul’s signature at the bottom, demonstrating his patronage of the festival.

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Though I visited the festival several times, I would like here to describe a short episode from my first visit on 24 January. I went with two Mukta Kamaiya friends from Ramnagar: Kaluram and his friend Sanjeev. We walked around the festival and looked at the different attractions and business stalls. In one display, Indian circus artists were performing astonishing acts with motorbikes and a car, while in another a group of Indian artists performed magic tricks. Near the entrance gate was a huge signboard with the names of the members of the Chambers of Commerce who had contributed to the organization of the festival. There was also a Tharu village model, for which an additional NR 15 entry fee was charged. Inside were several Tharu food stalls serving dikiri (a Tharu dish) and jor (liquor), as well as a traditional Tharu house. Next to the Tharu village was an extra ‘business’ parlour. A variety of consumer goods were displayed including TVs, Hero Honda motorbikes and tourist posters of the Terai region. One of the major attractions was a dwarf. There was also a small stall for the students’ union of the Nepali Congress Party, which I discuss further below. In the middle of the mela a large stage had been installed. On it was a couch with several seats behind for special guests. The mela began with a speaker from the organizing committee announcing Biswas Rawl, the chairman of the Chambers of Commerce, who was seated on the large sofa. Alongside him were two female CA (Constituent Assembly) members of the UCPN Maoist. As a friend explained to me, this was because there had been internal disputes within the Chambers of Commerce regarding party politics. The Maoists wanted to have their candidates seated on stage to balance the chief guest, the vice chairman of the CA, who was from an oppositional party. The atmosphere was charged as everyone eagerly awaited the chairman of the CA. The members of the Chambers of Commerce had brand new black suits and black topis (Nepali hats). When the vice chairman of the CA finally arrived the journalists present (including an A-TV television crew) rushed to shoot pictures. The vice chairman of the CA was heartily welcomed and given several malas; he then took his place alongside Mr Biswas Rawl. The programme began with the presentation of the various cultural societies, who marched through the masses of people before presenting their cultural programmes in front of the stage. Each community performed their traditional cultural dance. I was somewhat surprised by the juxtaposition when the cultural dance performed by the Badi community was followed immediately by a presentation from the very orthodox Brahmin society. After the presentation,

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Mr Biswas Rawl and the vice chairman of the Chambers of Commerce gave a speech. At the end of his speech, Mr Rawl indicated his desire for the speedy development of the road between Tikapur and a nearby town. The road was dusty, and he expressed his wish to the vice chairman of the CA to turn the road into a paved one as soon as possible. The festival concluded with the CA vice chairman walking through the business parlour and visiting several stalls followed by a crowd of reporters. He stopped in front of the small stall of the Nepali Congress Students’ Union and signed a large banner where thousands of visitors had signed a petition in support of the TikapurLumky paved road. I observed and filmed the scene from another stall a little further ahead. When the CA vice chairman rushed by with his followers, I spotted Gokul among them, and he greeted me as a friend. Following the festival, the students’ wing of the Nepali Congress Party collected voluntary donations for the building of the paved road. According to one of the student activists from the Nepali Congress Party, the plan was to start up another andolan to pressure the government to act. The strategy seemed odd, as the road was already planned throughout the period of Congress rule, and this andolan never took place. Instead of the andolan, members of the Chambers of Commerce reportedly visited the central government in Kathmandu a couple of weeks later.

Representation of the Festivals Members of the local business community emphasized that the yoga and town festivals were open to all inhabitants of the town, and that both promoted peace, physical well-being and prosperity. To substantiate these claims, they stressed that nobody was excluded from active participation in these urban festivals. Indeed, the yoga festival was free of charge, while the business festival entry fee of NR 20 was considered low enough to allow the poorer sections of the town to attend. Moreover, it was stressed that members of different castes and ethnicities participated in both festivals, suggesting that practices of caste or ethnic discrimination no longer existed. It was also claimed that by holding yoga practices in the early morning as well as in the afternoon, both the working population and local schoolchildren could participate. This notion of the festivals serving the whole urban community was also advanced at the events themselves. For both the yoga guru

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Luv Dev and the chairman of the Chambers of Commerce, the integrative aspect of the festivals stood at the heart of their discourse. This contrasted with the general antagonism and increasing class divisions between the Acchami and Tharu communities. In everyday life many of the well-off Acchamis regarded the former bonded labourers’ squatting of key symbolic sites in town as an impediment to the development of the town, which fuelled feelings of hostility between the groups. At the same time, all low-paid and menial work in town, including rickshaw-driving and brick kiln and construction work, was done mainly by members of the former bonded labourer communities. This is not to say that ethnic or social issues stood at the forefront of festival discourse. Quite the contrary, it was in the strategic interests of the business community to present Tikapur as a peaceful and harmonic community, rather than to emphasize existing ethnic and class grievances. Thus, Tikapur was heralded to outsiders as a sundar (beautiful) town, replete with exotic cultures and primed for Nepali and Indian investors, traders and commerce. This is evidenced by the fact that consumer goods (e.g. tractors, Hero Honda bikes) state development schemes (e.g. the road from Tikapur to a nearby town) and tourism (e.g. attractions such as the Indian motorbike artists or the dwarf) took centre stage in the promotion of these festivals, while ethnic and social issues were much more peripheral. The festivals were not only regional events, but also national. Some of my Bahun friends commented on the nationalist overtones in the songs that were played at the yoga festival, and industrialists insisted that the Tikapur Maha Utsav’s design was explicitly Nepali rather than Indian. By framing the festivals in this way, the business community played on the anti-Indian sentiment that is prevalent in the borderlands of the western Terai in the hope of further unifying the community. In contrast to the business community, the poorer sections of society, particularly freed bonded labourers from the Kamaiya bastis, held conflicting opinions regarding the two events. First, not all Kamaiya embraced the idea of a yoga teacher coming to town. Those who did participate in the Yoga Shivir, however, placed particular emphasis on the health effects of yoga, and some of them actually continued to practise yoga after the festival had come to an end. Second, the Tikapur Maha Utsav was widely regarded as prohibitively expensive for the Kamaiya community. Many of the freed Kamaiya complained to me about the entry price. For Kaluram, a samosa-stall owner, the price only emphasized his inability to enter and take part

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in the business stalls. For him, the Maha Utsav was primarily for the dhani manche (rich people). The festivals resonated with the enjoyment of consumer goods, which only reminded the deprived sectors of the community of their poverty. Two Mukta Kamaiya friends who entered the Maha Utsav were eager to admire the tractors and the exhibits of curiosities, like a bucket that was unbreakable. Many in the basti could not afford the entry fee, however, and complained bitterly about the NR 20 tickets. Thus, it can be seen that the Tikapur Mahut Sav served a double function: on the one hand, it offered individuals the chance to forget their misery amidst an illusionary consumerist dream world; on the other, it reinforced their misery by reminding them of their place in society. Neither the ethnographic description of the festivals nor the discourse that surrounds them can explain why the members of the local Chambers of Commerce invested a substantial amount of time and collective resources into organizing these events at this particular time. In the following section, I will examine what motivated a group of businessmen, industrialists and landlords to establish such largescale events – namely public patronage.

Urban Patronage and Community Discussing the role of a local festival in the integration of a Tamil village in Tamil Nadu, South India, Geert De Neve (2000) describes how a group of entrepreneurs established themselves as local patrons in the small towns of Bhavani and Kumarapalayam. The festivals, De Neve argues, foster a town-wide community identity, which, importantly, is ‘not that of a corporate caste group (e.g. among the Sourashtras in Madurai; see Roy 1997) nor that of a group of castes (e.g. the right-hand castes; see Beck 1972), but that of the entire urban centre’ (De Neve 2000: 515–16). Industrial patrons attempt to enlarge their town constituencies by using grand displays and ritual innovations as a means to attract a large crowd of followers and dramatize their leadership. These ‘acts of patronage’ by wealthy industrialists are significant, as de Neve goes on to explain, as they ‘shape the nature of the “community” generated at times of festival and other times’ (ibid.: 501). The ethnographic material presented in this chapter seems to fully support De Neve’s thesis regarding the increasing role played by local economic elites in the promotion of small-town identities. For the leading members of the Tikapur Chambers of Commerce, urban

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festivals represented an opportunity to fashion themselves as benevolent ‘patrons’ in the eyes of the town’s residents. Their attempts were largely successful, as many of locals talked afterwards about the Tikapur Chambers of Commerce as ‘active’ and recognized their efforts to revitalize the cultural and economic spheres of the town. This general sentiment was sustained by the recognition that the business elite managed to organize these festivals without the help of the state; it was the Tikapur Chambers of Commerce who brought bikas (development) to the town. Yet my account differs from De Neve’s in two main respects. The first concerns the nature of the economic elite, who instrumentalized urban festivals to gain political clout, and of the character of the community in question. Unlike De Neve’s case, the local elite involved in the organization of grand festivals in Tikapur did not consist of ‘multiple relations of caste and business networks’ (De Neve 2000: 516), but was instead composed largely of people from high-caste backgrounds (Bahun/Chetri), whose family origins could usually be traced back to the Pahad (hill areas). This was most evident in the leadership of the Tikapur Chambers of Commerce; the chairman was a Rawal and of Acchami origin, and the vice chairman, a Hamal from the Chetri community, was a local ‘son of the soil’, though his father came from the hill areas. It was also evident in the leadership history of the Chambers of Commerce; all previous chairmans had been from high-caste backgrounds, often with family roots in Nepal’s Pahad, as reliable informants told me. While caste and ethnicity thus continued to impact upon one’s ability to obtain a leading position within the local business association, what remained striking was that the image of the community that was promoted appeared to include all members of the town. This was evident in the discourse of equality and communal harmony surrounding these festivals, and the participation of a range of different ethnic and caste groups in the Tikapur town festival. However, it is important to remember that for the poorer sections of the town, such as the freed Kamaiya community, the economic barriers to entering the festival were high; the NR 20 per day entry fee represented a fifth of the real daily wage that freed Kamaiya women obtained as labourers in the local construction industry,12 and participation in the exhibition of small business stalls remained a distant dream for all. I suggest, therefore, that the strategic interests of the local economic elite in organizing these festivals focus more on winning over the hearts, minds and wallets of the town’s middle class than on helping the entire urban community. In this sense, it can be said that both

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urban festivals promoted a town-wide identity that was based not on caste or ethnic affiliation, but rather on class membership. A second way in which my ethnographic material differs from De Neve’s account is at an ideological level. While De Neve convincingly argues that in Bavani industrial elites draw on established idioms of kingship in order to legitimize their authority, the ethnographic material presented here suggests a different trend for Nepal. In Tikapur, the industrial elites invoke a largely secular discourse of communal harmony and economic prosperity in order to establish their authority, rather than resorting to religious idioms. This, I contend, is related to the emergence of the Maoists in the area, which strongly promoted anti-royal sentiments within the region. What is further striking about the elite’s patronage is the nature of its constituency. Before the eradication of malaria and the clearance of forests in the district in the early 1960s, the region was mainly inhabited by semi-pastoralist Tharus. In cases where Pahadis owned land, they tended to come to the Terai only in the cold winter months, when there was a lower risk of contracting malaria. The landlords’ constituency was restricted to the villages, where they held dominance, and included all residents who lived within the boundaries of this rural territory, but above all friends and relatives from one’s own ethnic group. With the liberation of the Kamaiya in 2001, the nature of these constituencies changed. Today, these are increasingly built upon idioms of locality, rather than being grounded simply in ethnic or caste identities. The fact that local elites used urban festivals to exercise patronage reflected wider shifts in the political economy of the region. There were three wider aspects to consider. First, it was obvious that the organization of the Tikapur Maha Utsav was not only about public patronage, but also about creating economic gains for the local elite. The event filled the cash registers of the Chambers of Commerce with a net profit of NR 35 lakh13 (approximately 35,000 Euros), where businessmen had little opportunity to attract capital. Second, the organization of the festival should be viewed against the background of heightened inter-town competition in the western Terai region. It is an open secret among local elites that Dhangadhi and Tikapur were competing to become the future business hub in the region. Both urban centres compete for private investment, state development schemes and tourism. Dhangadhi organized a business festival in 2007. Tikapur’s business elite most likely had been inspired by this Dhangadhi Maha Utsav. Third, both urban festivals must be seen as an attempt by a small regional elite in the periphery of Nepal to re-

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connect with the central government. Members of the local business community spoke openly about feeling neglected by the state administrative bodies in Kathmandu, and it is through the promotion of festivals that they sought to attract public funds and private capital for investment in the town and region. While urban patronage, economic gains, inter-town competition and relinking to the capitalist centre are all important to understanding the motivations of the Chambers of Commerce, they fail to explain why the Chambers of Commerce decided to organize the festivals at this particular time of post-conflict insecurity and frequent bandhs, chakka jams (road blockages) and urban demonstrations. In the next section, I will argue that the members of Tikapur’s economic elite sought protection through the display of urban patronage in a climate of insecurity and lawlessness. The Maoist presence meant that industrialists and businessmen had to be careful to foster an image of themselves as benevolent businessmen and industrialists, rather than as greedy capitalists, and organizing urban festivals provided a means to do this. In support of this assertion, the following section examines the elite’s fear of the Maoists.

The Elite’s Fear of the Maoists As Judith Pettigrew has pointed out in her ethnography of the experience of conflict in the village of Kwei Nasa (a pseudonym), both middle aged and elderly predominantly middle-income, non-aligned female villagers saw the Maoists in 2000 as a threat, the severity of which ‘increased in relation to relative wealth’ (Pettigrew 2009: 403). She goes on to argue that the nature of fear changes over different phases of a revolutionary period and according to individual circumstances, because ‘fear is always contextually situated, differently experienced through time and related to personal circumstances’ (ibid.: 403). Providing a chronological analysis of fear during the post-conflict period between 2006 and 2008, she concludes that ‘although a certain amount of suspicion and mistrust lingered, most people recovered from the impact of chronic fear’ (Pettigrew 2009: 403). How did these explanations hold up in Tikapur? Did the local elite return to business as usual after the conflict, or was normal life now marked by conflict? At the time of my fieldwork, a great part of Tikapur’s economic elite continued to perceive the UCPN Maoist and its youth organization YCL as a threat. In contrast to the freed Kamaiya, the elite had

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much to lose and had been the target of Maoist activism in the past. As mentioned above, rumours circulated that party cadres had previously captured territory in the district, beheaded four influential landlords and displayed their severed heads on a post next to the Mahendra Highway at Pahalmanpur. Most elites were aware that the UCPN Maoist had bombed businesses such as Surya Nepal, Nepal Lever Limited, Colgate Palmolive, Nepal Battery and Dabur Nepal in Kathmandu (International Alert 2006), and that throughout the conflict they showed an unfaltering commitment to attacking business communities that they perceived as ‘deriving undue benefit from the state policy of deregulation launched after the reinstatement of democracy in 1990s’ (International Alert 2006: 411). As a result, some landlords resettled in the more secure urban centres, such as Kathmandu or Pokhara, during the conflict, while others moved from the dangerous countryside to the safer town of Tikapur. Undoubtedly, the risk of being attacked by UCPN Maoist cadres had decreased in the post-conflict period. But the memories of past atrocities remained vivid with local elites. Gokul, for example, remained privately suspicious of the UCPN Maoist political course and intentions. He, like many others, articulated discomfort with the UCPN Maoist political line; on the one hand they repeatedly announced their commitment to capitalism, while on the other they followed a revolutionary path with the establishment of socialism as the final goal, while never fully defining what that would entail for the business community. For the local economic elite, this led to insecurity regarding the possibility of future confrontation between themselves and the Maoists. What they feared most were abductions, murder and public beatings by the UCPN Maoist, who remained the group with the largest political clout in town, but also by Maoist splinter groups such as the Tharuhat or other violent organizations and local goondas (thugs). The continuation of fear and suspicion in post-conflict Tikapur was immediately apparent upon entering the town. An armed police unit was stationed at the entrance throughout the conflict; even while I was there it was guarded by two soldiers in blue and black khaki uniforms equipped with machine guns. Each day a group of about fifteen or twenty armed police with rifles marched through town in order to demonstrate the presence of the state. Outside the armed police camp, a checkpoint was in operation throughout my fieldwork period, indicating that there remained significant unrest in the region. The levels of fear and suspicion also increased and decreased according to the time of day. While in the daytime the town usually felt

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safe, during the night it became insecure for many of its residents. Indeed, at night there were hardly any people on the streets, and as friends continuously warned me, goondas roamed the town after sundown. They remained vague about who the goondas actually were, but the group seemingly comprised young affluent Acchami people stealing valuable motorbikes, cement smugglers crossing the IndianNepali border, drunkards, pagal log (crazy people), Maoists, YCL and members of the emerging Tharuhat splinter movement. For the many urban centres around the world that are marked by insecurity, urban fortification is commonplace (See also Davis 1990; Caldeira 1996; Low 1997, 2003). In Tikapur, the Chambers of Commerce and the owner of a local radio station reacted to the situation by hiring security guards and constructing iron gates to protect their properties. More frequently, however, people protected themselves by being clear about who was on which side. For local members of the Chambers of Commerce, such as Gokul and his friends, it was also important on which side I stood: was I part of the Maoist movement or one of them, the business elite? In the chapters that follow, I will further document the Maoists’ considerable political clout in Tikapur, which renders the argument foregrounded in this chapter more plausible. It will become clear that the elite was afraid not only of the Maoists’ muscle power, but also of the size of the movement. Moreover, the persistence of fear and suspicion was grounded in the belief that the UCPN Maoist is the most well-informed network in the region (see Chapter Seven). It is important to stress that not all members of the Tikapur Chambers of Commerce were frightened of the UCPN Maoist. Some claimed that they were wholly unconcerned, while others took what was at best a defensive posture. For example, I witnessed an industrialist giving local Maoist cadres a ride in his car to a celebration at a PLA Camp near Dhangadhi. Similarly, it should be acknowledged that in Kailali, the local elite has other things to worry about; many were frightened of ghosts, rain (a threat to the productivity of brick kilns), landslides, floods, poisonous snakes and deadly motorbike accidents. Finally, the anxiety of local elites in town was also about a potential conflict between different ethnicities. As mentioned before, the region had recently witnessed the rise of a Maoist splinter group, the Tharuhat, which aimed to mobilize the Tharu community against the Pahadi outsiders. Emphasizing the harmonic and unifying aspects in the presentation of the festivals allowed local elites to disguise existing ethnic divides in the local economic hierarchy of the town and served to appease the Tharu community.

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Conclusion In this chapter, I introduced the setting of Tikapur and presented the argument that in post-insurgency Nepal the urban elites of this town organized urban festivals in order to fashion themselves as urban patrons, strengthen political networks with the central government in Kathmandu and temporarily project the image of a town whose residents live in communal harmony. Being on the strategic defensive after a decade of civil war that radically altered regional balances of power, the local elite used town festivals as a means to foreground new forms of urban patronage. This chapter has given an ethnographic description of two such events in order to shed light on how the local elite attempted to use them as a platform to restore their local power base and win an enlarged constituency. How, then, should we interpret the symbolic struggle of the business community in post-conflict Nepal to win a larger constituency? Here, it is important to remember that local businesspeople had chosen the strategy of public patronage to restore their local power base, instead of deploying goondas or militias, as we have seen in other post-conflict scenarios. Public patronage not only enabled one to win a wider local constituency, but also, in the context of post-conflict Nepal, provided a sort of safety shield for industrialists and businessmen. By nurturing the public image of a benevolent patron who fosters the economic development of the town, the elite sought to win over the former guerrilla forces and escape potentially violent attacks from Maoist cadres or other dangerous groups. Although many members of the post-insurgency urban economic elite had previously been the masters of bonded labourers in the area, freed Kamaiya experienced the new urban patronage of their former masters in an ambivalent way – that is, as a form of both inclusion and exclusion in the local polity, depending on their own class status. There was a certain historical irony apparent here. While representatives of the ‘poor’ and ‘working classes’ were now invited to participate in large urban festivals, the ‘poor’ and ‘working classes’ themselves were largely restricted from entering these sites, or else remained mere onlookers. The situation described above was only one of the unintended consequences of the Maoist revolution on local politics. In the following chapters, we will explore further how the Maoist revolution affected local politics and led to further ambivalent outcomes for the former Kamaiya in terms of inclusion in Nepal’s local and national polity.

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Notes 1. The pipal tree was locally famous for hosting a variety of bhuts (ghosts), which were believed to roam the region. 2. In post-insurgency Nepal, members of different political parties were in a constant fight for political space and recognition, with several incidents of brutal violence between members of Congress, UML and the UCPN Maoist taking place at the local and national level. This is detailed in a report by the International Crisis Group (2010), which sums up the post-conflict political climate as follows: ‘The main parties’ youth groups engage in almost daily clashes. The Maoists continue to murder opponents or critics. The Nepali Congress’s (NC) activists kill one rival and their student leaders chop off the fingers of another in Kathmandu’s main campus. The Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), UML and Youth Force (YF) carry khukuri knives and use the force of arms to protect its leaders and muscle in on contracts’ (ICG 2010: 1). 3. See also Rademacher (2009) for a more recent discussion of environmental activism in Kathmandu. 4. Consistent with De Neve’s viewpoint is a whole library on the cultural technologies of rule through which elites consolidated their power both in colonial times (Cohn 1996; Gooptu 2001) as well as in the postcolonial period (Roy 2006; 2007). Bernhard Cohn (1996), for instance, highlighted how the colonial conquest relied not only on obvious instruments of power such as military might, economic wealth and political allegiances, but was also achieved through public ritual and display, particularly at strategically important sites such as town festivals. 5. In a night attack on 16 February 2002, the Maoists overpowered the army and police base at Sanfebagar Airport in Mangalsen, Accham. The fighting between Maoists and state security forces resulted in the deaths of at least 150 people and is reported to have been one of the most brutal battles in the history of the insurgency period. Forty of the eighty police officers guarding Sanfe Airport were killed and fifty-five soldiers in the Mangalsen barracks also lost their lives. Casualties on the Maoist’s side remain undisclosed (Nepali Times 2009). 6. I am aware of Ashish Nandy’s critique of the appropriation of this notion derived from Western modernization theory, as South Asia ‘has always been a salad bowl of cultures’ (Nandy et al. 1995: vi). 7. Though in Tikapur one can encounter four different religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity), the town remains overwhelmingly Hindu, with 96.43 per cent of the town’s population following this religion (Intensive Study and Research Centre 2008: 321). 8. Ironically, the local Maoists bombed the school founded by the teacher of one of their senior guerrilla leaders, Mr Baburam Bhatterai. According to an article in the Nepali Times, ‘the school had received several extortion threats in the recent past and was one of the last remaining non-government schools still open in the far-western Terai region’ (Nepali Times 2002). 9. The principal instigators and organizers of the festivals described here were leading members of the Tikapur Chambers of Commerce. Though the association has members from different class, ethnic and caste backgrounds, it mainly represents the economic elite of the town. This is evident in the association’s leadership. In the past, two brick-kiln owners have held the position of chairman of the association. During my fieldwork, the leadership changed following elections in May 2008. The new chairman was Mr Biswas Rawl, a printing-press owner and shopkeeper from Tikapur, while Mr Gokul Hamal, the small-scale industrialist described at the beginning of this chapter,

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10.

11.

12. 13.

became the vice president. Both figures had economic clout in Tikapur’s economy, but they also derived power from their position in a network of entrepreneurs, politicians and bureaucrats. The Chambers of Commerce were said to be affiliated to the local Nepali Congress Party and the management committee of Tikapur’s municipality campus. As Alter notes, ‘though the precise history is difficult to construct, the now common practice of organising yoga camps (Shivir) for the general public and specific institutions – prisons, the police, government workers in various departments, school groups and the like – most likely dates back to the early twentieth century when the yoga teachings of Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo were integrated into the practice of postural embodied yoga’ (Alter 2008: 36). According to Cox (2006), the Badi are an untouchable Hindu caste whose men engage in work activities such as fishing and making drums and pipes, whereas Badi women often prostitute themselves from puberty onwards. While I was in Tikapur the Badi women had a reputation for engaging in sex work, I also encountered Badi men who worked as stone-cutters in the local construction industry. I will discuss wages in the informal economy of the town in more detail in subsequent chapters. One lakh = 100,000.

– Chapter 2 –

THE OCCUPATION OF SYMBOLIC SPACE IN TOWN

_ Introduction On a sultry summer evening in May 2009 I had an unusual experience. Sitting in my small bungalow, I heard a sudden knock at the door; outside, my neighbour Sudhani Chaudhary, twenty-eight, stood with her daughter Urmila, five, and four other children. Somewhat embarrassed, Sudhani looked at me and asked, ‘Could we watch television with you?’ ‘Sure,’ I replied, ‘come in.’ That someone had come to my door wanting to watch television was not extraordinary. On the contrary, freed Kamaiya would often come to my house to drink chai, eat cookies and watch Bollywood movies. This was the case with many of the former bonded labourers whom I had befriended since my arrival in Tikapur in January 2008, particularly because their mud huts were situated directly next to my bungalow. But what Sudhani told me that night gave me much food for thought. Like many former bonded labourers, Sudhani lived in one of the 453 mud huts that had existed on the site of Tikapur’s former airport since 2004. At that time, hundreds of former Kamaiya had marched through the city and occupied the town’s airport. They were all members of the militant Freed Kamaiya Society (FKS), which has since appropriated a number of areas in the city and throughout the western Terai region. Many of the occupiers had endured much hardship in their lifetimes. Sudhani, for example, had worked throughout her childhood as a kamlari (housemaid) for an affluent landlord in Dhangadhi, but since gaining her freedom (along with the other Kamaiya) in 2001 had worked for nine months in a brick factory and then in the local construction industry. – 69 –

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When I met Sudhani at the beginning of my fieldwork, she had already been married for about ten years to her husband Raju, whom she had met and fallen in love with during her previous job as a kamlari. As I had not seen Raju for a good nine months, I asked Sudhani, ‘How’s Raju? What’s he actually doing nowadays?’ Sudhani looked away in embarrassment. In August 2008, Raju had gone to India to earn money. At first he had sent money home every couple of weeks for Sudhani and their daughter. But at some point the payments stopped. Where Raju currently was, whether he would ever return home, Sudhani did not know. She was angry and upset about her hard life, constantly worrying about Urmila’s future and bemoaning her own work for a local construction company. Every day, she told me, she had to be on site, lugging around cement sacks from dawn to dusk; sometimes the company even asked her to work through the night. When Sudhani told me this, she was so frustrated that she asked me to lend her my cell phone; she wanted to call the wife of her former employer in Dhangadhi. I handed her the phone. At first I could not believe what I was hearing: Sudhani was begging the lady to take her back as her kamlari. The landlady refused, saying that she had found a replacement for Sudhani. Disappointed, Sudhani hung up the phone. Later, when she had left my bungalow, I thought about this experience. Up until that point, I figured that former Kamaiya must have been glad to have finally gained their freedom and acquired their own piece of land. To be enslaved voluntarily – and even to be grateful for it – seemed somehow absurd. So why did Sudhani want to return to working as a slave? Why would she prefer to work for an overbearing boss than a contractor in the construction industry? Her dream had been to own her own small piece of land in the centre of town; now that she had it, why would she give it up for her old job? Could it be that liberation from slavery, especially for women and young girls, actually brought few benefits? And what about the men who were living in the basti? Did the urban occupations that the Kamaiya took up after being freed improve their lives or empower them in any way? These are the central questions that this chapter will address; as I will demonstrate, their answers are closely related to the politics of the basti that took place in a radically altered political milieu. This chapter is an ethnographic exploration of the relationship between the radically altered power dynamic in the region and the community politics in a Mukta Kamaiya basti in urban Tikapur. Although the study of communities and their internal politics has long been

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central to anthropological research in Nepal and is often situated at the heart of any village ethnography, an understanding of these processes within the revolutionary context has not yet been developed. Despite this conspicuous omission from the literature on Nepal, the relationship between revolution and community politics has become a popular theme in recent anthropological studies from other parts of the world (for Mexico, see Barmeyer 2009; for Nicaragua, see Rodger 2008). These studies have developed two principal analytical frameworks to explore how a revolution shapes local community politics. First, in the case of the Nicaraguan Sandinista Revolution, the work of Dennis Rodgers (2008) has focused on shifts in political subjectivities in relation to a revolutionary movement over a given period of time. Second, in the case of Mexico’s Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) operating in Chiapas, the work of Niels Barmeyer (2009: 109–35) has explored how a revolutionary movement divides local communities into different factions according to shifting patterns of loyalty. The present chapter reflects this recent anthropological interest in how community politics respond to revolutionary political climates. With the aim of better understanding the outcomes of Nepal’s Maoist revolution, I examine how the revolutionary context has allowed freed bonded labourers to squat highly symbolic urban territory, and how this, in turn, has shaped community politics within the Mukta Kamaiya basti. It is argued that the changes brought about by the revolutionary context improved the conditions that the formerly debtbonded labourers encounter at their workplaces, but have also led to the formation of a new political elite within the squatters’ community. These dynamics relate to the argument put forward by the sociologist Asef Bayat (2009) about the revolutionary period in Iran. Accordingly, the poor used the political chaos created by the Iranian Revolution for their own gains and began squatting urban apartment buildings. He famously described these dynamics as the ‘quiet encroachment of the ordinary’ (Bayat 2009) – a form of small-scale, nonconfrontational occupation of urban living space. Unlike Scott’s ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott 1987), Bayat (1997) argues that such tactics are not defensive but ‘surreptitiously offensive’ (Bayat 1997: 56), as squatters often defended themselves for years against government eviction. Similarly, this chapter shows how the post-revolutionary context has allowed a marginalized segment of Nepali society to ‘make places of spaces’ (Gupta and Ferguson 1992: 11). It is because the armed Maoist guerrillas formed a significant threat to the state security apparatus, and that ex-Kamaiya were commonly thought to be Maoist cadres or

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sympathizers, that groups of formerly bonded labourers were able to occupy highly symbolic urban spaces. Moreover, it is because political parties regarded the squatter camps as potential sources of votes that formerly bonded labourers could squat the area until recently. Far from being ‘trapped’ in between the Maoist movement and the state security apparatus (Pettigrew 2004), the revolutionary situation allowed the squatter population to express some agency. The argument presented in this chapter complements more recent anthropological work on the importance of ‘spatial-orientated performances’ (Tilly 2000: 151) in South Asian politics. In a recent discussion of a dalit (untouchable) basti in Kanpur, North India, Nicolas Jaoul (2012) documented the spatial techniques of popular resistance that contributed to the defeat of a local riot system. His account points to the importance of political competition and people’s movements in the dynamics of symbolizing space. In a similar vein, this chapter highlights the importance of the wider political context in the dynamics of claiming symbolic space. Let me now begin to explore these dynamics by turning to the ethnographic microcosm where the consequences of capturing symbolic land will be addressed, namely a squatted airport in the urban municipality of Tikapur.

Occupying Urban Space Ramnagar is a squatter settlement established on the grounds of the local airport in the south-west of the town, surrounded by middleclass concrete bungalows. Its history dates back to the 2004 festivities for Mukti Divas (Liberation Day), celebrated by ex-bonded labourers throughout the revolutionary period. At that time, most freed Kamaiya in the region lived on unregistered plots of land in the countryside, near riverbeds or in the jungles of the district, but many had come to town to attend the festival. While people were singing and dancing in the town, a small group of FKS members were secretly preparing for the occupation of the airport. A ‘struggle committee’ was formed by senior members of the FKS, and it was agreed that when the young FKS member Mr Daniram Chaudhary, who would later become a leader of the settlement, began to sing a song about the sukha (happiness) and dukha (sadness) in the lives of the Kamaiya, a group of a few hundred would start the occupation. The plan worked without any interference from the local police. Freed Kamaiya left the festivities and walked towards the empty

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fields of the former airport. Once they had arrived, the struggle committee divided the ‘captured’ land into small parcels of equal size and each household was allocated a plot of 1.2 khatta1 for their own use. Freed Kamaiya families began to move into the field and set up plastic tents and shelters. Immediately after this ‘capture’, the members of the ‘struggle committee’ issued an ultimatum to the administrative authority of the town and the district, giving them five days to respond. But the authorities refused to honour their pledge to provide land to the former bonded labourers, which led the freed bonded labourers to settle more permanently in the grounds of the former airport. Though politicians and even the national land reform minister made repeated promises to give them either land or appropriate compensation, the airport was still being squatted when I left Tikapur after my first period of fieldwork in 2009. As many of the current residents remembered, life in the early days after the occupation was very hard. The greatest problem was ensuring a supply of clean drinking water, while the possibility of eviction by the local police was also a constant concern. Plagued by a lack of access to health facilities, food, jobs and proper housing, the FKS ‘struggle committee’ developed a strategy. The squatting population was divided into three working groups: one to secure access to clean drinking water by lobbying for nalkas (handpumps); a second to look for employment opportunities; and a third to lobby for donors. A general meeting was organized in which it was agreed that each household had to provide at least one member for begari2 (unpaid work) in the community. In the event of absence, it was agreed that the guilty household would be fined the equivalent of one day’s wage. These efforts initially brought only minor improvements, but they gradually allowed the community to develop a basic infrastructure. Occupants were able to secure sponsorship for hand pumps from several of the town’s citizens. Under the begari work system they built a drainage system alongside the small roads that cut across the neighbourhood and began to construct a basic nursery school. Begari was then used to develop and cultivate communal vegetable gardens on empty plots of land. But the occupants also began to develop the basti on their private lands. Small self-established businesses were set up along the two main roads through the basti, which would come to include a rickshaw repair shop, sewing workshops and small liquor ‘hotels’. Significantly, in 2005, the Kamaiya ‘struggle committee’ engaged two NGOs to support their community. These financed the provision of nalkas and provided more than one hundred school scholarships, as well as free uniforms, for Kamaiya children.

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At the times of fieldwork, the plastic tents of the early days were few and far between, and now the standard dwelling was a bambooframed mud hut with a straw roof. These houses never had more than two rooms, and most had only one. If they had two separate areas, the front one was used for cooking. The land behind the house was usually used to grow various vegetables for home consumption. While some of the inhabitants also sold these vegetables at the weekly bazaar nearby, it was clear that the food grown on these lands was not sufficient for inhabitants to survive. In terms of the settlement’s composition, Ramnagar was a socially homogenous neighbourhood. This was not to say that locality did not matter anymore: the members of the basti uniformly originated from villages in Kailali district. That was why each subdivision within the basti often had a high percentage of residents hailing from the same village. Some of the residents had relatives in other bastis in town or further afield. But all inhabitants were Tharu, which fell under the rubric of janajati (ethnic group). Nevertheless, within the neighbourhood, there were two different Tharu groups residing together. The predominant population was comprised of Dhanghaura Tharu, with only a few families of Kshatriya Tharu. While the two groups could be distinguished by their slightly different Tharu dialects, this difference was of little importance within the community. This became plainly evident to me when I asked freed Kamaiya informants to elaborate on their sub-caste names. They would usually make fun of these enquiries. What matters, they added, was that all inhabitants viewed themselves as members of a larger Tharu community. While caste and ethnicity shaped the identity of the neighbourhood, the precarious and dire economic situation that many ex-bonded labourers experienced prevented extreme social differentiations, yet producing shared working-class identities. As a result it was not surprising that many of the inhabitants shared the view that the dichotomy between garib (poor) and dani (rich) remained the most central in the lives of Tharu in contemporary Nepal. As the following sections show, members of the community tried to make ends meet by working various jobs in the local informal economy.

Discursive Construction of the Occupation Representations of Ramnagar by outsiders tended to revolve around the low socio- economic standing and limited educational background

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of its inhabitants. For many, the neighbourhood was regarded as a slum and frequently associated with Maoist supporters. My middleclass friends in town would often note that ‘poor people are the ones who support the Maoists!’ While this reflected the general perception of freed Kamaiya camps across Kailali, in Tikapur, it was a representation that was particularly associated with Ramnagar and the neighbouring village of Ganeshnagar, established on the nearby university campus. For many people, Ramnagar was also seen as a chaudhary (Tharu) basti, reflecting its homogenous ethnic composition. In terms of their ritual status, inhabitants were commonly regarded as only marginally higher than low-caste or untouchable communities. In the eyes of high-caste Brahmins, the Tharu consumed non-vegetarian cuisine (e.g. pigs, chicken), drunk daru and jaar (rice alcohol) and worshipped animistic deities (e.g. small elephants and tigers) alongside the major Hindu gods (e.g. Ganesha). The only thing that kept them above lowcaste or untouchable groups was their reputation for being honest and hard workers who did not beg and were generally nonviolent. In fact, a high-caste friend of mine would often refer to Ramnagar as a ‘safe place’; he was unruffled riding his motorbike through the neighbourhood, even at night. In contrast, the same friend would be hugely fearful of passing through an Acchami basti further east. ‘These Acchamis are hard to trust, and there are goondas,’ he would tell me. ‘The Tharu are OK, it’s safe to walk through Ramnagar.’ Friends living next to Ramnagar pointed out a further important stereotype about the neighbourhood. This held that Ramnagar was composed of two different types of Tharus: those who had actually worked previously as Kamaiyas, and those who only pretended to have been bonded labourers in the hope of obtaining government and NGO benefits. These ‘fake Kamaiya’ were referred to as ‘cheats’, ‘corrupters’ or ‘land mafia’. Though estimates varied as to the percentage of ‘cheating parivars (families)’, many supposed that the ratio of ‘real’ to ‘fake’ Kamaiya in Ramnagar was roughly one to one. Most people believed that more ‘real Kamaiya’ lived in Ramnagar than in neighbouring Krishnanagar, where it was estimated that only one in ten Kamaiya families was genuine. According to my own observation, these accusations were based more on prejudice rather than on any real knowledge. Outsiders could know little about who lived in these neighbourhoods, because they rarely entered the bastis or spent any time with their inhabitants. This dominant metanarrative of the basti as composed of ‘real’ and ‘fake’ Kamaiya resulted in two primary outcomes: first, it was used by

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the middle-class citizens of Tikapur to delegitimize and criminalize the capture of public space by freed Kamaiya; and second, it created a sense of unity within the basti community. Inhabitants positioned themselves against this discourse and usually in contrast to the outsider perspective. During my interviews in the basti, residents were always keen to explain to me that they were indeed real Kamaiya. Some of them had Kamaiya IDs issued by the government, which they used to convince me of their ‘authenticity’. Those who did not have an ID blamed this on bureaucratic inefficiency or their former landlords’ hatred towards them. In fact, all inhabitants recalled how the basti leadership had previously evicted landless Tharu peasants who had never worked as Kamaiya, and told me how only those who had really been bonded labourers now lived in the basti. While the occupation of public land by freed Kamaiya ultimately created a discourse that created a sense of community among the former bonded labourers in Ramnagar, the location of their settlements in the centre of town also permitted them to work in various niches of the informal economy. In our conversations, freed Kamaiyas often emphasized how this aspect of their lives contrasted with their situation in the past. Many were proud to have become sahar manche (town people) and feared being evicted by the local municipality authorities and returned to unregistered pieces of land, or even the forest. This was because they anticipated that work would be much harder to come by outside the urban centres, and felt that their women were less secure and exposed to sexual harassment and attacks by outsiders. They also preferred the access to healthcare in town compared to the mosquito-infested forest sites that were plagued by dangerous snakes throughout the monsoon period. The following section will explore in more detail how this urban environment has shaped the everyday experience and meaning of work among former bonded labourers in the study area.

Occupation and Employment in the City Working in the Fields No More As far as work was concerned, my informants, like Parry’s steel plant workers in Bhilai (Parry 1999a), generally compared the new world of urban work favourably with the old world of labour in the agricultural fields. They often described their work in the urban economy as ‘modern’, which meant it allowed them to become more developed, as suggested by the sentence ‘ali, ali bhikas cha’ (‘there is a bit of devel-

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opment’). Nevertheless, many also emphasized their long-standing ambition to one day become self-employed farmers. ‘We are Tharu. We have always ploughed the fields and we are experts in farming. This is what we know and are best at. With no education, what other kind of job can we be good at?’ This view, articulated by Ramkrishna, was widely held in the basti. It was certainly the case that the large majority of former bonded labourers in the neighbourhood were engaged in non-agricultural types of work. Table 2.1 details the various forms of employment undertaken by freed bonded labourers across a sample population of 173 households in the neighbourhood: Table 2.1 clearly indicates that for the former bonded labourers in Ramnagar, agricultural labour had ceased to be the primary livelihood activity. Most of the men and women worked outside agriculture and earned their living in the local informal economy. Admittedly, part of the reason why former bonded labourers no longer engaged in agricultural work might be to do with the scarcity of employment in the region. In the period between 2008 and 2009, much of the land belonging to the regional landlords was captured by UCPN Maoist cadres, who allegedly divided these properties and gave them to their supporters to cultivate. This meant that it was difficult for former bonded labourers to find employment unless they had a good personal relationship with the local party members. Even then, however, taking up a job in agriculture was no guarantee of security, as profit rates in this business were reported to be low and one often had to wait some time before being paid. Table 2.1 Type of employment undertaken by freed Kamaiya in Ramnagar, May 2009 • Self-employed: Rickshaw repairer (3m); tailor (3m, 4f); carpenter (12m); Kirana (shopkeeper) (5m, 5f); barber (1m) • In regular employment: Nursery school teacher (1f); midwife (3f); naukri (servant) (3m); hotel cleaner (1m, 3f); watchman (2m) • Casual labourers: Mason (10m); mazduri (labour) (102m, 50f); stonecutter (10m, 2f); Rikshaw/tella driver (21m); vegetable seller (1f) • In industry: Tile fitter (1m); brick moulder (3m,1f); machine operator in Surat, Gujarat (1m); Tekkedar (1m) • In agriculture: Tenant (3m, 2f); tractor driver (2m); dunlap (ox-cart driver) (2) • In construction: Construction loader (2m); house painter (2m) • Other: Kamlari (8 girls) and buffalo herder (2 boys) • Total: 190 Men, 72 Women, 10 Children

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A more mundane reason for avoiding agricultural work was related to a preference for cash over paddy. Agricultural work in Kailali was still sometimes compensated with quintals of rice rather than a daily cash payment, though paper currency was increasingly being used by landlords in the region. Moreover, non-agricultural work, as Parry (1999a) has argued, also offered the prospect of sexual adventures. In Tikapur this observation certainly rang true, as the local construction industry comprised small working groups where former bonded labourers could liaise with others from the same ethnic group free from the prying eyes of their kin. More striking still was the ideological element to this. For many former bonded labourers, agricultural cultivation evoked memories of their life in bondage. In some cases, it was associated with verbal and physical abuse, subordination, irregular schedules and the perverse sexual behaviour of landlords. In the next section, I will shed light on the most common form of work undertaken by freed Kamaiya in Tikapur; namely, construction.

Work in the Urban Construction Industry Within the spatial boundaries of Tikapur municipality, about fifteen or twenty labour contractors owned small businesses and were involved in private and state-led construction. Historically, construction work had been dominated by skilled Indian masons, most of whom hailed from Motihari district in Bihar. Until the turn of the century, these Indian construction workers came to Tikapur, often following established Indian contractors in town, and were still regarded as the finest masons in the area. Though their reasons for coming to work in the town varied, many had followed a Muslim mason, who was involved in one of the first construction projects in Tikapur. At the time of fieldwork, there was still a group of about fifteen different Bihari3 contractors and a number of masons working in the industry. Yet the social composition of the industry had changed. Homeowners in the centre were most often from Accham (though the male owner of the house was frequently absent, working abroad in India, Malaysia or Dubai). There were both Indian and Nepali contractors, and masons may be Indian, Pahadi or Tharu (with Tharu far outweighing the Pahadi masons). The unskilled labour force was entirely Tharu.4 Among the different contractors, I did most of my fieldwork with Krishna, a Bihari contractor. I met Krishna through Gyanu, a local

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Bahun, who had advised me to learn more about the construction industry if I wanted to understand the contemporary work practices of former bonded labourers. Krishna was known as a fine construction worker in town and his company was well respected. For two years he had been advertising his company on the local radio station Fullbari FM. His business was now flourishing. Krishna’s relationship with the town was uneasy, however. He lived together with some of his key workers in a small one-room apartment in the town centre and tried to spend as little money as possible in daily life. Together with his father, a shopkeeper, he was in the process of building a house back in Bihar, so he wanted to save up as much money as possible to finance this project. With both of us being outsiders in the town, Krishna and I quickly became friends. I asked him to teach me the art of constructing houses and he was eager to oblige, taking me to his worksites together with his skilled and unskilled labour force. Each morning at around 8 am Krishna gathered his workers in front of his house and divided them into different working groups. In order to protect himself in case a customer did not pay, Krishna had made it a habit to always be working on several projects simultaneously. Often he complained to me about how his financial situation gave him ‘tension’. Krishna’s policy had been to recruit skilled male workers from Bihar and unskilled female workers from the Kamaiya bastis and surrounding villages in Tikapur. He had several female workers from Ramnagar who came to his house in the morning before heading off to different construction sites with their various working groups. Their working day was fairly regular, lasting from 8 am until 5 pm.5 In the cold winter months work started later (around 9 am), while during the summer most workers were laid off, as the heavy monsoon rains meant that only a few interior construction projects could be undertaken. Unlike many other building contractors, Krishna tried to pay punctually. He paid his skilled Indian workers more than his Nepali ones, but the unskilled women received only NR 125, which was substantially less than the minimum wage of 150 NR per day. Nevertheless, construction work was seen as an attractive option by female labourers, as wages have been rising steadily in recent years (See Chapter 4). This, as both men and women agreed, allowed freed Kamaiya to improve their situation. However, as Lakshmi, one of Krishna’s workers, told me, the job paid much less than having one’s own business. During our talks at construction sites, she often pointed out that the most successful of all Ramnagar’s inhabitants

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was a man with a small samosa shop. What she neglected to add, however, was that the shop’s owner managed his business using the labour power of his two wives and occasional help from his sixteenyear-old son and eleven-year-old daughter, which therefore reduced the amount of per capita income received. Needless to say, it is not my intention here to belittle the problems faced by both male and female workers in the construction industry of Tikapur. Neither group wore construction helmets, gloves or boots, and workers were thus exposed to numerous risks while at work. Though tekkedars (labour contractor) paid male workers the minimum daily wage, female workers were regularly underpaid. Moreover, tekkedars had a reputation in town for delaying the payment of wages and being stingy when handing out advances, most probably because they operated on relatively small profit margins. But it was widely known that Indian tekkedars paid their skilled compatriots large advances. On a week-long visit to Motihari district with Krishna, I observed how he visited several villages in Bihar to find a skilled mason. When he finally found and befriended a Muslim mason, he spent more than an hour negotiating his advance before finally settling on more than IC 10,000. This clearly indicates how tekkedars tried to bind their Indian workers with advances, suggesting a form of debt-bondage was prevalent, at least among some of the construction workers. Nevertheless, for the freed Kamaiya in Tikapur, construction work meant above all an income in cash that they desperately needed in order to survive at the bottom of the town’s class hierarchy. They coped with the precariousness inherent in the construction industry primarily by undertaking a variety of jobs. This is best illustrated by the case of Daniram Chaudhary, a former adheje (chief) of the basti and current regional chairman of the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj, who worked alternately as a painter, stonecutter or skilled mistery (mason) in the local construction industry. The fact that workers such as Daniram could change jobs with relative ease further suggests that in Tikapur the boundaries between different sectors of the informal economy were relatively porous.6 This flexibility might also explain why freed Kamaiya preferred this type of work compared to their traditional, agricultural occupations. I often had conversations with Daniram about the difference between his current work and his past life as a bonded labourer. He told me that his experience in the past varied. There had been ramro and kharab landlords. In his childhood Daniram had worked for a good

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landlord, and he still remembered the day when the latter brought home a shirt and gave it to him and his family as a present. Other landlords, however, had been less benevolent, and he knew of some in the region who had been extremely brutal. But despite this, it was difficult to tease out any nostalgia for a lost world of ‘benign patronage’. Daniram suggested to me that he clearly favoured his work in the informal economy in spite of the low wages and lack of opportunity for training. Others added that construction work was preferable, since it provided a form of entertainment. Indeed, the atmosphere among workers at Krishna’s construction sites was frequently jocular and even flirtatious. Krishna was always aware if two labourers had hooked up, and he would even allow them to take the following day off work. Unsurprisingly, the workers saw this as a bonus. In summary, the former bonded labourers’ incorporation into the local informal economy was experienced positively when compared to previous labour regimes. Freed Kamaiya faced new problems in the urban construction industry, but preferred this type of work to the old Kamaiya system. This positive rendering of urban construction work contrasts sharply with accounts of the industry from other parts of South Asia. A case in point is Theo Van der Loop’s study of construction in two Tamil Nadu towns, where work is subcontracted from large firms to small tekkedars (1996: 180), with adverse consequences for labourers. Similarly, a recent report by the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) reported ‘blatant violations of workers’ rights’ in the construction industry surrounding the Commonwealth Games in Delhi (PUDR 2009). Here, urban construction workers often found themselves in new forms of bondage, remaining powerless in front of their mukkadam (contractor). There are two probable reasons why this account of the industry in Tikapur contrasts so starkly with the scarce South Asian literature on urban construction work. First, the construction industry in Tikapur was focused primarily on small domestic developments rather than large infrastructure sites where work is much more dangerous. Second, Kamaiya construction workers in Tikapur lived in nearby bastis, whereas the examples from India describe the lives of migrants in the industry. In the following section, I wish to examine a further interesting aspect of the freed Kamaiya bastis; namely, the emergence of particular residents as netas (leaders) and patrons of the community. More specifically, I intend to investigate the political organization of the neighbourhood in order to ascertain whom this new leadership represented and in whose interests the leaders were acting.

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Political Organization, Patrons and Benefactors of the Occupation Political Ramnagar was a locality where a strong political organization had grown over the past six years. Here, all residents of the basti were represented through a main committee, which was part of the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj (the frontrunner of the contemporary Kamaiya organization). This committee was led by nine elected members. The chairman was usually referred to as adheje or balmansar (the traditional term for a Tharu village leader). The committee did not meet at fixed dates but convened two or three times a month to discuss issues relating to the neighbourhood. These meetings were of variable composition, ranging from small informal gatherings of roughly five people to large-scale gatherings of several hundred. On these occasions given that there were 453 households represented by the main committee, attendance was extremely high. In the several meetings of the committee that I attended, three figures were always present. These were the leaders Ramkrishna Chaudhary, Bhulai Chaudhary and Daniram Chaudhary. All three came from the Tharu community and had previously worked as bonded labourers. At committee meetings, it was generally these three who were the most vocal when making political decisions and formulating strategies on behalf of the basti population. Common topics of discussion included development, employment, neighbourhood security, the movement’s tactics and the provision of school scholarships for children in the neighbourhood. As far as pay was concerned, all members of the main committee worked voluntarily for the development of the neighbourhood. In private conversations, leaders often complained to me about the amount of time that they invested in this task, which left them with little space to make an income. Their work was widely respected within the town’s Kamaiya community, and they were generally referred to with the honorific jee (sir). Among the main tasks from which these netas (leaders) derived their authority were the control of begari within the boundaries of the basti, the establishment of informal tribunals to judge minor disputes among residents, the effective organization of the basti against outsiders, the signing of contacts with NGOs and state organs, the collection of Kamaiya IDs and any negotiations with the police. While it was usually mostly women who attended the general meetings of the main committee, they often remained silent in dis-

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cussions about the basti. It was the men who made the majority of decisions regarding development and security in the basti. However, women were more vocal in the meetings of their neighbourhood sub-organizations. Residents of the street on which I lived had regular meetings and here women sat on the roadside and discussed micro-credit issues. Urban commentators such as Gyanu referred to the leaders of the Kamaiya bastis as agents of absolute control. This was apparent in his usual comment that all Kamaiya ‘struggle’ activities would cease as soon as the leaders were detained. Implicit in his comments was an image of the bastis’ inhabitants as prisoners of traditional royalty: a neighbourhood evocative of a village ruled by a headman. Admittedly, the power of the new Kamaiya leadership cannot be understood without exploring the wider shifts in the political organization of the neighbourhood. In contrast to the traditional balmansar system, which bestows leadership on the eldest male members in a Tharu community, the new leaders have to win the hearts and minds of their constituency. It is through the provision of NGO funds and development projects, Kamaiya ID cards and negotiations with the state municipality board over the allocations of resources that Kamaiya leaders have come to play an important role in the everyday life of community members. It is important to acknowledge the role of NGOs, the local state and the region’s political class in community politics. Following the land capture, the new rulers of the Kamaiya camps had to develop personal connections with each of these three parties in order to establish themselves as legitimate leaders. Practically speaking, the leaders had to visit NGOs or invite them to their basti and ask for donations for infrastructural development and the provision of school scholarships, meet with local state officials (e.g. the local municipality board and VDC secretaries in the rural hinterland) to secure financial contributions, lobby for the allocation of land and the distribution of Kamaiya IDs, and develop personal connections with Maoist CA members Rulpa Chaudhary and Saikdheja Chaudhary, who lobbied within the party for the provision of land to their basti. It is this significant investment of time and effort in the development of their bastis that has turned community leaders into venerated public figures. One example of this trend was Daniram Chaudhary, a former bonded labourer who has become widely respected as a leader within his community. Daniram’s friendship with a Kamaiya leader in another basti provided the initial motivation for him to run for the

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neighbourhood’s leadership. Over the years, his commitment to campaigning on behalf of his basti has elevated his status within the community. Despite working in low-paid jobs, Daniram fought for his community and has developed an acute awareness of the problems faced by his people. He described his relationship with other leaders in the community as friendly, and regarded the Kamaiya community as a whole as his pariwar (family). Through his lobbying work for a local NGO, he managed to acquire several school scholarships for local youths; however, Daniram had to be careful to include as many children as he could in the development process and was always aware that he must avoid accusations of being corrupt. Indeed, a rival leader had lost the yearly elections for this very reason. In contrast, Bhulai, another Kamaiya leader, was respected by his followers for his integrity and determination in fighting for his community. Bhulai even demonstrated his strength in the yearly municipality meeting in 2009, leading to violent clashes and a lowering of his reputation as a leader. But as well as the wider politico-organizational influence on the leadership, the community’s own rules and regulations curtailed the power of the netas. First, there was a rule that if a resident left the basti, their plot of land remained empty, which limited the degree of influence that the leader had over what might otherwise be termed land degree. In a nearby Sukhumbasi basti, in contrast, I heard of a leader who charged NR 2000 to those wishing to settle in the basti and pocketed a substantial amount of money through land deals. Second, each year the basti voted for a new chairman and management committee. The Kamaiya leaders were thus subject to democratic control by their constituency. The yearly vote was by consensus and the leader had to present himself in front of the community, which made him accountable to the community and limited the potential for corruption or cheating the people. Third, the presence of the Maoists forced leaders to act fairly. The latter knew very well that violating the moral code of the community might get them into trouble with the Maoists, and so they remained largely scrupulous. In summary, then, the freed Kamaiya community cannot be characterized as either egalitarian or as exhibiting the old vertical ties of dependency found in the earlier system of bonded labour. Instead, we find here a middle ground between hierarchy and egalitarianism on which leaders govern their bastis. In the following section, I will look more closely at what the neighbourhood association does for the women and girls in the basti and address their economic standing within the community.

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A Gendered Politics of Exclusion? In the emerging scholarship on Nepal’s Maoist Movement, an acrimonious debate has developed surrounding its effects on women’s empowerment (Manchanda 2004; Pettigrew and Scneiderman 2004; Onesto 2005). It is clear that women worked for the Maoist Movement both as guerrilla fighters and as mobilizers, propagandists, party cadres and district secretaries throughout the insurgency period (Manchanda 2004; Onesto 2005). However, while some authors have wholeheartedly embraced the idea of the inclusion of women in the Maoist movement (Onesto 2005), others remain sceptical (Manchanda 2004, Pettigrew and Shneiderman 2004). For instance, Pettigrew and Shneiderman have claimed that women in the PLA ‘rarely gain equality through their engagement’ (2004: 1). Similarly, Manchanda points out that these women remain subjected to a ‘male leadership ambivalent about redefining gender relations’ (Manchanda 2004: 237). An important caveat in this debate concerns the effect of the Maoist movement on the lives of ordinary women. Thus, this section poses the question, have gender relations changed in the freed Kamaiya basti of Ramnagar, established in the midst of the revolutionary period? As we shall see, my ethnographic findings suggest that women remained subject to a gendered politics of exclusion with a number of different facets. First, in terms of their political representation, adult freed Kamaiya women occupied three out of nine posts in the village-level committees. Though this might be considered a high proportion in the context of South Asia, it is important to note that in everyday meetings it was almost exclusively the men who made decisions on behalf of the community. While many women attended the meetings, most listened in silence rather than participating actively in the political decision-making process. But what really prevented women from participating was the fact that many decisions in the basti were debated outside of the formal meetings in one of the chai and samosa shops of the male leaders. It was in these shops, which were mostly patronized by men and boys, that political strategies and decisions were forged. Although, as I will discuss in Chapter 3, the central leadership of the FKS were aware of this fact and set up the Mukta Kamaiya Mahila Samaj, its own regional woman’s wing, in 2006, in the urban bastis of Tikapur and the rural slums in its hinterland, these organizations had few meetings in comparison with the many collective activities of the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj. Politically, then, women had gained a platform and increased public visibil-

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ity, but they remain largely excluded from crucial decision-making processes. Second, in terms of work, despite being considered diligent and honest workers, freed Kamaiya women could generally only find temporary jobs with labour contractors in the local construction industry. Here, they worked not as skilled masons, like some of their male counterparts, but rather as basic labourers undertaking the most arduous and menial jobs. As mentioned in the introductory vignette, young women like Sudhani had to carry cement sacks on their backs and bricks on their heads. The reason for the persistence of this gendered division of labour, as the history of Tikapur’s construction industry suggests, was most likely related to the fact that it was Indian contractors who first established the labour regime in town. Pahadi contractors learnt from their Indian forerunners not only the art of house building, but also the idea that, as one Indian contractor put it, ‘women are better helpers but not skilled’. Third, the male basti leaders were keen on keeping an eye on the sexuality of women. Extramarital affairs were strictly taboo; nevertheless, since many freed Kamaiya women worked with contractors in small mixed work groups of between five and ten people, such affairs were not uncommon. While Indian contractors usually boasted about their sexual adventures with young, supposedly innocent Tharu girls, married freed Kamaiya women had to be careful not to be caught in an amorous situation, lest they receive a traditional punishment from the basti leaders for their immoral conduct. In September 2008, for example, a married female Kamaiya worker had been caught by basti inhabitants during sexual intercourse with a married Pahadi mason in her mud hut. My friends in the basti told me about the incident the next morning and explained how they would punish the couple for this illegitimate affair. I went to the basti and watched with others as the Pahadi contractor and the young woman were forced to apologize in front of the whole community. Then the inhabitants put a mala (garland) made from shoes and a sign that stated ‘I’m a thief’ around the neck of the contractor and painted the girl’s face completely black before parading them around the basti. For the mason, who did not live in the community, this was arguably a minor chastisement, but for the young woman the public humiliation was a source of considerable anxiety, as there was a good chance that her husband would learn of her affair and punish her physically upon his return from migrant work in India. Fourth, and more generally, physical violence against women was commonplace in the basti, and the risk of rape was ever present. The

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fact that the male leadership of the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj remained largely silent about such incidents made them complicit in another form of gender-based discrimination. One example of this occurred in December 2008. I was sitting outside a chai shop on the main street of the basti, chatting with the basti leader and a few of his male followers, when I heard from another customer about an incident that happened earlier that morning: an adult male inhabitant of the basti had approached a teenage girl in her mud hut and attempted to rape her. The girl had screamed when the man dropped his trousers, scaring him away and allowing her to escape unharmed. Enquiring why the basti leaders had not intervened and brought the culprit to the police station, I was told that this was an affair that took place within private homes. As long as the girl did not make a complaint against him, the leader said, he would not intervene and call the police. He added that he preferred not to deal with any trouble among the inhabitants, most likely because he was looking to safeguard votes for the next village-level elections.

The Kamlari System In the formerly bonded labourers’ neighbourhoods in town – irrespective of the harsh situation adult women faced – the truly disadvantaged were pre-teen and teenage girls. They were likely to be ‘staffed out’ of the neighbourhood and ‘sold’ for a minimum period of twelve months to an urban household across the country in order to work as kamlari. For many years, middlemen acting on behalf of urban middle-class householders had recruited young teenage girls from workers’ neighbourhoods. During the Maghe Sankranti Festival in mid January, when it was Tharu custom to make economic household decisions for the following twelve months, a recruitment agent would arrive in the freed kamaiya bastis in the region. As the recruiters often hailed from the urban middle classes in the region, they usually arrived on motorbikes, roaming the area to find a suitable teenage girl for their clients. They usually tried to convince a girl’s parents to enter a contract with them by promising free education to the child in a reputable private school in a distant town or by offering a lump sum of cash to the male head of the child’s household. When the parents agreed, the middleman would accompany the girl to her new urban domestic worksite. This manner of recruitment differed from the kamaiya system, as it usually involved a middleman, but strong similarities to the previous system of bonded labour re-

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mained: the ‘transaction’ took place throughout the Maghe Sankranti Festival, the most popular of the annual festival cycle, and parents offered their children ‘voluntarily’ to an urban malik (master) usually in the hope for a better life of the child. In Ramnagar, the kamlari system was a big issue. My fieldwork data suggested that about fifty teenage girls were missing, and worked as kamlari in urban areas such as Kathmandu, Pokhara and Nepalgunj. Compared to the national figure of approximately 20,000 to 25,000 teenage girls working as kamlari who hailed from the five western Tarai districts (Kanchanpur, Kailali, Bardiya, Banke and Dhang) these figures might seem unimpressive. But given the size of the population in Ramnagar, it turned out that about 20 per cent of all households sent off at least one of their children or teenagers to work as kamlari. When I asked the fathers whether their daughters would not be better off working in the local construction industry at daily rates of about 100 NR, the most common response was that they hoped their children would receive a better education. However, most girls had no choice but to follow the wishes of their male householders. Sudhani Chaudhary, for example, cried for days upon hearing that she would be sent off to an urban householder in Nepalgunj. Maya was less afraid: she understood her parents’ dire economic situation. After her father had disappeared to India for work, her mother was left to care for Maya and her siblings alone. Maya, as the eldest daughter, had to be sold off to sustain the family. Yet as I mentioned earlier Sudhani Chaudhary, who worked in the local construction industry, preferred the kamlari system over her current job and even actively sought to re-enter the contract with her previous employer. She failed to do so, however, as her previous employer had already found a replacement. My informants told me that girls as young as six were sold to work as kamlaris. In nearly all cases they were bought by high-caste middlemen or private homeowners for a period of one year during the Maghe Sankranti Festival. In exchange, the parents received a sum of cash, usually around NR 6,000 for the year (the equivalent of forty days’ wages for an unskilled labourer in the construction industry). But some families indicated that they had not obtained anything in return for their daughters and were left only with the hope that their daughters would be well cared for in the households of their employers. Unfortunately, as Giri pointed out in a recent study of the kamlari system (2010), this dream of a better future was often not the case. After interviewing several girl workers, he noted that ‘as far as girls are concerned, some of them not only had to endure scolding

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and slapping, but also faced sexual mistreatment’ (ibid.: 236). It is of course difficult to come by such data but it is not unlikely that some of these young workers ended up in brothels in Kathmandu, Pokhara or a major city in nearby India. It was thus unsurprising that the dominant discourse in Ramnagar rendered the kamlari system as a bad habit. But while both men and women agreed about its negative side effects, it was often the mothers of these ‘missing girls’ who most fiercely criticized the practice, and many attributed the persistence of the system to men’s excessive alcohol consumption. Why then, did the local Maoist movement not actively challenge this practice of unfree labour? I will return to this question in Chapter 6 but suggest here already that the difference to the kamaiya system and forms of unfree labour in the brick kilns is related to the fact that challenging landlords and brick kiln owners was a political practice that was highly symbolic and visible. The kamlari system, however, was regarded by the local Maoists as an individual affair that was not symbolic, most likely because political power was largely vested with the men of the household.

Conclusion I began this chapter with the ambivalent relationship between the Maoist revolution and the freed Kamaiya community in terms of both individual and collective empowerment. This theme has been apparent throughout the chapter, though admittedly the forms of empowerment described have been those that involve changes in social structure and spatial order rather than shifting political subjectivities, aspirations and ideas about the future. What I have described can be summarized as follows. First, I suggested that the formation of the Kamaiya community in Ramnagar and its neighbourhood politics are largely a result of the changing balances of power in the region. It seems unlikely that without the political support of the Maoist movement the freed Kamaiyas would have been able to capture and occupy such a highly symbolic urban locality. Although originally intended as a temporary occupation, freed bonded labourers have managed to turn this site into a lived landscape by setting up a neighbourhood association and invoking the traditional custom of begari. It was only after the signing of the Peace Agreement between Maoists and the state in November 2005 that non-Maoist-related NGOs, such as FAYA Nepal and VWF (Volunteers Without Frontiers), were able to contribute to the neighbourhood by assisting the freed Kamaiya with

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infrastructural programmes. Although their place-making in the urban landscape is regarded with suspicion by the local middle classes, the freed Kamaiya have become a vital force in the local labour market by filling a number of different niches in the informal economy. This is not to gloss over problems of working conditions, wage payment and debt bondage (e.g. delays in payment and the handing out of advances) that many former bonded labourers face in this economy; rather, what I have sought to emphasize are the overall effects of taking up non-agricultural jobs. With a handful of exceptions, entry into non-agricultural forms of work allowed former bonded labourers to escape the grips of their old agricultural masters. In this sense the capture of the airport in Tikapur had a doubly empowering effect for freed Kamaiya; it not only provided a source of pride in having challenged the current spatial order in town, but also allowed freed Kamaiya to leave their rural past behind them. The second part of the chapter complicated this argument by looking more closely at the politics of the freed Kamaiya community. I shed light on the organizational structure of the neighbourhood association that represents the community and is part of the wider Kamaiya movement (see Chapter 3). Despite many residents of Tikapur viewing the naya netas (new leaders) of the freed Kamaiya bastis as agents of absolute control, I provided ethnographic evidence to show that their influence and authority within the boundaries of the neighbourhood remains limited by their ability to satisfy the moral and material aspirations of the community. Leading a basti, I contend, requires an everyday politics that balances the exercising of authority with the need to pay attention to the hearts and minds of residents. As I further demonstrated, however, neighbourhood politics largely reflect the interests of the male residents. Not only are young women and girls underrepresented in the political body of the basti, but they also face various forms of gender discrimination in their everyday lives. These include the threat of getting physically abused, raped or beaten up due to the insecure housing situation, the existence of public shame campaigns in cases of extramarital sexual affairs and the provision of only the most low-paid and menial work in the local informal economy. Furthermore, girls as young as six are often ‘staffed out’ to serve as housemaids. While the Kamlari system has been acknowledged and described recently by Giri (2010), I develop his analysis by arguing that it is largely an effect of neighbourhood politics. The practice persists, I suggest, because it reduces economic pressures on the individual household.

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Thus, I conclude by arguing that the Maoist attempt to capture state power has only partially empowered former bonded labourers. In unravelling these unintended consequences of the Maoist revolution, the chapter has sought to avoid the pitfalls of totalizing approaches that view the impact of a revolution on community formation as either empowering and unifying or destructive and destabilizing. This contrasts with much of the literature from the region, which often emphasizes how ordinary people have been victims of the Maoist revolution (e.g. Shah 2010), rather than how they have been able to gain some advantage from its destabilizing effects. In the following chapters, we will see how in Tikapur, the freed bonded labourers’ neighbourhood has become the base for collective political action undertaken by both the Freed Kamaiya Society (FKS) and local trade unions. Therefore, it is the ethnitized neighbourhoods out of which solidarities of class emerge and are expressed publicly.

Notes 1. 1.2 khatta = 406 sqm. 2. In the context of the western Terai, begari is not unusual. In the past, landlords used to rely on begari to develop local villages (LeComte-Tilouine 1998). Often, Kamaiya had to leave their usual activities at the bequest of the landlord and work for the development of the community. 3. Some of these contractors were Muslim, others Hindu. Muslim contractors met each Friday in a Muslim house in town for prayers. There was no mosque in Tikapur, but in January 2009 I witnessed the grand display of the Moharan festival in the town centre. 4. Stonecutters, who are directly employed by homeowners, were either Tharus or Dalits. 5. One exception to this rule was when the roof of a house was being plastered. On these occasions, labourers often had to work late into the night, and Krishna would sometimes hire a large number of additional unskilled workers to get the job done quickly. 6. This statement has to be judged against a wider body of literature on South Asian labour. Ever since the publication of Marc Holmstroem’s first monograph on South Indian factory labourers (1976), one dominant trend in the anthropology of South Asian labour has been to examine the nature of the divide between those employed in the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ economies (Holmstroem 1984; Parry 2009). While subsequent publications suggested a less dualistic and more graduated model of the division (Holmstroem 1984) or argued for the opposite (Parry 2009), little attention has been paid to the boundaries within the ‘informal’ workforce employed in small-scale, ‘unorganized’ sectors.

– Chapter 3 –

LEARNING TO PROTEST The Freed Kamaiya Movement

_ Introduction Maobadi aphano andolan ghardaichan, hami hamro andolan gardaichau. (Maoists fight their struggle, we fights ours.)

The above was a frequently quoted sentiment in Tikapur and the wider region, one that neatly described how activists of the Kamaiya movement viewed themselves as largely independent from the Maoist movement in the area. In fact, by the time I came to Tikapur, the Freed Kamaiya Society (FKS), one of the key organizations within the broad and complex Kamaiya movement, had already endured six years of struggle with the state. Thus, for most freed Kamaiya in town, the Kamaiya andolan (struggle) had been a large part of their life, and many had grown accustomed to participating in a variety of forms of collective action, including chakka jams (highway blockages), gheraos (municipality lockouts), rallies and public protests. Despite these spectacular undertakings, the Freed Kamaiya Society has been almost entirely ignored in contemporary sociological and anthropological scholarship on Nepal. Instead, much of what has been written on the Kamaiya movement has been focused on another Kamaiya organization; namely, BASE (Backward Education society) (see Odegaard 1999; Fujikura 2001, 2007; Guneratne 2002; Lakier 2007). Within this corpus of scholarly work, the writings of the Japanese anthropologist Tatsuro Fujikura (2001, 2007) have been particularly insightful and influential. BASE had been a pivotal organization in the Kamaiya liberation movement, and Fujikura’s portrayal

– 92 –

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of the struggle mapped out the emergence and growth of the Kamaiya movement from the perspective of BASE’s leadership from the 1990s up until around 2004. However, Fujikura’s work is problematic in the sense that his analytical framework remains centred within a state-society matrix, thus largely overlooking the relationships between the Maoist and Kamaiya movements. Fujikura is not alone in this analytical oversight; much of the emerging corpus of literature on social movements in South Asia tends to focus on the development of single protest movements (Robb 1993; Rangan 1996; Baviskar 1999; Aiyer 2007; Dorron 2008; Subramanian 2009), with little attention paid to the intersection between different protest movements. This chapter addresses this knowledge gap by examining the intersection between the Maoist movement and the Freed Kamaiya Society. In so doing, it poses some important questions. For example, what have been the Maoist attitudes towards different Kamaiya organizations historically? How does the FKS operate? Which kind of organizational practices and forms of collective action do members of the FKS engage in? How is struggle experienced and comprehended? And to what extent do the demands of the Kamaiya movement correspond with Maoist politics? These are some of the core themes considered in this chapter. The chapter begins by examining the history of the Kamaiya movement while paying close attention to Maoist attitudes towards different Kamaiya organizations. I argue that the Maoist’s policy towards different Kamaiya organizations provided political conditions that benefited the growth of the FKS but were detrimental to BASE. As a result of this policy, the Freed Kamaiya Society emerged as a powerful grass-roots movement of ex-debt bonded labourers. I then examine the FKS’s organizational practices and structure, before giving detailed ethnographic descriptions of two mass protests undertaken by the FKS; namely, a large rally in Dhangadhi and a militant protest in Tikapur. I go on to argue that these mass protests represented rituals of confrontation with the state that were intended to make the local government more responsive to the demands of the FKS. As I further explain, however, they were also a struggle for visibility. The penultimate section explores how this andolan against the state was experienced and comprehended by its participants. Finally, I suggest that the FKS confrontation with local state bodies resonated with the broader UCPN (Maoist) aim of reforming the local state, but while there was an overlap of interests, both struggles were seen as operating separately.

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Maoists’ Attitudes towards Kamaiya Organizations During the 1990s several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) representing the Kamaiya community in the western Terai region were established. These initially comprised Nepali organizations such as INSEC and BASE, which were later joined by international foundations such as MS Nepal, Save the Children US and Action Aid. As the work of Tatsuro Fujikura (2001, 2007) shows, BASE managed to become the frontrunner within this broad and complex movement during the 1990s. Led by the charismatic Tharu, Dilli Bahadur Chaudhary, the organization was transformed into a broad grass-roots movement, largely through the organization of informal educational classes in the villages of Kamaiya landlords. As Fujikura further reveals, BASE activists’ legal advocacy work for Kamaiya was central in the period preceding the latter’s liberation in 2001, later attracting large sums of cash from international aid organizations. Against this broader backdrop, the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj (Freed Kamaiya Society) was established by Mr Pashubathi Chaudhary and four Tharu friends on 22 January 2002 during the state of emergency.1 From its early days this group set out to organize ex-bonded labourers who lived on unregistered pieces of land, often near roads, rivers or forests. The five men decided to expand their organization to the five districts of the western Terai region; namely, Kanchanpur, Kailali, Bardiya, Banke and Dhang. Despite the risk of being caught up in local armed conflicts between Maoists and the State Security Forces, the group managed to set up committees in all five districts in the same year. Around the same time, the Maoists began substantially expanding their organization in the western Terai region. On 29 January 2003, the UCPN (Maoist) claimed the western Terai regions (excluding Dang district) as part of their Tharuwan Autonomous Province (TAP), governed by the Maoist-affiliated Tharuwan National Liberation Front (TNLF). For NGO leaders, the new ‘people’s government’ meant they had not only to register their organizations but also to pay ‘voluntary donations’ to the TNLF. As a result, as a report by Thapa and Subhedhi (2004) shows, many NGOs temporarily suspended their activities in the region or withdrew support for local chapters of their organizations. For example, the British development organization DfID reduced its purview from twenty-four districts to sixteen after the Maoist registration policy introduced on 16 July 2004. Similarly, the United States temporarily suspended its Peace Corps Nepal on 12 September 2004 (Thapa and Subhedhi 2004:

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44). How then did the rise of the Maoists affect the development of the FKS and BASE?

Attitudes towards the FKS For the Freed Kamaiya Society, the particular power configuration meant a peaceful coexistence alongside the Maoist organizations and underground rebels. When asked, none of the FKS founding members remembered any political interference by Maoists during their early years of organizing freed Kamaiya. There are two likely reasons for this. First of all, FKS politics mirrored the Maoist agenda and invoked the same ideology. This was evident when the FKS decided to change tactics in 2003, transforming from an organization that assisted state institutions in the rehabilitation of former Kamaiya into a radical association that pressured the state through land grabs. By 2003, public lands in the villages of Munuwa, Chuwa, Pratappur, Bauniya and Kotatulsipur in Kailali district were occupied, with other areas following until 2006. This radical plan to ‘give land to former Kamaiya’ mirrored the UCPN Maoist practice of seizing land in the area and distributing it to poor peasants. The second reason for Maoists tolerating the FKS relates to the fact that the founding members of the FKS were largely from bonded labour backgrounds. It would have been unthinkable for the UCPN Maoist to challenge an organization that enjoyed enormous popularity among the freed Kamaiya community, which the Maoists considered an important support base for their movement. As a result, the organization grew steadily, later obtaining support from various donor organizations, including Action Aid. The latter provided funds to the FKS, permitting it to organize several mass demonstrations throughout the district and to develop further pressure tactics against the state. These included a series of land grabs, highway blockages, municipality lockouts and even the preparation of a memorandum to the Prime Minister of Nepal through the Chief District Officers (CDOs) of the respective districts.

Attitudes towards BASE As the following quote demonstrates, since 2004 the relationship between the UCPN (Maoist) and BASE has been tense. On 26 June 2004, the Freed Kamaiya Society (FKS) organised a public meeting and warned the government that they would capture the public land if

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the government failed to rehabilitate them as soon as possible. They also expressed dissatisfaction with the development organisations and raised the questions of corruption within the organisations. They spoke against the seminars and other training programmes, which they have been conducting at expensive hotels, [and have taken] from the budget that [w]as obtained for the development of poor and oppressed Kamaiya. The president of the FKS strongly condemned the programmes and activities of local NGO particularly BASE. He said that they had planned to destroy the offices of BASE as it unjustly used the name Kamaiya to increase their earnings and personal benefits. “BASE has charged around Rs. 45,000 for 7 tshirts,” he added. The CPN (Maoist) exploded a bomb at the office of BASE of Kailali district on 28 June 2004. (Thapa and Subhedhi 2004: 18)

There are several reasons for the Maoists planting a bomb at the BASE office in Kailali. First, like the FKS members, Maoists perceived BASE as a corrupt organization that misused funds in the name of the Kamaiya community (Fujikura 2007). Second, for the Maoists, BASE had become an ideological ‘problem’, since it received funding from the American organization Save the Children (ibid.). Third, a WikiLeaks report from 2011 highlighted how BASE had been pressured by the Maoist-affiliated Tharuwan Liberation Front to provide funding for the Maoist organization. As BASE was reluctant to comply with these demands, relations before and after the Maoist bombing remained strained. In fact, as Fujikura outlines, BASE increasingly shifted its activities away from Kamaiya activities when the Maoist exerted pressure on the organization. This, in turn, provided more space for the FKS to grow and develop despite the Kamaiya movement having previously been dominated by BASE. To sum up, it can be said that with the consolidation of Maoist power in the western Terai region during the second half of the insurgency period, the Maoists created political conditions that favoured the FKS as opposed to BASE. This enabled the FKS to emerge and grow while the Maoists increasingly consolidated their linkages with the new movement. For example, in 2006 two leading FKS players – chairman Pashubathi Chaudhary and central committee member Saikdheja Chaudhary – became members of the UCPN Maoist. And in 2008 the UCPN Maoist and the FKS further strengthened their links when the former offered a CA seat to Saikdheja Chaudhary, which, as mentioned previously, she successfully won in the elections of 2008.2

Organizational Structure and Practices At the time of fieldwork, the Freed Kamaiya Society (FKS) was the largest organization of its kind in terms of membership. FKS chair-

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man Pashubathi Chaudhary estimated that the total general membership of the Society was ‘approximately 300,000’, most of whom live in Kamaiya camps in the western Terai region. While this figure seemed exaggerated, the exact number of general members across different districts was unknown. Moreover Pashubathi estimated that there were between three hundred and four hundred active representatives, with Kailali considered a stronghold of the FKS. The FKS had a strong hierarchical organization that was clearly understood by its members. Directives usually flow from the FKS central level down through district, regional and basti levels. In 2006 the FKS central committee established a women’s wing, the Mahila Kamaiya Samaj (Women Kamaiya Society), and a youth wing, the Yuva Kamaiya Samaj (Youth Kamaiya Society), both with the same hierarchical structure. These two organizations were supposed to communicate the problems of ‘women’ and ‘youths’ to the FKS (though both were largely inactive during the period of my fieldwork). In this respect, the FKS organizational structure mirrors that of the UCPN Maoist Party, which also founded a women’s wing (All Nepal Women’s Association Revolutionary) and a youth wing (Young Communist League). However, when asked, the chairman of the FKS, Mr Pashubathi Chaudhary, insisted that this organizational form was a product of his own creativity rather than an imitation of existing political structures. To maintain its wide organizational structure, the FKS undertook various practices that were intended to foster solidarity between its members and cohesion of the movement as a whole. The three most central features were a strongly centralized leadership, frequent meetings and institutionalized ‘awareness classes’, and the nurturing of contacts with NGOs and human rights groups and participation in external events to represent the movement to non-movement activists.

Strongly Centralized Leadership The five activists who founded the FKS in 2002 still serve today as leaders of the organization. As mentioned previously, Mr Pashubathi Chaudhary had acted as adheje (chairman) of the FKS since its formation. During this period he won two general assembly elections, the first held in 2005 near Tarathal, Gularia, and the other in May 2009 near Lumky, Kailali. Ms Moti Devi Chaudhary, being part of the FKS since its inception, has been committed to addressing issues of former Kamaiya and holds the post of vice chairman. Similarly, the co-

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founder, Nathu Ram Kathariya, is a central committee member of the FKS and chairperson of the district-level committee of Kailali district. As a result of this continuous leadership by its founding members, the decision-making process within the FKS had become strongly centralized. Whenever the central committee members of the FKS called for a district-wide or western Terai-wide rally, the regional and basti leaders followed, and local leaders discussed important decisions with the chairman of the FKS such as the organization of rallies. More generally, the leaders enjoyed respect within the wider exKamaiya community, at least from the point of view of those living in the bastis of Tikapur. The latter trusted that their leaders would make the right decisions for the Kamaiya movement to develop. However, the chairman of the FKS was also aware that he needed to visit many bastis and discuss local issues with regional and basti leaders in order to maintain the trust of the freed Kamaiya community as a whole. Pashubathi Chaudhary came often to visit the basti leaders at Ramnagar and Ganeshnagar, as Tikapur was an important strategic enclave for the Freed Kamaiya Society. Here, freed Kamaiya had captured many places in the urban terrain and their fight was particularly symbolic.

Frequent Meetings and Awareness Classes The FKS leadership used frequent meetings and ‘awareness classes’ as tools in their efforts to create cohesion and solidarity among different members. From the early days of the movement, FKS leaders organized meetings with freed Kamaiya and advised new members to meet regularly and discuss local issues. In Dhangadhi, the central and Kailali district-level committee met at the FKS office, which had been financed through Action Aid from 2006 onwards. Regional and VDC committees met within freed Kamaiya bastis. Their discussions reflected local conflicts, and often focused on how to secure access to potential donor organizations or state funds for the rehabilitation of ex-Kamaiya. In 2008 the FKS also organized awareness classes (again sponsored by Action Aid) within freed Kamaiya bastis. A limited number of FKS leaders were told by the central committee to visit other bastis and give these classes to local inhabitants, with the aim of raising the latter’s awareness of ‘problems’ within their community. For example, the leader of Ganeshnagar, Jagdhish, was told to pay frequent visits to the bastis near Vashini in order to instruct the inhabitants on the na-

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ture of their poverty, gendered violence and how to pressure the local government to provide scholarships by conducting rallies. However, these meetings were attended by only a small number of inhabitants (around twenty), which reflected the general view that awareness classes were of limited use in producing solidarity among members.

External Support and Participation in External Events The FKS relied on financial support from external donor organizations for both its administration and the organization of a variety of forms of collective action. There had therefore been a great need to cultivate relations with other groups and donors from the organization’s inception. It was not until 2005 that Action Aid representatives began funding the FKS.3 As well, leaders at the basti level sought material support by local donor organizations, as I described in Chapter 2. But seeking support did not only mean developing financial links; it also implied that leaders should represent the movement to local institutions. Jagdhish Prasad Dhangaura took this policy seriously, representing the FKS in meetings at the Tikapur Intellectual Society, a local civil society organization that aimed to enhance dialogue between different groups in the town, and by distributing an Action Aid-sponsored leaflet of the movement to the local police station, the Area Development Officer and staff members of the municipality. This policy was intended to present the FKS as a homogenous whole to the outside world, thereby strengthening the organization’s internal cohesion.

Staging Rituals of Confrontation with the State Throughout its six years of struggle, the FKS leadership had resorted to a variety of forms of public protest in order to make their demands heard by the Nepali state. As mentioned previously, these included chakka jams (highway blockages), lockouts of state government buildings,4 rallies through urban centres and public meetings. Of these various kinds of collective struggle, the ethnographic examples described in this section include a protest summit in Dhangadhi and a militant mass protest in Tikapur. These were the most dramatic and spectacular forms of FKS protest action that I witnessed during my fieldwork. Others included assembly programmes in public and in the bastis, which, in contrast, caused little disturbance to everyday

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life in town. These protest actions showed how the FKS used symbolic rituals of confrontation with the state in order to broadcast their demands to state officials. Importantly, in both cases the FKS mobilized large numbers of participants from different freed Kamaiya bastis, as high turnouts were crucial in demonstrating their ekta (unity) and shakti (power) in the region. While numbers undoubtedly matter in many protest movements across different cultural contexts (for Japan, see Turner 1995: 42; for Bolivia, see Lazar 2007), here the focus on numbers is a result of conflicting calculations regarding how many freed Kamaiya currently live in the western Terai. Although FKS leader Pashubathi Chaudhary estimated that around 300,000 freed Kamaiya were living in the western Terai, the government maintained that the number was in fact much lower, around 30,000.5 The FKS therefore emphasized large-scale participation in demonstrations to visualize their narrative on the Kamaiya population in the region. In what follows, I begin with an ethnographic description of one such demonstration; namely, the protest summit in Dhangadhi.

The Protest Summit in Dhanghadi In mid September 2008, the newly elected President of Nepal, Pushba Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda) of the UCPN (Maoist), announced publicly that he would solve the ‘Kamaiya issue’ by rehabilitating all former bonded labourers within the space of two weeks. By November 2008, however, according to FKS President Pashubathi Chaudhary, the government had only rehabilitated 14,500 out of approximately 32,000 freed Kamaiyas in Dang, Banke, Bardiya, Kailali and Kanchanpur. In October 2008, in reaction to this perceived failure, activists of the FKS hammered out a strategic plan of protest action in order to force the Maoist-led government to fulfil its promises. Rather than capturing further public property, as they had done in the past, they decided to organize five days of protest, which took place in November 2008. This decision was made with the backing of all members of the FKS central committee. As usual, the FKS leadership expected the lower ranks and general membership of the Freed Kamaiya Society to follow their decision. The plan involved the organization of several protest rallies in villages and semi-urban centres in Kailali, where freed Kamaiya camps were established for a period of four days. On the fifth day of action, protests culminated in a large protest demonstration in Dhangadhi, Kailali’s capital.

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My experience of this five-day long protest began at a rally in Vashini, where I met up with Daniram Chaudhary and Bishnu Chaudhary, two FKS leaders from Tikapur. A few hundred freed Kamaiya, mostly women, joined the FKS rally, chanting slogans for the rehabilitation of their people. After the demonstration in the centre of Vashini we returned to the basti, where the two leaders met up with Sunnita, a very tall female FKS leader, to discuss the rally with other freed Kamaiyas from the basti who they had befriended. The next morning, Daniram and Bishnu travelled by bicycle from Vashini to Hazimpur in order to help local leaders prepare for the next rally, a task that was repeated on each of the following three days. Then, on the fourth day, we all headed to Dhangadhi to make arrangements for the final large protest. Arriving in Dhangadhi at night, we went to an abandoned building in town that used to belong to the Nepali Congress Party. The building was a hive of activity, with scores of freed Kamaiya arriving from bastis all over Kailali. Some people were brought in by tractors, a few took buses and the rest cycled or even walked to get to the rally. Women prepared food in the evening for all participants, and many slept in the abandoned building at night. Some used their free time to cross over the open border and buy cheap rice in the neighbouring Indian town of Palia. But as there was no need to get to know the protest terrain, most of those taking part spent the night sleeping in the abandoned building. The following morning, after a nasta (breakfast) that consisted largely of cheap ‘beaten rice’, several thousand men, women and children from the FKS began to gather at a chowk (roundabout) in the centre of Dhangadhi. There they began their march along the main street towards the building of the CDO (Chief District Officer), where a large meeting with local politicians was being held. When the rally began, we walked in two lines through the centre of the town. Local FKS leaders were shouting slogans from a rickshaw fitted with a PA system, which the crowd repeated together. Significantly, there was no police presence, the constabulary being seen as impotent in the face of such a large gathering. After marching for thirty minutes through the town centre, the crowd finally arrived in front of the CDO’s building. Here participants left their organized ranks and began mingling and sitting down in front of the office. There was a podium from which the leader of the FKS, Pashubathi Chaudhary, and the chairperson of the Dhangadhi Town Development Committee, Tika Ram Sapkota (a Maoist party district committee member), were to address those gathered. Pashubathi began his speech by outlining the grievances of the FKS.

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He warned the CDO that a new wave of protests and agitation would occur if the local government bodies failed to effectively rehabilitate freed Kamaiya. Furthermore, he accused the local government of failing to compensate freed Kamaiya up until then due to their ‘conspiracy, fraudulent tendency and pretension’. He added that Nepal could not be described as a republic as long as Kamaiya had not been compensated. Sapkota welcomed Pashubathi’s speech, agreeing that the lands of the ‘bourgeoisie’ should be distributed to landless people. He added that the occupied airport in Tikapur should be given to freed Kamaiya, but accused Nepali Congress and UML representatives of blocking the land redistribution process. But despite Pashubathi’s threats and Tika Ram Sapkota’s promises, most of the participants at the rally did not seem particularly emotionally involved, in contrast to what one would expect for such a scenario. Instead, many of the ordinary participants listened calmly and remained seated during both speeches. Some moaned about the government’s promises, which had so far gone largely unfulfilled, while others speculated that the slowness of the rehabilitation process and the gradual distribution of land was intended to disrupt and weaken their movement. The leaders continued their speeches for another hour before the protest was drawn to a close. By this point most of the participants were tired, and many decided to go back home. Many had a long journey ahead of them. Strolling back through town, I met three Mukta Kamaiya from Tikapur. They had come to the rally in Dhanghadi by bicycle. It had taken about seven hours, as they had gathered firewood along the way. For those who had walked from Tikapur, they explained, the journey home would take some twelve hours.

Militant Protest in Tikapur Preparation One evening in June 2009, I was returning to Ramnagar basti having spent the day at a nearby brick factory. Kaluram, the owner of a chai shop located on one of the two roads cutting through the area, told me that the neighbourhood committee had met and announced a demonstration for the following day, which all households in the basti were requested to join. Unlike previous demonstrations, however, the committee had demanded that people prepare homemade lathis (wooden batons) and bring these to the rally. Kaluram told me that inhabitants of all other freed Kamaiya bastis in the town were

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also asked to take part in the rally, and he assumed that the following day all would join the rally. Kaluram’s neighbour Tullu Chaudhary, the owner of a local rickshaw repair shop who had joined us, added that the mood around the upcoming demonstration was serious; some of the basti inhabitants were afraid, while others, particularly the young, were eager to take part in order to demonstrate their strength to the leaders of local political parties. He warned me that I risked injury if I planned to join their rally. After more than a year of participating in their struggle, many considered me a comrade of sorts and were similarly worried about my safety.

Participation and Struggle The demonstration began the following morning around 10 am, with inhabitants of Ramnagar basti gathering near the burned-out control tower in the centre of their neighbourhood. There was an unusual amount of people present, indicating that each household had contributed more than one person on average to the rally. At around 11:30 am the first contingent of about forty people arrived from neighbouring Ganeshnagar; they were followed by many more from the town’s other bastis. The square next to the control tower slowly filled up. Most men and women had heard about the rally through their neighbourhood chaukidar (neighbourhood watchman), who had announced it while walking through the area the previous day. Many had brought homemade lathis to defend themselves in case of a clash with police. As usual, nobody seemed particularly concerned about the possibility of violence. Various individuals approached me to explain what they planned to do during the next few hours and what they hoped to achieve from the day’s action. Tulsi Chaudhary, an older resident and one of several guruwars (Tharu priests) living in the basti, explained the plan. Today was the annual public discussion of the municipality’s financial budget, which took place in front of the municipality building; by demonstrating their shakti to the general public, the freed Kamaiya hoped to force local politicians to provide more financial resources for the development of their bastis. The previous year the Kamaiya had been represented by Bishnu Chaudhary, the leader of nearby Ganeshnagar basti. Despite his lobbying work for the community at the previous budget discussion, he only managed to obtain 1.4 lakh for the development of six different Kamaiya bastis in the town. This, according to Tulsi, was generally considered insufficient, and the community as a whole demanded 10 lakh for the development of all bastis.

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Others talked about the importance of having a large number of participants at this event. They expected several hundred freed Kamaiya at the rally, a demonstration of unity that would convince the Tikapur Town Development Committee and local political parties of their urgent need for basic infrastructure. Dipendra, one of the rickshaw drivers from Ramnagar, who I knew, came with a lantern in order to ‘give light to the politicians’. Two other young men approached me to show off their homemade weapon: a wooden rod with metal spikes. They wanted to be prepared in case the Kamaiya decided to ‘lathi charge’ the politicians. This kind of talk characterized the morning’s discussions, and continued as the protestors began marching through town towards the municipality building at around 1 pm. I later learned that around the same time as the Kamaiya rally was getting underway a contingent of Maoist cadres and supporters had begun a separate protest at the inauguration ceremony of the municipality. The group gathered in front of a colourful tent where local politicians and municipality staff members were supposed to present the yearly budget to the public. Held back from the politicians by a chain of armed police, the Maoists were waving black flags at the chief guest at the programme, the Minister of State for Energy, Mr Chandra Singh Bhatterai. As Bhatterai was alongside people from the Nepali Congress Party, the local Maoist cadres and supporters felt cheated. According to them, one of the Maoist Constituent Assembly members should have been invited instead. Thus, every five minutes the Maoists tried to interrupt the programme by shouting a variety of slogans and waving their black flags in protest. Among the most common chants were ‘down with the liar government’ and ‘the government is a puppet government’, which implied that the current UML-led government had been installed by the imperialist powers of India and the United States. A potent mix of tensions filled the air, and many of the civil society spectators expected something to happen. When the Maoists began throwing pieces of gravel and even their shoes over the armed police line towards the chief guest, the organizers interrupted the programme. At this point, the Maoists collapsed the tent where the event was taking place. Instead of attempting to defuse the situation, the chief of the armed police ordered a charge of the Maoists and clashes soon ensued. At the same time, however, the four hundred freed Kamaiya protesters arrived outside the municipality gates. On seeing this, as the area administration officer later explained to me, the police chief panicked and fired two tear gas canisters towards the Kamaiya community.

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As a result of police actions, a fierce street battle broke out between the police and freed Kamaiya, lasting for half an hour. The former attempted to protect the politicians and the chief guest inside the compound of the municipality by forming a police chain, while a group of a few hundred members of the FKS attacked the police furiously by throwing stones and bricks that they found on the street. The armed police contingent, being outnumbered but well protected with helmets and shields, tossed the stones back at the protesters. When a group of young men and women prized open the gate of the compound with an iron rod, a mass of FKS activists swarmed in. Brandishing stones from a nearby construction site together with their homemade weapons, the FKS members began to form a line to confront the police. Worried that my FKS friends would be hurt, I ran inside the municipality compound, positioning myself between the armed police and the FKS members. I had the idea to protect my Kamaiya friends by filming the clash. However, less than a minute later the police began hitting the FKS members and beating them with their lathis. At this moment I escaped, though I was nearly hit by a hail of bricks tossed from outside the compound towards the armed police. Unscathed, I ran back out of the compound. Following the clash, the freed Kamaiya regrouped in a field near the bazaar, where everyone was busy trying to make sense of what had just happened. Journalists soon appeared and began interviewing some of the freed Kamaiya leaders, who explained that several of us had been seriously injured in the clash. Together with some of the FKS activists, I rushed to the local hospital in order to find out who had been brought there. We found Kalu, a carpenter from Ramnagar, who was one of seven freed Kamaiya who had been severely beaten up. I also met Netra Adhikari, a Maoist friend, whose head was bandaged following a violent police beating. When I headed back to the city centre, many of the freed Kamaiya had begun to move back towards the municipality compound, where a two-day lockout of the main building was about to start. Local politicians had apologized to Maoist leaders and the FKS activists for attacking some of their members and agreed to begin negotiations with both parties. Tired and shocked, I decided to return to my house to rest.

Further Actions Over the next two days Maoists and FKS members would organize additional actions. The UCPN (Maoist) announced a one-day, districtwide bandh (closing down of the market, all businesses, schools and

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state institutions) to protest against police violence. To enforce this, Maoist cadres drove around the centre of town in a rickshaw doublechecking that businessmen, schools and state institutions had followed their command. Only a few shopkeepers dared to disobey them, leaving their shutters half open to continue their business. The FKS leaders from the basti, however, were unhappy with the violence at the Maoist protest of the previous day. As one FKS leader told me the next morning, ‘It was wrong to hold our andolan when the Maoists had their andolan at the same time. We still have to learn a lot.’ Others were less upset about the timing of their demonstration than the attack by the armed police. After a meeting between leaders and active members in Bhulai Chaudhary’s chai shop, the FKS decided to continue their andolan by holding a second rally. Again, members from all bastis gathered in Ramnagar before marching through town, wielding their homemade lathis. They followed the same route through town until they arrived inside the municipality compound. The demonstrators came by the hundreds, and several leaders gave speeches in small circles. The activities in the afternoon followed the same pattern. In the evening, a small contingent of FKS activists stayed at the municipality compound, while the rest returned home. The following day they returned to find FKS leaders negotiating with the local area development commissioner. The FKS had decided to propose a four-point programme. They demanded not only more financial assistance for the basti, but also compensation in the form of land, free healthcare and free access for ex-Kamaiya children to higher education. However, after a heated discussion in the morning with local politicians and the local area development commissioner, they decided to cancel the programme. The local state officials claimed that their rehabilitation was a national issue and that there was little that they could do for them. The meeting ended around midday, at which point the leaders returned to the municipality building to announce the results of the andolan. None of their demands had been fulfilled, they admitted, but the politicians had promised to settle the issue of their rehabilitation in the near future.

Struggle for Visibility Given that the protests described above were staged in front of state officials in urban centres, media images of thousands of freed Kamaiya marching through these towns played a crucial role in the negotiations with state officials at the local and national levels. While

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a complete analysis of the local and national press coverage of both events – and of the FKS struggle more generally – is beyond the scope of this chapter, suffice it to say that descriptions of mass protests by freed Kamaiya rarely made it beyond the local print media. The struggle of the FKS remained largely localized, and was neglected by the major media outlets in Kathmandu. Without question, this was related to the dominant media discourse in Nepal at the time, which tended to portray the Terai as a dangerous hotbed for criminal groups. As a result, both the peaceful mass protest in Dhangadhi and the militant protest in Tikapur received little attention, with the news spotlight falling instead on the emergence of criminal outfits in the region. In the remainder of this section I give a short description of my own experiences in order to illustrate how the Maoists attempted to support the freed Kamaiya in their struggle for visibility. At around 8 pm of the first day of militant protest in Tikapur, I received a phone call from Saikdheja Chaudhary, the Constituent Assembly Member for the UCPN Maoist. She asked me to come over to the Maoist office in town and bring along the video I shot of the pitched street battle between armed police and freed Kamaiya. Curious about her intentions, I immediately set off on my motorbike through the empty streets towards the UCPN Maoist Party office. Upon arrival, I spotted five Maoists waiting for me beyond the office. There was the YCL district leader in charge, Akanda, along with Gorav Lohani, Saikdheja and another Maoist member, who I did not know. When they spotted me they joked about my unexpected popularity – ‘Comrade Michael, you were brave today in joining the battle with the police; now everyone knows on which side you stand’ – before changing to a more serious subject. ‘Can you show us the video of the struggle between police and freed Kamaiya?’ Lohani asked. I took out the small silver video camera and we all began watching the tape. When he saw the scene of the armed police beating the Kamaiya, Lohani asked me to stop the tape. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘could you please get a screenshot and send it to us? We want to publish it in our national newspaper to show the people of Nepal how the armed police in Tikapur beat up civilians.’ I nodded my head: ‘Of course, I can.’ I then left the group and drove back home. Together with a friend I spent almost two hours trying to get a screenshot from the video. Since my computer did not have an appropriate programme I was unsuccessful, and finally had to concede, somewhat embarrassed, that I would be unable to send the photo to the national Maoist newspaper as requested. I phoned Saikdheja and asked if any of the other Maoists had a computer programme that would allow me

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to get the screenshot. She told me no, thanked me for my support and hung up. This ethnographic vignette illustrates that the absence of freed Kamaiya in newspapers and journals was related not only to assumed hegemonic media production, but also to a basic lack of appropriate technology with which to produce these reports in a short time span. In this context, the tactic of organizing mass protests in urban centres became all the more meaningful, as it is through such endeavours – as opposed to, say, sophisticated media production – that the Kamaiya struggle was made visible to state officials.

Making Sense of their Andolan I begin this section with a quote from the Dhangadhi-based Kamaiya activist Yagya Raj Chaudhary, who works mainly for BASE. During the first Kamaiya movement it was the NGOs who took the initiative and mobilized the Kamaiyas for the movement. But this time the ex-Kamaiyas have involved themselves. Now they have become empowered and know that they can fight for their rights. The government ought to solve the Kamaiya rehabilitation problem also to avoid that they only in frustration choose sides in the conflict and join the Maoists. Most of the former Kamaiyas feel that they have nothing to lose, and they are well aware of their rights not fulfilled, so that might very well be a reaction. The government has to understand this aspect. (Yagya Raj Chaudhary, quoted in Action Aid (2006)).

The ethnographic descriptions of mass protests in Dhangadhi and Tikapur presented previously illustrate his core argument: former bonded labourers expressed their discontent about the state’s attitude towards them through a range of forms of collective action. They denounced the passivity of the local state towards their situation, while at the same time their urban protests undermined the symbolic order from which the legitimacy of the authority of the local state was derived. Therefore, it is important to highlight how the FKS in Dhangadhi sought to achieve its aim by organizing nonviolent mass protests, while in Tikapur the same association chose to engage in what the anthropologist Jeffrey Juris calls ‘performative violence’ (Juris 2005) in order to achieve similar ends. But unlike in Juris’ description of militant black block activists at the anti-G8 summit in Genoa in 2001, FKS activists used this tactic not to ‘capture media attention’ (2005: 414), but rather to force local state institutions to be more responsive to their demands. It was clear to the ex-Kamaiya leaders that they had obtained their rights at the national level through

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the Kamaiya Abolition Act of 2001, but the local state had been slow to acknowledge this. As FKS leader Pashubathi Chaudhary explained to me, ‘the state here in Kailali is blind in front of us, so we need to force them through action’. But why had the state been so slow to implement the rehabilitation and resettling of freed Kamaiya? Let us consider some of the common explanations given by the FKS leaders. First, it was clear to many that part of the problem was that the local government continued to be dominated by Brahmin and Chhetri bureaucrats whose families came from the hill areas of Nepal. As Tharus, Kamaiyas, who are classified in Nepal as a matwali (liquor-drinking) category of mid-rank caste, had a significantly lower caste ranking. Hence, caste discrimination was one reason given as to why the state remained ‘blind’ or apathetic with regard to the Kamaiya community. A second explanation concerned bureaucratic incompetence. During the insurgency period, as one leader told me, bureaucrats were reluctant to visit landlords’ houses to register freed Kamaiya. They were fearful of being caught up in the conflict between Maoists and the state, and so for the most part failed to fulfil the government’s plan to compensate freed Kamaiya. It was said that even when they came to the landlords’ houses, bureaucrats often sided with the owners and cared little about conducting the proper registration process to identify how many freed Kamaiya lived on the land. Third, it was clear to the more active leaders that part of their problem had been the political rivalry between representatives of the District Land Reform Office (DLRO) and the District Forest Office (DFO). Both state institutions had a vested interest in accusing the other of non-cooperation in the process of finding suitable land for freed Kamaiya, as neither wished to distribute public land under their command. The FKS struggle was thus a struggle over structural inequalities (e.g. caste discrimination, bureaucratic indifference, urban exclusion), but several questions remained. Why did so many freed Kamaiya participate in these mass protests? Why continue if the struggle had been going on for over six years already? What motivated the former bonded labourers to fight for a common cause despite the risk to their safety, as illustrated in the case of the militant demonstrators in Tikapur? The answers are multiple and readily available. As mentioned previously, the general policy of the FKS was that each freed Kamaiya household had to provide at least one individual as ‘manpower’ for collective action. Although the extent to which FKS basti leaders implemented this rule remains unknown, it appears that many of the general membership had been coerced into participating in the FKS

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actions. However, my interviews with those who participated in these events suggested otherwise. In truth, many participated not only because of their unjust and unfair treatment by the local state agents, but also because they were aware of their right to obtain a compensation package from the government and therefore felt cheated. Sometimes people talked about the ‘blindness’ of the government, and many indicated that this had been a critical stimulus for the struggle since the beginning. Others claimed that the government was ‘still treating us like bonded labourers’, while talking about their commitment using idioms that reflected the Maoist discourse on the necessity of ‘liberation’ for poor people. For example, one young FKS activist told me that there was not a lot of choice, ‘Either we win our andolan, or we will die a thousand times every day because of poverty.’ As another woman explained, ‘The Maoists showed us how to fight. Now we fight our own struggle.’ For the leaders of the FKS, the six years of struggle had helped them to become more assertive and articulate. As Daniram, a leader from Ramnagar, told me in an interview, ‘Before joining the FKS I was very shy. I didn’t know how to speak in public. Now I talk in front of hundreds.’ Forging new friendships beyond the boundary of one’s own basti seemed to be another motivation for the continued struggle. Bishnu, a leader from Ganeshnagar basti, attested to this: ‘Like Daniram, previously I didn’t know about the rights of my community. Through the FKS I learned our rights and I made many friends.’ For many of the ordinary members within the FKS, being part of a broader network of freed Kamaiya also provided an element of pride and excitement. Unlike the old days, when NGOs advocated on their behalf, they now had their own leaders. Many noted how the FKS provided shakti to the freed Kamaiya community. Many hoped that through their CA member, Saikdheja Chaudhary, they would be able to gain better bargaining powers at higher political levels. But there were also doubts among members about the FKS. In the privacy of their homes in the bastis of Tikapur, some complained about the Society’s leaders. As one middle-aged man told me, ‘The FKS is a society of leaders and followers and its leaders are no different from other corrupt organizations.’ Nevertheless, this kind of criticism was fairly rare. However successful the FKS has been for its members, its representation to outsiders (including myself) as a movement for all exbonded labourers was clearly overstated. In reality, it advocated only for those living in the freed Kamaiya bastis under its control, and even within those bastis the everyday politics of FKS leadership privileged

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male interests to the detriment of women (see Chapter 2). Those who lived outside of the Kamaiya camps, toiling in brick factories, for example, or dwelling on unregistered pieces of land, had benefited little from the FKS struggle.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on the history, organization and urban mobilization of the Freed Kamaiya Movement, a movement of formerly bonded labourers in western Nepal. Since its initiation in 2002, the Freed Kamaiya Society has prospered largely because the Maoist movement – which led a guerrilla war against the Nepali State until 2006 – tolerated its activities during the period of the insurgency, and later ‘captured’ the movement through the provision of strong political support immediately after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. As a result, the contemporary Freed Kamaiya Society became the frontrunner within the broader Kamaiya movement, and emerged as a powerful organization that undertook repeated and concerted collective action.6 This chapter has given ethnographic descriptions of some of the most dramatic actions that were witnessed during my fieldwork in the period between 2008 and 2009, which included a mass demonstration in the municipality in Dhangadhi and a violent militant protest against politicians at the local municipality building in Tikapur. They suggest that, notwithstanding the threat of police violence, the Freed Kamaiya Society was very active in pressing the state to adequately resettle its community and support their demands. Ironically, however, this strong activism has declined since 2009 for a variety of reasons. First, some of the occupational groups that formed the base of the movement have been partially resettled by the government. With different communities being resettled, the willingness to support further demonstrations, road blocks and government lockouts largely declined among the broad base of the movement. Second, after the Maoist government came to power, it negotiated several deals with the central leadership of the FKS between 2009 and 2011, in which the Kamaiya leadership finally agreed to accept a sum of 1.5 lakh in cash as compensation from the government, instead of the 5 khatta of land that had been previously promised. This led to the general mistrust of the Kamaiya leadership by its base, as the sum of 1.5 lakh was often too little to buy sufficient land in urban areas due to rapidly rising property prices. Finally, after the 2013 elections in which the old ruling party of the Nepali Congress (NC) regained

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power, the top leaders of the movement were forced to limit their agitation due to the fear of police violence. The NC was perceived as having a less lenient position towards protests, and the Kamaiya movement, like other social movements in Nepal, saw the ‘andolan’ period as over. Nevertheless, the potential for revolt by the freed Kamaiya movement continues to exist. By engaging in various forms of collective action, its leaders have learned how to protest against the state and have become more articulate and self-confident in the formulation and presentation of their demands. While participation in FKS events remains a rarity for the majority of ordinary freed Kamaiya, such actions do provide a source of pride and dignity that enables people to cope with the uncertainties and insecurities of their everyday lives. From a Marxist perspective, however, even the re-emergence of a strong activism by the FKS would remain limited in its ability to challenge the contradictions of contemporary capitalism. This is because FKS protests continue to target only state institutions, such as the local municipality building, the land reform office or the office of the CDO (Chief District Officer). At the risk of overgeneralizing, one could argue that the FKS deliberately selects weak targets and limits its demands to more land for more ex-bonded labourers. What it appears to neglect, however, are the strong targets such as the business elite, who control the everyday labour relations in town. In essence, the actions of the FKS mirror the politics of the Nepali Maoist movement more generally. It embraces capitalism by neglecting labour issues, but aims to eradicate the old ‘feudal’ institutions by providing access to land, which is not only crucial for obtaining a livelihood, but also remains an important local cultural symbol of political mobilization that the movement has to acknowledge. Moreover, the chapter has shown how the political mobilization process of the FKS remained highly gendered. By founding a separate women’s chapter, the FKS acknowledged the structural forms of exclusion that women experienced in Tikapur. However, this strategy remained problematic in at least two ways. First, this strategy has not been very successful, as the activities of the FKS women’s chapter remain limited and women have not gained significant political clout within the movement, as the previous chapter on basti politics has shown. Second, this political strategy structurally separated the suffrage that freed Kamaiya women experience from becoming a central demand within the Freed Kamaiya Society. In this chapter I have discussed the Freed Kamaiya Society, a political patron of the ordinary freed Kamaiya in Tikapur, and high-

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lighted this organization’s relationship with the controlling force in the region, the Maoist movement. As previous chapters have shown, however, the FKS is just one of the organizations struggling to improve the lives of ex-Kamaiyas. In the following chapter I will discuss others; namely, local non-Maoist trade unions, and will again attempt to situate these within the broader context of the Maoist movement in Tikapur.

Notes 1. The Nepali government declared the state of emergency on 26 October 2001. 2. Saikdheja was a member of the Women Children and Social Welfare Committee and Committee for Determining the Base of Cultural and Social Solidarity in the Constituent Assembly in Kathmandu. 3. AAN supports the FKS without any interference in the political decision-making process of the organization. 4. For example, in Tikapur FKS activists locked out the local municipality building for a period of two days in May 2008 in order to press for the allocation of public land to their community. Though I followed this event closely, its analysis is beyond the scope of this chapter. 5. For a detailed discussion regarding conflicting estimates of the number of freed Kamaiya, see Fujikura (2007). 6. In a now classic monograph, Starn (1999) offered a detailed analysis of the peasant-led rondas campesinas movement in Northern Peru. He describes cases of serious ronda opposition to the spread of the Peruvian Maoist Movement (ibid.: 142–44), which stand in stark contrast to the material presented in this chapter. The lack of serious opposition to the Maoist movement was perhaps related to their political clout, but more likely had to do with the fact that many FKS members benefited from their presence in the area.

The Maoist victory rally arriving

Successful Maoist candidates

– 115 –

A freed Kamaiya leader congratulating the Maoist candidates

Maoist symbolism on an electricity pole near the highway – 116 –

The building of the former People’s Court

The bombed Agricultural Development Bank in Tikapur – 117 –

Yoga Shivir, November 2008

The Tikapur town festival from outside – 118 –

A mud hut in Ramnagar

Basti meeting near the former airport tower – 119 –

A protest march through town

Entering the municipality gate – 120 –

Homemade weapons for self defence

– 121 –

Women carrying bricks in the brick factory

Brick burners in their free time near Baramati – 122 –

– Chapter 4 –

MAOISTS AND LABOUR UNIONS IN TOWN

_ Introduction On the morning of 1 June 2009, I visited Ganeshnagar, one of five freed Kamaiya neighbourhoods in Tikapur. At the settlement, established in the forests at Tikapur’s campus area, I sat together with its adheje (leader), Jagdhish, on a porch of the main square, discussing his vision for bikas (development) while two young Tharu women prepared our nasta (breakfast) at a hearth. For Jagdhish, the fact that his community was now living near the town centre was a major step forward, since it allowed freed Kamaiyas to obtain work and earn an income. In the middle of our conversation, Jagdhish’s 10-year-old son, Daswara, dropped by to give his father a letter that had just been delivered to their home in the neighbourhood. The letter was from the local labour organization CUPPEC (Central Union of Plumbers, Painters, Electrical & Construction Workers of Nepal) and called for participation in a CUPPEC rally scheduled for the same day. Curious, I enquired: ‘Will you go and join the rally?’ Jagdhish replied: ‘Yes, we [the freed Kamaiya] will go. Sometimes the union asks us to join their rally and we go.’ ‘What about the Maoists?’ I asked. Seemingly disinterested, he answered: ‘They don’t have a union, but support us too.’ I didn’t get much further in my enquiries, as Jagdhish promptly changed the topic, and before long the conversation had turned once again to his hopes for bikas and the future of the region. While there is a rich historical literature that investigates the growth and development of the Indian labour movement (Chakrabarty 1989; Chandavarkar 1994; Joshi 2003; Breman 2004; Bear 2007: 91–107), little has been written about its Nepali counterpart. To date, apart from – 123 –

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NGO-sponsored reports on its history (Dahal 2005; ICG 2010; GEFONT 2010) or journalistic reports (BBC 2004), it has been subjected to scarcely any critical and ethnographically informed analysis.1 Moreover, there is hardly any information about how the trade union movement fared in the aftermath of the Maoist insurgency between 1996 and 2006. This chapter thus ventures into new terrain by examining the emergence of a labour union movement in Tikapur that is marked by antagonism between the state and Maoists. It situates this history of labour politics within an environment characterized by radical shifts in the balance of power, and in so doing addresses the following questions: How has the existence of the Maoist movement in the area affected the political mobilization of labour in Tikapur? Do local Maoist cadres tolerate the organization of labour by new trade unions? If so, is this part of their broader politics, which also involves forging alliances with other groups advocating on behalf of the poor? And to what extent have specific segments of the town’s population benefited from these processes, particularly the formerly bonded labourers’ community who have ‘occupied’ sites within the city? By seeking answers to these questions, this chapter makes several more general contributions to the sociology of labour in South Asia. First, it comments on a popular discourse that portrays the relationship between Maoists and non-Maoist affiliated unions as hostile. In Nepal, journalists and labour and human rights activists have highlighted the antagonistic relationship between the Maoist movement and other labour unions. While there is a range of perspectives, the dominant view has been of an antagonistic relationship between the two. For example, in 2009, the International Trade Union Confederation released a study citing an incident where seven GEFONT leaders were brutally attacked by members of the Maoist All Nepal Federation of Trade Unions (ANFTU) at a Pokhara noodle factory after demanding the reinstatement of twelve dismissed workers. The same report adds that ‘[s]imilar cases occurred at Trvinevi Textiles Weaving Unit in Bara (eight workers seriously injured during a strike to demand the payment of their salaries on time) and at Himalayan Snacks and Noodles in Banepa’ (ITUC 2009: 1). Alternatively, the Maoist movement has been depicted as undermining existing union structures, as in Mallika Shakya (2010). Both representations rely on the assumption that the Maoist movement regards other labour unions as unwanted competitors. This chapter represents a notable counterpoint to this more general picture by demonstrating the peaceful coexistence of Maoists and unions in Tikapur.

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As well, this chapter contributes to three more general strands of literature on the sociology of labour in South Asia. First, it complements ethnographic work that documents unionization processes within the informal economy. De Neve’s (2005: 137–69) work in Bhavani, Tamil Nadu, India, describes how weavers employed in informal workshops have managed to set up a union. Through repeated, organized union actions they managed to secure annual bonuses in cash rather than the traditional veshti (loincloth) and tundu (towel) (ibid.: 146), to increase wages by 15 per cent (ibid.: 148) and, in some cases, to become master weavers (ibid.: 150). Similarly, the situation described in this chapter suggests that in recent years freed Kamaiya employed in Tikapur’s construction and rickshaw ‘industries’ have been able to improve their situation by engaging in union actions. Second, the history of the trade union movement in Tikapur shows how expressions of class-based solidarity have emerged through the strategic coming together of ethnically homogenous neighbourhoods in labour strikes. The ethnographic material presented in this chapter shows how unions draw upon ethnically homogenous neighbourhoods of freed Tharu kamaiyas, which not only have a strong ethnic identity but are now developing a class identity as well. Hence, the material presented demonstrates a case where ethnicity provides the platform for developing a class identity, in spite of class overlapping with ethnicity. This is in line with the Indian revisionist labour historiography (Chandavarkar 1994; Joshi 2003), which cautions against accepting uncritically the popular myth of the ‘making’ of a working class. Moreover, the chapter contributes to an emerging, though dispersed, literature on the role of ethnicity in trade unionism in South Asia (Parry 2009; Parry and Struempell 2008; Subramanian 2010). Finally, the ethnographic findings also suggest an absence of women workers’ voices in Tikapur’s trade union organizations. While this may be unsurprising for those familiar with the history of trade unions in neighbouring India (see Fernandez 1997: 109–31; De Neve 2005: 156–58), it raises serious questions about the extent to which the new trade unionism in Tikapur can be considered representative, given that a significant portion of the workers in the informal economy are women. A corollary is that the UCPN Maoist agenda to empower women (Pettigrew and Shneiderman 2004) has largely failed when it comes to female representation in the local trade union organizations. In what follows, I open the discussion with a brief description of the history of Nepal’s labour movement and the emergence of Maoistaffiliated labour unions from the late 1990s onwards. Against this

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backdrop, I then focus on the history and politics of labour unionization in Tikapur. Here, the Maoist movement and the non-Maoistaffiliated labour unions co-reside within the boundaries of the town in a symbiotic relationship. I highlight how, while Maoists claimed to represent labour in town, their actions focused largely on the protection of a specific segment of Tikapur’s labour force; Maoists offered political patronage to freed Kamaiya neighbourhoods but neglected other labour issues. This political vacuum surrounding the representation of labour was instead filled by two non-Maoist-affiliated labour unions that emerged in the wake of the insurgency period. I document the development of these groups and look at the various forms of collective action they employed, which included strikes, the mediation of labour disputes, monthly union meetings and the institutionalization of collective bargaining procedures. I suggest that an important effect of the new trade unionism in town was the incorporation of freed Kamaiya – and Tharu more generally – into the unions’ power structures, as discussed in the final section.

A Short History of Trade Unionism and the Rise of Maoist Unions in Nepal A strike at the Biratnagar Jute Mills at Biratnagar in March 1947 is widely heralded as the birth of the Nepali labour movement. Historical records written by labour unionists do not exist before this date. Inspired by the success of the Indian trade union movement, some of the Biratnagar Jute Mills workers demanded to have their working day cut from twelve hours to eight and asked for subsidies for food and clothing and a wage increase (GEFONT 2010). Organizing marches to articulate their grievances, the emerging movement was soon ‘brutally suppressed’ and most of its leaders arrested after the mills’ general manager appealed in writing to Prime Minister Rana (ibid.). While there are no comprehensive accounts of the emergence and transformation of the Nepali labour movement in the immediate aftermath of the Biratnagar Jute Mills strike, the limited literature on the topic suggests that the Nepali state was largely hostile to labour union activism until 1990. Although various labour unions were formed after the end of the Rana regime in 1950, unions were banned when King Mahendra took power in 1960 (Dahal 2005; GEFONT 2010). Throughout this period, union activists were forced to operate largely in secret, as all political organizations and forms of

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activism were banned. Nevertheless, union activism continued informally until the 1970s, when the government relaxed the existing restrictions (GEFONT 2010). For example, Upadhyaya notes that the unionization of workers in the construction sector ‘started in [the] 1970s while the government was constructing the East-West Highway. Some 25,000 workers of the East-West Highway had launched [a] general strike demanding immediate settlement of their grievances, which later helped to strengthen [the] newly launched National Federation – NIWU – Nepal Independent Workers Union’ (Upadhyaya 2006: 10). However, the Nepali labour movement only gained significant momentum after the Jana Andolan (People’s Movement) and the establishment of multiparty democracy in 1990. The Trade Union Act of 1992 provided a legal platform for the registration of confederation, federation and enterprise-level unions. This prompted the registration of various trade unions from 1993 onwards (Dahal 2005), with two trade union confederations – GEFONT and Nepali Trade Union Congress (NTUC) – emerging as the new major players in Nepal’s labour union landscape. From 2000 onwards, however, ‘violent Maoist conflicts, closing of many enterprises, the successive government’s bias towards capital, declaration of the state of emergency and suspension of civil rights (also workers’ rights)’ (Dahal 2005: 2) contributed to the decline of the trade union movement in Nepal. It was only after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between Maoists and the state that trade union organizations began to expand their membership base, with new trade unions, once more, registering across the country (ICG 2010: 9). Against this general backdrop, Maoist-affiliated trade unions have been established since the late 1990s. By October 2005, the ANFTU included ten Maoist-affiliated unions.2 In revolutionary parlance, these organizations were classified as janvargiya sangathan (people’s class organizations) and were part of the Maoists’ broader political strategy to build a united revolutionary front, modelled primarily on the Chinese revolutionary system. For the Maoist leaders, as a report by the International Crisis Group highlights, collaborations with other organizations of the united front were a key ‘instrument of struggle and embryo of the new power’ (ICG 2010:10) and ought to bring together ‘anti-feudal and anti-imperialist patriotic, democratic and leftist forces as an instrument for developing class struggles’. As the report further highlights, ‘[t]he principle function of such a front should be to develop struggles on the basis of people’s problems that would gradually break the [limit of the] system. At the initial stages,

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the effective form of such a front would be confined to rural areas and the local level’ (ibid.: 10). While the revolutionaries initially focused on organizing the rural peasantry, after the second Maoist National Assembly in 2001, they broadened their strategy to include the urban proletariat (Shakya 2010). Mallika Shakya, who reported on the garment industry in Kathmandu based on fieldwork at the Arya factory in Nepal in 2002, observed: Maoist cadres entered often pretending to be unskilled or semi-skilled workers. Once in, they easily proselytised the workers against the existing trade unions. Workers took little time to switch sides and the mainstream political parties – Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist (U/UML) – were not able to counter this. (2010: 10)

Increasing their reach across industries, particularly in areas around Kathmandu, the ANFTU soon acquired a reputation for being violent and militant in character. In 2005, the International Crisis Group gave the following assessment: It [the ANFTU] was initially said to be behind scattered incidents of extortion, vandalism and bomb explosions but it gained a wider reputation in September 2004 when it forced the shutdown of twelve major businesses over labour conditions and complaints about the foreign capital and exploitive multinational corporations. It enforced its strike with a minor bomb attack on the grounds of the five-star Soaltee Hotel, which hurt the tourism sector and also served as a symbolic attack against the royal family, which is closely linked to the hotel. (ICG 2005: 11)

The same report suggested that the Maoist trade unions not only aimed to organize the proletariat but also ‘played an important role in collecting “donations” from industrialists and businessmen in Kathmandu, Biratnagar and Birgunj’ (ICG 2005: 11). While there are not many serious scholarly investigations into the veracity of such allegations, popular newspapers reported further incidents of Maoist union violence and corruption. In a widely reported case from 2008, around fifty members of the Maoist-affiliated All Nepal Hotel and Restaurant Workers’ Union (ANHRWU) entered the premises of Himal Media and physically assaulted its employees after the publishing house had printed stories accusing the Maoist unions of extortion in cases where industrialists refused to pay voluntary ‘donations’. Rimal notes that by 2006: [The Maoists] declared a new ‘war’ on trade unions in the mainstream with the following libel published in their mouthpiece: ‘A decisive struggle should

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be waged against those who claim themselves as genuine and amass dollars from foreign NGOs and INGOs in the name of the workers … [and] who collaborate with capitalists against the interest of the workers’. (Rimal 2008: 2)

Soon after, at the meeting of the Special Central Command of the ANFTU held on 11 September 2006, the Maoists ‘decided that within one month, 100,000 memberships will be distributed … The strategic goal and objective is to “wipe out” GEFONT within four months’ (Rimal 2008: 2). This led to a series of physical attacks on GEFONT members at various sites and clashes, which the Nepali media referred to as a power struggle between GEFONT and the Maoists. Against this historical reconstruction of Nepal’s trade union movement, Tikapur’s history of organized labour presented a striking contrast. Here, Maoists and non-Maoist trade unions coexisted in a functional symbiosis. In what follows, I will describe this scenario in more detail, beginning with a discussion of Maoist politics in the town.

The Maoist Movement and its Politics of Labour in Town In Tikapur, the UCPN (Maoist) had a party office in the centre of town and was generally viewed as the ‘party of the poor’, well-organized and with a large membership. From here, all Maoist operations – including labour activism – were coordinated, yet because of a lack of financial resources the party did not set up its own local labour union wing. The local Maoists that I knew emphasized that there was as yet ‘no labour market’ in town and no Maoist-affiliated labour union. Nevertheless, as another informant told me, there had been efforts in the past to establish a union. For this reason, the local party had witnessed internal disputes over whether to open a separate Maoist-affiliated union. The party ultimately decided not to open an office because of the lack of funds to set up and maintain a separate union. Instead, labour issues were delegated to a district-level party member who was ‘in charge’ of issues related to labour for several regions. At the local level, however, Maoists stressed that labourers could visit the Maoist office at any time and file complaints against their employers. As another Maoist, Lalit,3 told me, the party thus gave preferential treatment to its members (that is, as compared to outsiders) in labour disputes. In practice, however, the impact of local Maoists on labour politics within the boundaries of the town was hardly felt. As a local rickshaw driver told me, ‘We have visited the Maoist office several

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times and no one has ever taken our case seriously or filed a FIR (First Information Report) at the local police station.’ Instead, as I was told by non-Maoist informants in town, the party was known to support specific local neighbourhoods, particularly the five bastis of freed Kamaiya and some of the neighbourhoods of the Sukumbasi,4 whose members were usually part of the local informal economy. In exchange, as the same informants claimed, the local cadres of the CPN (Maoist) expected the ‘poor communities’ to vote for them or support them when needed. Of course, such arrangements were not plainly obvious at first sight. But the local power structure became visible on a number of occasions. First, there was the gift-giving by the Maoists to freed Kamaiya households. The latter lived in poorly equipped mud huts in five bastis throughout Tikapur. In the two largest neighbourhoods, local residents had set up a school building. The tin roofs of these school buildings were sponsored by the Maoist party, and five months after the start of my fieldwork, I observed how a local full-time party member came to visit the leader of the neighbourhood because he wanted to have the bill signed for the party donation. Similarly, towards the end of my fieldwork, the party donated six rickshaws to a freed Kamaiya settlement. The money for the purchase came from a Constituent Assembly member of the UCPN (Maoist). Her motivation was clear; she had told me on numerous previous occasions that she was genuinely interested in providing much-needed material support to the freed Kamaiya community. Second, the allegiance between the UCPN (Maoist) and the freed Kamaiya community became obvious in the three weeks prior to the Constituent Assembly elections in 2008. While representatives of the three largest political parties in town (UML, Nepali Congress and the UCPN) visited the freed Kamaiya bastis on several occasions during the three weeks of campaigning, the day before the election was held, one Kamaiya basti received an additional visit from two young Maoists. They arrived on motorbikes during the night to double-check their voter list against a register of the basti’s inhabitants. By comparing the two lists, the young Maoists were able to ascertain the number of residents of the basti expected to vote in their favour the next day. This illustrates how the Maoist party saw the Kamaiya as a political base and expected the Kamaiya to vote for them. Third, when the UCPN (Maoist) called for hartals (strikes) in town, the allegiance between the Maoists and the freed Kamaiya community in town became visible. As Suykens and Islam (2013) have recently noted: ‘hartal operates as an instrument to allocate patronage

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and to test allegiance, both at the local level and from the higher echelons of power’. For example, in December 2008, one of the Maoist party cadres was attacked by students affiliated with the youth wing of the Nepali Congress. After days of campaigning against the squatting of Tikapur’s Multiple Campus, students organized a protest rally through the town, during which they threw stones at the house of a Maoist party member. The Maoists reacted without hesitation. The next day, several thousand people, mostly Kamaiyas and Sukhumbasis, assembled for a counter protest. This second rally ended in front of the police station, where Maoists demanded the immediate arrest of two members of Tikapur’s Multiple Campus who they believed to be the leaders of the student movement. The police, confronted with thousands of angry Maoists, had little choice but to arrest the two students. To sum up, the UCPN (Maoist) in Tikapur avoided a serious engagement with labourers’ rights but supported the neighbourhoods where many of the informal economy workers of the town were living. It is through the dispensation of favours, such as the provision of rickshaws and community school roofs, that Maoists enacted political patronage for Tikapur’s Kamaiya community. In return, the freed Kamaiyas supplied the UCPN (Maoist) with two much-valued resources: manpower for political rallies and votes during elections. This relationship remained highly asymmetrical and selective, however; not every individual obtained a rickshaw and not all communities acquired a school roof. In their everyday politics in Tikapur, the Maoists focused mainly on the control and support of neighbourhoods, while neglecting labour rights and refusing to become directly involved in employer-worker relations. This particular Maoist politics of labour has allowed non-Maoist labour unions to occupy the political vacuum. In the following section, I describe in more detail how the labour organization, Central Union of Painters, Plumbers, Electro and Construction Workers (CUPPEC), and a local rickshaw organization had come to fill this political space.

The Rise of CUPPEC and the Emergence of Other Unions Established by the Brahmin electrician and local resident Basu Adhikhari, the local arm of CUPPEC,5 a Nepal-wide labour organization, was the only formally registered union in Tikapur. Inspired by the unchecked exploitation and appalling conditions of labour in town, Basu began organizing workers in town during the second half of the

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insurgency period from 2002 onwards. The particular political circumstances at the time made it imperative that his activities should not be caught between Maoists and state security forces. During CUPPEC’s early days, its eight founding members (all work colleagues) would meet in Basu’s middle-class home to forge strategic plans for organizing different sections of Tikapur’s working classes. At this stage, however, CUPPEC was nothing more than a group of self-declared unionists meeting regularly. It was not until 2006 that Basu set up an office in the centre of town and their union actions gradually became more organized and systematic.6 Basu’s initial focus was on construction workers, though he also mobilized electricians, plumbers, carpenters and painters. Construction workers were the most numerous in town and many were from the freed Kamaiya bastis. As many of my informants told me, the union’s presence became clearly visible following the organization of several strikes and rallies between 2006 and 2008. Accordingly, the union’s protests centred on workers’ grievances related to wages. As a result of these strikes, wages in the construction industry were said to have increased substantially. Throughout the time of my fieldwork, employers paid male daily labourers NR 250 if they were skilled and NR 150 if they were unskilled. Although, as many informants agreed, this represented a substantial improvement compared to previous rates, wage payment between men and women remained uneven, with women often being paid much less than their male counterparts. In a recent analysis of the historical emergence of the trade union movement in the former princely state of Baroda, Pravin Patel (2011) highlights some of the difficulties unionists encounter when attempting to make inroads into working-class neighbourhoods. Addressing the formation of the first trade union in Baroda, he describes how Ahmedabad-based Mahajan leaders began to organize the Baroda workers in 1927–1928. To this end, the Ahmedabad unionists sent a full-time organizer, Akhbarkhan, to Baroda. However, the unionists were soon faced with a dilemma: Akhbarkhan ‘could mix with the Muslim workers, but did not have easy access to the Hindu workers’ (Patel 2011: 37). Realizing this, they quickly deployed a Hindu labour leader, Chimanlal Shah, to Baroda. Chimanlal then used a combination of strategies, including adult literacy evening classes, defamation of drinking and gambling and the invocation of traditional Hindu symbols through bhajans (songs) and kathas (stories), in order to mobilize Hindu mohallas (neighbourhoods). Together, the two unionists successfully established a union of textile workers in Baroda (ibid.: 38).

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Though the story of Akhbarkhan and Chimanlal is not at the centre of Patel’s analysis of the emergence of trade unions in Baroda, it poses an important question: Ahmedabad’s unionists deployed two members of different religious backgrounds to lobby for the establishment of a union in segregated working-class neighbourhoods, but how did Basu’s CUPPEC unionists make inroads into the working-class neighbourhoods of Tikapur? Of relevance here is the fact that three out of five Kamaiya settlement leaders were also members of CUPPEC, which they all openly admitted. They joined after the union leader requested them to do so in the hope that the union would work on behalf of their communities. Given this, the union could rely on the Kamaiya leaders to provide manpower from the bastis in the event of a rally. Thus, by distributing trade union membership cards, the union was able to establish a more personal link with Tikapur’s working-class neighbourhoods. But why did the bulk of ordinary freed Kamaiya join these CUPPEC rallies? There are several significant factors to consider here. First of all, by joining union rallies and strikes, labourers were able to articulate the sense of injustice that many of them felt in their everyday working lives. Most agreed that in the past, particularly when first settling in Tikapur, the problems they faced were greater than those they now experienced. Many of the freed Kamaiya complained about ‘being treated like Kamaiya’ and ‘paid not more than a bowl of rice a day’ when they first arrived in Tikapur. The union thus served as a vehicle to mediate grievances. Second, a general rule within the Kamaiya bastis was to provide at least one household member as manpower for begari (collective work) once a month (See Chapter 2). This meant that failing to attend a trade union rally would cost a freed Kamaiya household the equivalent of one day’s work, to be paid to the management committee running the basti. It is thus unsurprising that many women served as household representatives at union rallies, despite the union having largely failed to establish equal wages for women in town. Not all labour is organized according to this system of neighbourhood mobilization. A case in point was the town’s rickshaw drivers. Before 2007, Basu had tried to organize them by paying frequent visits to their ‘hang-outs’ in the bazaar and near the bus station; however, his efforts were largely unsuccessful. As Dill Bahadur, a rickshaw driver with six years’ experience, recalled: ‘Basu from CUPPEC came often and asked us to join CUPPEC. He said that a membership fee of NR 10 a year was enough to form a union. But we were suspicious about him. We thought he would take our money and run away.’ It

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was only when Basu convinced a delegation of rickshaw unionists from Dhangadhi to visit Tikapur and lobby for the formation of a union that the local rickshaw driver community was mobilized. A meeting was held in the main bazaar in the town centre to which all rickshaw drivers were invited, and the delegation convinced them to form a rickshaw union. The outcome of this particular episode of labour unionization within the boundaries of the town seemed to represent the symbiotic coexistence between Maoists and the trade unions. The relationship between the Maoists and the unions was mutually reinforcing but not obligatory; while Maoists and unions benefited from each other’s labour politics, they did not depend on each other for their existence. The Maoist patronage of the basti allowed unions to develop and grow, and the union’s labour politics complemented the lack of attention paid to labour issues by the Maoists. Importantly, both sides viewed themselves not as antagonists but as passive allies that could coexist side by side and benefit from each other’s politics. But how seriously did the labour unions in Tikapur take their mandate of representing workers and championing their cause? To explore this question further, I now turn my attention to the unions’ collective actions, meetings and bargaining procedures. The following section gives an ethnographic description of a union rally that illustrates CUPPEC’s tendency towards militant collective action.

A Militant Labour Rally In the morning of 1 June 2009, Jagdhish Prasad Dhanghaura, the leader of the Kamaiya basti, Ramnagar, told Tullu Chaudhary, the neighbourhood chowkidar (watchman), to inform all members of the freed basti about a union rally scheduled for that day and to encourage them to participate. This was a common way of mobilizing people in the freed Kamaiya bastis of Tikapur. Although inhabitants were often tired of participating in these rallies, they rarely refused to show up when requested. By about noon, many of the inhabitants of Ramnagar had come to join the union rally in the town centre, and I was surprised to meet Daniram Chaudhary, the leader of another Kamaiya basti, and many other inhabitants of freed Kamaiya bastis. They too had come to join the rally, and we headed together to CUPPEC’s office. Basu, along with an elderly, district-level CUPPEC unionist from Dhangadhi named Damakant, and many other freed Kamaiya met us

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outside the office building. CUPPEC’s senior leadership was easy to spot in the middle of the crowd of a few hundred people; both men were wearing fine dress shirts and baseball caps and were clearly from an upper-caste background. Basu was busy instructing the crowd about the planned route of the rally. Meanwhile, Ramkrishna, an ex-leader of another Kamaiya basti, who was very well respected within his basti, distributed red CUPPEC flags to the crowd, and Banji Chaudhary, a leader from the occupied basti at the local high school compound, handed out prefabricated protest signs. Bhulai Chaudhary from Ganeshnagar was busy giving instructions about forming a line. Finally, the crowd – some five hundred people, the vast majority of them women – began to move, chanting ‘CUPPEC jindabaad, jindabaad’ (‘Long live CUPPEC’). For the route, we traced a circle through the town. We first passed by the Tikapur Chambers of Commerce and a field where the weekly market took place, before crossing the Jamaran Bridge and turning onto the main street heading towards the northern entrance of the town. Then the rally moved eastwards, passing by several local government institutions, before heading back south to the bazaar in the centre. I was surprised for two reasons: first the rally’s route was more or less the same route as that of the Kamaiya movement rallies. This implied that for most participants the union march was a familiar procedure and did not require much organization. Everyone knew what to do and where to go. Second, by walking in two separate lines, the union made the crowd appear larger than if they had walked in a single column. This evoked the image of a disciplined and committed congregation rather than a wild, disorderly mob. However, what struck me more than the performative aspects of the rally was its manifestly militant character. This became apparent when the procession crossed the town’s Jamaran Bridge and came to a sudden stop. I had been walking a short distance ahead in order to take some pictures and was in a good position to see what was happening. Next to the column of demonstrators was a construction site where a new Hero Honda showroom was being built. Although the march had been publicized throughout the town earlier that day, labourers were busy toiling at the site. Some of the unionists like Ramkrishna Chaudhary were enraged to see people working despite the call for a rally. The procession was stopped, and Ramkrishna together with a group of five rally participants ran over to the construction site shouting at the Indian labour contractor and Tharu workers to stop

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working immediately. To demonstrate his seriousness, Ramkrishna confiscated a saw and a hammer before returning to the crowd. Following this, two of the workers joined the union rally, while three others ran off. The procession was then resumed, with the crowd turning right at the area administration office and the entrance gates of the Tikapur Multiple Campus, then crossing a wooden bridge before stopping again. Here, two more construction sites were shut down by Ramkrishna and the unionists, before the march stopped in front of the local municipality building. At this point, senior union leaders, as well as the Kamaiya leaders, Ramkrishna, Daniram and Bhulai, left the union rally and walked quickly towards the municipality building. They climbed the stairs and rushed into the office of the chief of the municipality. As the chief was not present, the unionists went straight to one of the office clerks. ‘What do you want?’, he asked. ‘We demand to be included in the municipality’s annual budget meeting,’ explained Basu, ‘We have the right to take part in the meeting. If not, we will make a bandh and lock out the municipality building. Look we have our unionists outside!’ The clerk seemed unimpressed, most likely as he had witnessed many bandhs and several lockouts of the municipality building in the last year. Calming his voice, he replied to Basu that the unionists should leave a letter stating their demands with the office and he would pass the letter to the chief of the municipality upon his return. The unionists did so and then left the building. After the brief pause at the municipality building, the union march proceeded to its final destination in a field near the bazaar. Here, Basu, Damakant, Daniram and Ramkrishna each gave a speech of about ten minutes. While Basu emphasized his own background as a worker, complained about the gendered wage inequality and accused Indian tekkedars (contractors) of being cheats, Damakant focused more on the importance of taking part in union rallies, noting that all workers are part of the same working class. The unionists and Kamaiya leaders, Ramkrishna and Daniram, then added their own Kamaiyaspecific concerns to this union-focused address. Ramkrishna complained about the government not having distributed land to the Kamaiya, and Daniram insisted that the Kamaiyas also had a right to land as residents of Tikapur, because it was they who built most of the buildings with their own hands. In this way, the Kamaiya leaders not only expressed an increased sense of assertiveness among the Kamaiya community, but also used the public assembly to incorporate their community issues into union politics.

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Union Meetings and Collective Bargaining The everyday practices of CUPPEC were less spectacular than the rally. In fact, most of the time the union office in town remained closed, opening its iron shutters for just two hours each day. As the union secretary, a young female student from Tikapur Campus, told me: ‘The union is very poor. We only have enough financial resources to keep the office open two hours a day. Apart from my half-day position, there are no other paid employees.’ The office was a single room with two benches, a table, an iron cupboard, a fan and a poster on the wall with the slogan, ‘Workers of the World Unite’. Located in the town centre, it was a rented first-floor property surrounded by middle-class bungalows in front of which children played, women walked their goats and buffalos grazed. It is from here that Basu Adhikhari ran the union, welcoming workers who visit for a variety of reasons: some had been fired by their employers; some had come to enquire about the union’s insurance funds; and others to apply for the limited educational scholarship programme that the union offered to the children of its members. Once a month, Basu organized union meetings outside the main office. Throughout the period of my fieldwork, these meetings were held regularly, the only lapse being during celebrations for the Tharu Maghe Sankranti Festival in January 2009. The union meetings were organized as follows. Workers of different occupations met at different times; for example, the electrical workers met at 10 am and the construction workers at 11 am. Meetings usually lasted between one and two hours. Each session began with the union’s chairman inviting union members to discuss the agenda, while the secretary recorded attendance. Although I do not have exact attendance data for each occupation, between forty and fifty members usually turned up for the construction worker meetings. In these meetings, unionists usually sat in a circle on the floor. The topics discussed varied, but the most prominent centred on the issues of how union funds were being spent, the link between the rising cost of living and wages for one day’s labour and the regular payment of membership fees. The rickshaw-wala union met separately on the same day, its members gathering under a large tree in a field near the bazaar. The number of attendees was much higher, with around one hundred rickshaw drivers taking part. This was a consequence of a specific policy of the union that held that if any member did not attend a

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meeting, he had to pay a fine of about NR 40. Similarly, if a rickshaw driver was working at the time of the union meeting, he had to pay a fine equivalent to one day’s wage. Sometimes, CUPPEC’s Chairman, Basu, presided over these meetings, but more often than not they were led by a Tharu unionist named Mangal Chaudhary. The most frequently discussed topic in these meetings was the revision of prices on the rates list. Since the inception of the union, the unionists had instituted a list of fixed rates for transport in town. To publicize this list, the rickshaw drivers put up a large red signboard near the marketplace. In addition, each rickshaw driver was supposed to carry a fixed rate list featuring the union’s stamp in his pocket. In this way, the unionists succeeded in standardizing transport rates in the town centre. CUPPEC’s leader, Basu, considered the union’s role in town to be that of a ‘mediator’ between the state and the workers. The primary function of CUPPEC, he claimed, was to arbitrate in local labour disputes. The procedure was fairly straightforward: in the event that a union member made a complaint, the senior leaders would meet up with this individual and begin to negotiate with the employer on his or her behalf. In some cases, disputes were settled immediately, while in others, the CUPPEC members had to lodge an appeal at the local police station. According to Basu, most cases were resolved at the local police station. This was because dealing with labour disputes at a court in the district capital was expensive, given the costs of travel. Police and unionists also had a vested interest in resolving the dispute locally, as the union, and most likely the police as well, usually obtained a percentage of the total sum negotiated. The following two cases illustrate this clearly. In 2007, local police arrested five rickshaw drivers, accusing them of smuggling illegal goods across the open border with India. These kinds of allegations were common and were usually quickly settled between the police and rickshaw drivers. On this occasion, however, the police officer in charge decided to send the five drivers to court in Dhangadhi. When fellow rickshaw drivers heard about this, they informed the rickshaw union adhakshya (chairman), Mangal Chaudhary. He and several other unionists immediately went to the local police station to complain about the arrests. He claimed that his fellow unionists – the rickshaw drivers – had been arrested on wrongful charges and were, in fact, innocent. When the police officer refused to release the five rickshaw drivers, the unionists called on all rickshaw and thella (a cart pulled by a bicycle) drivers to immediately stop working in protest against the arrests. The next day, the union-

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ists stepped up the pressure to free their colleagues by calling for a general bandh in the town. They blocked two main streets, preventing access to the main market, and marched through town chanting slogans demanding freedom for their colleagues. Through kinship and friendship links with Dhangadhi-based rickshaw drivers, they received further support, with this group echoing their calls to free the unionists and combat the arbitrary use of police power. By the following day, the protest had grown even larger. As a result, the local police officer called Mangal to a nearby hotel and demanded an immediate end to the protests. But Mangal and his fellow unionists continued their strike without fear of retaliation. The action culminated on the third day when the unionists from CUPPEC joined the rally in support of the rickshaw drivers. At this point, all of the unionists gathered at the police station for a final showdown. As Basu recalled, ‘We were ready to fight with the police officer. One of our members had even intended to throw a stone at him.’ Finally, the chief police officer apologized to the rickshaw drivers for arresting them on false pretences and the five men were released from prison. Compensation equivalent to five days’ wages was paid to each of them, of which CUPPEC’s general fund and the rickshaw drivers’ union both received 6.5 per cent. A similar situation arose towards the end of my fieldwork when the union resolved a serious labour dispute between inhabitants of the Kamaiya basti, Ramnagar, and a Pahadi labour contractor. The contractor had hired fifty-two male freed Kamaiyas from the neighbourhood to work for him on a construction site in the far-western hills. Although the contractor had covered the costs of travel and food, he failed to pay the wages as promised at the end of the labour contract. The workers returned angrily to their basti in Tikapur and spent the next year trying to claim the money that was owed to them. But when the tekkedar finally came to address their grievances, the workers from Ramnagar decided to take him ‘hostage’. They locked him in the neighbourhood’s assembly house for twelve hours, demanding the immediate payment of the missing wages. The following day, Basu was informed about this by some of the Kamaiyas from a nearby basti. Furious about being sidelined in this dispute, he drove to the Kamaiya basti and, together with some of the freed Kamaiyas, brought the tekkedar to the local police station. After three days of mediation and arbitration, the union finally managed to settle the case and the tekkedar paid the wages with the help of a hotelier friend. A few days later, CUPPEC members organized a small ceremony for the payment of the wages in a local restaurant and invited

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formerly bonded labourers and their leaders to join them. During the event, several of the workers went up on stage to thank the CUPPEC activists for their help. While the arbitration of labour disputes undoubtedly provided a sense of empowerment to workers in the informal economy, it was important to highlight that not all cases were mediated. Within the construction sector, for example, I observed how the workers of the Indian tekkedar, Krishna, sometimes stopped working for a short period of time to force him to increase their wages. Many of the construction workers I spoke with said that the tekkedars sometimes tried to cheat them and that only by putting down their tools were they able to bargain with them. But when asked why they would not go to the union, an elder female Tharu construction worker claimed: ‘The union does not help us. The adhakshya (chairman) is a Pahadi. [He is] corrupt and keeps money for himself.’ This suggests that ethnicity and corruption remained a crucial influence on the unionization of workers in Tikapur, a theme that I wish to investigate further in the following section.

Questions of Class and Ethnicity in Tikapur’s Unions In addition to raising wages, institutionalizing collective bargaining procedures and challenging authority in town, an important effect of the development of Tikapur’s labour movement was the inclusion of predominantly Tharu freed Kamaiya workers in the unions’ political structure. In contrast to the past, when the Kamaiya, and the Tharu more generally, did not have easy access to power structures, the unions at the time of fieldwork allowed them to actively participate and make decisions on issues that affected them directly. But did the workers acquire a class identity through this process of inclusion? Or did their caste identity and regional ethnicity remain central, shaping the political culture of the new trade unionism in Tikapur? Raj Chandavarkar, in his seminal study of the general strikes in Bombay between 1928 and 1929, reminds us: Class consciousness did not simply arise from the experience of production relations. Indeed, the social relations of the workplace were shaped by their interaction with the social organisation of the neighbourhood. Workplace disputes were sometimes given a communal construction by employers and trade union leaders, the press and the colonial state. They could also forge nationalist, regional or linguistic alignments. It was primarily in the domain of politics that social conflicts acquired a class character. (Chandavarkar 1994: 209)

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According to Chandavarkar, class consciousness rarely manifests itself, and if it does, it is most likely short-lived. He outlines the specific historical conditions in which it develops, but also sketches the conditions for the dissolution of solidarity in the context of the Bombay strikes of 1928 and 1929. Chandavarkar highlights how the decline of class solidarity in Bombay was largely related to the emergence of rival union organizations attempting to secure their stake in a developing constituency (Chandavarkar 1999: 233). In so doing, he alerts us to the possibility that unions may not only contribute to the emergence of class solidarities, but may also be responsible for divisions within the working class. In line with Chandavarkar’s emphasis on historical context, Parry’s (2008) work situated trade unionism at a steel factory in Bhilai within the broader processes that had led to its formation. He argues that, through its legal framework, the state privileged the Indian ‘aristocracy’ of labour; namely, public sector steel workers with regular employment contracts, at the expense of those who were employed informally in the surrounding mines. Despite these obstacles, in Bhilai, the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (CMM) emerged as a union vanguard for those employed in the informal economies of the surrounding mines and in construction work at the steel plant. Founded in 1977 and led by the charismatic leader Niyogi, who was murdered by contract killers in Bhilai in 1991, the CMM mobilized around the dominant regional symbols of political identification, particularly issues of ethnicity. Importantly, the political culture of the CMM was focused not only on class but also on issues of cultural identity formation. In Tikapur, it was clear that CUPPEC’s leadership invoked a discourse centred on the notion of ‘class struggle’, rather than ethnic discrimination, and unions did not engage in any cultural activities that reflected distinctive Tharu traditions and rituals. It is not that Tharu customs were totally lacking. As mentioned previously, during the Tharu Maghe Sankranti Festival, no monthly union meetings were held in order to allow workers to participate in the celebrations. But what mattered more for the unionists was the yearly excursion to Tikapur Mahendra Park, which usually took place at the start of the Nepali New Year around April. During this trip, union funds, gathered through membership fees, were spent on an afternoon of drinking in the park, evoking the image of proletarian binge drinking more than a revival of Tharu identity. However, ‘regional ethnicity’ plays an important role in structuring social relations between union leadership and the bulk of workers, in

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a similar way to Parry’s (2009) description of the CMM in Bhilai. This becomes clear when we look at the leadership of CUPPEC’s construction and rickshaw-wala unions. As mentioned before, the construction union was led by Basu Adhikhari, a high-caste union man who has had trouble establishing himself as a legitimate leader within his constituency. What was important for the predominantly Tharu construction workers, regardless of order and rank, was having a leader from the same ethnic group, the appropriate use of union funds and the deployment of local cultural symbols of political mobilization, in particularly the notion of ‘sacrifice’. This was why Basu effectively ‘outsourced’ part of the leadership to freed Kamaiya leaders like Daniram, Jagdhish and Ramkrishna, as I showed in my description of the rally. This gave labour disputes a communal dimension, and it is only in this way that Basu could sustain and organize the construction workers’ union. Ethnicity played an even more obvious role in the leadership of the rickshaw-wala union. Since its inception, the union had been led by local Tharu ‘son of the soil’, Mangal Chaudhary. As all but one of the rickshaw drivers in Tikapur were Tharu, it was important for them to have an adhakshya who was from their own community, and Mangal was ideal for several reasons. He was from the same caste and region as the drivers, and came from a freed Kamaiya basti and knew about the struggles and hardships of the Kamaiya community. In contrast to Basu, he worked alongside other rickshaw and thella drivers and spent much of his day socializing with them. He was thus an insider, which, unlike Ramaswamy’s (1977, 1981) work has shown in an Indian context, was an important criterion for trade union leadership in Tikapur. While ethnicity played an important role in the dynamics of the unions, gender was less of an issue; within both unions, women were largely excluded from leadership positions and union activism remained an entirely male domain. This was unsurprising for the rickshaw drivers association, as this type of work was only undertaken by men. When I enquired why there were no female rickshaw or thella drivers in town, the drivers would usually burst out laughing, noting that women did not have the physical strength to be part of the profession. It was beyond the imagination of the rickshaw-wala that a woman could ever drive a rickshaw, let alone be part of their union. Unlike the rickshaw-walas’ association, CUPPEC’s construction union did have female members, a fact that the male leadership was proud of. However, they were excluded from key positions in

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the union’s leadership. None of the women working in the informal economy of Tikapur had ever stood for elections in the local union. Although CUPPEC had added the issue of equal pay to their agenda and most male workers support this initiative, women remained marginal voices within the union.

Conclusion: From Harmonic Symbiosis to Co-optation? This chapter begun by presenting a brief overview of the history of Nepal’s trade union movement so as to contextualize the growth and development of Tikapur’s labour unions. It then placed in historical context the currently heated antagonism between Nepal’s Maoist movement and the non-Maoist union, GEFONT. The ethnographic sections that followed, however, presented a scenario that contrasted with the wider trends. In Tikapur, the Maoist movement and the GEFONT-affiliated labour union, CUPPEC, enjoyed a peaceful relationship with one another. By focusing on these actors’ labour politics, I showed how the relationship between the Maoist movement and CUPPEC could be seen as a functional symbiosis that contributed to increasing wages, standardizing collective bargaining procedures and challenging codes of authority and power for workers in Tikapur’s informal economy.7 However, as the emerging trade unions were organized largely through freed Kamaiya neighbourhoods, residents of the latter had gradually gained control of the unions, and communal, caste and regional identities had become central in determining their political leadership, which remained a male domain.8 This surge in the democratizing forces of industrialization invites comparison with other settings. In her discussion of the American labour movement, Janice Fine (2005) highlights the emergence, over the last three decades, of ‘community unions’ that have successfully managed to raise wages and improve working conditions among low-wage labourers in the United States. Moreover, Mollona (2009) has recently described how this model of ‘community unionism’ has spread from the United States to the United Kingdom since the 1990s. As Mollona notes, a combination of traditional workplace-centred union activism and broader community unionism was used by local activists in order to counter extensive subcontracting and labour deregulation in Sheffield’s steel industries. In a similar vein, Scipes (1992) contemplates how the union activities of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) trade union in the Philippines resemble a social movement, rather than a ‘pure’ traditional labour movement, as they incor-

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porate a variety of other organizations, such as churches and human rights groups. In this light, the ethnographic material presented here suggests that labour union activism in Tikapur can tell us something more of the wider social context in which it takes place. One tentative hypothesis resulting from these considerations is that Tikapur’s labour movement may be better understood as a community union rather than a traditional workplace-centred movement, as it relies on the support of social and political forces outside the purview of a traditional labour movement. Seen from that perspective, we can better understand the complexities of the political mobilization of labourers in the context of post-conflict Nepal. As such, an analysis focusing on particular unions without considering the political context risks missing the point. As I have demonstrated, the harmonic symbiosis between the Maoists and non-Maoist labour unions formed the root of new labour activism in the town. Yet, it should be noted that this chapter deals with a process that is open-ended and dynamic. It describes the situation encountered during the fieldwork period between January 2008 and July 2009; given the Maoists’ ongoing attempts to capture state power by broadening their base, the movement could very well shift strategies and the Maoists may place their own party members within the non-Maoist unions and begin to infiltrate them. Many actors in the field expected them to do so. Yet, with the recent split of the Maoist movement into UCPN (Maoist) and CPN (Maoist), the co-opting of friendly trade unions might remain a secondary goal in their struggle for state power.

Notes 1. An exception is Cross’s (2002) discussion of the ‘languages of solidarity’ among trade unionists working for the labour organization GEFONT in Kathmandu. 2. These included the All Nepal Carpet Workers Union, All Nepal Transport Workers Union, All Nepal Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union, All Nepal Meter Tempo Workers Union, All Nepal Press Workers Union, All Nepal Thangka Art Workers Union, All Nepal Painters Union, Nepal Shop Workers Union, Nepal Progressive Newspapers Vendors Union and Himalayan Trekking Workers Union (ICG 2005: 11). 3. Name changed. 4. Sukhumbasi were landless people that squatted in various places both in town and the forests in the rural hinterland. 5. While the union’s senior leadership claimed that CUPPEC remained politically independent, many of my informants suggested otherwise, noting close links between

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CUPPEC and the UML (United Marxist Leninist) Party. According to CUPPEC’s website, the union was founded on 31 March 1997, and has been affiliated at the national level with the trade union confederation GEFONT, and internationally with BWI (Building and Wood Workers International) since 2000. Upadhyaya (2006) further claims that ‘[t]he CUPPEC is working since 1991 (renamed as CUPPEC after amalgamation of three federations in 1997) and has unionized 56,228 workers. Adding the unionized number estimated in the fold of all other unions of various small sizes, roughly 135,000 construction workers are union members in different parts of the country. Based on CUPPEC estimates, nearly 1,050,000 workers are involved in construction work all over the country, which shows only 12.85 per cent workers are unionized’ (ibid.: 10). 6. The early labour union activism was secretive, as it took place at a time when the Maoist guerrilla war was at it heights and the state (then in the hands of Nepali Congress and UML, which CUPPEC is affiliated with) was forced to withdraw almost completely from the mid- and far-western districts to the extent that no elections could be held because most of their grass-roots-level activists had been flushed out of the district. 7. The opposite scenario is contemplated in Leslie Gill’s ethnography of trade unionism in Colombia (Gill 2007). Here, the multinational company Coca-Cola employed the paramilitary-like United Self-Defence Forces (AUC) in order to oppress union activism. 8. Rick Fantasia (1989) offers an analysis of workers’ struggles in the United States during the 1980s that demonstrates how white working-class leaders strategically relied on the incorporation of other identities into an otherwise male-dominated white working-class movement.

PART II LABOUR RELATIONS IN A BRICK FACTORY IN THE HINTERLAND

– Chapter 5 –

RED SALUTE AT WORK IN A BRICK FACTORY

_ Introduction In the novel Facing my Phantoms, Sheeba Shah addresses the transformation of society from feudalism into a more egalitarian form, focusing largely on rural life in Kailali district from the 1930s until the present day. Through the eyes of the fictional character Sanjeevani Singh, the author develops a narrative of both radical social change and personal crisis. Sanjeevani is the daughter of an affluent upper-caste landlord in the village of Pahalmanpur in Kailali. When, during the insurgency period, Maoists arrive at his rural farm and demand to tax his agricultural profits, almost the entire family moves to Dhangadhi in order to seek protection from the insurgents. Sanjeevani’s uncle, however, refuses to leave his farm and is brutally murdered by Maoist rebels. While the murder and the loss of their rural livelihood leads to apathy, grief and despair in her family, Sanjeevani decides to take up the challenge and revitalize the abandoned farm in rural Kailali. In the process, she embarks upon an amorous adventure with a local Maoist rebel whose strong political ambition to change society remains an unbridgeable gap in their relationship. While this fictional rendering of Nepal’s turbulent recent political past is more about Sanjeevani’s attempts to escape from gendered hierarchies and feudal attitudes, it touches upon a question that is at the heart of the rest of this book; namely, how did the emergence of the Maoist movement change labour regimes in the region? Perhaps surprisingly, in the emerging scholarship on Nepali Maoism, the movement’s diverse impact on labour has received little attention. It is clear, for example, that the movement extorted large sums of wealth from traders of the valuable Himalayan herb yasegumba in – 149 –

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the picturesque hill areas of Dolpa (‘Potent Insurgency’ 2005).1 The movement also organized workers in the large urban factories on the outskirts of Kathmandu by playing on the existing antagonism between Nepali and Indian workers (Shakya 2010) and established its own Maoist-led cooperatives in its staunch heartlands of Rukkum and Rolpa (LeComte 2010).2 Accompanying the few empirical investigations into this topic is the neglect of the influence of wider political developments on shop floor politics in ethnographic perspectives on work and labour.3 A case in point is the seminal work of Michael Burawoy (1979, 1985); his critique of Braverman (1974) cautions against interpreting the acquiescence of workers as entirely imposed from outside. Moreover, he highlights the importance of the ways in which workers on the shop floor negotiate and contest the ‘political regimes of production’ and gain fulfilment from aspects of the labour process. An important caveat in his work, however, is his conceptualization of the everyday politics of work as distinct from wider political developments outside the factory compound. Similarly, scholars of labour in South and South East Asia have only recently begun to acknowledge the importance of the workplace and shop-floor organization (Ong 1987; Chakrabarty 1989; Chandavarkar 1994). De Neve has emphasized the need for serious engagement with the everyday social relations in production rather than of production (2005). However, this approach needs further elaboration to reveal how hierarchies and authorities are created and reproduced not only in the workplace but also in the wider community, as Mollona (2003) has shown with reference to steel workers in Sheffield. The author found that in order to extend their control over the working classes, industrial capitalists used social institutions such as the church, Sunday schools and fishing clubs to manifest their authority. In opposition, workers expressed and formed their resistance to the diverse forms of labour control in local pubs, workingmen’s clubs, cooperatives and illegal gambling venues (Mollona 2003: 14). By doing so, this body of work has done much to improve the general understanding of how industrialization processes play out in the South Asian context and how wider class formations are dependent on the everyday politics of work (De Neve 2005). The argument presented in this chapter complements the recent anthropological challenge to Burawoy (1985) and argues that labour relations need to be understood in an analytic frame that goes beyond that of the workplace (see also Kalb 1997). I suggest that strict ‘point of production’ ethnographies of labour are generally of little use in understanding a post-revolutionary environment.

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The following two chapters hope to contribute to the closure of this knowledge gap by examining how the shifting power dynamics in Tikapur effected labour relations and a system of debt bondage in the town’s brick factories. The present chapter explores the influence of the political context on employer-worker relations and other types of social interactions at work. Following this, Chapter 6 highlights the impact of the Maoist movement on a system of debt bondage prevalent in the brick factories on Tikapur’s fringes. Taken together, these sections suggest that while the Maoist movement had only a marginal effect on the day-to-day reality of work in a brick factory, its impact is clearly apparent in the factory managers’ reluctance to severely bind labour again. I will return to this striking phenomenon towards the end of this book. In this chapter I aim to give an ethnographic description of the labour relations and informal work culture found in the brick factory of Gokul, the local entrepreneur who was introduced at the beginning of this book. In the first part of this chapter, I emphasize the continuities to be found in the everyday practice of brick kiln work. Despite radical changes in the local balances of power, work relations have scarcely shifted toward egalitarian solidarity, and hierarchy remains the core organizational principle, leaving little chance for industrial democracy in the workplace. I go on to argue that the perpetuation of these hierarchical relations is enabled by certain religious practices and everyday forms of play in the workplace, which serve to obscure and disguise the more structural and exploitative relationship between owner and workers. In the second part of this chapter, I outline some of the changes in the daily routine of kiln work in the wake of the Maoist revolution. It is argued that the Maoist rebellion has helped to produce a new young, mobile and urbanizing working class that in the new political context feels increasingly secure in claiming new spaces for its own emerging pleasure, pastimes, and sociality vis-à-vis existing hierarchies and customs. I further show that there is a broad base for solidarity among the more and less skilled people within this proletariat, though such solidarity does not yet seem to reach beyond ethnic and linguistic boundaries. Let us now begin to explore these themes by returning to Gokul’s factory.

Gokul’s Brick Factory Gokul’s inta-bhatta (brick oven) produced bricks for both local and export markets, targeting customers based mainly in the western Terai

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region. Its workforce consisted of approximately two hundred men, women, teenagers, and even children. The heart of the factory compound was the bhatta (oven), which comprised two moveable iron chimneys, purchased in Lucknow, India, and two brick walls, concentric ovals, of about two meters in height and perhaps one hundred meters in circumference. Its successful operation was a genuine art, dependent on the skilful stacking of bricks and careful management of the fire and chimneys. The process began with the stackers laying out the bricks between the two concentric walls. The bricks had to be arranged so as to produce a stable, evenly spaced structure that allowed the heat to convect at the correct rate. The gaps between the bricks were filled with wood that was subsequently set on fire, but this fire had to be contained within a certain area, which depended on both the correct stacking of the bricks and the continuous management of the fire. Every twenty-four hours the chimneys were realigned to cover the area that was being fired that day, creating a de facto furnace that could be moved with ropes as the fire progressed around the concentric ovals. The chimneys and the fire took between twenty-four and twenty-eight days to complete one circuit of the ovals, known in English as a ‘round’, and there were nine rounds in the firing season. Work in the brick factories was seasonal due to the impossibility of firing during the heavy monsoon rains. Many of the factory workers whom I interviewed explained to me that they had considerable work experience in the brick industry. The labour process itself was highly specialized. The technical knowledge required to set up and run a brick factory was brought to Tikapur from India in the early 1980s, with the original migrant workforce recruited through an Indian tekkedar (labour contractor). At Gokul’s new factory, in contrast, the workforce had been recruited locally through the manager, Surendra, and one of the brick staplers, Shiv Lal Chaudhary. The division of labour in the factory followed strict ethnic lines; the white-collar jobs in business, management and accounting were done by upper-caste Pahadis, while the labourers were generally Tharu. At the top of the industrial hierarchy in the factory was Gokul, the owner. His work responsibilities focused mainly on dealing with local government and bureaucratic affairs. Because of his business commitments in town and his involvement in the activities of the local chambers of commerce, Gokul rarely came to the factory more than twice a week. On each visit he would usually hang around the factory office and double-check the accounting books with the accountant, Nalin. Accounting was done manually by hand, which sometimes

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led to confusion and disagreements regarding the validity of calculations. The visible face of the factory and direct supervisor of the labour force was Surendra, the manager. His work duties began early in the morning and kept him at the factory until around 6 pm. There was thus a clear division of labour at the top level; Gokul would take care of bureaucratic affairs outside the factory walls, while Surendra managed proceedings within the factory compound. Most of Surendra’s working day was spent at the office outside the actual factory. The middle-aged manager would often sit out front with the accountant, discussing topics ranging from negotiations with customers (e.g., schools, individuals, construction companies) to problems with neighbours. At other times, he would share a meal with some of the supervisors and Phullbari Chaudhary, the cook who worked in the separate kitchen building. But Surendra also spent a good deal of his time within the factory compound dealing with everyday labour processes. Often he would sit together with the labour force and share chewing tobacco with Narayan Chaudhary, the chief supervisor in the factory, and the other workers. Gokul came by some evenings with his business friends; they would sit in one of the back rooms of the factory office and discuss private matters while drinking fine whisky. Both Gokul and Surendra travelled to the factory by motorbike, while the remainder of the workers came on foot or by bicycle. The work process involved various categories of labourers. All workers in the factory were supervised by four muncis (supervisors). The patheras (brick moulders) formed the largest group in the total workforce. This working group, which consisted mainly of married couples and families, was responsible for digging up wet clay and moulding it into bricks. After the patheras had stacked the wet bricks, the muncis counted them before they were carried by the intaboknis (brick carriers) either to the oven or to a separate pile of bricks to one side. The beldaris (brick stackers) then stacked these bricks accordingly, ready for the fukuwas (brick burners) to begin the firing process. Afterward, the bricks were removed from the oven by the nekhasi (brick exporters) before being arranged on the truck by two loaders and one truck driver. Methods of payment varied between the different working groups and included monthly salaries, daily wages, and piece rates. The few workers who enjoyed income security in the form of monthly wages included office staff, muncis, fukuwas, beldaris, truck drivers and loaders. Woodcutters, in contrast, were paid daily wages, while the patheras, intaboknis and nekhasis received piece rates. In addition to

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these wages, the factory management used a system of bonuses as an incentive mechanism to raise overall productivity. The fukuwas, for example, received a bonus for each completed round of bricks burned as well as for each Friday that they had to spend in the factory (since on Fridays the factory was usually closed for half the day). During my time at the factory, the four fukuwas spent their first bonus on identical red football shirts with an Italia sticker on them. Similarly, at the beginning of the season, Gokul offered a radio as a reward for the pathera who was able to mould the most bricks. Furthermore, each of the working groups received some clothing at the end of the factory season.

Between Hierarchy and Egalitarian Solidarity On my first visit to the factory, the relations of power and authority between employers and workers were immediately obvious. While the owner’s power was mostly apprehended through his absence, one usually found the manager and accountant sitting outside the factory office discussing matters among themselves or with visiting guests and customers. Occasionally some of the muncis joined them, though it was generally only the former pair who had the luxury of reclining on modern plastic chairs. The implication was obvious: white-collar workers like managers and accountants were superior to other employees and could rest while the others had to work. This behaviour was sustained by the fact that Gokul visited the factory infrequently, spending most of his time in his tool shop in town. When he came to the factory, however, the mood would usually change dramatically, and the laughter and banter that characterized the normal routine was reduced to a nervous silence. The hierarchical relations between employers and workers were buttressed by caste and ethnic divisions. Gokul, Surendra and Nalin were all Pahadis from upper-caste backgrounds, while nearly all of the workers in the factory were from the Tharu community. The hierarchical relationship between the two groups was expressed in language, with the owner referred to as the malikua (owner). Some of the older Tharu workers used a traditional poem to describe the ethnic divisions found in their workplace: ‘Uttar se aaya bandar, dakchhinse ayaa calendar,4 aur ham bichme phasgaye andha’ (From the north came the apes, from the south came the smart ones, and we are trapped blindly in the middle). This suggests that ethnic divisions in the brick factories were historically constituted.

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Not surprisingly, the manager’s power and authority was rooted in his ability to hire and fire labour at will. Unlike the highly desired government jobs in town, which remained a distant dream for the workforce, a large majority of work contracts within the company were informal and based on oral agreements, leaving workers with no legal rights. But such informality was common in industries throughout the region (Harriss-White 2003), and in Gokul’s brick factory the manager and accountant also functioned as moneylenders, which added another dimension to the power they exercised over their workforce. This was not only because a portion of the workforce took out an advance before starting work, but also because wages were only paid at the end of the nine-month-long season, so Surendra and Nalin distributed weekly allowances to the workers every Friday. The divisions between management and workforce were not all hierarchical. There were solidarities, too. As mentioned previously, Surendra spent a great deal of his time at work hanging out with the staff, sharing chit-chat and chewing tobacco. In doing so, he not only established trust, loyalty and familiarity among his workforce, but also reduced the distance between the labourers and himself. Although some workers complained about Surendra – the cook, for example, grumbled that Surendra was always ordering him around, leaving him little free time during his working hours, while others, like the brick burners Narayan and Gorakh, complained that Surendra never invited them to eat in the factory office’s kitchen, despite initially promising to provide them with masu (meat) every day – he was not particularly strict. In order to illustrate this, let us consider the daily routines of the brick burners, the work group with whom I spent the most time and am therefore most familiar. In Gokul’s factory there were two burner groups, each consisting of two fukuwas and one helper. Although the two groups were meant to work six-hour shifts, the amount of time actually spent working was relatively short. In a typical shift, a brick burner had to go up to the oven three or four times for a period of ten to twenty minutes to check whether the bricks were cooked or not. They were thus idle for the majority of the time, which was often spent chatting in the shade of trees near a pond in the adjacent agricultural fields. Brick burners sometimes received visits from workers from other factories, particularly towards the end of the season, when the time came to decide where to migrate for work during the monsoon period. Occasionally, the brick burners Narayan and Gorakh would visit their former master, Santosh Chaudhary, in a nearby factory to ask for advice; often they would sit next to the oven together with the beldaris and flirt

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with young female nekhasis or intaboknis. Although it was not uncommon for such behaviour to develop into a sexual adventure, I heard of no such liaisons between the four brick burners and the female workers; all of the brick burners were already married and their wives would regularly visit them at the factory. During their time off, the brick burners returned home to see their families or rested in the shacks next to the oven. Kishor, a brick burner in his late teens, told me how he sometimes went looking for honey during the work day, an activity that was usually only undertaken in this region by the Raji people, a community of honey gatherers.5 Krishna Prasad, a helper, spent his spare time estimating production rates so he could work out how much wood he would have to chop; he preferred to be free when there was a festival or holiday, so he would gather wood up to three days in advance. The fukuwas would also use their leisure time to help the female brick carrier groups, whom they would assist in the arduous task of bringing bricks from the factory. In a similar vein, the woodcutters volunteered their manpower to help the brick burners move two iron furnaces a few meters forward each day. There was thus a great deal of solidarity and cooperation between the different working groups in everyday life. ‘Here we are all like a family,’ explained Gorakh, a brick burner, in reference to the social structure of the factory. Although statements like these overlooked the fact that only some of the workers had short and regulated shifts while others had to get up with the whole family at 2 am, I was always struck by the fact that different working groups saw each other as equally important. This sense of togetherness may have been related to the Maoist insurgency in the region. While not all workers supported the Maoist movement, most were sympathetic, generally because they hoped to obtain land when it was redistributed by the Maoists. Gorakh would openly tell me of his sympathy for the Maoists’ cause. When I came to visit, he would often salute me with a lal salam (red salute), even in the presence of Surendra, who was anything but supportive of the Maoists. Often it was with others from one’s own working group that the strongest solidarity was felt. A case in point was the camaraderie found in the brick burner groups. Not only did all four brick burners buy the same red Italian football shirt with the money they obtained from their first bonus, but they would also visit each other in their homes. Gorakh had even attended Narayan’s wedding. At the end of the season, all the brick burners celebrated and ate chicken together with Surendra and Santosh Chaudhary. But what was crucial to forming that camaraderie, as Parry noted for Bhilai (1999a: 132), was the

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social homogeneity of the working group. Among the intaboknis and nekhasis, for example, a group of three Magar women who had been hired as additional brick carriers were marginalized and ate separately in the factory. When asked why the other women would not eat with them, a young female brick carrier pithily replied, ‘We don’t understand their language. We are Tharu, and speak Tharu. They are Magar and speak Magar.’ This suggests that solidarity does not yet seem to cross ethnic and linguistic boundaries, and neither workplace proximity nor Maoist ideology had done much to change this. These examples suggest that there is a clear hierarchical division between management and the manual labour force. It is only at the bottom of the industrial hierarchy that one finds strong egalitarian solidarities that cut across working groups, but not across ethnic boundaries. Hierarchy and authority remain at the core of labour organization in the brick factories of Tikapur’s hinterland, despite radical changes in the local and national political contexts. To further explore why these forms of hierarchy and authority persisted in worker’ everyday lives, I now offer an ethnographic description of some of the religious rituals that I observed in the brick factories.

Religious Practices to Cope with Dangerous Work In his introduction to The Worlds of Indian Industrial Labour, Jonathan Parry (1999b) laments the absence of ‘ethnographies of religious ideas and practices in an industrial milieu’, noting that the last such study was undertaken in 1971. Parry’s observation remains largely valid, as few anthropologists have attempted to engage seriously with religious practices in the workplace, let alone made them an explicit object of inquiry (for exceptions, see Heuzé 1992; Kalb 1997; De Neve 2005; Parry 2008; Talib 2010). The few existing interpretations can be divided into two different camps. On the one hand, we find, according to De Neve (2005: 15–16), a body of scholarly work concerned with how religious practices consolidate workplace hierarchies and authoritarian structures (Heuzé 1992) or how religious rituals, such as the celebration of the Vishwakarma Puja and Durga Puja, are appropriated by workers in order to undermine workplace authorities (Fernandez 1997). On the other hand, we have non-South Asian scholarship that offers a historical analysis of the genesis and development of ideas and beliefs surrounding religious practices in the context of work (e.g. Ardener 1970; Taussig 1980). A case in point is Jonathan Parry’s analysis of the origins and perpetuation of beliefs

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surrounding human sacrifice in the context of the Bhilai Steel Plant. Parry’s (2008) account shows that the roots of such beliefs have much to do with ideas about sacrifice and agricultural fertility, and their perpetuation and dissemination with one’s position in the industrial hierarchy. Similarly, Talib’s recent discussion of stone quarry workers in Delhi suggests that ‘[t]he bulk of religious resources belonged to the agricultural past of the workers … Such an exchange between the people and the divine spirits was essential, not only in the peasant world but also in the quarry worker’s world that faced uncertainties of a different kind’ (Talib 2010: 225). Before I situate my own ethnographic material within these debates, I will give a detailed account of three religious practices that I observed at Gokul’s brick factory.

The Inauguration: A Coconut Sacrificed to Lord Ram The inauguration of Gokul’s brick factory occurred in mid January 2009, a few days after the end of the Maghe Sankranti Festival. To celebrate the occasion, Gokul invited a small number of guests to a ceremony at his factory. Among them were his close friends and business partners, numbering around fifteen in total. The celebration began shortly after sunset. Gokul, together with his eldest brother, Bishnu, Surendra and all the other guests, walked to the factory’s oven. Here, two brick burners were waiting for Gokul’s signal to ignite the oven. Gokul’s brother hung a poster of Lord Ram on the brick wall before initiating the celebration with a puja (worship). He took out some incense sticks and swirled them around in a circular motion in front of the poster of the Hindu god. Then he took one of the torches from the brick burners and ignited the oven. At the same time, he and the guests began to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ (long live Lord Ram) in order to receive the god’s blessings for the upcoming season. Then Gokul, his brother and Surendra went up to the factory and performed a small puja in front of the two chimneys, which were adorned with Hindu tridents. A piece of red-and-white cloth was put on each, and the trio proceeded with a puja to the goddess Lakshmi. Next they went to a small brick mandir (temple) constructed previously by two Tharu women, inside of which was a poster depicting Lakshmi. Finally the three men went from the top of the oven back down and placed a piece of red cloth at the entrance and Gokul’s brother smashed a coconut on the ground. In this way the god’s protection was ensured. After the ceremony everyone returned to the office and resumed eating and drinking. A young businessman named Arjun remained

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outside the office building, as he did not want to disturb the ‘honourable men’ within, highlighting the particular prestige enjoyed by Gokul and his friends among Tikapur’s business community. Late in the evening local businessmen and a local journalist joined the drunken group. When I asked about the ritual everyone described it as a ‘custom’. The conversation quickly became fixated on the political situation however, particularly after the journalist suggested that the Maoist movement would soon lose power at the top level, which led to a heated debate for the rest of the evening.

Weekly Worship: A Puja to Agni Devi Puja to Agni Devi, the lord of fire, was the main religious ritual performed in the brick factories of Tikapur’s hinterland. At Gokul’s brick factory, the puja took place each Tuesday in front of a small brick mandir built near the oven. It was frequently performed in between the shifts of the brick burner groups and was attended by all four brick burners and their two helpers. Occasionally, other workers who worked in close proximity to the brick burners, particularly young female brick exporters, joined the worship. In contrast to the lavish and sensuous ceremonies held in nearby temples, the puja to Agni Devi was quite prosaic. There was no ringing of bells or chanting of sacred texts. Instead, the puja consisted of three stages of worship corresponding to the brick mandir, the chimneys and the fire inside the oven, respectively. The puja began with a brick burner lighting a couple of incense sticks and swirling them in front of an image of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, on a popular Hindu poster. Then the brick burner would walk over to the chimneys and wave the sticks of incense in front of them. Several sticks would be placed on the chimney, perhaps with a piece of red cloth. Finally, a helper would open one of the hot metal plates that kept the fire contained inside the oven and burning incense sticks would be thrown into the flames. Following this, prasad (sweets) would be arranged in front of the mandir and chimney and distributed for the workers to consume. In Gokul’s factory, the puja was usually performed by a young brick burner named Kishor Chaudhary. Kishor, who had been working in brick kilns since he was eleven years old, was considered a ritual expert. He had learned the procedure from an Indian brick burner while working in another factory in the region. According to Kishor, the purpose of the weekly puja was to appease Agni Devi

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in order to protect oneself from accidents during the working week. This view was shared by many other workers. They considered the brick burners’ work to be highly dangerous, as there was a constant risk of falling into the oven when climbing on top of it. Kishor knew of a brick burner in a nearby factory who had slipped into the burning heat and suffered severe leg injuries. Other workers told stories of burners who had actually died in brick kilns, though the actual incidence of fatalities and other accidents was hard to verify. Gorakh, one of the brick burners, had a different interpretation of the Agni Devi puja. According to him, there were two gods inside the brick oven; they took the form of a snake and a cat, and both were sacred. When I asked him to elaborate, Gorakh explained that the other day he had seen a cat in the brick factory and one of the woodcutters had wanted to throw a stone at it. Seeing this, Gorakh had warned his colleague not to throw the stone, because the cat was an incarnation of the god. According to Gorakh, the two gods lived together inside the oven for as long as the fire was lit. The ritual was intended to ensure that they remained within the oven so as to keep the flame alive. But this alternative interpretation has to be judged within its context. Gorakh was subordinate to Kishor in terms of years of work experience. By giving an alternative explanation for the Agni Devi puja, he also engaged in a status competition with Kishor that largely remained unsuccessful, as most of the workers agreed with Kishor’s interpretation of the ritual.

A Puja to Lakshmi The third religious ritual in the ‘life cycle’ of a brick factory is the puja for the completion of the first round of the season. This ritual generally takes place between twenty-four and twenty-eight days after the factory’s opening ceremony. It is awaited with considerable anxiety by both managers and workers, as it coincides with the first opportunity to look at the cooked bricks and assess their quality. Of significance here is the percentage of first-class bricks, as these can be sold for more than the second- and third-class, or kancha (broken) bricks. In Gokul’s factory the Lakshmi puja was anxiously anticipated by all the brick burners. With the manager testing the quality of the bricks, the day was decisive to assessing their skills. Their fears of being fired turned out to be unmerited, however; once Surendra had unravelled the cover and tested the cooked bricks by clapping them against each other, he announced that about 80 per cent were first-

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class bricks. This came as an enormous relief to the brick burners, as this was a high percentage of quality bricks, meaning their jobs were safe for the time being. After the manager had tested the bricks, the nekhasi got ready to take them out of the brick factory. Before doing so, however, they went to the small temple on top of the oven and performed a puja to Lakshmi. Then they distributed prasad to the fukuwas and swirled an incense stick in front of the newly opened brick wall. This was done under the guidance of Kishor, the experienced brick burner. The puja to Lakshmi brought good luck, which was always welcome in a dangerous job like theirs. Indeed, in the process of building the factory, a brick carrier had been crushed when a wall of stacked bricks collapsed on top of her. In this case, Gokul had managed to get the woman to a hospital in India, and he later provided her with a new job as a coin counter for the intabokni (brick carrier) working group. However, others were worried that they would not be so lucky in the event of an accident. The puja helped them to forget their fears and mitigated their concerns about the dangers of the work. My own interpretation of these religious rituals was somewhat different from those of the participants. As all ceremonies were sponsored by the factory’s management, I contend that they function primarily to mediate danger by appealing to divine assistance. I did not find any evidence to suggest that the rituals were used by the workers to undermine the hierarchy in the brick factory, which fits with Heuzé’s (1992) claim that religious rituals at work serve primarily to consolidate employers’ authority. In the religious ritual to mark the inauguration of the factory, the owner’s eldest brother sacrificed a coconut to Lord Ram. Given the decline of animal sacrifices across South Asia (Fuller 1996), the use of an animal surrogate may be unsurprising. What is striking, however, is that the god addressed in this ceremony was Ram instead of Kali, the queen of bloody sacrifices. This, I propose, can be explained by the fact that neither the owner nor his eldest brother was very knowledgeable about the symbolism of these rituals. What seemed more important to them and the other guests was the feast at the factory office that followed the ceremony, which involved discussions about business and political interests. This becomes more apparent when one considers how the factory owner only offered a sacrifice at the beginning of the season and expressed little interest in attending the weekly ritual to appease Agni Devi. Instead, it was the brick burners – those whose safety was most at risk in the factory – who regularly engaged in these pujas. For them, the rituals had a purpose: they allowed them to cope with

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the insecurities, uncertainties and risks related to their work and to emphasize their status as specific workers doing dangerous work in relation to the other workers. A side effect of these practices, however, is the concealment of both the dangers of work and the exploitative relationship between owners and labourers. In the following section, I will look further at how such hierarchies are mediated and disguised as kiln workers engaging in everyday forms of play and fun at the factory.

Play and Fun at Work In a way, Gokul’s brick factory resembles the Daisy brick kiln in West Bengal described by Alpa Shah (2006). Following rural adivasi (indigenous) labour migrants from a village in Jharkhand, Shah shows how their work in a brick kiln in West Bengal, despite paying next to nothing, offered a sense of fulfilment. The labourers perceived the factory as a ‘space of freedom to escape problems back home, explore a new country, gain independence from parents or live out prohibited amorous relationships’ (ibid.: 91). In the brick kiln, as Shah succinctly put it, ‘individuals were too busy having fun’ (ibid.: 99). The situation in Gokul’s brick factory was similar, albeit for different reasons. For many kiln workers, life at the factory was about freedom. Most freed Kamaiya preferred working for piece rates at the brick kiln to their previous lives in the agricultural fields, since the former allowed them to organize their working time according to their own needs. As Ram Chaudhary, a brick moulder, described it, ‘Before the owner always hassled us. Even when we didn’t have anything to do, he told us to run errands for him. Now here we are free.’ This sense of freedom was a consequence not only of history but also of the management’s recruitment strategy. In Gokul’s brick kiln, workers came from different Kamaiya bastis and villages, and most were quick to emphasize how this diversity made their work more interesting. For the brick moulders, working for piece rates meant that they were occasionally able to interrupt the monotonous work cycle and engage in other activities. These included going fishing in the nearby rivers, looking for firewood and berries in the forest, and visiting relatives and friends. Some workers also used these opportunities to drink jaar (a Tharu liquor). One non-work activity that all male kiln workers enjoyed was mice hunting, which was performed in groups of four or five individuals, often accompanied by children. Commonly, the mice would be divided out and eaten together after the hunt. It

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should be noted, however, that mice hunting trips were extremely time-consuming affairs. It usually took several hours of roaming and digging in nearby agricultural fields to find the mice. While the local Maoist cadres considered this ‘custom’ a frivolous pursuit and an obstacle to people’s economic development, for the majority of workers mice hunting was simply a fun way to pass the time. While the brick carriers also worked for piece rates, they usually had no time to leave the factory during their shifts. They worked in large groups of up to twenty people, transporting bricks between the moulders and the stackers near the oven. Despite the monotony of the job, the mostly female workers remained in good spirits, chatting and laughing with each other while they moved the bricks. As Surendra explained, ‘Sometimes they compete against each other to see who can balance the most bricks on their heads.’ The women would carry six, eight, ten, twelve, or fourteen bricks on their heads at any one time. After successfully transporting a set of bricks from the moulders to the stackers, they would be given a coin by the muncis, the colour of which denoted the number of bricks carried. Each Friday, the brick carriers would agree with the munci how many bricks they would move the following week. This led them to compete with one another as well as with themselves. During breaks, the number of coins would often be counted and compared, with those who had the most earning respect from their fellows. Though seemingly a bit of harmless fun, it could be argued that by engaging in these games the workers were contributing to their own exploitation and increasing the surplus of the company. Surendra usually laughed about this aspect of kiln work, but he welcomed the competitions because they ultimately helped to raise the level of production. Another enjoyable aspect of work at Gokul’s brick factory was the yearly company excursion, which in 2009 took place on 1 June. Gokul organized a tractor to transport approximately forty labourers to the Behada mela (fair), also known as Ganga Dashara Mela, at Urma village, south of Dhangadhi. Most of the workers spent the entire night at the festival, walking around and meeting new people, returning home at 6 am. The general consensus among the workers was that the excursion had been good fun. At the risk of labouring the point, the kiln workers’ engagement in everyday forms of play and fun at the factory further mediated and disguised the strict factory hierarchy. So how did the Maoist rebellion actually affect the daily affairs of the factory? The following section will expand further on this issue by shedding light on the significant changes that occurred in the wake of the Maoist revolutionary period.

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Assertiveness and Class Consciousness In Gokul’s brick factory, the most significant changes brought about by the Maoist rebellion in the post-conflict period were a change in the language of class and the workers’ increasing assertiveness. A telling example of this new vocabulary was how a neighbouring brick factory owner who originally hailed from India was regarded by many as samanthabad (feudal), a derogatory term used by the Maoist rebels throughout the revolution to point to the dark, ‘corrupt’ side of landlordism. More important, however, was that many workers talked now about their adhikhars (rights) – Tharu and Kamaiya. As the brick kiln workers’ language has been ‘Maoized’ in the post-conflict context they have become more brave in asserting themselves in front of authorities. Take the young, female brick carriers as a case in point. The young girls would sometimes use the back room of Gokul’s office for impromptu dance competitions. They would wait until the manager had finished work and then sneak through the office one by one. Once in the back room, they would turn on the radio and play Nepali or Hindi pop songs. It was usually Kishor Chaudhary, the brick burner, who taught the young women how to dance. Thus, by transforming the factory office into a temporary dance hall, the young workers demonstrated their assertiveness. Similarly, assertiveness was displayed more generally by women working in the factory as brick carriers. Arun, one of the muncis, told me how women now complained about their back pains and other hardships, and might even demand more wages, which was previously unheard of. But it was not only the women workers who had become bolder. On one occasion, I was sitting with a shift of brick burners, all men, in front of the steaming hot oven. They drank home-brewed dharu (liquor) despite the owner’s order not to drink alcohol near the oven for safety reasons. When asked whether they were afraid of the owner, they countered, ‘The malikua (owner) can’t tell us! We just do “time pass”’, suggesting their distaste for top-down orders. Similarly, the brick moulders had been emboldened, as all of the muncis kept telling me. During storms, these workers would often refuse to help cover the stacked bricks to protect them from the rain. It should be noted that subversive acts such as those described above occur sporadically and relate to specific work groups. Only once did I observe an entire brick moulder group asserting themselves together by going on strike. This occurred in the brick factory of Gokul’s brother, Som Paneru, in the summer of 2009, a few weeks before the end of the brick-making season. In protest against the low

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wages they received despite the extreme working conditions, nearly all of the brick moulders put down their tools and went on strike. In response to this, the owner threatened to close the factory and not pay them anything at all. Instead of openly challenging their employer, many workers opted to leave the factory, thus expressing their dissent with their feet. Som Paneru then continued the production with the remaining workers for another week before closing down the factory because of the approaching rainy season. His threat to not pay the workers proved to be a bluff; a week later he paid the workers their outstanding salaries. Despite the incident of the strike, he preferred to continue with the same workforce rather than search for new suitable workers. Yet what was the nature of the consciousness underpinning the workers’ subversive actions? Shall we conceptualize these subversive acts as a new form of class awareness or even as some form of class consciousness? Investigating these questions leads us to more general theories of assertiveness as a form of resistance to power structures. Among South Asian labour historians, the assertiveness of workers in regard to the authority of their employers is generally explained in the context of expanding labour markets across the South Asian subcontinent. These allow workers to be less submissive, as new job opportunities make them less dependent on agricultural employers. However, more recent anthropological contributions on these issues have also highlighted the importance of the wider political environment to the occurrence of assertiveness. For example, Nicolas Martin (2009) explained the absence of meaningful assertiveness among Kamis in Western Punjab in relation to their landlord’s successful capture of local state power, whereas Jeffrey and Lerche (2000) have documented the assertiveness of Dalit workers in Uttar Pradesh under the political influence of Mayawati. Yet, the impact and divergent histories of Maoism in South Asia and Nepal – on which there now exists a considerable literature (Lawoti and Pahari 2009; Gellner 2009) – paints a complex picture of Maoism that cannot automatically be linked to a meaningful empowerment of marginalized communities (Shah 2010). What, then, shall we conclude from the ethnographic material presented above? Certainly, describing the consciousness of brick kiln workers in crude terms of a Marxian class consciousness may be displaced. This is because the subversive actions described were restricted to particular working groups or to a specific factory, and workers have not united or acted as a homogenous working class that cuts across brick factories. Moreover, although a large part of the

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workforce was sympathetic to the Maoist movement and voted for the Maoists in the Constitutional Assembly in 2008, the discourse of workers encountered remains far from expressing an understanding of the recognition of the contradiction and conflict involved in class formations or even aiming at social transformation: what most brick kiln workers talked about was less the Maoist project of winning the state power and more their personal matters and their adhikhars (rights) as both Tharu and ex-bonded labourers. Hence, it would be misleading to render their experience as an instantiation of a Marxian utopia in which industrialization leads – in some way automatically – to the formation of an industrial working class that then continues to form a socialist movement based on a shared working-class consciousness. The essential point at issue is that the workers in the brick kiln had begun to cultivate a class awareness based on their common life situation. They were aware of their situation as exploited labourers, but also that they could be worse off if they did not have their malikua to thank. The alternatives of migrating for seasonal work to India, where Nepalis are known to be treated dismally,6 or to survive under the aegis of a ‘semi-feudal’ landlord in the Terai (Sugden 2013), would indeed be even worse. Seen in this light, it is hardly surprising that they generally viewed brick kiln work as a less exploitative form of labour and appreciated the leisure time, spirit of collective solidarity, company-paid annual excursions and opportunities for flirtation and dancing that came with it. In other words, what the brick kiln workers were conscious of was a new mode of life (Kalb 1997) that they have started to live as a class thanks to the rebellion.

Conclusion Since its inception, the Nepali Maoist movement has sought to act on behalf of the marginalized and disempowered populations of the country. Any judgment of the movement has to take into consideration the extent to which it has fulfilled this promise, as well as the consequences of its attempts to do so. In this chapter, I have drawn the balance sheet by distinguishing between continuities and changes in everyday brick kiln labour regimes. In the first part of this chapter, I argued that everyday work patterns have hardly changed in the wake of the insurgency period despite changes in the regional political economy. Relations in the workplace remain largely hierarchical, but there is now a broad foundation for solidarity to emerge among the different communities of workers, though such solidarity does

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not yet seem to reach beyond ‘ethnic’ and linguistic boundaries. The perpetuation of hierarchical employer-worker relations was dependent on two factors. First, workers used religious rituals to obscure the everyday dangers of work. By appealing to the divine power of the Hindu pantheon, they reassured themselves in order to face the everyday dangers of brick factory work. Second, for the majority of workers, the brick factory was a site not only of exploitation but also of play. Activities such as mice hunting, competitive brick carrying and company excursions brought a sense of fun to the workplace and allowed individuals to cultivate a positive self-image in an otherwise alienating environment. Significantly, the second part of this chapter has shown how, despite the propensity for the aforementioned practices to reinforce existing hierarchies, the workers now feel increasingly secure in claiming new spaces for their own emerging pleasure, pastimes and sociality vis-à-vis existing hierarchies and customs. They have begun to engage in subversive acts on the shop floor and to create a new mode of being and identity around their position as young, ‘liberated’ mobile workers. This nascent assertiveness indicates a rising level of class consciousness among the brick kiln workers in Tikapur’s hinterland and thus represents a rare corollary of the Maoist revolution. By tracing this effect, this chapter hopes to contribute to the understanding of industrial relations in Nepal (Graner 2001; Shakiya 2007), and to paint a more complex picture of South Asia’s left, one that goes beyond leftism as ‘simply the window-dressing of a capitalist accumulation drive’ (Steur and Das 2009: 67). While its impact is less tangible than might be expected, I hope to have shown how Maoism has created a new working class that is starting to make very different claims on society, an outspokenness that was impossible when its constituents where bound in rural servitude. But as the next chapter will demonstrate, the revolution has had an another important, albeit unintended, impact; with the changing balance of power in the aftermath of the insurgency, the ability of managers to bind labour has been severely curtailed.

Notes 1. According to a report in the Nepali Times, in 2005 the Maoists gained NR 180m in revenue from yasegumba taxes in Dolpa district (‘Potent Insurgency’ 2005).

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2. Moreover, the Maoist-associated news service ‘A World to Win’ reported that the Maoists were organizing the building of a 57-mile long road to be known as Sahid Marg (Martyrs Highway) in Rolpa district (A World to Win 2006). 3. An exception to this general rule remains Pun Ngai’s factory study in Shenzen, China (Ngai 2003). In the case of the dagongmei (women migrant workers from the countryside) described in her work, this is because state-sponsored consumerist fantasies – embodied in the urban agglomeration of Shenzen, which is full of high-rise buildings, theme parks and expensive hotels – rework the women’s consumerist aspirations and lead them to an acceptance of the ‘drudgery of sweated labour’ (ibid.: 2003: 469) at their factory jobs. 4. Calendar is a colloquial expression for chatur (clever). 5. The Raji are a small community of traditional honey gatherers who live in the region. Their lives have been documented by the French filmmaker Eric Valli in Honey Hunters of Nepal (1988). 6. See also Thieme (2006), Bruslé (2008) and Sharma (2008) for accounts of work regimes that Nepali labour migrants encounter in India.

– Chapter 6 –

THE REVOLUTIONARY LEGACY AND DEBT BONDAGE

_ Introduction This chapter discusses how the Maoist movement’s attempt to grab state power at the local and national levels has affected a system of debt bondage still practised in the brick kilns of the town’s rural hinterland. The chapter focuses on Gokul’s brick factory to make two general arguments. The first argument is that on the Nepali-Indian border in the far-western lowlands of Nepal, brick kiln owners still attempt to bind labour through the handing out of advances and the delay of payment, despite the fact that the state prohibited all forms of bonded labour under the Bonded Labour Abolition Act of 2001. Admittedly, in comparison with data available for brick factories in neighbouring India (Prakash 2009) or Pakistan (Ercelawn and Nauman 2004), this form of unfree labour remains fairly limited and is less severe than one might expect in this context. And given that industrial capitalism continues to rely on forms of unfree labour in similar contexts in other parts of the world (Brass 1990, 2004; Breman 1994; De Neve 1999; Engelshoven 1999; Manzo 2005; Mollona 2005) this might appear as hardly newsworthy. But it is important to highlight that this system of unfree labour is accepted by employers and workers only as long as it remains within certain boundaries. Apart from the economic reasons, the strong political clout of the Maoist movement in the aftermath of the revolution has imposed limits on the binding of labour. I propose that the Maoist movement presents a new structural and moral barrier to the attempts of kiln managers to force adult workers into relations of severe dependency. – 169 –

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With regard to these arguments, it is important to note that the constraining effect of the Maoist movement on unfree labour in brick kilns has to be placed in its local context. In the case considered here, debt bondage represents a condensed signifier of the old feudal order, and it is this order – as everyone knows all too well – that the Maoist party cadres are most eager to confront and destroy in their project of building a naya (new) Nepal. The chapter shows that it is the iconic status of bonded labour and the possibility of being sanctioned for continuing its practice that prevents managers from returning to the old system. However, the assurance of minimum wages and the improvement of labour conditions, as well as the situation of unfree labour in the neighbourhoods, are less of a concern for the Maoist movement, because it acts according to the party’s general understanding of the political economy of Nepal. Focusing on the meaning of ‘unfree labour’ in a post-conflict context, this chapter shows how the rise and establishment of the Maoist movement has put a break on the dispossession of a section of the working classes of Nepal. This insight coincides with the argument made in the previous chapter where I demonstrated that the Maoist rebellion has helped to produce a new young, mobile and urbanizing working class that in the new political context feels increasingly secure in claiming new spaces for its own emerging pleasure, pastimes and sociality vis-à-vis existing hierarchies and customs. While it is true that the Maoist movement in Western Nepal relied extensively on the use of violence, fear and intimidation as a political strategy both throughout the revolution and its aftermath (LeComte-Tilouine 2009; Pettigrew 2009; Shneiderman 2009; Thapa, Ogura and Pettigrew 2009), this chapter suggests that it has also brought some positive developments for Nepal’s working classes through the application of its ideology to traditional practices of unfree labour. The case presented is significantly different from similar contexts of unfree labour in India (Lerche 1998) and Pakistan (Martin 2009) for two principal reasons. First, in the immediate aftermath of the insurgency period that lasted from 1996 to 2006, the landlords and local elites were afraid of the Maoists, who used violence to target local banks and state institutions. Second, the establishment of the Maoist movement in the region challenged the ability of local landlords to rule through the arms of the local state apparatus. Unlike in the context described by Martin (2009) and Lerche (1998), the alliance between local elites and the state was broken through the establishment of the Maoist movement in the region following the insurgency period. However, I also argue that the project of radical justice that

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the Maoist movement embarked upon has so far only reached a certain section of the working classes. This coincides with the findings of Sugden, who recently argued that in the eastern Terai ‘feudal and capitalist formations co-exist and articulate, with surplus divided between landlords and non-farm employers’ (Sugden 2013: 519). Thus, I argue that the Maoist revolutionary project of radical justice remains partial and incomplete. But let me begin by returning to the workers in the brick kilns.

Origins of Debt Bondage Practices in the Brick Factories of Kailali Brick factories in Kailali district were first established in the early 1980s. Since then, the industry has expanded rapidly around the urban centres of Dhangadhi and Tikapur, as well as along the East-West Mahendra Highway, which transects this lowland district. In total, there were thirty-five brick factories registered across the region, with many more (smaller) factories as yet unregistered,1 while in Tikapur’s immediate vicinity there were seven large brick kilns. Two of the latter were established during my stay in the region, while the other five have been running for nearly two decades. With the exception of an affluent Tharu landlord, all of the seven kiln owners were from relatively well-off landowning families of the Chhetri caste. The capital needed to start these brick factories was generally acquired through either agricultural production, or land deals or non-agricultural businesses; for example, one kiln owner had a hotel in Kathmandu, another used some parts of his land for chicken farming, and a third made various business deals in neighbouring India. Since the Chhetri factory owners entered the brick business as outsiders with no experience of this type of work, they initially hired Indian contractors. In Gokul’s brick kiln, where I spent five months, the manager, Surendra, recalled how in the past all factory labour was foreign: the Indian contractors did not hire local labour, but instead brought their friends, family and peers with them to Nepal. They had a reputation for being extremely skilled in comparison to the local workers, which reinforced the wider belief that Indian workers were highly capable while the Nepalis were able to do only the menial jobs. It was the Indian contractors, as Surendra repeatedly told me, who taught the Nepali owners and managers how to run a brick factory, including the practices of handing out advances and delaying wages in order to ensure a steady flow of labour.

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Many brick kiln managers explained to me that they continued to distribute advances later as well, since this was a ‘custom’ acquired from the Indians. Kiln work was identified with an Indian labour regime, and there were certain traditions that were maintained. For example, each brick kiln closed on Friday afternoons, a practice that the Indians had introduced so that their Muslim workers could attend the Friday prayers. Again, the workgroups in the brick kilns were commonly referred to using Hindi names, such as beldari for stackers, nekhasi for carriers and pathera for moulders. Moreover, various religious rituals within the brick factory were referred to as Indian traditions; Gokul’s factory’s opening ceremony involved a puja to Lord Ram, and every week the brick burners would worship Agni Devi (the Lord of Fire), next to the chimney, for continued success and protection (See Chapter 5). All these practices were said to have originated in India. That the persistence of the practice of handing out peshgi (advances) to workers was a ‘custom’ learned from Indian contractors was of course only half the story. The other half, which was related to the necessity of binding and reserving labour, had several key characteristics. First, brick kiln owners and managers preferred locals from the Tharu ethnic community over foreign (i.e. Indian) workers, despite the latter’s reputation for being more skilled and productive. This preference was justified on the grounds that it not only reduced antagonism between different caste groups, but also because Tharu were seen to be more capable than local untouchables or low-caste groups. Having previously served as agricultural workers, the Tharu had a reputation for being imandar (honest) and mehanati (hardworking) labourers: honest because they were less devious and prone to spontaneous violence than their Indian counterparts and hardworking because they spent their entire lives in the agricultural fields, which was considered extremely arduous. As another manager added, ‘Tharus are simple people. They work hard but demand little.’ It is clear, however, that as members of a largely uneducated, lowskilled, proletarianized labour force, the Tharus had little choice other than to sell their labour power. A second reason to bind labour, as all managers told me, was to ensure a steady supply of diligent and skilled workers in the wake of increasing competition for capable labour among kiln owners. These skills varied among different working groups and were largely learnt on the job. For example, a good brick moulder was one who could produce 1,200 bricks a day, whereas a bad brick moulder would only make about 500; brick burners, meanwhile, had to be able to gauge exactly how long to bake the

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bricks, which required long-term training (ranging from one to five years) with experienced burners. By giving out peshgi to male skilled workers, managers took advantage of the fact that many workers were women and children who migrated to the factories along with their husbands. There was no doubt that women did the most back-breaking jobs such as carrying bricks on their heads. The managers, without any sense of irony, were proud to speak of them as having replaced the donkeys that used to carry the bricks when the Indians worked in the kilns, explaining that women’s labour could easily be ‘secured’ by giving advances to their husbands. Finally, as I discuss in more detail below, the managers felt the need to hand out advances because the location of the brick kilns in the border region of Nepal meant that labour migration could easily rob them of their workforce. To sum up, since the 1980s, the practice of handing out peshgi had been utilized by the kiln owners in Tikapur to ensure a stable supply of labour. While kiln managers attributed the existence of this practice to the original Indian contractors, an increasingly competitive industry and a shortage of skilled labourers contributed to the persistence of this form of debt bondage. This resonated with more general trends in non-agricultural industries across South Asia, which showed that debt bondage was not limited to the feudal or semifeudal past, but had been strategically reintroduced by small-scale industrialists in non-agricultural capitalist environments (Kapadia 1995; De Neve 1999; Engelshoven 1999; Prakash 2009). I will return to the differences between past and present forms of bondage in due course. First, however, I wish to explain in more detail the nature and extent of debt bondage in this industry.

Handing out Peshgi and Delaying Payment The result of the particular trajectory of economic development outlined above was a system of debt bondage that allowed brick kiln owners and the managers to convert wages into the repayment of debt and turn free labourers into debt-bonded workers, rendering employers successful in their project to deproletarianize their workforce (Brass 1990). The kiln workers, irrespective of their place of origin, received peshgi (advances) before taking up their jobs. An advance was usually given out by the managers during the monsoon period, when the subsistence level of the workers was at its lowest, and represented both a form of earnest money and a debt relationship

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(Breman 2010). It was earnest money because it showed the worker that the employer was serious about providing a job; workers got to keep the money in the event the employer changed his plans. But by accepting the advance, the worker also entered into a debt relationship with his employer, which continued until he paid back the loan. I conducted a survey of all seven kilns in Tikapur’s hinterland. Table 6.1 showed the advances given to various categories of kiln workers for two brick factories. Of those for whom data was available, approximately two thirds did not receive any advance before taking up their jobs. A cursory glance at this table reveals that the popular image of brick kilns as hotspots for debt bonded labour is far too simplistic, as there remains a high percentage of workers who Table 6.1 Advances given to various categories of brick kiln workers No peshgi

0–500

500– 1500

1500– 2500

2500– 3500

3500– 4500

Fukuwa (Brick burner)

  2

1

 1

 1

 2

 3

0

 10

Beldar (Brick stacker)

  0

0

 2

 2

 0

 1

2

  7

Pathera (Brick moulder)

 79

2

 7

19

18

 5

0

130

Rubbisha (Rubbish collector)

  2

0

 0

 0

 2

 0

0

  4

Intabokni (Brick carrier)

 35

0

 1

 0

 0

 1

0

 36

Nekhasi (Brick exporter)

 21

0

 1

 3

 1

 1

0

 27

Tractor driver

  3

0

 0

 0

 0

 0

0

  3

Woodcutter

 15

0

 0

 0

 0

 0

0

 15

Loader

  4

0

 0

 1

 0

 0

0

  5

Total

161

3

12

26

23

11

2

237

Source: Author’s fieldwork.

> 4500 Total

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did not enter into a debt relationship with their employers. However, considering that nearly all male brick moulders worked together with their wives, it can safely be said that roughly two-thirds of the brick factories’ workforce entered into a debt relationship with their employers. Among those who accepted an advance were brick burners, brick stackers, brick makers, brick carriers, brick exporters and truck loaders. It was only the woodcutters who received no advance, as they were employed on a daily basis. To what extent are those who accept advances indebted? From Table 6.1, we can calculate that 34 per cent of workers received between NR 1,501 and NR 2,500, while 30 per cent received between NR 2,501 and NR 3,500. Nearly 81 per cent of those who were given peshgi received sums in excess of NR 1,500, but only two workers received more than NR 4,500. It was usually male brick burners and staplers who received the highest advances, as their skills were regarded as vital to the success of the factory. Women and children in these roles received far less peshgi but still took home a substantial amount. These sums only make sense when one considers the kiln workers’ respective incomes (see Table 6.2). A brick maker, for example, earns NR 250 per day for moulding a line of 1,000 bricks; hence, a peshgi of NR 1,500 could be repaid in less than a week. Similarly, a brick burner earns NR 4,000 per month, so a peshgi of NR 4,000 equivalent to one month’s work. This suggested that the practice of handing out peshgi, taken in isolation, represented both a form of earnest money and a very limited attempt to bind labour. Despite this, workers remain bonded to their employers, as wages were not paid immediately but only at the very end of the brick making season. Once they begun working at a kiln, which was usually Table 6.2 Average wages for different jobs in Gokul’s brick factory Brick burner Brick stacker Brick moulder Rubbish collector Brick carrier Cooked brick exporter Tractor driver Woodcutter

NR 4,000/month NR 4,000/month NR 250/1,000 pieces NR 3,000/month NR 250/1,000 pieces NR 250/1,000 pieces NR 3,500/month NR 125/day

Loader

NR 3,000/month

Source: Author’s fieldwork.

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shortly after the famous Tihar festival in November, most employees received a small allowance from the manager each Friday, with a great amount available from their munshi (supervisor) only on request. At the end of the season, these debts were subtracted from the worker’s overall earnings. If the worker left earlier, however, he risked losing up to nine months of paid work, and if he requested an additional advance, he risked being indebted at the end of the season. Thus, owners and managers further bound labour by delaying the payment of wages. In should be noted that in the context of South Asia the practice of delaying payment was not uncommon. A similar system, known as baqidari has been described by the historian Nandini Gooptu in her seminal study of urban poverty in nineteenth-century Uttar Pradesh, India. She notes that ‘in the ready-made clothing industry [in Uttar Pradesh], for instance, darzis [tailors] were paid only half of their wages in cash, while the rest was kept by the workshop owners’ (Gooptu 2001: 54). This practice ensured that workers would return after a religious festival or marriage. Furthermore, it helped prevent workers from claiming higher wages, as they remained subject to the mercy of the factory owner. In November 2008, the Minister of Labour (UCPN Maoist) announced an increase of the national daily minimum wage from NR 150 to NR 190,2 yet none of the workers in Gokul’s factory were aware of this, and the woodcutters, even before this, were receiving less than the minimum amount. In addition, the practice helped the employers cope with their own shortage of capital. Gokul always pointed out to me that he was tense due to such shortages and needed to have a good relationship with his bankers. This was not to say that investments in the brick industry were not profitable; Gokul estimated a net profit at NR 50 lakh for a whole season, though other brick factory owners put their figures closer to NR 25 lakh. But in order to set up his brick factory, Gokul had to take out a sizeable loan from the bank and delaying payments to workers gave him ample time to repay this.

Old vs. New Forms of Debt Bondage? As in other areas of the subcontinent, Nepal has a long history of unfree labour. The eminent Nepali historian Mahesh Regmi claimed that the Gorkhali and Rana rulers had already introduced and institutionalized forced labour systems by the eighteenth-century (Regmi

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1971). In the context of the western Tarai, as discussed in the introduction, various authors have detailed the forms of bonded labour under the Kamaiya system. Yet if the system was deeply exploitative, what were the actual differences between the Kamaiya system and the system of debt bondage as described above? Several aspects of these differences can be considered, which related to its subjective understanding as well as to a structural comparison between the two systems. With regards to the former, I should state that nearly all of the workers who I interviewed in Gokul’s brick kiln rejected the notion that they were Kamaiya to the managers and factory owners, and many explicitly denied my thesis that they were trapped in a new form of debt bondage. The majority of workers claimed to have entered kiln work freely and accepted the advances given beforehand, as they provided a means to survive throughout the monsoon months, when work is scarce and subsistence is hardest. Only a couple of workers claimed that they had been forced into accepting an advance by the manager, and some brick moulder families explicitly refused to accept any advance in fear of becoming too dependent on the kiln owner. Similarly, the managers and accountants of the brick kilns did not agree with my contention that the practice of handing out advances and delaying payment of earnings represented a return to the old Kamaiya system. In fact, when I first met Surendra, the manager of Gokul’s brick kiln, shortly before the factory’s opening ceremony, he proudly explained to me that he had ‘already reserved the brick burners and brick stackers by handing out advances’. Clearly, Surendra had no intention of hiding the fact that the kiln gave out advances to bind the labour force. However, despite obvious strategic advantages, kiln owners and managers were reluctant to hand out large advances to their workers; as one manager told me, ‘We don’t want to get them bonded again.’ Similarly, a Bahun manager in a nearby brick kiln opined that, ‘If you give them [workers] large advances, they will get bonded again because they will squander all their advance on alcohol!’ While it was undoubtedly true that male workers in the brick kiln usually drank at night, what is significant here is that the manager felt he had a responsibility to avoid binding workers as had occurred under the Kamaiya system. In terms of structure, there are also several important differences between debt-bondage in the brick kilns and the Kamaiya system. First, while it was clear that indebtedness in both contexts led to a loss of freedom, the loss that occurs in the brick kiln was only temporary, usually lasting no more than one season; the lifelong bondage that existed in the Kamaiya system has certainly disappeared.

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Second, while a Kamaiya was usually bound to his landlord together with his entire family, this was only partially true in the case of brick kiln workers. While brick moulders often worked together with their wives and children, all stackers and burners worked individually on the factory floor. Hence, there is a likelihood that employment has become more contractual than before, one where patron-client linkages are increasingly stripped away. This also has to do with the increasing spatial distance between employers and workers. Gokul, for example, spent much of his time in his tool shop in Tikapur and invested some of the profits from his factory into building a luxurious mansion in the area. He held chicken and whisky parties in local hotels for bankers and friends, and led a remarkably cosmopolitan existence. His absence in the factory made it difficult for workers to claim patronage from him. Third, while in the mid 1990s the Kamaiya were an important source of gaining prestige and votes during elections, the relationship between an employer and their workers was less personal. It was unthinkable that brick kiln owners would use their workers as a vote-bank, largely because many of the workers had strong sympathies to the UCPN Maoist. Fourth, while in the Kamaiya system servants were paid in quintals of rice, labour nowadays yields wages, and workplace relationships are more monetized. To summarize, instead of viewing brick kiln work as a return to the Kamaiya system, I have argued in this section that the former represents a type of unfree labour in which labour relations are characterized as less personal, more contractual and more monetized than in previous systems of bonded labour. This bears resemblance to Jan Breman’s concept of ‘neo-bondage’ (2010), yet it would be quite a stretch to conclude that this relatively loose bond represents a situation of ‘peshgi without bondage’ (Kahn 2010: 247). Significantly this type of unfree labour was acceptable to both employers and workers only so long as it remained limited. I will now turn to the constraining factors that limited kiln owners’ attempts to bind labour.

The Maoists and Debt Bondage Recent research on bonded labour in South Asia (Lerche 1995; Martin 2009) suggests that debt relations and paternal procedures are not necessarily the only effective means of controlling labourers. Jens Lerche (1995), citing fieldwork conducted in western Uttar Pradesh,

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India, has cautioned us against accepting the proposition that the category of ‘bonded labour’ remains collectively unassertive by bringing out the role of the politically dominant landed groups in the perpetuation of debt bondage relationships. Focusing on relations between the upper-caste landholding Jats and the Chamar agricultural workers, he maintains that violence is a key instrument of political control. Moreover, the former’s violence towards the latter goes unchallenged, as landlords have influential connections to the police, judiciary and land revenue departments. In a similar theoretical vein, Nicolas Martin (2009) has recently suggested that the perpetuation of bonded labour relationships in Pakistan’s Punjab is rooted in the landed elite’s successful capture of local state institutions. Thus, both scholars avoid purely economistic explanations by highlighting the general importance of regional structures of power. Within the growing brick industry of Tikapur’s hinterland, debt bondage was neither slowly disappearing nor being consolidated by businessmen, who exerted political control over police, judiciary and land revenue departments. Instead, we find a case in which the political dominance of the landed elite had been substantially weakened at the regional level. Unlike in Lerche’s study, where ‘the Jats’ strength … builds on the fact that they have no real competitors for power and land in the rural areas’ (Lerche 1995: 506), the landed elite in Kailali had to put up with the Maoists. This has had serious implications for the local balance of power, as the upper-caste elites (e.g. landlords and businessmen) could no longer suppress other caste groups through force. Broadly speaking, this was related to the UCPN Maoist’s growing political influence in the region, one feature of which has been the brutal campaigns against corrupt landlords and political enemies from midway through the insurgency. More directly, it was related to the regional electoral victory of the UCPN Maoist, which won all of the six electoral seats in Kailali district in the national Constituent Assembly elections in April 2008. Of the six candidates, four were from the Tharu community, while the other two were known Maoist hardliners. The Maoists had an office in Tikapur, less than five kilometres from the brick kilns. It supported freed bonded labourers in the region in their occupation of highly symbolic urban terrain, such as the airport, the local high school compound and parts of the local university (see Chapter 2). It also held rallies to support freed Kamaiya in their fight for land and advocated for bandhs (strikes), which have led the Maoists to become known in the region as the party of the poor (see Chapter 4).

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In the brick kilns of Tikapur’s hinterland, the shifting power dynamic has influenced the functioning of the system of debt bondage. Kiln managers found themselves in a difficult situation. On the one hand, they aspired to play fair by reducing their efforts to bind labour, while on the other, they had to endeavour to stay competitive in a capitalist market and ensure a stable supply of labour. Brick kiln owners and managers were aware that ‘labour has power today’, as one of the managers put it to me; workers could now make use of the government apparatus, such as the police and law courts, and should these options fail, they could ask the Maoists to help them secure their rights. The Maoists’ advocacy was possible because they have established themselves as a significant political power in the region. Kiln managers feared their organization. This may appear obvious, as during the insurgency period the Maoists blew up several public and private institutions in Tikapur, such as the police station, a school, two private banks and the local agricultural development bank that had yet to be reconstructed. After the peace agreement, the Maoists established a martyrs’ gate in a village near Tikapur and built three PLA (People’s Liberation Army) cantonments in Kailali district. The following personal observations further illustrate the managers’ fears. Having been shown around my first brick kiln, I paid repeated visits to all seven over the course of the next five months. I soon gained the trust of another kiln manager, who told me that throughout the revolutionary period, the Maoists held meetings in his kiln and others in the area. This did not go unnoticed by the local police, who came to inquire at the factory about Maoist activities in the region. Some kiln owners reacted by distributing identity cards to their workers so that the latter could go about their business without being hassled by the police, while other brick kiln managers reported Maoists in their factories. The owner of a nearby brick factory recounted that the Maoists used to visit the factory frequently. They often asked for ‘volunteer donations’ (chanda), which he did not dare refuse to pay. The Maoists also threatened that he should obey their demands, or else they would resort to physical violence or request particular skilled workers from the factory to bring production to a standstill. In such a climate of fear, this owner added, a handout of large advances would have been ‘unwise’ as the Maoists were principally opposed to all forms of serfdom. Indeed, as another manager explained, the Maoists had once even kidnapped one of the managers of a nearby brick kiln for a few days, and this was why he was afraid of the organization.

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The same manager further stated, ‘Labour has a lot of power today. They [workers] can go to the Maobaadi [Maoists] and ask for support.’ There was even a sense in which fear about the Maoist movement was perpetuated through the circulation of rumours about the Maoists’ organizational strength. One of the rumours I heard throughout my fieldwork was that the UCPN Maoist not only had been the bestrun political organization, but also had an extremely well-informed network of party cadres and supporters in the region. In case of a kidnapping, for example, it was wise to approach the Maoists for assistance, since they usually had more access to information than the local police force. Moreover, it was widely known that the Maoists had begun to involve themselves in various civil society organizations. Among labourers and brick kiln managers alike, it was becoming clear that the UCPN Maoist had been ‘capturing’ local associations, such as the local rickshaw-walas’ (rickshaw-pullers’) union and a stone-cutter union, with the aim of undermining these from within so as to align their interests with those of the party. These sorts of rumours helped to establish the idea that the UCPN Maoist sought not only to organize public and private gatherings, demonstrations and bandhs (strikes), but also to subvert and hijack a large variety of local associations. For the brick kiln managers, therefore, it was the Maoists’ real political power – their capacity to produce violence as well as its ‘invisible’ qualities – that curtailed the temptation to force labourers into relationships of severe dependency. In other words, it was the invisible hand of Mao Tse-tung, clenched in a visible fist, which coerced kiln managers and erected a moral and structural barrier around their attempts to bind labour. This was not the only constraint, however; there was also the fact that countless brick kiln workers migrated across the open border to India, and many of them remained there. In the following section I tell the story of the journey undertaken by three brick burners in order to explore the effects of migration on the system of debt bondage.

Labour Migration to a Chicken Factory in Baramati, India It was a searing hot June afternoon in 2009, one week before the closure of the brick factory for the rainy season. In one of their breaks during the six-hour work shift from 2 pm to 8 pm, the brick burners Kishor, Gorakh and Krishna Prasad discussed where to find work during the summer months. Kishor was not interested, but Gorakh

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and Krishna Prasad had made plans; they intended to migrate to India in order to work in a factory. When asked why they wanted to do this, both emphasized the importance of earning paisa (money) and their hopes of finding a better-paid job in India in order to escape from the brick factory. Gorakh was particularly eager to leave and find a new job, as he was upset with Surendra, the manager of the brick factory. Despite Surendra’s promise to cover food expenses and regularly provide mutton for the brick burner groups, he had never done so. But Krishna Prasad was less enthusiastic about leaving Kailali, explaining bluntly that nothing about such a venture excited him, not even the prospect of an amorous relationship. After a lengthy discussion about where in India they should work, the men opted for an industrial chicken factory in the vicinity of Pune. After the closure of the brick factory, the three aspiring labour migrants rested for a period of one week before embarking on their journey in early July 2009. I joined them and we travelled south by bus and train for three days a distance of approximately 1600 km. When we got off the train we jumped in the back of a cement truck, which took us to Baramati near Pune. The final part of the journey was an auto-rickshaw ride from Baramati into the desert-like outskirts of the town, where we finally arrived at the Baramati Agro Chicken Industrial Processing Unit. Each of the Nepali brick factory labourers had spent about IR 500 on the journey. Upon their arrival, the three men were told by the contractor, Ajay, to have a short rest. They went to the labour colony, which was located next to the barbed-wire-enclosed chicken factory and consisted of ten small, one-bedroom bungalows. Each room was about seven feet by four metres and was divided into a common room and kitchen; two were inhabited by Nepali workers, with eleven in each. Next to their rooms were those of the Indian workers, who ate and socialized separately. All salaried permanent workers at the factory were Indian; they enjoyed a regular income, yearly bonuses and fixed working hours (8 am to 5 pm). The Nepalis, in contrast, were hired by Ajay as daily wage labourers and had to work according to the demands of the market, plucking feathers, cutting legs and packaging chicken in different working groups. Their working day, as Ajay explained to me, began at 4 am and usually finished around 4 pm with an average salary about IR 3,000 a month. Contrary to my expectation that all three would begin work immediately, I was surprised the next morning to be invited by Krishna Prasad to his father-in-law’s workplace at a chicken farm in Chawland, near Baramati. We spent a whole day visiting this other factory,

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where Krishna Prasad’s father-in-law tried desperately to convince him to take a job. He thought Krishna Prasad was wasting his time at the Baramati chicken factory. Here in Chawland, he asserted, Krishna Prasad would make a better living and could quickly earn IR 10,000 if he was prepared to stay. Krishna Prasad turned down this opportunity, however, and instead told his younger brother, Ramesh, who was also working at Baramati Agro, to go and work with his fatherin-law. Back at the labour colony, Krishna told me that he preferred to stay at Baramati where he could earn a living and be with his friends, smoke bidis (tendu-leaf cigarettes) and chat about sexual adventures. Manosh, a Tharu from Kailali, talked about the prostitutes of Pune (IR 220 for a short adventure), and Lal Bahadur sat in a corner reading a pornographic magazine. Commencing work three days after their arrival, the three men soon began to complain to me about their new workplace. Narayan thought of his work in the chicken factory as phui (dirty), while Krishna Prasad said, ‘mero kam theek lagdhaina’ (‘my work is not ok’), as he had little time to work and felt constantly supervised. Gorakh, on the other hand, was desperate to earn money, having heard that his young son had fallen ill just a few days after his departure. Their distaste for the work echoed the general attitude of workers. As one Indian employee told me, ‘This is Sharad Pawar’s factory. He’s the bhagvan [god] in this town. If you go against him, he will make sure you get fired. There are no unions here.’ This was expressed symbolically in the fact that the powerful factory owner did not even allow employees to take home a chicken after a whole day working in the factory. Instead, any theft of chicken was punished with a fine of IR 550 (one week’s salary). However, this did not stop Manosh, a young Tharu worker from Tikapur, from smuggling out a chicken fillet in his rubber boots and sharing it with his Nepali workmates. From their arrival, all three men had slept alongside eight other factory workers in a cramped, mosquito-infested room in the labour colony. Usually, they would go to bed around 10 pm in order to be fresh for the start of the work at 4 am. On the tenth day of their stay, however, the three workers were rejected by the security personnel of the company compound and sent back to the labour colony. I awoke when the three men returned. I asked them why the security guard had rejected them, and they angrily explained it was because their fingernails were supposedly not clean. Showing me their nails, which looked clean enough, we debated the incident for a while. Then all of us lay down again to sleep on the concrete floor, covering our faces with blankets to protect ourselves against the mosquitos in the room.

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Twenty minutes later, the metal door of the room flew open and the deputy manager rushed in. He wore a white apron and a butcher’s hat and pounced on the sleeping workers, shouting furiously, ‘Where are the three?’ His eyes scanned the room for the three men who were hiding under their blankets. Then he burst out, ‘What is this? Why do you sleep? Go to work immediately! Go, go!’ The three did not really know how to respond; they sat up and turned away from the manager. He threatened them further, ordering them to go immediately to the factory. The hierarchy was clear, and I wondered to myself whether the three would be compelled to obey. But then Krishna Prasad told the manager about the chaukidar (guard) refusing them entry. The manager looked unmoved; it did not matter what had happened, they were to get back to work immediately. My three friends responded that they did not want to go back to the factory and had already decided to return to their village. The deputy manager walked away fuming and five minutes later I saw a sleepy Ajay standing in the doorway. Clearly frustrated, he asked the men why they were not working, and the three of them replied in unison, ‘Because we decided to stop.’ Realizing that the workers were not budging, Ajay walked away grumbling. After he left, the three men chatted a little, mimicking and mocking the deputy manager but firm in their decision; they wanted to return to Nepal. The next morning Gorakh was at work in the packing department by 8 am. Since there was no water available in the room, Krishna Prasad and Narayan had decided to go and wash their clothes in a nearby pond. When they came back, Narayan told me that both the manager and Ajay had refused to pay them three days of earnings because they were unwilling to continue work. Hence they had forged a new plan and wanted to return to Nepal immediately. They planned to become rickshaw drivers in Dhangadhi, Kailali’s capital, for the summer period and decided to leave the next day. Narayan was worried that he would be unable to pay the IR 300 for the train, but he soon came to an innovative solution. He asked his Tikapuri labour friends for support. The deal was that they would pay for his train ride and he in return would deliver remittances to their families. The others were reluctant at first, but finally agreed and Narayan and Krishna Prasad left for Nepal the next day. As the story above suggests, labour migration should not be conceived simply as an escape from the system of neo-bondage found in the brick factories of Tikapur. Rather, I contend that a large part of labour migration is dependent on the personal context of the worker. Labour migration within the capitalist economies of South Asia is

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better understood as an individual’s gamble for improved working and living opportunities as opposed to reasoned career development. This conception is shared by the brick factory managers, who are well aware that not all labour migration to India ends successfully, with many workers returning to the kilns after just a short time away. This further explains why managers continue to hand out advances, while at the time being careful to limit their amounts.

Conclusion: Revolutions, the State and Collective Memories of the Old Feudal Order In this chapter, it has become clear that the rise and establishment of the Maoist movement in Kailali district has had a diverse impact on the forms of unfree labour in post-conflict western Nepal. While the establishment of the Maoists as a political movement in Kailali district effectively curbed the attempts of brick kiln owners and managers to bind labour severely, it had little impact on the practice of the Kamlari system in the workers’ neighbourhoods (see Chapter 2). Was there some logic behind this that linked these apparently disparate forms of intervention? Why did the Maoist movement care more about adult brick kiln workers than young girls and women in the workers’ neighbourhoods? One possible answer suggests that in their attempt to capture state power throughout the time of my fieldwork, the Maoists prioritized the fight against unfree labour among adult workers over unfree labour among young girls and women because of electoral politics. The ethnographic data foregrounded suggests that once overground and involved in multiparty politics, the Maoists no longer cared about eradicating all forms of inequality, instead focusing on a strategic section of Nepal’s working classes that was perceived as a potential vote bank. By pointing out the difference in impact that the Maoist movement had on two forms of unfree labour, I aim to highlight two more general points. First, the case presented in this book raises questions about the framings of the state as a largely performative or fictional entity (Herzfeld 1997; Gupta 2005). Instead, it illustrates an instance in which the former guerrilla movement began to infiltrate the state, altering the alliance between old elites and state bureaucrats. This challenge to the state’s composition had direct effects on the working realities of a section of the working poor, implying that the state was a much more powerful agent than imagined in narratives that emphasized its performative or fictional character alone.

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Second, it is important to highlight that this narrative is not presented to discredit the moral foundation of the Nepalese Maoist project of radical justice. Certainly each revolutionary movement must prioritize different fronts in its struggle to combat inequalities. What should be highlighted, however, is that in this case, the Maoist movement had a tendency to focus on inequalities associated with the old feudal order, rather than new inequalities resulting from emerging capitalist formations. This emphasis on prioritizing the struggle against old forms of inequality, rather than those that are new and emerging, is not specific to Nepal. As pointed out by Zygmunt Bauman in Memories of Class (1982), cultural images and understandings of class often last longer than actual class formations (Bauman 1982). Similarly Michael Denning has suggested that, ‘(w)hile a capitalist economy continually reshapes workplaces and working populations, destroying old industries and working forces while drawing new workers from around the globe and moving industry to new regions, we remain caught in the class maps we inherited from family, school, and movies’ (Denning 2004: 229–30). The critique resulting from the case I have presented here maintains that revolutions are risky in that they tend to be captive to collective memory; it may be important to bring down the symbols of the told feudal world, but it may equally be important to address inequalities brought about by emerging capitalist formations. By all means, then, the Maoist revolution remains partial and incomplete.

Notes 1. Interview with staff members of the Cottage and Small Industries Office (CISO) in Dhangadhi in March 2009. 2. Gorkhapatra newspaper, 10 November 2008. Available at http://sapkotac.blogspot .de/2013/05/nepal-fixes-minimum-wage-at-rs-8000-per.html. Accessed 6 March 2017. (see Sapkota 2008).

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_ This book has explored and examined two different narratives simultaneously. On one level, this book has explored how political mobilizations and labour relationships are reshaped by a revolutionary armed conflict. At this level of analysis, the book offers insights into the ways in which revolutionary political mobilization actually changes social relations – often in unexpected ways that at times converge, and at others diverge, with the movement’s ideological goals. On a second level of analysis, this book represents a study of the end of a feudal system of bonded labour, the role of a revolutionary movement in that process, and the transformation of that system into new forms of labour relations which involve neo-bondage. Here I maintained – in line with Raj Chandavarkar’s theoretical approach to labour history in Mumbai (1994, 1999) – that the labour history of freed Kamaiya cannot be understood without engaging seriously with its political context. In this concluding chapter, I would like to briefly summarize my findings and reiterate the main arguments put forward in this book as seen from both of these ethnographic perspectives. I will then comment on more recent developments and events in Tikapur. Finally, I shall debate some of the implications of the ethnographic findings of this book for current discussions of Nepal’s polity.

First Perspective: The Maoist Revolution and Changing Social Relations This book showed how in its attempt to capture state power at both the local and national levels, the Maoist movement gained significant political clout in Tikapur and Kailali district as a whole. While in the past the movement engaged in numerous brutal battles in the – 187 –

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district, it has since been transformed into a mass political organization that has won all six electoral constituencies in the region and garnered a large number of supporters and sympathizers throughout the time of my fieldwork. The Maoist movement’s political sway was fundamentally different from that of other parties in the region, as it was backed by a militant youth wing (YCL) and four PLA (People’s Liberation Army) cantonments situated in the district. At times, as I explained in the introductory chapter, the movement resorted to violence against its political opponents and representatives of the state, and Maoist-declared bandhs were usually strictly followed. The book has explored how the shifting balances of power in the region impacted upon local politics and labour regimes with a particular focus on the freed Kamaiya community. On the most general level, I have argued that the Maoists’ attempt to capture state power had allowed former bonded labourers to become more included in Nepal’s polity at both the local and national levels, and had mediated forms of debtbonded labour in local brick factories. This contention was evidenced in the two parts of this book. The first part of the book (Chapters 1 to 4) detailed the Maoist movement’s impact on the politics of different local institutions. Most previous research on the movement has concentrated on violence and national politics, but these chapters offered a range of case studies regarding its effects on political decision-making processes in local institutions. They point to a diversity of impacts of the Maoist movement. The first ethnographic chapter began with an overview of the social history of Tikapur and its citizens, arguing that the local urban economic elite, which consisted primarily of the former masters of Kamaiya labourers, seemed to be on the defensive in the postinsurgency context. These elites reacted to the changing political context by organizing two large popular festivals, namely a yoga event and a town fair. These festivals not only served the elites’ own economic and political interests (i.e. advancing business opportunities and reconnecting to oppositional non-Maoist parties in Kathmandu), but also enabled them to portray themselves as benevolent patrons while under the watch of the local Maoist movement. The elites’ struggle to regain a middle-class constituency was experienced by freed Kamaiya in different ways. For some the festivals afforded a meaningful experience of inclusion in the local polity, while for others they were sites of exclusion, with class barriers preventing them from participating. Chapter 2 showed how the freed Kamaiya used the larger political context to establish urban squats in town and reworked the notion of ‘community’ in order to bring people together

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as freed Kamaiya, united against the state and fighting to secure access to land. Taken together, then, these chapters exemplify how the larger political context can both limit and enhance the scope of action for political actors. Chapters 4 and 5 further demonstrated how the collective actions of the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj and the labour unions were related to the presence of the Maoist movement. Such organizations were tolerated by the movement, being classified as friendly associations that helped to mobilize the urban poor in the joint fight to reform state power. The movement’s strategy therefore was to maintain close ties with the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj while at the same time co-opting select labour unions by putting its own people within these. These chapters elucidate some of the ways in which the Maoists governed urban municipalities and examine the effects on freed bonded labourers. The second section of the book (Chapters 5 and 6) discussed the Maoist movement’s impact on brick kiln work, an occupation undertaken by many freed Kamaiyas in the rural hinterland. While Chapter 5 focused largely on the continuities of brick kiln work and argued that neither labour relations nor wages changed drastically, Chapter 6 maintained that the movement did have a considerable impact on the industry, as its presence limited attempts by brick kiln managers to bind labour severely. Both chapters demonstrate the complexities of the Maoist impact on labour, which elucidate some of the theoretical concerns set out in the introduction. While the Maoists battled for state power they had to fight on different fronts, some more important than others. It seems that the iconic nature of bonded labour in the region, which was emphasized repeatedly through the collective actions of the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj, forced the Maoists to take up the fight against systems of severe debt bondage rather than newer forms of wage exploitation. This prompts the hypothesis that the Maoist movement acted according to the party’s general understanding of the political economy of Nepal. It seemed primarily concerned with the eradication of practices and symbols associated with feudalism and only secondarily worked on behalf of the working classes.

Second Perspective: From Patronage to Exploitation? The Emergence of Multilayered Systems of Patronage and a Self-Confident, Mobile and Assertive Community The Bonded Labour Abolition Act of 2001 led to the rapid disintegration of the Kamaiya system and marked the disappearance of patron-

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age. Freed Kamaiya were quickly displaced from the lands of their agricultural patrons and most became landless labourers squatting unregistered pieces of land like roadsides, forests and riverbeds. Despite the state’s promise to offer a compensation package of agricultural land and a lump sum of cash to all former bonded labourers, many in Kailali initially received neither of these. They were compensated and rehabilitated only very gradually, with many of those who were slow to see any benefits opting to join the Kamaiya movement, spearheaded by the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj. To increase the pressure on the state, the organization decided to occupy parts of urban centres. As described throughout the book, their ability to carve out a niche within the urban landscape was mainly due to the wider political context; the Maoist presence limited the possibility for state agents and political parties to react more harshly and evict freed Kamaiya from town centres. For the freed Kamaiya, beginning a new life in town meant that working for a landlord and the allowances he provided was replaced by cash payment in exchange for their labour. While exploring the persistence of patron-client relationships in the countryside was beyond the scope of this study, I have shown that complex and multilayered systems of patronage and brokerage were present in the squatter camps of Tikapur. In particular, this book has drawn attention to four actors with which freed Kamaiya engaged in their new urban environment: capitalist employers, Kamaiya neighbourhood leaders, the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj and labour unions. I suggested that together these actors formed a new network of brokerage whose character remained inflected by the wider political context, what I have called ‘the invisible hand of Mao Tse-tung’. This implies that the Maoists were in effect embracing capitalist relations while at the same time trying to mediate them by supporting brokers between the state and the Kamaiya community. But the transformation in a highly politicized environment from rural patron-client relationships to urban broker-client forms points to an even larger sociological process; that of a ‘Great Transformation’. Recently, the Dutch sociologist Jan Breman suggested that South Asia is currently undergoing a social transformation akin to what Karl Polanyi conceived as a ‘Great Transformation’ (Breman 2009). According to Breman, the great transformation in South Asia is characterized by the increasing exodus of rural labour to urban towns. He compellingly argues that labour – as a political class – has failed to achieve protection from the state and remains extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of capitalism. The overall image he draws is one

Conclusion | 191

where labour has left its rural habitat and migrated to new sites of employment in urban city centres and peripheral industrial factories. This ‘exodus’ from the countryside and the emergence of an urban ‘surplus army of labour’ (Marx 1976 [1867]) parallels the image Polanyi has provided for nineteenth-century England, particularly after the abolition of the protective ‘Poor Laws’ (Polanyi 1944). But unlike in the European ‘Great Transformation’, where labour gradually managed to gain a permanent place in the city, in India much labour migration traces a circular path back and forth between the village and various sites of temporary employment. This consistent impermanence is a crucial indicator for Breman to conclude that ‘[a]t least in the setting of Asia, we seem to be back again in the first and ugly phase of the great transformation’ (Breman 2009: 27). While this is certainly the case for India, as Jan Breman’s superb ethnographic work demonstrates, the general trajectory in Nepal appears to be different. The ethnographic material presented here suggests that after moving from country to town the freed Kamaiya did not just find themselves exploited by urban elites. Rather they have emerged as a more self-confident, mobile and assertive community with the support and under the protection of the Maoists. In other words I suggest that in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, Nepali labour politics was inflected by the presence of the Maoist movement. This raises the natural question to what extent the mediating effect of the Maoist revolution has been sustainable. To explore this in more depth, let us first consider the broader recent history of the region.

Elections, Earthquakes and Violent Clashes The November 2013 elections for the Constituent Assembly marked the largely successful transformation of Nepal’s Maoists from a guerrilla movement into a peaceful force that has apparently embraced multiparty democracy. Despite the obstructions of the small group of Maoists surrounding comrade Kiran, elections were held and the UCPN Maoist – being the focal point for all kinds of pent-up frustrations from different segments of Nepali society – lost the ruling position that it had secured in the previous elections in 2008. Instead, the Nepali Congress won with 196 out of 575 available seats and the UCPN Maoist only received 17 per cent of total votes cast. This defeat was not surprising; since coming to power the UCPN Maoist was never able to implement its project of radical justice. The promises of a meaningful land reform and a restructuring of the state into fed-

192 | The Partial Revolution

eral zones that would truthfully address discriminations based upon class, gender and ethnicity had remained unfulfilled. The return to power of the old forces of the Nepali Congress (NC) Party and the United Marxist Leninist (UML) had direct consequences for the vibrant protest culture that had emerged after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2006. The bhandas, chakka jams and andolans quickly disappeared from the streets of Nepal’s municipalities. In Tikapur after the election, a leader of the ex-bonded labourers movement explained to me that the return of the Nepali Congress Party with such broad support meant that freed Kamaiya leaders were reluctant to engage in ‘street politics’ as they had throughout the Maoist government period. It soon became clear for everyone in town that the freed Kamaiya had lost a patron and that the new government was unlikely to act in their favour. But the new Constituent Assembly achieved little more than clinging onto power. Like the previous Assembly, the new government faced difficulties in accommodating the country’s various political interests and remained deadlocked for over a year. The horrific earthquakes in April and May 20151 changed the political game; the political parties negotiating the new constitution decided, amidst controversy, to speed up the writing process and pushed through the passage of the text. However, this occurred in the midst of political protests by historically marginalized groups claiming that ‘the document failed to deliver on earlier political commitments to address longstanding grievances of structural discrimination and marginalisation, both political and economic’ (Amnesty International 2016). On 8 August 2015 the government proposed a model for a federal Nepal with six different provinces. This led to protests across the country, particularly in the southern lowlands of Nepal. In Tikapur, several thousand Tharus gathered on 24 August 2015 to protest against the federal model proposed by the state. The protestors clashed with the police with deadly results: eight policemen and a child of a police officer were killed. The event attracted frenzied national and international media attention (Al Jazeera 2015). As a reaction to the deaths, the state declared Tikapur and adjacent areas as a special ‘emergency’ zone and banned human rights groups from entering. In the days after the deadly protests, more than forty Tharu houses in the area were burned down, with not a single perpetrator being prosecuted. The police arrested dozens of Tharu protestors from villages and brought them to jail in Kailali’s capital, Dhangadhi. One of my informants told me he knew of a former Kamaiya who had been accused and put in jail despite pleading his innocence.

Conclusion | 193

Evidence from Amnesty International suggests that detainees in Dhangadhi jail, who were awaiting trial on charges of murder, attempted murder and robbery related to the incident, revealed ‘consistent accounts of beatings with lathis (bamboo sticks), being hit with rifle butts and being slapped and verbally abused while in police custody’ (Amnesty International 2016). The report also documents how police subjected members of the indigenous Tharu community in Kailali district to arbitrary arrests, torture and other ill-treatment, and coerced some of them into signing ‘confessions’ in connection with the deaths of the eight security personnel and the child in Tikapur (Amnesty International 2016).

The Partial Revolution Compared to the most recent developments, including the horrific, violent ‘uprising’ in Tikapur in 2015, the situation for the freed Kamaiya described in this book was much different. This is because in its immediate aftermath the Maoist revolution did succeed in providing marginalized populations with a wider political space to articulate their grievances. During the 2008 elections the UCPN Maoist invited three formerly bonded labourers onto their ballot; when the Maoists won, these three became the first ex-Kamaiya to be members of the constitutional assembly. Similarly, as I described in Chapters 3 and 4, the Maoist presence in Tikapur helped the Mukta Kamaiya Samaj to gain political clout and territory and stimulated the growth of labour unions. Thus, by contributing to the maintenance of a Kamaiya organization and tolerating the largely Kamaiya-based labour unions, the Maoists also democratized the local polity. This would suggest that political rights and liberties were enhanced in the local polity at the time. But as I explained earlier, the andolans have disappeared since the old forces regained power in the elections of 2013. This is not an imposed analysis but one articulated to me by freed Kamaiya leaders themselves. On a brief return trip to Tikapur in 2014, some of the leaders of the freed Kamaiya movement referred to the period in the immediate aftermath of the Maoist insurgency as the ‘time of andolans’. By doing so, they historicized what in retrospect appears as a critical juncture in Nepal’s recent history. This is remembered now as a period when ‘street politics’ (Bayat 2009) were possible and marginalized communities could make claims upon the state. In other words, it was a vibrant time of rights-based activism.

194 | The Partial Revolution

What followed the period of ‘street politics’ between 2008 and 2009 was a more muted activism. The same Kamaiya leaders that romanticized the period after the insurgency were now planning to improve the greater Kamaiya ‘family’ through participation in local elections and hoped that NGOs would continue to give them attention. It remains to be seen whether such strategies will prove to be successful, but the odds seem to be against them. This is because, as Nicolas Martin recently argued, the overlaying of electoral democracy onto a feudal society does not automatically lead to political fairness or accountability (Martin 2016). Rather, electoral democracy can also serve to entrench existing inequalities when elites are able to ‘capture’ state power. Secondly, the reliance on assistance from NGOs will likely lead to only modest, material improvements and not to the broader structural changes needed to achieve a sense of full citizenship for the formerly bonded labourers. In their roles as both ex-Kamaiya and Tharu, there is little hope for upward mobility among the residents of the bastis of Tikapur. It remains to be seen how future politicians and policymakers in Nepal can address such contradictions. The question is not only one of federal restructuring along ethnic lines in a time of post-conflict state-building. In fact, such measures might lead to the hardening of the boundaries between ethnic groups, or only to the enrichment of elites within a community. Instead, a first step towards a more equal Nepal is the rebranding of Maoist ideas of redistribution such as land reform. As one senior Maoist once told me, ‘Our problem is our name.’ The name of Mao Tse-tung is a heavy historical burden that has most likely prevented meaningful coalition-building in the current international climate. Only by reimagining the Maoist project and rearticulating its core pro-poor agenda will a solid foundation for meaningful change be established. This is a challenge not only for the Nepali political ‘left’ but for all those who believe in equal and fair societies around the world.

Note 1. On the 25 of April 2015, Nepal was hit by a disastrous earthquake that attracted much international media attention. It measured 8.6 on the Richter scale, killed more than 8,000 people, left more than 600,000 thousand Nepalis displaced and had its epicentre in the districts near Kathmandu, where most of the damage was done. It was followed by another small earthquake a few days later.

APPENDIX Conflict-Related Incidents in Kailali

_ Incident At least nine Maoists were killed in firefights with security forces in Ilam, Sunsari and Kailali districts. Three Maoists, including two women rebels, were killed in encounters with security forces in Kailali and Khotang districts. In Kailali, rebel Maoists shot dead head constable Ranga Lal Khadka in Bhajani Bazaar. In yet another incident in Kailali, rebels killed a villager in Pahalmanpur VDC-6. In Tikapur, Kailali, a group of rebels shot dead bank guard Bhim Bahadur Thapa of Malika Development Bank in broad daylight. In Dhangadhi, Kailali, a group of armed Maoists looted property worth more than NR 1m from the houses of the newly appointed Mayor of the Dhangadhi Municipality, Dhan Bahadur Bam, and his brother, Purna Bahadur Bam, in Municipality-7. A group of Maoist rebels shot dead a local resident and wounded another in Tipka bazaar, Sugarkhal VDC, Kailali district. A group of Maoist rebels shot dead 24-yearold Netra Bahadur Shahi of Solta Village in Sugarkhal VDC, Kailali. – 195 –

Date 19 October 2003

21 October 2003

11 November 2003

12 November 2003 17 November 2003

18 November 2003

27 December of 2003 28 December 2003

196 | Appendix

Maoist rebels shot a police constable, Lalit Kunwar, in Tikapur VDC, Kailali. Thirty-four armed police were injured when their truck had an accident while avoiding an attempted Maoist ambush at Baliya, Kailali. In the security operation in Bhamidi, Handikhola VDC-4, two civilians, Chukmaya Bal (80) and son-in-law Lok Bahadur Bal, were killed in the cross fire between Maoists and the security forces. A group of armed Maoist rebels abducted four girls from Kailali village in Dhangadhi Municipality. Maoist rebels abducted forty-four teachers from Triveni Secondary School, Sugarkhal, Kailali district. Maoists shot dead three policemen in Ranitalau, Nepalgunj. A group of armed Maoist rebels abducted four girls from Kailali village, Dhangadhi Municipality. Five security personnel were injured in a landmine blast while on patrol in the Sukhad area of Kailali. Over forty teachers from schools in Baliya village and forty-eight teachers from schools in Masuriya village (both in Kailali district) were abducted with the aim of providing the rebels with ‘people education’. Maoists abducted over 250 people, including teachers and students, from different areas of Kailali district. Maoists detonated a powerful bomb at the office of the Backward Society Education (BASE), an NGO in Dhangadi, Kailali. Four Maoists barged into the NGO’s office, took three security guards as hostages at gunpoint and detonated a pressure cooker bomb on the top floor.

15 January 2004 5 February 2004

9 February 2004

23 February 2004

10 March 2004

9 April 2004

24 May 2004

19 June 2004

29 June 2004

Appendix | 197

The Maoists shot and killed Dhan Bahadur Bom, mayor of Dhangadi Municipality, in Kailali. The Maoists killed an assistant sub-inspector (ASI) of police after abducting him in Kailali district. The Maoists shot dead a sub-inspector of police in Kailali. Former president of the District Development Committee (DDC) of Kailali, Chheda Lal Chaudhary, was injured when a group of Maoists opened fire on him. Three Maoists were killed in a security action in the Sukkhad area of Kailali district. Maoist militants torched two passenger buses in Malka, Kailali district. Maoist militants fired indiscriminately and killed five youths at Malakheti VDC in far-western district of Kailali. At least six security personnel were killed when a fresh clash between security forces and Maoists erupted in Kailali district. Two Maoist militants were also killed in the incident. At least two Maoists were killed in security actions during a search operation in Kailali district. At least ten security personnel and over sixteen Maoist rebels were killed in a clash in the Pandaun area of Kailali. At least five Maoist militants were killed in an encounter with security forces in the far-western Kailali district. On the eve of the 56th International Human Rights Day, Maoist militants captured and forcibly drove away at least six passenger buses in the far western district of Kailali.

11 July 2004

22 July 2004

23 July 2004 12 August 2004

12 October 2004 15 October 2004 13 November 2004

16 November 2004

19 November 2004

20 November 2004

29 November 2004

10 December 2004

198 | Appendix

The Maoist militants looted two trucks of food 11 December 2004 grain from far-western district of Kailali. At least three Maoists were killed in security 19 December 2004 action in the far-western district of Kailali. 23 December 2004 A group of armed Maoists abducted about two hundred students from Badimalika Higher Secondary School in Sugarkhal in the far-Western district of Kailali. The Maoists took the senior students to an unknown destination to impart a two-month-long military training. Source: Information gathered from the South Asia Analysis Group (available online: http:// www.southasiaanalysis.org/nepal)

GLOSSARY

_ Accham adheje andolan Badi bandh

Bahun balmansar baqidari basti/busti begari beldar bhatta bhut bikas chai Chaudhary chakka cham chowkidar Chhetri

hilly district in the far-western development zone chairman demonstration/struggle is a Dalit, Khas community in Nepal. Members of this caste group often engage in sex work. a form of protest, usually associated with the closing down of a market in a town for one or several days upper-caste Hindu, traditionally associated with priestly functions a Tharu term referring to a Tharu village leader a system of deferred payment of wages for workers slum unpaid labour brick stacker term used both for brick factory and brick oven ghost development tea Tharu road blockage neighbourhood watchman upper caste Hindu, traditionally associated with martial history – 199 –

200 | Glossary

dalit dani manche daru dikiri dunlap fukuwa Ganesha garib garib janta gherao goonda guruwar Holi intabokni jaar jana andolan jana yudha Kamaiya kamlari kancha khukuri lal salam lathi mala magar Maghe Sankranti Maha Utsav mandir Maobaadi masu mazdur

term used to refer to untouchables rich people liquor a Tharu dish ox-cart brick burner Hindu god popularly associated with luck poor poor people lockout thug Tharu priest, usually associated with spiritual and healing powers Hindu festival brick carrier Tharu liquor people’s movement people’s war system of bonded labour housemaid broken/raw curved Nepalese knife, similar to machete Red salute, a popular Maoist greeting a wooden baton flower garland ethnic Group living predominantly in the midwestern hills of Nepal Tharu festival great festival temple term commonly used to refer to the UCPN Maoist meat labourer

Glossary | 201

mela moharram Mukti Divas munci nagar palika nalka naulo janbad naya Nepal nekhasi neta om shanti pagal Pahadi Panchayat

pathera peshgi pipal tree prasad puja rikshaw-wala sahar sahar log sal tree saraswati saunki shakti shivir sukhumbasi

annual fair or festival Muslim Festival Liberation Day supervisor municipality handpump new people’s democracy new Nepal brick carrier/exporter leader followers of the religious sect Brahmakumaris founded by Lekh Raj in 1937 in Pakistan crazy/mad someone born in the hilly parts of Nepal political system of Nepal in between 1962 and 1990, usually associated with a party-less ‘guided’ democracy with real power maintained by the monarch. brick moulder advance sacred tree usually associated with malevolent spirits and ghosts a gift offered to a Hindu deity and then consumed, usually sweets Hindu worship driver of rickshaw town town people timber tree Hindu goddess, usually associated with knowledge, music and arts debt that a Kamaiya takes on from his landlord powerful camp landless people

202 | Glossary

sukkha/dukkha tazia

happy/sad model of tomb of Iman Hussain carried in procession by Muslims during the festival of Moharram tekkedar labour contractor Tharu an ethnic group living in the Terai region tihar Festival of light tikka mark worn on the forehead thela bicycle-pulled cart topi traditional Nepali hat yasegumba Himalayan herb zamindar/jamindar landowner

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INDEX

_ A Action Aid, 18, 94–99, 108 agriculture, 44, 91 airport, xiii, 66, 69–73, 119 alcohol, 5,16, 75, 89, 164, 177 Amnesty International, 52, 193 Armed Police, 2, 43, 51, 52, 64, 104–106, 196 army. See Royal Nepalese Army; People’s Liberation Army

democratization, 187–189 demonstration, 6, 19, 100–106, 134–137 development, 61,123 district (administration), 19–22

B BASE (Backward Education Society), 16, 18–19, 35, 92–97, 108 Bandhs, 26–27, 39, 63, 105, 136, 139, 206 Brickfactory, 43, 102, 122, 149–186 bonded-labour, 1–4, 10, 13–19, 92–110, 140, 166, 174, 189–194

F fear, 63–65, 75, 109, 139, 160–162, 180 festivals, 17, 43–67, 72, 87, 141, 156 feudalism, 10, 149 fieldwork in post-conflict area, 29–34 Freed Kamaiya Society (FKS), 13, 30, 69, 92–113, 189–191 friendship, 16, 31, 94, 110 forest (District Forest Office (DFO), 109

C caste, 5, 26–29, 50, 61, 109, 140–143, 171, 179 child servants, 69–70, 77, 87–89, 106, 185 class, 28–29, 140–143, 164–166 conflict, 4–8, 94–98 Constituent Assembly (CA), 7, 130, 179, 190 contractor, 38, 53, 78–81, 139, 182 D dalits, 28, 165 debt bondage, 15–19, 176–178 debts, 17, 174, 176

E education, 77, 87 election, 1–3, 84, 130, 191–193 elites, 44, 63–65 enemies, 5, 179

G gender, 8, 85–87 ghosts, 65, 67 gossip, 24 H Human Rights Watch, 6, 37 household, 73, 77, 82, 87 I ICG, 5–6 ideology, 10, 15, 95, 157, 170 inequality, 8, 136, 185–186

– 213 –

214 | Index

K Kamaiya (system), 15–19 kamlari, 69–70, 77, 87–89, 106, 185 kidnapping, 24–25, 181 L labour begari, 72–74 brick-factory, 149–186 chicken-factory, 181–185 construction, 78–81, 105 landlords, 5, 15–19, 43–45 language, 21, 50, 154 loans, 16, 174–176 local power, capture of, 11–14 M Magar, 48, 50, 157 martyrs, 2, 47, 168, 180 market, 26, 56, 105, 135 Maoist. See Unified Communist Party of Nepal migrant labour, 181–185 N neo-bondage, 178, 184–185 Nepali Congress Party, 7, 38, 44, 57–58, 101, 191 O occupation, 69–91, 111, 137 P patronage (multilevel systems of), 189–191 people’s court, 24, 131 people’s movement, 46, 127 people’s war, 4–8 People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 2, 6–7, 26, 49, 67, 180, 188 police armed, 104–105 local, 24–25, 72–73 politicians, 2, 19, 73, 103–105, 111, 194 protest, 26, 92, 100–107, 134–136 Prachanda, 5–7,100

R revolution, 4–11, 193–194 Royal Nepalese Army, 6–7 ritual, 16, 35, 45, 47, 60, 67, 95, 113, 141, 157–162 S socialism, 14, 64 social movement, 92–113 spirits, 156 T tea, 31,53 teachers, 24–25, 28, 77, 196 Tharuhat, 25–29, 64–65 Tharu, 15–29 torture, 6, 47, 193 transformation, great, 190 U United Marxist Leninist Party of Nepal (UML), 7, 67, 102, 145, 192 Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (UCPN-M), 1–8, 94–95, 104–106, 187–189 Union, 32, 123–148 V Village Development Committee (VDC), 18, 20, 22, 48, 55, 83, 98, 195 violence, 23, 86, 102–106 W weapon, 24, 26, 104, 105, 121 wedding, 156 work. See labour women, 2, 18, 85–87, 97, 101, 122, 125, 142, 163, 175 Y Young Communist League (YCL), 7, 25, 44, 63–65, 107, 188 Youth Force (YF), 67

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Focaal is a peer-reviewed journal advocating an approach that rests in the simultaneity of ethnography, processual analysis, local insights, and global vision. It is at the heart of debates on the ongoing conjunction of anthropology and history as well as the incorporation of local research settings in the wider spatial networks of coercion, imagination, and exchange that are often glossed as “globalization” or “empire.” Seeking contributions on all world regions, Focaal is unique among anthropology journals for consistently rejecting the old separations between “at home” and “abroad “, “center” and “periphery.” The journal therefore strives for the resurrection of an “anthropology at large,” that can accomodate issues of postsocialism, mobility, capitalist power and popular resistance into integrated perspectives. RECENT ARTICLES The sanctioning state: Official permissiveness and prohibition in India AJAY GANDHI Non- and dedocumenting citizens in Romania: Nonrecording as a civil boundary IOANA VRĂBIESCU Nonrecording the "European refugee crisis" in Greece: Navigating through irregular bureaucracy KATERINA ROZAKOU "China gives and China takes": African traders and the nondocumenting state SHASHAN LAN

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