Gérard Toffin

Opening the country to the outside world in 1951 has proved a crucial step in the globalisation process in Nepal. The young generation is unaware that until relatively recently, re-admittance to one’s caste after travelling to foreign countries—and, consequently, after being polluted by accepting illegitimately cooked food or by having illicit sexual intercourse—required the performance of a special ritual called patiya. A certificate of rehabilitation was given to the person concerned by the highest judicial authorities of the former Hindu Himalayan kingdom. The procedure of re-admission to a caste is described in the old code of law, the Muluki Ain, propounded in 1854 by Jang Bahadur. The question of the intention, whether an involuntary or knowing offence, was taken into consideration, as well as the emergency of the situation. These circumstances could eventually mitigate the transgression of rules. Otherwise, the traveller lost his caste and his share in the ancestral property was confiscated. He was not even allowed to enter the sanctum of major temples.

It is also worthwhile recalling here the notion of kala pani, the ‘black waters.’ As in pre-modern India, travelling overseas (samudrayana) was considered to be a sin and a religious offence. The transgression of crossing the sea caused the loss of one’s caste. The reason behind the ban was the inability to carry out the daily rituals and the sin of having contact with mlecchas, Christian foreign people. Such journeys also meant breaking family and social ties. Moreover, the fear of crossing the seas derives from the notion that it meant the end of the reincarnation cycle. We thus realise how the Jang Bahadur’s Belayat-Yatra to Britain and France in 1850 was a breach of tradition and very risky from a religious point of view. Jang Bahadur had to undergo special rituals in Calcutta on his return from Europe. He was the first high-ranking Nepali official (and perhaps the first among the Hindu princes of South India) to cross the “Black Seas” to see foreign countries. Jang even had to face a conspiracy after his return to Nepal on the ground that he had violated caste rules while in Europe.

How many migrants to Gulf countries, North America or Europe, are still aware of these old rules? Most Nepalis, even highly educated ones, no longer know the meaning of these two words: patiya and kala pani. Rehabilitation and purification after long journeys have become things of the past. Indeed, it is not precisely known how many of the thousands of Nepalis fighters who served during World War I and II in Europe cared about such ideas, even though they themselves belonged to a caste. Yet an arrangement with the rajguru, supreme religious authority, had to be found by Chandra Shamsher in 1919, and a collective nominal patiya was granted to all of these soldiers.

Recalling such regulations is far from futile. It is important to situate Nepal not only in space, in relation to other countries, but also in time, between the present and the past. It helps to put into perspective the incredible series of change that Nepal has undergone over the last century. The fall of the Rana regime in February 1951 dramatically transformed the country. New ideas, new forces, relegated during an initial period of time within the precincts of Kathmandu jails or in India among Nepali political refugees, suddenly irrupted and spread rapidly within the people. A new relationship emerged between territorial identity and the world. This new relationship has to be analysed. From this point of view, the Panchayat system can be seen as a last (and desperate) attempt to accommodate old social rules within a new, totally different environment.

Today, the restrictions on crossing boundaries are limited mainly to some rare priests and religious officials. The caretakers of some Devi temples in the southern part of the Kathmandu Valley are, for instance, not supposed to cross the limits of their villages or of their districts. Likewise, the Lalitpur agnihotrin (a Rajopadhyaya Brahman) is not supposed to cross the Bagmati river. However, the new freedom to come and go, aaune-jane, has overthrown old regulations. Nobody really bothers about the latter today. After travelling to America, the Kumari living goddess of Bhaktapur was first stripped of her divinity and then reinstated after a cleansing ceremony (2007).

Reports on the Nepali diaspora reflect a combination of a transgression of traditional lifestyles and of the persistence of values and traditions. It is very difficult to make any generalisation regarding these matters: the situation differs from one place to another. Yet, broadly speaking, Nepalis in Europe and North America gather at the time of religious and festival events and enjoy celebrating traditions as a group. If there is a big enough community, they set up ethnic associations to defend and maintain their culture. Symptomatically, most of them tend to have a home diet that is almost similar to the one usually eaten by city-dwellers in Nepal. However, their lifestyle, dress, fashion and values have changed considerably (as in Nepal itself). In the case of marriage to a non-Nepali, there is a rapid collapse of caste rules outside and inside the household. All these changes, whether profound or superficial, weaken caste regulations as a whole. Over the last few decades, globalisation and the increasing rate of migration abroad have breached the old hierarchical caste rules, though not uniformly, perhaps in a more drastic manner than any political transformation has ever done.

Toffin is Director of Research at the National Centre for Scientific Research, France

Published on: 5 May 2013 | The Kathmandu Post