1. Min Pun, Ph.D. Tribhuvan University, PN Campus
LECTURE – 6 Nation.State
MA 2nd Year (English) “The Formation of the Concept of Nation- State in Nepal” Richard Burghart
Min Pun, Ph.D.
Tribhuvan University, PN Campus

2. THE AUTHOR: Richard Burghart
The late Richard Burghart was an outstanding scholar and a gifted and original anthropologist.
When Burghart died in January 1994 at the age of 49, he left behind several unpublished research reports and a huge corpus of published writings.
An American by birth, Burghart received his doctoral dissertation entitled “The History of Janakpurdham: A Study in Asceticism and the Hindu Polity” in 1978 at London School of Oriental and African Studies.
While he taught in the UK and later at the University of Heidelberg, Burghart published many articles that made him as a formidable scholar of South Asian history and society.

3. THE BOOK: The Conditions of Listening: Essays on Religion, Politics and Society in South Asia
The Conditions of Listening (1996) is a collection of his essays which makes an important contribution to the study of religion, politics and society in South Asia.
The very high quality of Burghart's ethnographic and historical research and his theoretical argument were not always recognized in his lifetime because his work was published in the form of articles.

4. THE ARTICLE: “The Formation of the Concept of Nation-State in Nepal”
The essay “The Formation of the Concept of Nation-State in Nepal” is a chapter in Burghart’s book The Conditions of Listening that deals with Burghart's interpretation of Hindu society, which introduced his crucial idea of 'intercultural' and ‘intracultural’ translation.
He concentrates on political culture and the historical development of the nation-state of Nepal.
Using the category "Hindu", Burghart concerns himself with the history of the use of these ideas in governmental discourse in Nepal.

5. His formulation helps us to understand one aspect of the history of the Hindu-based, Nepali-language-based exclusive nationalism in Nepal.
In one of the other essays, using ethnographic details from the teachers’ movement of the mid-1980s, Burghart argues that in a hierarchical social structure with no civil society (this is how he interpreted Nepal during the Panchayat era), the "conditions of listening" have to be created by first generating "the moral space in which subjects can publicly criticize."
He interprets the movement´s three phases— symbolic strike, open procession and bandh (closing down)—as a way in which the subjects communicate with the king and not simply rebel against the lord.

6. INTRODUCTION: Anthropological Interpretation of Hindu Society
Anthropology = the study of the origins, physical and cultural developments, biological characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of humankind. Anthropological approach can be used to analyze literary texts, society or culture.
Anthropologists have interpreted Hindu society from the native perspective, which can describe Nepali society authentically. According to this approach, Hindu society has uniqueness in its cultures and people.

7. But anthropologists have tried to avoid describing Hindu society from a foreign/alien perspective and focus on the native (local) terms.
In this essay, Burghart has used these two perspectives, native and foreign/alien concepts, in the governmental discourse of Nepal.
According to Burghart, the purpose of his essay is to interpret the concept of ‘nation-state’ from native and foreign perspectives.
Here, nation-state means a form of government that is culturally unique in nature in Nepal.

8. RULER, LAND AND PEOPLE: Interculatural and Intracultural Contexts during 19th Century
Over time, Nepali rulers have adapted their form of government in intercultural and intracultural contexts, continuing a uniquely Nepali form of government.
Burghart says that the concept of nation-state in the governmental discourse of modern Nepal is identifiably European or western (intercultural context).
For example, with the signing of the Sugauli Treaty in 1815, the Nepali rulers started to work closely with the powerful southern neighbours: First with the East India Company, then with the government of British India and later with the Republic of India.

9. Modern history of Nepali polity begins with Prithvi Narayan Shah who ruled the kingdom of Gorkha during mid-eighteenth century ( ).
From 1742 to 1814, Shah dynasty annexed the League of 24 and 22 kingdoms to Gorkha and then expanded its territory from Sikkim in the east to Kangara in the west.
The Shah rulers maintained intracultural relations by three concepts – possessions, realm, and country. These concepts are defined according to different kinds of authority such as proprietary, ritual and ancestral respectively. These concepts again specify a different relation between ruler, land, and people.

10. POSSESSION, REALM AND COUNTRY: Native Terms to Define Territorial Boundaries
The concepts of possession, realm and country are native/indigenous territorial concepts to define polity or the system of governance.
Possession – It is a territorial boundary or domination of a state (in Nepali, Gorkha raj bhar muluk and king as malik). The Gorkha rulers adopted tenurial (land/territory) system to exercise proprietary authority. They collected revenue (payments) from the tenants or subjects.

11. At the turn of the eighteenth century, the Gorkha rulers referred to their territorial domain as possessions (muluk), which is called as ‘the entire possessions of the king of Gorkha’ (Gorkha raj bhar muluk).
The tenurial system defined different categories as tributary rajas (rajya tenure), military officers (jagir), civil administrators (nankar), tenant cultivators (raikar), servants and artisans in the service of the king (rakam), religious associations (guthi), and individual persons awarded a private means of livelihood (birta).

12. Realm – It is a territorial boundary or royal domain/kingdom that is on the basis of auspicious/religious icon (in Nepali, desa).
The realm with which the king of Gorkha exercised his ritual authority was a different territorial basis. (kot is one example)
The realm was an auspicious icon that centered on the temple of the king’s tutelary deity and demarcated on the perimeter by temples, often four to eight in number.
The concept of realm was an autonomous and auspicious system of social relationships.

13. For example, Prithvi Narayan maintained different realms, making the temple of Bhavani and the cave of Gorakhnath in Gorkha as the centre of his realm.
He also used the word ‘mula desa’ that referred to his realm (Gorkha) as the locus of authority and ruled over provinces (pradesa) from the centre (Gorkha).
After 1817, Gorkha considered itself as the only independent Hindu realm in the Sacred Land of the Hindus (bharatvarsa).

14. Country – It is a region or territorial boundary in which a unique people who experience a common moral and natural identity by virtue of their living and interacting in the same region.
People of the same country often live a common way of life (called des dharma), speaking a common language and sharing common cultural practices.
A country is also characterized by its unique environment (havapani) that sustains the physical composition of the native/local people. They were the Plains Country with the Hills (bhitri mades), Plain Country (madhes), Hill Country (pahardes) and Snow Country (Hyudes).

15. A country is also distinguished in the ethnic sense of the word ‘country’, by the people who customarily lived upon their territory.
For example, the Gorkhali referred to their country as Khas des, the north of the Khas country was Bhot des (Tibet), the east of the Khas des was Nepal des, and the south of Khas des were Bamgala des and Mithila des.
The Gorkha rulers conquered all these countries and other smaller Hill kingdoms and annexed to Gorkha Khas des.

16. THE CONCEPT OF NATION-STATE AND ITS FORMATION
After the military defeats with the East India Company and signing of Sugauli Treaty in 1815, the Gorkha governments remained in isolation the outside world until 1950s.
King Mahendra, in 1962, drafted a constitution that says that Nepal is a Hindu kingdom in which sovereignty is vested in the kingship. This legimatized both the kingship and Nepal’s political autonomy in terms of the concept of the nation-state.

17. Burghart mentions six intercultural and intracultural contexts in the formation of the concept of nation-state in Nepal:
The demarcation of a defined border in 1816.
Overlapping the boundary of the realm with the boundary of the possessions in 1860.
Interpretation of country in terms of species in 1860.
The designation of Nepali as the official language of the Nepali realm in 1930.
The implicit differentiation of the kingship from the state in 1960.
The cultural uniqueness of the Nepali state in 1960.

18. CONCLUSION
After 1816, the relations between spheres were also relations between different cultures (both intra and intercultures. So the government policies were formed according to the understanding of foreign perspective of Nepal.
In the Panchayat era, the government claimed that its boundaries were determined by the territorial distribution of a culturally unique people and its governmental system was the expression of their culture.

19. So because of intercultural and intracultural relations, the concept of nation-state in Nepal is defined in native terms, using the foreign perspective.
In Nepal, for anthropologists, the formation of the concept of nation-state remains culturally unique throughout its history despite the idea of nation-state is seen from the foreign perspective.

20. Dr. Min Pun minpun@gmail.com www.minpun.com.np
Associate Professor, Department of English
Tribhuvan University, PN Campus, Pokhara