ETHNIC POLITICS AND RELIGION AMONG JANAJATIS IN AN EASTERN TARAI TOWN (original) (raw)

Ethnic activists in Nepal after the 1990 political change have used two types of mobilization strategy regarding culture and religion. The first set of strategy is related to the specific demands on the state. The Nepali state has partly responded to them in recent years by recognizing and offering public holidays on ethnic festivals and, most notably, by declaring Nepal a secular state in 2006. The second set of strategy, which is the focus of this paper, involves inward activism. This activism has aimed at transforming ethnic cultural practices and worldviews from within. Under this scheme, ethnic organizations and activists have called for an ethnic cultural revival as well as the purification of ethnic cultures from what they have termed "Hindu" or Hindu-inflected cultural practices. A non-Hindu imagination and an emphasis on the distinctiveness of ethnic cultures from "Hindu culture" have been one of the major characteristic features of Nepal's Janajàti movement (Gellner, Pfaff-