Paper short abstract:

By exploring how people in the former Maoist heartland of Nepal adopted previously transgressive norms and practices, this paper demonstrates the centrality of the temporal dimension of war for understanding people’s agency during conflict as well as the processes of social change engendered by it.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how people in the former Maoist heartland of Nepal adopted previously transgressive norms and practices during the decade of the People's War. By exploring the rise in practices of beef-eating and inter-caste commensality, this paper suggests that the temporal dimension of the war-time 'when different rules apply' was crucial in making people accept new ideas and break established norms on a scale atypical for the 'normal' times of peace. Analysing the agency of Maoist activists who self-consciously tried to implement a project of radical social transformation and those people who were 'caught' in the midst of the Maoist transformative endeavour, this paper demonstrates that the contours of the 'new society' emerged not only due to revolutionaries' intentional actions but rather because of the 'exceptional' nature of the time war-time which forced people to recreate their daily lives often in quite radical ways. By transgressing social norms, 'ordinary' people did not deliberately undermine the normative order in the same way that the Maoist activists did, but rather responded to the constraints of the war time, where the need to secure the survival of one's kin and the safety of the community often outweighed other considerations. While the Maoist activists lived 'for the long-term future', sacrificing not only the 'near future' but also one's family ties and one's own life, 'ordinary' people had to live in the perpetual present with most of their 'agentic' choices being driven by the need to ensure the continuity of life itself.