Paper short abstract:

Nepali Dalits are divided by caste, language, and geography; they lack any single outstanding leader. There are four basic options available for imagining a future different from the present and past and, as will be illustrated ethnographically, all four have their adherents.

Paper long abstract:

The status of Dalits in Nepal has undergone considerable changes in recent decades. Nepali Dalits are not short of political or activist leaders offering them liberation or at least government support. But Dalits themselves are deeply divided over what the best way forward is and could be.

In the case of Nepal's Dalits, at least four characteristic and (theoretically, if not practically) mutually incompatible ways of avoiding the stigma of the past and embodying an egalitarian future can be identified: (1) a desire to assimilate and entirely get rid of a stigmatizing past, a position characteristic of upwardly mobile and non-activist households; (2) the revolutionary option, most obviously represented by the CPN-Maoist party in its heyday and today (for Dalits) by the figure of the poet Comrade Ahuti; (3) identity politics that work to build a single Nepali identity labelled 'Dalit', focused on suffering and subordination under the caste system (across all the divisions of Hill and Plains, and different castes), in order to achieve reparations and reservations; (4) assertion of a positive identity that focuses not on victimhood but on the artisan skills that were associated with their former status as castes providing services to the rest of society. This latter position also involves a firm rejection of the term 'Dalit'. All four positions will be explored using material from interviews with urban activists and rural Dalits.