Paper short abstract:

Heritage in Nepal has laid bare tensions between the government and local authorities. We study local political power and heritage management in Bhaktapur. We show tensions between a municipality and the government, ethnic minorities and the majority, private homeowners and public officials.

Paper long abstract:

Nepal's devastating 2015 earthquakes prompted anxious attention to the UNESCO-designated World Heritage sites in the Kathmandu Valley and the means and methods for rebuilding damaged monuments and residences. As a value-loaded concept, the debate over 'heritage' in Kathmandu today laid bare tensions between the national government and local authorities over the use of foreign experts, building techniques and materials, and the appropriate style of heritage sites. Utilizing ethnographic data, archival material, and photo documentation, we follow the diachronic unfolding of the interdependence of local autonomous political power and heritage management, viewed from contestations over the styles of both private houses and public temples and former royal palaces in the city of Bhaktapur, one of the three major urban areas of the Kathmandu valley. We show how heritage becomes the material manifestation of power struggles between a municipality and the national government, between a local ethnic minority and the national majority ethnicity, between private homeowners and public officials. Our findings build on the values-based approach to heritage studies through a focus on heritage as the material manifestation of community values, but also the site where those values are contested.