Maoists at the Hearth: Everyday Life in Nepal's Civil War 9780812207897

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Maoists at the Hearth

THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF PO LITI CAL VIOLENCE Tobias Kelly, Series Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

Maoists at the Hearth Everyday Life in Nepal’s Civil War

Judith Pettigrew

Foreword by

David N. Gellner

U N I V E R S I T Y O F P E N N S Y LVA N I A P R E S S PHIL ADELPHIA

Copyright © 2013 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pettigrew, Judith. Maoists at the hearth : everyday life in Nepal’s civil war / Judith Pettigrew ; foreword by David N. Gellner. p. cm. — The ethnography of political violence Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978- 0-8122-4492-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Nepāla Kamyunishta Pārtī (Māovādī). 2. Political violence— Social aspects—Nepal. 3. War and society—Nepal. 4. Nepal— History—Civil War, 1996–2006—Social aspects. I. Gellner, David N. II. Title. DS495.6 .P4555 2013 954.96 2012049809

CONTENTS

Foreword David N. Gellner Introduction

vii 1

1. The Village of Kwei Nasa in 1991–92

26

2. No Place to Hide

53

3. Return to Kwei Nasa

70

4. Maoists in the House

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5. “Our Government Is the Maoists”

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6. “All We Need Is Peace”: The People’s Movement and Its Aftermath

138

7. After Words

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Notes

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References

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Index

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Acknowledgments

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FOREWORD David N. Gellner

The Nepalese civil war/the Maoist insurgency/People’s War in Nepal—what you call it depends on the assumptions you approach it with—lasted ten years, from 1996 to 2006. As Judith Pettigrew describes in these pages, more than 13,000 people were killed, often in brutal ways, and many more were maimed for life, physically, psychologically, or both. The rise of the Maoists was a shock both to ordinary nonpolitical Nepalis and to almost all foreign scholars of Nepal. The Maoists had come from nowhere (so it seemed) to dominating the country in a few short years. In the 2008 elections for the Constituent Assembly they won the biggest share of votes and exactly half of the 240 seats contested on a first-past-the-post basis (the Congress Party, which came in second, won only 37). Those of us who work on Nepal are frequently asked four questions about the Maoists: (1) How is it possible that in the 1990s, with communism in retreat all over the world, you suddenly get a successful Maoist revolution in Nepal? (2) Does the Maoists’ success have anything to do with China? (3) Are they really Maoists? (Perhaps they are just pretending to be Maoists?) (4) How were the Maoists, at the height of their military success, able to gain control of up to 80 percent of the country (though not the fortified district capitals)? Was it because ordinary people supported them? Question 1 is large and complex. Anthropologists, political scientists, and political economists of Nepal—initially as taken aback as everyone else—began to turn their minds to it as soon as the seriousness of the conflict became apparent. Social science—the best efforts of economists notwithstanding—is not predictive in the same way as natural science. It is only now, as the dust is starting to settle, that the war is beginning to be grasped in all its complexity.

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The simple answer to the second question is a rather paradoxical negative, though if one takes a sufficiently long view, it is possible to say that there is a Chinese connection. The immediate inspiration of the Nepali Maoists comes from India. It is in India, not China, that they have spent long periods training, being educated, recovering from battle, or just hiding from the Nepalese state. It is with Indian Maoists that they have the closest personal contacts. The border with India is completely open for Nepali citizens: they may travel and work in India without any required documentation. There are also many ethnic Nepalis who are Indian citizens and this makes it easy for Nepalis to travel throughout India. Revolutionary communist movements have a long history in India and parts of India have had Maoist bases long before they developed in Nepal. Yet it was almost certainly the example of Maoist success in Nepal that inspired the various Indian factions based in north and south to unite into a single Indian Maoist party in September 2004. At the same time, Maoist groups are part of a wider landscape of armed insurgent groups that encompasses also ethnonationalist movements, as in the northeast of the country, Kashmir, Punjab, and Hindu nationalist groups that seek to intimidate Muslims and others (Gayer and Jaffrelot 2009). The rise of Maoism in Nepal is multiply paradoxical because at the time when China was most interested in exporting revolution to Nepal and elsewhere (the 1960s and 1970s), when Marxist-nationalist peasant revolutions were occurring in Vietnam and Mozambique, no one in Nepal seemed to be interested (there was in fact an underground movement, but most were not aware of it). Today, by contrast, China’s Communist Party is deeply enmeshed in neoliberal global capitalism. It believes in a strong state and is intensely hostile to revolutionary movements (it supported King Gyanendra and his authoritarian attempt to suppress dissent, described in Chapter 6, until the very end). In the 1990s, when China, in all its actions, had rejected revolution, a true-believing Maoist movement was launched in Nepal and now (2012) provides the country with its second Maoist prime minister, Baburam Bhattarai. The top leaders of Nepal’s Maoists were shunned and dismissed as shameful traducers of Mao’s good name as long as they were revolutionaries. Only once they had achieved power, following the election of 2008, were they invited to China as honored guests. The answer to Question 3 is unequivocal: yes, they are Maoists. The leaders and many of those in the movement have studied Mao’s works in detail. The military strategies adopted in the civil war, the terminology used to

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describe it, and the ideological framework within the whole project was understood were taken straight from the Maoist archive. Of course, many young recruits were ignorant of ideological subtleties, and at the outset no doubt of much else, but this is necessarily true of any such movement. There may be more than a whiff of elitist essentialism lying behind the question (as when Western aficionados of Tibetan Buddhism claim that ordinary Tibetans understand nothing of Buddhism). However, the question may also be posed in a more sophisticated way: are the Nepali Maoists, like some armed groups in Africa or the JVP in Sri Lanka, adopting an off-the-peg ideology as the most convenient cover for self-interested armed revolt? Of course, there are or have been “opportunists” (khauvadi, avasarvadi) who join the Maoists for reasons that have nothing to do with ideology or idealism, a possibility recognized and allowed for both in popular Nepali and in Maoist understandings. But the empirical record in the Nepalese case is clear: Maoist ideas and ideology have played a highly important role in training and motivating those who have joined (and suffered) in the movement. Without these ideas, the willingness of so many to face death for the future of their country, the millennial hopes that inspired a generation to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, throwing themselves against the barbed-wire encampments and superior fire power of the Royal Nepal Army, cannot be explained or properly understood. With Question 4, we reach the nub of the issues to which Judith Pettigrew’s pathbreaking ethnography is addressed (though it would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that her historically rich and nuanced account is just an explanation of how some villagers came to be Maoist supporters). No other anthropologist of Nepal, whether foreign or Nepali, has returned so often and so devotedly to the same place throughout the course of the conflict. In doing so, she has gathered the material for a highly poignant and unique record of village Nepal. She knew the village intimately before the Maoists arrived, she tracked the Maoists’ first encounters with the villagers, she saw them become the local sarkar or legitimate government in the eyes of the villagers, she was present at the election of 2008, and she has seen the Maoists become just one political party among others, with members in the village. Furthermore, the village may have been spared the full horrors of the war. But Pettigrew was not. She traveled to Nepalganj, one of the worst-hit areas. Her vivid and painful descriptions bring the full horrors of the Emergency back to life: the narrow escapes, the beatings, the random killings.

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Her account reminds us how Nepalis had to learn to read the smallest sign in order to work out who was a Maoist and who the army. In the village too it was necessary to train children not to speak carelessly, to avoid adults who didn’t know how to guard what they said. The village is the focus but we also learn about Kathmandu, Pokhara, and other towns. It is worth stressing that though Pettigrew’s villagers did not experience the depths of suffering of some other locations in Nepal, they did live with the terrifying uncertainty that every day could be their last and that their end could come at the hands of either side. They all knew people who had been badly beaten, and others who had been killed. Pettigrew’s detailed and person-centred ethnographic description conveys lessons about the war that can perhaps be learned in no other way. Dhan Kumari, one of Pettigrew’s closest friends, used to be deeply impatient of her father’s endless stories about foreign wars. Now she and her age-mates have their own war experiences, much closer to home. Maoists at the Hearth brings out the complex reshaping and remaking of relationships both during the war and afterward. Personal narratives, when properly framed and insightfully chosen, convey understanding in a way that no abstract statement ever could. I was invited to be present as a discussant at a Social Science Baha meeting in Yala Maya Kendra, Patan Dhoka, less than a week after the historic Constituent Assembly elections of April 2008 (I had been a Carter Center election observer and was sent to Parsa district). Pettigrew told the story of Lek Bahadur, and his gradual conversion from hostility to the Maoists. When they first arrived in the village, he resented their demands to be fed and housed, but eventually he got to know them, learned what they stood for, and— finally—became a party member. This story made a deep impression on the urban Nepalis in the audience. It demonstrated, as only a good narrative can, how affi liation and commitment—whether to parties, ethnic groups, or any other social unit—are part of a continually negotiated process, not a fi xed attribute that can be captured by ticking a box. The audience at the talk that day—essentially urban intellectuals—had been struggling with the question why rural Nepalis might support the Maoists. Pettigrew’s example brought it home to them and made it real. Th is book should do the same for a wider audience.

Map of Nepal (based on Christopher Evans with Judith Pettigrew, Yarjung Kromchaĩ Tamu, and Mark Turin, Grounding Knowledge/Walking Land: Archaeological Research and Ethno-historical Identity in Central Nepal. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. (2009).

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Introduction

On a cold winter’s afternoon in central Nepal I sat in the courtyard of the house of my village sister, Dhan Kumari, with a group of neighborhood children who were amusing themselves by reading an English alphabet book. My neighbor, Lek Bahadur’s seven-year-old daughter, Rupa, read out loud: “A, B, C, D, Maoists with large bags and guns coming along the path, E, F, G, H. . . .” It was a casual observation, and Rupa did not falter nor was she frightened. She was simply acknowledging a fact and communicating as usual the arrival of Maoist insurgents to whomever might wish to be forewarned. Some months later on a late pre-monsoon afternoon Dhan Kumari told her grandnephew, nine-year-old Raju, to dig up radishes. He opened the fence at the edge of the courtyard and disappeared down the steps into the kitchen garden. While placing some clothes to dry on the courtyard fence I glanced down at Raju digging in the garden below me. Unaware that I was watching him he rhythmically cleared the soil with his hoe and carefully dug out the vegetables, which he placed in a bamboo basket at his feet. He worked slowly and methodically and I was about to turn away when he suddenly transformed his hoe into a “gun” and sprayed the ground and walls of the garden with “bullets.” “Ra, ta, ta, ta ta,” he hissed as he fired his “weapon.” After completing a round of “gunfire” Raju returned to carefully digging out radishes for the evening meal. The warscape of rural Nepal was so “routinized” that it was intertwined with saying the alphabet and digging up vegetables, and for Rupa and Raju these were typical everyday activities. In this book I examine how everyday life and social relationships are reshaped in war. Although conflict brings challenging new circumstances, I agree with Stephen Lubkemann (2008) that people’s primary concerns continue to be the management and realization of their everyday lives and the challenges of their social interrelationships and life projects. Although the practices and material culture of violence may be overtly present, physical violence is not the centerpiece of life. Living in conflict is about realizing

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everyday projects under trying new conditions. My interests here lie in exploring how social life and cultural practices unfold and are reshaped within a landscape of danger and increased uncertainty. In the following pages the challenging reconfigurations of social life during the “People’s War” in Nepal (1996–2006) are examined through the lens of the everyday lives of a group of politically nonaligned,  predominantly middle-aged and elderly, middle-income women in the mainly Tamu village of Kwei Nasa in central Nepal before, during, and after the Maoist insurgency. Through examination of the concerns, priorities, and social relationships of these people I present a picture of a rural area during Nepal’s Maoist insurgency. This book is also about the complexities and contradictions of villager-combatant relationships, especially villager-Maoist relationships, which drew on a range of culturally patterned preexisting relationships that were reforged, transformed, or renegotiated in the context of the conflict (and its aftermath). Violence is a feature of everyday life in Nepal contrary to its peaceful Shangri-La image. This includes the violence of exclusion on the basis of caste, gender, class, or ethnicity; poverty and inadequate health care; poor educational or employment opportunities; and state-perpetrated violence, such as the use of torture. The People’s War primarily affected rural areas, bringing a different type of communitywide, conflict-related violence that deepened the preexisting structural violence. The term structural violence (Galtung, 1969; Farmer, 1997, 2010; ScheperHughes, 2002; Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois, 2004) has been used to highlight how systematic social and economic conditions can result in severe social inequality and marginalization that can lessen people’s opportunities and increase their vulnerability. My use of the term draws on the work of Lubkemann, who in his writing about the Mozambican civil war takes structural violence “to refer to the subjective sense of acute deprivation produced by changing socioeconomic and political conditions” (2008: 112). The emphasis here is on the subjective sense of deprivation in contrast to the idea of breaching an externally determined objective. Deprivation according to Lubkemann is “the subjective package of sentiments—of disappointment, disempowerment, loss, and frustration—that results when groups or individuals perceive that their own experience is falling short of some standard they expect” (ibid.). Linda Green (1999: 13), writing about war widows in Guatemala, emphasizes the importance of including as key elements of

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structural violence “humiliation and fear, as well as denial of dignity and integrity—that is, the psychological and spiritual effects of violence.” These definitions drawn from other warscapes aptly describe the structural violence of the People’s War. This book is not a story of the experiences of acute violence—by and large Kwei Nasa escaped these experiences—but rather of the deepening of structural violence shaped by war. Key life projects and social relations were renegotiated in the deteriorated circumstances of the Maoist insurgency. Most development initiatives ceased or ran in limited ways; much of the already limited infrastructure became further compromised; and the local administrative structure stopped functioning. Strategies were developed to cope with worsening structural violence, as well as the constant threat and sporadic reality of direct violence. People experienced increased uncertainty in social relations and deterioration in the sense of trust. Constant vigilance led to persistent unease. Social tensions were realized in unpredictable ways, and at times people both supported and betrayed each other. This uncertainty heightened fear as villagers tried to work out who was an “insider” and who an “outsider.” Decisions based on kinship, ethnicity, or locality might or might not work; and so new interpretations were fashioned, some more successful than others. All of this contributed to a heightened suspicion of others and their motives. People were vulnerable to fears that (known or unknown) forces were conspiring against them, and sometimes they were, however, as Michael Jackson notes in “perplexing and perilous” situations it may simply be “one’s powerlessness and estrangement that produces this erosion of self-confidence” (2008: 57, 71). Despite the greater unpredictability and increased danger, daily life focused as usual on circuitous social undertakings, interpersonal relationships, and life projects. People’s primary concerns were their everyday activities and responsibilities such as managing agricultural work, running households, attending school, managing development projects, and organizing and attending life-cycle celebrations. I consider how these activities were achieved under dramatically transformed conditions. I discuss the new opportunities or struggles that people confronted in the course of these processes. And I examine the effect that conflict had on how social interrelationships with both fellow villagers and “strangers” (including Maoists, and soldiers and thieves who masqueraded as Maoists) were developed, maintained, or renegotiated. Personal and life differences played a significant role

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in how people lived through the People’s War: the judgments they made, the actions they took, their inner resources and resilience, their external supports, and potentially the degree of danger they faced. For example, the Maoist insurgency was experienced differently by fearful, middle-aged, somewhat socially isolated Dhan Kumari and her younger, less fearful neighbor, Asha, who was deeply embedded in her extended family network. Village-based pre-teen Raju, who was “conflict street-wise,” and his towndwelling, teenaged brother, Damar, who was “conflict-naive” also had very different experiences. Dhan Kumari may have been more frightened than Asha; however, the former’s volatility sometimes attracted the danger that she tried so hard to avoid. Damar was considerably older than his brother, but Damar’s limited understanding of the nuances of the People’s War put him at greater risk. Drawing on the Tamu concept of rhaba versus a-rhaba (competent, able, knowledgeable versus incompetent, uninformed, ignorant), I examine how different people’s circumstances, opportunities (or lack of), ability to read subtle nuances, and personalities informed their behavior and decision making and influenced (to a considerable degree) their ability to keep safe during the war. “Competent people” were vigilant (often while appearing not to be) as at any moment it might be necessary to change activity, and/or to appear to be engaging in an entirely different one, such as hiding alcohol production during Maoist anti-alcohol campaigns and appearing instead to be tending the hearth. They knew when (and how) to speak, when to change the topic, when to remain silent, and what to hide (and when), for example, personal guns that Maoists might requisition and gold jewelry that Maoist imposters might steal. The knowledge that informed such judgments was passed via the usual channels of everyday conversation and especially via the concept of norbe taa (“inner talk,” the whispered, furtive confidences of trusted relatives and friends) It was difficult to be rhaba in every situation, however, and even those people who were considered the most able were sometimes overtaken by the complexities and challenges of life in the People’s War. For example, a key figure on the village day-care center committee, Purna Maya, was taken in by a thief, a Tamu like her, who masqueraded as an ex-Maoist. Furthermore, being rhaba only provided a certain degree of protection, and by looking at stories, such as that of the man who unwittingly sat beside a Maoist commander and ended up facing accusations of being him, I also

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examine the unforeseen and random circumstances through which some people ended up in dangerous situations.

Everyday Activities in Conflict Despite the deteriorated situation, people strove very hard to keep the activities of everyday life going. It was essential to do so: crops needed to be grown, animals cared for, water carried, wood gathered and meals prepared. Everyday activities and routines are usually performed outside consciousness. As Sheringham notes, “the everyday is a liminal region of experience that we can be aware of only at the fringes of consciousness, since it exists only through our unreflecting participation in the rhythms of existence” (2006: 20). People become more attentive to their everyday activities (and social routines), however, when they are challenged or disrupted. For example, a common sight on village paths is people taking their animals (such as water buffalo or goats) to graze outside the village. Maoist-imposed occasional daytime curfews disrupted this activity and forced people to seek grazing within the village. This routine activity suddenly became challenging as people tried to work out where to find food for their animals and to make judgments about the acceptable boundaries within which to graze during curfews. Disruption leads to reflection. Henrik Vigh notes the presence of “increased social reflexivity, the heightened awareness of the way we interpret the social environment, our perspectives and our horizons” (2008: 19) in situations of chronic crisis (such as war). Because of the speed and/or unpredictability of change in such unstable situations “it becomes increasingly necessary, even critical . . . to reflect upon reflections; to scrutinise . . . way[s] of anticipating and predicting what was, what is, and what is about to happen” (ibid). The necessity of constantly reflecting on the taken-forgranted daily routine was an essential dimension of life in the People’s War. For example, women who were responsible for cooking suddenly found that meal preparation required a previously unnecessary level of reflection. As they prepared the evening meal they inevitably wondered if they might have to feed Maoists that day. Once Maoists arrived some women told me that they reflected on their ability to cook in a way that they had not done before “Is my food tasty?” “What might happen if they don’t like it?” “Will there be

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enough for the Maoists and the family?” they wondered. Reflection facilitated the continuance of daily activities (such as managing to feed animals during curfews) and helped people keep safe (knowing where to go and where to avoid during curfews). But it also significantly contributed to people’s hypervigilance (ongoing worries about the arrival of Maoists, the acceptability, quality, and quantity of food). Under the threat of the People’s War the activities of everyday life such as the routines of farming and of running households took on heightened meaning. Their disruption had serious implications for people’s livelihoods (for example, when the area was under Maoist curfew and people could not go out into the fields or forest to work or when the road to town was closed). The degree of disturbance of daily life was also a means of evaluating more generally the extent of deterioration in the village at any particular time, which was often based on whether or not people could adequately perform their cycle of everyday activities. The continuance of the daily routine took on additional psychological and symbolic significance. Keeping the everyday chores going helped to keep anxiety at bay (as villagers themselves pointed out) and was also a metaphor for keeping life going. Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman, referring to people whose lives are severely disrupted (by violence), note that “to be able to secure the everyday life by individuals and communities is indeed an achievement” (2001: 1–2). Kwei Nasa villagers faced extra challenges continuing their daily activities during the People’s War, and their ongoing success in this endeavor was a notable accomplishment which provided hope and ensured the future. As people planted rice seedlings in the spring, they looked ahead to the transplantation of the seedlings in the monsoon, the harvesting of the grain in the autumn, the repair of the terraces in the winter, the start of the next year’s agricultural cycle, and so on. Monique Skidmore, writing about survival strategies under military rule in Burma, suggests that Burmese people escape from the politicization of everyday life into miniature worlds of everyday existence, in which “the minutiae of everyday life take on an exaggerated focus or absorption” (2004: 190). In such miniature worlds such processes as memory, reflection and emotion are shut out. Similarly, the Tamu cultural pattern of paying attention to, and talking about, daily activities (“What are you doing?” “Where are you going?” “Have you eaten rice?” and so on) was sometimes exaggerated during the conflict as people tried to evaluate the degree of risk. Aside from maintaining practical necessities of daily routines, this attention to the

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quotidian mundane activities was a way of distracting people from the unsettling realities of the conflict. It was also a means of shutting out and managing such difficult emotional processes as fear, and I explore how it worked in combination with other cultural models for tackling difficult emotions. In usual circumstances “the timeless order of society is no less an object of myth than in times of crisis, but in normal times its challengers can be more easily denied” (Greenhouse, 2002: 27). Because the challenges and changes cannot be so easily denied during wartime, researchers have often considered it to be an “event.” Communities who live in socially “unstable places” (ibid.: 1–34) are taken to be “interrupted,” and the multiple social processes that anthropologists usually research are treated as if they have been suspended. Henrik Vigh points out that, “Social positions, institutions and configurations do not just disintegrate [in endemic crisis situations] but are reconfigured and reshaped in relation to stable instability and chronic crisis” (2008: 12–13). Stephen Lubkemann draws attention to the fact that for the inhabitants of warscapes, “war has not been an ‘event’ that suspends ‘normal’ social processes, but has instead become the normal—in the sense of ‘expected’—context for the unfolding of social life” (2008: 1). This is what Michael Taussig refers to as the “normality of the abnormal” (1992: 17–18). The challenge, Lubkemann suggests, is to focus on the culturally negotiated life projects of people in conflict zones rather than being mesmerized by the more violent and uncertain situations in which such projects are negotiated. The problem for most people who live in warscapes arises from the challenges that violence introduces to the realization of other projects rather than violence as such (ibid.: 330).

Agency People in conflict zones are frequently divided into those with weapons (and therefore agency) and those without, who are thus essentially agentless victims. Nonaligned Kwei Nasa villagers often placed themselves in the latter category. While this representation communicated people’s sense of lost agency under the disrupted circumstances of the Maoist insurgency, it did not in fact fully convey their everyday practices and interactions. By drawing on multiple examples I examine the complexities and contradictions of agency in wartime and illustrate how people exercised agency through the management of particular experiences and events. The was not merely the

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“tactic agency” (de Certeau 1984: 37) of people who lacked autonomy and who had to act “in the physical or social space which is not their own” (ibid.). Although at certain times this was so. Nor was it the “tactic agency” of those who had lost their capacity to orient themselves to long term projects as has been put forward by some social scientists writing on war. Notably people in Kwei Nasa did not lose this ability. For example, while the delayed arrival of electricity in their village (long after it had arrived in neighboring villages) was due to the war; people tried, as far as they could, to facilitate the possibility that it would arrive, even if this was just to envision its future installation. Notably this was the major first development in the area following the signing of the peace agreement. Writing about crisis and chronicity Henrik Vigh suggests that “Agency . . . is not a question of capacity—we all have the ability to act—but of possibility; that is, to what extent we are able to act within a given context” (2008: 10–11). As I illustrate in what follows the possibilities for agency were often significant. Conflict does not simply constrain or necessarily diminish agency, but rather it also provides new, unexpected, and reconfigured outlets for agency for some, while for others, it diminishes the ability to act. The overall impact of the war was complex and contradictory, however, as new opportunities for heightened agency coexisted with the imposition of new constraints. While some people saw the insurgency as a time of diminished opportunities, others saw it as a chance to further their personal and political ambitions or to play what they perceived to be a more meaningful role in society, or both. For others it brought different things at different times—lost opportunities during one period and the opening of new horizons at another. Everyday life in conflict can bring empowering opportunities as well as constraints, and I explore the creative and generative effects of violence as well as the destructive effects (Nordstrom, 1995, 1997, 1998). For example, the women whose experiences I discuss in this book were not directly influenced by Maoist gender equality rhetoric nor by the Maoist women they encountered. However, through a series of unintended consequences—their unexpected leadership of a village development project during the People’s War—they gained greater confidence in participating in public life. Kwei Nasa villagers used a range of practical, creative, and innovative strategies to manage their lives during the People’s War. For example, members of development committees were forbidden by the Maoists from having official meetings, and so they held secret meetings or events that did not look like

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meetings. Aware that the existing committee records would be at risk, they copied and hid them. When the records were requested by the Maoists, they presented the copies for burning. While these resistances were empowering, provided a measure of control, and ensured that “normal” developmentrelated activities “continued,” the cost was high because people feared that their actions would be discovered. Fear in turn generated alternative strategies as agency coexisted uneasily with constraint. A theme explored in this book is the manner in which the conflict reformulated social opportunities in ways that had an ambiguous impact on agency at different times.

Fragmented Spaces A key element of the People’s War was the fragmentation of space. Writing about the Gurungs (the Tamu-mai), Ernestine McHugh notes that honor is inscribed in space because locale is central to personal identity (1998: 167). “People move within nested identities: the household, the neighborhood, the village all define the individual.” As people move from narrower to wider circles of belonging, their vulnerability and susceptibility increase (for example, to thieves and malevolent spirits). Conversely, incoming movements are risky, and there are multiple demarcations ranging from the boundaries of “our own forest” to the protective ritual threads stretching above the entrance to a hamlet, to the most intimate spaces of the house, where such barriers as gates, steps, and thresholds restrict entry. As space narrows to house and hearth, so too does access, which is never a given. Only those with whom the inhabitants are intimate, such as family, friends, neighbors, and selectively invited guests, enter houses. During the People’s War neither army respected these demarcations or the etiquette of entry into the most private spaces. Maoists entered houses demanding food and shelter, and the security forces carried out searches and sometimes entered homesteads with their guns firing. Both sides imposed curfews. Through an exploration of local spatial models and their adaptation I examine the transgression of space as well as the steps that people took to preserve their community when they had physically lost control of their villagescape. With the fragmentation of their personal, public, and sacred spaces people retreated into a parallel “virtual” world based on local knowledge and elusive communications in which they could talk to each other and try to keep safe. As such they

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engaged in forms of spatial “tactics” which de Certeau describes as the practices of the marginal: the furtive movement, short cuts, and routes used by those “already caught in the nets of ‘discipline’ ” (1984: xiv–xv).

Historical Overview Modern Nepal was created in the latter half of the eighteenth century when Prithvi Narayan Shah, the ruler of the small principality of Gorkha, formed a unified country from a number of independent hill states. Following his death his heirs continued expanding their conquests. The rise of the Gorkhas coincided with the growing influence of the East India Company in India. Eventually the two expanding powers came into conflict in the Anglo-Nepal war of 1814 to 1816, which resulted in Nepal’s defeat. The court rivalries and intrigues that had begun following Shah’s death led ultimately to Jung Bahadur Rana taking absolute power. The Rana family entrenched itself through hereditary prime ministers and ruled Nepal as a personal fiefdom for the next 104 years. The monarch was reduced to the position of figurehead. The Ranas isolated Nepal from external influences, which ensured that the political movements that affected the rest of South Asia during the fi rst half of the twentieth century largely passed Nepal by. The isolationist policy was one-sided, however, because although foreigners were kept out, Nepalis left the country in large numbers, most notably journeying to India to join the Indian Army, for other forms of employment, for schooling, or for exile from the ruling regime. It was among these expatriates that the first resistance against the Ranas began. The Nepali National Congress, set up in Banaras, India, in 1946, merged with the Nepal Democratic Congress, which had been founded in Calcutta in 1948 and became the Nepali Congress. They found an ally in King Tribhuvan, a direct descendant of Prithvi Narayan Shah. In 1950 Tribhuvan fled from the “prison” of his palace to newly independent India, an action that led to an armed revolt against the Rana administration. Eventually, India brokered a peace and worked out a compromise among the king, the Ranas, and the Nepali Congress. Th is agreement allowed the return of the Shah family to power and eventually the appointment of a non-Rana as prime minister. A period of quasi-constitutional rule followed, during which the monarch, assisted by the leaders of fledgling political parties, governed the country. King Tribhuvan died in 1955 and was succeeded by King Mahendra, who held the politi-

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cal parties at bay as he strengthened the position of the monarchy. In early 1959 he issued a new constitution that made the premier position of the king apparent. The political parties had no choice but to participate, and so democratic elections for a national assembly were held. The Nepali Congress Party gained a substantial victory and its leader, B. P. Koirala, formed a government and became prime minister. Less than two years later, however, King Mahendra declared parliamentary democracy a failure and dismissed the Koirala government, and imprisoned the erstwhile prime minister. This takeover laid the basis for three decades of direct rule by the monarchy. Political parties were banned, and many leaders were jailed or escaped to India. In 1962 King Mahendra promulgated a new constitution that established a “partyless” system of panchayats (councils), which was his own form of “guided democracy.” The justification was that Nepal was not ready for multiparty politics. The panchayat system enshrined the absolute power of the monarchy and kept the king as head of state with sole authority over all governmental institutions, including the Cabinet and the Parliament. In 1972 Mahendra died and was succeeded by his son, King Birendra. Amid student demonstrations that developed into countrywide unrest, Birendra ordered a national referendum in 1980 to decide on the nature of Nepal’s government—either the continuation of the panchayat system with democratic reforms or the establishment of a multiparty system. The referendum was held in May 1980, and the panchayat system won a narrow victory in an election that was widely believed to have been rigged (Thapa with Sijapati, 2003). The king carried out promised “reforms,” including appointment of the prime minister by the national legislature. The political changes in Eastern Europe in 1989 were followed with interest in Nepal, and the political parties again pressed the king and the government for change. Leftist parties united under a common banner of the United Left Front and joined forces with the Nepali Congress Party to launch strikes and demonstrations in the major cities. The Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (also known as the People’s Movement) was initially dealt with severely, with scores of people killed by police gunfire in front of the royal palace and hundreds arrested. These events were a turning point, and, although curfews were instigated in parts of Kathmandu Valley, behindthe-scenes negotiations were taking place. In April the king capitulated. Subsequently, he dissolved the panchayat system, lifted the ban on political parties, and released all political prisoners. An interim government was sworn in on 19 April 1990, headed by Krishna Prasad Bhattarai as prime minister

12

Introduction

presiding over a cabinet consisting of members of the Nepali Congress Party, the communist parties of Nepal, royal appointees, and independents. The government drafted and promulgated a new constitution in November 1990, which enshrined fundamental human rights and established Nepal as a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarch. In the May 1991 elections the Nepali Congress won 110 seats out of 205 to form the government. The largest opposition, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist and Leninist), or CPN(UML), won sixty-nine seats. Girija Prasad Koirala, brother to the former prime minister B. P. Koirala, became prime minister and formed the government. In May and June of 1992 the structure of Nepal’s new democratic government was completed following local elections in which the Nepali Congress Party scored a convincing victory.

Nepal’s Maoist Movement The history of Maoism in Nepal is closely linked to events in India. When the Nepali National Congress was formed, it drew together all those committed to ending Rana rule, including Puspa Lal Shrestha. Shrestha, however, left the party because he was disappointed by the nonviolent policy and leadership fights. He translated and published the Communist Manifesto in Nepali in September 1949, which is considered to be the founding date of the CPN. The CPN denounced the compromise between the Nepali Congress, King Tribhuvan, and the Ranas, citing it as a betrayal of the revolution. During the post-Rana period the communists took a strong anti-Congress stance. The 1960s and 1970s saw multiple factions emerging in the CPN, which reflected splits in the Communist Party of India. Influenced by the developments in Naxalbari immediately across the border in India, one of the most important factions to emerge in the early 1970s was the “Jhapali group” from the District of Jhapa. Following the doctrines developed by Charu Mazumdar in Naxalbari, the Jhapalis were Maoists who eventually abandoned their adherence to Naxalism after the arrest and death of five members. The Jhapalis formed the nucleus of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist) in 1978, which became the mainstream Communist group, now known as the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified MarxistLeninist) (CPN-UML). The party that eventually became the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), now called the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), had its roots in another Communist faction, the Communist

Introduction

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Party of Nepal (Fourth Convention). But while the CPN-UML emerged through the continuous amalgamation of the various groups and became the largest party in the post-1990 period, the Fourth Convention was riven by factional disputes; by the time of the democracy movement in 1990 it had split into three groups. In the 1970s and 1980s the various Communist factions in Nepal struggled to achieve what they called, following Mao, “new people’s democracy.” The more radical Left ist parties, including some factions of the former CPN (Fourth Convention), however, did not join the Left alliance that had teamed up with the Nepali Congress in the 1990 movement for the restoration of democracy. The third faction, led by Nirmal Lama, joined the United Left Front. When democracy was restored, members of the Nepali Congress and their Left partners formed the interim government; however, these radicals rejected the November 1990 Constitution, which they saw as democratically inadequate. Instead, they demanded a Constituent Assembly that would draw up a new constitution. Despite their protests a Constituent Assembly was not perceived to be necessary by the ruling alliance. In November 1990 two of the factions merged to become the CPN (Unity Center), while a splinter group under the leadership of Baburam Bhattarai joined them from the third faction. The United People’s Front, Nepal, which was put forward by the underground Unity Center, contested the 1991 elections. They won a mere nine seats out of 205, but this seemingly small victory still made them the third largest party. Following the election some of the smaller Communist parties also became increasingly unconvinced about the potential achievements of the parliamentary route. In 1994 a group from the Unity Center broke away and renamed itself the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), or CPN (Maoist), in 1995. The “People’s War” was officially declared in February 1996, when the CPN (Maoist) presented a list of forty demands to the government of Nepal. The points dealt largely with rectifying economic and social injustice, abolishing the monarchy, and establishing a Constituent Assembly. They have been described by several nonpartisan commentators in terms such as “reasonable and not dissimilar in spirit to the election manifestos of mainstream parties” (Thapa with Sijapati, 2003: 53). When their demands were not addressed, the Maoists escalated their underground war. In an inversion of the usual direction of political action—protest movements in Nepal are primarily urban based—most of their actions were rural based and initiated from the countryside.

14

Introduction

Alongside their original strongholds in the midwestern districts of Rolpa and Rukum, the Maoists slowly began to establish “base areas” elsewhere in the country (cf. Ogura 2007, 2008). Early on, repressive police responses antagonized local people and contributed to support for the Maoists (Thapa, 2001). They also capitalized on a widespread sense of frustration with a corrupt and unreliable state, which despite promises of enfranchisement and economic development after the advent of democracy in 1990, had provided little in the way of concrete improvement. Unlike other political parties the Maoists actively reached out to the people who were most marginalized: those who lived in rural areas, Dalits (formerly “untouchable” castes such as Tailors or Blacksmiths who continue de facto to be treated as such), women, and youth. The conflict escalated after major police operations occurred in 1998, with frequent clashes between Maoists and police throughout the country. It reached a new height in November 2001, when the insurgents withdrew from a several-month-long cease-fire and initiated a series of attacks across the country, including ones targeted at Royal Nepal Army barracks in Dang in the midwestern area and Salleri in the eastern district of Solu-Khumbu. These attacks were especially noteworthy because for the first time the Maoists had directly challenged the army (rather than the civilian police), while at the same time they had demonstrated their now substantial strength outside of their strongholds in the western part of the country. On November 26, 2001, the government of Nepal imposed a state of emergency, called out the army, and put into place an ordinance granting the state extensive powers to arrest people involved in “terrorist” activities. The CPN (Maoist) was declared a “terrorist orga nization” and the insurgents labeled as “terrorists.” With the instigation of the state of emergency some fundamental rights guaranteed in the Nepali Constitution—including freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of movement and assembly, and the right to constitutional remedy—were suspended. After a year of continued conflict and increasingly large numbers of deaths among Maoists, state forces, and civilians, as well as a political crisis in the Parliament, King Gyanendra—who had come to power after the June 2001 royal massacre in which his brother, King Birendra, was killed—appropriated constitutional powers and put the democratic process on hold on October 4, 2002. A second cease-fire was negotiated in January 2003, and a schedule for peace talks was established as high-ranking Maoist leaders came above ground and became instant celebrities, most notably the ideologue Baburam

Introduction

15

Bhattarai. All of the negotiating parties faced the challenge of establishing political legitimacy: since no democratic government was in place, the Maoists questioned the ability of “government” negotiators (handpicked by the king) to implement any agreement reached. On their side the government negotiators questioned the Maoist ability to maintain control over their cadres, particularly since low-level attacks continued to occur throughout the negotiation period. The talks ended in August 2003, when both sides refused to compromise on the issue of a Constituent Assembly. The Maoists insisted on a new constitution that redefined the role of the king, whereas the government was only prepared to amend the existing constitution. The Maoists threatened to withdraw from the cease-fire and issued an ultimatum, which expired. On August 27, “Prachanda” (Pushpa Kamal Dahal), the Maoist commander, unilaterally declared the cease-fire over, and confrontations between Maoists and security forces resumed. Human-rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, extensively documented the human-rights violations committed by both the Maoists and the state forces (Amnesty International, 2002a, 2002b, 2003). King Gyanendra took direct power in February 2005, and strikes and protests against royal rule increased. These events culminated eventually in April 2006 to a People’s Movement (Jan Andolan) led by the political parties and a wide range of civil-society organizations. The Maoists participated in the Jan Andolan, but they did not officially collaborate with the Seven Party Alliance. The king relinquished power in April 2006. A cease-fire was negotiated in May 2006 and was followed by a Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed by the government and the Maoists in November 2006. The Maoists formally declared an end to their ten-year insurgency. The peace agreement included plans for election to a Constituent Assembly and the monitoring of the weapons and soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) by the United Nations. Subsequently, 30,000-odd PLA soldiers entered U.N.-controlled cantonments across the country of whom 19,602 were subsequently verified as fighters by the U.N. The Maoists were widely criticized for doubling the number of PLA soldiers before they entered the cantonments. They were also accused of removing combatants to create the paramilitary style organization, the Young Communist League (YCL). The Maoists entered Parliament in January 2007 under the terms of a temporary constitution, but elections to a Constituent Assembly were twice

16

Introduction

rescheduled. Insisting on the abolition of the monarchy, the Maoists withdrew from the government in September 2007 and did not reenter until December 2007 when Parliament agreed to this condition. Elections for the Constituent Assembly were held in April 2008. The Maoists won a stunning election victory, gaining the highest number of seats in the new Constituent Assembly, although with 220 out of 601 seats they did not secure a majority. Owing largely to the reservation of seats provided through the 2007 Interim Constitution of Nepal, 33 percent of the members were women. The conflict resulted in the death of more than 13,000 people; the disappearance of thousands, the displacement of approximately 200,000 people; the conscription of at least 4,500 children into armed groups; and the widespread use of torture (Human Rights Watch, 2007; OCHR Nepal Conflict Report, 2012; Singh et al., 2007; Tol et al., 2010; Shah and Pettigrew, 2012). In 2003 and 2004 Nepal had the highest number of disappearances in the world (United Nations, 2004). Throughout the conflict, in addition to thousands of cases of long-term incommunicado detention and torture, 1,619 disappearances (1,234 attributed to the security forces, 331 to the Maoists, and 54 unidentified) were reported to the National Human Rights Commission (Advocacy Forum, 2010). The fate of 1,378 people remains unknown (International Committee of the Red Cross, 2011). Many of these people were arrested by the security forces and are suspected to have been tortured and killed. At its first sitting the Constituent Assembly voted to end the monarchy, and in May 2008 the country became the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal with Ram Baran Yadav of the Nepali Congress as its first president. The Maoist leader Prachanda formed a government in August 2008 that the Nepali Congress refused to join and that then went into opposition. Eight months later Prachanda resigned in protest over the president’s rejection of a cabinet decision to sack the army chief. Madav Kumar Nepal, leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), became the new prime minister but subsequently resigned. Political deadlock followed as the Constituent Assembly repeatedly failed to elect a new prime minister. Jhala Nath Khanal (from the CPN-UML backed by the Maoists) was fi nally elected in February 2011. He resigned in August 2011, after which Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) vice chairman Baburam Bhattarai was elected as the thirty-fift h prime minister of Nepal. Writing about a constantly transforming political situation is challenging, and so the following section only briefly summarizes some of the significant events taking place as this book goes to press. After four years of

Introduction

17

discussion agreement was reached by the political parties on 1 November 2011 on the future of the Maoist fighters. Following this Maoist combatants were offered a choice of either integration into the national army or voluntary retirement with a financial package. Initially a significant number expressed their decision to be recruited into the Nepal Army (significantly more than the 6,500 allowed by the agreement). Over the following months, however, this number dwindled for a range of reasons (ineligibility, reversed decisions, disenchantment). In September 2012, 1,388 ex-fighters (105 of whom were female) were finally selected for integration into the Nepal Army. The restructuring of the state to make it more representative and decentralized is still awaited. Nepal’s State Restructuring Commission, which was tasked with suggesting an appropriate federal model, submitted two reports to the government in January 2012 as internal agreement was not reached. One recommended the establishment of eleven states while the other proposed a six-state formula. Federalism and the question of identity has become a key issue of contention for many Nepalis and identity-based groups have widely mobilized, especially outside Kathmandu. The potential for such groups to forward an exclusive nationalistic agenda could deepen the regional, ethnic, cultural, religious, and class divides that the peace process aims to lessen. Despite a series of extensions the Constituent Assembly did not complete its task of writing the constitution by the deadline of May 2012 and so collapsed. Elections were initially proposed for the end of 2012 although it was also possible that the assembly would be reconstituted. In September 2012 the political parties decided that this was not feasible and elections were planned for the spring of 2013. Despite some major achievements the peace process continues to faces significant challenges. In addition to those discussed above, widespread concern remains that the Maoists have not totally committed to nonviolence. Furthermore, the systematic crimes committed by both parties to the conflict during the decade of civil war have not been addressed, and there is little political will to do so. This lack of attention has created an environment of impunity in which armed groups can continue to operate. Likewise the government’s promise to establish an independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a Disappearances Commission remains unfulfilled. The People’s War has attracted considerable attention from scholars, especially following the escalation of the conflict in 2001. Writings have focused on a wide range of topics including the history and politics of the Maoist movement (Lawoti and Pahari 2010; Ramirez 2004b; Seddon 2010;

18

Introduction

Thapa with Sijapati 2003), gender dimensions (Manchanda 2004; Pettigrew and Shneiderman 2004; Pettigrew 2012; Sharma and Prasain 2004), revolutionary governance (Lecomte-Tilouine 2010; Ogura 2008), the insurgency in local contexts (De Sales 2012; Lecomte-Tilouine 2012; Ogura 2007; Pettigrew 2004; Shneiderman and Turin 2004; Shneiderman 2012; ShresthaSchipper forthcoming), psychosocial impacts (Kohrt et al. 2010; Pettigrew 2007; Tol et al. 2010;), development (Leve 2007; Upreti 2004), ethnic dimensions (De Sales 2003; Lawoti 2010), revolutionary music (De Sales 2003; Stirr forthcoming), military analysis (Cowan forthcoming; Mehta and Lawoti 2010; Ogura 2004), conducting research (Pettigrew, Shneiderman, and Harper 2004), tourists and the insurgency (Hepburn 2012). Major collections of material on the movement and its context include Baral (2006), Dhakal et al. (2004), Einsiedel et al. (2012), Gellner (2003), Hutt (2004), Karki and Seddon (2003), Lawoti and Pahari (2010), Lecomte-Tilouine (forthcoming), Manandhar and Seddon (2010), Manchanda (2001), Onesto (2005), Shah and Pettigrew (2012), Steinmann (2006), Thapa (2003), and Thapa with Sijapati (2003). For attempts to explain the rise of the Maoists, from various viewpoints, see Gersony (2003), Goyal et al. (2005), Maharjan (2000), Muni (2003), Murshed and Gates (2004), Ramirez (2004a), Riaz and Basu (2007), and Simkhada et al. (2004).

Fieldwork in Conflict In the early and mid-1990s I worked with urban Nepali ethnic and religious activists who found the common anthropological convention of using pseudonyms for informants and field locations suspect. Regarding the writings of other researchers, I was often asked several questions: “Why are the names changed?” “Why have people not got credit for their information?” “What is the researcher trying to hide by changing names?” “What are the informants trying to hide?” To them, disguising informants and research sites was questionable and the fi rst step toward the creation of an unaccountable fantasy world. I therefore named the activists I wrote about. While this approach was not without problems—one person in particular was offended by how he had been represented—in the context within which I was doing research, it was the most acceptable one. By 2001 the situation was radically different. One of the primary concerns I had during the insurgency was the protection of those who had spo-

Introduction

19

ken to me. In my written work I no longer identified individuals, the area, or even the district because such identification would place people in danger. However, the idea that I could fully protect people was clearly naive. By the time I started my work on the Maoist insurgency, I already had a history of doing research in this area and among these people. Anyone who was serious about discovering where I had carried out my fieldwork could easily do so. Despite my intentions, it was not possible to do more than provide a measure of confidentiality. The alternative was to write nothing; but then I, like so many rural Nepalis, would have become voiceless—silenced by the conflict. In keeping with such writers as Michael Taussig (1987: 4), Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1995: 419–420), and Jeff rey Sluka (2000: 12), I believed that it was important to write against terror. The challenge was to ensure to the extent possible that such writing did not have unintended consequences, or created new threats, for those who were written about. To enhance confidentiality I changed ethnographic detail. I changed people’s biographical data, dates, locations, and events. I also avoided writing about particular strategies that locals used as this knowledge could have been abused by the Maoists or the security forces if they learned of it. During the most escalated phases of the conflict I sometimes omitted culturespecific reactions from my written work in an attempt to mute cultural and ethnic identifiers. In some publications I did not place my work within the body of scholarship on the Tamu-mai but rather reformulated the Tamumai as generic “rural Nepalis.”Subsequently, I rethought this position as I felt that it was possible, and in fact important, to use identifiers, as otherwise the work lacked the context and detail that makes for good ethnography. The situation was constantly changing, and it was difficult when out of the country to remain current with events in Kwei Nasa. Because of this issue and also to minimize exposure (since I worried that my presence might place villagers, as well as my assistant and me, at risk), I made multiple short field trips—up to as many as four a year—between 2002 and 2009. As the data were often gathered from different villages, at different times, the conventional patterns of field visits were avoided and the research trail was intentionally difficult to follow. This contrasted with the idea that rigor in qualitative research can be enhanced by an audit trail whereby the research documents can be scrutinized by external evaluators. The audit process is intended to reveal the chronological steps taken and field methodologies used by the original researcher (Denzin and Lincoln 1994). In conflict situations, such research strategies are not only ineffective, but can constitute

20

Introduction

bad practice. What are required instead are fieldwork strategies that have evolved within the particular conflict setting (Pettigrew, Shneiderman, and Harper 2004: 23–24). Fieldwork during the People’s War required me to rethink my datacollection techniques. Keeping detailed research notes during the conflict was impossible because it would have placed locals, assistants, other support staff, and me in danger. Instead I began taking sketchy notes, in poorer than usual handwriting, using code words and pseudonyms sometimes sprinkled with Irish-language words. On each visit I started a new notebook so that I would never have more than a few weeks’ notes with me. On occasion I left copies of notes at a foreign friend’s house in Kathmandu in case I lost them in transit since I put them in my checked-in luggage to avoid carrying them through the airport. Despite these precautions, however, I agree with Patrick Peritore (1990: 359–73) and Christopher Kovats-Bernat (2002: 216) who suggest that the identities of informants can be compromised by the unobserved lapses in attention that regularly occur during the daily grind of fieldwork. In other words, the encryption of notes taken in dangerous field locations is always imperfect. Ethnographers working in warscapes must develop new strategies to enhance their safety and those of the people they research while simultaneously identifying and explaining the unique social interrelations that occur amid crisis and strife (Kovats-Bernat, 2002: 216). For example, during some phases of the conflict I did not write at all, and the notes I wrote retrospectively in the city were written as fiction based in a distant land. While caution, foresight, and experience play an important role in managing dangerous field situations, the inherent instability and complexity of such work ensures that there are no easy answers. This book has taken so long to write for several reasons, one of which is the distance that “peace” brings. It is simply safer to publish now and not then. Even now, however, while reading through my still partially encoded field notes, I am reluctant to fully commit the decoding to paper. Instead I prefer to mentally decipher my notes each time I read them. The skills so carefully crafted in the conflict setting are not easily abandoned, and despite the temporal and spatial distance I still associate the notes written during that time with danger. Fieldwork during the People’s War was especially unpredictable. Each time I returned to the village the situation had changed significantly, even when the visit had only been a couple of months before. These shifts were

Introduction

21

largely related to changes in Maoist or Royal Nepal Army presence; their tactics, policies, actions, or personnel (e.g., the arrival, departure, or death of a commander; changes in the frequency of army patrols; or the imposition or removal of a state of emergency). Such shifts had a significant impact on people’s everyday lives (e.g., whether they could or could not easily travel to town or whether it was or was not possible to brew alcohol) and became focuses of attention. These changes meant that past events or topics receded into the background and it was often hard or risky to refocus on them or to try to gain additional information about them. For example, during a period when the Maoist commander and almost all the Party activists were out of the village, I conducted semiformal interviews on the topic of fear. Had the Maoists been in the village this kind of discourse would have been impossible as talking about fear was potentially subversive. The direct discussion of many topics (such as killings, beatings, torture, or fear) was considered dangerous in case either of the conflicting forces suddenly appeared (sudden arrival usually characterized their appearance) or in case it “got out” that certain topics were being discussed. However, at times it was possible to talk, and occasions arose when people initiated discussion. One evening when I was eating in a neighbor’s house, I received a message that some women wanted to talk to me. When I arrived home, a group of between eight and ten women—all of whom I knew well and who knew I was studying “war suffering”—were seated around the fire waiting for me. Almost before I had sat down, they started explaining in detail the difficulties, challenges, and fears of their daily lives. Although the tone was initially solemn (and most had tightly pulled their shawls around their heads and shoulders in a protective gesture), as they talked they became animated recalling both their fears and their strategies (usually described in the context of particular events) to deal with the Maoists (especially). Proud of their ability to sometimes outwit the insurgents, they laughed loudly at their escapades. I was never quite sure why these women chose to talk to me that evening, but the times and places in which people initiated discussion took place under certain conditions. For example, sitting round the fi re in the evening (the usual time for relaxing and for sharing confidences) and a lower presence of Maoists in the village that day. Writing about Northern Ireland, Karen Lysaght (2005) draws attention to the relationship between political violence, space, and fear. In the Northern Irish case relatively safe spaces existed (segregated enclaves). This situation contrasts with that in villages like Kwei Nasa where there were no safe

22

Introduction

spaces because either side could appear at any moment and enter unchecked the most intimate parts of a house. This lack of security significantly contributed to the degree of fear, uncertainty, and hypervigilance. However, people created “safety” in the times and places that they could, such as in the evenings sitting round the fire. The concept of “inner talk” (norbe taa provided a blueprint for the creation of safe space. In contrast to the physical safe spaces of Northern Ireland the safe spaces in Kwei Nasa were temporary and temporal. Space in a Tamu village is often temporarily reconfigured, for example, during a ritual when a shaman or lama’s paraphernalia is laid out and a section of a room becomes sacred. Likewise, during the insurgency carefully chosen places were hastily configured as safe and if necessary just as hastily reconfigured. Even the sound of someone approaching the house would have refocused the group’s attention on stoking the fire and chatting about mundane matters until they knew the identity of the individual. If either party to the conflict had appeared on the evening my friends chose to speak, they would just have seen a group of friends chatting around the fi re. Heightened unpredictability meant that not only was it difficult to follow a particular story but it was often impossible to deepen my understanding of a topic or event. I had originally wanted to write a book on fear, but I was unable to gather enough data to write exclusively on this subject. I also felt that asking frightened people to talk about fear was problematic, especially because in the attempt to lessen fear and keep it out of their heart-minds (saF) (located in the chest, the heart-mind in Tamu culture is the center of consciousness, memory, and emotions) people generally avoided talking about it. The focus of this book changed many times as I realized after writing a chapter or two that I did not have and would never get access to a particular topic (these “books” have often ended up as short articles, but even then I have sometimes struggled with a lack of data on a particular issue). Eventually I realized that writing about the warscape of Kwei Nasa, interwoven with my own experiences and long-term knowledge of its inhabitants, would enable me to get beyond the third chapter.

Writing Conflict Writing about the People’s War was challenging. For example, I found it difficult to represent the shifting terrain of everyday life and people’s understandings of danger, fear, and threat in a way that does justice to these experiences

Introduction

23

while at the same time not sensationalizing or overprivileging them. As Ivana Maĉek notes: “As producers of knowledge about war, anthropologists are in a sensitive position because our representations of war . . . create a sort of truth about it that circulates internationally” (2009: 10). Th is responsibility has weighed heavily on my shoulders and much of my editing has focused on trying to present a picture that simultaneously conveys in a nuanced way the dangers, complexities, challenges, deteriorations and unease of the People’s War alongside, and interwoven with, the resilience, creativity, humor, continuity, strategizing, and resourcefulness that I observed in Kwei Nasa during the insurgency. To illustrate the experiences of the People’s War I have included many stories in which I show how a range of different people managed their lives under extremely demanding circumstances. I traveled widely through neighboring districts (and many other districts in Nepal) during the conflict and while the picture I present here is primarily that of Kwei Nasa I include some material from other locations. I also draw on my experiences in different places to inform the breadth and depth of my writing. In all of these locations people focused—as in peacetime—in various ways and configurations, and depending on the context, with varying degrees of success, “on the pursuit of a multidimensional agenda of life projects and ‘other struggles’ ” (Lubkemann, 2008: 323), and, as always, depending on the situations they faced, they planned as strategically as they could their daily life undertakings. In my previous publications on the insurgency I worried about overwriting terror at the expense of the everyday and in some cases may have unwittingly done so, especially in shorter pieces where the scope for giving a well-rounded picture of people and events is limited. I also discovered that, no matter how hard I try, some readers will overread what I write. I was taken aback on one occasion to discover that an international humanitarian worker only saw the terror in a publication in which I had carefully emphasized people’s strong coping strategies and creativity. Media representations of conflict, which prioritize the sensational and emphasize the destructive and disordering dimensions of violence, influence people to read any work on war selectively. People also read from their own situated contexts from which they will prioritize some representations over others and completely exclude others. There may be divergence between the author’s intention and the reader’s interpretation. I have therefore paid attention both to how I write (by trying to avoid potentially sensational language) and to the overall picture I present of Kwei Nasa during the People’s War

24

Introduction

(by situating conflict-related events in wider contexts). To facilitate this process I have read and reread my field notes (which detail many nonconfl ictrelated events which could safely be written about at the time), reexamined photographs, and discussed in depth certain days, events or periods of fieldwork with my (then) research assistant. Conveying the immediacy of certain wartime situations is challenging. As Elizabeth Mertz notes, “the control and closure that result from telling the story of what happened as a narrative with a known ending—about an event of a certain type—move the readers away from an essential aspect of the lived experience” (2002: 361). While this difficulty can never be completely overcome, Mertz suggests that “it can be ameliorated by use of discursive strategies such as . . . first-person ‘eye witness account[s]’ to describe a tenuous, potentially eruptive moment” (ibid.: 362). Such accounts bring us closer to that moment of insecurity and make us more aware that “in that moment” the narrator is uncertain of the outcome (ibid.). For example, early one morning I walked along the narrow village paths to the day-care center for a meeting. Just before I reached Chandra Bahadur’s house I noticed a young woman whom I had never seen before at the edge of his courtyard. It was only when I was opposite her, and we had acknowledged each other, that I noticed her gun. I then realized that there were Maoists crouched at the edge of other courtyards. I continued walking at the same pace along the street but wondered what lay ahead around the bend. As I passed the teashop a group of about seven fighters walked out in front of me. They saw me, and by the time I rounded the bend some of them were sitting on a wall at the side of the road. We had a brief exchange about their (undisclosed) destination and my ability to speak Tamu Kwi before some of my friends arrived and we walked away down the road to our meeting. Writing from “this side” of the experience this event was just another Maoist encounter of which I had many during the years of the Peoples War. But “in the moment” I had no idea how it was going to end. I did not know who was around the next corner nor if the army was in the area. Just as every time Dhan Kumari fed Maoists she did not know if they would leave as usual after eating or if the security forces would arrive and the house would become a battlefield, as had happened in a nearby village. The post-event narrative “tames” the event in a way that the experience as lived does not. By recounting firsthand accounts I aim to move the reader imaginatively closer to the moments where the narratives ending is uncertain (Mertz 2002), and

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by doing so I hope to facilitate the development of a sense of the uncertainty and insecurity of life in rural Nepal during the People’s War. To help address complex issues of representation, I have written this book as a memoir, in which individuals’ stories (including my own) are followed over a lengthy period of time which starts a decade before the insurgency escalated. Through this examination I show how the conflict affected them and how their particular social contexts and personalities influenced how they perceived, experienced, and imagined the People’s War. By the time readers encounter the confl ict, they will have an understanding of Dhan Kumari’s life and so will be less inclined to label her merely as a victim, just as they will be less likely to label Amar solely as a Maoist or Damar as just a conflict-naive urban teenager.

In the Wake of the Conflict The Maoist insurgency ended with the signing of a peace agreement in 2006, and the latter part of the book examines what happened after the conflict ended. It explores how such local cultural models as “forgetting fear” expressed people’s commitment to the peace process and enabled them to move beyond the conflict, how they reclaimed the “lost” spaces of their village, at first tentatively (and under the guise of doing something else) and then more boldly. For example, some of the most conflict-affected spaces were significantly reconfigured, this was motivated in part by opportunity but also by a desire to erase their conflict-related associations. The final chapters consider how life projects and everyday activities that had been negotiated in wartime became renegotiated in peacetime and how people responded when some of their friends, relatives, or neighbors revealed their secret allegiances to the Maoists. It explores the motivations and experiences of “new” Maoists—villagers who joined the Maoists in the post-conflict era—and ask in what ways the insurgency reconfigured the villagescape and facilitated (or denied) certain people to acquire (or lose) positions of public influence. The local government administration offices reopened and development initiatives recommenced and/or expanded; however, a degree of insecurity and suspicion remained. Th is situation reflected the reality of Nepal’s uneasy peace in the immediate years following the end of the People’s War.

1 The Village of Kwei Nasa in 1991–92

As the sun faded on a March afternoon in 1991, I rounded a bend at the end of a steep, five-hour walk uphill and saw the village of Kwei Nasa above me on a ridge. As I walked the last ten minutes to the village, I noticed a woman and a man working in a small field above the path. The man was plowing  with an ox while making clicking noises to urge the animal on. The woman walked behind him scattering seeds. I was finally beginning my Ph.D. fieldwork. I had visited three months previously and had received permission from the village elders and members of the Village Development Committee (the local government committee, henceforth VDC) to undertake my research on chronic illness and healing in Kwei Nasa, a predominantly Tamu (ethnic) and minority Dalit (mainly Blacksmith and Tailor castes) village in central Nepal. At the same time, I had met the family with whom I would live: Dhan Kumari—an unmarried, middle-aged woman— and her elderly parents. In the intervening period their tool shed had been converted into my small bedroom. I was accompanied to the village by Dev Bahadur, an ex–British Army Gurkha soldier who was originally from Kwei Nasa but was now based in the town of Pokhara. As we approached, he reminded me of the key phrase in Tamu Kwi (the local ethnic language) that he thought I would need: “Don’t laugh at me!” This phrase was to be followed up by an explanation that I had come to live in the village and wanted to learn the language. In subsequent months this sentence caused much hilarity, but it also identified me as someone who wanted to learn Tamu Kwi. Consequently, people actively encouraged me to develop my linguistic skills and my cultural knowledge.

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In the early days of my fieldwork I learned many things, but most of all I learned how to manage the practical aspects of everyday life—how to wear a lungi (sarong); which colors were considered to be “Tamu colors” and which were not; what was considered “food” and what was not. Dhan Kumari’s mother, Ama, was horrified that I planned to eat bread in the mornings: she considered it to be a light snack fit only for children. She informed me that I would die and that my family in Ireland would accuse the villagers (and especially her) of having killed me if I did not eat “proper food.” Her distress, as well as villagers’ incredulous questioning about my food habits on the paths, quickly made me agree to eat kaĩ (rice—or millet or maize gruel—lentils, and curry, or a variation of this combination) twice a day. I accompanied Dhan Kumari everywhere. On my second day we attended a rally hosted by a Nepali Congress Party politician who was the member of Parliament for our area. Kwei Nasa was a Nepali Congress stronghold, and his arrival created great excitement. There was a festivallike atmosphere as people thronged the village paths en route to the event. As I walked across the open ground of the volleyball court, I felt the eyes (and comments) of more than a thousand people on me. I had no idea that calls to mass meetings in years to come would evoke a sense of fear rather than excitement as people waited in trepidation for the latest revolutionary edict or were forced to watch public punishments, or both. Later in the week I visited the primary and lower secondary school (grades 1 to 8) to meet the teachers. I was taken aback by the rudimentary state of the classrooms. Basic facilities, including benches and desks, textbooks, and even pens and paper, were in short supply. My offer to do some occasional English teaching was quickly accepted. When I left, all the children (numbering just under two hundred) followed me out of the school grounds and along the village paths, only retreating when the teachers beat them back with sticks. I was embarrassed, but the headmaster reassured me by saying, “In three weeks’ time you will walk in and out of the school and no one will pay any attention”; and indeed this was (more or less) so. I went with Dhan Kumari and her friends and neighbors into the forest to gather wood and to the fields to repair terraces and to weed in preparation for rice planting. I was a source of entertainment, being frequently called upon (usually by forceful Dhan Kumari) to recite difficult sentences or to demonstrate some other incompetency (such as the incorrect way to tie a headscarf) to an audience ever ready to laugh. One day in the forest Dhan Kumari told me that I was to

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dress in full Tamu costume (as opposed to everyday village wear) and cut down a tree while she took photographs with my camera (she considered the forest to be a picturesque backdrop for the photographs that she liked to put in her photo album or on the wall of her veranda). She removed clothing and jewelry from her bag. So far I had met all of her requests, but this one was too much. As she ordered me to don the clothes and demonstrated how she wanted me to hold the axe, to her amazement I said, “No, I am not going to do that!” Aghast, she insisted, and I refused. Eventually I ran away in tears. When I finally reappeared, we reached a compromise: I posed, axe raised, beside a tree in my everyday village clothes. Dhan Kumari got her photograph, and I asserted myself as something more than a humorous distraction. As it was the quiet agricultural season, the long afternoons were spent in the courtyard. Dhan Kumari wove an intricately patterned wool blanket, and others chatted. The most junior member of the circle of women was Dil Maya, a quiet, gentle woman in her early twenties who had married Ama’s brother’s son, Tej. When I wasn’t the center of attention—and increasingly I wasn’t—that spot was occupied by Dil Maya’s nine-month-old son, Damar. He was constantly admired, examined, and often teased. For making a “love marriage” (as opposed to an arranged marriage), Dil Maya had been disowned by her family, who considered themselves to be of higher status than Tej’s family. An egalitarian ethos coexists in Tamu society with marked status differences that occur along lines of gender, age, and wealth. Clanbased hierarchy was and continues to be contentious. Seventeenth- and nineteenth-century Hindu-authored genealogies portrayed one group of lineages, the Sõgi, as “superior” to the other, the Kugi. This supposed hierarchy is highly contested by the Kugi. Sõgis, because of historical alliances, have had greater opportunities to gain status, and some continue to consider a hierarchy to exist. Kugis, on the other hand, do not recognize them as such and have looked to such domains as the army and ritual practice to acquire status. In Kwei Nasa more Sõgi than Kugi men were prominent members of the influential VDC, but some of the wealthiest families were Kugi “army families,” such as Dhan Kumari’s family. These divisions remained in the background as a potential source of tension. In the case of Dil Maya and Tej’s marriage the divisions had remained in a particularly painful way. Dhan Kumari’s group of friends were from both clan groups; however, a considerable number were relatively well-off Sõgi women. Dhan Kumari

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shared her unmarried status with some of these women, but, as the daughter of a wealthy, high-ranking ex-Gurkha officer, she also shared with them an elite background. The husbands of some of these women were out of the village serving in either the Gurkha Brigade of the British Army or the Gorkhas of the Indian Army. Others worked as migrant laborers overseas, mainly in the Gulf. Dhan Kumari’s close circle also included widows, but a core of about six had never married. Some had cared for elderly relatives and not married for that reason. Others stated that they had not married because no one had approached their family to ask for their hand. At least one was briefly married and subsequently initiated a divorce. Others had made conscious choices not to marry. Members of the group were active in village affairs. Although older men held most of the formal positions of power within the village, middle-aged or older women also participated but in smaller numbers. One of Dhan Kumari’s circle was a Nepali Congress Party political activist and a member of the VDC; others were involved in social development activities or village Mothers’ Committees (membership did not equate with motherhood). Before formal development activities beginning in the mid- to late 1990s, Mothers’ Committees primarily organized dances to raise funds for the repair of village paths. From the mid- to late 1990s onward they were the main conduit for development initiatives aimed at women, including small-scale programs such as rotating micro credit schemes and a day-care center for children under five. Dhan Kumari’s friends were also responsible for the management of a small Hindu temple that they had built in a prominent village location. All these activities brought the group of women together regularly. A peculiarity of Nepal’s history is the recruitment of certain sections of male society into the British—and after the independence of India, Indian— armies. Impressed by the bravery and martial abilities of their defeated opponents, the British reached an agreement with the Gorkhali Army during the Anglo-Nepal war of 1814–16, which enabled them to recruit Nepali citizens into their army. Initially Nepal’s government discouraged recruitment, fearing that the returned soldiers would bring revolutionary ideas and sow seeds of discontent against the hereditary Rana prime ministers who ruled Nepal between 1846 and 1951. The rise of Bir Shamsher Rana to the position of prime minister through a coup d’état, however, changed the government’s policy. Needing British support for the survival of his government, Bir Shamsher began in 1886 to actively encourage Nepali youth to join the British Army. The British established two recruitment centers and began

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recruiting almost exclusively from the hill populations—the Gurungs (Tamu-mai), Magars, Rai, and Limbus—the “tough, hardy hillmen” that the British so badly wanted. Initially the local male population had no interest in being recruited. The government and the army resorted to force and coercion. Over 200,000 hill-men were recruited during World War I in addition to the 26,000 men already serving in the British Army; they suffered 20,000 casualties. The situation repeated itself during World War II, when 160,000 were recruited. In this war the numbers of casualties increased to 24,000, and a further 40,000 were incapacitated. In more recent times Gurkhas have fought for the British in Malaysia, the Falklands, and both Gulf wars, and in the Balkans and Afghanistan. Kwei Nasa has a long history of army recruitment, and every Tamu family has army links. Although the numbers serving in the British Army were relatively small in the early 1990s, greater numbers served in the Indian Army and a small number served in the Royal Nepal Army. High numbers of men (and increasingly women) also worked overseas in the Gulf and in Southeast Asia. However, the opportunities for financial advancement as a migrant laborer were much lower than those offered by the British Army and to a lesser extent by the Indian Army. Enrollment in foreign armies was a highly sought-after status symbol. Dil Maya’s brother-in-law, Santosh, who was a British Gurkha stationed in Hong Kong, visited on leave shortly after my arrival. I was intrigued to see him arrive in the village laden with presents for relatives, friends, and neighbors; later I learned that elaborate gift giving is an important element of army ser vice. Santosh and I were joined by a shared language (he spoke English) and also by our marginality, albeit in very different forms, to the daily life of farm and field work. Sometimes Ama delegated us to carry snacks out to those working in the fields, and during these trips we took photographs. As I documented village life for research purposes, Santosh documented what he had taken for granted as a child: the everyday life of a village that he called home but would never live in again. These photographs formed part of the “cultural heritage” he would share with friends and colleagues in the army. One of my favorite photographs is of Santosh in his smart clothes, pristine white socks, and hiking boots lining up a somewhat bemused and mud-spattered group of villagers for a photograph. Other photographs taken by him include one of me, towering above villagers, dressed in Tamu clothing and attempting to plant millet.

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Figure 1. The author cleaning village paths with neighbors.

Another of Dhan Kumari’s cousins, Ram Bahadur, was in the Indian Army. He also returned on leave, but unlike the gifts of shoes, coats, “U.K. sweaters” (twin-set cardigans favored by Tamu women), and “tartan” (lengths of Scottish tartan, the preferred fabric material for Tamu women’s headscarves and shawls) distributed by Santosh, Ram Rahadur’s gifts were less lavish. They were, however, equally prized as they included fashionable lungis and high-quality lengths of cotton. Ram Bahadur was a lively character, and his visits always brought excitement as they inevitably involved excursions. On one occasion a large number of friends and relatives made the one-day journey through the dense forest beyond the village to a small shelter built by Dhan Kumari’s father, Baba. The shelter, which was perched on top of a cliff, was used by those cutting bamboo and by shepherds en route to the uplands. On such expeditions Ram Bahadur’s army logistical skills were highly valued. “Army men are useful as they can do things very quickly,” commented Dhan Kumari as Ram Bahadur escorted Baba (who Ram Bahadur had arranged to be carried up to the shelter) to the toilet for the second or third time during the night. The following day Dhan Kumari orga nized a “photo event.” She produced colorful saris from her bag and

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insisted that young female relatives and friends dress up so that she could photograph them clutching large bouquets of red and pink rhododendrons. Obviously remembering her previous experience, she approached me only for a small number of poses. Instead, young cousins, who had to defer to her authority, posed endlessly behind bright bouquets of sticky flowers. On return to the village we were feted and garlanded: a “thank you” to Baba for building a shelter in such an inhospitable (but well used) place. Ram Bahadur left shortly afterward, but his next leave was eagerly awaited. The following year my research assistant, Chandra Maya, and I amused ourselves while walking from village to village by trying to work out if those we passed on the paths were on-leave Indian or British soldiers. Inevitably we made the correct decision. Indian soldiers usually passed us accompanied by single porters carry ing medium-sized loads. In contrast, on-leave British soldiers were normally dressed like Santosh in shorts, white knees socks, and hiking boots with a camera hung around their neck. They were inevitably escorted by several porters carry ing a large array of luxury items. A decade later I would “play” a similar trailside “game” with my new research assistant, Kamal, but by then it took on a different, sinister meaning. Army influences meant that various items of combat dress and military accoutrements were extremely popular, partly because of the availability of cast-off British and Indian Army clothing, which was considered both high status and durable. Because of its popularity it was also possible to buy lower-quality camouflage gear in town. Men commonly wore camouflage pants, but women also wore military items of clothing. Early on in my fieldwork I was surprised when a young woman who assisted me in conducting a  health survey turned up for her first day of work wearing a camouflage jacket. The interest in military paraphernalia also extended to guns. Although she could not shoot, Dhan Kumari was especially proud of Baba’s gun, which was one of the best in the village. I took a series of photographs at the cliff shelter of Dhan Kumari holding her father’s gun in different poses, including one in which Santosh is showing her how to shoot it. My favorite picture of that trip is of her striding through the uplands with her father’s gun over her shoulder. Kwei Nasa (population approximately 2,200), like most Tamu villages, is located high on a ridge. It consists of tightly nucleated hamlets of whitewashed stone houses roofed with slate. The two arms of the village come together around a central pond, and from there paths lead off along both sides of the ridge. Centrally located on the cobbled streets are tea shops and water

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Figure 2. The close arrangement of houses in a Tamu village (photo: A. Nightingale).

taps, while the village houses are behind sturdy stone walls. Houses in Tamu villages are built close together by choice because people like to live near each other—it is common for kin to live side by side—since it facilitates socialization and makes the fulfillment of ritual, social, and work obligations easier. The private space of house and courtyard is marked off from public space by upright stone gates that are closed with wooden poles. On passing through the gate one enters a large paved courtyard that is both a work area and a social space. Behind the courtyard stands the house, its size and countenance reflecting the wealth (and therefore prestige) of its owners. Tamu-mai are proud of their houses, which they see as culturally distinct. Although there is uniformity of architecture, people make small innovations or adaptations to the design or layout. Some large houses, such as Dhan Kumari’s, had artistically carved upper windows and particularly well-paneled verandas. Others had various outbuildings and separate extra sleeping accommodations.

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Houses are closely connected with all phases of the life cycle: the birth of babies, the eating of the first rice, marriages, departures and returns, death and its rituals. They are places to which people return after long hours in the fields, to rest, eat, relax, and socialize. Rituals (especially shamanic ones) take place within houses, and the protection that is given to the inhabitants (gold-colored threads which keep people’s souls in their body and so maintain well-being) extends to the house (protective nails inserted into the corners and door). Post-ritual prohibitions also include the house (e.g., in certain rites money must not be taken over the threshold for three days to ensure that the family wealth is preserved). Space and place are central to identity, and people identify strongly with their houses, which at some level are extensions of themselves. People share their houses with spirits who inhabit every part of its structure. Some spirits arrived there with the wood, stones, and slate. They might not have been happy to have found themselves incorporated into a house but will have been appeased by various offerings of food, alcohol, and flowers. The house itself has a spirit, as has the courtyard. Another spirit lives directly in front of the house—nghyoli che—the welcoming spirit. Spirits protect the house and its inhabitants, and, like their worldly coinhabitants, they expect to be treated respectfully and have their dwelling place entered only by those who are invited. Offended furious spirits will curse the uninvited, frustrate their plans, and cause illness and even death. I lived with Dhan Kumari and her parents in Ple Noh, one of the five hamlets of Kwei Nasa. It was reached by a path that branched off the main street and was a relatively recently settled area. In contrast to other parts of the village, most houses here were only a couple of generations old. Dhan Kumari’s father had built their large, well-appointed house during the early years of his army ser vice in the mid-twentieth century. Ama’s brother (also a retired British Gurkha) and his family were our closest neighbors, and other relatives lived nearby. On the long, warm afternoons rice and millet dried on bamboo mats laid out on the flagstones of the spacious courtyard. At other times of the year this area was used for dehusking maize, beating millet, and other tasks, such as the weaving of bamboo mats by men and blankets and items of clothing by women. Courtyards were also social spaces where dances are performed and where death rituals take place. Dhan Kumari’s courtyard contained a water buffalo stall and a chicken coop, which was only periodi-

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cally occupied. A bad-tempered ox was housed in a stall on the other side of the path. Atypically, for its time, the courtyard also contained a toilet. Onions, garlic, pumpkins, radishes, beans, and other green vegetables were grown in an adjacent kitchen garden. At one end of the veranda at the front of the house was an outdoor hearth for distilling millet wine, while the other end contained a stone hand grinder, a washing line, and stools and mats which were mainly brought out when guests arrived. Photographs of family members were attached to the back wall of the veranda: they included photos of family members on outings in the uplands and other local scenic spots, as well as one of Dhan Kumari as a teenager, standing alongside her parents dressed for an army party in 1950s Singapore, where she had grown up. She also had a photograph of her father in full army ceremonial dress and one of a youthful Queen Elizabeth II of England. I later learned that Dhan Kumari had experienced a difficult transition back to Kwei Nasa as she arrived as a teenager who spoke Nepali and not Tamu Kwi. Up to that point, her life had been the privileged one of the daughter of a high-ranking officer living in Singapore and Hong Kong. Years later she showed me an album of photographs taken of her parents attending formal army functions: Ama dressed in saris and her father in  ceremonial army dress. Other pictures showed Dhan Kumari dressed in western-style skirts and blouses attending children’s birthday parties in Singapore. It was not surprising that her “return” to Kwei Nasa was so challenging. Verandas are used for sitting, chatting, and entertaining guests; writing letters; chopping vegetables; and the performance of other small, everyday tasks. They are socially less-restricted spaces than house interiors; for example, Dalits, who are not permitted access to the house, are allowed to sit on a veranda. Veranda space is not, however, as freely accessed as courtyard space, and visitors often wait for an invitation to mount the steps and sit down. Only those with whom the family are intimate—such as family, friends, neighbors, or selectively invited guests—enter the house. Ama’s longtime friend, a Bahun (Hill Brahman) woman from a neighboring village named Sunita, sometimes visited. She was from an orthodox Bahun family that considered the Tamu-mai to be “low caste,” and so, unlike most Bahuns, who will enter Tamu houses, she would not. Instead, Ama sat inside the house preparing food at the hearth while Sunita sat outside on the veranda and engaged in lengthy and animated conversations with her friend whose house she would never enter.

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Verandas were sometimes used in ambiguous ways. One day I was informed that a male buffalo was being brought to mate with the household buffalo, and for reasons of propriety women should not be present. I expected to be told to stay inside the house. I was therefore surprised when the buffalo and his handlers arrived to be told by Dhan Kumari to sit alongside her and Ama on the veranda. We sat on the floor of the veranda facing the outside wall of the house with our backs turned away from the courtyard. Things did not go well, and it soon became apparent that Ama and Dhan Kumari considered Baba and the handlers to be unable to manage the event. “Secluded” on the veranda, the two women closely monitored what was happening. Initially, they shouted out advice to the men, but, as they grew more exasperated, they jumped up and down from their seats to yell detailed instructions. Finally, they abandoned all pretense of decorum and orchestrated the entire event from the veranda. By then I fully appreciated the advantages of having a domestic space whose meaning could be so easily reascribed. The hearth in a Tamu house is the center of family life and the central structural feature of the house. Access to it is limited, and there are rules about what can be put into it. For example, it is not used to burn rubbish, and items categorized as “dirty” (for example, cigarettes and bandages) are not placed in it. It is the home of the hearth-dwelling god and is a semisacred space. At the end of the working day and in the evenings people sit around the hearth in a large circle. The arrangements are not random but carefully orchestrated as space is an important marker of status. Within the “kitchen” of Dhan Kumari’s house, Ama, as senior woman, assumed responsibility for cooking and sat to the right of the hearth (facing outward), from where she could easily reach utensils and cooking implements, tend the fire, and observe who came in. This was the central position in the house and the only fi xed one: in Ama’s presence no one else occupied it. When she was not there, Dhan Kumari substituted for her. From this vantage point Ama oversaw the running of the house, prepared food, and choreographed the movement of people within the house and courtyard. Baba sat opposite her on the other side of the hearth; guests, if any, sat in descending order beside him. Attention to personal identity, seniority, age, respect, and honor meant that the arrangement of who sat where was an ongoing process, with positions being changed depending on who was present (or, if not actually changed, at least offered). My position was beside Baba, but, if senior guests were present, I would sit in a more distant posi-

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tion. Each evening Baba would tell me rambling stories of his experiences in Italy and the Middle East during World War II. Ama and especially Dhan Kumari were tired of hearing these stories. Dhan Kumari frequently told her father to stop talking. He usually became silent for a few minutes before recommencing his stories. In that way I learned the names of the places where his battalion had been stationed during the war, of how they had hunted wild boar to supplement their diet, and of the challenges of intercultural radio communication with British officers who (unlike British-national Gurkha officers) did not speak Nepali. Although Baba was long retired, he retained links with some of his army colleagues, both Nepali and British. Occasionally I would meet him on the path going to visit another elderly villager who had served in the Gurkhas at the same time. Such visits provided opportunities for Baba to talk about his army ser vice without censorship from Dhan Kumari. British officers also occasionally visited, and these visits were especially prized and talked about long afterward. One morning a retired British Gurkha officer who was trekking through the area appeared unannounced. As he and Baba exchanged greetings, a flurry of activity erupted as the family’s one table and two upright chairs—deemed to be a suitable seating arrangement for a visiting British officer—were hastily brought out of storage. His porter, who arrived shortly after him, was also carry ing an upright chair, which he began to untie. Tactfully, the elderly man, who until that point had appeared to be quite comfortable seated on a low stool, accepted the chair offered by Dhan Kumari. As the men talked of army acquaintances and events and campaigns long past, Ama and Dhan Kumari prepared tea in their best china mugs, accompanied by biscuits which had been hastily purchased at the village shop. Baba and his friend sat at the table, reminisced, and ate their snacks while an audience that had gathered in the courtyard looked on. Kwei Nasa has several designations. Officially, it is known by its Nepalilanguage name of Maurigaun. This is the name on government documents and maps and the name that is used by its inhabitants when speaking Nepali. In Tamu Kwi it is called Kwei Nasa, a village (nasa) which is part of Tamu yula “Tamu country.” Geographically a yelsa yula refers to the natural formations of a locale—the rivers, valleys, forests, and surrounding hills. Contained within yelsa yula are settlements like Kwei Nasa where Tamu ways predominate, where people are interrelated and have a strong sense of belonging and of shared ancestry, and where they perceive there to be a fit between them, the landscape, and the spirit world. A person’s constitution is

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best suited to the climate of one’s own yelsa yula, and Tamu ideas about the body, health, illness, and remedies for illness provide the best explanation for life’s contingencies. In this local world people know how to greet and relate to each other. They know (by and large) what categories of strangers might visit, the range of allegiances they might have, and how to recognize and question them. They know how to work and live together, how to manage the endless social ruptures and confl icts, and what remedies to use for physical and spiritual dangers. Tamu yula is a place where people generally have a strong sense of competency, mastery, self-sufficiency, and know-how. Yula can be contrasted to desh (country; Nep.), where non-Tamu political and administrative structures dominate. The movement from village to town is essentially from yula to desh, from Tamu (their own name for themselves) to Gurung (an externally imposed name which is commonly used in wider Nepal—and when speaking Nepali—to refer to the Tamu-mai), and from Tamu Kwi to Nepali. However, the distinctions are more subtle and there are many occasions in the village when the Tamu-mai are Gurungs, such as during interactions with both local and national-level bureaucracies, at the health post, and in the village school. There is “desh” in yelsa yula just as in the Tamu spaces of the town there is “yelsa yula” in desh. The physical boundaries of Maurigaun are the same as those of Kwei Nasa. People move between saying “Kwei Nasa” and “Maurigaun” with ease. It is normal to speak in Tamu Kwi one minute and in Nepali the next. A Tamu may break off from a conversation in Nepali with a Bahun schoolteacher— during which she refers to the place she lives as Maurigaun—and speak to her child in Tamu Kwi, referring to the village as Kwei Nasa. Outside of the school, the health post, the Village Development Committee, and certain formal (mainly development-related) committee meetings, most interaction takes place in Tamu Kwi. Non–Tamu-mai who live in Tamu villages, such as Dalits, can speak Tamu Kwi (although their first language is Nepali). It is not uncommon for Bahuns and Chhetris who live in neighboring villages to understand a little Tamu Kwi, but rarely do they speak it. There are exceptions, however. A Bahun shopkeeper named Krishna who lived in Pokhara sometimes stopped at the house en route to his village on the opposite ridge. Speaking confidently in good Tamu Kwi, he would bring Ama and Dhan Kumari up to date with the latest Pokhara news. Krishna’s shop was located in the outermost Pokhara suburb and was considered to be “the Kwei Nasa shop.” He acted as an informal conduit of information between locals and the urban center, often relaying messages between the two. During the times

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I was based in Pokhara, I would send letters to the village via Krishna. His local origins were important, as was his reliability, but perhaps most significant were his ability and willingness to speak Tamu Kwi. Shared language brought a par ticular type of affi liation and relationship. Although yula is referred to in spatial terms, speaking Tamu Kwi is at some level a marker of participation in Tamu yula. Above the village and reaching up to the top of the next ridge is the forest, where firewood, fodder, and bamboo are cut. Beyond the forest are the uplands, the traditional preserve of the then dwindling numbers of shepherds and their flocks of sheep. Also in the uplands are Tamu ancestral villages, places inhabited by the ancestors, who continue to offer protection to their living descendants provided that they are adequately honored. The landscape is marked out in a very specific “route map” from the village to the Tamu afterworld along which the shamans guide the dead during the major death ritual. Parallel to this path is the ancient migration route reaching back to the supposed Tamu origins “in Mongolia.” Superimposed on these physical spaces are the spaces and beings of the spirit world—gods and godlings of the soil who live in the forest, in the rivers, at the sides of the trail, and at the boundaries of different territories. This world also includes the spirits or ghosts of the departed, especially those who died a violent death or whose death rituals were insufficient to see them off carefully and correctly to the afterworld. People feel safest in their own area where they are protected by the familiar landscape and by the local gods and ancestors they propitiate in exchange for protection. People share this space, which reaches from house to neighborhood to village, with others who are referred to as “our own villagers.” Kwei Nasa was founded by Tamu-mai, although when I arrived a demographic shift was in progress whereby the numbers of Tamu-mai were decreasing while the Dalit population was increasing (to its present level of 22 percent). This shift was triggered both by the desire of the Tamu-mai to relocate to urban areas and by increasing opportunities for migrant work overseas. Many no longer wished to subsistence farm and struggled to get “ahead” by “going to foreign,” as they put it, or relocating to the town. A neighbor relocated to the outskirts of Pokhara, where he had bought some land. He said that while he wanted to farm, he didn’t want to do so in the village. He explained: “It’s just too hard there. Every year hail comes, and, if you are unlucky, you lose some of your crop. When this happens, you have to buy rice from the town and carry it up to the village and that’s really hard.

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If I lose some of my crop down here, I just go into town, buy the rice, and transport it back on the bus.” Outmigration was an option, however, that was more readily available to young men. It was more difficult for young women and usually depended on having a preexisting network outside the village, either in an urban center or in a foreign country; it also had to be fitted in with the constraints of parents’ marriage plans. The roads that led out of the village and toward the consumer images and goods of a wider world were notoriously convoluted. “Going to foreign” required monetary resources and a particular type of knowledge that village youth often did not have. Several of Dhan Kumari’s young male relatives fell prey to unscrupulous agents who took their deposits but didn’t provide visas or jobs. Dalit–Tamu interrelationships are complex and discriminatory. Despite having no modern legal or religious legitimacy in Nepal, caste discrimination remains, and Dalits are still considered untouchable, especially in rural places such as Kwei Nasa. This holds true despite the fact that Dalits, especially Damai (Tailors) and Kami (Blacksmiths), have lived in Tamu villages for generations, providing their ser vices to the whole community. In 1991 some Dalits continued to follow these occupations; however, the majority were impoverished farmers who owned little or no land and were primarily dependent on wage labor. For example, much of the work on Dhan Kumari’s land was done by Dalit laborers. The area is also home to people from other ethnic groups (Tamangs and Magars), as well as to Bahun and Chhetri caste groups, who live in small hamlets on the slopes below Kwei Nasa. During the autocratic Rana regime, which lasted from 1846 to 1951, Nepali society was ordered according to orthodox Hindu ideals. The legal code of 1854, the Muluki Ain, hierarchically organized the heterogeneous population on the basis of their relative purity in Hindu terms. The key distinctions were between the Tagadhari as elite wearers of the sacred thread and the rest, known as the Matwali, or alcohol-consuming classes. These distinctions were supported by law and by the judicial system. Although they did not consider themselves to be within the caste system, ethnic minority groups like the Tamu-mai were nonetheless slotted into mid-level positions. They were in the Matwali category from whom water and food could be accepted. This distinction was in contrast to the supposedly impure castes from whom water and food were not accepted. The dominant Bahun (Brahman) and Chhetri (Kshatriya) caste groups spread throughout the country as landowners and took up positions as priests, administrators, and soldiers.

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Over time and through intermarriage, long-standing connections, and high levels of literacy, and in the absence of initiatives targeting marginalized groups, the majority of development and educational opportunities went to those groups. In the Kwei Nasa area most of those employed by the administration, such as teachers, health workers, and government workers, were from Bahun and Chhetri groups. Despite their connections, however, most Bahun and Chhetris were subsistence farmers like their Tamu neighbors, and many were economically less well off than the richer army families of Kwei Nasa. Superimposed on the spatial designations of Kwei Nasa and Maurigaun is the state organization of groups of villages into Village Development Committees, which provided a third name: Deurali VDC. Under this designation Kwei Nasa is grouped together with other villages and hamlets and divided into nine wards as an administrative unit of the state of Nepal. Kwei Nasa itself is the headquarters of the VDC, and so representatives of the state—such as health-post workers, VDC employees, and teachers—are based in the village or in nearby hamlets. Nonetheless, the presence of the state felt minimal. All the teachers were local, mainly Bahun and Chhetri men from surrounding hamlets, although there were two Tamu female teachers. The small numbers of staff at the health post were mainly Bahun, some local but others from faraway districts. Usually they were posted to Kwei Nasa for long periods, (some stayed for several years and others for a decade or even more) and some were highly respected and had excellent relationships with locals. Dhan Kumari and Ama were friendly with the health post in-charge named Vishnu, who was from a village on the plains of the Tarai. Vishnu was a regular visitor to the house, and I often visited him in the health post. When I arrived, there would inevitably be long lines of people waiting to be seen, some having walked for an hour from an outlying hamlet while others arrived being carried by relatives. The health post comprised two minimally equipped rooms, and I quickly learned that the medicines—carried up from Pokhara in a large basket transported on the back of the health post porter— ran out before the end of each month. Health post staff operated a parallel private business, buying medicines in the town which they then sold privately to villagers at inflated prices. Some staff members exploited this opportunity more than others, and their reputations were partly based on how much they inflated the price (or on how people thought they inflated it). Vishnu inflated his prices minimally, which was partly why he was so well liked.

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There was no police post in Kwei Nasa, and, like many rural Nepalis, the villagers of Kwei Nasa policed themselves. The only time the police entered the village was following a serious crime, which occurred only rarely. It was enough to state that “the police came” to explain that a serious crime had been committed. Like many Nepalis, people in Kwei Nasa were frightened of the police, who were viewed as corrupt, potentially violent individuals into whose clutches they did not want to fall. The only time I saw an army patrol in Kwei Nasa before November 2001 was on polling day during the 1991 elections, and then the villagers that I was sitting with commented, “What are they doing here? There is no need for them.” Kwei Nasa lies within the Annapurna Conservation Area, although it is a day’s walk to the large Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP), area headquarters in the village of Khoda. ACAP was one of several projects pioneered by the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation (KMTNC), one of the largest Nepali nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). ACAP’s activities, which began in 1986, include resource conservation, sustainable rural development, sustainable tourism management, and conservation education and extension. The ACAP development activities initiated in the area did not begin in Kwei Nasa until the latter half of the 1990s, when a subbranch office opened and a series of development activities and training sessions began. Activities included the establishment of a Conservation Area Management Committee, which was entrusted with the responsibility to manage, utilize, and protect all the natural resources within the VDC. Other initiatives included the opening of a horticultural nursery, a day-care center for children up to the age of five, micro credit schemes for women, and various other education and development initiatives. Before the late 1990s there were no development initiatives in the village, although a Swiss development agency upgraded the water system during the early to mid-1990s. The royal sponsorship of ACAP by the well-connected and well-resourced KMTNC was seen as a positive feature, but in years to come it was the main reason why the organization’s development work was brought to a halt throughout the area. Tamu people place enormous emphasis on their relatedness to others, and this emphasis on solidarity is expressed via an elaborate system of kinship terms. The first step to knowing a person is to work out his or her relationship to you and in the absence of a relationship to create one. One of the challenges for an outsider is to learn the correct terms of reference for different people, and, when one forgets, which is unavoidable, to make sure that the substitute chosen—because it is rude not to use one as otherwise the re-

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lationship is not acknowledged—if not exactly correct is at least a designation of appropriate status and honor. In the early days of my fieldwork I often got kinship terms wrong and would inevitably be loudly corrected. Kinship in a Tamu world places people in known categories that guide social interaction. It is not, however, the only basis for relationship: people are also linked through friendships forged by membership in cooperative work and age-grade groups. They are also interlinked through fictive kinship— relationships that mirror kin relationships but are contracted with people from different ethnic (or clan) groups. I was quickly slotted into Dhan Kumari’s family as “Dhan Kumari Kaji” (Dhan Kumari’s younger sister). This hierarchical relationship worked in Dhan Kumari’s favor, and, while my close association with her provided me with huge insights into the everyday life of the village, she frequently humiliated me in public and bossed me in private. She was considered to be a complex character even by her closest intimates. She was often angry with her mild-mannered father (who suffered increasingly from dementia) and not infrequently rude to Dalits and other casual laborers. Ama was a tempering force, and her overwhelming kindness neutralized some of Dhan Kumari’s erratic behavior. The Tamu emphasis on communal solidarity means that there are powerful restraints against the expression of difficult feelings. People value the ability to hide their thoughts and not let on that they are suffering when angry, grieving, or in pain. Because the social expression of personal distress is disapproved, people also learn to shun it privately; keeping the heart-mind “smooth”/“clear” is viewed as an important strategy to avoid emotional distress (the heart-mind is the center of consciousness, memory, and emotions). Dhan Kumari’s behavior, however, clearly illustrates that, despite the high value placed on emotional constraint and the repression of such emotions as anger, not everyone adheres to the expected norms of behavior. The emphasis on smoothing the heart-mind sometimes also broke down when people were drunk and said things they would not have said otherwise. Although those who witnessed the incursion outwardly made excuses for the behavior, what was said was in fact carefully noted and factored into future encounters. On one occasion a normally reserved visitor from the town was so humiliated by what he had said when drunk that he feigned illness and left the village early the following morning. In a world that is far from the projected ideal of harmony, cohesion, and mutual assistance, work and age-grade colleagues along with kin provide the most consistent source of support, security, and certainty. Interconnectedness

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and interdependence are integral to the Tamu worldview, and the centrality of these ideas is strongly demonstrated during periods of personal distress, such as following an accident, during serious illness, or at a death. The usual response is to visit, bring gifts, offer practical assistance, and provide emotional support. For example, throughout the first three nights after a death, friends, neighbors, and family members sit with the bereaved and sing to cheer them up. Being severed from the interdependence of others is deeply frightening. The first three days following death, when the souls of the deceased are still believed to be in the house, are considered to be particularly painful. The dead usually don’t want to leave, and so they can be heard crying and rattling doors in the night. The shamans can offer them special “forgotten water” named mbliku to make them forget and go away. A dead person can only reach the afterlife and join the ranks of the ancestors after its three day pae laba death ritual has been performed. It is the responsibility of the deceased’s family to perform this rite. Thus the interdependence of life continues after death; the dead need their living kin to release them from the misery of an undefined existence and enable them to become respected ancestors. The living also need their ancestors, who, classified as ancestor-deities, offer protection and assistance. If a deceased relative does not have a pae, he or she will remain in a state of undefined “liminality” and, in the form of a vengeful spirit, can cause much pain and suffering to the living. Pae laba are extremely expensive events, and so they are often conducted collectively for a group of deceased clan members when enough money has been raised to host the event. This event is often held many years after the actual death and burial in the village cemetery. Consequently, intermediary rituals are usually conducted to ensure that the newly dead do not trouble their descendants. Relationships with kin are often complex and are sometimes expressed in shifting alliances and counteralliances. There is also a strong tolerance for ambiguity and contradiction. Within Dhan Kumari’s circle, relationships with Ama’s family were close. Her favorite brother and his family lived next door, and members of her large extended family visited on a daily basis. Baba’s family lived on the other side of the village and visited infrequently. Relationships with some members of his family, while outwardly amicable, were ambivalent, which was the result of long-standing complex animosities that I never fully understood. In fact some of these relationships were highly

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contentious, but everyone worked hard to maintain an appearance of harmony and cooperation. Much of the day is spent outside in the courtyard where people work together, organize the running of daily life, and visit, which is a favorite leisure activity. Anyone who enters a house or who sits for a chat on the veranda will be offered something to drink and possibly a snack. When invited for a meal, guests are repeatedly offered more food. An impression of abundance is presented that often outweighs reality. This etiquette requires careful negotiation so that giving and retaining are balanced and honor is maintained. Visitors frequently appear unannounced, and, because reciprocity and hospitality are so highly valued, they are (depending on their status) treated lavishly. Baba’s nephew, Sher Bahadur, a captain in the Gurkhas who was based in Hong Kong, sometimes visited when on leave accompanied by his wife, Sanu Maya. Even a hint that they might come caused great activity and excitement. Although Dhan Kumari’s family was wealthy because of Baba’s army career, they were labor deficient and dependent on the goodwill and indebtedness of others to help out on social occasions. When word was received that Sher Bahadur and Sanu Maya were en route from Pokhara, relatives, friends, and neighbors were drafted to help. Messages were hurriedly sent to family members in distant parts of the village asking that their teenaged daughters be sent to assist (my long-term friendships with some of these young women began during these visits). Friends and relatives arrived carry ing millet wine; rice was sent to be milled before being made into a doughnut-like snack; and animals (usually a hen and a goat) were slaughtered so that there would be plenty of meat (otherwise only eaten rarely). Dhan Kumari and Ama opened large army trunks, which smelled strongly of mothballs, and took out special bed linen, including pillowcases onto which Dhan Kumari had embroidered misspelled English words like “sweet drems.” Before the renovation of the water system there were water shortages most days, and during one of Sher Bahadur and Sanu Maya’s visits I arrived home to discover they had been given my entire stock of water! During another visit Sanu Maya became ill, which distressed Ama and Dhan Kumari, who worried that her illness reflected badly on their hospitality. The health post in-charge, Vishnu, was hurriedly summoned, even though it was a Saturday (and his day off ). I was asked to provide the antibiotics he prescribed from my first-aid kit. “High-status hospitality” extended as far as procuring the best medical treatments available.

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Kwei Nasa villagers rely on each other for assistance and support in difficult times. The other side of this enveloping and supportive ethos, however, is that people make constant demands on each other for various forms of assistance that cannot always be met. It is difficult to openly refuse, and so people make excuses. Surface harmony is maintained, but refusals create a sense of mistrust. Others’ actions are watched closely, and people are especially sensitive to personal snubs and to lapses in gift giving and hospitality. Suspicion of other people’s behavior is paralleled by a concern about one’s own behavior. Tamu-mai worry that they have not measured up and have made mistakes or omissions, which could lead to retribution. Just as they worry about possible slights and insults to deities and ancestors that will lead the aggrieved to take revenge on themselves or their loved ones, people also worry about slights to fellow humans and wonder about their effects. While Ama and Dhan Kumari presented themselves as being very community oriented, they—like everyone else—engaged in “inner talk” (norbe taa). For example, they told me not to accept cups of tea in certain village houses. These were places that they considered to be either “dirty” or where witches (or potential witches) lived. The latter were not openly discussed, and so they focused on hygiene rather than witchcraft. I explained that it would be hard for me to refuse hospitality, and so they told me to say that I was sick. This “inner talk” was also aimed at limiting my social interaction with people with whom, unknown to me, they were not on good terms. As my linguistic skills improved, so did my understanding of the world around me. Dhan Kumari and Ama denied knowledge of witches, but one warm evening as we sat outside on the veranda, Ama pointed out to Dhan Kumari and a neighbor lights above the village that she called “witches’ lights.” She had not expected me to understand and was taken aback when I commented, “So those are the lights of witches?” “You understood,” she laughed! After that she and Dhan Kumari did not deny knowledge of witches, although they like everyone else spoke circumspectly about them. It was illegal to accuse people of witchcraft, and so witchcraft was only referred to in indirect terms. Although I frequently asked Ama and Dhan Kumari if they or other villagers used herbal medicines, they always denied their existence. The shepherds who looked after the family’s sheep visited relatively frequently, and I watched them give Ama herbs that they had gathered in the uplands. Yet she and Dhan Kumari persisted in stating that they did not use or have herbs, and neither did anyone else. One day when I was ill, Ama reached into the

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pocket of her blouse and produced a root stating, “This is a very strong herb; eat it.” I was so taken aback that I could hardly answer her. Access to knowledge was often contextual. Sometimes after I had learned something of interest, I asked people why they had not told me beforehand. Inevitably they replied that I had not asked them or that they were unaware I was interested in the particular topic. But this circumstance was different, and I never fully understood why I was only privileged to herbal knowledge when I became ill. The following day Dhan Kumari and I looked at my herb books, and she carefully pointed out which ones she knew and which were in use in the village. Years later when I traveled into the uplands on archaeological expeditions, she would inevitably ask me to remind the shepherds to send her herbs. Because of the long history of out-migration among the Tamu-mai, at any one time a number of on-leave young men from the British or Indian armies were in the village. The son of a neighbor, thirty-three-year-old Tek Bahadur, a soldier in the Indian Army, consulted a shaman named Kancha Pachyu because he was complaining of shortness of breath. Although he was skeptical about the efficacy of ritual healing, he agreed to the consultation to please his mother. While Tek Bahadur had initially presented with a physical complaint, on probing Kancha Pachyu discovered that Tek Bahadur had been passed over for promotion. This had caused his saF (heartmind) to shrink, which had resulted in his illness. Depending on one’s life experiences and the manner in which one conducts one’s life, an individual’s saF can be either big (theba) or small (choba). The size of one’s saF, however, is not fi xed, because it changes in reaction to the sorrows, joys, fortunes, and misfortunes of life. Success, well-being, and achievement cause the saF to swell, while mishaps, disappointments, social setbacks, fear, and loss make it shrink. A person who has failed, been humiliated, or suffered a serious loss is prone to unhappiness and bad temper and susceptible to illness, bewitchment, or other forms of spirit attack. People strive to maintain the expansiveness of their saF by attempting to keep their heart-minds “smooth” and therefore strong, thus maintaining their well-being, demeanor, and ultimately their prestige. Sometimes life’s events overtake people, however, and their shrunken heart-minds cause them to become ill, as in Tek Bahadur’s case. Tek Bahadur’s all-night healing ritual included numerous subrituals accompanied by lengthy narratives chanted in the esoteric shamanic language, Chõ Kwi. Kancha Pachyu fought witches on Tek Bahadur’s behalf,

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frightened away bad spirits with fire, and gave him a midnight inhalation of Himalayan herbs. Finally, in the chilly early dawn he stood over Tek Bahadur and, chanting to the beat of his one-sided drum, embarked on a soul journey to search for Tek’s lost souls (plah). The plah are outside the awareness of the individual, cannot be controlled by human volition, and can easily fly out of the body and cause illness. Other people can try to prevent plah from leaving the body following a fright or a shock by placing their hands on the person’s head and saying “shi, shi.” While family, friends, and neighbors can provide emergency or preventative “first aid,” serious soul loss requires the intervention of a shaman. The identification and recovery of lost plah is considered to be a task requiring much skill since souls—which shamans are believed to see—are “shadow-like” and fickle and can hide or masquerade as something else. Once identified and recovered, souls must be enticed back into the owner’s body and are attracted with flowers and a gold-colored thread on which to swing. When they alight on the thread, which they inevitably do, albeit sometimes slowly, it is quickly tied around the owner’s neck and the souls restored to the body. Everyone watched intently while Kancha Pachyu waited for Tek Bahadur’s souls to alight on the thread. At last it began to sway, and Kancha Pachyu grabbed it and firmly tied it round Tek Bahadur’s neck. Tek Bahadur’s shortness of breath disappeared, and his saF was restored to its full size. He returned to the army and was promoted, but not before attending, as a spectator, a series of other rituals at which he loudly sang Kancha Pachyu’s praises. Another popular visitor was Kul Bahadur, the son of Ama’s fictive sister who lived in a village several hours away further up the valley. The regular gift exchange between the households consisted primarily of produce local to one village but not to the other. These gifts were often carried by intermediaries visiting one or other of the villages. Sometimes, however, Kul Bahadur arrived in person laden with potatoes that were widely grown in his village but not in ours. He would stay overnight and update Ama with his mother’s latest news. He was a lively and sociable character who was uncharacteristically tall for a Tamu, a fact that people usually referred to when they described him. Although he stayed in our house, he always visited other friends and acquaintances in the village and sometimes managed to take in a dance. He was, however, careful to balance his time outside the house with time inside it, a thoughtful consideration that was appreciated by Ama and Dhan Kumari. Kul Bahadur would leave in the morning with a basket full of Kwei Nasa produce, including a grain rarely grown in his

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village and a local variety of root vegetable that Ama and Dhan Kumari considered to be of superior quality to that found in his area. Dhan Kumari liked to write letters, and so sometimes Ama’s gifts to Kul Bahadur’s family were accompanied by short written notes. Many of Dhan Kumari’s female contemporaries were unable to write or had limited literacy skills. In contrast, Dhan Kumari took pride in being literate and always had a ready store of notepaper and envelopes. She also had an interest in astrology, which is generally the preserve of men, and frequently pored over astrological charts, working out the auspicious day to undertake a certain task. “She’s an astrologer,” proudly announced Ama. This ability sometimes worked against me as Dhan Kumari inevitably proclaimed that the day I planned to leave the village on a particular trip was inauspicious. Negotiations over my departures were sometimes protracted and at times heated. Life was made easier when I learned that techniques could be used to mitigate bad luck. For example, if one is planning to leave on an inauspicious day, a personal item such as a bag or a walking stick can be placed outside the house on an auspicious day. By placing the item “en route,” the journey was deemed to have begun on a lucky day. I lived in Kwei Nasa for almost two years. I attended many healing rituals such as Tek Bahadur’s and eventually refocused my research on the urbanled Tamu shamanic revitalization movement. In the second year of my fieldwork I therefore spent a considerable amount of time in Pokhara and in other villages. I also traveled widely through the districts of central Nepal and got used to the confidence with which my companions traveled within Tamu yula, often arriving in a village at dusk or even after dark, knowing that local connections would ensure that we would get accommodation for the night despite the absence of any lodges or hotels. We always did, and in this way I developed a wide network of connections in many Tamu villages. I often attended three-day death rituals, the pae laba, for which the Tamumai are renowned. On one occasion I was invited to a ritual in Pokhara that was conducted by the Kwei Nasa shamans in collaboration with the village “old” lamas (who include animal sacrifice in their practice like the shamans). I stood beside Dev Bahadur as Amar, the lama’s son, swirled in front of me in his elaborate ceremonial costume. Dev Bahadur explained that very few “old” lamas were left, and Amar shouldered much responsibility for continuing the tradition. The concerns of those with whom I was affiliated in Pokhara in the early 1990s were with asserting an ethnopolitical space for the Tamu-mai in newly

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democratic Nepal, in increasing opportunities for the Tamu-mai in the high caste–dominated government bureaucracy, and in revitalizing the shamanic (and affi liated) traditions in the face of increasing competition from the “new” Tamu lamas (followers of the Dalai Lama). Most of my associates wanted to further opportunities for the Tamu-mai in democratic Nepal but did not want to overthrow the system. As I watched Amar perform, I had no idea that he was on a different trajectory. In the years to come he would continue his father’s tradition while simultaneously and secretly becoming deeply embedded in a revolutionary movement. Despite my travels I always returned to Kwei Nasa. During my second year I employed a research assistant named Chandra Maya, from the village of Khoda. Chandra Maya was the first woman from her village to complete secondary school in Pokhara and to pass her School Leaving Certificate. She spoke limited English, but that ability was no longer essential as by now I spoke reasonable Tamu Kwi. Chandra Maya settled into Kwei Nasa very quickly, facilitated by her good humor and willingness to help out with household tasks. She got on particularly well with Ama and even won Dhan Kumari’s approval. Her presence and easy companionship, alongside my improved linguistic skills, meant that I was only occasionally a target for Dhan Kumari’s teasing. However, at just the point where life had become easier, it was time to go. I left the village on a cold, sunny afternoon in December 1992. A large delegation of villagers walked with me to the edge of the village and watched as I began the four-hour walk to Pokhara. My Ph.D. fieldwork was over, and a few days later I was back in Cambridge. I returned to Kwei Nasa regularly, at least once and sometimes twice a year, mostly while working on a multidisciplinary ethnohistory and archaeology project centering on the upland Tamu ancestral villages. En route to our research sites we stopped off for a night or two in Kwei Nasa and always stayed in Dhan Kumari’s house. Dhan Kumari enjoyed expanding her international networks and was delighted when the archaeologists measured and drew her house as an example of an extant dwelling. Following a relatively short illness Ama died in 1994. I had planned to visit the village three weeks later, but, when I received the fax informing me of her death, I expedited my trip and left that day so that I could take part in her three-day pae laba, which was scheduled to begin immediately after her burial. Thanks to a Cambridge travel agent’s impressive combination of international and national flights, I arrived on the first evening of Ama’s death ritual. I was able to participate in her pae as a daughter alongside Dhan Ku-

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mari. Dhan Kumari loudly informed late arrivals that I had managed to arrive from the UK on time, whereas they, who had walked from the other side of the village, had arrived late! Alongside Dhan Kumari and other female members of the family I circumambulated with the shamans during the last hour of the sherga chant so that Ama did not to have to make her final journey to the afterworld on her own. At the point where the shamans chanted Ama across a lake to the land of the dead, we hastily “returned” to the land of the living by changing direction. Later I watched as the shamans “introduced” Ama (in clay representation), now a new ancestor, to the ancestors already living in the Tamu afterworld. In the late afternoon on the third day of the ritual, kinswomen and neighbors fi led into the courtyard holding plates and trays of delicious food—khF (doughnut like bread), biscuits, meat, pa (millet wine), and spicy cooked vegetables. They sat on the ground in a rectangle, behind their offerings. Dhan Kumari and I sat together at the head. Two sheep were herded in: one to represent Ama and the other to represent a friend to accompany her to the afterworld. As in life, journeys in death are undertaken in the company of others. The feast began, and the sheep were offered the delicacies. We offered “Ama” her favorite foods. I was taken aback when Ama’s sheep greedily ate bananas—one of Ama’s favorites. Later at dusk, when the light was fading fast, Dhan Kumari, Baba, and I stood in the center of the courtyard holding the a-la (flagpole), which when placed aloft on the roof of the house had guided Ama to her pae. We were told to stand in front of it and touch it with our hands. Standing behind us were the shamans. Kancha Pachyu stood behind me chanting softly. Behind that the villagers crowded round. I could hardly breathe. The incantations ended, and the villagers surged forward to place threads (ru) around our necks to prevent any of our souls from departing with Ama. The a-la was then carried out of the courtyard followed by streams of people. It was almost completely dark and Ama’s pae was over. Baba and Dhan Kumari lived together in the large house, although young male relatives often visited to assist Baba manage his everyday activities. On a subsequent visit I videotaped him (to his delight) talking about his World War II experiences. As usual, Dhan Kumari expressed her dismay as to the relevance of “such old stories” and was particularly surprised to see that they merited recording. Baba died in the late 1990s, and sadly I was unable to attend his pae. Dhan Kumari continued to live alone in the large house.

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Dil Maya and her two sons, Damar and Raju (who was born in the mid1990s), spent much of the time in Dhan Kumari’s house, and at night one or other of the boys usually slept there. Dil Maya was finally reconciled with her family, and constant movement took place between her parents’ home and her in-laws’ house. Her mother and sister, whom I had never previously met, frequently visited. I liked them and found it hard to understand why Dil Maya’s parents had banished their gentle elder daughter. I wondered whether a “performance of status” had been expected of them by other clan members and whether they had fulfi lled it by this means. Interestingly, the reconciliation came during a villagewide festival when people were so busy that they paid minimal attention to who was going in and out of which house. Dil Maya’s husband, Tej, left for work in the Gulf in the late 1990s, and within a relatively short period both her of in-laws—Dhan Kumari’s mother’s favorite brother and his wife—died. With the death of her favorite uncle Dhan Kumari had lost all those to whom she was closest. The Maoist insurgency began in 1996 but initially had a minimal affect on Kwei Nasa. Dhan Kumari and Dil Maya listened to radio accounts of Maoist attacks on the police but soon forgot these news bulletins as they immersed themselves in their everyday lives of housekeeping, farming, and child care. ACAP opened an office, developed a horticultural nursery, and formed various committees to manage the local resources. A women’s development officer named Meena involved Dhan Kumari and her friends in development activities. A day-care center located initially in a vacant house was opened and quickly became popular because it provided women with a safe place to leave their children while they were working in the fields or in the forest. The all-female management committee (which included Dhan Kumari) began fund-raising for a permanent building. During a trip in early 2000 I was invited to visit. On my arrival I was greeted by many of the women I had known for a decade and was given an enthusiastic welcome and flower garlands by the excited children. I was introduced to Meena and along with members of the committee discussed plans for the development of the center. I agreed to provide some financial support. I had no idea that by the time I handed over my first donation, the country would be in the midst of a nationwide civil war and that Kwei Nasa would have become a potentially dangerous place to live. Neither did I have any sense that the running of the day-care center would shortly fall entirely on the shoulders of the inexperienced committee members and that I too would have a role to play.

2 No Place to Hide

From their original strongholds in Nepal’s midwestern districts of Rolpa, Rukum, and Jajarkot the Maoists expanded their activities into other parts of the country. Maoists first became active in the Kwei Nasa area during the latter part of the 1990s. In early 2000 I returned to the village after an absence of two years. I was visiting with a combined British and Nepali archaeology team who were en route to excavate a large ruined ancestral village in the uplands. After the morning meal the archaeologists left for a village tour, and Dhan Kumari and I were about to have a chat, since we had only been able to snatch a few brief moments the previous day to catch up on each other’s news. She was busy with household tasks, and so I walked around the courtyard and stood at the fence looking out over the familiar village landscape. I heard what I thought was the sound of a gunshot. When Dhan Kumari came out of the house, I told her about it. As she walked to the edge of the courtyard to look out across the village, she asked me a series of detailed questions: “Where did the shot come from?” “How many shots did you hear?” “Are you sure it was a gun?” I was not, but it was some time before she was satisfied that I had made a mistake. In the past a comment like this would have provoked minimal curiosity and would have been dismissed as “just someone hunting in the forest.” But this time was different, and Dhan Kumari appeared to be frightened. “What are you frightened of?” I asked. She was quiet for a while and then answered, “I am frightened of the Maoists.” Dhan Kumari was reluctant to say more but confirmed what I had heard from Dil Maya and other friends: that the Maoists were in the forest and sometimes they came into the village looking for guns and financial “donations.”

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Later on she told me in hushed tones that not only were the Maoists in the forest but they were in the village during the day, talking to people and giving speeches. “Who are they?” I asked. “Are they locals?” She was noncommittal: “I don’t know, maybe, mostly they are outsiders, from other jat” (Nep.) (ethnic/caste groups). Other people expressed similar opinions. In the preceding years it had been possible to think of the Maoists as “outsiders”— remote, distant, unconnected people who posed a threat but not a local one. By 2000, however, they were active in the area, and, while they were mostly strangers, they were not exclusively so. The Maoist insurgency was no longer something that Dhan Kumari and Dil Maya heard about on radio news bulletins that affected people in “faraway districts.” They too had become part of an increasing number of people in rural Nepal who had to manage everyday life in an increasingly conflict-affected area. Three weeks after the discussions with Dhan Kumari I was traveling through the uplands en route back from the excavation site. One of our colleagues had become ill, and we were taking him back to the village. It was raining heavily, and we decided to stay overnight in a shepherd’s hut. We sat around the fire joking and chatting through the long evening. As the night was cold, we blocked off the hut’s second entrance to increase the temperature. We bantered about blocking off the door so that the Maoists could not come in. Ram Bahadur, who was a nephew of Ama’s, commented, “Don’t worry—the Maoists are not in the hye [uplands] around here. I am often up in these parts and I have never met them.” Within months this statement would be inaccurate. A few days later I was in a different village, visiting a middle-aged friend I have known for many years. In the early morning, as we sat beside the fire drinking tea, Laxmi commented, “The Maoists are in the forest just outside the village.” “Who are they?” I asked. “Outsiders,” she commented, but added, “Our young people meet them in the forest, but they are not Maoists; they just meet them.” While Laxmi was frightened, she was not as fearful as Dhan Kumari. She was neither as well off nor alone, and she insisted that although the Maoists were in the vicinity, they did not come into her village. Dhan Kumari and her friends viewed the Maoists as a threat, and that threat escalated in relation to wealth. They perceived that people with large houses, guns, money, and gold were more at risk than poorer, less wellresourced people: in other words, people like them. That the threat came from the forest fitted with Tamu ideas about it as a potentially frightening

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place. While villagers were dependent on the forest for firewood, bamboo, and medicinal and edible plants, it contained many dangers. People working in or walking through forests were vulnerable to attack by ghosts, angered gods, and other spirit forms. Illness and even death could result from an encounter with a forest spirit. One autumn I photographed a young man performing a particularly graceful dance during the Hindu festival of Tihar. Several months later he was dead, “eaten” by a spirit who dwelled in the forest. Despite widely used strategies to tame the uncertainties of the forest, including collective calendrical rituals and individual offerings to local gods, the dangers were never fully allayed. Human danger in the forest was not new. Various categories of “bad people” were believed to walk the lower trails that led to Pokhara. When faced with such people, villagers professed themselves to be powerless, but they could minimize their risk by traveling in large groups, avoiding carrying large sums of money, and not wearing expensive jewelry. On one occasion when I walked to the village alone, albeit in the company of a villager and his unruly mule train whom I met along the way, Ama and Dhan Kumari were horrified, not because the mules had dangerously stampeded in the forest but because I had walked some of the way on my own. They made me promise never to do this again. Maoists were just the latest addition to the pantheon of intimidating human and spirit-based forest beings. “Maoists” were an ever-expanding category, which included both the insurgents and a bewildering mixture of others who masqueraded as Maoists and were felt to wreak havoc of a much worse kind. As Dil Maya explained, “While Maoists want money and guns, they speak politely and explain their ideas, whereas the others are just thieves.” “Fear of Maoists” was also a fear of what could be done in the name of the Maoists. Elderly Rash Kumari commented, “Anyone could kill you these days and say it was the Maoists, and nothing would be done about it. You could be killed by your enemies or by people who are angry with you for some reason and want revenge.” These comments were expressions of fear rather than descriptions of actual occurrences. They reflected the new uncertainties and people’s concerns that the changed political realities could become entangled with preexisting conflicts. For Dhan Kumari, who rarely left the village and had always made strong distinctions between the “safety” that lay within the village and the “danger” that lurked outside it, it was unsettling. The death of both her parents combined with the out-migration of four young male relatives who previously

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lived in the loft had left her feeling particularly vulnerable. Although Dil Maya and one or another of her sons usually slept in the house, Dhan Kumari’s nighttime fears were more pronounced and more diff use. She thought it likely that someone would come for “donations” or for her father’s gun, a gun to which she was particularly attached. Who would come, however, was less certain. One night she arranged for the gun to be buried; it was almost seven years before she dug it up again. Dhan Kumari and her friends were reluctant to acknowledge that the Maoists included locals. This reluctance may have been partly owing to definitions. When Maoists moved into an area, those in leadership positions were usually from other districts, while a significant proportion of the lowerlevel activists were recruited locally. If villagers like Laxmi and Dhan Kumari defined “Maoists” as those in authority, then it was possible for them to maintain that locals were either “not Maoists” or “meeting Maoists but not joining them.” However, the reality was more complex. Although the area was predominantly a Nepali Congress Party stronghold, there had long been pockets of left-wing support, especially for the mainstream Communist Party, the Unified Marxist Leninist. As the Maoist movement expanded, some changed their allegiance. For example, Moti Lal, a well-regarded local from an adjoining hamlet, was a prominent Maoist. Despite the rhetoric of denial, there was local involvement. The Maoists had also become a focus around which preexisting unexpressed concerns surfaced. Talking about the rebels provided an indirect way of expressing previously unstated anxieties about conflict between neighbors and kin and about the fears associated with these conflicts. Paralleling the violation of spatial boundaries between village and forest, the arrival of the Maoists led to a violation of boundaries between people. Nobody was quite sure who had joined the insurgents. New alliances had formed, and along with them was the ever-present possibility that local knowledge and preexisting conflicts would be brought into the wider political arena. Bir Maya, a Pokhara-based friend, explained how taken aback some of her relatives had been when Maoists came into their village, “looking for guns. The most shocking thing for my relatives was that they knew some of the members of the group—they were from the local area and they were Tamu. The thing that astonished my relatives most of all was that some teenaged Tamu girls in the group performed gymnastics. They could hardly believe their eyes. Before they left, the Maoists told the villagers that if they ever identified any members of the group, they would be killed.” Bir Maya

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explained that while her relatives felt that the loss of a gun and some money was very disturbing and the threat of death even more so, the social and kinship implications of the encounter were deeply shocking. In this brief encounter accepted notions of social relationships, based on an orderly progression of age overlaid with ideas of gender-appropriate behavior, were completely subverted. The fear and uncertainty associated with the Maoists was a fear about what could be done by others using the pretext of Maoism. While vengeful neighbors had always been present, it was felt they were largely kept in check by the old allegiances and the customary village-based manner of maintaining order. The spread of the Maoist movement, however, had brought a perception of lawlessness. As the movement deepened its penetration into the area, the insurgents moved around more openly. A Maoist leader told the VDC secretary that he had stolen guns from the police and planned to steal more. The secretary, who was the most senior representative of the state in the village, was powerless to respond. By 2001 a Maoist training camp was based a day’s walk from the village. Propaganda and cultural events, which included dancing and revolutionary dramas, were held in Kwei Nasa, and some villagers visited the camp in the high pastures. The number of Kwei Nasa Maoist activists remained low, however, and most people were wary of them, viewing them with a mixture of fear and fascination. In June 2001 King Birendra and almost the entire royal family was killed in suspicious circumstances supposedly by the crown prince, who subsequently died. Many Nepalis believe that Prince Gyanendra (who took over as king) was behind the massacre, although there is no hard evidence to support this belief. The following month the Maoists killed forty-one policemen in three districts outside their midwestern “base areas.” These attacks were planned for the new king’s birthday. Later in the same month the Maoists attacked a police post and took sixty-nine policemen hostage. The army was sent on a rescue mission, but, when the soldiers did not engage the Maoists, Prime Minister Girija Koirala resigned. He was replaced by Sher Bahadur Deuba, who stated on taking office that his priority was to address the Maoist issue. He declared a cease-fi re, which was reciprocated by the Maoists. Negotiating teams were announced, and in August the Maoists placed their demands on the table, which included the establishment of a Constituent Assembly, an interim government, and a republic. They also asked the government to create an atmosphere conducive for the talks by making public

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the details of arrested Maoists and by releasing those held in custody. The positions of the two sides, however, were deeply polarized. Little real dialogue took place, and the third round of talks, which ended in November 2001, was inconclusive. The main point of contention was the demand for a Constituent Assembly, which the government, supported by the other political parties, refused to consider. Prachanda made a statement on 21 November to the effect that the talks were about to collapse. On 23 November the Maoists initiated a series of attacks across the country, including ones targeted at Royal Nepal Army barracks in Dang in the midwest and Salleri in the eastern district of SoluKhumbu. This confrontation marked two major departures: for the first time the Maoists had directly challenged the army (rather than just the police); at the same time, they had demonstrated their now substantial strength outside of their known strongholds in the western part of the country. In response King Gyanendra imposed a state of emergency on 26 November 2001, which effectively suspended most civil rights, and for the first time deployed the army to fight the Maoists. The following week I traveled to Nepal to develop a research project on the impact of the conflict on the everyday lives of civilians. I planned this project after attending an international conference in London in the autumn of 2001 on the insurgency, at which many papers on the political dimensions of the conflict were presented, with little on the perspective of people who were experiencing the insurgency firsthand. Accustomed to sharing my flights to Kathmandu with many individuals dressed in trekking gear, I sat in the Vienna airport and wondered when my fellow passengers would arrive. It took me a while to realize that the trekkers had all stayed away, with the exception of two young couples. The plane, which could hold more than 250 people, had a mere 40 on board. Approximately half were Nepalis: some returning from overseas trips and others visiting. The remainder of the passengers included an assortment of foreigners: business people, development workers, foreign residents, the four trekkers, and me. Within minutes of boarding the plane the only two other passengers seated near me at the rear of the plane began a conversation about “the Maoist situation.” “Bad, bad,” I overheard a Nepali man, who turned out to be a Kathmandu politician, comment, to which a foreign development worker asked, “What do you think will happen?” As the conversation continued, it became harder to hear the whispers, and I lost the thread of the discussion, but not before I heard the development worker

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comment, “We have had to close projects; staff have been threatened by the Maoists and offices ransacked.” The politician added, “Perhaps things will be sorted out now that the army is involved. We don’t know what will happen; nobody knows.” On arrival in Kathmandu the following morning I left the airport terminal to find that the parking area was totally deserted and the person designated to collect me was nowhere in sight. I phoned and was told, “We can’t get beyond the main gate; they have closed it for security reasons. Can you walk down to meet us or get a taxi yourself?” Within moments of getting into the taxi the driver started talking: “Things are not good here. We don’t know what will happen; there are very few tourists. We were 46 percent down last month (the peak season month of November), and they say it’s going to get worse.” He tried hard to get me to stay at his newly opened hotel. “It’s new, we have all the facilities, but no one is coming. I don’t know what to do,” he commented. I apologized, explaining that I had a reservation elsewhere. At first glance the hotel I stayed in looked much as before, but it took only a few minutes to realize the extent of the changes. Ten guests were registered instead of the usual hundred-plus, and the hotel management insisted that they were doing well in comparison to other places. This assessment was backed up by a friend who mixed up the name of the hotel I was staying in and ended up looking for me in another similar-sized place that had only two guests. In the lobby the pictures of King Birendra and Queen Aiswarya occupied their usual places, with butter lamps burning in front of them: there were no pictures of the new king and queen. Before I went out for the first time, I inquired about being on the street after dark. “It is quite all right to walk around up until about 9 p.m. as things in Kathmandu are quiet. There have only been two incidents—the bombs at the Coca Cola factory and the one at the carpet factory,” stated the young man at the front desk. Others took a different view. A friend phoned from Pokhara and told me to stay in the hotel after dark. “How are things there?” I asked. “Dangerous,” he replied, and continued: “The Maoists are underground now, and so they are not worrying people as much as before, but there are new dangers: lots of people have been arrested by the security forces and no one knows where they are. The other night the police raided one of the campus hostels and arrested a group of students. They haven’t been seen since and nobody knows their whereabouts.” Amnesty International stated that according to official sources more than five thousand people had been arrested since 26 November on suspicion of

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being members of or sympathizers with the Maoists. It was suspected that many people were held in army camps without access to their relatives, lawyers, or a doctor; and very few of those arrested had been brought to court. Owing to my limited time I was unable to visit Pokhara or Kwei Nasa, and so I asked my friend how things were in the surrounding villages. He answered, “Quiet in some places but not in others. The Maoists have left their training camp above Kwei Nasa, but now the villagers have a new worry. They are really frightened to go into the jungle as the army helicopters are coming over looking for the Maoists and the villagers fear they will be mistaken for Maoists and shot at by the helicopters.” The Nepali human rights organization INSEC (Informal Sector Ser vice Centre) had reported the death and injury of villagers in the Rolpa district by helicopter gunfire. My friend continued, “The Maoists now come into the villages every day asking for food. They come at anytime, and the villagers don’t know when they will arrive and when they will leave. The army also comes and so peoples’ homes have become a target. Both sides are on the paths, in the schools, fields, and tea shop and in the courtyards, verandas, and homes. There is no hiding place.” While the tourist haunts of Kathmandu are not particularly busy in early to mid-December, what I witnessed was something totally different: there were hardly any tourists at all. On the first morning I walked the full length of almost two streets before seeing another foreigner. My impression was that most of the tourists were low-budget travelers. The people who seemed to be missing were the better-off middle-aged and older ones who spend more money. The owner of a bookshop I frequent commented on the decline in tourism by saying, “We didn’t know what we had, until we lost it.” Shops were closing earlier than usual, and people were anxious to get home as soon as possible. Weddings began earlier in the day so that people could be home by evening. I met two expatriate friends who were very upset about the treatment of a friend at the hands of the police. They explained: Ram is a young single man in his twenties from a rural background who works in the tourist industry. His family lives in the village, and other than a few friends he is alone in Kathmandu. He is not interested in politics and has never been politically active. One evening shortly after the emergency had been declared, he was walking home from work. As he crossed the bridge into Kopundol en route to his

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home in Patan, the police at a checkpoint stopped him. They asked him where he was going, and he replied that he was returning home after work. They then asked him where he was from, and, when he replied that he was from Dolakha district [one of the districts most affected by the People’s War], they commented that “everyone from there is a Maoist” and insisted that he come with them to the police station. He was kept in the station overnight and was badly beaten. The next day at the insistence of his friends he went to the hospital where he was treated for severe bruising and a fractured arm. He never held a strong political opinion before, but now he is very, very angry with the government. This event has politicized him and has made him into a prime candidate for joining the Maoists. The following day I became friendly with two taxi drivers, Kumar and Raju, who thereafter came to my hotel each morning to check on the prospect of getting employment that day. On a couple of occasions I changed my plans at the last minute and told one or the other of them to come back at a later time if they were not busy. Each time the reply was the same: “There is no chance that I will be busy; I’ll be back.” As we drove along behind a truckload of heavily armed soldiers, Kumar worried about how to pay his children’s school fees: “How will I educate my two sons? Before, being a taxi driver was a good job but now it is terrible. There are so few tourists. Tourism began slowing down after the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane followed by the Maoist problem, but it didn’t really get bad until this year. This has been a terrible year: there was the palace massacre, September 11, the war in Afghanistan, the Maoists, and now the state of emergency. Hardly anyone is coming. They are frightened. Can you blame them? I’m frightened. Who knows what will happen next?” Sitting in traffic jams made worse by the road repairs being undertaken for the forthcoming South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit, Raju told me how much he missed “the old king.” I commented that very few photos of the new king were around. “You won’t see many of them. They are only up in official offices. He is not popular.” The next day walking through a suburb I got my first glimpse of the king and queen returning from an official function. The following day I saw the king driving in a large black Mercedes down the road to the palace. That evening I spoke to a friend from Pokhara. He was very upset, as Maoists had killed a friend of his who was active in the Congress Party:

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How could they do that? What did they know about him? All they knew was that he was in the Congress Party, and they killed him because of that. They didn’t care that he was a good man, a good father, a good son, and a good friend. They came for him in the night, took him out of his house, and killed him with a khukuri [Nepali knife]. What sort of people would do that? I used to think that the Maoists had the right idea, but now I think they are just a bunch of vicious killers. At first I wasn’t sure about the emergency, but now I support it. The government has to sort out this problem, but, when they get things under control, they will have to provide some proper benefits to the people since the lack of these is why we are in such a mess. I met health professionals who were concerned about the Ministry of Health directive that stated that health workers could not treat people involved in terrorist activities without informing the local administration or security organizations. If they did treat such people, action would be taken against them, as, for example, on 15 December, when Dr. Jitendra Mahaseth was arrested and held until 5 January 2002 on the grounds that he had treated Maoists. Some health professionals I spoke to felt that the policy meant that they were not permitted to treat anyone affected by the war. One doctor told me that he thought that he was probably working illegally when he treated people with war-related health problems. He had taken to writing prescriptions on small slips of paper rather than on headed notepaper. The Physicians for Social Responsibility, Nepal (PSRN) had drafted a response to the directive the previous week that was subsequently sent to Prime Minister Deuba and also to national and international medical organizations. No local newspaper, however, dared publish it. Although human-rights activists and a supreme-court judge had noted that requiring health professionals to seek permission to treat the injured was not constitutional, the only medical organization to comment (aside from PSRN) was the American Medical Association, which sent a letter to Prime Minister Deuba in which they pointed out that “a physician must always give the required care impartially and without consideration of sex, race, nationality, religion, political affi liation or any other similar criterion.” Furthermore, they added that the fulfi llment of medical duties should in no circumstance be considered an offense. On a sunny Saturday morning I visited a friend in a suburb of Kathmandu. As we chatted over tea, we were unaware that a few streets away

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American Embassy security employee Ramesh Manandhar was dying— assassinated in the early afternoon outside an American school. Manandhar, aged twenty-eight, had just finished the inspection of the security arrangements at the school when he was shot dead by two unidentified men who, according to eyewitnesses, claimed that they were Maoists and warned people not to follow them. The Maoists did not, however, officially claim responsibility. In a chance encounter in Kwei Nasa almost a year to the day later, a Maoist commander casually mentioned that they had killed Manandhar. On my last day in Kathmandu I met an NGO staff member who told me that she had received a phone call during the first week of the state of emergency from people she had become friendly with during a field trip to Jajarkot in midwestern Nepal: They phoned me to tell me that they remember me. They wanted to say goodbye as they felt that they are going to die. They are not political; they are just local people, but, with the Maoists shooting on one side and the army on the other, they said that they don’t know how they are going to survive. I have not heard from them since then. It is very difficult to get news from the most affected areas at present. We are very worried about what is going on in those places. People get caught in the middle between the Maoists and the security forces. If someone is injured or in need of medical treatment, it is hard for him or her to get help now, as they cannot easily travel. In many places night buses are not running, and, even if they are, people can’t travel or they are too frightened to travel or to ask for help. Somebody did manage to come yesterday: he had been tortured the previous day. Amnesty International had appealed to both the government and the Maoists, raising a number of concerns around extrajudicial killings and other human-rights violations. It was feared that among those killed by the state were scores of civilians and Maoists who were deliberately killed as an alternative to being taken prisoner. Amnesty International also strongly condemned human-rights violations by the Maoists who had been responsible for torture, widespread intimidation, and execution-style killings. Many of those killed were supporters or members of the Nepali Congress Party, although members of other political parties had also been killed. The Maoists had also killed several teachers.

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The airport on the day of my departure was as quiet as it was when I arrived. A few more passengers were leaving than arriving, but it was, after all, just before Christmas. The security arrangements in the departure lounge had been increased, and I was frisked several times. After the plane climbed out of the Kathmandu valley, I watched as we traversed the familiar mountain ranges, and, as I did so, I reflected on the words of an NGO worker I had met the previous day: This is not going to be a short war. Some people think it will be over soon, but I do not think so. I have been in the worst-affected areas, and I have met many Maoists. Lots of them have very deeply held beliefs. They come from the most impoverished and underdeveloped parts of the country; they have no facilities, nothing, the people in those districts are forgotten people. They have little to lose, and so they turn to fighting. One day I spoke to some child soldiers and told them that they should be in school and not fighting a war. One boy who was aged about twelve looked at me and said, “How can you say that, older sister? Do you not understand what is happening in our country? This is the time for us to fight; this is the time for us to die for our country.” Some of those who feel most strongly about the cause joined the Maoists after the state killed members of their family. One day I met a woman who became a Maoist because the police killed her husband. This woman and people like her will never give up; they will fight to the end. When I visited those areas, I discovered that life is cheap and that people on both sides kill easily. Because of this I know that many Nepalis will die before this war is over, and many more will live in terror. As the mountains and valleys of Nepal faded from sight and as we started the long flight back to Europe, the images of my visit and the words of the people I had spoken to in Kathmandu flooded my thoughts. As I considered the diversity of perspectives, I remembered what my fellow passenger had said as we arrived in Nepal just a week ago: “We don’t know what will happen; nobody knows.” In the following months the conflict continued unabated with increasing deaths on both sides. The funding application for my new project was successful, and I returned to Nepal four times during 2002. I was based in Kathmandu (and also in the town of Nepalganj in the midwestern Tarai

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lowlands), where I spent several months at an NGO (the Center for Victims of Torture) interviewing people affected by the conflict. I also accompanied human-rights lawyers who were documenting human-rights abuses perpetrated in most but not all cases by the government security forces. In Kathmandu I interviewed a quietly spoken ex-Maoist woman who was disillusioned by the gender inequalities she experienced in the Maoist Party. She explained that like her male comrades (including her closest male relatives) she spent almost every day mobilizing rural women, yet, when she returned to her revolutionary household, she still had to perform the majority of the household chores. She explained that she wanted to join a women’s-only party where her rights and those of other women would be properly addressed. Six weeks later she was dead, killed by the security forces as a member of the movement she had renounced. One afternoon I was asked if I would accompany some human-rights lawyers and a doctor on a visit to an outlying village in the Kathmandu valley. I agreed. The lawyers were from the recently formed human-rights organization Advocacy Forum, whose director was Mandira Sharma. When the conflict began, Mandira, who had a degree from a British university, was one of the few lawyers with formal training in international level humanrights documentation. We piled into a small taxi and set off. After we left the Ring Road, we traveled for about ten minutes over rough roads and eventually ended up in a small village on the lower slopes of the valley. Chickens scattered and children looked up at us solemnly as we entered the house of a young man recently released from army custody. As he walked over to greet us, I noticed that he had rope burns on his wrists and horribly discolored bruises on his arms. He explained that he and four friends had been arrested in the village one evening the previous week. Some were arrested on the street and others in their houses. The mother of one of those arrested did not want to open the door when the security forces knocked. Her son, however, told his mother not to worry since “the army was there to protect people,” and so he opened the door. The men were put into a jeep, and hoods, which remained in place throughout their seven days of custody, were placed over their heads. They were seen being taken to a nearby army camp. But when their relatives went to the camp, they were told the men were not in custody. Meanwhile inside the camp, those arrested were accused of being Maoists, although none of them were members of the Party. Speaking quietly and in a monotone voice, the young man recounted how on the first night they were beaten and hosed with water. The following

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day they were beaten again, given electric shocks, and thrown into a pond. For three days they had no food. As this litany of horrors was recounted, I looked around the room. Oblivious, the chickens scratched on the clay floor, but even the youngest child was silent and stood pressed close to his mother. The walls were covered with the usual pictures of Nepali and Indian movie stars, local calendars, and family photos. On a shelf near a shrine two small, slightly battered trophies stood in pride of place. The contrast between the mundaneness, aspirations, and achievements of everyday life and the recital of the violations of arrest, detention, and torture was striking. I was attending my first human-rights documentation and was deeply shocked. The young man, perhaps the recipient of the trophies, was asked to take off his shirt so that his injuries could be photographed. He did so and revealed a badly bruised and discolored torso. A second man entered the house, just home from a visit to the hospital. He displayed even more injuries and complained of chest pains; he was extensively bruised and had nasty cuts on his arms and legs. Clearly distressed, he provided minimal details and was initially reluctant to have his injuries photographed. Both men had been threatened by the soldiers and told not to talk about what had happened to them. They were required to report to the camp regularly, and so their vulnerability continued There had been reports that the security forces covered up the death of those who died during torture by presenting them as having been “killed during an escape attempt” or during an “encounter” (a clash between the two sides). The body of the fifth member of the group had been brought to a Kathmandu teaching hospital three days after he had been arrested. Humanrights activists, who saw the body, stated that he appeared to have been severely tortured and had been shot through the head. As we left, the doctor drew my attention to the army camp on the ridge above the village. “Look, that’s the camp. They are constantly under surveillance. Of course they are frightened; they can never get away from the army,” he remarked. I also accompanied human-rights activists on documentation sessions in the Tarai where the risks that documentation entailed (especially from the security forces) were strikingly clear. One day I asked a group of eight documenters how many of them had been threatened. I was taken aback when all replied in the affirmative and provided examples. On hot, dusty journeys into the countryside I encountered a variety of people who had been affected by the conflict. One day I met a family chased

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out of their village by the Maoists because of Nepali Congress Party affi liations, their house taken over by the insurgents, and their fields lying fallow. In three adjoining villages off the beaten track I spoke to newly bereaved and bewildered relatives who had lost family members killed by the Maoists on suspicion of passing information to the security forces. They recalled in detail the mayhem of the Maoist attack: heavily armed insurgents coming into their village at night; the shouting, orders, and counter orders, some given by senior female insurgents; the horror of their relatives being dragged away and then killed. On another day I accompanied Mandira to meet a young man who had been recently released from army custody. His fearful eyes darted all over the room as he sat perched on the edge of his chair. He insisted that he had been treated “very well” in the army camp where he was interned. Eventually he reminded us that he lived next to a police station and asked us to leave. I interviewed all the patients on the trauma wards in Bheri Zonal hospital in Nepalganj, where those injured in the conflict were treated. I met a middle-aged female amputee who was shot in the crossfire and lay bleeding in her field for six hours as the army and the Maoists fought each other. Next to her was a young woman injured when she stepped on a land mine with her baby strapped to her back while gathering mushrooms in a forest near an army camp. Traumatized, her conversations no longer made sense. In the adjoining ward I spoke to a young woman married early by her parents in an attempt to prevent her being recruited by the insurgents, only to be attacked by them when she returned for the first time to her natal home. I met teachers and shopkeepers with legs broken by the Maoists for not giving “donations” on time or of sufficient amount or for being caught drinking alcohol against Maoist rules. Separate from these in a distant part of the hospital I met a young Maoist woman, a member of a medical team, who had been injured in a battle and extradited back to Nepal following her arrest in a hospital in India. I was present during the documentation by Mandira and a colleague Govinda Sharma (“Bandi”) of an appalling case that was not directly related to the conflict but was facilitated by the increasing militarization of everyday life—the arrest and repeated rape by the security forces of two teenaged Muslim female cousins. The girls aged sixteen and eighteen were taken into custody following the earlier arrest and detention of the older girl’s father on a drug-smuggling charge. Bandi was experiencing severe intimidation

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from the army concerning the case, which months later resulted in him temporarily relocating to Kathmandu. We arrived at the girls’ house at midday on a sweltering hot monsoon day, and I was immediately struck by the atmosphere of shocked horror. We were taken upstairs where the teenagers were in bed despite the late hour. Wrapped in a blanket, one of them walked painstakingly outside onto the veranda to recount her ordeal. Her cousin continued to lie huddled up in bed in the adjoining room, too traumatized to meet us. Slanting sunshine glinted through the foliage on the veranda and provided a sharp contrast to the horror of the young woman’s story. Bandi commented that the security forces were undoubtedly aware of our presence in the house, and I wondered who was watching us from the seemingly benign street below. I crisscrossed the Tarai districts accompanying Mandira, Bandi, and others who were documenting a bleak litany of human-rights abuses, always keeping track of time so that we could be back in town before the evening curfew. On several occasions we reached an urban center just as the curfew fell. The alternative was to be stuck outside the safety of the town in a kind of “no man’s land” where we would be vulnerable to the suspicions of both sides. On another occasion—while traveling with staff from a local development project—our car drove into the site of an encounter between the Maoists and the security forces shortly after it had ended. Soldiers lay on both sides of the road with their guns pointing into the forest against the backdrop of a burnt-out troop carrier. One day I visited Dr. Jitendra Mahaseth who had been an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience when he had been in detention on the grounds that he had treated Maoists. He was busy when I arrived at his house in a corner of the hospital compound, and so I arranged to see him later in the day. In the meantime some doctors heard that a foreign researcher was visiting. When I returned, four or five of them came to meet me. It was late on a warm, sunny winter afternoon, and the sun had created long shadows between the trees that dotted the hospital campus. Following the introductions we stood chatting outside Dr. Mahaseth’s house. In the distance I heard the sound of an army helicopter, which I assumed was passing on a routine journey. It took a moment for me to appreciate that we were the target of its attention. It swooped low overhead, and a soldier kneeling in the back pointed a gun at us as the craft hovered. We quickly retreated indoors where Dr. Mahaseth explained that he was subjected to this airborne intimidation twice a day.

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As my interests lay in the impact of the conflict on civilians, this work provided a rich source of data, but I felt frustrated. Each time I interviewed someone, I was meeting them for the fi rst and usually the last time, and I  had no understanding of their lives before the conflict. I kept thinking about Kwei Nasa and wondered what was happening there, but felt frightened of going to the hill villages. One day I realized this fear was not logical since I was spending a considerable amount of time in rural areas outside Nepalganj where, although access was by road, the situation was more unstable. Finally, I phoned a friend in Pokhara and asked if he thought I could visit Kwei Nasa. “I am not sure; I can’t say much on the phone,” he explained. Then, switching into Tamu Kwi, he explained very briefly that a Maoist commander was based in the village. “I don’t know if you should go,” he reiterated and suggested that when I arrived in Pokhara, I should speak to people from the village.

3 Return to Kwei Nasa

On a clear afternoon during the monsoon season in July 2002 my new research assistant, Kamal, and I boarded a Pokhara-bound plane. Kamal was a botanist whose consulting work had practically dried up owing to the dangers of being in the forests during the conflict. In the course of his work he had spent time in other parts of the country under Maoist control, which was one of the main reasons I had asked him to work with me. Since I had learned Tamu Kwi I had not worked with a research assistant; however, I felt more secure doing so now. I was aware that I would meet the Maoists and felt more confident to do so in the company of someone who had experience interacting with them. We left behind the bustle of the capital where, although a state of emergency was in place, the evening curfews had long been relaxed and the seeming normality of the busy metropolis masked the reality that large numbers of people were in detention. Many of these people were held in secret locations—unaccounted for, not legally represented, and not medically treated for their injuries sustained in torture or through the general neglect of custody. Oddly, tourists were still coming to Nepal, primarily to Kathmandu and Pokhara, although some continued to trek in certain parts of the country thought (usually incorrectly) not to be affected by the conflict. The previous week I had met a representative of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) as they were planning to provide health-care ser vices in one of the most affected parts of the country. He had invited me to dinner to give advice on where to undertake his reconnaissance visit. As we pored over maps of the war-torn mid-western districts, his eyes moved to a group of young Japanese tourists buying postcards of white-peaked mountains, smil-

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ing hill villagers, and the sights of Kathmandu in a souvenir shop on the street below us. A veteran of many wars, he commented, “I have never before been in a country where there was such a serious conflict in progress yet tourists were still coming.” Nepal’s civil war had attracted limited international attention, and, while some foreign governments had suggested (or even told) their citizens not to visit, others who were uninformed, evaluated the risks differently, or were concerned about the impact on tourism in Nepal, did not. Most of my flights over the previous month had been bumpy, cloudscreened journeys, but on the afternoon we left for Pokhara the cloud layer was thin. The mountains were bathed in golden light as the mid-afternoon sun began to set. After about fifteen minutes the scenery became familiar, and I looked out at well-known landscapes. On the approach to Pokhara I saw villages I had often visited, where I had laughed, eaten, chatted, and danced, some now with new notoriety as the places where encounters between the security forces and the insurgents had taken place. I looked down at the step terraces and the small settlements dotting the tops and sides of ridges against the backdrop of white-tipped mountains. I wondered who was below me in those places and whom I would meet there. I both delighted in and feared the familiar scenery. On arrival in Pokhara I was immediately struck by the increased presence of army aircraft and personnel and the almost total absence of tourists. The following day I visited my town-based Kwei Nasa village friends and talked to people who had just returned from the area. After a brief discussion they decided that it would be all right for me to visit. My friend added, however, “It’s best to travel with people from the village; so my son will go with you.” Later that evening, as we prepared for departure, I suggested to Kamal that we walk part of the way along the path, and, if things looked stable, we could continue on in this manner until we reached the village. Kamal agreed but stated that he “was confident that things would be all right.” To his amusement I asked him to carry the money I was bringing as a contribution toward the building of the new day-care center as I worried that, if the Maoists knew I had a large sum of money with me, they would ask me for a large “donation.” When getting my clothes ready, I decided to wear a kurta surwaal (Punjabi-style outfit) while walking, instead of my usual lungi. I thought that the lungi would alert outsiders to my local connections, whereas a kurta might suggest connections but not necessarily local ones. I put my newly bought running shoes in my bag, but decided that

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while it might be a good idea to have them with me, I would not go as far as wearing them, for my usual plastic flip-flop sandals would do. The following morning Kamal, another young man from the village, and I set off. As the taxi bounced its way along the partially flooded road to the trailhead, I thought back to the first time I had traveled this route, twelve years before. I remembered the apprehension I had felt then and realized that I was once again apprehensive, but for a very different reason. At the trailhead we paid the taxi driver and then started walking. As we made our way on the path, I was immediately struck by the unusual silence. Even allowing for the lightly falling rain and the fact that it was the height of the agricultural season, the almost total absence of people walking the trail was striking. A landslide blocked part of the route, necessitating a detour, and so it was early afternoon before we arrived at the tea shop. The proprietor was not at home, but her daughter-in-law, whom I had never met, served us. I asked her about the killing by the army of a young woman and her husband that I had been told had taken place in the area. Initially she ignored my question and went back to what she was doing. I inquired again, and eventually she explained in a low voice that the killings had not taken place there but in a village a half-hour’s walk away. She turned back to the stove and kept silent. I was used to casual, lively conversations at this tea shop. This was my introduction to the changed situation, and it prompted me to scrutinize people we met on the path and wonder about their identities and intentions. Further along the road I met a Kwei Nasa villager, and, after we had exchanged greetings, I commented that the path was unusually quiet. “Yes,” he replied. “People are busy working in the fields.” Before moving off he lowered his voice and added, “They are also staying at home because they don’t know whom they might meet on the road.” We walked steadily upward, skirting the edges of the water-fi lled paddy fields. The vibrant green rice stalks were partly submerged in water that sparkled in the sunshine. At the monsoon-swollen stream my booted companions hopped from rock to rock while I waded across, momentarily enjoying the coolness of the water on my legs. We stopped under the large tree at my favorite rest place, and I looked over the surrounding landscape of steeply terraced fields sweeping down to the fast-flowing river. The scene was backed by thick forests and—out of sight because of the monsoon mist—the white-topped peaks of the mountains. I began to feel more relaxed and thought to myself, “It feels like usual here. I wonder if there is really anything to worry about.” When we arrived in the next village, we stopped

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briefly to talk to a group of Bahun women who, with their brightly colored cotton saris hitched up to their knees, were standing weeding in the middle of a paddy field. As my companions chatted, I glanced at the school and noticed that the walls were covered with Maoist slogans. We arrived in Kwei Nasa toward the end of the afternoon. At first glimpse things looked very much as always: children playing by the buffalo pond, women washing at the tap, a group of people clustered in the tea shop. However, as I approached, I was surprised to see so many unfamiliar faces: young men and women I had never seen in the village before. “This is hardly surprising,” I told myself, “as I have been away for some time, and this first tea shop on the edge of the village tends to attract visitors.” I called out a greeting, and the three casually dressed young men standing at the door replied. As I rounded the corner into the main street, the usual collection of teenaged boys were playing volleyball, watched by a group of younger children too little to be allowed to join in. “You’ve come,” someone shouted out. “I have come,” I replied in the typical informal way of Tamu greeting. I continued my journey through the cobbled village streets, stopping briefly for greetings at the centrally placed water taps and across the walls of courtyards. I noticed that the new VDC office appeared to have been abandoned in a half-built state and that Krishna Maya’s tea shop was boarded up, but otherwise things looked much as they did when I first visited twelve years before. As I passed a former research assistant’s house, I caught sight of her mother and grandmother, the latter, despite the heat, dressed in full Tamu dress, wearing a maroon velvet blouse and pleated blue-gray dotted ngui (Tamu old-style lungi), over which she wore a triangle of black velvet that reached down over her thighs. She had a light-blue cummerbund around her waist and a long tartan headscarf draped over her head and shoulders. Prem Maya’s mother—who in contrast was dressed in a cotton T-shirt and lungi—put down the large copper cauldron she was carry ing and walked over to the wall of her courtyard to show me the latest photograph of Prem Maya and her daughter in their Hong Kong home. After a few minutes of chat we continued through the village. This meeting was our last in the village: shortly afterward they relocated to Pokhara for security reasons because Prem Maya’s father was a prominent member of the VDC. Subsequently, the Maoists commandeered their house as a headquarters, and it was frequently used as a “jail.” Years later, it had another surprising incarnation which none of us could have predicted at the time.

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When we reached Dhan Kumari’s house, we discovered that she was out in the fields. “Come and have tea at my house!” shouted our neighbor, Purna Kumari. Once the social pleasantries were over, I asked Purna Kumari and her husband, Kancha, about life in the village. “How are things? Are there Maoists around?” I asked. “Yes, almost all the time,” replied Purna Kumari. “There is a group here today. They are sitting at the tea shop with their guns beside them. You must have seen them, but maybe you didn’t notice their guns.” “Does the army come?” I asked. “Yes, they come,” replied Purna Kumari quietly, and continued: A couple of months ago Kancha and I were working in the fields below the village. We were alone, just the two of us. Suddenly I saw the helicopters coming; there were two of them. I watched them from the time they were like tiny flying ants in the distance until they landed. As they came closer and closer, I nearly fainted with fear, and I said to myself, “Maybe this will be the day I die.” I was terrified that the soldiers would behave as they have behaved in other villages, where they hit and killed people. The helicopter landed on the top of the hill, and they set up camp there. They brought their own cooks, and they prepared and ate their food separately. They stayed one night and patrolled around the village and the surrounding area. They asked us if the Maoists come and if we feed them, and we said that we hadn’t seen the Maoists and that we don’t feed them. We had no choice but to lie. We know that they think that anyone who feeds the Maoists is a Maoist—and, as they are strangers, people we have no connection with, we were totally unprotected, and they could have done anything to us. We didn’t want to be beaten and we didn’t want to die. They left; we were lucky. Terrible things have happened in my friend’s village. Some months ago Maoists killed an army officer. Shortly afterward the army came to search the village and hit everyone with rifles. They hit old and young alike, and they even hit people in the stomach. During the search a helicopter circled overhead and fired into the village and the nearby forest. The firing was aimed at houses where the soldiers thought they saw smoke where people might be cooking for the Maoists. A few days later somebody told the army that Maoists were eating a meal in the next village. By the time the soldiers arrived the Maoists had left and only the family remained. The soldiers came in with their guns

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firing and killed the newly married daughter and her husband, who was home on leave from his job in Saudi Arabia. She died with her hand full of rice. The Maoists escaped, but they were arrested the next day. I heard that when they were caught, they were hiding among the children in the school. They were apprehended in the school grounds, but they were not killed in front of the children; they were taken a little way into the forest and killed there. The radio said that they were killed during a fight, but this wasn’t true: they were killed after they were caught. One day shortly after that a lato [Nep.] [a deaf man who can’t speak] was shot dead by the army as he ran away when he saw them. He didn’t understand, and, as he was frightened, he ran and they killed him because they thought that he was a Maoist. The army killed a friend of my mother’s when she was cutting grass for her buffalo in the forest. They heard something moving and they just shot; they didn’t bother to check who it was, and so my mother’s friend died. I was horrified. Some months earlier I had read on the Internet that an army officer had been killed in the area and had worried what impact the murder might have had on locals; now I knew. Shortly afterward we left for Dhan Kumari’s house, where the first fifteen minutes were taken up with greeting friends and neighbors. Once the welcomes were over, Dhan Kumari turned to me and said: Take that kurta off and put on one of your lungis. Don’t wear a kurta around the village or when you are walking on the trail. You must always wear a lungi. You are wearing a kurta, you have no tika [vermillion powder: Nep] on your forehead, and you are not wearing glass bangles: you are dressed like a Maoist woman. It is very dangerous to dress like this nowadays. The army checks for three things. First of all they look to see if the woman is wearing a kurta; if she is, then they check for two further things—they look at her forehead to see if she is wearing tika and at her forearms to see if she is wearing glass bangles. They go like this: one for kurta, two for no tika, three for no bangles, and four: shoot! Many women have died in this way. Go and change into a lungi now, put your kurta in the bottom of your bag, and do not bring it out again while you are here.

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I had completely misjudged my outfit. Whether on the basis of ethnicity, caste, gender, or class, villagers categorized people by dress. In 2002 this “reading” of one’s attire had taken on new meaning, with the potential for dire consequences. Villagers in Kwei Nasa noted that Maoist women wore kurtas, no tika, and no glass bangles, and it was believed that to dress like this was to place oneself at great risk of being killed by the security forces. People had no faith in the army’s ability to make distinctions between individuals or their interest in doing so. If the army could not or would not differentiate between Purna Kumari’s mother’s friend—an elderly woman cutting grass for her buffalo—and armed insurgents, then how could it be trusted to make subtle distinctions based on the idiosyncrasies of dress? As a foreigner I was unlikely to be considered a Maoist, but, as far as Purna Kumari and Dhan Kumari were concerned, the army did not see people; rather they “saw” “smoke,” “running on village paths,” “noise in the forest,” “kurtas, no tika, no bangles”; and on the basis of these identifiers they shot people. In a world of rumor and counter-rumor people tried to make some sense of the information they had. For Dhan Kumari “wearing of a kurta” and “being shot as a suspected Maoist” were synonymous. In this unpredictable time knowing what combination of clothing to wear and what to stringently avoid was a concrete piece of information that could be acted on and passed on to others in an attempt to make them safe. That it might be somewhat outdated—because Maoist women’s “fashions” changed, as was subsequently pointed out to me by a colleague—or simply wrong, was irrelevant because this information both accurately reflected recent experience and gave locals like Dhan Kumari a small sense of control. Other patterns of clothing had also changed. The government had told people not to wear combat dress because it placed them under suspicion of being Maoists. The highly fashionable army jackets and camouflage pants had taken on a disturbing new meaning and had been put away. Over a cup of tea I told Dhan Kumari that I was thinking of visiting nearby villages to get details of the army killings, which I knew from a meeting with a city-based human-rights organization had not been fully documented. Dhan Kumari looked horrified; she did a quick scan of the veranda and courtyard and told me in a hushed and hurried voice: “You cannot go there; it is terribly dangerous. And you cannot talk about the killings. They are secret things. It is very dangerous to talk about what the army does. Do you not know that the Maoists are here nearly every day? They come and force villagers to feed them. There is no choice. And then the

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army comes and they blame people because they fed the Maoists. It is a very dangerous time now.” She stopped abruptly and tensed as we heard footsteps outside. “Stop talking,” she said. “I don’t know who it is.” Dhan Kumari was notably relieved when she discovered that it was our neighbor Lek Bahadur. They talked about arrangements for Dhan Kumari’s fields for the following morning and then the topic changed to the arrival of a group of Maoists. “Where are they? How many are there?” she asked him. “There are five,” he replied. “Three men and two women—they have told Didi [“older sister” Purna Maya] to open the women’s committee house and that is where they are going to sleep tonight.” Dhan Kumari turned to me and commented, “They don’t all sleep at once; they take turns sleeping and guarding. At least one or two of them are always awake.” As she crushed garlic and chilies she said, “Sometimes a Tamu woman comes. She speaks Tamu Kwi. She is from a far-off village and she is pregnant. We haven’t seen her for a while, and we wonder if she has been killed in a skirmish because she couldn’t run fast enough.” Two years earlier Dhan Kumari and other middle-aged and elderly Tamu women had had great difficulty acknowledging that Tamu women were Maoists. Now the evidence was so overwhelming that it was impossible to ignore. Picking up the threads of our conversation of 2000, Dhan Kumari conceded that Tamu women were joining the Maoists. Interestingly, she and her circle talked about female Tamu Maoists primarily in terms of childbearing and death. While Tamu men have a long tradition of going to war, women have an associated tradition of staying at home and most see themselves primarily in terms of nurturing and family. Village women who discussed female Tamu Maoists often talked about how they were pregnant and in danger because they couldn’t run fast enough, or had given birth and their babies had died, or had been caught and killed by the security forces. In these representations the usual picture of Tamu women as mothers and nurturers was reproduced, and the representation of Tamu women as combatants was denied. In the encounter with Tamu Maoists these women encountered “themselves” and did not recognize themselves as fighters and trained killers. It is not that they denied women the right to make decisions or choose unusual options; they did not. However, in the representation of women as soldiers they saw Tamu men but not themselves, and so they deemphasized the defining characteristic of Tamu female Maoists, which was that they were “combatants” and instead re-created them in their likeness as “nurturers.” As people who had been killed by the security forces, these

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women could be viewed as victims or potential victims of army violence, like the village women themselves. In this way the ambiguity of Tamu female Maoists was decreased. This representation of Maoist women, however, was not shared by everyone. One day while visiting Mila Devi, a forty-eight-year-old mother of four, I noticed a group of boys, most of who were under ten, sitting on the stone wall at the edge of her courtyard. Each boy held a bamboo “gun.” I asked Mila Devi what they were doing. “They are playing Maoists,” she said. “Do girls also play Maoists?” I asked. “No, they don’t,” she replied. With that I turned around to see a girl aged about nine proudly holding a bamboo “gun.” When I asked her what she was doing, she replied, “I am playing Maoists.” “Have you seen Maoist girls?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied. “I have seen lots of Maoists girls; they often stay in our house.” Then she ran away “shooting” her “gun” at a group of boys. Dhan Kumari concluded her discussion on Maoist women and left shortly afterward to visit a neighbor. Dil Maya and I prepared vegetables for the evening meal. Raju, who was then eight, played on the floor beside us. As we chopped we caught up on each other’s news. I was relieved that the clothes I had brought for the children fitted and was delighted that Raju and his friends had spent much of the afternoon playing with the badminton rackets and shuttles I had brought. We then talked in vague terms about the arrival of two groups of Maoists in the village when suddenly Raju asked in a rather loud voice, “Are you talking about the Maoists?” With barely a break in her conversation Dil Maya turned to him and said, “Do not talk about these things,” and then slapped him hard on his leg. Tearful, he retreated into the corner. When I questioned Dil Maya about her actions, she explained to me that Raju had not yet learned to be silent. “He must learn not to speak about certain things. It is hard for him, but he must learn because it could be a matter of life or death. Nowadays you cannot be sure of whom you are talking to, and so you must know when to be silent.” In future years we would encounter this silence many times. On one occasion, while walking through outlying hamlets en route to the village, Kamal commented, “Something is different, Didi [older sister]; when they see me, they stop talking. They look at me suspiciously, but, when they see you, they relax and start talking again. I wonder why that is?” On arrival in Kwei Nasa we expressed our puzzlement to Dhan Kumari, who explained that “a one-armed Maoist, who looks very like Kamal, has been collecting

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money for the Party and that is why people stopped talking when they saw him.” Raju’s older brother, Damar, attended school in Pokhara, where he lived with recently retired ex-Gurkha Santosh and his family. Damar visited Kwei Nasa during his vacations; however, Dil Maya worried that he would be recruited by the Maoists. Each time he was due to visit she made a careful judgment about his safety, and he did not come if she thought it unsafe for him to do so. In the evening after we had eaten rice, a group of neighbors joined us round the hearth. We caught up on each other’s news and chatted about everyday things. As this was Kamal’s fi rst visit, Dhan Kumari wanted to know a bit about his background and was especially interested to learn that he was also from a hill district, although presently based in Kathmandu. After a conversation about the availability of different varieties of crops and the quality of goods in Kamal’s local town I asked about the impact of the insurgency on Kwei Nasa. An elderly relative of Dhan Kumari’s, Hom Bahadur, summarized the village situation: Most of the time the Maoists are here, but sometimes the army comes. When the army is in the village, we worry that they will learn we have fed Maoists, and, when they leave, we worry that the Maoists will think we have betrayed them to the army. No one in Kwei Nasa has been accused of spying, but people in other areas have; and the Maoists have either punished them severely or killed them. As you know, there is a commander here, and, as long as he lives, then we will be all right; but if he was killed, we would be accused of betraying him to the army. It wouldn’t matter if we were guilty or not; what would be important is that someone thought we were guilty. He fell silent, and Dhan Kumari, while blowing on the embers of the fire, added, “If Moti Lal [the commander] is killed, then terrible things will happen to people in the village and nobody could save us.” An elderly neighbor, Pari Maya, commented, “You have probably met Moti Lal. He went to school with my son, and he used to be around the village a lot. He loves his own people, and so he doesn’t give dukkha [hardship, suffering] to us. Recently, the army destroyed his house and he is often out of the area, and so we fear commanders who don’t know us and give us dukkha.”

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Dhan Kumari, Pari Maya, and Hom Bahadur’s greatest fear was that they would be “caught in the cross-fire.” This statement was meant both literally, as they feared being injured or killed during a gun battle between the opposing sides, and metaphorically, as they feared becoming embroiled in situations in which they would unwittingly be accused of spying by one or both armies. Owing to Moti Lal’s presence people were especially frightened of accusations of spying. Villagers felt protected by Moti Lal because he was local and “loved his own people.” However, if he were killed, then they could be accused of betraying him. I asked Hom Bahadur, Pari Maya, and Dhan Kumari about the degree of support for the Maoists in the village. They were adamant: “We are not Maoists; we do not support them. They have made life very dangerous and difficult for us. No one in this village has joined them, but people from the neighboring hamlets have joined. Recently, two Bahun girls from Sanu Tol went with them.” Other people expressed similar opinions. It was difficult to judge, however, who had left the village for employment and who had left on the pretext of seeking employment and had instead joined the Maoists or been forcibly recruited. Despite their protestations, people might not necessarily know who had joined since Maoists were usually posted to locations outside their home area. In addition, villagers had good reasons to conceal any connection that their families might have had to the rebels. It was several years before Dhan Kumari and her circle discovered who had joined the Maoists, and, when they did, they were taken aback. The next morning I visited one of the tea shops for a chat with Man Maya, the proprietor, a young woman from a village two days’ walk away who had married into Kwei Nasa. It was midday, and, as most people were out in the fields, we were alone except for her youngest daughter, who was playing on the ground in front of us, making a “tea shop” out of stones, sweets wrappers, and matchsticks. After we had exchanged pleasantries Man Maya lowered her voice and told me in hushed tones about the visit of Maoists to her shop the previous week. In the early evening a group arrived. They were heavily armed, and they wore belts with bullets around their waists. One of the girls was very young—she couldn’t have been more than thirteen. It upset me to look at her as she was about the same age as my eldest daughter. I am so glad that I sent Nani [eldest daughter] to live with my sister in Pokhara so there is no chance that the Maoists will recruit her. The

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leader of the group told me that they wanted food and a place to sleep. I told them that I could feed them, but I pleaded with them not to sleep in the house. I said, “If you stay here and the army arrives, then all my family will be killed.” One of them laughed and said, “Then we’ll all die together.” I begged them not to stay, and they left after they had eaten. It is such a frightening time; things that we could never have imagined are now happening on a regular basis. Did you know that one of my friend’s relatives was killed by the Maoists? He was a teacher, and one day last winter Maoists came to the school where he was the deputy headmaster and took him out of the classroom. They accused him of giving the police information about a Maoist who was captured three years ago, and they also accused him of refusing to give money and of teaching Sanskrit, which they had banned. Then they took him to a tree and attached him to it with his own scarf. They stabbed him in the shoulder and the stomach and shot him in the head. The villagers were too frightened to help him, and it was only the next day that his body was removed by the police. Just before he was killed, his friend visited him and pleaded with him to leave the village. He wouldn’t go because he said that the school would close if he left, as the headmaster had already gone. She stopped talking briefly, and looking at her little girl, commented: It is hard to keep children safe nowadays. I have sent Nani to the town, but can I protect Kaji [youngest daughter]? She is still little and does not understand, and I am worried about her picking up bombs that the Maoists might leave behind. Recently they had bombmaking equipment in a house in our neighborhood. One of them was reading by candlelight; she fell asleep, and the candle caught fire. She only woke up when her hair caught fire. They put the fire out, but, if she had not awakened, then there would have been a terrible explosion and everyone in the house and maybe even the area would have been killed or injured. Later that day Man Maya saw us and laughingly told us that the first time Kamal had visited her shop, she had assumed he was a Maoist. She explained that on seeing him she had felt frightened but tried to appear calm,

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while struggling inwardly to conceal her fear. This approach to “smoothing” (or keeping “clear”) the heart-mind was a common coping strategy. It described people’s inward struggle to protect the “bigness” of their heartminds (and therefore their well-being and responsiveness to others) which were now especially prone to “shrinking,” “hurting,” or “crying.” “Smoothing” the heart-mind also referred to an attempt to hide fear from the Maoists, so that people could maintain their dignity and not let the insurgents see how much power they in fact held. On the village paths and in the tea shops people talked of everyday matters: who had married, who had found a job overseas, who had died, arrangements for working together, and the cost of building the new day-care center. The women I watched laughing, chatting, and washing the mud off their legs at the village tap after a day of field work paid no outward attention to the group of Maoists sitting listening intently to the radio just yards away. The small crowd of villagers at the tea shop did not stop their conversation when they came to request supplies from the shopkeeper. Yet this outward presentation of calmness hid constant worries over who was in the village and what they might do. People experienced, expressed, and concealed fear differently. They also dealt with it differently. Proud, self-contained Dhan Kumari often denied her fear, while some of her friends spoke about it in jest. Instead of downplaying their worries, they presented themselves as people entirely overwhelmed by fear. One day, sixty-seven-year-old Sanu Maya, who lived alone, came to visit. A few weeks previously she had returned home to find six Maoists encamped in her courtyard. They asked for food and shelter. She served them tea, and, while they were drinking, she locked her house and said that she would be back in a few minutes. Instead she ran along the village paths and went to her sister-in-law’s house to hide. She didn’t return to her house for a week—“In case they were still there!” she added. As Sanu Maya told her story, she laughed, delighted to think that she had been so cunning. I asked why she had behaved like this. “Fear,” she replied loudly, and, instead of speaking about it in a whisper, she stated that she was totally overwhelmed by fear. Throwing back her head in laughter, she said, “Of course, I was terrified. We only have fear; we are terrified! That’s all we have . . . fear! I am frightened all the time!” Fear was managed by exaggeration. This response had a parallel to the “smoothing” of the heart-mind because in both representations the emotion was trivialized and people’s heart-minds remained large. Through satirizing fear, people challenged the

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idea that it was the dominant—and only—emotional experience in their lives. Some people expressed fearlessness. Sanu, a severely impoverished and frequently sad Dalit woman, told me that she had “no fear.” “I have so much sorrow, how can I have fear? There is no place for fear in such a life. I don’t care if I live or die, so why should I be frightened?” she said. Here fear was seen as an emotion that those less weighted down with sorrow had the privilege to experience. Sanu felt that she had nothing to lose and so nothing to fear. Although everyone downplayed and concealed fear, men especially denied that they were fearful. People might acknowledge, minimize, or deny fear depending on the context, on who the audience was, and on what was personally at stake. While women also used this strategy, men used it more frequently. Chandra Bahadur, a forty-year-old social activist, a member of several village committees, and a Nepali Congress Party member frequently negotiated with the Maoists on behalf of locals. Because of his prominence he also had come to the attention of the security forces and was interrogated by them on at least two occasions. As we will see in chapter 5, Chandra Bahadur was co-opted by the Maoists onto the central committee of the Tamu Mukti Morcha (Tamu Liberation Front) in 2005, an event that frightened him so much that he relocated to Pokhara. In subsequent conversations about fear Chandra Bahadur often stated that he was “not frightened of the Maoists,” and I have overheard him tell others that he was not fearful. By denying his fear Chandra Bahadur presented himself as a strong man who mastered his emotions. He also presented himself as someone who did not experience fear in his heart-mind; rather he remained “big hearted” and therefore maintained his honor. Thus he was differentiated from “the frightened women.” However, this tactic denied his deep fear of late 2005, which was clearly evident (and which he acknowledged) at the time. People always said that they survived with the support of others, and, while this was true, the conflict created extra uncertainty and fragmentation. Social tensions were realized in unpredictable ways. Villagers feared strangers, but they also feared each other. They were less sure of each other. Outwardly, the idea of a mutually supportive society endured, and in many ways people were very quick to support and assist others. However, people knew that the Maoist surveillance regime was perpetuated by local collusion. During one of our subsequent visits the Maoists were demanding

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“donations,” and the well-off, especially the ex-servicemen, had been told to give. An ex–Indian Army captain had to give the large amount of 10,000 rupees (approximately $120). “How do the Maoists identify the army families?” I asked Dhan Kumari. She sighed and a look of resignation came across her face as she said, “We don’t know; it is secret.” Then she paused and continued, “Other villages tell them. It is villagers who give them this information.” People supported each other and betrayed each other. This duality generated suspicion, mistrust, and insecurity. Uncertainty increased over who could be party to “inner talk,” and the allegiances and motivations of even the most trusted confidants came under suspicion. These lines were not firmly drawn in the past, as allegiances and affi liations were always fluid and people were used to ambiguity, but the degree of uncertainty then was less extreme and the stakes were lower. One day Dhan Kumari told me that two unknown children of Raju’s age were in the village and had told local children that they were spying for the Maoists. This revelation shook Dhan Kumari because it contradicted her desire to believe that Raju was too young to be taken. The event reinforced her opinion that children of his age were susceptible to indoctrination. It also frighteningly expanded the categories of strangers who might be in the village. Dhan Kumari expected adult spies and knew that thieves masquerading as Maoists came into the village, but here was yet another unexpected category of being—children who had been taught to spy. People sought the support of others, but they also coped by carry ing out everyday life occupations. When asked how they managed fear, uncertainty, and insecurity, villagers emphasized the importance of their everyday routines and tasks. Daily household and agricultural tasks were essential, but they also provided a supportive structure to everyday life. Stirring pots calmed nerves, preparing and drinking tea diverted fearful minds, drinking a glass of water helped the recently shocked. People continued to take pride in the skillful performance of everyday tasks and benefited positively from their achievement. Undertaking and completing everyday activities helped the saF to expand, which contributed to a sense of well-being. Conversely, the disruption of everyday tasks or the inversion of time was troubling. Dil Maya and shopkeeper Man Maya, talked about how upset they felt when they were required to cook for Maoists late at night. It was not just the inconvenience of cooking when tired but also the disruption of the usual rhythm of the evening’s activities. Whether or not people could adequately perform their cycle of everyday activities was used to evaluate the level of dangerousness

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and the degree to which the area was affected by the war at any particular time. On the second day of our stay we visited the day-care center since I wanted to hand over the money I had raised. Many village women—most of whom I had known for many years—had gathered, and, when we entered the courtyard, members of the committee placed garlands around our necks and vermillion powder on our foreheads. Some women neatly placed a small dot of powder on the center of my forehead. Others, however, laughed loudly as they smudged handfuls of red powder across my entire forehead. I pleaded with them to stop as I find it difficult to wash this powder out of my blond hair. Some did so but others paid no attention to my request and continued to smear my face with handfuls of vermillion powder. The children aged between three and five years “danced” briefly in our honor, and after receiving tse (a rice blessing placed on the forehead) I placed my contribution on the stainless-steel plate. I spoke briefly, and we then went to Purna Maya’s house for tea and snacks. As we lingered outside chatting about future plans for the center, two of the women noticed a group of strangers approaching. Suddenly the relaxed scene changed, and the women hissed at us to go inside the house quickly. “Quick, quick, inside the house,” said our host. “If they see you, they will want money. They won’t hurt you, but they will want money, maybe a lot of money. You don’t want to meet them. Quick, quick!” With one flip-flop off and the other half on I found myself being pushed into the shadows of the large room. Kamal, who was wearing trainers, struggled to remove them just inside the door before being ordered to sit beside me in the darkest corner of the room. The day-care center was forgotten. The women talked instead in hushed tones about the new uncertainties of life in the village and of their fears for themselves and their families. The atmosphere gradually relaxed, the fire was stoked, and Purna Maya laid out a row of stainless-steel dishes on which she placed curried potatoes and pickles. Her elder sister, Shova Kumari, divided out the khF (doughnut-like bread) as the kettle boiled on the hearth. While she poured tea into glasses, Purna Maya commented, “Two of the young Maoist women who come to the village are pregnant. Another couldn’t deliver, and so she and the baby died. Quite a few women have given birth, but the babies don’t always survive because their situation is difficult. A woman recently gave birth in the forest, but the baby didn’t have enough food and it died.” Dhan Kumari disagreed: “I don’t think it died. I think that she killed it because it prevented her from running fast and if it cried the

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army might find them.” A third woman said, “No, I think it died. It just didn’t get enough food.” When I asked the women how they knew these things, they replied that the Maoist women “tell us. We have to feed them, but they also talk to us and we ask questions and sometimes they answer us.” When I asked the group what kind of people Maoists were, I was told, “Some are violent and like killing, whereas others don’t like killing and don’t do much of it. They just have different ideas compared to the government. Some Maoists are very educated and don’t like killing at all.” This differentiation of Maoists was in contrast to commonly presented views in Kathmandu, where Maoists were often simplistically portrayed by the media as undifferentiated killers. After about half an hour the development project’s women’s officer, Meena, a veterinary assistant, and a forest ranger joined us. Sitting close together in the shadows at the opposite end of the room, they told us how difficult it was becoming to work in the village. When I had met Meena previously, I had been struck by her enthusiasm, but now she was subdued and anxious. The veterinary assistant explained that colleagues in other villages had been forced to leave their posts, and they didn’t know how much longer they could continue to work in Kwei Nasa. “We are laughed at and called names. If we meet the Maoists on the streets, they say, ‘Here come the monkeys daring to show their faces.’ We are beginning to feel frightened.” A member of the royal family was a patron of the trust under whose auspices this project was run, and so it had become targeted by the Maoists. While some project offices had been attacked and the work of several branch offices disrupted, this branch, which was relatively small and its work liked by most villagers, had so far been left alone. Shortly afterward we prepared to leave, and one of the women said to me, “It is best not to walk around too much and don’t sit at the tea shops as they are often there. If you hear that they are in the area, stay in the house and don’t come out.” I nodded but didn’t bother to mention that I had already met one, a casually dressed young man in his early twenties whom I had encountered while walking through the village earlier in the day. As we passed, we caught each other’s eyes, and for a brief moment we stared in surprise at each other before moving away. He had made no attempt to ask for money, and in fact I was never asked for money by the Maoists, despite making more than twenty visits to Kwei Nasa during the insurgency. Later in the afternoon I walked around the village. At one point I stopped at a shop to buy sweets and biscuits for the forthcoming Mothers’ dance. As

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I waited for the sweets to be counted out, an elderly villager sitting on a bench outside the tea shop asked me where I was going. When I replied, he thought for a moment and then said, “Okay. It’s all right to go there.” Later, in another part of the village someone suggested that I change route: “It’s better to take the lower path,” she stated. Several times locals checked which path I intended to take and indicated their approval or disapproval of a particular route without explaining further. To the outsider this interaction would have appeared to be casual—typical of the general concern that villagers in this area pay to people’s movements—but it was not. While villagers frequently talk about movements in space, they do not talk in quite this way. In an attempt to regain a degree of control over their environment they used a series of communications that, though they mimicked their usual patterns, were in reality different. These interactions allowed people to convey information safely about the presence and movements of their uninvited guests. Throughout my visit this “tracking” of the Maoists continued, with villagers quietly passing information on to family, friends, and neighbors about the presence and movements, or expected movements, of the insurgents. Forewarned by my encounter at the tea shop on the day we arrived, and by Dhan Kumari’s and others’ counsel of the dangerousness of the situation, I found myself scrutinizing all communications and listening to every scrap of information. Villagers had lost physical control of yelsa yula—of their locality, their streets, courtyards, and hearths but through these subtle communications based on shared language and local reference points, they created community spaces over which they had mastery. And in doing so they attempted to maintain yelsa yula in the face of the ongoing threats. Having lost physical control of their villagescape and its environs people retreated into a “virtual” yelsa yula—a parallel world based on local knowledge and elusive communications into which the Maoists did not (by and large) have access. Despite these subtle attempts to reclaim their villagescape, villagers learned quite early that overt physical attempts to regain their space would not be tolerated. Maoist slogans were painted on the walls of such buildings as the VDC office, the day-care center, and Mothers’ Committee houses, and even at times on the stone slabs of the paths. One of the Mothers’ Committees decided to whitewash over the slogans on the gable end of its committee house. Almost immediately the slogans reappeared along with a threat painted onto the wall from the Maoists stating that if an attempt was ever made again to paint over the slogans, the perpetrators would be punished. No one ever dared to paint out Maoist slogans again.

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During some of our visits people told us that the “Maoists are not in the village.” These disappearances happened during cease-fires or at other times when the commander and the Party workers unexpectedly left for a while. While this referred to their physical absence spatially and psychologically, the Maoists remained very much part of the villagescape regardless of whether they were there or not—so much so that during one of the ceasefires when few Maoists had been seen in the village for months, every decision made at a committee meeting in the day-care center was made in light of “what the Maoists think.” Frustrated, I pointed out that the Maoists were nowhere to be seen. I was quickly told that “they will be back, and so we have to consider them in every decision we make.” The women, who were more used than I was to living in a warscape, insisted that the cease-fire would break because the “Maoists and the army want to fight each other.” Their insistence proved correct. I worried about the risks to villagers, Kamal, or me if I wrote my usual in-depth field notes. Instead I began taking rough notes, littered with code words and pseudonyms, in poorer than usual handwriting. We developed code names for the opposing sides. Dhan Kumari told us to refer to the Maoists as “those people.” When we told her that we had a code name for them, she asked what it was and confirmed that it was acceptable. “You have to use a nice name for them in case they find out,” she explained. During some phases of the conflict I didn’t write at all, and the notes I wrote retrospectively in the city were written as fictitious narratives based in another continent. Everyday items, such as notes, photographs (especially of Maoists), and employee identity cards (especially those that identified people as government employees), took on new meaning during the insurgency. As the Maoists and the security forces searched for each other, these documents could be scrutinized for evidence of membership or collaboration, with potentially dire consequences. Kamal sometimes undertook consultancy for government agencies. On one occasion he was returning from a field trip and was traveling through a Tarai district when his bus was stopped by the Maoists. To his horror he realized that he was still carry ing his government ID. The passengers sitting to either side of him were searched, but he wasn’t. Sometimes the difference between safety and danger was entirely random. During our fieldwork Kamal took few notes and sometimes none, depending on the situation, and, because I was under less suspicion than he, I always carried what he wrote. With a growing awareness that there might be

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times when it would be impossible to keep a written record, I consciously began developing my ability to remember interviews, scenes, or particular events (using retrieval cues and repeated recall) rather than commit them to paper when it might be unsafe to do so. On our last evening villagers congregated in Dhan Kumari’s courtyard for a “Mothers’ dance” to raise funds for the repair of village paths. Shortly after the dance began we heard that commander Moti Lal and fi fty Maoist fighters had arrived in the village. The dance was conducted with the usual joking, flirting, and teasing, along with demands that Kamal and I dance, which we duly did. I had learned early on in my fieldwork that dancing was an essential skill to have in a Tamu village and I had worked hard to acquire it. Bamboo mats marking out the dance area were laid out in the center of the courtyard around which people sat. The musicians “drummed” plastic water containers instead of drums as drumming during the monsoon could displeased gods and cause the monsoon to fail. The number in attendance, however, was small. Before the escalation of the insurgency people from all over the village would turn up in large, noisy groups, often guided through the dark alleys by flaming pieces of wood held aloft. I was disappointed not to see Kabita, a cousin of Dhan Kumari’s and a good old friend, but a neighbor explained, “Most nights Maoists come to her house as it is positioned at the top of the village, close to the forest, and has good views of the surrounding area. She would have liked to come to see you, but she had to stay at home and cook for a group that arrived just before dark. Her life is difficult nowadays.” “How does she manage?” I asked. “She just gets on with her housework and farm work like everyone else. What else can she do?” replied her neighbor. I remembered how those of us who lived closer to the heart of the village sometimes envied the location of Kabita’s house because it was closer to the forest, which reduced the distance she had to carry heavy loads of firewood. Now I was very glad of our more central location. Mothers’ dances are extremely popular events that usually attract large numbers of people from all over the village. In this case few villagers were present, which partly reflected the fact that it was the busy agricultural season. But I have been at well-attended dances during this season before, and the main reason for the low turnout was the war. It was dangerous to move around the village at night. Young people in particular had been warned not to walk around after dark, as the Maoists stated that they could easily be mistaken for members of the security forces and shot. Most of those in attendance therefore were our neighbors. Earlier in the evening when seated

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outside a tea shop we had watched a group of Maoists set up sentries at one of the main entrances to the village. No one said anything but I realized that we were witnessing what people had described as the nightly “closing” of the village. From then onward until next morning it would be very risky to attempt to enter or leave the village. The following morning we left Kwei Nasa shortly after 9 a.m. but not before Dhan Kumari had a detailed conversation with me about the type of shawl she wanted me to bring on my next visit “Pink tartan is what I would like,” she said, as she watched me write this down in my notebook, adding “And remember to bring a bigger size than the tartan you brought me before, that wasn’t big enough!” “You shouldn’t go before you have eaten rice,” she added as she carefully packed gifts of village foodstuffs for Kamal and me. “Rice for your mother,” she said, knowing that my mother liked making rice pudding with the high-quality rice that she grew. Dil Maya appeared with small gifts of her own—fermented radishes and other village delicacies. Dhan Kumari tried again to get us to stay for the main morning meal but didn’t belabor the point, as she would have in the past; she knew that setting off earlier was safer that traveling later in the day when the paths to town would be busier. We walked with one of her neighbors, a young man who taught us how locals scrutinized those they passed on the paths, trying to ascertain their reasons for travel, their intentions, and their affi liations. Rumors circulated endlessly about how you could identify a Maoist. In the village people had explained that they “carry large packs,” “wear Gold Star trainers,” “carry lots of bandages,” and “look extra alert.” Saila explained, “If a person looks extra alert and carries a large pack, then we can easily work out who they are, but, if they don’t, then it is not so easy. The most important thing nowadays is to be extra careful with people you don’t know.” As locals knew that these descriptions applied to a significant proportion of the young male population in particular, in the end a combination of a new face and some of the above criteria were used to identify possible Maoists. As we walked, Saila developed a new “game” whereby he “tested” me on the identity of those we passed, asking each time, “Who do you think that was, older sister?” And then he gave his own evaluation of the person. In the course of the next few months Kamal and I continued to refine this “game.” On one occasion we walked into the suburbs of Pokhara behind a long-haired youth who sported an earring in one ear. On first glance he was a typically attired trendy Pokhara youth. Kamal, however, was working on a series of subtle

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clues, which were refined by my challenges that he could only make such a claim if he supported it with strong evidence, carefully determined that the young man was most likely an army spy. On another occasion a group of schoolteachers told us that one or other of the two sides were in the village we were approaching. “We don’t know if they are the army or the Maoists,” they commented. When we entered the village, we saw out-of-uniform fighters sitting in the shops and by the side of the road. I tried to look casual as I remembered the words of a woman we had met in another village who told me that she worked out affi liations by “looking at their feet. Usually the soldiers have better boots,” she commented. As I sat down in a tea shop, I scrutinized the fighter’s footwear. “Highly polished boots, probably the army,” I correctly surmised. As we began climbing the last hill before the long descent to Pokhara, I spotted a group of young men walking on the trail some distance below us. Shortly afterward I became aware that they were rapidly catching up with us, and I felt a brief wave of fear. I called to Kamal to stop as I wanted to meet them face on. They walked past but waited for us at the rest place. When we sat down, they approached Kamal and asked him what we were doing in the village. He explained that I have researched Tamu culture and history in the area for many years and added that we were also visiting because I was supporting the new day-care center. When asked who he was, Kamal explained that he worked with me but that his main profession was botany. He then launched into a detailed monologue about Himalayan herbs and after listing several well-known varieties he asked the men if they were aware of the medicinal properties of these plants. Completely bemused, the young men struggled to reply. Shortly afterward they abruptly left, disappearing up the path and into the forest as quickly as they had appeared. Saila commented, “Older sister, those were the Maoist Party workers. They were checking you out.” We walked the rest of the way into town without further encounters, chuckling at how Kamal had mystified the Party workers with academic talk of plants! Wading across the final river I noticed that a bridge had been installed upriver which greatly facilitated those travelling into town from further up the valley. In the past I had watched with horror as groups of villagers had crossed the river clinging on to each other as the water rose sometimes up as high as their chests. Now the journey was much less perilous. We walked along the hot dusty road which in 1990 had been entirely rural but now was semi-urban. We finally hailed a taxi and dropped Saila off at his relatives’

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house in a suburb which was dominated by Tamu-mai from villages in the same valley as Kwei Nasa. Pokhara Tamu-mai have settled along the roads and in the suburbs which lead out to their villages and when we stopped to let Saila out I briefly exchanged greetings with several Kwei Nasa friends and acquaintances. When we arrived at our guesthouse I felt conflicted. I was disturbed by what we had discovered in the village and was determined to convert our rough notes into a detailed record as soon as possible before we began to forget the specifics. I also felt rather frightened as I was aware that to do so might be potentially risky. The benefits outweighed the risks, however, as there was little chance that I would be asked for my notes by the authorities and even if I was, they were written partly in code. I told Kamal to bring his very rough notes to my room and when he arrived I locked the door. By this stage it was dusk and raining heavily. Shortly afterward the electricity went out and so we spent the next few hours writing up our notes by candlelight. Finally, in almost complete darkness we walked the short distance to a nearby restaurant passing en route the royal place which was the only building in the area with its lights on. Later that night, I tossed and turned while outside the window a monsoon storm raged. Lightning lit up the dark room, and suddenly, with a clap of thunder the electricity went out and the overhead fan ground to a halt. I felt very alone and searched frantically for my torch, which I turned on and reassuringly placed by my side. When I finally slept, my dreams contained images of villagers going about their daily activities juxtaposed against images of people with frightening faces who kept running in and out of courtyards and along the village paths. I woke up. I spent the rest of the night awake, as confused and upset as I had been asleep. I had found the changed realities in Kwei Nasa deeply disturbing.

4 Maoists in the House

On a cold winter morning in December 2002 a taxi collected Kamal and me from my friend’s house in Pokhara and drove us to the trailhead on the newly completed road. Shortly after leaving the town we picked up a schoolteacher. Although a Bahun, he had taught in Tamu villages for twenty-five years, and so spoke to me in Tamu Kwi. The sun shone through the trees as the thirty-year-old Toyota taxi bumped and shuddered along the steep, rough road. As the road narrowed, I averted my eyes from the steep drop to the river and turned my attention to the talkative teacher, who wanted to know whether I knew any songs in Tamu Kwi. I replied that I did, and with the sun streaming in through the windows we bumped up and down the steep inclines singing the aptly named “Kaili Yaba? Kaili Tiba?” which translates as “How to Go? How to Stay?” Where the trail started away from the road, we met a group of people from a village close to Kwei Nasa, who explained they were going on a path that avoided traveling through the forest as the Maoists were there. They suggested we walk with them. As we followed a barely discernible path that traversed the open fields, the middle-aged woman, dressed in her best goingto-town clothes, looked toward the forest and commented, “They have been in the forests for the last three days. They must be hungry, and hungry people are angry people, so they could be dangerous.” A few minutes later she added, “Don’t worry; we are just ordinary people, so they won’t hurt us.” As we walked toward the village we heard the sound of an army helicopter in the distance. It circled the ridge at the far end of the valley and then flew away in the direction from which it had come. Although I was extremely

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hot, I kept on my bright red jacket because I felt it would identify the group to the security forces as “trekkers” and not Maoists. A brief wave of fear passed over me, and I lost my footing. “Are you all right?” asked the woman, and then added, “Don’t worry; we will soon be there.” Several hours later we parted company from our companions and walked the last half-hour up to Kwei Nasa. On arrival we were told that four hundred Maoists had been in the area a few days before but had left. In Khoda they had ransacked the large Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP) office and had slaughtered and eaten the pet deer. The small project office in Kwei Nasa was untouched, but the staff had fled, although they made occasional brief visits. While the Maoists might be out of the village, their presence was everywhere, from the slogans on house walls to the unceasing conversation about them. When we arrived at Dhan Kumari’s house, she looked at me and, referring to my trousers and trekking jacket, said, “What are you dressed like that for? Why aren’t you wearing a lungi?” I explained, and Dhan Kumari quickly changed the subject. As she served tea, she said, “When you were here in the summer, we were frightened of them. Now we aren’t frightened anymore. We had four hundred of the ‘red army’ to stay, and we are not frightened any longer.” Standing in the middle of the courtyard, she pointed to the bamboo platform on which water was stored and dishes washed and said, “That’s where the sentry stood.” Looking farther into the distance, she named other places in the hamlet and surrounds where sentries had been posted during various visits. She described watching a girl walk out to do sentry duty: “She wore uniform trousers and a black pachheura [shawl, Nep.]. She was very fat. She had a big stomach and big trousers and she carried a big gun. However, I don’t think she could run very fast. I am not sure if she was any use as a sentry.” Dhan Kumari returned to the topic of security, and, when she discovered that one of the archaeologists she knew was visiting Pokhara, she commented, “As you can see, it is perfectly safe here. Why didn’t you bring Steve with you? He should have come to see us as we haven’t seen him for a long time.” I explained that he had not come because he felt worried about the situation in the village—in fact his wife had made him promise not to visit before he left the United Kingdom—and she replied, “Why? There are no Maoists and no army.” She then returned to telling stories about the Maoists. Sometime later the conversation turned to Christmas, which was in three days’ time. Laughing, Dhan Kumari said, “Let’s have a party tomorrow. They have Coke in new plastic bottles at the shop, and we could have

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some of them with the biscuits and sweets you brought.” I commented, “I’m really thirsty; let’s go to the shop now and buy some of those new bottles of Coke.” Dhan Kumari stopped weaving for a moment and said forcefully, “No. You can’t go there. That’s where the Maoists sit; they are always at the shop. You are not to go there.” Instead, she told Raju to go and buy the drinks. He was to “come back immediately and not to talk to anyone.” Dhan Kumari returned to talking about how safe it was in the village and how there were no Maoists. When Raju came back, she took the bottles out of his bag, and, as she began distributing them, she quietly asked him, “Did you see anyone?” With an almost imperceptible nod of his head he signaled that he had. A few hours later the small circle of people had grown to include a second woman weaving alongside Dhan Kumari and several other neighbors. Asha, who lived next door, had left her baby in the care of the group while she went on an errand to the far side of the village. As the sun faded and a wintry chill came over the courtyard, she suddenly reappeared. Walking purposively toward us, she said, “There are five hundred Maoists walking into the village.” One of the women looked up at the path above our hamlet and said, “Look, here come some of them.” We turned quickly to see the silhouettes of two men and a woman walk past the water tap, carry ing large packs with guns over their shoulders. The group of women scattered—some to return home and others to pass the news on to neighbors and kin. Earlier in the afternoon I had mentioned that trekking permits were no longer being issued in certain areas, and, recalling this information, Dhan Kumari said in a panicky voice, “Perhaps they will think you are a spy. Go into the house quickly and hide in the bedroom. I am going to lock it and sit outside cutting vegetables. If they come, I will try to get them to go to another house.” Kamal muttered beneath his breath that “all of this is unnecessary; they won’t bother us,” but he complied nonetheless. With most of her closest relatives dead, Dhan Kumari felt very alone. The leg problems she had experienced earlier in her life had gone, but she now had back problems and walked with a marked stoop. She had developed other chronic health issues, some of which had been diagnosed by doctors in the town as mainly anxiety related. She was more frightened than her neighbors and friends, and generally evaluated situations as being more dangerous. However, as she was experienced in dealing with the Maoists and was our host, we did not feel able to argue with her, although we did not agree with her decision.

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During the next half-hour Kamal and I sat in the growing dusk inside the locked house and listened to the sound of many feet on the path outside. I felt calm but a little frightened. At one stage I looked across at Kamal who was sitting opposite me on the other bed and thought that we should have stood up more strongly to Dhan Kumari; being hidden instinctively felt dangerous, as I thought we were more likely to be accused of spying if we were discovered hiding. Through the window we could see Dhan Kumari sitting on a small stool in the courtyard cutting vegetables. Other neighbors came and went, making reconnaissance trips to ascertain where the insurgents planned to spend the night and to inform friends, relatives, and neighbors of their intentions. While villagers could not prevent visits to their homes, by anticipating them they could be forewarned and have time to take small measures to protect themselves and their families. Dil Maya took Raju with her for company so that she would know where he was. It also made her visit look like a normal visit to her parents’ home rather than an attempt to fi nd out where the Maoists intended to stay. Other women made similar trips, some taking their children with them to detract attention from the true nature of their excursions. The emphasis of this “performance of innocence” was the participation in plausible everyday activities. Another neighbor set off to ask one of his relatives in another part of the village “about a buffalo.” After some time Dil Maya and Raju returned and told Dhan Kumari that the Maoists would not visit our hamlet that evening but would come the following morning. Content that we would be left alone that evening, Dhan Kumari unlocked the house and let us out. Then she told Raju to “do sentry duty” while she went to the kitchen to begin dinner. Raju’s task involved sitting at the edge of the courtyard and alerting her should the Maoists arrive. Holding his catapult in his hand, Raju perched casually on the courtyard wall while surreptitiously observing the goings-on and ascertaining the risks. With the approach of a group of Maoists he would call out to Dhan Kumari, then scurry into the house to warn her. She was unusually ner vous and irritable. Seated by the fire she took dried chilies out of a plastic bag, which she mixed with salt and two cloves of garlic. Placing a stone slab in front of her, she pounded the mixture—more vigorously than was warranted—with a small round stone. As she poured vegetable oil into a saucepan and added several handfuls of spinach, she finally became calmer. After the evening meal we sat around the hearth and chatted. The conversation included discussions of Christmas parties hosted by British offi-

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cers in the Gurkha camps in Singapore in the 1960s, the unexpected death of a close relative of Dhan Kumari’s in Pokhara, and the impending birth of my brother’s first baby. In stark contrast to the absorbing preoccupation of the afternoon the Maoists were never mentioned. Talking in low tones, we sat close to the fire and to each other. Raju held a puppy in his arms, and Dil Maya hugged them both. The usual glass of pa (millet wine) turned into two, and then three and four. Dhan Kumari observed, “We drink a lot these days.” Then, making the only reference to the events of the day, she added, “What else can we do?” We went to bed at an unusually early hour, with the normal outside sleeping spaces remaining unused and everyone sleeping inside the house. The sturdy stone houses, which are entered and exited through a single door of heavy wood that can be bolted on the inside, were perceived to offer real protection (one time we arrived in a nearby village at 6:00 p.m. and found the houses all boarded up; Maoists had recently killed a villager and, fearing further attacks, the people had retired inside and were safely “in bed” early to avoid confrontation). I slept surprisingly well but got up before 6:00 a.m. because I wanted to be “prepared” for the Maoists’ arrival. Dhan Kumari told me to sit on my bed in the shadows but didn’t provide any further instructions and I didn’t ask for any. The Maoists arrived just before 7 a.m. When they entered the courtyard, Dil Maya tried to get them to go to her house, arguing that she was alone and it would be difficult for Dhan Kumari to host them. They refused, and the nineteen-year-old section commander—who had stayed before—told Dhan Kumari that there were seven of them and that all they asked for was tea, not a whole meal. She consented and checked that sentries were to be posted so that warnings would be given if the security forces were sighted. As the remainder of the group decamped on the veranda, placing their packs against the inner wall and stacking their guns against the outer wooden panels, the section commander confirmed that sentries were already in position. The Maoists’ arrival quickly transformed the domestic space into a militarized one. It suspended the day-to-day running of the household and had a significant impact on the women’s work. The presence of the Maoists disrupted usual activities, such as cooking, cleaning, collecting water, making millet wine, and hosting guests, as well as seasonal activities, such as weaving and drying grain, and occasional activities, including a meeting of the day-care center committee. Far more unsettling for Dhan Kumari, however,

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Figure 3. People’s Liberation Army soldiers eating at a mobile camp in Surket District, Nepal, 2003 (photo: Dhurba Basnet).

was the demand to make the household and its contents available. Although clearly displeased, she stood aside as a group of cadres, led by a senior Party member named Jitendra, carried her large cauldrons, which are heirlooms, to a makeshift kitchen in the center of her field. Speaking to her abruptly, he informed her that her cooking pots and utensils were to be handed over for the duration of their stay. The scene quickly became reminiscent of the field kitchen at a pae laba death ritual. Goats were slaughtered, vegetables were chopped, and the food cooking in the large cauldrons was stirred with long wooden sticks. The only visible difference was the large number of backpacks hung on the lower branches of a tree, which were suspended above a large, neat stack of guns. At pae labas many of the kitchen staff members are men; however, women are usually also involved, if not in cooking then in serving and washing up. The Maoist kitchen, however, was entirely male. The women were busy doing other tasks. Backpacks and guns were stored on Dhan Kumari’s veranda, and, seated on her straw mats, the Maoists sang, read, wrote, and organized their day. Others chatted in the courtyard, repaired equipment, sewed uniforms, laced boots, read out-of-date newspapers, and performed exercises with their

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guns. The wooden table at which Baba had entertained his Gurkha friend a decade earlier was placed in the center of the courtyard and used for gun cleaning. Dhan Kumari’s bathroom, which is only used by family and invited guests, was constantly occupied, and both her sewing machine and the Tailor she had employed to use it that day to make purses for my parents were deployed to sew revolutionary flags. While gender empowerment was a central tenet of the Maoists’ campaign, they placed women such as Dhan Kumari in disempowered positions during their visits. Dhan Kumari was used to organizing her own life. She exerted great power over her house and made clear decisions about how her space was used and by whom. The Maoists, however, paid little respect to the spatial arrangements of people’s homes or to the fact that forced entry into houses, especially their interiors, was experienced as deeply violating. They also ignored the fact that by positioning themselves in the midst of homesteads they ensured that the civilian space became a military one and therefore vulnerable to counterinsurgency actions both during and after their visits. The villagers essentially became hostages in their own homes. With Maoists in their midst the “parallel world” of yelsa yula where villagers informed each other surreptitiously about the movements and actions of the insurgents was severely constricted. Approximately 25 percent of the force were young women between fifteen and twenty-five years old. A quietly spoken sixteen-year-old Chhetri girl, who had been with the Maoists for two years, stated that she had joined the movement following arrest and torture in custody. In mid-morning she took out a small plastic bag containing a toothbrush, rags, and oil and began cleaning her weapon. She spent most of the next few hours on this task. She wore a blue shirt and combat trousers, and, as she took apart and cleaned her gun, I was surprised to see the remains of faded and scratched red nail polish on her fingernails. She was “happy to take part in attacking anywhere in the country” and had recently been involved in a large battle. When I asked her what it was like to live in the forest, she curtly replied, “We don’t live in the forest; we stay in the villages.” I felt tempted to ask her whether villagers were happy with this arrangement but didn’t dare. In the middle of the morning she discovered that the cork she had inserted while cleaning her gun was stuck in the barrel. She made an improvised removal implement fashioned out of a piece of wood and a nail, which she carried into the kitchen and placed in the middle of the hearth, which as explained earlier is the central point of the house and the home of a god. Dhan Kumari, who had not previously protested, did so loudly when she

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saw what was happening. “Get that thing out of my hearth,” she ordered the teenager. The girl paid no attention, went on with what she was doing, and then left the room. Up until this point hearthside etiquette had been observed, as the Maoists who were predominantly rural youth, were familiar with appropriate hearthside behavior. But this event was different. A few minutes later the girl returned and removed the implement. After she left, Dhan Kumari commented, “It is like a bazaar when they visit, too many comings and goings and too much noise.” Shortly afterward—following another unsuccessful attempt to remove the cork from the barrel of her gun— the young woman reappeared and repositioned the removal implement in the hearth. When she left, Dhan Kumari turned to me and complained loudly but did not remove the piece of equipment. She could not do so, she stated, “because they have guns.” When the wooden handle caught fire, however, she did nothing to rescue it. The young woman returned to find that it was burned beyond use. She retrieved the remainder of the implement and left the room stern-faced. Dhan Kumari smiled surreptitiously to herself. She had reclaimed a degree of power, but ultimately she remained dominated. Sometime later I observed the young woman reattempting to clear the barrel of her gun—this time with another cork attached to string. Th is method required excessive pulling but was no more successful. Raju and two little girls watched with great interest as she made a series of strenuous movements to clear the gun, which involved using her body in ways that would have been unacceptable for a woman within most other social contexts. After several attempts she realized she needed someone with greater physical strength to help. She approached a male colleague for assistance, and it was only after the combined efforts of two male cadres pulling against each other and one holding onto the corner of the veranda for leverage that the cork was dislodged. She then laid her gun on Dhan Kumari’s table and began taking it apart to clean it. Raju, who was playing with a toy car, walked over to the table and stood silently with several other children, watching intently as she dismantled the rifle. For much of the remainder of the morning and early afternoon the disassembled parts of the gun lay on the table as she methodically cleaned each piece. Later she took a plastic bag out of her pack, which contained some pens, colored markers, and a notebook into which she had earlier transcribed revolutionary songs. Opening the notebook she turned to a clean page and drew a picture of the head and chest of a large, stern-looking, moustached man wearing a peaked Maoist-style cap, a shirt with a collar, and large hooped

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earrings in both ears. When I asked her about the picture, she said that the man had “no name” and she would not elaborate. I could not ask more questions since like the villagers, I had to maintain a careful balance between asking questions and protecting myself. I had already got the balance wrong (as I explain later) and did not want to do so again. Among the other members of the section was a nineteen-year-old whose nom de guerre was Pragati (meaning “progress”), who had been a Maoist for four years. Dressed in a combat jacket and track-suit trousers, her long hair was concealed underneath a woolen hat. She stated that she had “a good life in the movement” and explained that “from the time I was in school I was involved in the Maoist student wing. I was arrested and tortured by the police and after that I joined the People’s Liberation Army. I joined because I want to get rid of the old way of being a woman.” She was the most outspoken of the section and frequently spoke assertively to her colleagues. On one occasion she strode over to me and said in a confrontational voice, “Why are you wearing gold earrings? You shouldn’t wear gold. You should take them off.” My gold, bought to “fit in” in rural Nepal, was in Pragati’s eyes a symbol of gender and economic inequalities that were unacceptable. Later in the day she penetratingly asked me whether I was a Christian. I replied rather vaguely that I was from a Christian background. She stated forcefully that she didn’t follow religion but didn’t comment further and walked off. The previous month Kamal had spent some time in Chame, the headquarters of nearby Manang district undertaking a botanical survey. There he had briefly encountered a group of young Maoist fundraisers, including Pragati, who stated that she was a Dalit. Despite being in army fatigues with her hair covered in a hat, Kamal quickly recognized her when she entered the courtyard. He did not comment, however, when he overheard Pragati identifying herself to Dhan Kumari as a Chhetri. The Party had a strong antidiscriminatory stance, but individual Dalits might choose to conceal their identity rather than confront implicit discrimination in a Tamu village. Pragati’s outspokenness did not extend to self-identifying as a Dalit. Others did, however, openly identify themselves as Dalit. Later in the morning I watched with interest as a group of Dalit, Bahun, Chhetri, and Magar men and women forewent the usual caste and gender conventions and hungrily ate together from the same plate. In the afternoon Pragati brought out a gift she had received from a male colleague when visiting the far western region. It was a red piece of cloth on which Maoist symbols and slogans were carefully painted. She told Binta,

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the Tailor woman, who was doing some sewing for Dhan Kumari, to hem the edges of the piece of cloth. Binta seemed not to know what to do because she had been told by Dhan Kumari to finish off her job quickly, yet Pragati ordered her to undertake her work. After a moment Binta put down Dhan Kumari’s work and began hemming the edges of the square cloth; but she quickly put it down when Dhan Kumari reappeared and said, “What are you doing? I told you to do my work first. She [looking at Pragati] will have to wait.” Binta returned to sewing Dhan Kumari’s fabric, but shortly afterward Pragati picked up her cloth and reexplained to Binta what was to be done. Binta quickly sewed the edges of the cloth while Dhan Kumari was out of sight. Binta was in a difficult position because she was fearful of both Pragati, an armed Maoist, and her rather authoritarian fellow villager. Unable to defy either woman, Binta managed the situation as strategically as possible. The most direct challenges to Dhan Kumari’s authority thus came from the two female members of the group, both of whom stated clearly that part of their motivation for involvement in the Maoists was to challenge conventional gender norms, which perhaps they thought Dhan Kumari embraced. I was reluctant to probe further but the Maoist women seemed to make assumptions about Dhan Kumari’s position as a woman in Tamu society. These ideas would have been premised on Hindu ideals concerning gender and equality, taking into account neither local diversity nor personality. For example, although most Nepali women marry, as we have seen, it is not uncommon in Tamu villages to meet women who have chosen not to marry or who are divorced and do not wish to remarry. These women’s assumption of Dhan Kumari’s position took neither her personality nor Tamu practices into account. When the Maoists arrived, I had dived under a pile of the thick blankets on a bed in Dhan Kumari’s inner room and stayed there, uncertain of what to do. In fact, although we knew that the Maoists were coming, we had not discussed what I should do when they arrived. I too was in denial. I was aware that I had to come out but didn’t know when might be the right moment. As I lay cramped under the blankets, too frightened to move in case I unexpectedly alerted them to my presence, I could hear the group talking quietly on the other side of the wall—just two feet away—and could see their shapes through the slatted window. I heard the voices of two young women who alternated between quietly singing revolutionary songs and making a list of purchases to be bought at a village shop. Pragati forcefully told a male

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colleague who was going to the shop to buy a particular type of soap. As they drank tea and ate biscuits, the familiar tune heralding a Radio Nepal news bulletin came on the radio, and I could hear the news reader recount the latest clashes between the government forces and the comrades of the people who sat an arm’s length away from me. Over the course of the next hour Dhan Kumari came into the room several times, carry ing out her morning tasks. She looked calm, but her rather stilted body movements suggested otherwise and she did not look at me. I watched her light incense and pray over the photographs—taken by me—of her deceased parents: her father in a dark suit and topi with his numerous army medals pinned to his chest and her mother dressed in full Tamu costume with a magnificent turquoise, coral, and gold necklace around her neck. Shortly afterward Raju entered and out of a large copper container took the toy car I had given him the previous day. He played with it quietly in the shadows, running it up and down his arm and briefly along the floor. He then replaced it carefully, looked at me, and went back out into the courtyard. Dhan Kumari had told Raju to “guard” me—an impossible task—and by coming into the room and taking out his car, I felt he was surreptitiously checking on me. Half an hour after this—by which time I was extremely stiff—Kamal came into the room and said, “Didi, let’s go. It’s time for you to meet the Maoists.” I was so well hidden that he sat on top of me, and it was a moment before he realized that I lay at the bottom of the pile of heavy woven blankets! As I got up, he said that he had told them another guest was staying but had not said I was a foreigner. I straightened my lungi and walked after him into the kitchen. When Dil Maya saw me coming into the room, she called out my name and said in Tamu Kwi, “You have got up.” I replied, “Yes,” and, as the section commander turned to look at me, I saw surprise come across his face. I sat in the corner with my back against the wooden panel that divides the kitchen and remained silent beside the section leader who coughed loudly as he drank a mug of hot water. In an extra-polite voice Dhan Kumari explained that they had known me for twelve years and that I studied Tamu culture. I knew their language, wore their clothes, and had lived in the village for two years and now visited several times a year on my holidays. It was my Christmas holiday, she explained, and that was why I was visiting. She added, “Photos of her ten years ago are on the wall outside the house, and now you can see her as she is today.” The section commander asked if

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he had met me in another village, and I replied, “No.” Dil Maya added, “The woman you met only came for a short visit, whereas Didi has visited many, many times.” The section commander and a male cadre sat beside the hearth and chatted with Dhan Kumari and Dil Maya. After mildly teasing the two young men about the stereotypical differences between different Nepali ethnic groups to which some of those present belonged, Dhan Kumari commented that they should not take offense as she was “only joking.” This cycle of chiding the rebel “guests” and then virtually apologizing was a pattern that repeated itself several times during the day. Shortly afterward several men abruptly entered the room. One was slightly older and had an air of seniority. Accompanying him were a number of others, including two young men whose faces were partly concealed by cotton scarves (the scarves were of a cheap variety available in the town printed rather bizarrely with the names “Rose” and “Jack” on them, which referred to the lovers in the fi lm Titanic). The arrival of masked men worried me, but later Kamal told me that he thought they were from his district—as he had been told that among the larger group were people from his area— and that they didn’t want to meet him. I wasn’t so sure. We were asked our names, where we were from, our work, our education, and why we were in the village. I was asked only a few questions, but Kamal (a nonlocal Bahun) was questioned in detail concerning his identity, his workplace, and his reasons for being in the village. Maoist intelligence was widely acknowledged to be good, but we were surprised that the officer had such detailed knowledge of the school where Kamal did some part-time teaching. This interrogation worried me because I wondered if they thought he might be a spy. Kamal felt strongly that he knew “how to talk to the Maoists” and was confident that the questioning, although detailed, had gone well. I felt less sure and worried that he was at risk throughout the remainder of our visit. Finally the questions ended, and we were asked our opinions of the Maoists I replied rather vaguely but stated that I thought it would be very difficult for either side to win the war. I admitted I had been frightened meeting them, whereupon they laughed loudly. The previous day Dhan Kumari had told me that during the PLA’s last visit they had told her they were going to attack the towns, and she had commented, “Then why are you here bothering us? Why don’t you leave us in peace and go off to the towns?” When they talked about plans to attack urban centers, I asked a similar, if more mildly worded question. The officer

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replied, “Don’t worry; we will be going to the towns soon.” Dhan Kumari shot me a ner vous glance and said in Tamu Kwi, “Keep quiet; don’t speak; don’t say anything. You don’t know what you are talking about.” As an older woman and the Maoists’ “host,” it was safe for Dhan Kumari to ask such questions—villagers were familiar with the boundaries between what was acceptable and what was not—but it was risky for me to do so. As a foreigner, I “could get away with it”; but by being overly familiar I revealed my inexperience in dealing with the Maoists and potentially put myself and others at risk. Interactions between Dhan Kumari and the Maoists drew on a range of cultural norms, including preexisting Nepali notions of age and seniority, and she told off her “guests” as she would village teenagers. For example, shortly after their arrival she said to the section commander (whose nom de guerre was Pataka, which translates as “firecracker”), “Move that gun away from my shawl; we villagers don’t like guns.” He subsequently did as asked, but not before laughing and commenting, “Don’t worry, Mother. That gun doesn’t fire very well; it will not go off. Even when fighting with the army, it doesn’t work that well!” Sitting by the hearth sometime later, as he helped himself to a third mug of hot water—which he hoped would improve his bad cold—Dhan Kumari scolded him, saying that drinking too much hot water was bad for him. By assuming a motherly role she reminded him of how the relationship ought to be and in so doing attempted to both assert and protect herself. At other times, however, she was wary and repeated her comment that her teasing was “only joking.” Pataka spent much of the morning warming himself by the fire. He was nineteen and a Magar from a district in central Nepal. His peaked cap was pulled down low over his ears, and he had a whistle around his neck and a grenade in his waistband. His career as a Maoist began when he was arrested at the age of eleven because he was a member of a revolutionary student group. He was in police custody for three months, and on his release shortly before his twelft h birthday he took his first military training in western Nepal. Over the years he had been involved in many Maoist actions and battles. He walked with a slight limp and told us that he had multiple bullet wounds to his left forearm, back, shoulder, and leg but only showed us the scar of a bullet wound on his forearm. “Some of our friends have no legs, no hands, no ears, no eyes after clashes,” he said. But when I asked him whether any of his close friends had been killed, he avoided the question by stating that “all Maoists are my friends” and refused to be drawn any further.

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Later on he talked about the support of the government by foreign powers and commented, “The U.S. Government is a dictator and interferes with the domestic affairs of many countries. Here they are sending their agents and helping by giving equipment and financial support to the opposition to finish us off. That’s why we are watching them and that’s why one staff was killed. We ask all Nepalis not to work for them and not to take part in spying.” He then casually mentioned that the Maoists had killed American Embassy security officer Ramesh Manandahar. I remembered with a chill the sunny December afternoon when I sat in my friend’s garden while a few streets away the unarmed security officer was assassinated. I realized that I was sharing the hearthside with his killers. Some of the topics of conversation contained unexpected twists. A young man from eastern Nepal whose relative worked in the tourist industry was concerned that the number of foreign trekkers visiting Nepal had dropped. Ironically he made no connection between the declining numbers and the role that he and his comrades played in their downturn. Foreigners, he said, would be welcome in their new republic. He muttered approval when he heard that I was a citizen of a republic; and, when I asked him whether the president of his republic could be a woman (as was the then president of Ireland), he replied, “Yes, of course we could have a female president.” When I asked him what it was like staying in Kwei Nasa, he reproduced a Bahun stereotype of the Tamu-mai, saying, “We like staying with Gurungs [Tamumai] as their villages are clean and they are a friendly, simple, honest people who don’t spy.” Simplistic stereotypes can sometimes be useful, I thought. Our interrogator was confident of the Maoists’ success, stating that “the royal army is fighting for duty only and they always worry about their life, whereas we are fighting for the liberty of poor people and to save our nation from dictatorship—that’s why we will be successful.” He added that while it would take years to form their style of People’s Democracy, they would be in government within a few years. His estimation was off by only two years. Cadres came and went. A young woman was clearly very surprised to see me. A few minutes later she returned with another girl, and both stood for a few moments looking at me, giggled, and then left. Some cadres from Kamal’s district hastily covered the bottom part of their faces with a scarf when they discovered his origins, while others avoided him. We were asked several times what we thought of them, and they emphasized that they “were not as the Royal Nepal Army broadcasts.” The young man who wor-

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ried about tourist numbers quietly told Kamal to “coach the foreigners about our good ways and not our bad ways.” In the early afternoon several neighborhood women had gathered in the courtyard, and, since it was not possible to undertake their usual winter activity of weaving, they turned their attention instead to the Maoists who were carry ing out small domestic tasks, such as sewing on buttons and washing clothes. A youth from a neighboring district in full combat dress stood quietly while the young man from eastern Nepal sewed a button onto the cuff of his sleeve. Dhan Kumari, standing a couple of feet away, commented, “Your uniform is very smart, but your shoes don’t match!” While the young man looked abashed, others moved their eyes from his green camouflage uniform to his blue canvas shoes and back and laughed. Another woman rubbed the cuff of another young man’s uniform and commented that it was “rather thin” compared to the uniform of her relative who is in the British Army. “I don’t think that it will last long,” she stated. By forcing themselves into people’s homes Maoists violated the intimate spaces of courtyard, veranda, and house and committed a symbolic assault on the residents. However, by using the cultural norms of hierarchy (the right of an older person to maintain authority over a younger one) and indebtedness (as “guests” the Maoists were dependent on householder women), people like Dhan Kumari could symbolically “disarm” their youthful invaders. These interactive approaches used by the women were based on hierarchical mother–child relationships as well as on the cultural norms of flirting. A local teenage Party worker entered the courtyard and immediately attracted comments from neighbor Purna Kumari, who greeted him by saying, “Hari, your gun’s far too big for you!” She turned to us and commented, “That’s Hari; he used to be in the same class as Tej [her fifteen-year-old son]. He’s left school because he is a Maoist boy now. All the members of his family are Maoists, and his father’s in jail.” The youth grinned sheepishly but said nothing as he stood between two equally youthful comrades. I overheard Dil Maya speak to a young man in combat trousers and black T-shirt, with a miniature bullet on a thread round his neck. “You speak our language, don’t you?” she said forcefully. His embarrassed reaction confirmed her suspicion, and he muttered in Nepali, “Just a little, not much, not really.” Undeterred, Dil Maya continued, “I know you are a Gurung [Tamu]. You are pretending that you don’t know our language.” The young man looked uncomfortable, moved away, and left the courtyard shortly afterward.

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Tamu villagers were especially interested in Tamu Maoists. The interest stemmed partly from normal inquisitiveness because people always want to know what familial or clan relationship they share and from which district and village they originate. However, it was also an attempt to bring these Maoists within their sphere of influence and so protect themselves. By reminding them that they were joined by multiple links of kinship, language, place, culture, social structure, history, and position in Nepali society, the villagers questioned and attempted to weaken the combatants’ allegiance to the Maoist movement. To counteract such conflicts of interest Maoists were often posted outside their own area. As a woman married across the usual endogamous clan lines, Dil Maya could conclusively establish kinship links to the youth by drawing on her natal family’s clan membership or the membership of the clan into which she had married. To avoid being further drawn into the web of influence, the young man left. That evening the Maoists broke the door of the ACAP office in Kwei Nasa. They wrecked the office, threw all the furniture outside, ripped up the plastic sheets covering the seedlings, and destroyed the (horticultural) nursery. As we had left by then, Dhan Kumari recounted the incident to us on our next visit: Some of us women were very upset, as the project helped us do many things—like starting the day-care center. Purna Maya and Sanu Maya wept as they were so upset. I was angry, and, when I asked the Maoists who were staying in the house why they had done such a bad thing, they said, “We didn’t do it, Mother. We weren’t involved. Others did it.” After that we heard they were planning to destroy the day-care center because it had an ACAP board nailed to the outside. I went out on the street along with some of the other women from the committee. We pleaded with them not to wreck it. We explained that we just received some support from the project, but it was our school and we had built it and we run it. They removed the board but left the center alone. People’s portrayal of themselves as agency-less was inaccurate, as negotiation and compromise with the Maoists were clearly evident. By coming out onto the streets after dark (a relatively rare occurrence during the People’s War) the women saved the day-care center by using a range of strategies including confrontation and negotiation. When I asked what motivated them

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to do so they pointed out that although the center had an ACAP board outside it, in fact it was a village facility that played an important role in child care as parents (especially women) could leave their children there safely while working in the fields. They also stated that experience had shown it was possible—if you were cautious—to negotiate with the Maoists. Some women explained that the insurgents were rural people like them, who knew the ways and problems of the village. Long-term proximity and observation enabled people to identify the most appropriate negotiation strategies to use which they deployed as strategically as possible. Aware of the importance of the day-care center to the women and perhaps unwilling to anger those on whom they were dependent for food and shelter, the Maoists backed down. Dhan Kumari continued with her story: That night the members of the group who stayed in our house slept on the veranda, and Dil Maya, Raju, and I slept inside. Two of them had sleeping bags. The men slept at one end, and the women slept at the other end. They used their packs as pillows and put shawls and jackets over their heads. It was a very cold night. I felt sorry for them; they must have been very cold. I think they are used to sleeping like that. They are strong. Early the next morning they left to do exercises at the volleyball ground or to do sentry duty. When I opened the door of the house, I was surprised to see the Bahun in the blue track suit [the young man from eastern Nepal] sitting on the veranda wrapped in a small shawl. He said, “I couldn’t go because I have a headache.” He swept the veranda and asked for tea. With the tea he ate a huge amount of dried bread, which they brought with them. I was surprised at how much he ate. After that he asked whether he could come into the house. I said that he could. He sat by the fire and told me about being in the Maoists. He had taken part in looting banks as well as attacks on police posts and described how on one occasion they had surprised the police, who were playing cards when they arrived. After the attack—during which they killed all the policemen—they celebrated by singing and dancing on the bus that had transported them. Dhan Kumari was quiet for a moment and then blew on the embers of the fire. I asked her if she had any feelings toward Maoists. She replied, “I don’t

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feel anything toward them. I don’t feel love or sadness for them. In both armies some are good and some are bad. I prefer the PLA to the Party workers and the local militia because they are better behaved and more controlled. The local Maoists often join when the PLA are in the area, and after they leave they stay behind and do Party work. They are not very well trained and are often rude. I don’t like that Magar section commander [Pataka] as he gives too many orders.” She then explained how earlier in the day a fighter had lifted Raju up and thrown him in the air. Dhan Kumari, who was standing on the veranda, was furious and strode over to him and shouted, “Put him down at once.” She continued, “I don’t like them getting too close to him, and I don’t want him to get too close to them. He understands well and knows not to go with them. He is frightened of them, but, as he is only a child, they might convince him. What if they took him? How would we live then?” Children’s heart-minds are underdeveloped, and they do not know right from wrong as clearly as adults do. Capability may develop earlier than morality, however, and, while Raju was learning how to competently downplay the extent of his family’s possessions in the face of Maoist questioning, he remained morally underdeveloped and vulnerable. Furthermore, his souls—which could easily fly out when he was shocked or distressed—were less integrated into his body than were those of an adult. All around, he was a more fragile being—vulnerable to fear, emotions, illness, and being influenced by others and therefore susceptible to Maoist recruitment. The parents of younger children faced greater challenges. Walking through the village one afternoon, I met five-year-olds Nil Kumari and Rupa on their way home from school. As we walked, Rupa started talking in a loud voice: “Mother, do you know that two Maoist girls came to our house when it was raining? They have gone now, but they left their bags in our house. They said they will be back in the evening with lots more people.” Not wanting to draw attention to what she said, I replied in a quiet voice that I knew what had happened and changed the subject. As she walked along holding my hand, I wondered whether anyone else had overheard what the little girl said. She had spoken very near a shop frequented by Maoists and allegedly by army spies on occasion. In fact, as I had walked down the path a few minutes previously, I knew that the commander was sitting outside it. Later I discussed this with Asha, her mother, who commented, “Rupa is very frank and I can’t stop her talking openly. It is dangerous, but what can I do? She is still too small to understand.” That evening Dil Maya backed up Asha’s

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comments, stating that “five is too young to understand.” She continued, “By the age of seven or eight, children can understand what to say and what not to say. Raju is nine and he understands very well; younger children are especially in danger as they can easily be tempted with sweets, and then they will say things they shouldn’t.” I asked another villager, Jit Bahadur, how he and his family kept their two small children under the age of five safe. He replied, “When they are about seven or eight, they can understand, and so it is easier to talk to them about what to do or not do and what to say or not as they understand the dangers. Before that age we make them frightened of both sides in the hope they will stay away from them and not speak in their presence.” Teaching children to be silent was not new, as children know about “inner talk”—things that are secret and not to be discussed outside the immediate family or a close circle of confidants. Children are also frightened of witches, ghosts, spirits, and various types of “bad people.” Parents drew on age-appropriate concepts, such as “inner talk,” and preexisting fears to keep their children safe. Maoists used various ploys to abduct children or to encourage them to join the Party; in response parents restricted their children’s movements. One year during the autumn festival of Tihar, Maoists invited teenagers to join them in festive singing and dancing in the small village of Kausari on the ridge opposite ridge Kwei Nasa. Recalling the festival, my friend Laxmi explained, “We wouldn’t allow them out of our houses because we thought it was a trick to get them to join the Maoists. We kept them in for three days; only the very small children went out.” Chuckling, she added, “It was amusing to see the Maoists and the tiny children dancing together, but what could we do?” While Dhan Kumari stopped a Maoist cadre from playing with Raju, she could not prevent more subtle influences that played a role in attracting young people to the insurgents. Raju spent most of that day in the courtyard along with Rupa. They watched Maoists wash clothes, transcribe revolutionary songs into notebooks, kill and cook three goats, repair equipment, and dismantle, repair, and clean guns. Raju and Rupa watched intently as the female cadre tried repeatedly to remove the cleaning cork that was stuck in the barrel of her weapon. Once it was freed, they stood beside her as she carefully took the gun apart and cleaned it piece by piece. She invited them to examine the weapon, and with fascination both children peered down the barrel of the newly cleared rifle. By mid-morning Raju’s earlier hesitancy

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had gone, and he was clearly enjoying himself, observing the activities of young people who in some cases were only six or seven years older than he. It was not difficult to see why visits by Maoists provided fertile ground for recruitment as they created an air of excitement and activity attractive to many young people. Following the discontinuation of development work in the village and the cancellation of various villagewide events, the only people who had attempted to mobilize the youth were the Maoists. To children (and indeed to many adults) large-scale visits by Maoists evoked both fear and fascination. They interrupted the mundaneness of daily life, and, with the courtyards full of people and numerous side events taking place, they were spectacles somewhat reminiscent of major communitywide events. Raju repeated the dominant narrative that he was frightened of the insurgents—and undoubtedly he was—but this was a partial picture. Maoists aroused conflicting feelings, such as fascination (albeit fleeting) and fear, which they drew on in their attempt to attract recruits. Although Raju’s heart-mind was undeveloped at times, he displayed a maturity beyond his years. Dhan Kumari and Dil Maya referred to him as the “man of the house” and further reinforced this role when telling him to be a “sentry,” to “guard” me, or to make a reconnaissance trip to the shop. Dhan Kumari sometimes walked a thin line between what was seen as acceptable chastisement of Maoists and dangerous behavior. She commented on her at times erratic responses by explaining that she was “a person who says what is in my heart-mind.” At these times Raju carefully monitored her behavior. One day two Maoists asked Dhan Kumari to cook for them. She said she could give them rice and lentils but could not prepare food because she “was too tired and too old,” and so they should get it cooked elsewhere. One of them pointed his finger at her and spoke rudely and threateningly under his breath. She heard what he said and replied, “Why are you pointing your finger at me? If you are brave enough, shoot me, kill me now!” The other young man pulled his colleague away and said, “Mother, he is new; he doesn’t know how to behave.” They took the food and hastily left. Afterward Raju told a still furious Dhan Kumari not to talk to them like that as “it was dangerous.” In mid-afternoon Kamal and I prepared to leave. A Maoist-called bandh (general strike) was planned for the following day, and the Maoists told us to avoid traveling then because security would be high. Dhan Kumari and other villagers suggested that we stay for two more days; however, we were concerned that our continued presence placed her, and us, at risk. An hour

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beforehand, speaking in English, I said to Kamal, “Based on what you have seen and taking into account the risks to us and to the villagers, can you give me a one-word reply: do we stay or go?” “We go,” he replied unequivocally. A message was sent up to the senior officers, and shortly afterward we were told that we had permission to leave the village. As we left the courtyard—the first time for a day and a half—we got a sense of the Maoist presence in the village. The usual group of card-playing villagers in Sanu Maya’s courtyard was nowhere to be seen; in their place a group of insurgents cleaned their guns. Two female cadres sat on a straw mat writing in notebooks, another brushed her hair, and a man on the veranda stood with a radio up to his ear. In contrast, Prem Maya’s courtyard— which used to be full of children playing and neighbors visiting—was empty; the family, concerned about security, had recently relocated to Pokhara. Instead the courtyard was being used as the PLA’s temporary headquarters and a bomb-making “factory.” The usual sociability of the village paths was missing: few people were about, and those we saw greeted us in a subdued and constrained manner. Several people shouted out cheery greetings, but some felt strained. I passed Amar, the lama’s son, walking purposively toward the center of the village and exchanged a brief greeting with him. At the time I thought nothing of it but later would recall his purposeful and authoritative presence on the village paths that day. Shortly afterward I said a few words to his elderly father who was sitting on his veranda. At the tea shop Man Maya called out a jovial greeting, but it was incongruent with her wary expression. I replied but didn’t stop, and she returned to serving her customers. The journey through the village was relatively quick, as there was no lingering at water taps to chat, laugh, and joke or to catch up with people’s news over courtyard walls. As we approached the crossroads, I was surprised to see no sentries posted and wondered at the ease with which we were able to leave the village. After leaving the last houses behind, I realized that Kamal was not with me. I turned and saw he was talking intently with a young, somberly dressed young man who wore a black topi (Nepali men’s hat) and was attired like a civil servant. I stood and waited for a few minutes and then concerned that we had a long walk ahead of us, I called out in English, “Come on—it’s getting late and we don’t know this person. Let’s just go!” When he didn’t respond, I repeated the sentence and then turned and walked quickly down the path. A few minutes later Kamal caught up with me and said, “Didi, you didn’t understand what was going on back there. I didn’t stop to talk to that

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man; he stopped me. He was the sentry! He had a pistol in his jacket. He told me that we were allowed to leave the village but said that if we meet the army, we are to deny that we have met the PLA. We are to say that they are not in the village or anywhere in the area. Then he laughed and said to me, ‘Even if you tell them where we are, they won’t come near us!’ ” I replied, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. Was he okay?” “He was a bit threatening,” replied Kamal. “I have been waiting for them to threaten us all day, and it finally came.” A little farther on we met two Maoists walking rapidly toward the village. “Did you meet our friends?” they asked. We replied that we had, and they expressed puzzlement that we were leaving so late in the afternoon. They suggested that we return with them to the village and spend the evening with the PLA since “it would be enjoyable.” We explained that we had commitments in the town, and they reminded us to speak positively about their movement. As we started to leave, one of the men reconfirmed that they knew about my activities in the area by asking, “Didi, were you visiting about the day-care center again?” We excused ourselves and hurried on. At the trailhead we caught the last jeep out of the valley, and, as we neared Pokhara, we saw people rushing home in anticipation of the bandh. The security forces were on high alert, and we passed several army patrols as we traveled through the suburbs. I suddenly felt fearful, worrying that in some unfathomable way the security forces might know, just by looking at us, that we had spent the day with the People’s Liberation Army.

5 “Our Government Is the Maoists”

On a visit to the village health post in mid-2002 I chatted with a health worker about the impact of the conflict on people’s health. As we spoke, two young men strode in. One carried a large pack stuffed full of bandages. The other sat down in the patient’s chair and stated that he had a cold. He also pulled up his trousers to reveal a large wound on his lower leg. The health worker, who clearly knew him, asked if he had “been injured when running,” but he replied vaguely that he had “fallen off a ladder.” As his wound was healing, it didn’t require a dressing, but he was given medication for his cold and then abruptly left the room. We continued talking, and I quietly asked whether Maoists came for treatment. The health worker replied, “Many people come. We treat them all, and among those people there can be Maoists.” Lowering his voice, he added, “The patient I saw just a few minutes ago might be a Maoist.” It was only later that I realized that he had not taken the man’s personal details nor had he fi lled in the large patient register which lay open on his desk and into which he had meticulously written the personal details, medical history, diagnosis, and treatment of every other patient. A few minutes later Kamal overheard a conversation in the adjoining room. The man was chatting to two health workers about “numbers,” “platoons,” “the structure of our militia,” and “people who are no longer obeying the revolution.” When he was asked about a friend, he replied, “He has left the movement. He is a traitor now.” We were astonished that such a conversation could take place so openly, and this was our introduction to the degree of Maoist influence in the village. A few days later, after we became more familiar with local conditions, we realized that the unidentified patient was Moti Lal, the Maoist commander.

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Moti Lal was from a hamlet just outside Kwei Nasa. Despite the general lack of support in the village for the insurgents, he remained popular. He had a reputation for being fair and genuinely concerned about people’s welfare. He was diabetic, and, while the hardy “uplands dwelling person” designation that was sometimes applied to other Maoists was not relevant for Moti Lal who was sometimes ill and several times injured, he was frequently talked about in terms of being a “great escapist.” This category was one that I had only previously heard used in relation to a long-dead shaman who was believed to have escaped from jail by changing himself into a sheep. One day Dhan Kumari, who was especially fond of Moti Lal, told me about his latest escapade: “Last week the army was looking for him. When he heard that they were near his house, he quickly put on his wife’s clothes. He even put tika [vermillion powder] on his forehead! After that he put an empty water pot in a pi [carry ing basket] so that it looked as if he was going to fetch water, and then he walked out of the house and out of the courtyard, right past the soldiers. They didn’t realize who he was, and so he escaped!” On my next visit Dhan Kumari announced within minutes of my arrival that “Moti Lal is dead.” Clearly upset, she continued: He left his bag with his medications in a house as the army was chasing him. He wasn’t able to return to collect it and collapsed just outside the village of Ghate. He told a young boy of about ten who he was and asked for water, but the boy was frightened and didn’t give it to him and he died on the road shortly afterward. . . . He was a very good man. He understood our problems and he protected us. I know he was a Maoist, and I didn’t like his work, but I really liked him. I am worried about the new commander and how he will treat us. Despite their anticipated fears, the circumstances of Moti Lal’s death did not put villagers at risk. As the security forces searched for commanders, however, villagers were often unwittingly targeted. In a nearby village the death of a soldier resulted in a massive search operation by the security forces, which led to the deaths of the commander and three villagers wrongly accused of being Maoists. In both cases ambiguity (one of the victims happened to be wearing a T-shirt similar to the commander’s) and a callous disregard for life by the security forces resulted in the deaths of these civilians.

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By the time of my following visit, several months later, the villagers were getting used to Jitendra, the new commander. On my first evening, as we sat around the fire waiting for the BBC Nepali news ser vice to begin, Dhan Kumari explained: “Jitendra is a Tamu. He speaks Tamu Kwi and often walks around in full Tamu costume. He has painted slogans in Tamu Kwi and says that we are part of a Tamu Maoist area called Tamuwan. He is different from Moti Lal; he gives lots of punishments. You have seen him before as he was the person who rudely came into the house and took out my cooking pots when the Maoist army stayed two years ago.” Older villagers like Dhan Kumari initially found it hard to acknowledge that Tamu-mai were Maoists. By 2002 the evidence was so overwhelming that it was impossible to ignore, and by 2004 Kwei Nasa was under the authority of a Tamu commander. Jitendra’s ethnicity mattered little, however, because while he emphasized certain outer markers of Tamu ethnic identity, such as clothing and language (he asked Purna Maya about my ability to speak Tamu Kwi and my knowledge of Tamu cultural practices), he deemphasized the elements that mattered most to villagers. He was immune to the kinship pressures and allegiances that Tamu villagers often attempted to use, usually without success, with visiting Tamu Maoists. For example, it took some time for villagers to discover his clan, and he did not use clan-based kinship terminology or interactional patterns. While Jitendra was a Tamu and an “insider” to the Tamu majority, in reality he was much less of an insider than the Bahun Moti Lal. Jitendra’s outsider status was reinforced by his lack of local knowledge and his reputation for using punitive measures. Kinship relations are generally used to decrease the social distance and fear of others, but in this case they did not work. The type of authority the commander used and the type of social relationship he formed were the significant characteristics. Moti Lal had intimate knowledge of the village and made judgments based on detailed contextual information. This knowledge was important, but more important was his consistent, nonpunitive, sociable style of leadership, which was much less intimidating than that of the distant, authoritarian, and unpredictable Jitendra. It was, however, difficult to distinguish between individual commanders’ personalities and Maoist tactics. Jitendra was punitive, but his tenure may also have coincided with changed Party policies. Furthermore, as a Tamu commanding a predominantly Tamu area, he may have wanted to dispel any suggestion of favoritism, and so adopted a strict, distant demeanor. Unable to interact with Jitendra as a “Tamu,” Dhan Kumari and her circle refocused

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their attention on his parents, whom no one had met. Snippets of information gained about his family revealed their residence in a Tamu area of a nearby town. Jitendra might be an ambiguous Tamu, but his parents, located firmly in a Tamu “stronghold,” were not. Dhan Kumari and her friends felt a degree of compassion for Jitendra’s family, as they did for the kin of other Tamu Maoists, making comparisons between their fears for their children and those of the parents of offspring voluntarily or forcibly recruited into the Maoists. Neighbor Purna Kumari, referring to some young Tamu Maoists who visited her house, commented: I feel upset as I can’t advise them. I would particularly like to advise the young women as they are my “daughters” and they are on the wrong road, but I can’t say anything. I can only ask where they come from. They don’t always reply fully but give rather vague replies. They often say “far away” or the name of the district but nothing else. Even if they don’t say anything, I always know which district they are from by their accent. I think about their parents. Do they know or not? How they must worry for them. When I look at them, I feel it in my saF [heart-mind]; my saF cries for them, for those parents. Their children are the age of my children; how frightened they must be. We are moving to Pokhara, but my husband and I are only going because of our boys. They can be taken at any time, and I am terrified for them. What would happen to them? They might be sent to a remote district far from here. They might suffer a lot, they might be killed, and they might have to kill people. I tell them to stay at home and not walk around the village too much. If they go out in the evening, I worry until they are back home. When large groups of Maoists come, I am terrified. They could be taken at any time, and there would be nothing we could do. On the outside we look normal, but on the inside we are shaking. An older woman in another village talked about the aftermath of an ambush of the Maoists by the security forces and her thoughts about the parents of a dead insurgent: After the gunfire ended, other villagers and I came out of our houses. On the street in front of my house, I saw the body of a thirteen-year-

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old boy who was part of the dance troupe, his guts spilled out on the road. I knew him well and fed him many times. I felt very upset when I saw him. When we feed a dog, it is grateful and wags its tail, and he was like that. He was a Tamu from a far-off village and a member of a clan closely connected to mine. He would not tell me where he was from; sometimes he said one village and at other times he said another. I felt very upset about his death as I thought about his parents and how young he was and wondered when they would find out that he was dead. Dhan Kumari continued her story about Jitendra: Some weeks ago, a local man who works for an employment agency arrived in Mauju [a neighboring village] to collect a passport for an overseas visa application. The commander, who was in the house, arrested him. He tied his hands behind his back and took him through the jungle where he was badly bitten by leeches. Ram Bahadur [a local Maoist] followed them and asked the commander to release the man, as he felt that he shouldn’t have been arrested because he hadn’t done anything wrong. Jitendra released him, but the man was covered in so many leeches and bleeding so badly that his white shirt turned completely red. There was blood all over his body. Jitendra told the man to bring his brother, who is a well-known employment agent and has a shop at Kuido [the bazaar at the trailhead], to meet him. Ram Bahadur said to Jitendra, “They are not on good terms, so how can he bring him?” The man was lucky that Ram Bahadur stood up for him. He was released and left the area immediately, without completing his work. This incident highlighted the mediating role sometimes played by local Maoist activists. Ram Bahadur, who was said to be in charge of land reform, although Dhan Kumari was not sure of his exact position, protected the man by intervening. In fact, the information volunteered was not entirely accurate as the brothers were on relatively good terms. While Ram Bahadur’s actions may have been motivated by what he thought was unfair punishment, they were also designed to maintain good local relationships. As a Maoist Party member, he not only implemented Maoist policy but was also dependent on villagers’ discretion for protection. When the security forces

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patrolled the area, Ram Bahadur and other village-based Maoists hid. They relied on their own networks for warnings about the whereabouts of the security forces, but they were also dependent on the complicity, silence, and support of non-Maoist villagers who knew where they might be. In December 2005 Dev, a villager-turned-taxi driver drove to the trailhead at 5:00 a.m. As he passed through the outskirts of Pokhara, he was flagged down by Ram Bahadur. Ram Bahadur had spent the night hiding from the security forces that were patrolling the neighborhood before they left for the villages shortly after midnight. Crouching out of sight at the side of the road, he waited for the first vehicle to pass so that he could travel into the valley to warn his comrades. Dev picked him up partly because he did not want to be accused of refusing to provide support but also because Ram Bahadur was a local. Unlike the soldiers, who were outsiders, Dev and Ram Bahadur were interlinked by lengthy social relationships. On another occasion, Dhan Kumari told me, the army had searched the area, and Ram Bahadur had spent the day hiding up a tree. She commented, “Poor thing, he had no food. I felt sorry for him; he was very hungry.” Dhan Kumari was often critical of Ram Bahadur’s plans to abolish sharecropping. However, he was a villager; he had grown up in the area; and his family, who were all Maoists, were also farmers. For generations they had worked the land alongside other villagers. These long-standing ties to the land were paramount, and so farmer-cum-Maoist Ram Bahadur looked out for locals when they faced outsider commanders engaging in punitive practices; and villagers, through their silence, protected him during security-force searches. Although the anticipated fears of vengeful kin and neighbors (stated before the escalation of the conflict in 2001 and summarized in Chapter 2) largely did not transpire, personal animosities did in some cases became intertwined with Maoist politics. One day a Bahun woman named Gita from a nearby hamlet visited Dhan Kumari to talk about a sharecropping arrangement. Clearly distressed, she recounted how her husband had been accused of spying. A Maoist in her neighborhood had been arrested by the security forces. Five days previously Gita’s husband had said to the man that he didn’t believe he was a Maoist and challenged him to prove his Party membership. The man hit her husband with a chain, and her husband in turn stated that he would seek revenge within a week by either joining the Maoists or talking to the security forces. When the army arrived in the village, a rumor was

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circulating that Gita’s husband had been spotted with his face partly hidden by a scarf (so as to conceal his identity). Following the arrest he abruptly left the area, and most people assumed that he was the informer, a charge that was strongly denied by Gita, who stated, “My husband is a fool who drinks and says ridiculous things, but he is not an informer. The security forces visited by chance. It was nothing to do with my husband. Now he can’t come back to the village, and maybe I will have to leave also and all because he said stupid things. He is a fool, not an informer, but we cannot prove his innocence.” People listened sympathetically but said little. It was impossible to know who passed information to whom, and no one wanted to become involved in such a risky case. Afterward Dhan Kumari pointed out that while it might be true that Gita’s husband had just made inopportune threats when drunk, he should have known better. If he was not a spy, then he had shown himself to be someone who had not leaned how to live in such dangerous times. Unlike Raju, he was a-rhaba (incompetent, “conflict-naive”). Just as Maoist-villager relationships were complex, so too were security force–villager interrelationships. Since many local men serve in foreign armies (especially in the British and Indian armies but also in the Royal Nepal Army), it was never entirely possible to dismiss the soldiers as merely hardened killers. While locals were extremely cautious in their dealings with the security forces, with good reason, they also recognized to a degree that this dangerous occupation was shared by many of their menfolk. Dhan Kumari’s fear of soldiers was tempered by the compassion she sometimes felt for them. One day when the Maoists had mined the main path to the village, she worried about the fate of a polite, youthful soldier she had met the previous day at a checkpost. “Usually they call me ‘mother,’ ” she said. “So I was surprised when he called me by the English word ‘mummy.’ He would have been better to have stayed at home with his mummy,” she commented. My work with human-rights lawyers influenced my often negative perceptions of the security forces as did my encounters at checkposts. On one occasion on the outskirts of Pokhara our taxi was stopped by a drunken, armed policeman who pushed his gun into the taxi and across Kamal’s chest as he incoherently questioned us about our journey. On other occasions I watched members of the security forces carelessly conduct searches with little respect for people or their possessions. These perceptions of trigger-happy soldiers who had little regard for the civilian population, however, were challenged by an experience in a village in neighboring district.

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Figure 4. Maoist slogan (calling for the dissolution of the royal army and the forming of a national army) that has been crossed out by the security forces who have inserted the words “terrorist thieves” (referring to the Maoists).

Pamche had been the site of a major encounter between the Maoists and the security forces after which an army camp was set up above the village. The soldiers frequently patrolled through Pamche, and, although villagers could not speak freely about their presence, they were clearly concerned about aspects of the soldiers’ behavior. Rumors held that some drank alcohol while on-duty, and on one particular visit I observed two soldiers with guns casually strewn across their knees drinking alcohol. On another occasion I was asked by a young officer on arrival in the village to produce identification. We chatted briefly with him as he checked my passport, and we discovered he was a Bahun from Kathmandu who was the camp second-in-command. The following morning we departed for another village. After about an hour’s walk we met a combined army and armed police-force patrol led by the officer. He once again stopped me, and I expected to be asked to leave the area immediately. Instead, to my astonish-

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ment he said (in Nepali), “You speak Gurung [Tamu]; I am trying to learn it. Can you please check some of my sentences?” In halting Tamu Kwi he recited three basic sentences and then said, “Are these all right? Will the villagers be pleased if I speak these sentences?” As he spoke, I noticed that the display screen on his radio flashed “no signal.” Aware that I was standing beside a uniformed soldier in exposed open country—who was out of radio contact—I was keen to move on but not before confirming that his sentences were correct and would be warmly received. I watched the patrol move swift ly off trail and climb rapidly up a steep slope. For the first time I fully appreciated the vulnerability of the security forces who were susceptible to ambush at any moment. I was also impressed that a young Bahun officer from Kathmandu was making such an effort to develop his relationship with the local population. Back in Kwei Nasa, however, people were experiencing a different association with the security forces. As the area was under a Tamu commander, Tamu men experienced extra scrutiny from the security forces, sometimes with severe implications. One day I visited a villager who had been beaten by the security forces. Som Bahadur was tending his buffalo when I arrived. As he limped over, I noticed he was badly bruised and had cuts and scratches all over his body. Round his neck were multiple threads to keep his souls leaving his body owing to the shock of being accused of being the commander, arrested, and beaten We each added a thread around his neck and then placed our hands momentarily on his head and shoulders while saying shi shi. While villagers worshipped the gods, godlings, and ancestors as usual in the hope of a better life and for protection against diseases and other forms of misfortune, they had not created new rituals for the changed situation. Those who have had a bad fright, such as Som Bahadur, could ask Kancha Pachyu or another shaman to retrieve their lost souls, and friends and family could provide threads to prevent the souls from leaving in the first place. Som Bahadur explained what had happened: My father and I went to Khoda to pay a fine to release my brother-inlaw who was being held by the Maoists because he was having a relationship with a married woman who became pregnant. Her husband complained to the Maoists, and they arrested my brother-in-law and demanded that he pay 30,000 rupees (approximately $372). That day the two families were to meet the Maoist commander to sort out the

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problem. The meeting hadn’t started when the army arrived. I was sitting beside the commander, and, when the soldiers came, he escaped. One minute he was there and the next he was gone! I don’t know how he managed to leave so quickly. He left his bag behind, which contained a book of donation receipts and a mobile phone. When the soldiers entered the house, they found the bag beside me. They searched me and discovered 2,350 rupees, which was part of the fine. Then they accused me of being the commander. I was beaten from 12 o’clock until 5 o’clock. I thought I was going to die. I didn’t give up hope that I would be released since I was innocent, but I was very frightened. The villagers and my father didn’t know what to do. In the end they decided that they would go in a large group to talk to the soldiers and explain that I was not a Maoist. After a lot of discussion the soldiers believed them, and I was released. In Som Bahadur’s story the escapist Maoist commander character reappears, as Jitendra (like Moti Lal) by his quick actions evaded arrest. This narrative also highlights the locals’ lack of agency regarding the security forces. While negotiation was possible with the Maoists, it was much harder with the security forces. Villagers stated that they “only shout, ask questions, and give orders.” It was, as people said, “a one-way conversation.” Som Bahadur was innocent, but it was extremely difficult for the villagers to approach the soldiers to establish his innocence. Although this experience demonstrated that it was possible, albeit difficult, to negotiate with the soldiers, it did nothing to revise the lack of agency that villagers felt regarding the security forces. The Maoists demanding to come into peoples’ homes for food was the worst experience of the insurgency for most villagers and was considered to be an “invasion” of private space. While providing food drew on people’s limited resources, what was most horrifying was the risk at which people were placed. Villagers were very aware that a Dalit man and woman in a neighboring village had been killed by the security forces during such a mealtime visit. Despite these transgressions, however, as the revolutionaries warmed themselves by the fire, sat on the veranda repairing their clothes, or cleaned their guns, they participated in the social life of the village, albeit one that had been significantly reconfigured by their presence. By sharing experiences, conversations, and jokes—albeit warily—villagers attempted to

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gain protection against Maoist violence. When dealing with the security forces, however, villagers did not have such opportunities. Interactions with the security forces were at the most basic level and consisted of house-tohouse searches, abrupt questioning, and requests for firewood, snacks, and alcohol, which might or might not be paid for. In these interactions the villagers had virtually no possibility for influence. While Maoists penetrated the most intimate realms of the house by appropriating the space, the soldiers infi ltrated intimate space by treating it with a lack of respect. When conducting searches, they frequently rummaged through personal effects, opened trunks, and searched bedrooms, kitchens, shrine areas, verandas, sheds, kitchen gardens, and outhouses. When I asked a villager what the worst thing was about the army searching his home, he replied, “They didn’t respect our possessions, they searched everywhere, they flung things around, they broke things, and they threw our possessions out of the house.” In other instances the searches were conducted courteously, but dangerous demands were made. In my friend Laxmi’s village her neighbor made the following comments: “The soldiers searched all over the village, including in every house. They looked everywhere and opened every book and copy belonging to the young people. They asked some of us women to put poison in the Maoists’ food when we cook for them. I said to them, ‘We are just little people, we can’t do that.’ ” At times the Maoists held mass meetings at which they announced new policies and upcoming events. One day they ran a program at the local high school where they asked the teachers if they had any criticism of them. Most of the teachers said nothing, but the outspoken science teacher—who seemed not to have learned how to live in dangerous times—stated that he had heard that babies had been born in the forests to Maoist women and left to die. The Maoists said nothing, but shortly afterward they arrested the teacher in one of the tea shops in the village. They took him to the lower secondary school where they assembled all the students and teachers and humiliated him by blackening his face and putting a garland of shoes around his neck (a deeply insulting gesture as feet are considered to be polluting). Horrified, the other teachers looked away. At other times the news at mass meetings was chilling, as on the occasion when Jitendra announced that they had suddenly been called away by the Party and so did not have time to carry out a planned killing. Shocked villagers wondered who he was referring to, and the person who thought he might be the target left immediately for Pokhara. Despite such unsettling news, Chandra Bahadur commented

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that generally such meetings were useful because they were informative, prepared people for upcoming Maoist organized events, and let them know about the latest Maoist policies. He added, “It would be useful if the army would hold similar meetings since we never know what they are planning to do next.” Although the ACAP staff discontinued their development activities in 2002, villagers continued to run the day-care center and other small-scale initiatives with ACAP’s support from a distance. Training sessions continued but were held out of the area. Dil Maya attended a micro-credit training course in the Tarai that she thoroughly enjoyed. She returned to Kwei Nasa with a photograph album full of pictures chronicling her trip, her fellow students, and her recreational elephant rides. In late 2004 Jitendra banned meetings held by the ACAP-formed committees. The committees were disbanded and the members were to resign. The ban made the management of the day-care center and other development activities, such as the horticultural nursery and forest conservation, more complicated. Jitendra stated that things could be run “in the traditional manner,” leaving it up to the locals to interpret the meaning. No one was sure what exactly he meant, but it seemed that while ad hoc “committee” meetings could be held, the bureaucracy relating to the formal committees, such as minute taking, official scheduling of meetings in designated buildings, and so forth, was to cease. Local leader Chandra Bahadur copied and hid some of the official records of the development committees. When Jitendra ordered Chandra Bahadur to open the Fathers’ Committee house so that he could burn the records, he was unaware that copies had already been taken. The day-care center committee secretly held their monthly meeting inside Purna Maya’s house which they locked from the inside but became so frightened that they decided to comply with Jitendra’s orders. The committee members wrote the required resignation letters to ACAP, but ACAP did not accept them. This ambiguity enabled villagers to meet the Maoists’ demands yet retain their links with the project. It also provided a measure of protection because it deflected the blame for lack of compliance away from the villagers and onto the absent development project. Equally ambiguous was the financial management of the day-care center. Officially, it was a village project, yet it remained funded by ACAP and everyone, including Jitendra, knew this. As long as this fact was not openly acknowledged, the deception was ignored. However, it caused deep unease among the teachers

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and committee members, who felt that this misdemeanor could at any time be brought into the open with negative repercussions for the staff, the committee, and the school. In early 2005 I received funding from a small international trust to build a health clinic for children and to fund a second teacher and a helper’s post for the day-care center. When I told the committee we had received money to build the clinic, Purna Maya replied, “You have to negotiate with the government, and our government is the Maoists.” My decision to apply for permission from the Nepal government’s district health office in Pokhara as well was dismissed by some committee members as totally unnecessary and by others as quaintly amusing. “Why do you want to ask permission from them?” they asked “We haven’t seen them for years!” We wrote a letter to Jitendra asking if we could meet to discuss the planned building. He didn’t reply, and so Kamal, Chandra Bahadur, and I set off early one morning to search for him. Before we left the village, I made Kamal go through his bag to check that there was nothing in it the Maoists might find suspicious. I also went through mine. I was based at the time at a British university and was aware that the British government was providing the RNA with what they described as nonlethal military assistance (for example, helicopters, aircraft, radios, night-vision goggles, and other equipment in addition to infrastructural support). I had therefore carefully taken all UK identification out of my bag but had retained my Irish passport because I wanted no misunderstanding about my nationality if we were questioned by the Maoists. As we walked up to where we were to meet Chandra Bahadur, I commented to myself that compared with my feelings of two years ago I was not frightened at the prospect of meeting a Maoist commander—until I noticed that my hands were shaking. Then shortly after we left Kwei Nasa, Kamal’s mobile phone, which didn’t usually work in the village, suddenly went off. I felt the last thing we needed when walking along the steep mountain paths looking for the commander was a non-local receiving phone calls. I shouted at him to turn it off immediately and give it to me. I checked that it was off and put it at the bottom of my bag. It was, I decided, safer there since our meeting with the PLA two years previously showed us that Kamal was much more likely than me to be considered a spy. After half an hour of walking we arrived at a fork in the trail and sat down to wait because we didn’t know which route the two messengers Chandra Bahadur had sent ahead had taken. Looking up at the cliffs above

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us, Chandra Bahadur told us that they had restarted honey hunting three years ago after a gap of twenty years. Honey hunting, for which the Tamumai are renowned, is a dangerous activity because of the location of the hives, and Chandra Bahadur described the safety measures that had to be put in place with people above and below the cliff when the honey was being gathered. After a while we walked on and eventually stopped at a house that had a good vantage point overlooking the valley. It was a lovely, sunny day, and we sat and chatted with the houseowner, who offered us buffalo milk. He explained that recently a young boy who had been forcibly recruited by the Maoists managed to escape in the area and was hidden by one of his elderly neighbors in his house for sixteen days. The boy finally managed to make his way to Pokhara, where he surrendered to the security forces. He was briefly interrogated and then sent back to his home in a faroff district. Shortly afterward we spotted one of the messengers on the path above us. Our host escorted us to the gate, where we chatted for another few minutes. Once out of earshot the messenger told us that he had met approximately thirty-five Maoists in the house just down the road. He had been stopped by the sentries and questioned about the purpose of his visit. Well used to the necessity of having a good alibi ready, he had quickly launched into a complex story about wanting to buy a buffalo. The commander was not there; he had gone to another village, and the other man, who lived in the area, stayed to pass on the message. In late afternoon we walked back to the village as a spectacular sun set over the horizon. Chandra commented, “He is the commander; he won’t come when we ask him to. He will come in his own time.” A week later Dhan Kumari and Purna Maya met Jitendra in the village and received permission to build the clinic. He stated some conditions, however: no American money was to be used (the United States provided lethal military assistance—that is, assault rifles—to the government forces) nor was funding to come from an official aid agency or international bilateral organization, and the project was to be sustainable and transparent. By September the clinic was half built, but the teachers were concerned about the scrutiny that Maoists passing through en route to other destinations were giving to the day-care center. On several occasions the teachers were asked how much money they earned and who was funding the project. To provide a measure of protection we prepared a letter describing the center’s management and the financial support arrangements.

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In the following months Maoist attention turned to children in the primary and secondary schools, and under Jitendra’s leadership the rebels rounded up hundreds of children from schools in the area and forced them to walk, dressed only in their school uniforms, for two days to a remote village for educational programs. Villagers in Kwei Nasa were forewarned, and parents kept their children at home. The children, who were cold and tired but unhurt, were released when an army helicopter hovered above the village on the third day. In December, when large numbers of insurgents were in the village, many parents kept their children at home. I attended the annual prize-giving at the primary and lower secondary school, at which only half the pupils were present. Dil Maya frequently kept Raju at home, and Damar no longer visited. Three years on, Raju was fully aware of the realities of village life in the People’s War. One evening Dhan Kumari, talking about the Maoists, said, “They ask children where their fathers are and if they have gold, guns, and other things in their houses. Nowadays you have to teach the children what to say.” I asked Raju, who was sitting beside her playing with a toy car, “Have the Maoists asked you what you have in your house?” “Yes, they have,” he replied. “I always say we don’t have any of those things.” He then recited the answers he gave, in which he denied the existence of guns and gold and downplayed the number of possessions owned by the family. On another occasion he boasted that he knew “what answer to give to any questions they ask,” and he was proud that, unlike his elder brother who only visited the village occasionally, he was viewed as rhaba (streetwise, competent). Raju also attempted to keep members of the wider community safe. One day Dil Maya told me that when he and his friends were sitting at the rest-place below our hamlet, they had warned a Tamu youth, who they assumed was visiting from another village, that the Maoists were in the area. The youth promptly replied that he was a Maoist! Damar, now a Pokhara-based teenager, was less safe than village-based Raju. On one of his earlier visits I noticed him wearing combat trousers (which the government had told people not to wear as they could be mistaken for Maoists), but when Kamal and I told him not to wear them, he replied, “They are my father’s. When he was on leave [from his job in the Gulf], he wore them and the Maoists stayed in our house. They thought he was a Gurkha soldier, and so he took them off as otherwise they would think that we were rich and ask for lots of money. The Maoists will know that I am too young to be a Gurkha; so there’s no problem.” Kamal and I replied that

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he was not so much in danger from the Maoists as the security forces who might think that he was a Maoist. He replied that he did not have another pair of trousers. When we told Dhan Kumari, she also told him to change his clothes and commented, “He doesn’t live here and he doesn’t understand the dangers so well.” Shortly afterward he found a change of clothing. In late 2005 Maoists arrived at Chandra Bahadur’s home. They told him that he had to attend a meeting of the Tamu Mukti Morcha (Tamu Liberation Front) in Khoda, a day’s walk away. He was escorted there by Maoists with concealed weapons. When he arrived, he discovered that local leaders from all across the area had been assembled. In front of thousands of people, he was garlanded as a member of the Tamu Mukti Morcha central committee along with eleven other unsuspecting people. Chandra Bahadur was very taken aback and subsequently asked if he could resign. He stated that he would help the Maoists informally but did not want to be an official member of the front. The event at Khoda was broadcast on the radio, as was his name, and he had to report to the army headquarters in Pokhara to explain what had happened. In fear, Chandra Bahadur relocated to the safety of an urban neighborhood. He occasionally visited the village. During one of his visits a colleague, who is trained in conflict negotiation, and I spoke to him secretly. My colleague tried to assist Chandra Bahadur in developing strategies to negotiate with the Maoists. He was so intimidated, however, that he felt unable to approach them to begin negotiations. His usual joie de vivre was gone, and he only left his house accompanied by a “bodyguard” (a Dalit neighbor). Fortunately, the peace process started six months later, and Chandra Bahadur returned to the village. As the confl ict continued, strangers moved in and out of the village on a daily basis. Some were Maoists, some were soldiers masquerading as Maoists, others were spies masquerading as villagers, and others still were thieves masquerading as Maoists. Sometimes Maoists trying to look like something other than themselves also passed through, as Dhan Kumari explained: One day I was sitting on the veranda preparing vegetables for the evening when a man came along the path carry ing an injured Bahun woman dressed in Maoist combat dress. She couldn’t walk as she was paralyzed, and so he was carry ing her in a pi [a large carry ing basket]. They were going to town to get treatment. Some weeks later they returned. She was still paralyzed, but she wasn’t dressed in uniform

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any longer; instead she was wearing a very smart kurta, and he was wearing a topi. They were trying to look as if they weren’t Maoists, but I think it was obvious to everyone that they were! He carried her through the village and up into the forest, but I have no idea where they went after that. We never saw them again. Sometimes the Maoists held mobile clinics for the PLA in the large forest above Kwei Nasa. They had their own health workers and medical supplies, but occasionally they asked the health post staff for medicines. On one occasion the forceful nurse midwife was overheard refusing to supply medicines: “There isn’t enough for the villagers. I can’t give you any,” she said. This attitude was risky, but it worked because the Maoist health worker got out his mobile phone and found medications elsewhere. Sometimes, however, the Maoists raided health posts, and on occasion they did so in Kwei Nasa. Dhan Kumari continued talking about Maoists she had recently encountered: “The Maoist woman who stayed in the house when their army visited—the talkative one who wore the woolen hat—has surrendered to the army. I don’t know why she did that. The other girl visited a few months ago and stopped at the gate to ask me if I remembered her.” She laughed: “At first I didn’t remember her, but I thought it was safer to say ‘yes,’ and so that’s what I said. Another time the Bahun from eastern Nepal who wore the blue track suit stopped and asked if you had visited recently. I said that you had but that you were now out of the country.” I was taken aback when I heard that Pragati—who appeared to be deeply committed to the Maoists—had surrendered and wondered what the circumstances were. Dil Maya had some additional details. “She didn’t surrender; she married a man from this area and has left the Maoists. Nobody knows where she is now,” she commented. Motivations for both joining and leaving the Maoists were many. Some choices were clearly considered, while others were serendipitous and still others were due to various contingencies. I never saw or heard of Pragati again and have always wondered about the exact circumstances of her departure from the Maoists. Without additional information it was impossible to know. Despite the ongoing presence of the war, the most distressing events in the village at that time were caused by natural disasters. In the monsoon a man that I knew well—who had moved out of the village to live near the Pokhara road adjacent to the river—and his four young children were

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drowned when the river burst its banks. Some months later the twenty-yearold daughter of one of the shamans was killed, and another villager was injured in a landslide. The man survived because his knee was sticking out of the rubble; but the girl died because none of her body was showing, and, despite frantic searching by her family and neighbors, she wasn’t found alive. Previously people had told me that the souls of those who have died bad (conflict-related) deaths and who had not been properly sent to the afterworld were roaming the land and creating misfortune for locals. I therefore wondered how people might attribute causation to these events. Initially they seemed to be unconnected to the war—and the landslide was unconnected as it was believed to have happened because of the nonperformance of an ancestral ritual—but later I realized that the river-related deaths were connected. According to Sanu Maya (and others), the drowning had occurred because “people from different castes went to a festival at a sacred lake, which caused pollution and made the god of the lake angry. As water from the lake flows into our river, the god caused the river to burst its banks and sweep people away.” What Sanu Maya meant but didn’t say was that “different castes” was a euphemism for “Dalits” whose presence she (and others) believed had caused the pollution. For some Tamu-mai the Dalit Maoist entry into their homes was a serious violation (and those who found it most unacceptable sprinkled sacred water around the house afterward). They could not prevent Dalit Maoists from entering their houses, nor could they stop the Maoists championing the cause of the Dalits, but in examples like this their continued perception of the polluting power of Dalits found expression. The usual talk of ghosts and witches was overshadowed by talk (and the reality) of armed groups moving silently along the village paths at night. They didn’t carry torches, which made it impossible to see who was who. The Maoists were said to sometimes crawl, while the soldiers always walked. Dhan Kumari recalled seeing a Maoist leader walk at the head of a group of insurgents carry ing an umbrella while his subordinates moved forward close to the ground. Doors were banged at night, and people were unsure whether the perpetrators were human or supernatural, locals or strangers. One night all our neighbors’ doors were banged and footsteps were heard on verandas. Those already in bed wondered whether this was the work of ghosts, Maoists, soldiers, or thieves. “We stayed up late last night and that is why our door was not banged,” commented Dhan Kumari. No conclusion

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was reached, but such occurrences undermined people’s already diminished sense of security in their own homes and their safety at night. One day when I was taking a photograph of men repairing the bamboo platform at the edge of Dhan Kumari’s courtyard, we heard a gunshot in the distance. The men paid no attention and continued working. Neighbor Sanu Maya, who was taking in the morning sun while watching the men, commented casually, “Oh, the war,” and returned to chatting with Dil Maya. I remembered Dhan Kumari’s frightened reaction to the shot, recalled in Chapter 2, and noted how “normal” distant gunshots had become. The sound of shooting close by would have prompted people to hurry indoors to take cover, but distant firing, previously the source of much fear, now occurred almost unnoticed. Although people have long feared thieves on the paths to town, stealing within villages was relatively rare. Now came a perceived and real increase in theft and lawlessness. People feared Maoists, but they were much more frightened of criminals who masqueraded as Maoists. It was, however, sometimes difficult to separate one from the other. As I walked through the village one day, Purna Maya, who lives with her elderly sister, Shoba Kumari, called me over. She leaned close and said: Last month I nearly died of fear. One evening a handsome young man who spoke nicely and looked like a Tamu came to our house. He said, “Last time I came I was with the Maoists. I have now left the movement and am going home to my village.” I’m not sure if we met him previously as so many of them have visited our house. I gave him tea and snacks and he left. During the day we saw him wandering around the streets near the day-care center. In the early evening I gave him a meal, and we went to the Mothers’ Committee house to watch [battery charged] television. When we returned home later in the evening, he reappeared as we were getting ready for bed. He had an alarm clock that he held up to his mouth, pretending to be talking on a mobile phone. He told me that I should sleep inside the house instead of sleeping in my bedroom off the veranda. He said that four heavily armed Maoists were in the nearby shop and were coming to the house. They were very dangerous and could steal everything. I said that I was going to sleep in my usual place and went to bed. After I left, he entered the house and told my sister not to make any noise and to give him her necklace. She had already taken it off

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and hidden it because she was suspicious of him. He pretended to talk on the phone again; she was unsure what he was doing, as he talked about calling the heavily armed Maoists to the house. He pulled out a gun, which may or may not have been real. After a long while my sister managed to leave the room and shouted for help from the neighbors. They came, and he ran away but not before he left one of his sandals. We heard the next day that he bought new flip-flops in Lamagaun. When we told the Maoists what had happened, they said, “That’s all right. When we went to your house last month she [my sister] wouldn’t give us food, so that’s fine.” They didn’t support us at all, and, even though the thief had not traveled far, they didn’t chase him. There is no security now, and there are so many groups of people wandering around—the Maoists, thieves who pretend to be Maoists, soldiers who pretend to be Maoists. How can we work out who they are? Through a mixture of naiveté, social uncertainty, and an attempt to depend on nonexistent kinship ties, Purna Maya and her sister allowed a thief into their house. However, they managed to redeem themselves and demonstrated that they had learned how to live in unstable times. They fell for the ruse, but not entirely, as they concealed their jewelry and alerted their neighbors. Villagers like Purna Maya perceived Maoist justice to be partial and related to one’s standing vis-à-vis the insurgents. The Maoists often apprehended those who posed as insurgents and punished them (usually with a severe beating). In this case they paid no attention because they perceived that Purna Maya and her sister had refused them food and therefore did not warrant support. Purna Maya and Shoba Kumari argued that this was not so, that the door was unopened because elderly Shoba Kumari was alone and unsure of who was outside. They pointed out that they had good reason to be cautious. The resolution of conflict before the escalation of the insurgency was dealt with by the VDC or the police in the case of more serious crimes. By 2005 disputes were handled by an ad hoc “committee,” which usually consisted of representatives of the disbanded committees, such as the VDC, the Conservation Management Committee, the Mothers’ Committee, and the Fathers’ Committee. To the uninformed the collection of people present appeared to be random, whereas in fact it was not. I watched such a gathering attempt to resolve a family feud in December 2005. A Tailor named Tek

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Bahadur who was in a dispute with his family burned his own house and the adjoining house belonging to his brother Lal Prasad. Lal Prasad had recently returned from working in Qatar and had upgraded his sewing machines. Both houses were destroyed, and the livelihoods of the families seriously threatened because sewing machines, fabric, and the entire store of grain were destroyed. The accused was placed under lock and key in the half-built VDC office. The following morning the ad hoc committee, backed up by a large group of villagers, gathered under a tree. The choice of location was notable as, by gathering under a tree instead of in the usual office meeting rooms, the “committee” demonstrated that they were managing the dispute in the “traditional manner,” permitted by Jitendra. The accused was asked to present his side of the story, but he said little other than to deny the charge. The aggrieved family members put forward their case, accompanied by loud accusations, wailing, and screaming. The wronged brother’s wife, Binta, was restrained as she attempted to hit the accused. Once the accusations were finished and justice was awaited, the “committee” floundered. No one was in charge, and those gathered were unable to reach any conclusion. The person who would have taken the lead, Chandra Bahadur, had relocated to Pokhara by then. Eventually the “hearing” became chaotic, with those who could shout loudest having the greatest say. At one stage the opinions of a young man (to my knowledge not a member of any “committee”) almost prevailed, and the accused narrowly missed being taken to the edge of the village and expelled. Members of the Mothers’ and Fathers’ Committees intervened, and the young man was overruled. In the end the family requested that the accused be returned to the lock-up and no decision taken until his elder sister arrived from town the following day. There was talk of the VDC secretary coming to the village, but this possibility was remote since he had been chased out by the Maoists and would be in danger if he reappeared. Despite the arbitrary and inconclusive nature of the inquiry, consensus had been achieved on one point. None of those to whom I spoke wanted the Maoists to become involved, and nobody discussed taking the case to a Maoist tribunal. I heard several people comment that they hoped Jitendra would not suddenly appear during the meeting. If he did, he would take charge and make decisions based on limited local information and informed by his own sense of justice, which often differed from majority local perceptions. Inevitably the punishment would involve a severe beating followed by humiliation

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(a garland of shoes placed around the neck and the face smeared with soot). It would also involve quick decisions about whether or not the accused could remain in the village, despite the most important decision makers not being present. Local Maoists, such as Ram Bahadur, might be able to represent village sensibilities and exert a degree of pressure, but this was uncertain. What some of those gathered did not realize was that in addition to the openly identified Maoists like Ram Bahadur there were other Party members whose identities were (to a greater or lesser extent) concealed. In fact there was almost always a communication channel to the Maoists at any village-wide event. Peoples’ concerns about the appearance of Jitendra and his summary justice were based on events of the previous year. One day a male health worker and the nurse midwife, who has been in Kwei Nasa for many years, argued. The male worker insulted the nurse midwife, who responded by slapping him on the face, following which he pushed her. The commander unexpectedly arrived and the opponents were separated. After hearing the details Jitendra told both staff members to admit they were wrong and apologize. The nurse midwife did so, but the male health worker refused. The Maoists beat him harshly and put soot on his face and a garland of shoes around his neck. They then gathered the members of the Health Committee and of the Mothers’ and Fathers’ Committees (this event occurred before they had disbanded) and told them to decide whether or not the workers could remain at their posts. It was up to the villagers to decide, and, if no decision was reached, the Maoists would destroy the health post. The commander left. The committee members wanted to retain both staff members but were worried about making a decision that might displease Jitendra. After a lengthy discussion they decided that both could remain at their posts. Some days later they became frightened because they feared the repercussions of supporting someone whom the Maoists had punished. They feared being punished themselves for their decision and the health post being destroyed anyway. They subsequently sacked the male health worker, even though they knew that the position would remain unfilled. When I questioned Purna Maya and Chandra Bahadur, they said that they regretted the loss of the health worker but had no choice as they could not risk antagonizing the Maoists. It is unclear whether retaining the health worker would have been negatively evaluated; however, uncertainty and the anticipation of punishment led the committee to make this drastic decision. Consequently the

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health post remained minimally staffed throughout the remainder of the conflict. Villagers in need of medical assistance had to make journeys to a neighboring village several hours away or go to Pokhara for medical care. King Gyanendra staged a coup in February 2005 and assumed direct power. In November 2005 the Maoists and seven mainstream political parties agreed on a program to restore democracy. Within the framework of the understanding the Maoists committed themselves to multiparty democracy, and the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) accepted the Maoist demand for elections to a Constituent Assembly. The SPA planned a four-day nationwide general strike for April 2006, and the Maoists called a cease-fire in the Kathmandu valley.

6 “All We Need Is Peace”: The People’s Movement and Its Aftermath

Strikes and protests against royal rule culminated in a People’s Movement (Jan Andolan) in April 2006 led by a wide range of civil-society organizations and political parties. In response the government put Kathmandu under curfew. On the first morning I stood with a friend and some locals watching the Ring Road (which circles Kathmandu) as a group of protestors on the other side placed obstacles in the middle. The Ring Road was a key boundary since the curfew was only enforced inside it. The protestors and the police eyed each other as the time of the curfew approached. Ten minutes after it had started, the police decided to act, enthusiastically encouraged by the protestors who were taunting them from less than 100 meters up the road. When the police charged to disperse the protestors, they promptly ran through the alleys and reappeared unperturbed immediately opposite our little lane. They laughed at the police, who had now gone 50 meters in the wrong direction. Soon the police turned their attention on our small group. They whistled and waved their batons as they approached, whereupon we withdrew deep into the alley. Shortly afterward an elderly woman approached the road and did not break her stride. Some people told her she should not cross, but others suggested it might be all right because she was an older woman; regardless, we were concerned. On seeing her a policeman blew loudly on his whistle. She kept walking but called out to him that her house was on the other side of the road. Another policeman drew his rifle up to a shooting position. The women continued walking resolutely across the road. Passing very close to the armed policemen, she reiterated that her house was on the

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other side. He looked as if he wanted to stop her but hesitated. She reached the other side safely and quickly disappeared into a small lane. In the alleyways inside the Ring Road people gathered, walked between neighborhoods, and tested the boundaries of the security forces’ control. These people were not participating in overt demonstrations or protests but rather were exercising a subtle form of civil disobedience by refusing to observe the curfew fully. While in some parts of the city tires were burning, police were firing rounds of rubber bullets and tear gas at protestors; in the less overtly contested areas people expressed their defiance through such everyday acts as crossing roads, opening shops, gathering to share news, and challenging the security forces’ control of the roads. We watched a policeman intercept a group of young men who attempted to cross the Ring Road. He then raised his rifle high above his head and brought it down with crushing force on one of the youth’s backs. The young man managed to duck the second assault, and the group ran back into the lane. Throughout the incident we intentionally positioned ourselves as witnesses, refusing to look away or be intimidated by the policeman’s actions. By witnessing we thought his violence would diminish, but our presence seemed to have no impact whatsoever on his actions. He then continued to enforce the curfew by ordering us away. The ending of a curfew (usually in mid-evening) brought people out of their homes and onto the streets, mainly on foot but also on motorbikes and in cars. Initially people stayed at the edges of the main roads, retreating quickly to doorways and remaining watchful. Sometimes the mood was quite confrontational, and the police were at times deliberately provocative. One evening in an area well out of our neighborhood a truck fi lled with armed police roared up and stopped abruptly. Policemen poured out of the back, charging even as they jumped out. The charge was directed at a group of protestors who were trying to set fire to a tire in the middle of the road, but everyone, ourselves included, quickly scattered. The police removed the tire and left. People reappeared but not to protest. The mood had instantly changed. One minute large numbers of people were milling about, and the next minute everyone dispersed looking for a safe place; moments later, after the police had gone, people calmly walked through the intersection again. On the third day of the curfew in Kathmandu a major confrontation took place between protesters and the security forces in a suburb on the eastern side of the city. Reports from the incident were shocking: police used

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live bullets to disperse the protestors, doctors were beaten as they tried to treat patients, and hundreds were injured, arrested, and terrorized. I decided to join a friend and a group of local NGO workers on a visit to the area. The debris of the confrontation littered the road. Huge armored vehicles partially blocked it, and security personnel, primarily the armed police in full riot gear, lounged next to them. U.N. human-rights monitors mingled with the security personnel, and people moved back and forth across what had been a battle line the day before. I talked for a few moments with a Japanese fi lm crew, who formed part of a large number of foreign reporters who had positioned themselves at the intersection. Their Delhi-based lead correspondent had a degree in anthropology, and we chatted briefly about shared research interests. Normally this part of the Ring Road is a busy, high-speed intersection. On that day there were almost no vehicles on the road. The street, blackened by burned tires and tear gas and fi lled with bricks and stone, was juxtaposed with everyday activities: people shopping, a man pushing an ice-cream cart, and locals out and about after four days of curfew confinement. The bright sun and crowds, however, could not disguise the tense atmosphere and the strange scene of dozens of demonstrators’ abandoned plastic sandals lining the intersections and alleys. A man dressed in fatigues, wearing a helmet, and carry ing a large rifle suddenly stepped into the middle of the road and stopped an oncoming car. As he turned, we realized he was in fact carry ing a stick and wearing a T-shirt painted to look like fatigues and an old motorcycle helmet. He carried on, walking over to the police, and appeared to advise them on the tactics of shooting. The policemen laughed at him, and he walked away. While clearly he had mental-health problems, his mimicry of the situation threw the scale of what was happening into stark relief. We crossed the road and walked down an alleyway littered with abandoned sandals. The curtains were blowing through the smashed windows of a medical center that had suspended normal operations to give first-aid treatment to the protestors. But the patients and the medics who treated the injured and the police who entered the second-floor clinic to beat the doctors and the wounded were all gone. On the other side of the intersection the staff of a clinic told us how the police tried to prevent them assisting the wounded. Human-rights defenders blocked the entrance, and the clinic remained open. Further along the Ring Road we came upon a protest. Sitting in his hired Volkswagen van-cum-ambulance, we spotted Brian Cobb, an American

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emergency medical physician based in Bangladesh, who along with a team of Nepali medical students had been providing medical care to the wounded. As we got nearer, we overheard him giving preparatory instructions to his team. Joining a group of onlookers, we noticed the diversity of the protestors; although the majority were young, considerable numbers of older people were also part of the group. An elderly woman dressed in a red sari sat determinedly on the street in front of the police line. A foreign tourist cycled up on his bike, probably returning from sightseeing at the nearby Buddhist stupa at Boudhanath. He got off his bike and looked around bewildered before continuing on his journey on foot. Cobb and his team, all wearing yellow T-shirts with blue crosses and several other medics in white coats stood to the side with stretchers. We approached him and introduced ourselves. He was deeply distressed about the police brutality that they had witnessed over the previous few days. He and other health personnel had been beaten as they tended the wounded, and he showed us their bruises. He introduced us to his colleagues, including a doctor who had saved the life of a policeman a few days previously. The team had treated more than a hundred police personnel over the last week, but he stated that he would be reluctant to treat them again after witnessing and experiencing such brutality. As the standoff between the protestors and the police became more intense, the BBC reporter Charles Haviland arrived. His cameraman positioned himself in the midst of the protesters in front of the police line and began fi lming. Haviland attached his microphone to his shirt and disappeared into the crowd of demonstrators. The standoff continued, and we eventually left to visit a hospital where many of the wounded were being treated. The staff members were solemnly going about their duties, and all were wearing black armbands. I phoned Brian Cobb the following morning as we had agreed to meet for a chat. He explained that shortly after we left, the team was arrested and taken into custody. A terrifying ordeal was eased by the fortuitous presence of U.N. human-rights monitors who happened to be visiting the police station where the medical personnel were detained. The monitors mediated between the doctors and the police, and eventually the intimidated medics were released late in the evening. Cobb and a German doctor were accused of illegally working on tourist visas and had to leave Nepal the following day. Having observed the demonstrations in Kathmandu since their start on 6 April 2006, Kamal and I traveled to Pokhara on 17 April so that we could

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observe how the People’s Movement was unfolding outside Kathmandu and especially in Kwei Nasa. Crowds thronged the domestic terminal at Kathmandu airport, even though it was before 7:00 a.m. Huge packages and hastily inscribed boxes piled up waiting for security checks, and the queue to pay airport tax wound its way halfway around the building. Most of the travelers were Nepalis trying to get themselves and their goods across the country between curfews. On arrival in Pokhara I was struck by the total adherence to the bandh. The only vehicles on the road were those of the security forces and the United Nations, with the odd ambulance. Vegetable sellers had turned their carts into “tourist vehicles” and pushed backpacks (and sometimes tourists) along the silent roads. Chandra Bahadur and a friend met Kamal and me at the airport with hired mountain bikes, which we would cycle to the trailhead. A few minutes after we set off, a truck full of plainclothes policemen drove so fast out in front of us that we were forced to swerve. Cycling toward the center of the town, we entered streets blackened with the debris of protest—the remains of burning tires, tear-gas canisters, rocks, stones, and hastily abandoned plastic sandals. The acrid smell of burning hung in the air. An oil tanker swept past with three heavily armed soldiers perched on top. On our way out of the center and through the suburbs we saw a group of protesters in the distance. As they approached, several shopkeepers, whose shops had been half-open (thereby breaking the strike), rushed to pull the shutters down and retreat inside. As they marched toward us, a woman commented, “It’s the Muslim protest.” Muslim men wearing skullcaps led the group, which numbered about two hundred, the flags of Islam mingling with those of the Nepali Congress and the UML. We took photographs as they filed past chanting strongly worded antimonarchy slogans, and then we cycled on. Shortly afterward we came across a group of about twenty-five smartly dressed, middle-aged, mainly Tamu women (and some young girls) walking behind a banner that identified them as members of the local Mothers’ group. Far out of the city, in areas more rural than urban, we were surprised to see evidence of demonstrations at almost every intersection. Cycling along the flat motorable road in the scorching midday heat, we spotted a group of several hundred people walking toward us. Instead of flags they carried umbrellas and walking sticks and told us that they had walked from their village two hours away. We asked them where they were going, and they replied, “We don’t know where we are going. We don’t know where we will

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reach today. We are just going.” Half an hour later we met a middle-aged man who walked with a bad limp. “Where are you going?” we asked. “I walked with our villagers to the river,” he replied and added, “I can’t walk any further, and so I am returning home. We all have to make a contribution to the Andolan [revolution] and that was mine.” After pushing and cycling the bikes up and down hills for several hours, we abandoned them at a tea shop and continued on foot to Kwei Nasa. We arrived in the village after dark, and the sound of a death ritual distracted attention from the unusually silent streets. Support for the Andolan was immediately obvious, but it was the next morning before we discovered that the villagers, too, were following the bandh, as the tea shops were closed. A pro-democracy rally, organized by Nepali Congress supporters and led by Chandra Bahadur, had been held the previous week and had attracted several hundred demonstrators despite heavy rainfall; Chandra Bahadur phoned a local radio station shortly afterward to announce the turnout. We were immediately struck by the Andolan-related Maoist slogans around the village, which had not been evident some months previously. A wellexecuted, full-sized drawing of a skeleton on the outside wall of a toilet suggested that the king was a ghost. The slogan “Red salute for a rising republic of Nepal—we will be funeral bearers for the royal dictatorship” was painted everywhere. The Maoists were urging villagers to participate in the Andolan. As we walked through the village, a group of children aged from five to ten stood under the eaves of the Fathers’ Committee house, partially destroyed the previous year by Maoists. In the light rainfall they chanted strongly worded antimonarchy slogans that had been taught to them by the Maoists. The day before our arrival the Maoists had announced that each household was to send one person to attend a rally in the town in two days’ time. Chandra Bahadur and others to whom we spoke were adamant that they planned to attend anyway. Others who supported the movement but had not planned to attend, like Dil Maya, felt compelled to do so. Dhan Kumari hoped that she would be excused as she was unwell. The previous day the Maoists had carried out the public punishment (soot and a garland of shoes) of an ex-VDC member and pro-monarchy supporter who had asked the government to assist him in relocating to the town; this act had instilled renewed fear. Following the punishment, at which attendance was compulsory, the Maoists led a rally, and subsequently compliance with the order to participate in the forthcoming rally was expected to be high.

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On our return journey to Pokhara we pushed our bikes through a small village and saw a group of men, including the Maoist Ram Bahadur, discussing the Andolan. Shortly afterward we turned on the radio and heard a woman at a rally in Pokhara addressing the security forces: “We are your mothers, your sisters, your wives. We are paying taxes to the government; so why you are shooting us with the guns which have been bought by our taxes. Come on and join with us to get loktantra [democratic republic].” It was only 7 p.m. when we reached the town, but the streets were empty. Stopping to buy snacks from a street vendor in the center, we discovered that the security forces had fired on demonstrators at several locations around the city. A fruit seller described seeing several people being treated in a nearby private clinic. “Go home quickly; it’s dangerous,” she said. As we sat on the pavement eating, a heavily armed and steel-helmeted security-forces patrol walked by. We cycled on through streets strewn with the debris of the day’s protests. In the Lakeside tourist district some shops and restaurants close to the brightly illuminated royal palace were open, but further along almost everything was shut and hardly anyone was out. The following morning we watched the curfew come into effect. Despite a very heavy security-force presence and vans with loudspeakers patrolling the streets telling people to stay in, many ignored the order. Initially the curfew was adhered to in the center, but in the outskirts people walked along the road. Some were travelers making their way to the airport, some were street vendors, but others were out in defiance of the curfew. There was near-chaos in the airport. A group of young women were upset because they had missed their flight. In a half-reassuring, half-bullying tone an airline official told them that there was little he could do. Undaunted, they stood by the check-in desk requesting to be put on a flight. In the restaurant we listened on a waiter’s radio to an arrested professor giving an interview to an FM station from custody on his mobile phone. Unexpectedly a plane arrived, ahead of schedule, followed immediately afterward by another. We hurried to the check-in counter to inquire. A frazzled airline official shouted, “Three of our planes have left Kathmandu together. Go into the departure area as one of them could be yours.” We spotted the young women hastily boarding the plane before ours. An airline bandh had been called for the following day. As we flew over Pokhara, we saw huge crowds converging on the city center and others walking toward it through the largely silent streets. On

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the roads in from the villages large groups of people walked toward the city. The protests continued in the following days, with crowds increasing to sizes estimated at a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand in Kathmandu. On 21 April opposition sources claimed that about half a million took part in the protests in Kathmandu, although others suggested that the number was close to three hundred thousand. Buckling under the tide of public opinion King Gyanendra announced on 24 April that he would return political power to the people and called for elections to be held as soon as possible. A cease-fire was negotiated the following month. In November 2006 a peace accord was signed by the government and the Maoists, declaring a formal end to the ten-year insurgency. I returned to Kwei Nasa in December 2006. The first indication of change came as we drove through the outskirts of Pokhara. The checkpoint was gone, along with the soldiers who manned it; there was no barbed wire in sight, and the house by the checkpoint (on the roof of which a soldier with a machine gun had stood behind sandbags) was once again a flat-roofed house with a chicken coop. There was no intake of breath as the taxi slid to a stop, the passengers and luggage scrutinized. Instead, we sped on, and I felt a brief moment of panic, wondering if we had missed the checkpoint. I looked at the relaxed face of the driver, and for the first time I fully understood that the soldiers were gone. Leaving the town far behind, we traveled at a snail’s pace along the rough road that hugged the steep inclines. The countryside with its steep hills and deep, narrow gorges against a backdrop of snow-topped mountains looked the same, but this time there was no discussion with the taxi driver as to whether or not there was a Maoist checkpoint at the trailhead and how much he might be taxed. I remembered the trepidation of previous visits, the worries about what we might encounter around the next bend in the road. On arrival in Kwei Nasa I noticed that the bamboo Maoist martyrs’ gate at the entrance to the village was gone. This Maoist marking of territory had been dismantled by the village youth who, sitting at the rest place beside it, had taken it apart piece by piece “for firewood because they were cold.” The gates at the other entrances to the village had met similar fates. No one had dared to dismantle the martyrs’ gates openly, but the young people had done so bit by bit and under the pretext of being cold. In other parts of the village strung high above the paths, ritual bamboo ropes to protect a hamlet or a

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homestead had reappeared. Yelsa yula was being reclaimed: its physicality was being reknitted together with the “virtual” yelsa yula of the war years. The village was markedly different. Dhan Kumari was no longer bolting the doors and retreating to bed in mid-evening. She had extended her evening radio listening hours, having discovered a program she really enjoyed. She often went to bed uncharacteristically late in the evening. The Maoists moved around openly and jan sarkar (Maoist village people’s government committee) committee meetings were held openly. Dhan Kumari was taken aback when some villagers made their long-standing secret allegiances to the Maoists known. She was particularly surprised to learn that Amar, the lama’s son, whom she knew well, was a Maoist and in fact held a senior position in the Party. I then better understood his confident and purposeful presence on the village paths during the visit of the PLA recounted in Chapter 4. Other people had become what Dhan Kumari called “new Maoists,” like Lal Prasad, the Tailor whose house had been burned down. Using the Maoist platform, Lal Prasad was openly campaigning for Dalit rights— something he had not been able to do before. Membership with the Maoists had given him a new confidence and a previously unobserved subversity. One day I watched as a very elderly Tamu woman gave him the end of her cigarette to smoke. She assumed he would accept it gratefully. Instead he rolled his eyes in exasperation at me, took the cigarette butt, and extinguished it by crushing it into the wooden panel of her veranda. Other new Maoists, however, had less strong convictions. At a village dance Kamal met Om Bahadur, our hamlet’s representative on the jan sarkar, who boasted about his affi liations yet demonstrated little awareness of Maoist antidiscriminatory policies. When a young Dalit man got up to dance, he shouted at him to go away and prevented him from dancing until others intervened. Kamal asked Om if we could talk to him, but he failed to show up at the arranged time. Chandra Bahadur and Dhan Kumari told us that we were wasting our time trying to talk to Om. Dhan Kumari commented, “He is a new Maoist who isn’t interested in politics and knows nothing about the movement. He is just trying something new.” Three months later Om’s experiment with Maoism was over, and he had become a Nepali Congress Party member. I also discovered some unexpected converts to Maoism. Dhan Kumari’s neighbor Lek Bahadur had previously held similar views to hers on the Maoists. Early one morning in September 2004 I had overheard a whispered

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conversation between them. Lek Bahadur whispered, “They arrived when it was raining and sheltered in our house for about an hour. They have gone now, but they say that they will be back in the evening with their friends. They have left their packs on the veranda. What should I do? I want to move them in case the army arrives because if they find the packs, we will be killed; but I am frightened that they contain bombs that might explode if they are moved.” So began what Lek Bahadur later described as “the longest and worst day of my life.” The army did not arrive, the bags did not explode, and the young Maoist women returned in the evening to collect them. Later Lek Bahadur commented, “I have never been pleased to see the Maoists. I do not support their ideas and do not like them frightening and threatening us, but that day I was happy when they reappeared.” In mid-2006 between two hundred and three hundred members of the PLA spent a month in Kwei Nasa undergoing training. As they were no longer underground, many villagers had lengthy conversations with them. Lek Bahadur and his family hosted a group of cadres, and he spent many hours in their company. He had worked as a laborer in Dubai, India, and Malaysia, and previously he had been rather annoyed with the Maoists. When they arrived, demanding food and shelter, he sometimes said to them, “Why should I look after you? Am I your wife that I should feed you and cook for you? We hardly have enough for our own family.” During their month-long stay, however, he saw another side and became especially close to a young man who had been shot eight times in the head. The female cadres impressed him as they talked about the freedom they had gained as Maoists in contrast to the constraints of their previous lives. Most important, Lek Bahadur was impressed by the Maoists’ commitment to rural Nepal. He was exasperated with the lack of development in the village. Although Kwei Nasa was—since the opening of a new road—less than half a day from Pokhara, it had no electricity and could only be reached on foot after a long, steep climb. Lek Bahadur was also frustrated with the underdevelopment of agriculture, the poor educational and health facilities, and the general marginalization of rural areas. He was not wealthy enough to relocate to the city, and, even if he had been, he didn’t want to join the unending Tamu urban exodus. He wanted to live in Kwei Nasa, farm, and raise his four children. The Maoists were the only people who had seriously engaged him, and without their guns he hoped they offered the possibility of a better life for him, his family, and the village. When he joined the Maoists, he stated that he was

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ideologically motivated, and others also noted his commitment, but his membership could also have been an attempt to increase his public standing in the village as well as provide him with new opportunities and possibilities. It took Lek Bahadur some time to “come out” as a Maoist. He confided in me in early 2008 that he was a Party member, but at that time not many people knew of his affiliation. When Dhan Kumari heard that he had told me, she commented, “It’s inner talk and only a few people know. Don’t talk about it.” Lek Bahadur was fully aware that villagers suffered during the insurgency, and, while much of this related to the fear of being caught between the “fires” of the opposing armies, suffering was also the result of the specific hardship caused by the constant presence and behavior of the Maoists. His elderly parents were not impressed by his new political stance. Neither was Dhan Kumari; however, like Lek Bahadur, she justified it by explaining that he was not going to hurt anyone now that the war was over. Lek Bahadur did not publicly reveal his political sentiments for some time, and, when he did, it was in dramatic style: he appeared (alongside Amar and Lal Prasad) as a Maoist representative in the polling booth at the national elections in April 2008. During 2006 and 2007 Maoist actions continued: they reinvestigated the death of a village man some years previously at the request of his family. This activity led to some arrests followed by confi nement in the “jail” and the brief abduction of a suspect. During this period I started seeing Maoist mobilizers working openly in the village. In December 2006 I spoke to a young woman who was dressed in the new Maoist grey-suit uniform. She was the niece of the deceased commander Moti Lal and was attempting to engage village women in Maoist programs. Despite her enthusiasm, she was disappointed at the response. As we spoke, a group of villagers gathered; some people eyed her suspiciously and drew their shawls round their heads, while others looked with interest at her publications and listened intently to her stories of grenades that didn’t explode, unreliable guns, and the hardships of sentry duty. The demystification of the Maoists was firmly under way, and a new type of interrelationship was developing. A degree of intimidation remained, but people no longer feared the Maoists (or the security forces), and, although they remembered the hardship of the conflict, they had made choices. After years of war people desperately wanted peace, and this desire meant actively engaging with those who had previously frightened them.

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Although the performance of religious rituals had not been prohibited, as in other parts of the country, organizing a pae laba death ritual was challenging during the insurgency years. Maoists chastised people for spending too much money, for the elaborate organization and feasting, for drinking alcohol. Sometimes they harassed the shamans. On one occasion Kancha Pachyu was asked why the ritual involved the use of alcohol. “I explained that we have to use pa—millet wine—because otherwise we cannot make offerings to the spirit and ancestral worlds and so cannot do our rituals. Without alcohol there would be no pae.” Not inclined to anger the large assembled crowd, the Maoists backed down (and some even sneaked back to watch some of the more dramatic ritual-dance sequences). Now there were no restrictions, and once again large groups of people dressed in their finery walked from village to village to attend death rituals. Women who had taken out their gold earrings reinserted them. Following Pragati’s challenge and on Dhan Kumari’s urging, I had removed mine and now I also replaced them. Dances were frequently organized and extended long into the night in contrast to the abbreviated versions of previous years. People visited family, friends, and neighbors and returned home late. Young people often stayed out all night. The villagers were free to socialize with each other, and through communitywide social events they were also beginning to resocialize with strangers. Combat dress, which I had last seen locals wearing during the 2003 cease-fire, was once again back in fashion. Camouflage fatigues, jackets, and backpacks all had reemerged from the mothballs. Dhan Kumari asked the neighbor who had buried her gun to dig it up. To her delight it had survived its seven-year burial and just needed a good oiling before being returned to its usual storage place. With a peace agreement signed, the mystique that surrounded the Maoists was shattered. For the first time in years it was possible to talk openly with them without the danger of repercussions. People who were used to thinking of the Maoists as a very different type of people from themselves began to find that they were surprisingly like themselves. Shoba, a prominent member of one of the Mothers’ Committees commented, “Before, I was frightened of both the Maoists and the army. . . . If we did not provide food and accommodation they could become angry. . . . Now there is no fear because we know that the Maoists are also people like us.” Although they interacted with Maoists during the conflict, Maoists were seen by most people as

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“outsiders.” Following the conflict the social relations changed and villagers could intermingle with them without fear of violence. Although some villagers were positively reevaluating the Maoists, others remained wary. Shopkeeper Man Maya stated, “There is less fear because of the peace agreement. . . . Previously when I went to the forest, I was frightened that the children would be taken while I was away. I was frightened of sending the children to school. I was frightened of being killed by the army. Now we can move around freely but I am suspicious . . . and I am still frightened of being killed by the Maoists. The Maoists and the government might not agree in the future.” Chandra Bahadur was very relieved that the Maoists had joined the political mainstream. He explained: There is a huge difference between the past and now. Before it was difficult while having a meeting and organizing sports events. If we took permission from one side, the other side didn’t agree. . . . The school used to have to close. The students were frightened when a helicopter came. We were frightened when a helicopter or the Maoists came. We even had to stop reading the newspaper when either side came. I am hopeful that the political situation is getting better. People have become active and they have hope. . . . We can have discussions. We need freedom. . . . The leaders could make some mistakes and if that happens . . . the conflict can return. We have to work together. . . . If we share with others what we have experienced during the conflict, we can recover. What did Chandra Bahadur mean when he talked about recovery? What was there to recover from? Armed Maoists or soldiers no longer forcibly entered people’s homes; villagers did not have to pass through checkpoints or be searched; they freely questioned strangers on the paths; and they unrestrainedly danced, sang, visited, and stayed out all night. However, Chandra Bahadur was not talking about reclaiming space. He was acknowledging the social transformation brought about by the conflict. The nights might have been filled with dancing and the bamboo martyrs’ gates dismantled, but the changed social relationships—the increased suspicion around social interactions—would not rebound as easily. At the time of my visit in late 2006 there was a festive air in the village. Dances were frequently organized and extended long into the night in con-

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trast to the abbreviated versions of previous years. At Tamu New Year (at the end of December), Kamal and I attended a particularly raucous event organized by a youth group, which went on all night. Chandra Bahadur commented, “During the conflict we couldn’t move around freely. The Maoists told people, and especially the young people, to stay at home at night and not walk along the paths, as they said that they could not guarantee their safety. They told us that we might be mistaken for soldiers and killed. Now people are walking around the village all night. They are visiting family and friends. They are dancing and singing, and often the young people stay up all night. They are making up for what they missed.” People were reclaiming their village in different ways. Kamal was approached by an elderly man in a distant hamlet and asked whether he was a Maoist. During the conflict this question was unthinkable. Then, villagers might wonder about the affi liation of a stranger, but they would never directly ask who they were. Now the averted eyes, hurried movements along paths, bolted doors, and subdued silences were gone. Reclaiming yelsa yula was an uneven process, however. Social uncertainty remained. A visitor to Dhan Kumari’s house asked her quietly inside the house if Kamal was a Maoist. People passing through the area were carefully scrutinized. One afternoon Dhan Kumari eyed with suspicion the “members of a Maoist committee” only to discover later that they were a family group en route to a marriage negotiation. The slow dismantling of the martyr’s gate was paralleled by a slow dismantling of social fears. I was struck by comments I first heard during the cease-fire of 2003 when people talked about having “forgotten fear.” They explained that the Maoists and the soldiers had gone, they were no longer frightened, and their shrunken heart-minds had reexpanded. Following the end of the insurgency villagers talked a lot more about forgetting fear. While they sometimes talked about past fears, usually in the context of particular events, their heart-minds and their bodies were no longer fear fi lled. People were no longer constantly asking themselves, “What is going to happen?” “Who will it happen to?” “How can I stop it happening to my family?” This dissipation of fear helped them put the past behind them. They could see beyond the guns and were willing to forget. “Forgetting fear” both acknowledged an emotional state and reflected a choice. After years of conflict people desperately wanted peace, and, by forgetting, they actively engaged with the peace process. They had metaphorically drunken mbliku (the water given to the dead to make them forget) and were freed from their memories.

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By the end of 2006 most people had recovered from the effects of chronic fear, and, while the challenges of everyday life continued, they no longer had to wonder how to gather firewood during a curfew or whether they could safely send their children to school. The transformation of social relations during the war, however, informed post-conflict aspirations. Some people “came out” as Maoists and others joined the Party. Nevertheless, because the evaluation of the Maoists during the insurgency had been overwhelmingly negative, some found it difficult to acknowledge their affi liation. Membership in the Party remained a sensitive topic, and even those who had openly joined the Party discussed their participation somewhat circumspectly. The new Maoists were viewed by many people with a mixture of bemusement, suspicion, and exasperation. Some family members, including Lek Bahadur’s parents, vocally criticized decisions by their kin to join the Party. In late 2008, when I asked Lek Bahadur if I could talk to him about his experience of being a Maoist, he assumed that I was going to tell him off ! Before I could ask him any questions, he reassured me that he was not “hurting anyone or giving them trouble.” In the postconflict reconfiguration there was a surprising role reversal. Maoist Ram Bahadur’s son extorted five lakh ( just over six thousand dollars) from a Pokhara-based Tamu community organization and then disappeared. He was caught by the Maoists but escaped (to India) while being brought back to the village to be punished. Ram Bahadur was accused of orchestrating his escape, a charge he strongly denied. He was arrested by the new commander, a Dalit from a nearby hamlet, and held in the village “jail.” He was publicly humiliated in front of a large crowd of assembled villagers and forced to admit his wrongdoing, and his face was smeared with soot. The punishment that he had meted out to others ended up being his fate. He retired from public life and built a water mill. Kamal and I met him as we walked to the trailhead. He was happy to talk about milling but not about the Maoists. In November 2006 the Maoists declared a formal end to the ten-year insurgency. In late 2006 I visited the temporary offices of the VDC secretary in Pokhara. He had decamped there for several years, but now the contents of his office were stacked high, waiting to be transported back up to the village. In January 2007 the Maoists entered Parliament under the terms of a temporary constitution, but elections to a Constituent Assembly were twice rescheduled. Insisting on the abolition of the monarchy, the Maoists withdrew from government from September 2007 until December 2007 when

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the Parliament approved their proposal. Elections for the Constituent Assembly were finally scheduled for April 2008. The Deurali VDC polling booth was based in the grounds of the lower secondary school in Kwei Nasa. On election day I arrived at the booth at 6.50 a.m. just before it opened. I introduced myself to the polling officers, who were strangers to the village and did not know me. As I walked across to meet them, I greeted the representatives from the different parties: three from the Maoists, three from the UML, three from the Nepali Congress, and single representatives from the smaller parties. These people were first and foremost fellow villagers with multiple ties and interrelationships that predated the elections and continued after them. They were people who were related to each other, who were friends, acquaintances, adversaries, and colleagues. Some sat together on various village committees and some worked together, but on election day they were positioned in very different camps. The previous evening they had met and had agreed to cooperate so that polling would run smoothly. I spoke to Chandra Bahadur and the Congress Party representative first and then to the Maoists: Lek Bahadur, Amar, and Lal Prasad. By 7:30 a.m. it was obvious that the Party workers were not the only villagers who were impressed by the CPN (Maoist). Although some people spoke of the former insurgents in whispers, the Maoist group outside the polling booth was impressively large and included Tamu ex-British Gurkha soldiers, relatively well-off farmers, older Dalit men, middle-aged Bahun women, and Tamu and Chhetri youth. The Nepali Congress and UML groups were also large but less diverse. The Congress group in particular included large numbers of middle-income, middle-aged, and elderly Tamumai and was more homogenous than the other parties were. Dhan Kumari and many of her friends stopped at the Congress Party huddle to cross their names off before voting. Although it was clear that there was a lot of support for the Maoists, many people did not vote for them. As I sat with Purna Maya and some other members of the Mothers’ Committee, some of my companions whispered tensely when a group of Maoist YCL (Young Communist League) members appeared, and, when the Maoists had left, my companions told me that because of past violence and the threat of violence they were not voting for the former insurgents. The YCL did not linger long, and the afternoon passed without any major events. As the booth was dismantled, there was a celebratory air. The

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Figure 5. Escorting the ballot boxes to Pokhara.

ballot boxes were sealed and wrapped in fabric ready to be transported down the mountainside on the backs of porters escorted by armed police and representatives of the political parties. The boxes were heavy, and I took a series of photos of the nurse midwife and one of the teachers helping a porter get to his feet. I was standing beside the returning officer when he took a phone call from the CDO (Chief District Office) in Pokhara. “Sir, we have had a great day here!” he exclaimed. Later I stood with a group of villagers and watched the procession wind its way down the steep paths as a pink sun set over the hills. Despite the reservations of some of my friends, many people in Kwei Nasa and the surrounding villages did vote for the Maoists. Clearly, the month-long 2006 visit by the PLA was important. It allowed a new type of relationship with the Maoists to develop, and many people liked what they saw. The constituency was won by Dev Gurung, a Tamu and a prominent Maoist, a “local boy made good” (not entirely “local” as he was from neighboring Manang district but “local” enough). Many people told me that Dev Gurung has benefited from mentoring, training, and opportunities in the

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CPN (Maoist). The advancement of a Tamu to the highest echelons of the Maoist Party and his fielding as a candidate illustrated the Party’s commitment to the Janajati (ethnic groups). This factor was an important motivation, especially for youth, who acutely experience the lack of opportunities. The Maoist agenda also appealed to Kwei Nasa Dalits like Lal Prasad who could use it as a platform to advance Dalit rights. The Maoists were the only party to seriously mobilize villagers. From the cease-fire onward they attempted to actively engage villagers. They had the advantage in that they were already “in the field” and had a structure in place from the leadership down to the neighborhood, but no other party made a serious attempt to rival them. Kwei Nasa had previously been a Congress stronghold and Party activists assumed that it would be again. In a serious miscalculation they anticipated that history, preexisting loyalties, and kinship ties would reconfigure as usual. Candidates made belated and half-hearted rural visits, but it was too late and too little. Local Party members also misjudged the changed atmosphere. Chandra Bahadur stated confidently in March 2008 that “Congress will win in this village; this is a Congress village.” Many people did vote Congress, but many did not. Much of the postelection analysis suggested that people were willing to give the Maoists a chance. They were exasperated with the ineptitude of the other political parties and felt abandoned by them. They wanted peace and change, and they were willing to try the untested. The Maoists might have been untested in the formal national political arena years, but they were not untested. The insurgency was rural-based and people had coexisted with them for years. They observed the Maoists fight a war, run a parallel government, develop an effective surveillance network, move huge numbers of people across the country, attempt reforms, and so on. They had watched them do many of these things very successfully. When compared with the repeated failures of the other political parties, it was hardly surprising that people were prepared to give the Maoists a chance. The Maoist vote was also a plea to keep them from returning to war. Above all else, people wanted peace.

7 After Words

In the elections for the Constituent Assembly held in April 2008, the Maoists emerged as the largest party, although with 220 out of 601 seats they did not secure a majority. The Constituent Assembly voted to end the monarchy at its first sitting; so in May 2008 the country became the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. In August 2008 the Maoist leader Prachanda formed a government, which the Nepali Congress refused to join, preferring to go into opposition. Eight months later Prachanda resigned in protest over the president’s rejection of a cabinet decision to sack the army chief. The CPN-UML leader became the new prime minister. Following his resignation in June 2010 the country was without an official prime minister until February 2011, when Jhala Nath Khanal (from the CPN-UML backed by the Maoists) was finally elected. He subsequently resigned in August 2011, after which Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) vice chairman Baburam Bhattarai was elected prime minister of Nepal. More than five-and-a-half years after the cease-fire, agreement was finally reached on the future of the almost 20,000 PLA fighters verified by the U.N. who were to leave the cantonments and either enter the army or become civilians. Initially, approximately 14,000 individuals took voluntary retirement and received cash packages (Jha 2012). In September 2012, 1,388 former Maoist combatants were selected for integration into the Nepal Army. The remainder were either ineligible, changed their minds or did not present for selection. The greater majority of Maoist ex-fighters have therefore become civilians. Some of these individuals are disillusioned with both the state and the Maoist Party leadership, in particular because they feel that their years of armed struggle have not resulted in the hoped for political

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change, nor have their contributions been adequately recognized (Jha 2012). Concerns have been expressed in the Kathmandu media regarding the potential political effects of this disgruntlement. Despite a series of extensions—and riven by party politicking and interference by the political leaders—the Constituent Assembly did not complete its task of writing a new constitution by the deadline of May 2012 and so collapsed. The contentious issue of federalism was only addressed in late 2011 by which time public debate was highly polarised. Consequently, there was little opportunity for consensus before the deadline for agreement on the Constitution expired (Thapa 2012: 41). Nepal is currently in a state of political uncertainty. A caretaker government is in place (headed by Baburam Bhattarai) and elections are planned for the spring of 2013. For many Nepalis the eventual structure of the new federal state and the recognition of identity are the most important issues in the process of restructuring. Ethnopolitical involvement, however, continues to be mainly urban. Political activists like Chandra Bahadur are heavily involved in the debates but many in Kwei Nasa remain on the sidelines of these discussions. Although people wonder about the structure of the new state and the impact it might have on them (particularly as they are likely to be in a Tamu majority region), a sense of remoteness from government remains. Based on past experiences people wonder whether the politicking of Kathmandu will really ever improve their day-to-day lives. In addition to the present political flux, many challenges to the peace process remain. Most of the land seized by the Maoists during the conflict has not been returned, and they have not totally committed to nonviolence. The conflict has brutalized Nepali society, leaving a legacy of violence, impunity, and crime. The peace process is further threatened by a failure to address the crimes committed by both sides during the People’s War. The human-rights lawyers I worked with during the conflict are as busy as ever struggling in particular for some form of justice for the families of the disappeared. At least 1,300 people remain unaccounted for. These people are assumed to be dead, but their fate has not been officially acknowledged. The development of the country’s democratic institutions is undermined by the resistance to creating legal accountability for the disappeared. The VDC office in Kwei Nasa reopened in 2007, and the secretary returned after an absence of four years. The ACAP office lay in ruins, but the workers restarted their development initiatives. A community library opened that grew out of a discussion between Chandra Bahadur, Kamal, and me in

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late 2006 when some people commented that they would like to be able to read the Comprehensive Peace Agreement document without having to travel to Pokhara to buy a copy. The library came under the umbrella of a registered NGO, the Dhi Project, along with the day-care center and the child-health clinic. The Dhi Project was inaugurated on a cool winter’s day in late 2008. I sat at the head table alongside Chandra Bahadur and some local dignitaries. Those assembled were from diverse sections of village society, including members of the day-care health center committee, representatives from the four village Mothers’ Committees, local leaders, and members of the political parties, including the Nepali Congress and the Maoists. Once the welcomes were over, elections to the project committees began. The new equality quotas were carefully adhered to, which ensured a designated number of places for women and Dalits. Lek Bahadur jokingly remarked that because the projects were already run by women, there was no doubt that the quotas would be greatly exceeded, which proved to be the case. Purna Maya was elected president. Amar was also elected and accepted his nomination by standing up and doing a Maoist salute (raising his clenched fist to head level), in contrast to everyone else who accepted their nomination by clasping their palms together in the usual Nepali namaste greeting. Lal Prasad was elected as the Dalit representative. Despite adherence to the new official quotas, not all members are equal. Lal Prasad attends Maoist events out of the village and makes trips to the headquarters in Kathmandu. However, his position in the village remains ambivalent. At committee meetings he sits in marginal positions, sometimes among lower-ranking women or at a slight distance from the proceedings. When more prominent members ask him to do something, as they would have in the past, he does it. On one occasion I watched him compliantly run an errant for Chandra Bahadur. He is thereby included, but his position is hardly in line with his desire to play a greater and more equal role in village politics. The Maoists have given Lal Prasad some legitimacy in his struggle for Dalit rights and his desire to be more involved in village politics, but it is a limited role because older ways of interrelating along caste lines also continue to hold currency. By late 2011 his plans for Dalit rights had stalled and he had returned to the Gulf as a migrant worker. In the postconflict atmosphere of increased awareness of rights there are, however, some changes. The Dhi Project employs a Dalit female assistant, Sita, in the day-care center, and at project meetings her Tamu colleagues make concerted efforts (despite her shyness) to ensure that she enters the room and

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sits alongside them. Some people opposed her employment, but others supported it, stating that in post-conflict New Nepal Dalits must receive opportunities like everyone else. Sita was formally employed as a cleaner because this position was acceptable to those who stated that she should not be involved in the preparation of food for Tamu children. Four years later hardworking Sita is a popular “cleaner.” Like the other employees, she assists with the multiple lunchtime tasks, including helping with the distribution of food. Although Chandra Bahadur remains a staunch Nepali Congress Party member, the advancement of his political career now also includes close collaboration with the Maoists; the most senior Party cadre in the area is a Dalit from a nearby village. Infrastructural projects that had been long imagined but were held up because of the war are now in progress. In 2008 Chandra Bahadur stood for the position of chair of a committee formed across two VDCs to develop a road into the area. The position was strongly contested, and his nomination was only successful because he received support from the Maoists. The road project is the most major infrastructural development to take place in the area, and through its leadership (and the leadership of other initiatives) he is now politically active in an arena far beyond the village. In 2010 he led to a successful conclusion the long-awaited (and long-overdue) project to bring electricity to Kwei Nasa, a task that required considerable agreement and collaboration between different stakeholders, including the Maoists. The health post is to be upgraded, and a site for the new building has just been cleared. However, the school remains as underresourced as ever, although the Dhi Project is hoping to develop it through twinning with a school outside Nepal. The desire to improve the local infrastructure has brought people together from different positions on the political spectrum. Despite tension, rivalries, animosity, and conflicting ideologies, the local patterns of collaboration, cooperation, and compromise continue to enable people to work together. This outward collaboration, however, masks a complex reality. Although people are no longer frightened of the Maoists, some continued to be rather suspicious of them, at times wondering about their motives and questioning their renouncement of violence. One evening more than two years after the People’s War had ended when I was visiting Chandra Bahadur’s wife, Durga, a villager, a relative of Dhan Kumari’s, appeared in the doorway looking for Chandra Bahadur. Durga explained that he was not at home. When the villager had left, she whispered, “He is a Maoist; why has he come to look for him after dark?” By late 2008 the worries of who was doing what at night had largely evaporated but not entirely.

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Maoists are part of the everyday villagescape in a way that they were not in the past. Dhan Kumari is no longer shocked to discover that some of her friends and relatives have become Maoists. She doesn’t approve and comments that her cousin must have been influenced by all the fighters who stayed in his house at the edge of the village; however, she is no longer surprised when she hears that people have joined the Party. On the other hand some people have left. I was recently told that Lek Bahadur, who is now the president of a leading village development committee, was no longer a Maoist. The details remain unclear at the time of writing; however, his break with the Party does not appear to have had an impact on his now successful political career in the village. Although he was publicly active in a minor way prior to his involvement with the Maoists, his membership undoubtedly facilitated his career. The advancement of younger men like Lek Bahadur has also been facilitated by the gaps remaining after the departure of some of the older men who left (or were forced to leave) the village during the war and have not returned. Maoist slogans painted on village buildings are mostly still there, but they have faded as have memories of the insurgency. Like old soldiers, villagers swap “war stories.” During the early years of my fieldwork in Kwei Nasa, Dhan Kumari was impatient with her father when he told and retold his war stories. Today, like the generations of men who have left for foreign armies, the women and children (as well as the men) of Kwei Nasa have their own war stories. Dhan Kumari’s insurgency narratives have much in common with the war stories her father recalled twenty years ago. The places and the people are different, but the stories in which the protagonist faces hardship, challenges, and risk that he or she endures and eventually overcomes are similar. Baba’s favorite stories were of language miscommunications with British officers, long marches in adverse weather, and supplementing his army rations by hunting wild pigs in Italy. Dhan Kumari’s stories of her experiences as a civilian during the Maoist insurgency also focus on the implications of miscommunication (with Maoists) and the hardships of everyday life during the conflict. Dhan Kumari, Purna Maya, and Sanu Maya laugh as they recall how they fabricated stories to make themselves appear less vulnerable, by telling Maoists that they were married and had “husbands and sons working overseas.” Sanu Maya dissuaded Maoists from entering her house by explaining that her “husband was sleeping.” Dhan Kumari recounts how she was caught out by the commander Moti Lal, who laughed

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loudly when he heard that she had told a group of his subordinates that she was married with two sons! Others recall stories of dilemmas they faced during the insurgency. Hom Bahadur didn’t know if he should disown or acknowledge the two local Maoists he met in the forest when they were fleeing from the security forces; Lek Bahadur remembers the Maoist bags that were left in his house; and Chandra Bahadur talks of his recruitment to the Tamu Liberation Front and his interrogation by the security forces. The years of the Peoples’ War, however, are not singled out from other years or decades. When people talk about the past, the insurgency years and their challenges might be mentioned, but equally they might not be. For example, stories about a particular village event that took place during the insurgency might include an anecdote that incorporated the Maoists or the security forces, but it might not. While the People’s War introduced additional challenges to the realization of many social projects, it also brought new and unexpected opportunities for some. Initial losses sometimes turned to unexpected gains as people refashioned their disappointments into achievements sometimes with wideranging implications. When the development-project workers left, village women, drawing on their own resources, took over and discovered that they could run the day-care center themselves. They also realized that—contrary to the usual trend—they could expand their development project and open a child-health clinic (with some support from Kamal and me) in the midst of the People’s War. Today they confidently manage the Dhi Project thus playing a wider role in village public life. As Purna Maya commented, “We can do things that before we thought only men could do. We can organize, run committees, and lead just as well as the men.” These achievements have led them to expand the main Mothers’ Group meeting house in the village. They applied for a series of grants and also undertook substantial fundraising in order to build what is now the most impressive—and only two-story— public building in Kwei Nasa. In the reclaiming of Kwei Nasa the attention paid to this building—in fact one of the most conflict-affected buildings in the village—is significant. Positioned near the main village entrance, the Mother’s house was frequently used by the Maoists as sleeping quarters. During a 2004 visit the army cooked their meals at the base of the large tree in its courtyard. The tree was a key village landmark and meetings were frequently held under its wide branches. Referring to the security forces visit, Purna Maya commented, “The army set

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up their rice pots at the bottom of the tree and they burnt it. They didn’t respect our village spaces, they didn’t care about the tree, and now it will die.” During the People’s War the walls of the (then) small committee house were constantly covered with Maoist slogans and sometimes also Army responses such as those in Figure 4. In the process of “reinscription” the women arranged for the half-burned tree to be cut down, thereby obliterating the army’s violation, and replaced it with a small shrine to the tree god (the tree had contained a sacred area in one of its hollows). During the renovation process a second story was added to the house, necessitating the entire building to be whitewashed thereby painting out the Maoist and Army slogans. The “new” building bears limited resemblance to its more humble precursor and it contains no physical residues of the conflict. Another conflict-affected house has been creatively remade, putting the past behind. My former research assistant Prem Maya’s house is no longer used by the Maoists as a headquarters or a jail. Instead one of her brother’s sons has tidied up the courtyard, brightly painted the outer panels of the veranda, and undertaken considerable internal renovation. He has reopened it as the Hard Rock Guest house with an attached signboard prominently featuring Bob Marley, palm trees, and the colors of the Jamaican flag. It offers home stays to foreigners who want to spend a few nights in a hill village. Tourists, who are a relative rarity in Kwei Nasa (which is off the main trekking routes), are totally unaware of its former incarnation, and excitedly view the onetime jail as a prime example of a “traditional village house.” As with the women’s house the Hard Rock Guesthouse bears no outward markers of the confl ict. Th is homestead, with its troubling history, was always going to be challenging to reincorporate into village life. Prem Maya’s nephew has been very entrepreneurial and has fashioned an opportunity out of a potential liability. However, as a home stay for foreigners— with a suitably refashioned interior—the house continues to lie somewhat “outside” Kwei Nasa. Warscapes such as the one Kwei Nasa and its houses and people rest in are not interrupted zones from which social processes and life projects are suspended. Despite the reconfigurations and constraints of the insurgency, people’s attention continued to focus on their multidimensional daily life occupations, life projects, and social processes as it did in peacetime. It continued also to focus on the intimate fabric of their lives, their social relationships, and their everyday routines that stretched back into the past and forward into the future. Violence, or the threat of violence, was a feature of

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life, but it was only one of the problems that the People’s War introduced. The deepening of structural violence that accompanied the conflict—for example, the closure of development projects, the lack of staff at the health post, curfews, bans on fieldwork, and the humiliations and violations of forced entry into homes—had a much greater impact than violence per se. Although people had to negotiate and navigate survival paths through the conflict, their imaginings, aspirations, and activities went well beyond it. As Stephen Lubkemann (2008: 325) points out, the questions that people continue to pose in wartime are not only how to avoid violence but “rather more commonly on the order of ‘Which field will I hoe?’ or ‘How shall I raise this child?’ ” As we have seen, these were the concerns of Dhan Kumari and her friends and family. Placing the conflict in the longer trajectory of the study of an area over two decades reduces the possibility of seeing this period as merely one of interruption when the usual social processes and cultural practices were on hold. Notably, villagers do not share this perception. For example, if Dhan Kumari is asked about an activity in the past such as farming, she punctuates her account with observations about changes over time in the pattern of growing certain crops, shifts in sharecropping arrangements, loss of fields through monsoon landslides, and stories of various events. Conflict-related incidents might or might not be included. Significantly, she does not punctuate her reply with a differentiated account of farming “before”, “during,” and “after” the war. In Kwei Nasa the insurgency has not left its mark on everyday village life or people’s psyches as deeply as some might assume, or as deeply as would likely be the case in places where people were more severely affected. When asked, Dhan Kumari and her circle say that they have not forgotten the suffering of the People’s War and that they never want to return to such an insecure and dangerous time. But today there is peace—they can visit each other in the evenings, they can travel to town without fear of meeting fighters en route, they are not forced to feed Maoists, and their homes will not become battlefields. The war has gone and they tell me there is no residual impact of it on their lives. Now they have other challenges, other forms of worry and suffering that focus their attention. For some these might be greater than the suffering of the People’s War. All life brings suffering, they say, just more or less, and the war (for most people) brought more. Viewed from this perspective in Kwei Nasa the conflict is not abstracted out from other times as an “event” which stands outside “normal” time. But rather it was part of the ebb and flow of life (albeit a more extreme period). Certain

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public events in Kwei Nasa were disrupted, however, during the People’s War, but these have now recommenced. The annual festival of Baisak Purne is one of the highlights of the social calendar, and for a couple of days in the pre-monsoon spring the village is once again crowded with visitors attending sporting and cultural events. Dhan Kumari had visitors from Pokhara this year, and Dil Maya, who continues to live in Pokhara, celebrated the festival with family and friends in the village. Her life is easier in Pokhara, but she misses the sociability of the village and visits regularly. She has taken up weaving to “pass the time” and make some additional income. Raju goes to school in the city, and Damar is at university. However, Damar will leave shortly, and, because there are so few job prospects, he will probably have to leave Nepal for work. Like their mother, they visit Kwei Nasa regularly. Dil Maya is determined that they retain their ability to speak Tamu Kwi, their knowledge of Tamu lifeways, and their relationships with village-based kin and friends. Dil Maya’s home is now my reentry point into Kwei Nasa society since my visits always begin and end from there. Our work on the Dhi Project means that I am in regular phone contact with Chandra Bahadur and Purna Maya, and sometimes also Dil Maya. On his frequent trips to town Chandra Bahadur sends emails from a local cybercafé, and with the arrival of mobile broadband and smartphones emails have started arriving directly from the village. I still send postcards written in Romanized Tamu Kwi to Dhan Kumari, updating her on the events of my life, but we also exchange news via Purna Maya’s phone calls and Chandra Bahadur’s emails. Dhan Kumari has retired from her position on the day-care center committee but has an advisory position on the Dhi Project. Her physical health is poor, and she has refused a recommended operation on her spine. Her eyesight has deteriorated despite a cataract operation, but in other ways she remains unchanged. I recently received a message on the day of my arrival in Pokhara that I was to accompany Dhan Kumari to a pae laba memorial ritual. Kul Bahadur, the son of Ama’s fictive sister, was dead from cancer at barely fift y. Relations between the two families had continued following the death of the “sisters.” Gifts continued to find their way between the two hill villages reinforced by occasional visits. His memorial ritual, however, was held in Pokhara, where he had spent the last few years of his life and because it enabled large numbers of people to attend in recognition of the significant role he had played in the development of his village. As we entered the com-

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pound, we paid our respects by placing small amounts of money in front of Kul Bahadur’s photograph. For the first time in many years his smiling face looked back at me, and with sadness I remembered the lively young man who arrived in Kwei Nasa laden with potatoes and full of fun and good humor. Dhan Kumari walked somewhat unsteadily but very determinedly into the assembled gathering of hundreds of people; I walked behind her. As we performed the various acts of respect, she taking the lead and me following, I felt the eyes of a large number of people on us and for a moment twenty years slipped away. Time and the configuration of life had changed, but not entirely.

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NOTES

Foreword 1. For useful works to consult, see the Introduction. There is also a large and growing literature in Nepali—novels, poems, songs, magazine articles, biographies and autobiographies from all sides in the confl ict—that deals with the war. With the honorable exceptions of de Sales (2003), Lecomte-Tilouine (2006), and Hutt (2012), scholars writing in English have not made any significant use of this literature. For a social scientist who (thanks to his grounding in the realities of revolutionary Peru) had the unique foresight to predict the war, see Nickson (1992). 2. On Maoism in India, the literature is too large to mention systematically, but one should start by consulting Banerjee (1984) and Duyker (1987) on the early years. On more recent times, see Louis (2002), Bhatia (2002), Shah (2010), Shah and Pettigrew (2012), Kunnath (2012), and Mukherji (2012). Of the many popu lar accounts of Indian Maoism that are beginning to appear, Roy’s (2011) is probably the most widely read. 3. For a description of Jelbang, a village which lost sixty-eight dead to the conflict, see Thapa, Ogura, and Pettigrew (2012).

Introduction 1. All personal and local place names in this book are pseudonyms; however, my research assistant during the years of the Maoist insurgency, Kamal Adhikari, has chosen to be named. Additionally, well-known events or people in the public domain are sometimes referred to by their own names, as are cities and regions. 2. Although we may talk about the routinization or normalization of crisis, as pointed out by Hendrik Vigh (2008: 11), “we should not confuse normalisation and routinisation with indifference: crisis, when it is chronic, may become normal in the sense that it is what there is most, but it does not become normal in the sense that this is how things should be.” 3. Nonalignment is complex. Here it refers to those villagers (the majority) who did not actively support the Maoist agenda, did not identify themselves as Maoists, or

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identified themselves as not being Maoists. However, many of these people participated in activities (often because they had no other choice or because it was the safest choice) that the security forces interpreted as demonstrating evidence of Maoist alignment. On other occasions people participated in activities, such as not concealing the location of Maoists or attending Maoist mass meetings partly because of fear of repercussions or out of loyalty to villager-Maoists, or because they were curious or being strategic. As Lauren Leve, writing about the People’s War in Nepal, notes, “Evoking different identities in different contexts is a strategy that helps people to survive” (2004: cited in Leve, 2012, 165). 4. “Tamu” is the singular of “Tamu-mai” the term that the people who are better known as “Gurungs” (who number approximately 500,000 and whose main area of ethnic concentration is in central Nepal) apply to themselves when they speak their own language, Tamu Kwi (a Tibeto-Burman language indigenous to the Tamu-mai). As this book is based on research carried out in a predominantly Tamu village and conducted primarily through Tamu Kwi, I use the term “Tamu” throughout. Most conversations took place in Tamu Kwi (and non-English words included in the text—except for obvious political terms which are all Nepali—are Tamu Kwi unless otherwise indicated). I am responsible for translations. Major books on the Tamu-mai/Gurungs include Evans with Pettigrew, Tamu, and Turin (2009), Macfarlane (1976), McHugh (2001), Messerschmidt (1976), Mumford (1990); Pignède (1993 [1966]), Ragsdale (1989). 5. Research in the interdisciplinary field of occupational science draws attention to the concept of occupational disruption and related theories (see Whiteford 2000). 6. A revolutionary hardline breakaway group led by some senior UCPN members formed the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) in June 2012. 7. This body of literature is now considerable and so by way of example I have only included a small numbers of sources. 8. As Sjaak van der Geest (2003: 14–18) has shown, it is possible to maintain confidentiality if informants, the location, and the anthropologist are all given pseudonyms. Using a pseudonym was not possible in my case because I had always previously written under my own name. 9. This book is based on more than twenty field trips, ranging from two days to two weeks, conducted during the period 2002–2009, and building on my earlier work, which commenced in late 1990. I lived in Kwei Nasa from early 1991 to late 1992. From 1993 to 2002 I revisited yearly or biannually, sometimes living in the village for extended periods of time. From 2002 onward I returned three to four times each year to chart the course of the insurgency in the area. I undertook research during all phases of the insurgency, including the two states of emergency, active phases of fighting, cease-fires, and in the postconflict period (up until early 2009). I revisited the village in late 2011. 10. The diacritic ˜ denotes nasalization.

Notes to pages 27–87

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Chapter 1. The Village of Kwei Nasa 1. These colors were primarily dark, such as maroon, dark green, blue, and black, although they may come together in bright patterns on lungis. 2. Although the Tamu-mai are indigenously shamanistic (conversion of significant numbers to Buddhism has been more recent), they are also influenced by statesponsored Hinduism. The use of shamans (or lamas) for the major death rituals and as healers does not conflict with the practice of Hindu rituals. 3. See Bolt (1967: 98). 4. Santosh is now retired from the Gurkhas after fifteen years’ ser vice, and like many ex-British Gurkhas he lives in the United Kingdom. 5. Gurkha regiments have long-standing relationships with Scottish regiments, which led to the introduction of tartan as a fabric for shawls. 6. Some older houses have thatched roofs and some newer ones have tin roofs. 7. For additional work on the concept of yula (or yul) see Des Chene (1992). 8. Personal communication from the VDC secretary September 2012. 9. Since 2008 KMTNC has been known as the National Trust for Nature Conservation. 10. Ama did not offer me a par ticu lar herbal remedy, which understandably she might be reluctant to share with others; instead, she offered me (what I later discovered to be) a widely used and available herb. 11. For additional work on the concept of saF see McHugh (1989). 12. The Tamu-mai believe that men have nine souls and women seven. Chapter 2. No Place to Hide 1. This term probably refers to the dance sections of Maoist cultural performances that often accompanied Maoist-convened mass meetings and were aimed at maintaining the populist facade. Chapter 3. Return to Kwei Nasa 1. Tourists traveling outside the cities frequently encountered Maoists and were often asked for financial donations for which they were given receipts. 2. This is not to deny, however, that women can also be shopkeepers, development workers, teachers, health workers, etc. 3. There is a considerable literature in occupational science on the relationship between occupation, well-being, and health (e.g., see Wilcock 2006). 4. Even in late 2011 this slogan had not been painted over, but rather it had faded over the years so that it is now almost impossible to read. Slogans also remain on other public buildings.

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Chapter 4. Maoists in the House 1. Children are especially vulnerable to losing souls because they are easily frightened and their plah are less used to their bodily “home” and more prone to wandering. 2. Rupa calls me “mother” because I am the same generation as her birth mother. 3. Maoist cultural programs include dancing, which is appealing to many young people and therefore a good medium for recruitment. Villagers who saw them considered the performances more impressive than the performances of local youth groups. 4. With one exception the members of the group billeted in the house were teenagers. Chapter 5. “Our Government Is the Maoists” 1. The BBC World Ser vice in Nepali was widely believed to be the most reliable source of news. 2. The Maoist justice system was at the heart of their “People’s Government.” In the absence of a functioning government legal system, it was the only legal system in the countryside during the insurgency. Maoist justice was based on their legal code, which aimed at reforming the wrongdoer and was frequently quickly dispensed. It entered into areas not normally associated with the law, such as family relations, marriage, and sexual relationships. Maoist courts were often popu lar, however, because they provided quick justice and were cheap; furthermore, they combated caste discrimination and made decisions in favor of women in inheritance and polygyny cases. 3. Although this equipment was described as “nonlethal,” it could in reality be used to help launch military attacks. 4. In 2002 the government told the population not to wear combat dress because it put them at risk of suspicion of being Maoists. Because of this edict combat garb was not as widely worn as previously. It remained popu lar nevertheless, but in the case of a teenager it was particularly risky to wear. I know of one case where an on-leave soldier in the Indian Army wearing combat dress was killed by the security forces, who believed him to be a Maoist. 5. Eventually he was allowed to remain in the village but had to rebuild his home some distance away. Chapter 6. “All We Need Is Peace” 1. The movement was called Jan Andolan II (People’s Movement II), which implies a continuation of the 1990 Jan Andolan that restored democracy to Nepal. 2. I am grateful to Alpa Shah for this quotation, which formed part of a conversation she had with Lek Bahadur in March 2008.

Notes to pages 151–159

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3. This is not the case for people who were had severe “war suffering” (i.e., people who in Western psychological terms would be considered to be traumatized). People interviewed in other villages who were injured in crossfi re and had severe “war suffering” reexperienced fear in their heart-mind each day. Chapter 7. After Words 1. Research on postconflict social transformation in rural Nepal leads Sharma and Donini (2010) to observe that while “the political economy of survival in rural Nepal has not changed dramatically . . . the combination (and sometimes the competition) of the political agency of the Maoists and social development work of civil society organizations, in parallel with the development of formal and non-formal education, has resulted in a historical transformation of consciousness” (iii). For example, “Awareness of rights and gender has increased massively” (ibid.). These shifts can be observed in different ways and intensities in postconfl ict Kwei Nasa. 2. Kwei Nasa was the last village in the area to receive electricity.

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INDEX

Advocacy Forum: 65 alcohol: 40, 122, 125; Maoist anti-alcohol stance: 4, 21, 67, 149; alcohol in rituals: 34, 149. See also millet wine Amnesty International: 15, 59, 63, 68 Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP): 42, 52, 94, 108–109, 126, 157 army: ix, x, 9, 10, 14–17, 21, 24, 26, 28–32, 34, 35, 37, 41, 42, 45, 47, 48, 57– 60, 63, 65– 68, 71, 72, 74–79, 81, 84, 86, 88, 91, 93, 94, 98, 101, 103, 105–107, 110, 114, 116, 117, 120–122, 124–126, 129–131, 147, 149, 150, 156, 160–162; Royal Nepal Army: ix, 14, 21, 30, 58, 106, 121, 122, 156; Nepal Army: 17, 156; People’s Liberation Army: 15, 98, 101, 104, 110, 113, 114, 117, 127, 131, 146, 147, 154, 156; Indian Army: 10, 29–32, 47, 84, 170n4 (chap. 5); British Army: 26, 29, 30, 32, 34, 37, 107. See also soldiers Baburam Bhattarai: viii, 13, 16, 156, 157 Bahuns: 35, 38, 40– 41, 73, 80, 93, 101, 104, 106, 109, 117, 120, 122–123, 131, 153 bandhs: 112, 114, 142–144 base area (Maoist): 14, 57 betrayal: 3, 80, 84, 120–121. See also spy/spies Birendra, King: 11, 14, 57, 59, 61 caste: 2, 14, 26, 35, 40, 50, 54, 76, 101, 130, 132, 158. See also Bahuns; Chhetris; Dalits cease-fi re: 14, 15, 57, 88, 137, 145, 149, 151, 155, 156, 168n9 Chhetris: 38, 40, 41, 99, 101, 153 children: 1, 27, 29, 64, 75, 78, 81, 84, 85, 96, 110–112, 118–119, 129, 132, 143, 170n1 (chap. 4). See also youth/young people/ teenagers

clothing/dress: 27–28, 30–35, 71, 73, 75–76, 90, 91, 94, 103, 107, 117, 129–130, 149, 168n1, 170n4 (chap. 5) Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist): 12–14, 153, 155, 168n6; Maoist Party: viii, 65, 91, 119, 155, 156 Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist Leninist): 12–14 Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist): 12–13, 16, 56, 153, 156 Constituent Assembly: 13, 15–17, 57–58, 137, 152, 156–157 Dalits: 14, 26, 35, 38, 39, 40, 43, 83, 101, 124, 130, 132, 146, 152, 153, 155, 158–159 day-care center: 4, 24, 29, 42, 52, 71, 82, 85, 87, 88, 91, 97, 108, 109, 114, 126, 127, 128, 133, 158, 161, 164 democracy: 10–14, 50, 106, 137, 143–145, 157, 170n1 (chap. 6) development: 3, 8, 9, 14, 18, 25, 29, 38, 41, 42, 52, 58, 68, 86, 108, 112, 126–128, 147, 157–159, 160–164 education: 2, 27, 41, 42, 81, 104, 125, 127, 129, 147, 159, 164. See also teachers elections: vii, x, 11–13, 15–17, 42, 137, 145, 148, 152–158 elite: 28, 40 emergency, state of: 14, 21, 58, 61, 63, 70 ethnicity: viii, x, 2, 3, 17–19, 26, 40, 43, 54, 76, 104, 117, 155, 168n4 fear: 3, 4, 7, 9, 21–22, 25, 27, 29, 47, 53–57, 60, 63, 67, 69, 71, 74, 79, 80, 82–85, 91, 94, 97, 102, 110–112, 114, 116–118, 120, 121, 130, 133, 137, 143, 147–152, 163, 167n2, 171n3 fieldwork in confl ict: 18–22, 88–89, 92

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food/cooking: 5, 6, 9, 24, 27, 34–36, 40, 44, 45, 51, 60, 66, 74, 79, 81, 82, 84–86, 89, 90, 96–98, 109, 112, 117, 120, 124, 125, 134, 147, 149, 159 forests: 6, 9, 27–28, 31, 37, 39, 52–56, 67, 68, 70, 72, 74–76, 85, 86, 89, 91, 93, 99, 125, 126, 131, 150, 161 gender: 8, 18, 40, 57, 65, 77–78, 83, 98–102, 158, 161 ghosts: 39, 55, 132, 133, 143. See also spirits; witches/bewitchment Gyanendra, King: viii, 14, 15, 57, 58, 61, 137, 145 health: 2, 32, 38, 41, 45, 62, 70, 95, 115, 127, 131, 136, 137, 140, 141, 147, 158, 159, 161, 163, 164 health post: 38, 41, 45, 115, 131, 136, 137, 159, 163 heart-mind (sae): 22, 43, 47, 48, 82, 83, 84, 110, 112, 118, 151, 171n3 Human Rights Watch: 15 language (Tamu): 26, 38, 39, 87, 103, 107, 108, 117, 168n4 Magars: 30, 40, 101, 105, 110 millet wine (pa): 45, 97; brewing millet wine: 35, 97; millet wine in rituals: 51, 149. See also alcohol Nepali Congress Party (Nepali Congress, Congress Party): vii, 10–13, 16, 27, 29, 56, 61– 63, 67, 83, 142, 143, 146, 153, 155, 156, 158, 159 peace process: 15, 17, 130, 145, 151, 152, 155, 157 peace talks: 14–15, 88, 137, 145, 150 People’s Movement (Jan Andolan): 11, 15, 138, 142–144, 170n1 (chap. 6) People’s War: vii, 2– 6, 8, 9, 13, 17, 20, 22, 23, 25, 61, 108, 129, 157, 159, 161–163, 167–168n3 police: 11, 14, 42, 52, 57– 61, 64, 67, 81, 101, 105, 109, 121, 122, 135, 138–142, 154 Prachanda: 15–16, 58, 156

ritual: general: 9, 22, 28, 33, 34, 55, 132, 145; ritual (death): 34, 39, 44, 49–51, 98, 143, 149, 164, 169n2; ritual (healing): 47– 49, 123. See also shamans Seven Party Alliance: 137 shamans: 2, 22, 34, 39, 44, 47–51, 116, 123, 132, 149, 169n2. See also ritual soldiers: 3, 41, 57, 61, 66, 68, 74, 77, 91, 116, 120–125, 130, 133, 134, 142, 145, 150, 151, 160; People’s Liberation Army soldiers: 5, 98; child soldiers: 64; British Army (Gurkha) soldiers: 26, 29, 32, 129, 153; Indian Army (Gorkha) soldiers: 32, 47, 170n4 (chap. 5). See also army souls (plah): 34, 44, 48, 51, 110, 123, 132, 169n12, 170n1 spirits: 9, 34, 37–39, 44, 47– 48, 55, 111, 149. See also ghosts; witches/ bewitchment spy/spies: 79, 80, 84, 91, 95, 96, 104, 106, 110, 120, 121, 127, 130. See also betrayal structural violence: 2–3, 163 Tamangs: 40 Tamu yula: 37–39, 49, 169n7 Tarai: 41, 64, 66, 68, 88, 126 teachers: 27, 38, 41, 63, 67, 81, 91, 93, 125–128, 154 Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist): 12, 16, 156, 168n6 Village Development Committee (VDC): 26, 28, 29, 38, 41, 42, 57, 73, 87, 135, 143, 152, 153, 157, 159, 160, 169n8 witches/bewitchment: 46, 47, 111, 132. See also ghosts; spirits yelsa yula: 38, 87, 99, 146, 151 youth/young people/teenagers: 29, 80, 85, 89, 90, 100, 107, 111–112, 118, 121, 125, 128, 129, 139, 145, 148, 151, 170n3– 4 (chap. 4). See also children

AC KNOW LEDG MENTS

This book has taken a long time to write and many people have helped me at different stages and in different ways. I would like to thank the following people who read earlier versions of sections of the book (and in some cases the entire book) and provided vital comments: Kamal Adhikari, Stephen Biggs, Ann Dunbar, Sharon Hepburn, Brandon Kohrt, Heonik Kwon, the late Bela Malik, Don Messerschmidt, Andrea Nightingale, Katie Robinson, Sara Shneiderman, Deepak Thapa, Piers Vitebsky. For advice with the title I would like to thank Don Messerschmidt, Piers Vitebsky, and especially Sharon Hepburn. I am deeply indebted to my friends in Kwei Nasa. I hope that this debt to those who befriended me, with whom I have lived periodically for many years and who in the midst of very difficult times shared their experiences and helped me to keep safe, is obvious on every page. Although Kwei Nasa is the main focus of this book I also conducted research in other locations. I would like to thank all those who shared their experiences with me in diverse locations, including Kathmandu and the surrounding area, Pokhara, and Nepalganj and its surrounds. I am especially grateful to those people who took time to talk to me, accommodate me, or provide some other sort of assistance in rural areas of central Nepal and the Tarai in situations that were often unstable. When I was looking for a research assistant to work with me during the insurgency, Ian Harper kindly suggested his brother-in-law Kamal Adhikari. In the earlier stages of the conflict Kamal had undertaken botanical work in forests (until it got too dangerous) and had frequently encountered both parties to the confl ict. With his quiet confidence and good humor Kamal was an ideal research assistant for such an unstable situation. His confidence in feeling able to talk to either side was very reassuring as was his judgment and his willingness to make and revise decisions as required. Kamal’s adaptability and enthusiasm to participate (even to learn a little Tamu language) endeared him to people in Kwei Nasa, where he has subsequently

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developed long-term friendships. We traveled widely across two districts of central Nepal during the insurgency, and to ensure that villagers did not have to unexpectedly cook for us (as they were so often under pressure to cook for Maoists) we took trekking cooks with us. Lek Bahadur Tamang (and also Tula Ram Tamang) has now been a friend for many years and today trips (even to Kwei Nasa) would not be complete without his cheerful presence and impressive logistical abilities. Throughout my visits during the insurgency years I rented rooms, along with other academics, at Don Messerschmidt’s house in Kathmandu. To other friends and guests Don usually introduced me as “the lady with the war stories.” He thereby encouraged me to talk about my fieldwork experiences and so to gain important support in difficult times. I am very grateful to him for that and for his excellent hospitality. I first met Andrea Nightingale at Don’s house and together we conducted the fieldwork that is recounted in the first part of Chapter 5. Andrea was an excellent fieldwork collaborator and I am especially grateful to her for her ability to see humor in challenging situations, her detailed and thoughtprovoking insights, and her (notable) ability to run fast through the back lanes of Kathmandu during curfews! From the early days of the insurgency up until today Sara Shneiderman has been a companion in the study of the People’s War. We have collaborated on several projects and I am very grateful to her for her deep insights, perceptive analysis, and integrity. I am especially grateful to her for her presence and support in the aftermath of the events recalled in chapter four. Although now living back home in the Republic of Ireland I remain involved in the Britain Nepal Academic Council. During the People’s War I worked closely with other members of the executive committee, hosting events and writing statements highlighting the situation in Nepal. For camaraderie and support I would especially like to thank David Gellner, Ian Harper, Michael Hutt, Surya Subedi, Ben Campbell and Anthony Costello. I am especially grateful to David Gellner for writing the foreword to this book and for his ongoing support. I would also like to thank Ingrid Massage of Amnesty International. My work on the insurgency has benefited from conversations with many people. In addition to those already named they include Dhruba Basnet, Sam Cowan, Anne de Sales, Kanak Dixit, Joop de Jong, Mark Jordans, Marie Lecomte-Tilouine, Chetana Lokshum, Kiyoko Ogura, Gail Robertson,

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Alpa Shah, Suraj Thapa, Mark Turin, and Wietse Tol. Thanks also to all those unnamed others who in one way or other supported this project. In Kathmandu I have benefited from affi liations to the Center of Victims of Torture and TPO (Transcultural Psychosocial Organisation) Nepal. I am grateful to Mandira Sharma of Advocacy Forum for allowing me to join her and colleagues on human rights documentation visits. While collaborating on a project in a border town (on the Nepal side) during an escalated phase of the conflict, Mandira greatly cheered me up by making evening excursions to the nearest bazaar on the Indian side and returning with extra fashionable kurta surwaal: I have kept them to this day. I thank her for that and much more. In Nepalganj I would like to thank Govinda Sharma (Bandi) for allowing me to accompany him during documentation and for introducing me to other colleagues working in the human rights field in the area. I would like to thank Peter Agree at the University of Pennsylvania Press for his enthusiasm for this project and his support and encouragement at every stage of the process. I would also like to thank the series editor Toby Kelly and two anonymous readers. Additional thanks to Noreen O’ConnorAbel, Rachel Taube, Sara Davis, and Julia Rose Roberts at Penn Press. Hester Higton provided editorial support at an earlier stage and I am grateful to her for her insightful suggestions. For assistance with editorial tasks I would like to thank Ritisha Maharajan. For editorial and research support at UL (University of Limerick) I would like to acknowledge Bríd Dunne. For assistance during fieldwork in the early 1990s and ongoing interest in my work I would like to thank Ardeshir Sepehri. I would also like to thank Balasingh Tamu and family, Durga Gurung and family, and Dil Maya Gurung. For providing me with the opportunity to talk about the psychological challenges of fieldwork during the conflict and for her support I am grateful to Jane Frances. For support, friendship, collaboration, and ongoing discussions about Nepal conducted in many different countries and via many different media I would especially like to thank Sharon Hepburn, Andrea Nightingale, Sara Shneiderman, and Mark Turin. Alan Macfarlane initially introduced me to Kwei Nasa. I would like to thank him for intellectual wisdom and he and Sarah Harrison for ongoing discussion and for encouragement and support over many years. I have been fortunate to have collaborated with Yarjung Tamu for many years. I would like to thank him for assistance with language and cultural concepts and for his ongoing interest in and support of

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my work. I would like to thank Chris Evans for the use of a Cambridge Archaeological Unit map. My research trips to Nepal during the insurgency years where funded by the British Academy to which I am extremely grateful. Sally Wolfe shared the field trip during the 2008 elections in her usual humorous and indomitable style. Late at night on the road from Kathmandu to Pokhara (after a series of delaying breakdowns) we were flagged down by a group of Maoists with torches. From the back seat I urged Sally to say nothing. Totally ignoring my suggestion she shouted at the youth who shone his torch in her face. The encounter ended abruptly as the stunned cadre (and his colleagues) withdrew! I thank her for her unstinting support and encouragement and for our many conversations on the psychological impacts of war. Piers Vitebsky has read most of this book at different times and in various incarnations. I am very grateful to him for his continuing support of my work, his meticulous attention to text, and his inspiration over many years. For their longterm support and encouragement I am very grateful to my parents Vera and Stanley and my brothers John and Mike and their families. Sabina is aware that academic parents thank their children in the acknowledgment section of their books. She carefully examines colleagues’ acknowledgments and has been composing (and revising) her “thanks” for the last two years. She is very keen that I thank her for not interrupting me too much and for not joining the Maoists for a biscuit when she was aged four. Sabina makes a brief appearance in the book but what I know about the impact of the People’s War on children has been significantly augmented by her comments especially during her first year out of Nepal (in 2006). (“Are those the Maoists?” she sometimes asked me as we passed groups of mixed gender youth on the streets of the small English town we then lived in. “Did the Maoists or the army do that?” she asked when a friend showed us World War II bomb damage in London, and on seeing a uniformed soldier, “The Maoists and the army are friends now, isn’t that right?”) Thank you, Sabina, for that and so much more.

Earlier versions of portions of the Introduction appeared in “Introduction” in Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew, eds., Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal (New Delhi: Social Science Press: 2012), reprinted by permission of Social Science Press; in the introduction to a guest edited special issue, Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew, eds., “Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in South Asia,” Dialectical Anthropology, 33(3–4) (2009), 225–251, reprinted by permission of Springer; and in Judith Pettigrew, Sara Shneiderman, and Ian Harper, “Relationships, Complicity and Representation: Conducting Research in Nepal during the Maoist Insurgency,” Anthropology Today, 20(1) (2004), 20–25, reprinted by permission of Wiley and Sons, Inc. Earlier versions of portions of Chapter 2 appeared in “Guns, Kinship and Fear: Maoists among the Tamu-mai (Gurungs)” in David N. Gellner, ed., Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences (Social Science Press: New Delhi, 2003), reprinted by permission of Social Science Press; in “Guns, Kinship and Fear: Maoists Among the Tamu-mai (Gurungs)” in David N. Gellner, ed., Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences, revised edition (Oxford: Berghahn Press, 2006), reprinted by permission of Berghahn Press; and in “Observations During the State-of-Emergency: Kathmandu,” European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 20(1) (2001), 125–131, reprinted by permission of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Earlier versions of portions of Chapter 3 appeared in “Living Between the Maoists and the Army in Rural Nepal,” Himalaya: The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 23 (1) (2004), 9–20, reprinted by permission of The Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies; in “Living Between the Maoists and the Army in Rural Nepal,” in Michael Hutt, ed., Himalayan People’s War: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion (London: Hurst & Co., 2004), reprinted by permission of Hurst and Co.; (Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 2004), reprinted by permission of Indiana University Press; and in “Learning to be Silent: Change, Childhood and Mental Health in the

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Maoist Insurgency in Nepal,” in Hiroshi Ishii, David N. Gellner and Katsuo Nawa, eds., Nepalis Inside and Outside Nepal: Political and Social Transformations (Series: Japanese Studies on South Asia) (Manohar: New Delhi, 2007), reprinted by permission of Manohar Books. Earlier versions of portions of Chapters 3, 5 and 6 appeared in Judith Pettigrew and Kamal Adhikari, “Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal,” in Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew, eds., Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal (New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2012), reprinted by permission of Social Science Press; and in Pettigrew, Judith and Kamal Adhikari, “Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal,” Dialectical Anthropology, 33(3–4) (2009), 403–422, reprinted by permission of Springer. Earlier versions of portions of Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 appeared in Judith Pettigrew with Kamal Adhikari, “ ‘There is Nowhere Safe’: Intrusion, Negotiation and Resistance in a Hill Village in Central Nepal,” in Prabin Manandhar and David Seddon, eds., In Hope and Fear: Living Through the People’s War in Nepal (New Delhi: Adroit Press, 2010), reprinted by permission of Adroit Press. Earlier versions of portions of Chapters 4 and 7 appeared in “Unexpected Consequences of Everyday Life During the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal,” Journal of International Women’s Studies, 13(2) (2012), reprinted by permission of the Journal of International Women’s Studies. Earlier versions of portions of Chapter 6 appeared in Andrea Nightingale and Judith Pettigrew, “Everyday Spaces of Protest in Kathmandu,” in Prabin Manandhar and David Seddon, eds., In Hope and Fear: Living Through the People’s War in Nepal (New Delhi: Adroit Press, 2010), reprinted by permission of Adroit Press; in Andrea Nightingale and Judith Pettigrew, “At the Edges of a Curfew: Beyond the Teargas and Bullets, Citizens Play Cat and Mouse to Reclaim their Space,” Nepali Times, 294 (2006), 8, reprinted by permission of Himalmedia Private Limited; and in “Observing the Elections in Central Nepal,” in Deepak Thapa, ed., Anthropologists Observe Nepal’s Constituent Assembly Election (Kathmandu: Himal Books, 2009), reprinted by permission of Himal Books.