Mongolian Momo

By Anand Gurung

A funny thing happened while I was meeting a friend over lunch at a restaurant in Kings’ Way last week. The day was clear and sunny. We sat in a table and after a brief chat started going through the menu which had names of French and Italian sounding dishes under Appetizers and A–la –carte, a break from restaurants which I regularly visit whose menus include chicken-in-the basket (roasted chicken pieces), chicken drumstick (it should have been chicken legs, but they look like meatballs in sticks) and finger chips (French fries).

We told the waiter to bring us Spaghettis, Rolls and of course Momos. He wrote down our order and then with a courteous smile asked if we would like a Mongolian Momo or an Aryan one? I was completely bowled over. What is this waiter saying? Since when did they bring the matter of race in, of all things, food? What kind of a tacky restaurant is this where they mean to shock its patrons? More importantly, being a “Mongolian”, am I expected to go for a Mongolian dish? What if I order the other one? Seeing me baffled, my friend asked the waiter what he exactly meant. The waiter explained that Momos made with Chinese spices are Mongolian and those made with Nepali (or Indian) spices are Aryan. Simple. We couldn’t decide which Momo to go for and quite confused, just looked at each other. After the waiter went with our order minus the Momo we finally broke into a laugh to drive away some awkwardness from the situation. A little while later our order arrived. The food was fine, and having the sated feeling one gets after having a heavy lunch, the little episode was just as good as forgotten.

But of course it was not that easy to put the incident out of my mind. All my life the question about caste and race, and with it the stereotyping – behavioral and otherwise - had been the unpalatable dish that was served to me without having to order for it.

I first heard about the Maoists and the war they were waging against the state deep in the remote, treacherous hills and mountains of western Nepal while in college in the late 90s. They were said to be fighting to end feudalism in the country once and for all and liberate the oppressed from age-old discrimination and bondage. However, the Maoist insurgency also gave the intellectuals something to talk about. Fed up with King Prithvi Narayan Shah’s concept of Nepal as “a garden of 4 castes and 36 varnas”, they now openly started to acknowledge that discrimination indeed exists in our heterogeneous society on the basis of gender, caste, race and religion, and that something needs to be done to end it. Coming from an average family of the city, young, not well versed with politics, not well read even, of course I couldn’t understand all this.

How could I possibly understand discrimination? I had never experienced it. Just that I often saw, more clearly in rural areas and more subtly in the urban, girl child being less preferred to boys; girls occupied with household chores while their brothers went to better schools; young women not being asked for her consent by her parents while making major decisions on her life like marriage, not being entitled to ancestral property. Worst of all, in the case of single mothers, not being able to give her own children citizenship status in her name.

I also saw people refusing to touch or let a Dalit inside their houses considering them as “outcastes” and “polluted”, but proudly donning the clothes made by them or taking their services. The situation of Madhesis in Kathmandu and other towns was worse. They were ridiculed for their dark skin, costume they wore and were bullied. Though they were legitimate Nepalese citizens and had come to Kathmandu, their country’s capital, from Terai districts to eke out a living, mostly, by doing menial works, they were always considered aliens. But I used to think discriminations exist everywhere. Just that in some society it is more apparent.

The ethnic community to which I was told I belong to is part of an even larger community known as the “Janjatis” or “indigenous nationalities” in English. It was a choice word among government policy makers, development workers and intellectuals to collectively define a large segment of Nepal’s population belonging to “minority groups” mostly of “Mongoloid appearance”, although it is yet to be ascertained which caste, community or race are in majority in this country.

I looked at the Nepali Brihat Shabdakosh published by the Nepal Academy (formerly Royal Nepal Academy) for the dictionary definition of “Janjati” and I was shocked. According to it, a Janjati is a jungle tribe chiefly living on wild fruits and plant roots who are totally cut off from the development process.

The definition looked more appropriate to define the way of life of most people of this country back two centuries ago. Yes, among the 59 “identified” indigenous nationalities few who the development workers define as “other backward communities” are indeed jungle tribe, but the majority like Tamang, Newar, Magar, Rai, Limbu, Thakali, Sherpa and Gurung – who are collectively known as “Janjatis” - don’t. They have their own distinct (even sophisticated) culture, language, religion, customs and traditional social structures and mores. And although these groups were deliberately excluded from the mainstream of state affairs for much of the past two centuries since Nepal emerged as a nation state (but which is in fact a city state with all the power centralized in Kathmandu), they through their resilience and whatever little means available to them managed to safeguard their culture and identity while trying their best to adapt to the changes happening around them.

Then, of course, there is the government definition of “Janjati” as communities having their "own distinct language and culture" but that are "socially [and financially] backward in comparison to other caste groups".

Socially backward! Although having little say in national affairs, Newars are socially and economically better off than any other Nepali community, including Bahuns and Chettris. So, who are the people coming up with these definitions? Who are the observers making these observations? You may admit that you have been oppressed, neglected, deprived, victims of biasness but who would call oneself “backward” or, for that matter, “of low status” (in case of Dalits). How easy it is to use words, come up with definitions just like that without considering its implications. It feels as if the person(s) coming up with these set words believed that Janjatis and Dalits (and also women) were solely responsible for their “backwardness”, without acknowledging the factors that contributed to the situation that they are in: The deliberate policies of the Shah and Rana rulers to wrest away their self-respect and belief from themselves and then the sheer neglect and disdain of the successive Bahun-Chettri dominated “democratic governments” thereafter which pushed the “socially backward” and the unprivileged into the periphery . Again, on what basis these conclusions were made? Was it social awareness, cultural sophistication, education, health standards or representation in state agencies, political power and reach? Or is there more?

Janjati comprises of two words -- “Janta” meaning citizenry and “Jati” meaning castes/kind. So the meaning of “Janjati” is itself clear and obviously may have been first used by a segment of the dominant communities that made up the ruling class in Nepal.

The Janjatis were the defeated. After King Prithvi Narayan Shah’s army quickly over ran the small principalities ruled by various Janjati groups during his, what Nepalese historians proudly call, “national unification” drive over two centuries ago, Nepal as a country came into existence. But although he succeeded in unifying the country geographically, the harsh subjugation of the defeated under his rule and the continuation of the same policies by the successive rulers and governments meant that Nepal was never united emotionally.

The discriminatory policy clandestinely practiced by the State meant that the Janjatis, Dalits, Madhesis and ofcourse women were completely sidelined. They were left out in the cold, had no voice in the running of the State. It never fostered national integrity by advocating social and economic justice for them. Instead, the Kathmandu rulers forcefully tried to thrust one religion, language and culture on the minorities to promote the sense of “Nepaliness” and partly succeeded in this attemt. Rais and Limbus of the eastern hilly districts, Gurungs of mid-western hills, Newars in Kathmandu, Tamangs, Tharus and Madhesis in the plains and Dalits across the country still hold a deep grudge against the State for this. The sense of this tremendous injustice culminated in the decade-long Maoist insurgency that took thousands of lives and brought the whole country close to disaster. Moreover, it is also a prelude to other political catastrophes yet to come in the country, the signs of which is being seen in the identity politics played by Janjati and Dalit groups and the growing militancy in Madhesh.

Nepal’s history is poorly written. It is just the biography of the great rulers of the country: Mostly glorification of the Shah kings, their great deeds or the pomp and pageantry of the Ranas, their exploits and eventual fall. It is absolutely silent on the Ghale kings of Lamjung or the Kirat rule in much of what is now Nepal; the majesty of the Malla dynasty or the charm of the forgotten kingdom of Mithila. The entries on them in the history books appears more as an effort to brush it off as mere collection of events in the timeline of history, so inconsequential that the historians thought it better to write it off as fit to be conquered by Prithivi Narayan Shah’s army.

Dominated socially, politically and economically, the Janjatis, Dalits and Madhesis had to silently bear the derogatory labels, phrases and definitions that were conjured up to distinguish them, were forced to accept the history that has so ruthlessly snatched away from them their ideals, their past. There may have been great poets, learned men and philosophers in Nepal even before Bhanu Bhakta Acharya, but he was venerated as Nepal’s “Adi Kavi”, a symbol of the high literary and scholarly status of the Bahuns and dominance of Nepali language over that of other ethnic groups in the country.

As I write these lines something strikes me. Though Mongolian or Aryan, a Momo is after all a food to relish. So the next time I visit that restaurant I am going to order for a Momo, if they ask would that be a Mongolian or Aryan, then I will tell them to bring me a fusion of both, which I believe will be more tasty to eat. They also tell me fusion foods are in. nepalnews.com Dec 29 08

The writer can be reached at andygurung@yahoo.com

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