What makes a Nepali?

In the aftermath of the GenZ protests last month, as new PM Sushila Karki chose the first members of her Council of Ministers, youth collectives urged that it reflect the country’s diversity by including women, youth and people from various ethnic and socio-cultural backgrounds. 

It took another couple of weeks for Karki to include  bureaucrat and public health expert Sangeeta Mishra as  Health Minister in her next tranche of ministers. Almost immediately, people dug up a video of Mishra calling herself “Nepali, but a native Indian”.

She was telling it like it was: Mishra is a naturalised Nepali citizen. But there was outrage in the ultra-nationalistic cybersphere. Mishra’s name was withdrawn from the list of ministers, with government officials citing an ongoing investigation at the CIAA. 

With her Cabinet still incomplete a month after taking office, Prime Minister Karki was preparing to induct GenZ as ministers. A leak in the media floated the names, one of which was of Tashi Lhazom, a climate activist and filmmaker from Humla’s Limi Valley. 

Almost immediately, social media erupted with discriminatory, xenophobic and misogynistic epithets against her: that she supported a separatist movement, that she was a foreign agent, that her citizenship was disputed, that she did not ‘look’ or ‘speak’ like a Nepali. 

Political figures like Gyanendra Shahi, a prominent voice calling for the restoration of a Hindu monarchy, added fuel to the fire by making bigoted and false remarks about her heritage.

The former Commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission, Mohna Ansari, wrote on social media that it was shameful to question Lhazom’s identity: ‘Ms Tashi Lhazom is as Nepali as you are. Our society’s ugliest face and biggest flaw is doubting our own. Real patriotism embraces diversity — fake nationalism must end.’

Ansari, a human rights lawyer and activist, has also often been subject to Islamophobic and derogatory comments on digital platforms.  

In response, the Indigenous GenZ Collective released Lhazom’s Nepali citizenship certificate to debunk the mistruths spreading on digital as well as mainstream media.

What makes a Nepali? What does a Nepali look or sound like? Who is a Nepali?

‘Had my name been Tashi Poudel, Thapa, Bhattarai or Ghimire, this would not have happened,’ Lhazom said in an interview with Kantipur following an avalanche of bigotry against her. ‘They questioned me because I do not look Nepali, or speak Nepali like a Khas. Because it is not my mother tongue.’

It is an indictment of Nepali society that indigenous Nepalis have to present proof, at the slightest inconvenience of mostly the dominant groups, of being a citizen of this nation simply because they might not fit into an imagined idea of Nepali nationhood by virtue of physical appearance, speech, geography, or faith.

And while we celebrate the successes of Nepal-born naturalised foreign citizens (some now hold elected office in the US) we refuse to afford the same respect to naturalised Nepali citizens, and those born in Nepal to excluded groups, nor do we expect them to work in the national interest if they are given responsibility to govern. And women are singled out twice as much for scrutiny.

Then cyber Nepal went into a tizzy when videos appeared of a biker’s group clad in black t-shirts emblazoned with the acronym ‘TOB’ which was interpreted to stand for ‘Tibetan Original Blood’ and linked to the Free Tibet movement.

The accusations snowballed into disinformation, xenophobia, and even calls for violence against Nepalis of Tibetan heritage and the Tibetan community in Nepal. 

In the aftermath of the September protest, the hope was that politics and the bureaucracy would finally be rid of orthodox political actors. But first, we as a nation need to collectively examine the biases and bigotry that exist in Nepal’s socio-cultural space. 

Otherwise, Nepal’s multiculturalism will be limited to just words in the Constitution and political tokenism.

No one who is in government now or in future can be expected to be completely free of subjective opinions, ideology, affiliation to a cause, or prior activism. And such criticism falls disproportionately on activists, advocates, and members from underserved and underrepresented communities. 

One cannot be apolitical and hope to participate in politics, and as we move forward to rebuild the system it must not just reflect diverse communities, but also celebrate diversity of thought and beliefs. 

Resorting to ethnocentrism, racism and chauvinism with conspiracy theories and discriminatory dog-whistling about fellow citizens is a disservice to Nepali nationhood. It is Nepal’s diversity that makes us strong. 

Shristi Karki