"Firstly, the urbanized, introverted Newars, organized around clustered settlements, rooted in their land, religiously ecumenical and syncretic, and non-expansionist. Secondly, the rural-based Parbatiya Hill Hindus, governed by a militant aristocracy and orthodox Brahmanical values, military oriented, aggressive, and territory-grabbing….these two models imply important differences in the form of the Hinduism practised. The first one was tolerant, liberal, pluralist…. The second was exclusive, intolerant, orthodox as far as the Brahmanical values were concerned, in a way fundamentalist before its time. In the Parbatiya model, Hinduism was politicized in a much more decisive manner than among the Newars."
By the late medieval period, the kings of these small kingdoms in the central hills had begun to view themselves as protectors of pure Hinduism, as in their opinion the Indian plains had been defiled first by the Moghuls and then by the westerners. After he conquered the Kathmandu Valley in 1768-69, Prithvi Narayan Shah "proclaimed himself as Hindupati, lord of the Hindus, protector of Brahmans and cows." Under him and his successors, Gorkha´s version of what it meant to be a Hindu kingdom was extended to all the territories brought under its sovereignty.
State-backed Hinduism was most importantly manifested during the 19th century in the codification and practice of caste-based differentiation through the provision of national laws known as Muluki Ain (MA). The original MA of 1854 propagated by the first Rana premier Jang Bahadur provided a Hindu ideological base for the state. It legalized a five-tier national caste hierarchy in which the peoples of Nepal were divided into categories according to ascribed ritual purity: wearers of holy cord, non-enslavable alcohol-drinkers (matwali), enslavable alcohol-drinkers, impure but touchable castes, and impure and untouchable castes. One implication of this scheme was that the state guaranteed inequality based on one’s caste. For instance, the punishment for the same crime committed by a Bahun man and an untouchable man was sometimes vastly different as provisioned in the MA.
The MA nor any of the constitutions before 1962 formally declared Nepal to be a Hindu kingdom. However, the Hinduness of the Kingdom was manifested by the fact that the monarch was a Hindu, and the nationally influential bureaucracy was dominated by Nepali speaking male high-caste Hindus. Consequently, the cultural ethos of the nation was projected in terms of the religious and cultural motifs of the dominant Hindu hill groups. This was the case, for instance, with respect to the general orientation of the laws governing many aspects of societal interaction.
Hindu Kingdom
It was only in the 1962 Panchayat Constitution that the Nepal was first declared ‘Hindu’. However, the logic of caste hierarchy was abandoned by its guarantee of equality to all citizens. The MA itself was thoroughly revised in 1963, assuring equality before the law irrespective of one’s caste. Nevertheless, the state´s patronage of Hinduism continued. After the end of the Panchayat system, the 1990 Constitution Recommendation Commission received many suggestions saying Nepal should be declared a secular state. These came, in part, from the Communists who believed in secularism but also from Buddhists and practitioners of other religions who thought that their respective religious beliefs and practices were better protected if the state was declared secular. Janajati activists, liberal intellectuals and politicians who had been influential in the regime change of 1990 were also in favor of declaring Nepal as a secular state.
But supporters of the Hindu Kingdom idea even used the Bharatiya Janata Party of India to make a pitch for its inclusion in the constitution. They also played with the dominant Hindu community´s fear that in a secular state, religious conversion, especially into Christianity, would be widespread. The 1990 Constitution ended up declaring the kingdom as Hindu.
Critics of this provision argued that this declaration negated the right guaranteed by Article 11.3 which said that the state shall not discriminate between citizens on the basis of religion. The janajatis claimed that in a constitutionally declared Hindu Kingdom, all the other religions would face discrimination. Some, like sociologist Sudhindra Sharma, argued that for various historical relationships between the Hindu religion and Nepal as a kingdom, it was very difficult to declare Nepal as a ‘secular kingdom´. Instead, it was suggested that the term Hindu should be understood as describing just the King and not the state.
A few weeks after the successful People´s Movement of April 2006, the restored House of Representatives declared Nepal to be a secular state and suspended virtually all the political powers of the then king. The Maoists, other leftists and janajatis in Nepal had realized one of their long cherished goals. Nepal´s secular state status was reiterated when the Interim Constitution (IC) was promulgated in January 2007. The Constituent Assembly (CA) declared Nepal to be a republic on 28 May 2008.
Secularism´s Future
It has been easy to declare Nepal to be a secular state. However, to practice secularism will be quite a challenge. In one model of secularism, there should be a clear separation of the state and religion, and no state resources should go to support any activity that could be construed as religious. Although there is lack of details regarding what model of secularism has been committed to by the declaration in the IC, there is simply an abundance of historical baggage for this model to be adopted anytime soon. In practice, the interim state has already funded religious activities, suggesting that it is the second model that works here.
Under the second model, the state is declared secular to mean that all religions will be treated equally by the state. The implication of this is that if state resources are to be provided to support religious programs, they will have to be distributed equitably to all religions. However, defining what an equitable distribution means is not going to be easy. This is so because such support will be sought most probably not in the name of religion but in the name of culture or ethnicity, which in many an instance will be very hard to distinguish from religion. This difficulty will be even greater because the logic of proportional representation has already been written into the IC, and will most likely emerge as a permanent feature of the new constitution that the CA will deliver. This logic recognizes that representation in the state machinery should tally with the size of various types of communities based on gender, ethnicity, caste or regional origins, and will also apply to questions related to the distribution of state resources. Religion could easily enter this turf through the back door as part of one´s ethnicity.
The logic of proportional representation would suggest that the state-resources to support activities of any single religion would be of a size that was proportional to the percentage of members of that religion in the population at large. Since the Hindu community in Nepal is far greater in size than the other religious communities, if this logic were followed, a large share of state-resources to support religious activities would still go to the Hindu community, and would seem unfair to followers of other religions. Such details have to be confronted by members in the CA as they discuss the theme of secularism in the future constitution of Nepal. If the drafts of the thematic committees of the CA submitted thus far are to be our evidence, it is clear that the CA members are not thinking at the level of such details.
In addition, if societal tolerance and respect for minority religions is to be celebrated as a good aspect of this second model of secularism, inter-faith dialogue will have to be promoted with state support. For the faithful, this will be an opportunity to reexamine one´s own religion and, in the case of open-minded believers, this could lead to reforms in one´s religion. For atheists like me who do not question others´ rights to believe in God, such exchanges will be further evidence of our collective commitment to real cultural pluralism.
A direct implication of the above is that laws that prohibit conversion will have to be left out of the new constitution. Sociologist Sharma and others have argued that the constitutional ban on religious conversion, purportedly there to protect Hinduism from Christianity, was detrimental to Hinduism itself as it stunted the possibility of reforms in Hinduism on the face of challenges from other religions. However, such a change in law is likely to face much opposition. Even in the interim constitution, promotion of religious conversion is banned (Article 23.1). Given that the significant absolute growth in the number of Christians in Nepal over the past 20 years – while their total is still less than two per cent of the overall population – has not been celebrated as a good feature of increasing pluralism in Nepali society even once by the mainstream media, it is quite clear that the work of promoting respect for minority religions is not going to be easy.
Are we ready for a debate on secularism´s future in our country?
(Onta is a historian based at Martin Chautari in Kathmandu.)
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