Description

In August 2014, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Nepal. In a speech to parliament he spoke a few sentences in Nepali. To a rapturous reception, he declared that Nepal was a sovereign country and that the Buddha was born in Nepal. This was widely perceived as the opening of a new era in India–Nepal relations. Little more than a year later, Modi had become a villain like no other. How did this happen? What is it about the relationship, and in particular the place of Madhesh within Nepal, that makes it so difficult to handle? I review the emergence of politically sensitive ethnic blocks in Nepal, analogous to similar groupings within India, that will have a deep influence on future developments.

David N. Gellner is Professor of Social Anthropology and a Fellow of All Souls College in the University of Oxford. He has been researching religion, ethnicity, and politics in Nepal since the early 1980s. His edited collection Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia appeared with Duke University Press in 2013.