Hemmed in by a kebab house on one side and a health and beauty aid discount store on the other, the eatery is unremarkable in a crowded street that flaunts Bengali alphabets on signboards and caters mostly to South Asian shoppers looking for silk sarees, 24-carat gold jewelry, bhajan music, Bollywood DVDs and authentic spices—not necessarily in that order—from ‘back home.’[break]
A whitened portion on the nameplate above the restaurant’s main entrance catches attention. An old patron of the place explains the blank space.
The joint once advertised itself as specializing in “Nepalese, Indian & Tibetan Cuisine.” The second adjective has since been erased. The comma after the first word remains.
The picture is nearly one year old, but its message is still relevant. The error may have been symptomatic of billboard English.
However, like poetic licenses, lapses of grammar can also be interpreted as expressions of agitated minds. Apparently, the Nepali diasporas—the plural form of the term attempts to capture diversities within seemingly homogeneous community—are as much in ferment as their compatriots back home.
On the other end of the world, some Nepali restaurants in Tokyo and Osaka often proclaim that they specialize in Naan and Momo.
Naan is the Persian term for flatbread and it spread out towards South Asia through Afghanistan. Momos have been known in places like Ladakh, Kathmandu, Gangtok, Darjeeling, and Thimpu for long. But connoisseurs of these distinctive dumplings south of the Himalaya were few and far between.
That changed with the flight of Dalai Lama from Lhasa in 1959 to the land where Lord Buddha had attained nirvana. Fearful of Chinese prosecution, Tibetan refugees followed their spiritual master to South Asia in hordes.
Some of them settled down in Kathmandu where Momos became a popular street food.
Naans have failed to find that honor, but Nepalis now consider Momos as their very own. Among customers of Nepali restaurants all over the world, Momos are all-time favorites.
Attachment to familiar fares is common to all kinds of diasporas. Immigrants take traditional recipes with them wherever they go.
Refugees have to initially make do with whatever they can get, but they begin to improvise customary dishes once life in host countries becomes a bit predictable.
Guest workers in alien lands find solace in recognizable flavors.
The comfortable expatriate may explore exotic dishes and dine out on Continental cuisine to impress their colleagues, but even they drool over childhood foods in the privacy of their homes.
For the overseas ethnic communities, feasting on familiar dishes is the favored way of socializing.
Among those forced to live away from their ancestral homes, communities of exiles are most finicky about their food choices: They refuse to carry the baggage of their past around but are ready to jump at the first opportunity of claiming a culinary heritage.
Assured migrants
Going abroad in search of work is not new to Nepal. The tradition of seasonal migration from mountains to the plains, especially during winter but sometimes also in the spring, for work and trade is as old as the Nepali hills.
After the Anglo-Gorkha war (1814–1816) ended in the surrender of the latter, many warriors of the vanquished army turned into soldiers of fortune.
One of them was Bal Bhadra Kunwar who deserted the defeated army and joined Maharaja Ranjit Singh in raising a force of Gorkhali mercenaries for the expansion and protection of the short-lived Sikh Empire (1799-1849) with its capital in Lahore.
Professional fighters from the hills had served various Hindu potentates of the Ganga-Brahmaputra plains for long, but Captain Kunwar of the Nalapani legend was perhaps the first to raise entire regiments of Gorkhali mercenaries as a general in the Sikh army.
Jang Bahadur Kunwar would later pay back the dues to the employer of Gorkhali soldiers by sheltering and then interceding on behalf of the dowager Maharani Jind Kaur with the British when the Sikh Empire began to disintegrate.
The Lahure tradition was thus born to fight the forces of East India Company.
For nearly two centuries now, they have been serving to advance British interests all over the world with even more distinction.
Migrant workers and Lahure warriors never had any confusion about the focus of their loyalty.
The body of a Lahure—the term has now come to include combative duties as well other menial activities—belongs to whichever government or enterprise pays their wages.
Their mind may be slightly divided between planning for a future at home or exploration of more attractive avenues abroad.
The heart and soul, however, remain firmly rooted in the soil of their ancestral land. This could be the reason remittances continued to sustain Nepal’s economy even during the worst years of armed conflict.
After subsistence agriculture, employment abroad is reported to have become the second largest contributor to Nepal’s GDP, bringing in almost four billion dollars annually into a country longing for every penny of foreign currency just to pay for continuously ballooning petroleum import bills.
Guest workers in foreign lands may invite Nepali artistes or politicos once in a while for diversion, but they are too occupied in making a living to worry about larger solidarities.
Identity for most menial workers begins with the names of their family, caste, ethnicity, community, village, or district and end in an affirmation of loyalty to the official seal over their passports.
Mostly hailing from exploited castes, classes and communities, democracy at home matters to them even more than it does to expatriates and exiles.
Politics of migrant workers often mirror realities on the ground in their home constituencies. Self-assurance is the shield that protects guest workers from relentless onslaught of globalization.
Paradoxically, dislocation induces completely different sets of responses among comfortable expatriates and commercialized exiles.
Anxious exiles
Benedict Anderson, the China-born and British-educated half-Irish professor of international relations in the United States of America is better known for propounding the theory of nation as a creation of imagination.
Earlier scholars, media-theorist Marshall McLuhan for example, had long intuited that nation-state was a manufactured concept of print capitalism.
Prof. Anderson presented his observations in such a persuasive manner that his eponymous book became a handbook of understanding “Imagined Communities.”
His latest contribution deals with predilections of exile, which he terms “long-distance nationalism.”
The bug to explore the world is impossible to resist at a certain age, and the only way for the poor of doing so is to go abroad in search of work. Guest workers begin their journey with the conviction of returning.
The country of origin may be whacked by extremism, militarism, civil war or ethnic strife, but the idea of abandoning home doesn’t appeal to everyone.
However, people with fungible loyalties are capable of being at home wherever they are. Prior to globalization, ‘post-national’ ethos was considered a desirable attribute of the social elite.
The idea of cosmopolitanism implied that a person was free from nationalistic fervors or communal prejudices.
Commercialization of social relationships in the wake of globalization has left a large section of exiles at the mercy of market forces. As it gets harder to settle and assimilate into the societies of host lands, exiles look towards homeland for fulfillment, which Anderson thinks may have “...menacing portent for the future.”
In a much-quoted paragraph, the theorist of nationalism propounds: “First of all, it is a product of capitalism’s remorseless, accelerating transformation of all human societies.
Second, it creates a serious politics that is at the same time radically unaccountable. The participant rarely pays taxes in the country in which he does his politics; he is not answerable to its judicial system; he probably does not cast even an absentee ballot in its elections because he is a citizen of a different place; he need not fear prison, torture or death, nor need his immediate family.
But, well and safely positioned in the First World, he can send money and guns, circulate propaganda, and build intercontinental computer circuits, all of which can have incalculable consequences in zones of their ultimate destinations.”
Pointing towards the main impulse that turns exiles into ardent nationalists, Anderson argues: “That same metropole that marginalizes and stigmatizes him simultaneously enables him to play, in a flash, on the other side of the planet, national heroes.”
Perhaps a sense of guilt, too, is partly responsible for the bellicosity of expatriates towards those who they feel have made a mess of the country they left behind.
Exile is an option, not compulsion. Alibis have to be manufactured to justify an escapist choice made in the past. Response expresses itself in belligerence.
Umpteen email groups—almost all of them based in the First World countries—lament the loss of peace and amity that had once existed in the country that they deserted and keep remitting an unceasing flow of sanctimonious sermons.
Highly educated individuals, people who should know the nitty-gritty of a functioning democracy and shenanigans of politicos better, disparage inclusion, deride politics of dignity and demonize federalism.
Reparatory discrimination is anathema to those who are unlikely to come back and strengthen meritocracy on home ground. Patronizing tone and condescension waft from their conversation like vapor from ‘holy’ cow dung.
“Why can’t all Janjatis be like good Gurungs of Kaski and Lamjung? Or why don’t all Madheshis adopt food, dress, language and lifestyle of Pahadis just as most Tharus have done, despite suffering worse humiliations at the hands of their tormentors?”
Such questions are difficult enough to explain to Resident Non-Nepalis (RNNs) of Planet Exclusive in Kathmandu.
For Non-Resident Nepalis (NRNs) sitting in London, New York, Paris or Moscow, even the attempt of an answer appears blasphemous.
Fear and loathing of India and Indians—social, cultural and economic superiors of exiled Nepalis in their host lands—often translates into animosity towards Madheshis who, to quote an old and caustic hate mail, “Look like Indians, talk like Indians, but pretend to be Us!”
Erasure of the ‘offensive’ term from the signboard of a New York eatery should not be a cause of worry in Kathmandu. It may have been an offhand business decision.
After all, loss avoidance is a stronger urge than profit maximization: It is better to keep the loyalty of chauvinistic customers intact than attempt to lure more discerning cosmopolitan crowd.
Long-distance nationalism is still in an embryonic stage in Nepal. The risks here are higher merely because it would not take much to destabilize a diverse country mired in xenophobia.
Lal contributes to The Week with his biweekly column Reflections. He is one of the widely read political analysts in Nepal.
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