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Maximillian Mørch, Plains of Discontent: A political history of Nepal’s Terai (1743–2019)

Bernardo A. Michael
Référence(s) :

Maximillian Mørch, Plains of Discontent: A political history of Nepal’s Terai (1743–2019), Kathmandu: Fine Prints, 2023. vi+291pp. Notes, Bibliography

Texte intégral

1In this book, author Maximilien Mørch argues that the 250-year process leading to the creation of the modern Nepali state (formerly the kingdom of Gorkha) and national identity has been an acutely discriminatory and exclusionary one, especially for its minorities and underserved populations. In fact, Mørch, whose research focuses on borderlands, believes that inequality, exclusion and discrimination are prominent markers of this process. The author writes that discrimination ‘has been a cornerstone of Nepal since its founding as a modern nation state’ (Mørch 2023: 153). Nepal’s hill-based, high-caste ruling elites curated, regulated and enforced this historical process that marginalised indigenous and subaltern social groups. The book’s particular focus is the Madhesis, an internally varied population group that has historically forged strong linguistic and cultural bonds across the Indo-Nepal border. Today, this group inhabits Nepal’s Tarai plain, a narrow 23,000-square-kilometre-long strip of land stretching along the southern boundary of the country. This land was gradually incorporated into Nepal over a long period of time, starting in the eighteenth century, which left many Madhesis on the verge of statelessness. Mørch chronicles this story of Madhesi discrimination as one that was a systemic and inter-generational process (p172). Here, as a valuable insight, he suggests that there ‘are cyclical and generational effects of statelessness; for one, it discourages education for the next generation’ (p183).

2The book is divided into six chapters and contains an introduction and epilogue. In the introduction, the author lays out the book’s argument, namely an exploration of the legacy of dispossession, exploitation, exclusion, injustice and repression in Nepal’s Tarai and its impact on the fortunes of Madhesis and other subaltern groups. In the first two chapters, the author takes a long historical view of the Tarai, including its gradual incorporation into the Gorkhali state in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mørch suggests that during that period the Tarai and its impregnable malarial forests became a geo-strategic barrier that deterred the territorial ambitions of political forces in North India. At the same time, it increasingly became a site for resource extraction by the ruling elite in Kathmandu whose policies were mostly concerned with the appropriation of labour, the extraction of agrarian and forest resources, the levying of taxes and the highly regulated promotion of trade and commerce. In the Tarai, the policies of the ruling elite especially under the Rana regime (1847–1951) led to the creation of a ‘landlord state’ (p62) along with a new class of extractive beneficiaries – absentee landlords, government officials and members of the Rana families. This uneven development of the Tarai resulted in a paucity of infrastructure and services, while depriving indigenous communities of their traditional rights to land and its resources.

3Chapters 3 and 4 provide a timely and helpful chronicle of the political history of the Tarai from 1951 to the present. Here Mørch tracks the changes in political parties in Nepal and their relationship with the monarchy, the malaria eradication programmes of the 1960s and 1970s that opened the Tarai to migrants from the hills who settled there, the Panchayat System (1960–1990), the rise of Maoist power in the 1990s, the subsequent decade of internal conflict (1996–2006) and so on. These chapters are a wealth of information about the various events that marked the way the history of the Tarai evolved. The chapters also cover the problems associated with migration from the hills to the plains, inter-ethnic tensions, political disenfranchisement of indigenous groups such as the Tharus, the rise of Madhesi political movements and the rapid deforestation of the Tarai. Furthermore, the overemphasis on Nepali as the national language led to the subordination of minority languages – which, according to Mørch, constituted a veritable ‘linguicide’ (p124). These developments and movements ultimately raised lingering questions about equity and inclusion in national life that have remained largely unaddressed. In these chapters Mørch is careful to trace the intersections between Madhesis, Janajatis such as the Tharus, and Dalits, while acknowledging that these identities are also fractured by internal dissensions and conflict, leaving them unable to forge sustainable political coalitions to redress their grievances.

4In chapter 5, Mørch takes up the question of how inequality and exclusion were systemically codified in the country through legal and constitutional means. The legal codes of the Malla kings, Gorkhali raja Girbana Yuddha Bikram Shah (1806), the Muluki Ain (1854) and the various constitutions of 1955, 1959, 1962 and 2015, and the Citizenship Acts of 1958, 1962 and 2006 all contained discriminatory and exclusionary clauses that discredited Madhesis and other subaltern groups. The subsequent division of the country’s federal polity into seven provinces based on ethnicity, language, geography and political convenience, though expedient, failed to produce a consensus. The sixth chapter explores the contemporary political situation in Nepal’s Tarai – life at its borderlands, political violence and the ongoing discrimination faced by Madhesis in employment and public life. Mørch makes special mention of Madhesi activists, such as C K Raut, and organisations such as the Alliance for Independent Madhes (AIM) and their political projects calling for an end to the internal colonisation of Madhes and greater autonomy in determining its future. Mørch ends with an epilogue calling for the dismantling of the ethnonationalist, hill- and caste-dominated character of the Nepali state. Yet he cautions against simple solutions and binary forms of thinking and remains hopeful that the discontent sweeping through Nepal’s Tarai will find resolution within a revived, inclusive, equitable and unified nation.

5Though practitioners of disciplinary purity might wish to see greater theoretical and methodological rigour, Plains of Discontent is certainly worth a read. The author is clear in stating his goals for writing the book – as a public-facing argument calling for the restoration of justice, equity and inclusion at the heart of Nepali nation-building and state formation. Indeed, this laudable but challenging task fits in well with the emergence of public-facing writing about questions raised by the ongoing wear and tear of our planet, growing human conflicts and persistent inequality. Consequently, there has been a spurt of interest in scholarly and non-academic writing to address themes of equity, inclusion, justice and reconciliation. This new commitment redressing historic wrongs and promoting well-being and repair in state and society has yielded a slew of public-facing writings. Examples here could range from Partition narratives of loss and trauma to American colleges and universities coming to terms with their past investments in histories of enslavement. At the same time, the presentist concerns of such writings may interfere with the expectations of disciplinary specialisation and methodological consistency. This can yield its own share of controversies as in the recent case of James Sweet, president of the American Historical Association.1 Sweet questioned how politics of identity (especially racial inequality) in contemporary America was yielding one-sided and diluted representations of the past. Sweet pointed to the 1619 Project, which sought to recentre the history of the United States around the themes of enslavement and anti-Blackness, as an example of this trend.2 Sweet’s criticisms, which were roundly criticized by academic and non-academic writers and activists, induced him to offer an apology. The debate continues.

6It might be argued that Plains of Discontent belongs to this emerging genre of socially conscious writing, and is therefore amenable to the possibilities and challenges of such writing. Mørch is insightful in pointing to how the inequities of the past have long-term, even traumatic intergenerational consequences. His call to redress this through activist decolonisation calls for serious consideration. On the other hand, the delivery of such an activist argument merits additional scrutiny. Following on from this, Mørch’s citations, 744 endnotes in all, could do with some editorial review given their methodological implications. Citations are key to the production and dissemination of public-facing knowledge – aligning the text to additional clarifications and sources of reliable information. This is important if the reader is to actively engage with these materials, to query the information, to seek out additional readings and to be a better informed activist. This is not always the case in Mørch’s text. Some examples might help clarify this point. Note 9 in the introduction refers to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation as the source of the information on the length of the Tarai (23,000 square kilometres). This being a generally accepted fact, no note would have been necessary and, if one were to be inserted, a reference to works of geographers would have been more appropriate. The same argument would apply to notes 12 and 13. Note 18 could provide additional information on the exact page number in the source where the information being cited can be found. There are other instances of this. In some cases, direct quotes, such as on pages 41 and 43, have no supporting note indicating their pagination. Other minor edits include using BCE and BCE consistently rather than AD or BC, Michael not Micheal (p260), Ranoddip not Randeep (p71), Prithvi Narayan Shah not Prithvi (p152). Furthermore, there could be a closer integration of the chapters into the book’s narrative. For example, the chronological range covered by chapter 1 in setting the stage for the historical formation of Madhes seems to be too ambitious. Moreover, chapter 6 nestles uneasily within the narrative flow of the preceding chapters, and the epilogue and the purpose of using the example of C K Raut in the overall argument remain unclear. In addition to this, while Madhesis as inhabitants of the Tarai remain the focus of Mørch’s argument, it is unclear whether this group, given its long history of mobility and migration and trans-border connections, is indeed a coherent group as Mørch seems to characterise it. Moreover, while Mørch’s commitment to the cause of the Madhesis is entirely appropriate, it is unclear how they relate to similar themes of exclusion that touch on janajati, Dalit and gender histories, and how they might facilitate the formation of new political coalitions within and beyond Nepal. This might require additional clarification and space that would be beyond the scope of this review. Overall, and despite these caveats, Mørch’s Plains of Discontent might well be considered part of the creation of a larger archive of public historical knowledge that promotes decolonial activism in the pursuit of justice, equity and inclusion in contemporary Nepal.

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Bernardo A. Michael, « Maximillian Mørch, Plains of Discontent: A political history of Nepal’s Terai (1743–2019) »European Bulletin of Himalayan Research [En ligne], 63 | 2024, mis en ligne le 20 décembre 2024, consulté le 22 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ebhr/2674 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13mzx

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Auteur

Bernardo A. Michael

Bernardo A. Michael is professor of history in the Department of History, Politics and International Relations at Messiah University where he has also worked as director for the Center for Public Humanities and special assistant to the president and provost for Diversity Affairs. His research has focused on Anglo-Gorkha relations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is the author of Statemaking and Space: Lessons from the Anglo-Gorkha War (1814–1816) (Anthem Press) and is currently working on a biography of the Anglican educator and activist Charles Freer Andrews (1871–1940).

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