EUROPEAN BULLETIN OF HIMALAYAN RESEARCH • 50-51 2017-2018 RESEARCH OF HIMALAYAN BULLETIN EUROPEAN Special Double Issue 50-51 Relations between Britain and Nepal GUEST EDITORIAL 3 ARTICLES 50-51 Autumn 2017-Spring 2018 What Happened to Kinloch’s Expedition to Kathmandu? Thomas Bell 7 States and Territories: The Anglo-Gorkha War as a “Diagnostic Event” Bernardo Michael 33 EThe First Nepali in England: Motilal Singh and PM Jang Bahadur Rana Krishna Adhikari 58 Masculinity and Mimicry: Ranas and Gurkhas Sanjeev Uprety 77 Reflecting Political Allegiances Through the Design of the Narayanhiti Royal Palace Bryony Whitmarsh 112 EBHR Britain-Nepal Relations through the Prism of Aid Jeevan Sharma and Ian Harper 145 The Limits of Nationalism: Political Identity in Nepal and the British Isles John Whelpton 162 EUROPEAN BULLETIN OBITUARY 199 OF HIMALAYAN RESEARCH BOOK REVIEWS 203-214 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 215 Autumn 2017-Spring 2018 published by the EBHR Editorial Committee in conjunction with Social Science Baha, Kathmandu, Nepal European Bulletin of Himalayan Research The European Bulletin of Himalayan Research (EBHR) was founded by the late Richard Burghart in 1991. It is the result of a partnership between France (Centre d’Etudes Himalayennes, CNRS, Paris), Germany (South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg) and the United Kingdom (School of Oriental and African Studies [SOAS]). From 2014 to 2018 the editorial board is based at the South Asia Institute (SAI) in Heidelberg, Germany and comprises William Sax (SAI, Managing Editor), Christoph Bergmann (SAI), Christiane Brosius (Karl Jaspers Centre, Heidelberg), Julia Dame (SAI), Axel Michaels (SAI), Marcus Nuesser (SAI), Karin Polit (SAI), Mona Schrempf (Berlin), Anja Wagner, Astrid Zotter (SAI), Heleen Plaisier, and Arik Moran (University of Haifa, book reviews editor). The EBHR’s contributing editors are Martijn van Beek (University of Aarhus) Tone Bleie (University of Tromso) Ben Campbell (Durham University) Pascale Dollfus (CNRS, Paris) Martin Gaenszle (University of Vienna) David Gellner (University of Oxford) Ingemar Grandin (Linkoping University) Sondra Hausner (University of Oxford) Marie Lecomte-Tilouine (CNRS, Paris) Chiara Letizia (University of Milano-Bicocca) Fiona McConnell (University of Newcastle) Axel Michaels (University of Heidelberg) Matthew Nelson (SOAS) Judith Pettigrew (University of Limerick) Philippe Ramirez (CNRS, Paris) Anne de Sales (CNRS, Paris) Surya Subedi (University of Leeds) Mark Watson (Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh) Astrid Zotter (University of Heidelberg) The following address should be used for correspondence: William Sax South Asia Institute INF 330, 69120 Heidelberg Germany Email: [email protected] For subscription details and back issues (>3 years) http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/ebhr The EBHR is published from Kathmandu in collaboration with Social Science Baha (http://www.soscbaha.org) Special Double Issue 50-51 Relations between Britain and Nepal GUEST EDITORIAL John Whelpton 3 ARTICLES What Happened to Kinloch’s Expedition to Kathmandu? Thomas Bell 7 States and Territories: The Anglo-Gorkha War as a “Diagnostic Event” Bernardo Michael 33 The First Nepali in England: Motilal Singh and PM Jang Bahadur Rana Krishna Adhikari 58 Masculinity and Mimicry: Ranas and Gurkhas Sanjeev Uprety 77 Reflecting Political Allegiances Through the Design of the Narayanhiti Royal Palace Bryony Whitmarsh 112 Britain-Nepal Relations through the Prism of Aid Jeevan Sharma and Ian Harper 145 The Limits of Nationalism: Political Identity in Nepal and the British Isles John Whelpton 162 OBITUARY Dina Bangdel Christiane Brosius 200 BOOK REVIEWS Mark Elmore: Becoming Religious in a Secular Age William Sax 204 Alex McKay Leiden. Kailas Histories: Renunciate Traditions and the Construction of Himalayan Sacred Geography Vasudha Pande 211 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 215 Guest Editorial As part of the events commemorating the 200th anniversary in 2016 of the Treaty of Sugauli, which established permanent diplomatic relations between Britain and Nepal, the Britain Nepal Academic Council, with David Gellner as lead organizer, held a one-day history workshop at SOAS on 23 March 2016, with funding kindly provided by Oxford University’s All Souls’ College. This special issue of EBHR brings together revised versions of six of the papers presented, together with a BNAC lecture, which was delivered the same day though not formally part of the workshop. The commemoration of the anniversary was itself the subject of some controversy for two reasons. First, some argued that the Treaty of Sugauli was not the real starting point of the relationship between the two countries because there had been extensive diplomatic contact between the two sides beforehand – most significantly during Knox’s few months as resident in Kathmandu in 1802-3. Second, the celebratory tone of the commemorative events jarred somewhat with the fact that Sugauli was not only an agreement to establish ‘peace and perpetual friendship’ but also an acknowledgement of Nepal’s military defeat and loss of one third of her pre-war territory. There was even some uncertainty on how precisely to date the treaty. The document was actually signed in December 1815, after Ochterloney’s success against Amar Singh Thapa in what is now the Indian state of Uttarakhand, but the ratification was only delivered on 4 March 2016, after a further round of fighting had put the British within striking distance of Kathmandu. Choosing the March anniversary did, however, made sense as it marked the actual end of hostilities, and also allowed a clear separation from the 2015 celebration of 200 years of Gurkha service with the army of the East India Company and then under the British Crown. The workshop presentations did not focus specifically on the Treaty of Sugauli itself or the arguments which some Nepalis have recently raised about its validity under national law, but covered many aspects of the Nepal-Britain relationship, including both conflict and co-operation. They attracted an enthusiastic audience including not only Nepal 4 EBHR 50-51 specialists but also a number from outside academia, including members of the UK’s Nepali community, which now stands at around 100,000. Tom Bell’s paper examines the East India Company’s unsuccessful attempt in 1767 to come to the aid of the Newar kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley and sees Kinloch’s failure as due mainly to adverse weather and inadequate grain supplies. He suggests that had a second attempt been made, as Kinloch himself urged, it might well have succeeded. The survey of the historiography of the episode that concludes the essay shows how both officialdom and the history profession largely forgot about it until pioneering work by Indian researchers in the mid-20th century. There is a partial similarity here with treatment of the 1814-16 conflict which in recent decades has been the focus of great attention but which the British once wanted to forget (Pemble 2009). Bernardo Michael focuses on the territorial dispute leading to the 1814-1816 war, the topic of his monograph Statemaking and Territory, which is the most thorough examination of the issue yet published. He emphasizes the complexity of tenurial arrangements along the frontier and how a major factor was the East India Company’s desire for a clear line of demarcation, in contrast to the more fluid arrangement that indigenous states were used to. Also highlighted is the role of local landholders who rendered the region less ‘legible’ by registering their claims with more than one authority. Michael concludes with a brief account of ‘spatial anxiety’ in another part of South Asia: the frontier between India and Bangladesh, where the many mini-enclaves are only now being eliminated by exchanges of territory. In Krishna Prasad Adhikari’s paper, the focus switches from war to peace with his investigation into Moti Lal Singh, the crossing sweeper taken into Jang Bahadur Rana’s employment whilst he was in London as ambassador to Britain in 1850. As the first known Nepali resident in the UK, and also the first to have had a substantial piece of writing in English published under his name, Moti Lal is of particular significance for the UK’s present-day Nepali community. He is also something of a puzzle because of discrepancies between his own account and other sources on the embassy and also because we are uncertain how far his article in the New Monthly Magazine was his own work rather than that of one or more literary collaborators. Guest Editorial 5 Jang Bahadur Rana is again part of the story in Sanjeev Uprety’s discussion of the models of masculinity he and a later Rana prime minister, Chandra Shamsher, presented to foreign and domestic audiences. Within Nepal, the loss of caste status, against which those who travelled abroad had to guard carefully, would also entail a loss of masculinity, reminding us, perhaps, of the saying that ‘a woman has no caste.’ For the British, an ‘exotic’, traditional South Asian ruler could be seen as masculine in contrast to the supposedly effeminate Indian ‘baboos’ but with the uncontrolled, irrational masculinity which upper- class Britons ascribed both to their own working class and to Gurkha soldiers. Chandra’s own use of European and especially military dress brought him more into line with ‘rational’ upper-class British masculinity, but had to be carefully balanced with strict observance of Hindu norms. The need for different performances for different audiences is also brought