University Honors Capstone Project:

The Nepalese Conflict and Resulting Diaspora Community

Jessica Dubow

Conflict Cuisine

Professor Johanna Mendelson Forman

American University; School of International Service

Spring 2014 Dubow 2

Abstract

This honors capstone project reviews the Nepalese Civil War, its causes and outcomes, its resulting Diaspora movement, and how that Diaspora and its cuisine are manifested in the DC area. The purpose of the project is to develop a nuanced understanding of the relationship between food and conflict and to use a combination of existing academic research and local resources to understand how conflict manifests itself through the cuisines of Diaspora chefs.

This collaborative project was completed with Caitlin Allmaier, who is supplementing the class for honors credit rather than using it for her capstone. The following report was compiled using research from secondary and tertiary sources including scholarly journal articles, news articles, and non-academic online resources in order to develop a background on the

Nepalese Civil War. A primary source interview, reinforced by background research, was conducted with the manager of Momos Nepalese Restaurant and this interview served as the basis of a twelve-minute video on Nepalese cuisine. The paper and video were synthesized in a twenty-minute class presentation that placed the Nepalese case in the framework of “conflict cuisines” developed by Professor Johanna Mendelson Forman.

Through this exploration, several conclusions were achieved. Nepalese cuisine as represented in the United States carries with it a cultural connection to a community-oriented society, as well as one that speaks to the inefficiencies of a government that does not include a large percentage of its people in its democratic structures. The Diaspora expanded significantly with the Civil War and continued to grow even after the war had subsided because conflict remains in Nepal in terms of poverty and instability. As these persist, Nepalese people continue to migrate to the United States and develop deeper roots, spreading their culture and cuisine. Dubow 3

This research identifies a growing community in the United States who impact the melting pot of American culture, but its greater significance is in further developing the new paradigm of a “conflict cuisine.” Professor Mendelson Forman defines this as “foods that are carried by populations of war-torn societies, or where we know that a conflict has caused the displacement. Thus, in our course, Washington has numerous conflict cuisines based on the number of ethnic restaurants that reflect geographic locations where war is ongoing or has taken place.” Nepalese conflict cuisine reinforces this theory, but it also complicates it with the specific context of this case.

Dubow 4

The Himalayan nation of Nepal, cushioned between India and China, has attempted to establish its own particular brand of political system for decades. The country is incredibly diverse, made up of over 100 caste and ethnic collections, eight religious groups, and 92 linguistic factions.1 The series of democratic institutions set up over the past half a century have been faced with overturning centuries of de facto and de jure discrimination, marginalization, and oppression among the Nepalese people. A decade-long civil war from 1996 to 2006, ignited by Maoist forces, was meant to end in peace and the establishment of a true democratic republic, but the years since the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Accord have seen substantial amounts of instability and strife, triggering Nepalese migration and relocation. The mountain nation has come out of the worst of its conflict, but is still searching for a true and sustainable peace.

Outlined herein is a brief history of social movements in Nepal, which is very important to understand in the larger context of conflict in the Himalayan nation. The People’s War, from

1996-2006, was a reaction to years of attempted democracy and inclusive political systems that instead solidified social systems of marginalization and did nothing to improve upon the quality of life or institution for the quarter of the Nepalese population that lives below the poverty line.

The civil war itself and the post-conflict political and social climate of instability are examined, with evidence that supports the greater need for peace building mechanisms throughout Nepal.

The trends of Nepalese migration patterns are also outlined, with particular emphasis on the

‘third wave’ of Nepalese migration and the growth of the Nepalese Diaspora in the United States from 1996 through the present day. The communitarian nature of Nepalese culture is highlighted through an investigation into the culinary philosophy of the Nepalese-American population,

1 Rakesh Karna, “Minority Rights Protection in Federal Systems”, Constitutional Roundtable no. 1 (May, 2012): 1. Dubow 5 supported by evidence gained from primary research conducted in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

Nepal existed under the Rana oligarchy from 1846 to 1951, a period characterized by rampant economic exploitation, religious persecution, and oppressive tyranny of all those but the highest socio-economic class.2 Beginning in 1950, a burgeoning democratic movement spread through the country, coinciding with the fall of the reign of the British Raj in neighboring India.

On February 7, 1951, the Rana regime officially came to an end with the Delhi Compromise.3 A short-lived attempt at democracy, in which citizens indirectly elected their representatives through community elections held at the local, then regional, then state, then national level, the

Delhi Compromise ushered in less than ten years of attempted peace. In 1960, King Mahendra established direct rule under the Panchayat System, a party-less “guided” political system in which true power existed only in the hands of the monarch, but the veil of democracy was shoddily hung.4 This state-sponsored power system was in part a reaction to the inability of

Nepal’s democratic political parties to unite and make progress, and in part a response to the

Sino-Indian war that broke out in 1962 – Mahendra’s response to the threat of losing Himalayan territory was to declare and inevitably maintain a state of public emergency in which the state held ultimate power and sovereignty. The Panchayat system, however, was neither internally or externally legitimate, and the system only took partial hold in the cities, frequented by elites and those of upper castes, but never quite stuck in the rural areas, where large amounts of Nepalese

2 Angela Dietrich, “Buddhist Monks and Rana Rulers: A History of Persecution”, Buddhist Himalaya: A Journal of Nagarjuna Institute of Exact Methods (1996): 1. 3 Yurenda Basnett, “From Politicization of Grievances to Political Violence: An Analysis of the Maoist Movement in Nepal”, Development Studies Institute (March 2009): pg. 16. 4 Harvey Follender “The Panchayat System under King Mahendra,” Library of Congress Country Studies, April 15, 2014, accessed April 15, 2014, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+np0030). Dubow 6 minorities live: “The mechanism of accountability of the national legislature was to the King and not to the people.”5

The Panchayat system was overturned by the 1990 People’s Movement, a multiparty attempt at laying the groundwork for a sustainable constitutional democracy in Nepal. Mahendra stepped down, appointing Krishna Prasad Bhattarai as interim Prime Minister, marking the beginning of a five-year arc of steady improvements and growth in banking, tourism, health, and education in Nepal. GDP growth averaged a rate of 5.1% over this time, with GDP per capita growth averaging out around 2.3%.6 However, these general upward trends were undermined by largely rural-based political instability – both within the formal government’s attempt at democracy and the fledgling People’s Movement’s Maoist ideals spreading through the countryside. The inefficiency of Bhattarai’s administration began to strain government relations with the Nepalese civilian population, especially those living in less developed areas whose growth lagged behind that of the more centralized areas.

The Nepalese Civil War, or the People’s War, as the Communist Party of Nepal labeled it, began on February 13, 1996. The main goal of the Maoist uprising was to overthrow the

Nepalese monarchy and to establish a “People’s Republic,” with supplementary proclaimed goals of land tenure reform and the redistribution of land, the extension of power centers to rural locations, the elimination of the caste system, women’s rights, and the institution of a

Communist republic.7 The Communist Party of Nepal quickly became of South Asia’s most feared rebel groups, utilizing violent guerilla tactics targeting government and civilian properties.

5 Basnett, “From Politicization of Grievances to Political Violence,” pg. 17. 6 “Data, Nepal,” World Development Indicators | The World Bank, April 15, 2014, accessed April 15, 2014,http://data.worldbank.org/country/nepal. 7Eric Randolph, “Now the Social Revolution Can Begin,” Foreign Policy, November 20, 2013, accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/20/now_the_social_revolution_can_begin. Dubow 7

Estimates range from 13,000 to 15,000 Nepalese killed, and 100,000 to 150,000 people internally displaced.8

In the early years of the conflict, the Maoist rebels gained substantial control over the rural areas of the mountainous country, with the Nepalese government maintaining influence and order in the urban centers of the country. The Maoists rebels are considered to have simplified the plurality of the Nepalese social system with their straightforward platform of a two-player political game – the oppressors, the state and high civil society that existed in the cities, and the oppressed, the marginalized indigenous Nepalese living in the rural areas.9 For the first six years of the conflict, the fighting was isolated, individualized and focused on this urban-rural divide – in 2001, the situation drastically changed, wherein Maoist forces withdrew from peace talks and initiated a series of attacks against police and army posts in 42 of Nepal’s 72 districts.10 The

Royal Nepalese Army was formally and finally engaged in the conflict three days after the peace talks collapsed with the declaration of a formal National State of Emergency. This triggered substantial political instability over the next year, with public support for the Nepalese monarchy quickly beginning to fade.11

The rebel movement gained substantial traction under the leadership of Pushpa Kamal

Dabal, better known as Prachanda, or the “Fierce One.” He is credited with transforming the

Maoists from “a poorly armed rag-tag outfit into one of South Asia’s most feared rebel groups.”12 Prachanda drew much inspiration from Peru’s Shining Path rebels, a Maoist group that has been able to establish and maintain footholds in the mountainous areas of the Latin

8 Ibid. 9 Basnett, “From Politicization of Grievances to Political Violence,” pg. 18. 10 “Nepal: Conflict Profile,” Insight on Conflict, April 14, 2014, accessed April 14, 2014,http://www.insightonconflict.org/conflicts/nepal/conflict-profile/. 11 Ibid. 12 “Profile: Nepal Maoist Leader Prachanda,” BBC, November 21, 2013, accessed April 14, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-25032962. Dubow 8

American country.13 Shining Path’s strategy was to “use violence to bring down Peru’s democratic government… [to] destroy the state’s reputation among the peasantry and, ultimately, ruin its reputation among the population in general.”14 Prachanda’s Maoist forces in Nepal adopted the same strategies, motivated by the objective to undermine and destroy government institutions to create an equitable space for a revolutionary peasant regime. Prachanda’s forces, numbering between 10,000 and 15,000 at the end of the civil war period, were able to smuggle arms and money across the border shared with India, further strengthening and legitimizing the movement.15

The Maoist presence and sway over rural areas exemplifies the primary reason for the longevity of the civil war, as well as the political instability that has plagued Nepal through the present day, which will be expanded upon below. The areas of the country most in need of government-mandated development programming to grow and support social safety net programming – health system strengthening, education, etc. – were the ones most influenced by

Maoist rebels, and therefore the ones most dangerous for government forces to occupy. It was very easy for Prachanda’s forces to delegitimize government operations in places where they were already weak, and where government forces could not safely operate to further develop a sovereign presence. Joseph Nye writes on the efficiency of this fusion of hard and soft power in his work Soft Power – using the context of the Cold War as an example, he examines how the use of a combination of hard military power and soft cultural power can delegitimize a formal state actor that provides power to those identifying with popular culture rather than with high,

13 Kathryn Gregory, “Backgrounder: Shining Path, Tupac Amaru (Peru, Leftists),” Council on Foreign Relations, August 27, 2009, accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.cfr.org/peru/shining-path-tupac-amaru-peru- leftists/p9276#p7. 14 Ibid. 15 Alastair Lawson, “Who Are Nepal's Maoist Rebels?,” BBC, June 6, 2005, accessed April 15, 2014, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3573402.stm. Dubow 9 elite culture.16 The Maoist movement in Nepal, during the civil war, created much more damage than just the buildings they bombed and the populations they terrorized – they capitalized upon the existing disillusionment with the central government and its poor attempts at inclusive democracy, and utilized both soft and hard power strategies to recruit and utilize marginalized communities for support.

The People’s War came to an end in 2006 and brought with it several genuine but ill- supported attempts at democratic governance. The citizens and government(s) of Nepal have attempted to find an equitable and functional system in which a democratic republic can meet the needs of an undoubtedly pluralistic and diverse nation. According to a 2013 Foreign Policy

Democracy Lab feature, “The abolition of the monarchy was only the beginning of real change in Nepalese society.”17 Nepal’s political system did not stabilize after the king stepped down, and inter-party rivalries and fracturing contributed to further delegitimization of formal state power for the disenfranchised Nepalese populations that once stood so strongly with the winds of change. Five different government administrations cycled through Kathmandu in as many years, and “the slow progress on the constitution [had] left may former revels disillusioned with the democratic process.”18 The caste system and social stratification so adamantly opposed by the

Maoist forces did not wash away when the king relinquished his throne, and the more subtle forms of oppression and racism overshadowed by the simplistic Maoist framing of a dual

Nepalese society became apparent as Nepal attempted to rebuild post-conflict.

The Foreign Policy feature highlights two marginalized classes of Nepalese people who have yet to gain full rights and access within government systems and formal and informal societal structures, and this evidence illustrates the intense identity reconceptualization and

16 Joseph Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Power (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2004). 17Randolph, “Now The Social Revolution Can Begin.” 18 Ibid. Dubow 10 reconciliation measures necessary to maintain any stable form of government in the Himalayan kingdom-turned-republic. The Madhesi, an ethnic group making up 35 percent of the Nepalese population and spread through mostly very rural areas, suffer from rampant political and economic oppression stemming from their supposed “Indian-ness.” A democratic system means nothing without proper representative inclusion, and Nepal is still very much working towards that ideal. Perhaps the classic example of the downtrodden in a caste-based system, Nepal’s Dalit population – widely known as “the untouchables” – are understood to be one of the core supporting groups in Prachanda’s Maoist movement, but have yet to see true inclusive change take hold in Kathmandu. “A constitution that truly respects the rights of all Nepalese citizens holds out the promise of overturning centuries of crushing social hierarchy;” there is no clear-cut solution to solve this multi-rooted and inherent problem, except time, dedication, and resilience.19

Nepalese society has spread its reach far past the confines of the nation’s borders – because of the political instability, insecurity, and chaos outlined above, the Nepalese Diaspora has developed and stabilized over time. A decade of violent civil war followed by an equal amount of time of institutional disorganization and disillusionment has created the motives for

Nepalese citizens to migrate to other parts of the world. The character of Nepalese migration has evolved through three key phases since Nepal was declared a kingdom in 1768. The first wave of migration occurred primarily in the early nineteenth century and began with settlement eastward across Nepal and then into Sikkim and Bhutan.20 It was generally limited to neighboring

19 Randolph, “Now The Social Revolution Can Begin.” 20 Desh Sonyok, "A Comparative Study of Emergence of Nepalese Diaspora in USA" (PhD diss., New Mexico State University, 2011), accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.slideshare.net/drsonyok/emergence-of-nepalese-diaspora-in- the-usa. Dubow 11 countries and motivated by the search for better livelihoods.21 After the Anglo-Nepalese War from 1814-1816, the army employed people to serve abroad and this further facilitated the movement of Nepalese people out of their homeland’s borders.22 Those who had served and retired resettled in the British Isles and in Southeast Asia.23 Since the 1970s and especially in recent years, it has become more common for Nepalese people to travel further from the

Himalayan region and permanently settle in Europe, East Asia, Oceana, and North America, primarily in search of employment opportunities.24 As immigration laws became more stringent in places like Hong Kong and Japan, more Nepalese people moved west and toward the United

States.25 The Diversity Visa program has also encouraged Nepalese settlement in the United

States; this program is a congressional mandate that allows up to 55,000 persons from nations historically under-represented in the US immigrant population to qualify for immigrant visas and avoid the complexities of the standard visa process.26

Data on the size of the Nepalese community in the United States is highly varied, with estimates ranging from 10,000 Nepalese people on the entire North American continent to

35,000 Nepalese people in the DC area alone. One of the lower estimates comes from the

International Nepal Fellowship, a Christian mission organization that calculates that the largest

Nepalese Diaspora community lives in India with a size of 600,000 people and a substantially smaller community of 10,000 people residing in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.27 Data from the Institute of International Education suggests that the size of the Nepalese Diaspora in

21 Ambika P Adhikari, "Diaspora in Nepal's Development," Republica, July 31, 2010, accessed April 14, 2014, http://archives.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=21660 22 Adhikari, "Diaspora in Nepal's Development." 23 Sonyok, "A Comparative Study of Emergence," 24 Adhikari, "Diaspora in Nepal's Development." 25 Lopita Nath, "A little of Nepal: Nepali diaspora in the US in an age of globalization," Bodhi 3, no. 1 (2009): 108, accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/BOHDI/article/view/2817/2501. 26 Nath, "A little of Nepal," 109. 27 "Nepali Diaspora," International Nepal Fellowship, accessed April 14, 2014, http://www2.inf.org/map/diaspora. Dubow 12 the USA is much larger, given that there are over 10,000 Nepalese students in the United

States.28 An article in the Nepalese newspaper Republica confirms this figure and adds that in

2010 the number of Nepalese students in the United States ranked 11th among all foreign students at American universities; Nepal actually ranked second to India in terms of students from South Asia, surpassing the amount of students studying abroad from larger South Asian countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan.29 The Republica article’s author, Dr. Ambika Adhikari served as the Non-Resident Nepali Association’s Coordinator from 2009-2011, and he estimates there are as many as 250,000 Nepalese people currently living in the United States and Canada.30

In an op-ed for the Kathmandu Post, financial consultant and author Sujeev Shakya discusses the potential for this group of educated Nepalese based in the US to transform Nepal from abroad.31 The Diaspora population provides crucial financial support in the form of remittances, which at $3.5 billion in 201032 are estimated to comprise 22 percent of Nepal’s

GDP.33 Dr. Ambika Adhikari agrees, stating that by seeking foreign employment and receiving better training and education, Nepalese people can acquire higher-level positions, which give them access to valuable connections and institutional resources that can be used to strengthen educational and economic opportunities in Nepal.34

The Diaspora population has not only remained financially connected to Nepal, but has also maintained its cultural and emotional ties. The era of globalization has permitted the

28 Sujeev Shakya, "Diaspora and beyond," Kathmandu Post, May 27, 2013, accessed April 14, 2014, http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2013/05/27/oped/diaspora-and-beyond/249255.html. 29 Adhikari, "Diaspora in Nepal's Development." 30 Adhikari, "Diaspora in Nepal's Development." 31 Shakya, "Diaspora and beyond." 32 Dilip Ratha, "Whatever happened to Nepal's diaspora bonds?," World Bank Blogs, last modified January 19, 2011, accessed April 14, 2014, http://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/whatever-happened-to-nepals-diaspora- bonds. 33 Adhikari, "Diaspora in Nepal's Development." 34 Adhikari, "Diaspora in Nepal's Development." Dubow 13

Diaspora community to be transnational.35 Shakya finds there are over 70 Nepalese associations in the New York area and close to 60 Nepalese associations in the Washington DC area that help to elevate the status of and expand the opportunities for Nepalese people abroad.36 One such organization is VIFON, Vision for Nepal, based in Springfield, Virginia. VIFON is a non-profit which produces a talk-show program entitled “American Conversations”; its objective is to facilitate interactive dialogue on the social, economic, and diplomatic experiences shared by

Nepalese at home and in the US.37 Though the organization’s location twenty minutes outside of

Washington may seem arbitrary, Springfield has become a nucleus for the DC-based Nepalese

Diaspora. Moti K. Neupane, the founder and manager of Momos Nepalese Restaurant, located in

Springfield, estimates there are 500 Nepalese families in that area.38 The concentration of

Nepalese people but lack of Nepalese restaurants inspired Neupane to found Momos seven months ago, and the restaurant has enjoyed a successful opening. Neupane is the manager and also works in the kitchen, but he is supported by a five-person staff of whom three are

Nepalese.39 Though all local residents frequent Momos, the restaurant’s primary customers come from the Nepalese Diaspora seeking tastes of home.

Those authentic flavors are something Momos is challenged to provide, given how many traditional ingredients are unavailable outside Nepal. “But people are still happy,” Neupane assures. In addition to the typical dumplings the restaurant is named after, Momos serves a variety of Nepalese dishes with an apparent Chinese and Indian influence, something Neupane attributes to the “multi-culture” of the Himalayan region. Anthropologist Sydney Mintz supports

35 Nath, "A little of Nepal," 118. 36 Shakya, "Diaspora and beyond." 37 "Current Projects," Vision for Nepal, accessed April 14, 2014, http://www.visionnepal.org/pages.php?page=Current%20Projects. 38 Moti K. Neupane, interview by the author, Momos Restaurant, Springfield, VA, April 1, 2014. 39 Neupane, interview by the author. Dubow 14 this analysis in his book Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, in which he doubts the existence of a

“national cuisine.” He concludes that because state boundaries are “not made in heaven, but by political and military activity” there is no such thing as a national cuisine “except in the sense of an aggregation of foods, styles, cooking methods and signature dishes from the regional cuisines, based partly on better transportation and communication, and greater means.”40 “A genuine cuisine,” Mintz believes, “has common social roots; it is the food of a community—albeit often a very large community.”41 Thus, there are many similarities between food consumed in Nepal and food consumed in India, China, Tibet, Bhutan, and other South Asian countries.

A typical daily meal consists of Dal Bhat, which consists of rice, lentil soup, curried vegetables, meat, and a small amount of pickle or sauce.42 Though Nepal’s many ethnic groups have their own specialties, in most of the country Dal Bhat is eaten twice a day—once in the morning and once at night, with snacks of bread, beaten rice, curried vegetables, and milked tea enjoyed in the middle of the day.43 Most Nepalese people eat with their right hand from a large metal plate divided into separate compartments called Thal rather than using individual plates or silverware.44 This permits the consumption of food to be intimate and communal, reflecting commensality, the act of coming together around a table to share a meal.45 Commensality encourages cross-cultural understanding and community-building. Moti Neupane identifies the strong communal values found in South Asian culture as important to maintaining the relationship between Nepal and the Diaspora community in the DC area. Especially for second

40 Sidney W. Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1996), 97. 41 Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, 96. 42 "A Guide to Nepalese Dining," Food Nepal, accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.food- nepal.com/feat/food_guide.htm. 43 "A Guide to Nepalese," Food Nepal. 44 "A Guide to Nepalese," Food Nepal. 45 Sam Chapple-Sokol, "Culinary Diplomacy: Breaking Bread to Win Hearts and Minds," The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 8 (2013): 162.

Dubow 15 and third generation Nepalese, language, festivals, and food have become important to maintaining their Nepalese identity and their relationship with family abroad.46

Though the exact size of the Nepalese Diaspora community in the US is up for debate, sources do agree that it has rapidly grown in the last ten to fifteen years, a time period that coincides with the Nepalese civil war and post-conflict instability.47 The third wave of Nepalese migration can be broken into three periods: pre-civil war, exodus during civil war from 1996-

2006, and post civil war.48 The most dramatic growth of the Diaspora community in the US has occurred during the second and third periods, from 1996 to the present. In fact, the Institute of

International Education finds that during the 1995-1996 school year, only 1,219 Nepalese students studied abroad in the United States, a figure that has increased almost tenfold in the present day.49 Moti Neupane estimates that between 5,000 and 6,000 Nepalese people now migrate to the United States annually.50 Neupane’s personal story is consistent with the trends of the third wave of migration: he moved to the United States six years ago to pursue better education and employment opportunities and currently has no plans to return to Nepal, though he does maintain close ties with his homeland.

In an analysis of the Nepalese Diaspora in the United States in an era of globalization,

Lopita Nath of Kathmandu University argues that the Nepalese Diaspora differs from other

Diaspora communities because it was voluntary rather than motivated by crisis.51 While the migration of people may not have been motivated by widespread famine or ethnic persecution, the civil war and post-conflict instability have undoubtedly contributed to the lack of

46 Nath, "A little of Nepal," 113. 47 Nath, "A little of Nepal,” 106. 48 Sonyok, "A Comparative Study of Emergence." 49 Shakya, "Diaspora and beyond." 50 Neupane, interview by the author. 51 Nath, "A little of Nepal," 118. Dubow 16 employment and educational opportunities, the two forces driving Nepalese people out of their homeland. With a GDP per capita of $1,500, an unemployment rate of 46%, and 25.2% of the population living below the poverty line, Nepal has in many ways experienced the perpetual conflict that economist Paul Collier refers to in The Bottom Billion.52 These conflicts perpetuate poverty that permits weak institutions, lack of diversification, lack of opportunity, and the disruption of daily life. In turn, crops cannot be planted, farmers are unavailable to harvest, and food cannot be moved, bought, and sold as necessary, resulting in food insecurity and further instability. Fortunately, the World Food Program’s most recent Nepal Food Security Bulletin indicates positive trends. Most parts of the country were classified as minimally food insecure, sale of agricultural products and daily wages were major sources of income, there were no major disasters affecting food security, and 84.1% of households had adequate food consumption.53

The Nepalese Diaspora, in the United States and elsewhere, has showcased its commitment to its cultural and ideological roots, as outlined above. The rampant political instability that has plagued the country from 1990 through the present has encouraged migration, but has not diluted the Nepalese sense of pride or identity. Nepalese cuisine as represented in the

United States carries with it a cultural connection to a family-oriented society, as well as one that speaks to the inefficiencies of a government that does not include a large percentage of its people in its democratic structures. Nepalese migration has been motivated by the pursuit of greater opportunity than what is available to those who stay in Nepal, highlighting the subtleties of the conflicting ideals still very much present in modern Nepal. Because of the burgeoning Nepalese

Diaspora, Nepalese cuisine is becoming more and more widespread throughout the United

52 "Nepal," in CIA World Factbook, accessed April 15, 2014, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/np.html. 53 Nepal Food Security Bulletin, report no. Issue 40 (n.p.: World Food Program, 2013), accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.wfp.org/content/nepal-food-security-bulletins-2013.

Dubow 17

States, and the Nepalese community is taking hold and planting roots elsewhere to continue to support its family members still hoping for change in Nepal.

Dubow 18

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"A Guide to Nepalese Dining." Food Nepal. Accessed April 15, 2014.

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Adhikari, Ambika P. "Diaspora in Nepal's Development." Republica, July 31, 2010. Accessed

April 14, 2014.

http://archives.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=21660.

Basnett, Yurenda “From Politicization of Grievances to Political Violence: An Analysis of the

Maoist Movement in Nepal.” Development Studies Institute (March 2009): 1.

Chapple-Sokol, Sam. "Culinary Diplomacy: Breaking Bread to Win Hearts and Minds." The

Hague Journal of Diplomacy 8 (2013): 161-83.

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Gregory, Kathryn “Backgrounder: Shining Path, Tupac Amaru (Peru, Leftists).” Council on

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http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/BOHDI/article/view/2817/2501.

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