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Ambiguous Bikās: History of the Concept of Development in Nepal 1900–2006

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Ambiguous Bikās: History of the Concept of Development in Nepal 1900–2006 Department of Political and Economic Studies University of Helsinki Finland Ambiguous Bikās: History of the Concept of Development in Nepal 1900–2006 Bandana Gyawali ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki, in lecture room PIII, Porthania (Yliopistonkatu 3) at 11:00 on Thursday, 23 August 2018 Publication of the Faculty of Social Sciences 82/2018 Development Studies Opponent Professor Mark Liechty, Departments of Anthropology and History, University of Illinois at Chicago Pre-examiners Professor Stacy Leigh Pigg, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University Professor Tatsuro Fujikura, Department of South Asia and Indian Ocean Studies, Kyoto University Supervisors Professor emeritus Juhani Koponen Department of Political and Economic Studies, Development Studies, University of Helsinki Docent Sudhindra Sharma, Interdisciplinary Analysts, Kathmandu, Nepal © Bandana Gyawali Distribution and Sales Unigrafia Bookstore http://shop.unigrafia.fi ISSN 2343-273X (Print) ISSN 2343-2748 (Online publication) ISBN 978-951-51-3319-9 (Paperback) ISBN 978-951-51-3320-5 (PDF File) Unigrafia, Helsinki 2018 ABSTRACT Development, an ambiguous sociopolitical concept, has become entrenched in the imaginations and vocabulary of the people of Nepal for decades. Its Nepali translation, bikās, is commonly believed to have come into existence with the American Point Four assistance in 1951, followed by a plethora of technical and financial assistance offered by various countries. That development is to be achieved mainly through foreign-aided interventions that will ultimately propel the country to economic prosperity and social wellbeing akin to the West is the dominant view in Nepal. Such a view makes development a fairly recent phenomenon. It also makes development a concept that is ahistorical. This study is an attempt to refute such ahistoricity. It explores the history of the modern sociopolitical concept of development as it was adopted in Nepal in the late Rana period of the 1920s and was semantically augmented in the successive political periods right up to the end of the Maoist ‘People’s War’ in 2006. Being a conceptual history, it studies bikās diachronically and synchronically. Diachronically, it pursues the concept across almost a century to trace continuities and discontinuities in the semantics of bikās, while synchronically it pauses at each political period and reflects on how bikās has been understood at a particular historical juncture. In other words, this study explores how the concept carries elements from the past, assimilates into the present and projects into the future. Apart from the methodological prerequisites of pairing diachronic and synchronic approaches, this study also takes into consideration the onomasiology and semasiology of bikās. It explores parallel expressions around bikās such as the ideas of unnati and pragati (both denoting progress) and of sabhyatā (civilization) and teases out their semantic layers. This historical study focuses extensively on written data, with interviews supplementing it only when required. Official correspondences, newspapers, dictionaries, books and booklets, pamphlets, etc., that survive at the Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya in Kathmandu, the Nepal National Library at Harihar Bhavan in Kathmandu, and the National Archives of India in New Delhi have informed this study. For recent historical contents, the sources used were books published from 1990 to 2013 and digital archives such as the Digital Himalaya and the website of the National Planning Commission, accompanied by occasional interviews. However, this is not just a semantic history of bikās or an attempt to trace the changing meaning of a sociopolitical concept. The evolution of bikās as a concept is tied to socio-structural transformations. This is because conceptual change, a slow process when compared to the fast pace of political changes or even the gradual pace of social changes, occurs through accumulated meanings resulting from political and social changes. A result of the reciprocity of conceptual and sociopolitical changes is that while Nepal’s sociopolitical transformations from the 1950s to the present have contributed to the semantic expansion of bikās, such an expansion has, in turn, facilitated sociopolitical transformations – in this case, deepening of democracy in Nepal. Outlining this reciprocity between sociopolitical transformations and conceptual changes in bikās is the aim of this research. Keywords: Nepal, development, bikās, unnati, pragati, sabhyatā, concept, history, sociopolitical transformations. i CONTENTS ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................................i CONTENTS............................................................................................................................................ii CHRONOLOGY.....................................................................................................................................v GLOSSARY .........................................................................................................................................vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...................................................................................................................ix NOTES ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION.................................................................x CHAPTER I: What is bikās? .................................................................................................................1 1.1 Research objectives and research question ...................................................................................2 1.2 Background to the research...........................................................................................................2 1.3 Framework of the research............................................................................................................5 1.3.1 Development as foreign-aided projects..................................................................................5 1.3.2 Development as unintended consequences ............................................................................6 1.3.3 Development as idea or concept ............................................................................................7 1.4 What is Begriffsgeschichte, or history of concepts? .....................................................................9 1.5 Bikās as a concept .......................................................................................................................13 1.6 The method of Begriffsgeschichte...............................................................................................13 1.7 An alternative study of concepts.................................................................................................16 1.8 Structure of the thesis..................................................................................................................17 1.9 Limitations ..................................................................................................................................18 CHAPTER II: Nepal’s pre-bikās encounters with the West: sabhyatā and unnati as precursors to bikās in the Rana era ......................................................................................................................................19 2.1 Encounter with the West – Jang Bahadur’s voyage....................................................................19 2.2 Chandra Shamsher’s slavery abolition speech as an example of positive identification ............22 2.3 Positive identification under new circumstances – Juddha Shamsher’s industrial pursuits........25 2.4 Towards industrialization – the vocabulary of sabhyatā, unnati and ‘development’ .................27 2.5 Defining sabhyatā and unnati.....................................................................................................30 2.6 Predominance of the word unnati in Rana-era Nepal .................................................................33 2.7 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................36 CHAPTER III: From development to bikās: Nepal’s transition to democracy and the emergence of a concept..................................................................................................................................................38 3.1 The transition from autocracy to democracy ..............................................................................38 3.2 Pragati ........................................................................................................................................41 3.2.1 The vocabulary of the revolutionaries..................................................................................41 3.2.2 Defining pragati...................................................................................................................43 3.3 The Beginnings of development .................................................................................................45 3.3.1 American influences ............................................................................................................45 3.3.2 Translating development as bikās........................................................................................48
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