31 Spring 2007 EBHR EUROPEAN BULLETIN OF HIMALAYAN RESEARCH European Bulletin of Himalayan Research The European Bulletin of Himalayan Research (EBHR) was founded by the late Richard Burghart in 1991 and has appeared twice yearly ever since. It is a product of collaboration and edited on a rotating basis between France (CNRS), Germany (South Asia Institute) and the UK (SOAS). Since January 2006 onwards the French editorship has been run as a collective, presently including Pascale Dollfus, András Höfer, Marie Lecomte-Tilouine, Boyd Michailowsky, Philippe Ramirez, Blandine Ripert, and Anne de Sales. We take the Himalayas to mean, the Karakoram, Hindukush, Ladakh, southern Tibet, Kashmir, north-west India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and north-east India. The subjects we cover range from geography and economics to anthropology, sociology, philology, history, art history, and history of religions. In addition to scholarly articles, we publish book reviews, reports on research projects, information on Himalayan archives, news of forthcoming conferences, and funding opportunities. Manuscripts submitted are subject to a process of peer-review. Address for correspondence and submissions : EBHR, CNRS UPR 299 7 rue Guy Môquet 94801 Villejuif Cedex, France [email protected] fax: (33) 01 49 58 37 38 For subscription details and back issues (>3 years) http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/ebhr Contributing editors: Martin Gaenszle, Institut für Südasien-, Tibet- und Buddhismuskunde Uni-Campus AAKh, Hof 2.1, Spitalgasse 2-4, A-1090 Wien, Austria [email protected] András Höfer, Elvira Graner South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University Im Neuenheimer Feld 330, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany Michael Hutt, David Gellner, Ben Campbell School of Oriental and African Studies Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H oXG, U.K. [email protected] Mark Turin Himalayan Languages Project, Silodam 355 1013 AW Amsterdam, Netherlands [email protected] The Bulletin is published from Kathmandu in collaboration with Social Science Baha (www.soscbaha.org) IN MEMORIAM 3 EBHR 31 Spring 2007 IN MEMORIAM Harka Gurung 8 by Monique Fort ARTICLES Castes among the Newars. The Debate between Colin Rosser and 10 Declan Quigley on the Status of Shrestha. Bal Gopal Shrestha Himalayan hill stations from the British Raj to Indian tourism. 30 Isabelle Sacareau Crisis in Education and Future Challenges for Nepal. 46 Kedar Bhakta Mathema Our hymns are different but our gods are the same: Religious 67 rituals in modern garment factories in Nepal. Mallika Shakya Is Bangani a V2 language? 83 Claus Peter Zoller LECTURES Digital Himalaya: Nepal in Context. 145 Alan Macfarlane Close-Up and Wide-Angle. 156 On comparative ethnography in the Himalayas – and beyond. Mark Oppitz The world upside-down: Nepalese migrants in Northern India. 173 Tristan Bruslé CORRESPONDENCE, ANNOUNCEMENTS, REPORTS Response to K.P. Malla’s review of History of Nepal. 187 John Whelpton Democracy, Citizenship, and Belonging In The Himalayas. 195 BOOK REVIEWS Axel Michaels: The Price of Purity... 203 Catherine Clémentin-Ojha, Paris Susan Thieme: Social Networks and Migration... 208 Tristan Bruslé David Zurick, Julsun Pache & al.: Illustrated Atlas of the Himalaya. 215 Joëlle Smadja EDITORIAL Now nearing its fifteenth year of existence, EBHR goes to show that imagining an editorship rotating between Germany, Britain and France was not such a silly idea after all. Though all collaboration and technical tasks are now running smoothly enough, the bulletin still suffers from an irregular volume of subscriptions. Delays in subscription renewals compel us to “juggle” with our finances. We are therefore taking this opportunity to kindly request our former subscribers to check the status of their subscription. May we also appeal to regular readers to subscribe so that we can guarantee the future of our bulletin. We would like to remind everyone that EBHR does not benefit from any funding other than subscriptions and that these rates are kept to the lowest possible. We have decided that issue 31 will be a double issue with a single number. Therefore, this will not affect its price, nor the number of issues sent to subscribers, nor the publication of a second issue next autumn. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the publication of two double issues over the last three years had caused a gap and the problem had to be solved. Secondly, this issue includes an article which is particularly long and which could only be published as a single piece. It is exceptional for the bulletin to accept texts of such length, and this was done only by taking into account the very peculiar nature of the data offered. We would like to renew our appeal for contributions, especially among young researchers, for whom we would be very proud indeed to offer an opportunity to bring their findings and thoughts to the public eye. Let us finally dedicate this issue to the memory of our colleague and friend Karen Lunström-Baudais. We will never forget her passionate and exceptionally rigorous fieldwork reports. Her demise is a great loss for Himalayan Studies. Philippe Ramirez IN MEMORIAM 5 Notes on contributors Mr. Kedar Bhakta Mathema started his career from the educational sector. He has been lecturer at Tri-Chandra College and Vice-Chancellor of Tribhuvan University. He then served as Senior Program Officer of World Bank in Kathmandu and as Nepali Ambassador to Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Isabelle Sacareau is Maître de conférences (Lecturer) in geography at the University of la Rochelle ([email protected]) and member of the MIT (Mobility, Itinerary, Territory) research team at Paris 7 University. She focuses her research on a geographical approach to tourism (tourist practices, process of emerging and spreading tourism). Her main topics include mountain tourism and tourism in developing countries, including domestic tourism (India, Morocco, China). Mallika Shakya is a PhD candidate at London School of Economics, Development Studies Institute. She holds a degree in Economic Planning from the University of Glasgow. Prior to her doctoral studies she worked for seven years with UNICEF. Her research interests include cultural capital, state-entrepreneur relations, and comparative business systems in industrial organization. Currently, she is with the World Bank working on institutional dynamics of export competitiveness in developing countries. Dr. Bal Gopal Shrestha teaches at the University of Leiden. He is lecturer at the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS), Tribhuvan University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona. His PhD dissertation Ritual Composition of Sankhu… (2002) deals with Newar culture and rituals. He has written about Hindu-Buddhist religious rituals, ritual identity, Nepali diaspora, ethnic nationalism, Maoist conflict, and democratic developments in Nepal. Dr. Claus Peter Zoller has completed a PhD on A grammar of a Bhotia language… His habilitation pertained to the Stylistic analysis of an oral Mahabharata. He has been scientific supervisor of the Hindi text database (http://salcorpora.com). His areas of scientific interest include Hindi language and literature, linguistics of West Himalayan and Dardic languages, North Indian folk traditions and epics. IN MEMORIAM 7 IN MEMORIAM EBHR Harka Gurung by Monique Fort With the tragic death of Harka Gurung on 23 September 2006 in a helicopter crash in far eastern Nepal, Nepal has lost one of its most brilliant intellectuals and statesmen. Harka Bahadur was born in Bhulbule in the heart of the Gurung country, on the sloping left bank of the Marsyangdi River, not far from Khudi bazaar. His father, a colonel in his Majesty’s Gurkha regiments, sent him to study at the finest schools in India, at a time when the school infrastructure was practically nonexistent in Nepal. His frequent trips back and forth between Nepal and India, led Harka Gurung to write his “Vignettes of Nepal”, in which he recounts a number of choice anecdotes, and in particular how he got away from highway bandits who, with the opening of the country to foreigners and the development of the trekking industry, have gradually died out. After obtaining a B.A. Honours from Patna College, India Harka left for the University of Edinburgh to prepare his post-graduate diploma, and a Ph.D. (1965) devoted to the geography of the Pokhara Valley, a remarkable piece of work carried out under the guidance of Pr. Geddes. At the same time, he was demonstrator at the University of Edinburgh (1963-64) and Research Fellow at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London (1964-66), thanks to which he realized that his calling was indeed research and multi-disciplinary studies which he was to keep throughout his political career. This started barely a few years after his return to Nepal. After two years as lecturer at Tribhuvan University (1966-68), he was rapidly appointed member, then Vice-chairman of the National Planning Commission (1968-1975), then Minister of State for Education, and Industry & Commerce, and finally Minister of State for Tourism, Public Works & Transport (1977-78) in the Nepalese Government. His vision as “geographer”, his sound knowledge of Nepal and its populations, strongly contrasted with that of other ministers, who had often never even been outside the Kathmandu Valley. His knack of grasping local situations made Harka Gurung de facto a real expert on Nepal’s development, marking out future tendencies whereby Nepal, in the