8.2 Ethnic Inequality and the Adivasi-Janajati Movement

The ground: the janajati category's construction (Unit 6.6: the lists, NEFIN, the 2002 foundation statute); the inequality record (language loss, hill-Hindu dominance of state and symbol, the Panchayat homogenisation's grievances). The movement's arc:1. Post-1990 awakening: the multiparty opening's identity wave — mother-tongue associations, cultural revival (the de-Sanskritisation of Unit 4.2), NEFIN's 1990s consolidation; the demand-set: cultural rights (language, education, ritual), recognition (the indigenous- nationalities concept — the ILO Convention 169's vocabulary arriving in Nepali politics — ratified 2007), land and resources, and (decisively) federalism with ethnic identity.2. The constitutional wrestling: 2007–15's central conflict — identity-based vs administrative provinces (the first CA's collapse on this rock); the 2015 settlement's administrative boundaries with names contested still (the Koshi naming dispute of 2023 as the aftershock); the movement's split strategies — constitutional participation (the Maoist-era ministries and the Nepal Federation's engagement) vs street assertion.3. The internal debates: hill janajati vs tarai/madheshi janajati (Tharu) interests; the indigenous frame vs the Dalit frame's competing grammars of grievance; elite capture within ethnic organisations (Sociology 7.2's general critique, here specific). The anthropological reading: ethnogenesis as politics — the census and constitution as identity's machines (Unit 6.6's Barth lesson in power): the movement both resists and uses the state's categories.