Home Institution

Davidson College

Publication Date

Fall 2022

Program Name

Nepal: Tibetan and Himalayan Peoples

Abstract

In 1996, Nepal was engulfed in a civil war when the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) – hereafter referred to a— launched a guerilla war against the state. In historical and political scholarship on the conflict, there has been a tendency to situate the conflict with a neat set of causes and consequences. In focusing on the macroscale changes, such narrations of “Big History” obscure the experiences of the Nepali people who were—and continue to be— impacted by war with the loss and violence endured clinically tallied in human right reports and social science studies. Within rigid analyses, the variegated reasons individuals joined the Maoists have either been simplified as resulting from their backwardness or collapsed by Maoist leaders as resulting solely from ideological affinity. This project, then, seeks to collate an oral history of the “People’s War” by centering Nepali people’s experiences. — especially those at the epicenter of the conflict in the mid-western hills of Nepal— to illuminate the complexity, contradiction and diversity of experience encompassed under the banner of the “People’s War.”

Disciplines

Asian History | Asian Studies | Peace and Conflict Studies | Politics and Social Change | Social Justice

Download

Share

Article Location

 
COinS