The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0040/00408.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 28KB | 475 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00408}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Nepal
Chapter 5.    Family and Social Structure}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{George L. Harris}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{caste
groups
group
social
status
pahari
ethnic
family
castes
members}
$Date{1973}
$Log{}
Title:       Nepal
Book:        Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, An Area Study: Nepal
Author:      George L. Harris
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1973

Chapter 5.    Family and Social Structure

     Politically united in the late eighteenth century, Nepal remains socially
diverse. Little, except the frequently remote authority of the royal
government and limited trade relationships, exists to relate the various areas
of the country and the numerous ethnic groups to each other. Even within a
particular ethnic group an active sense of collective identity hardly goes
beyond the cluster of neighboring villages and, at most, as in the case of the
Kiranti in the east, may extend throughout a region. Differences in economic
circumstances provide a scale against which it is possible to classify the
population into a small group of wealthy, a middling and also small group of
the moderately prosperous, and the numerically predominant poor. On none of
these levels, however, would there be much, if any, sense of common interest
or shared goals across ethnic or caste lines.

     The caste system, historically introduced from Hindu India by migration
and conquest, structures the social life of nearly 80 percent of the country's
population, largely living in the south and west, and in the Katmandu Valley.
By contrast, Buddhism and cultures of a sub-Tibetan type prevail in the north
and east. These two patterns represent significantly different ways of
life-one compartmentalized by caste, the other relatively uncomplicated by
hereditary ranking, except in some groups by a simple division between
aristocrats and commoners. Each dispensation, however, contains groups as
different in language and tradition as the Hindu Pahari and Newar or the
Buddhist Bhote and Limbu.

     Within the plural structure of the society, certain uniformities narrow
the distance between one group and another. Thus, Hinduism and Buddhism
provide common denominators of religious belief and practice in different
regions, and the mingling of the two-as among the Newar-has produced a
distinctive synthesis. Nepali, the official national language, is the first
tongue of more than half of the population and a spreading second language
among the remainder. The caste system, in which a sizable majority of the
people are involved, fragmentizes the community into hereditary compartments
of ritual and social status, but it is also associated with a shared body of
religious belief and a normative set of premises about human relationships.
Moreover, the numerically and politically dominant Hindu elements have tended
to assign a place in the hierarchy of caste even to non-Hindu groups, many of
whose members have been strongly Hinduized. Still another factor softening the
sharpness of ethnic contrast is the similarity of family and community life
throughout most of the country. Details differ, but in the agricultural
villages-in which 97 percent of the population lives-the more or less extended
family marks the perimeter of the strongest loyalty of the individual, and,
for most, the widest field of social action is the local community.

     The emergence of an integrated structure of society implies, not the
disappearance of ethnic difference, but the growth of social interaction and
interdependence among the numerous ethnic and local groups into which the
people are divided. Progress in this direction, until 1951 inhibited by the
defensively traditionalist policy of the Ranas, continues to be complicated by
caste and hindered by the Himalayan terrain, poor communications and an
undeveloped economy. Change inevitably will be slow, but it is being
accelerated by two dynamic factors: government action and influences from the
outside world. The effect of both is to enlarge the areas of shared thought
and experience in Nepalese life.

     The commitment of the government to the creation of a genuinely national
society is stated explicitly in the Constitution:

It shall be the objective of the State to promote public welfare through the
establishment of a just social system by bringing about, with a broad-based
national outlook, the unification and assimilation of the interests of various
classes and professions and by bringing about a uniformity in national life.

     The government effort, although slow, is broad in scope, comprehending a
wide range of political, economic and social measures. Thus, the panchayat
system of government councils, established in 1960, was introduced to provide
both a uniform apparatus of national and local administration and a training
vehicle for popular participation in government. The economic development
envisaged in the Five-Year Plan and the Three-Year Plan is aimed not only at
increasing the national income and raising the general standard of living but
at ending regional and local economic isolation and creating an integrated
national economy. The expanding public school system is spreading the use of
the official national language and inculcating a body of national ideals in
the younger generation. Associated with this domestic activity has been the
opening of the country to foreign influences which, in the form of material
aid, scientific knowledge and social ideas, are tending to erode the
traditional particularisms and contributing to the growth of national and
international orientations.

     Nepalese society, meanwhile, continues to be a complex of ethnic
communities and caste groups rather than a unitary structure. Numerous
similarities of culture and circumstance exist, but their translation into a
conscious sense of social relationship and national identity has only begun.

Kinship and Marriage

     The vast majority of the people live in small villages, bazaar
settlements and market towns. Villages vary in size and composition. Some are
no more than hamlets of five or six houses; others are sizable communities
made up of a number of neighboring hamlets. The hamlet, as among the Bhote,
may contain only a few closely related families comprising a single small
lineage or part of a lineage, or, as among the Tamang, it may comprise a much
larger lineage group. The Pahari village generally includes a number of
castes, each of which in small communities may be represented by only a few
closely related families. In more populous places the caste groups are larger
and may occupy different neighborhoods or separate hamlets.

     In these small communities, whether organized on caste lines or not, the
strongest social tie is that of kinship. The individual confronts the
community primarily as a member and representative of a kinship group.
Traditionally, and largely still, he inherits not only his social status but
his prospects. Individual choice in such matters as marriage, place of
residence and occupation is restricted by customary rules or subject to
family decision. Kinship obligations not only govern personal behavior, but
the family-ideally in an extended form-is the basic economic unit, and local
political authority is likely to reside with the heads of the senior lineages.
Modern influences and the action of the national government in the realms of
social legislation, public services and economic development are tending to
reduce the size and importance of kin groups larger than the nuclear family.
There also appear to be signs that the force of family controls on the
individual is beginning to weaken.

     All groups appear to trace descent through the male line. Beyond the
nuclear family, consisting of father, mother and children, the actual size and
cohesiveness of the kin units formed on this basis vary from one ethnic group
to another. Thus, the clans of some of the Tibeto-Nepalese are huge
aggregations of families regarded