Hindu Nationalism in Nepal: The Challenge of Transnational Diffusion

• In Event: Religion, Populism, and Geopolitics

Abstract

This paper analyzes the prospects for the diffusion of Hindu nationalist (hindutva) ideology into Nepal, based on extensive field work undertaken from 2022-24 in Nepal.
Nepal would appear to be a 'easy target' for the spread of hindutva ideas and organizations, given its prior history as a 'Hindu monarchy' and a population 80% of whom identify as Hindu. In recent decades hindutva organizations have begun operations in Nepal and held events mirroring those deployed by activists in India, such as demonstrations against Nepal's 2015 secular constitution, protests against Christian conversion, mobilizations against alleged 'beef eating' by minorities and allegations of 'love jihad' by Muslim minorities against Hindu women. There are strong suggestions of funding and support from India for organizations (such as Shiv Sena Nepal) that help to organize such events. Nepal also has a major political party, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (National Democratic Party) that espouses some elements of hindutva ideology, not least its demand that secularism in Nepal be overturned and Christian conversions be forcefully ended.
However, the diffusion of the package of ideas and organizational forms associated with Indian hindutva is making slow progress in Nepal. This paper examines why. It does so firstly by illuminating the heterogeneity of Nepal's religious social movement environment. This environment, more so than India's, displays many features of traditional and localistic practices that have proved resistant to the homogenizing tendencies of hindutva f For example the local ownership of temples by particular caste networks, resistant to outside influences and forms of worship seen as burdensome or complex by elite hindutva ideologs.
In addition to this religious heterogeneity in Nepal there are political geographical obstacles to the progress of hindutva in the form of a major split between a Nepali hills (pahari) version of hindutva focusing on the restoration of the monarchy and a plains (terai) based hindutva that does owe more to Indian media and organizational influences. This split is reflected in multiple micro-splits in the organizations of hindutva in Nepal, as the paper shows in detail.
This paper is based on extensive interviews (around 25) with actors from social movements and political parties across multiple regions of Nepal, including gurus, political leaders, hindutva activists, traditional religious leaders and religious scholars based in Nepal.
The findings of the paper will be of interest to scholars of the intersection of religion and politics, in that the study comprises a detailed case of the attempted diffusion of a politicized religious ideology from one context (India) to another (Nepal) and traces the mechanisms by which that diffusion might be hampered and the means which activists of that ideology are using to try to overcome those obstacles. The findings are also important more broadly for the future of democracy and social inclusion in Nepal, a fragile non-consolidated democracy that has previously been prone to democratic setbacks and civil war. For Nepal, hindutva represents a very real threat of backsliding into social conflict based around religious identities.

Author

• Richard Bownas, University of Northern Colorado