Lead partner: Dr. Sabin Ninglekhu (Social Science Baha)

January–June 2024

In collaboration with SOAS University of London (Dr. Stefanie Lotter), the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) in Ahmedabad, India, University of Southampton (Prof Bryony Whitmarsh), the action-research NGO “Indigenous without Borders” (collaborators: Niranti Tumbapo, Kailash Rai, Govinda Chhantyal), and place-based collectives of heritage and identity activists in the following four districts in the eastern provinces of Nepal: Terhathum, Panchthar, Khotang and Sankhuwasabha

The initiative’s title—Jal, Jungle, Jameen—translates in English into “water, forest and land”: the three sites central to indigenous Kirat heritage in Nepal and India.

This outreach project brought together a team of seven researchers and activists representing five different academic and research institutes in India, Nepal and the UK to strengthen networks with Indigenous without Borders (IwB). Through the partnerships formed, “Jal, Jungle, and Jameen” organized a series of traveling workshops conducted in Province 1 in Eastern Nepal, creating grassroots-level outreach with locally based collectives of activists, artists, heritage preservationists and oral historians in the four districts. The goals of the initiative is to engage in indigenous coalition building through trans-regional and international partnerships, while strengthening intellectual and political conditions for the future that will arrest the project(s) of erasure and strengthen the project(s) of decolonization through a series of timely, everyday interventions.

In addition to its series of traveling workshops, “Jungle, Jal, Jameen” will produce four multi-lingual essays and a documentary to reflect on the initiative’s work and to preserve its teachings for both local and international audiences. The excerpt below, by Dr. Sabin Ninglekhu, is one of the aforementioned essays produced as part of the project.

Publication by Dr. Sabin Ninglekhu in The Internationalist Newsletter, for issue #98

This post is an excerpt of a longer piece. It has been republished with permission and was first published in The Internationalist Newsletter for issue #98. The entire version can be found here.

For issue #98 of The Internationalist, Dr Ninglekhu writes on the "No Koshi" movement in eastern Nepal which resists the erasure of Indigenous identities by rejecting the province name "Koshi" and fighting against imposed development projects like a cable car on sacred land.

History bears witness to a universal truth: The inauguration of the colonial future begins with the erasure of the Indigenous past. In March 2023, as part of an ongoing federal restructuring of the Nepali state, the provincial government of as-yet-unnamed “Province No. 1” of eastern Nepal made the parliamentary decision to name the province “Koshi.” 

The Indigenous Kirat, predominantly the Rai and Limbu ethnic communities, rejected this name on a few important grounds. First, with its mythological origins rooted in Hinduism, “Koshi” represented neither the history nor heritage of the geographic territory. Second, the ruling government had deceitfully deployed their electoral advantage in the provincial parliament to sidestep deliberative dialogue necessary in something as historic as naming a province. In doing so, they had reneged on the promises made to the Indigenous people during the election time. 

This was how the “No Koshi” Indigenous movement was born; negligible to the state in its nascent phase, but less so after their more-than-expected showing in a recent by-election in one of the important constituencies in eastern Nepal.

At the heart of this ongoing movement is a demand for the right to name one’s territory and land according to the heart’s desire. To put it pointedly, the movement has declared “Enough!”; enough with the project of erasing and replacing Indigenous names of places, landscapes, rivers, forests, graveyards, hills and rocks, with Hindu names, as a primary and preliminary form of neocolonial domination and control. The resurgent “No Koshi” movement is persistent and relentless, not violent but also not peaceful, and filled with creativity deemed necessary to deal with uncertainty. 

A motley crew of activists and anthropologists, architects and geographers, photographers and writers, many of us of the Indigenous background, embarked on a journey of eastern Nepal to document the resurgent Indigenous movement carried out in the spirit of critical solidarity with the movement. On the journey, we passed many rivers and their tributaries, hilly mounds and graveyards, ponds and forests. We spoke with young students and activists, political leaders and local historians, returning migrants and farmers who never left. Through their telling, we have come face-to-face with histories, stories and anecdotes that spoke of the sacred bonds people in these parts have historically shared with nature. 

So, when names are erased, it is not just the names that are lost. Remembering and forgetting are powerful tools for exerting domination and control. New names remove old traces. And when the past is no longer remembered, what is lost is the legitimacy necessary to make claims over the present time. In turn, what is ultimately taken away, seized under broad daylight, is the power to chart a future. 

During the journey, each day left behind an impression that made this clear — after a decade of dormancy, the indigenous movement in eastern Nepal is back at the forefront. And reclaiming the names — of water, forest, and land — that were lost or stolen, effaced or erased, through stealth and by force, was the first fight to be fought, and won, in this permanent war of attrition for reclaiming power. 

Images from left to right:

In Phalaicha, Panchhar, the protestors of the 'No-Koshi Struggle Committee', discussing the ups and downs of the ongoing movement; Photo credit: Sabin Ninglekhu.

Many like the protestor pictured, member of the ‘No Cable Car Struggle Committee’, keep guard  along the trail to discourage the Armed Police Force (APF) from setting up camp in Mukkumlung; Photo credit: Sabin Ninglekhu.

Trees, including Rhododendron, cut down following the government’s order; Photo credit: Kailash Rai.

Funeral procession of the cable car; Photo credit: Sabin Ninglekhu.

Mask carrying the rings of a tree trunk that was cut into two by the Nepal government; Photo credit: Mekh Limbu.