Focus On

From the Field

Oftentimes, the poor historian that I am feels a pang of envy when listening to the wonderful tales that spill forth from the mouths of sociologists, anthropologist, sociolinguists and the like, who come back from their fieldwork enriched and enlivened by experiences the likes of which are often found in the pages of adventure novels. I have heard tales of prowling tigers, medusa-filled lakes, arid deserts. Many researchers recall beautiful fragrant dishes, harrowing journeys, hush-hush topics, and they all hint at an infinite number of stories still to come. Inevitably, there comes the time when I―perhaps too conspicuous by my silence―have to share in the tale-telling. Dread… my parched lips open and from my dry throat come the words: “Well, I can tell you about the British Library.” Those listening suddenly recall urgent appointments, and, within seconds, I am left alone to ponder: what is the nature of my fieldwork?

Uneventful it is, though not without wonder. Although my eyes have seen glorious sights both old and new, these―perhaps because of my poor eyesight―have often left me with only a fraction of the emotion that filled my heart when first I stepped into the grounds of the British Library. Walking briskly through the modern courtyard, I stepped forward with the confidence of a newborn toward the glass doors that would lead me into the inner sanctum. The continental European that I am, forever prone to all sorts of ID checks, bag checks and metal detector checks when it comes to such prestigious institutions, had already presented his bag; however, the guards, with the faintest of smiles, simply ushered me in. I stopped and asked if I could indeed step forth without having to state my paternal grandmother’s maiden name. Bemused, they nodded, and I―bewildered by such liberalism—made my way to the Reader Pass Application desk. I shall not tell you about the surprise that awaited me there too when it soon became obvious that the only prerequisite was valid ID and a home address. Nor will I tell about how helpful staff patiently answered my anxious questions and happily handed me centuries-old manuscripts. I still scarcely believe how simple it was.

And there it was: on my desk sat an ancient tome, a Book of War, generations old, penned by scribes of egregious talent, all for me, for me alone. I felt the pages under my fingers and breathed its fragrance that had journeyed so. In this book, where tales of yore had travelled from one language to the other, were left the impressions of countless hands, of countless voices and―I almost blushed—perhaps even the laughter of an Emperor, the Greatest of all. Any edition can reproduce the contents of a manuscript, but it is the manuscript itself that is the vector of our fancy. Though our research may not lead us to other lands or enable us to make new friends, those of us who deal with ancient words do indeed travel whilst immersed in times long gone. Within the reach of our hand is a thread that leads us into the past: not until I stepped through those doors had I realize that we had a field, that our research was very real and that it took very little to gain access to it.

This is what struck me most: that though I was reading these texts for academic purposes, it was the badge issued earlier―at no cost I might add―that granted me access to them. This badge could be issued to anyone, and anyone could read the books. I find solace in that.

So, until such time as I can tell you about other libraries…

Report by Raffaello De Leon-Jones Diani

My thesis is about a peripatetic group called the Samis, located in Sindh province in Pakistan. Compared with other groups such as pastoralists, non-pastoralists or sedentary people who have attracted the attention of numerous scholars including anthropologists and sociologists, the Sami people have rarely been the subject of academic studies. Locally known as sorcerer-beggars and spies, Sami people themselves claim to be beggars and to know how to tell people’s fortunes and to practice alchemy. To earn money, they wander from place to place between Sindh and Baluchistan provinces, and they also travel to Iran. When begging, they tell people’s fortunes using dice, called dharo, and perform alchemical activities to heal people. They also trade precious stones which they bring over from Iran and sell to people in Sindh and Baluchistan. As for their religion, they worship individual goddesses and follow Jafria tariqa, which is associated with Islam. No detailed survey of the Sami people has ever been carried out before, thus their settlement techniques, their beliefs and their professional activities remain largely unknown. I set out to review them in my thesis.

Photo 1: Sami fortune-telling dice.

The first time I went to Sami people’s settlement/houses, called pakha (singular: pakho), located in the village of Shahbandar in Thatta district in the south of Sindh province, was in January 2019. The purpose of my journey was to conduct a field survey about Sami people’s religious conversion (from Hinduism to Islam) in late 2017. In fact, the idea of studying this community has evolved from my initial doctoral project about the religious conversion of untouchable communities, officially known as scheduled castes in Pakistan. Indeed, I was drafting my doctoral project in October 2017 when I came across a news item in the Sindhi newspaper, Kawish, announcing that more than two hundred people from the Sami community in Shahbandar village had embraced Islam. An event to celebrate their conversion was organized by the owner of the land on which these Samis had settled. And pir Ghulam Muhammad Soho Qadri, an influential religious figure in the area, had been saying prayers for their conversion. I therefore had the idea of starting my fieldwork among this community and of exploring the reasons why such a large number of people from one community had decided to convert.

Photo 2: Sami houses (pakha) in the background.

Photo 2 bis: Sami houses (pakha) in the background detail.

I was taken there by a local journalist who had reported the news about their conversion and had been in contact with the head of the Samis in Shahbandar, Hameer Shaikh, who used to be called Hameer Sami before converting to Islam. The journalist had already told Hameer Shaikh about my visit so he was there waiting for us when we arrived. He welcomed us warmly and took us directly to the newly built mosque at the entrance to their village. At the time of my visit, building work hadn’t been completed. Hameer Shaikh told us: A religious scholar called Mullah has been appointed to teach Salat and the Islamic scripture of the Quran, and people have started praying there as well. After visiting the mosque, I asked Hameer Shaikh if he could take me to visit their pakha. He agreed and we set off. After about five minutes’ walk, Hameer Shaikh pointed to the houses surrounded by fields in which lucerne and brassica were growing. To get to the houses we crossed the fields. In comparison with the mosque that was solidly built, Sami houses were made of reeds and bamboo sticks covered with clay. There, I met Sami women who were busy doing household chores and quilt making.

Photo 3: Sami showing his knowledge about healing practices.

Photo 3 bis: Sami showing his knowledge about healing practices detail.

During the survey, Hameer Shaikh told me the reason for his converting to Islam. He explained: We were Samis, Sami beggars. We used to beg for a living but then we decided that, since we already live according to the Musalmani method, follow Safi tariqa, believe in everything and don’t build temples as Hindus do then, why do we live in the shadow of Hinduism. Thus, to escape this Hindu label, we became Muslims. Most people I met stressed how they had been impressed by the Islamic faith and their desire to be included among its believers. On hearing their answers, I soon realized that my set of questions was too direct for them to answer in total honesty. Indeed, the subject of religious conversion is a sensitive subject in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Also, it was the very first time we met. Nevertheless, this field visit prompted me to pursue various research threads for future work among these people. Hameer Shaikh’s explanation about Safi tariqa and the absence of religious spaces such as temples made me curious and got me interested in the Samis who had not converted. Therefore, during subsequent visits, I went to visit other Sami people in different villages, towns and districts of Sindh province. These visits broadened my understanding of Sami people but also considerably shifted my focus from religious conversion to many questions about their migration routes between Pakistan and Iran, their customs, beliefs and activities as fortune tellers, their knack for getting money from clients, women’s quilt-making activities of and, more importantly, their worship of different goddesses. I address these questions in my thesis.

This account focuses on the political contributions and compromises of a female Dalit who is elected as representative of Nepal’s Dhanushadham municipality. This is one of the municipalities I’m studying for my doctoral thesis. My research examines municipal planning in Nepal, an annual process organized by local elected representatives to formulate local plans for building local infrastructures and for initiating social development policies based on proposals collected among ordinary citizens in settlements or tole. The newly introduced federalism (2015) has brought in legal arrangements that allow the 753 newly formed local government units (rural and urban municipalities) to receive a massive budget transfer from provincial and central governments.[1] These budget transfers have sparked an interest in standing for elected office as representatives because the latter play an important role in allocating municipal budgets to small-scale projects by organizing settlement assemblies, tole bhelas, during the planning process. During my fieldwork in 2021, I met several elected representatives in Dhanushadham municipality and its sub-municipal units, the wards.

Photo 1: Mithila art drawn by a student.

Photo 1 bis: Mithila art drawn by a student detail.

For the first few days of my visit, I was able to meet only male elected representatives, as they were the only ones available in the ward offices. I wanted to meet some female elected representatives, so some of them suggested I meet Anita.[2] The chairperson of the ward I was visiting said, “you should meet Anita, who was elected for Dalit reservation quota from our ward. She knows everything.” I was pleasantly surprised to see a Dalit woman appreciated by a high-caste elected representative.

I met Anita the very same day. She wanted to do something for her community; that’s why she ran for the ward-member position. Before being elected, she was engaged in many voluntareer activities with different community development organizations that worked toward Dalit upliftment. For instance, a few years ago, she volunteered for a project run by a local NGO that built an after-school learning center (tuition center). At this center, Dalit children from her neighborhood attend additional classes that help them with their homework because most of these children’s parents are illiterate and can’t help them. The children also learn Mithila art, a type of art practiced in the Maithili-speaking region of Nepal and India. Anita showed me some walls painted by a Dalit student (Photo 1). She herself had never had the opportunity of attending school but had participated in many adult literacy programs organized by local NGOs so that she could learn to read and write. Anita believes that a good education for children can improve the condition of Dalits in the long run.

After being elected as representative in 2017, Anita played a vital role in organizing tole bhelas. She would collect project proposals within her neighborhood, then forward them to the ward assembly that establishes a shortlist of the projects. When I asked her how she learned to collect local proposals, she said, “it is not difficult to identify the needs of your people.” As ward member, Anita enjoyed what she was doing for her community. She wanted to do more. She expressed her desire to run again in the 2022 election, but this time for the position of ward chairperson instead of ward member. Following the federal restructuring of Nepal, every ward has a committee of five elected representatives, including a chairperson and four members. The position of ward chairperson carries the most power. She reasoned that, as there is a significant population of Dalits in her ward, if a Dalit runs for election, they can win. I was amazed by her confidence.

I returned to Dhanushadham again in early June 2022, right after the local election which had taken place in May 2022. I saw her name in the list of elected representatives, but she had again been elected under the Dalit member quota. I wanted to know what had made her change her mind. I met her the following day and congratulated her on her election. Then I asked her why she hadn’t run for chairperson. She replied that senior party leaders had suggested that Dalit seats are reserved for the member position only, not for chairperson, so she couldn’t run for that position. And she didn’t get a ticket from her political party to run for chairperson. She regarded it as law, so she had to accept it.

Photo 2: Tole bhela of year 2022, in Anita’s tole: she is the only electedrepresentative who does not get the chair

The law that has been in place since 2017, the Local Government Operation Act-2017, states that the political party should nominate at least one Dalit woman for the position of ward-member. However, it does not forbid any party from appointing women or Dalits to the position of ward chairperson. The aim of providing reservation to Dalits was to ensure at least minimum representation of Dalits in local politics. But the “minimum representation” has been interpreted as the “maximum limit."

Anita no longer has her eye on the ward chairperson’s position because she believes that she can only run for the seats reserved for her. However, she’s not disappointed and continues to work for the community as ward member and to organize the tole bhela. In 2022, I was able to attend the tole bhela in her settlement, as well as to observe the other ward representatives there. Anita gathered together people for discussions and then noted down the demands of the population. There were three other elected representatives at the tole bhela. It is worth noting that during the meeting, every ward representative except for Anita was offered a chair to sit on. She stood the whole time (Photo 2). Offering a chair is a sign of respect in Nepali society. Though this story is just about one Dalit woman, it shows that, despite Nepal's reformed laws and reservations for Dalits, social inequalities are still rife in the country.

[1] The newly introduced federalism (2015) brings legal arrangements that allow the newly formed 753 local government units to receive about 32% of the budget (20% from the central government and 12% from the provinces) to be utilized through a participatory planning process.

[2] Name has been changed to maintain confidentiality.

The anthropology of change and modernity is a multifaceted issue. How has the small single-subcaste Newar[1] agricultural village that I studied in the early 1970s been affected by the major transformations that Nepal has endured over the last fifty years? In November 2022, I made several visits to the place where I conducted my initial fieldwork which is located about 17 km south of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. A number of young boys immediately welcomed me, repeating that they were the sons of so-and-so with whom I was on familiar terms. “We need your help to preserve our original culture,” they all insisted[2]. It was not the first time I had been back to this locality; yet such visits rapidly became the main focus of my recent trip to Nepal. As the two photos reproduced here show, Pyangaon (in Nepāl bhāṣā or Newari: Svãgu), populated by a particular agricultural subcaste, has changed considerably. With regards housing, bricks have often been replaced by cement, and pitched roofs by flat terraces. The ceilings are higher and the carved wooden windows have disappeared. In addition, new houses have been built around the pond at the entrance to the village and some of them are rented out to Tamang and Hindu Bahun-Chetri groups, i.e. outsiders. The village appears to be cleaner and less insalubrious than fifty years ago. Buffalo husbandry, so essential in the past for the sale of milk to faraway places, has been abandoned. However, the only street in the locality, still flanked on both sides by high wooden stakes to dry maize and by two compact rows of terrace houses, is still the same. A new arched concrete gate at the entrance to the village reinforces the demarcation between Pyangaon and the outside, and sustains the sensation that one is entering a reclusive, secluded, community.

The standard of living and people’s everyday clothes have considerably improved, as has their lifestyle. In most houses, there are TVs and modern furniture (in 1970, there was no electricity). The village has entered the digital world of the World Wide Web: young people have a mobile phone, an Internet connection and surf Facebook and Tik-Tok. Furthermore, Pyangaon/Svãgu, which has never been a self-sufficient locality, is increasingly dependent today on a market economy. The use of old horizontal weaving looms, where the woman operating it sits on the floor, has practically been abandoned. Ready-made garments are now worn and are bought on the market. Farming (irrigated rice and non-irrigated crops such as maize, mustard and wheat) still remains one of the inhabitants' main occupations, but often only on a part-time basis. Thanks to schooling, more and more young educated boys (and a few girls) work as clerks and accountants in neighboring towns. It takes them only 30–45 minutes in the morning to go to work by motorbike and the same amount of time in the evening to return to Pyangaon. Other men are employed here and there in the building sector. Some fields, especially those situated furthest away from the village, have been sold at a very high price. What is more, young people are trying to revive the craft of making bamboo containers, pyāṅg (or dyāṃcā, hāpā) (hence the Nepali name for the village), once used to measure grain and to store varieties of spices.

The population has more than doubled (about 1,400 persons at present, instead of 550 in 1970, yet the village has retained its unique identity. Its rural character still differs markedly from the nearby cities of Kathmandu and Lalitpur (Patan) and its specific Newari dialect, bhāṣika, is still spoken in the locality. From a sociological viewpoint, the division of the village into two factions subsequent to a debatable case of intercaste marriage with an outsider in the 1940s is no longer discernible. In fact, nowadays, intercaste marriage with girls from outside the locality is increasingly challenging the traditional mode of marrying endogamously. “Now, everyone marries girls from outside,” says teenager Sumina Maharajan. The gap between the younger (kvakāli) and older (thakāli, or thakāri in the local language) generation is therefore widening. However, sociologically, the holistic features of Pyangaon still prevail. Members of the community (Svãgumis, “the people of Svãgu,” in the local language) are still encapsulated within an all-encompassing social order. They have to accept binding communal rules and are submitted to a strict organization of labor, an annual calendar of festivals and ceremonies, as well as to a large number of obligations towards their relatives. These constraints do not basically differ from what I observed fifty years ago. If marriage is contracted with somebody from outside the village, even with a girl of higher caste, men retain their membership within the local group, but their sons are excluded from the main socioreligious events. By and large, patrilineal kinship remains one of the roots of local society. Nonetheless, young women have now formed voluntary groups, mahilā samūha, in order to be more independent, to manage their own savings, or to heat the inner bark of bamboo in the fire for making pyāṅg containers. On the whole, they try to impose their own vision of the future—an outcome of the recent mahilā feminist movement in the country. In matters of political orientations, wood sculptor Narendra Maharjan, one of my old friends from the village, who recently converted to Christianity under the influence of a local Jehovah’s Witness church, informed me that in November 2022, during the general elections, Svãgumis cast votes in favor of a wide range of political parties (not just a single one): Communist, Congress, and others. “Options even vary within a family,” Narendra told me.

Religion, which is basically ritualistic among Newar farmers or former farmers, is still a pillar of society. A number of rituals and ceremonial observances, mostly of a Hindu character, structure social life. Pyangaon, for instance, still celebrates a major eleven-day-long joint festival (mū yāḥ) at the end of the rainy season; the five guthi (locally known as gvahã), socio-religious groups rooted in kinship units, take part in it. The old theatrical play kuṃ pyākhã (or rājā-rāni nāc) staged during the festival has been revived with a modern twist. Interestingly, local people now compete with ethnographers in photographing and filming ceremonial events with their mobile phones. Above is a reproduction of a photograph illustrating the khaḍga jātrā (in the local dialect: kharyacā yāḥ) procession during vijayā daśamī day, which was taken in October 2021 by Mahila Maharjan, now a retired schoolteacher. Another photograph (below) that I took shows three Navadurgā masked dancers (from left to right: Byāṃghīṇī, Mahālakṣmī and Siṃghīṃnī) from Theco, a nearby Newar village, resting on a bench during the performance of the sacred dance which, once every twelve years (this event took place in 2022), takes on a special dimension, with more deities participating in the dances. On that occasion, most of the inhabitants of Pyangaon have to offer flowers, rice, and money to the dancers who embody the divinities. Thanks to my good relations with one of the persons in charge of the dance, Prasant Mallakar, I was able to visit the inside of the new small temple dedicated to these nine Durgās—a temple that was recently rebuilt after being destroyed during the 2015 earthquake. For the rest of the year, the masks of the deities are housed here. Outside, the remains of the large hut (balcā) that was used for celebrating important rituals every twelve years were still visible.

Two conclusions can be drawn from this summary report. 1. Altogether, three forms of attachment, both secular and religious, continue to prevail in Pyangaon: to basic local patrilineal kinship units, to the small single-subcaste village and, lastly, to the Newar ethnic group. This triadic configuration roughly defines the Svãgumi system of belonging, both past and present. 2. The report also shows that even if macro political, demographic and economic data on transformations are of major import, the findings of local inside ethnological micro-studies are also crucial and sometimes provide a more comprehensive viewpoint of the sociocultural facts.

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