Simultaneous identities: ethnicity and nationalism in mother tongue education in Nepal*

Abstract

AbstractThe scholarly works on ethnicity and nationalism have been highly dominated by binary frameworks. In addition, the normative preference for civic consciousness and the concerns of national disintegration often separate the notions of ethnicity and nationalism. This article suggests that the notions of ethnicity and nationalism cannot be understood exclusively as a choice between maintaining the integrity of the nation and completely rejecting it. Drawing on fieldwork in mother tongue schools in Nepal, the article draws attention to the ways in which school actors discursively positioned ethnic identity as imperative to national identity, the one that bolsters the notion of Nepali nationhood. By paying close attention to the everyday context within which discourses of nationalism are situated, this article argues for an analytical necessity to approach ethnicity and nationalism in relation to each other to appreciate the process of symbolic negotiations in public spaces.