Until recently, newspapers and magazines frequently published boring contents on why Nepal failed, and correspondingly saw the need of a new political force whose program would be apolitical and strictly economic. Naya Shakti Party (New Force) led by former PM Dr. Baburam Bhattarai was founded within the discourse. Political leaders did promise to turn this country into Singapore and Switzerland after the 1990 and 2006 movements, but the things are still the same old way. There are books to explain the country’s failed development, but anthropologist Dor Bahadur Bista’s Fatalism and Development: Nepal’s Struggle for Modernization (1991) remains the most popular for its explanation based not on political-economic institutions and processes existing “out there”, but on our “in here” subjectivities predicating the former. The work is praised extensively by many, like anthropologist Alan Macfarlane who compares its flavor with De Tocqueville’s Ancien Régime, and, scholars, on the other side, severely disapprove its methodology and overt generalization.
Anthropologist Bista has not bothered to sufficiently operationalize the terms — “development”, “modernization” and “social change” — before showing their causation with fatalism. “Development” is the trickiest of three terms. One resourceful book — Managing Development: State, Society and International Contexts (1991) — by Kathleen Staudt offers seven of the hundreds definitions of development. It can mean “enlarging people’s choices” and “promoting participatory democratic values” as much as “infrastructural development” and “economic growth”. Sociology as a discipline sees “development” as a means to bring order and homogeneity. Sociological tradition of “development” is shaped by August Comte, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Talcott Parsons. Almost all the founding sociologists have their own versions of two societies — one “modern” and another “traditional”. “Modernization”, a post-colonial concept in an immediate sense, is an idea formulated and prescribed through a set of theories proposed by Talcott Parsons, Walt Whitman Rostow, Shmuel Eisenstadt, Bert Hoselitz and David McClelland. Modernization refers to an execution of “to do lists” prescribed to the Third World governments and citizens by Western scholars to turn underdeveloped and traditional societies into modern and developed ones. This program of modernization, hence, would bring order and homogeneity across the globe. “Social change”, least frequent in Fatalism, seems to be neutral, but in critical linguistic discourse, the word of “change”, originally a verb, is strategically changed into noun to conceal the agentic dimension of “who changes what” and so, to bring absurd and abstract concepts like “modernization” in the local social field.
Fatalism consists of seven chapters excluding Introduction and Conclusion. In Introduction, Bista brings in the concept of fatalism as a “predominant value system of the Nepali society at the elite level”. In metaphysics, fatalism refers to an outlook that is based on arguments which are purely logical or are a priori in character: it doesn’t rest on any empirical premise. Bista’s fatalism is more theological in character that is anchored on assumptions about the God’s existence and nature. Bista associates fatalism as an analytical category located at the emotional-integrative-traditional-consummatory pole as diametrically opposed to instrumental-adaptive-rational-modern pole. Fatalism doesn’t allow Nepalis to value productivity and labor; it makes them passive recipients of the cosmic order. In Introduction, Bista challenges the works that focus on politico-economic sphere, and rightfully defends psycho-social, psycho-cultural and religious values as the principal roadblocks of development and modernization.
The first chapter, General Background, provides general information about Nepal, and its pre — , ancient, medieval and Rana histories.
The second chapter is about the caste system. According to Bista, caste concepts entered Nepal with Vaishnavism (sect of worshipping Lord Vishnu) in Lichhavi period, before there was a reign of Shaivism (sect of worshipping Lord Shiva), close to Shamanism and Animism. In 1854, PM Jung Bahadur Shah imposed a Civil Code based on caste protocols. Previously, King Jayasthiti Malla had sub-grouped Newars of the Kathmandu Valley along the caste lines. Quiet opposed to others, Bista praises the edict of King Ram Shah and Dibya Updesh of Prithivi Narayan Shah. At one point, Bista brings an incident of coronation of King Birendra in which “pro-caste” elements contrived to have the King anointed by a Bahun, Chhetri, Vaishya and Shudra in which a Limbu was nominated as a Shudra and a Shrestha as a Vaishya. Bista puts Thakuri and Shrestha as class categories, and reiterates the over-arching nature of caste structure as guided by 1854 Civil Code that included all ethnic groups and all religions into a single framework.
The next chapter, Family Structure and Childhood Socialization starts with the nature of the family and the role of women in Nepali society. According to Bista, Nepali families tend to be nuclear, and populationist family planning regime seem less effective to high castes than the lower. Another finding of Bista is that women in Nepal generally have equal status except among Bahun-Thakuri and some upper and middle Chhetris. Nepali children are not socialized to sanitize, and are not instilled with the values of competition and achievement. “There is no concept of children as a separate section of Nepali society”. For the most part, “life seems to be a single continuum with no apparent disjuncture between childhood, youth and adulthood”. This statement might hold true in closed rural settings before 1990, but according to French historian Philip Ariès, the distinct gap between childhood and adulthood even in Western societies first emerged only in sixteenth century.
The fourth chapter, Values and Personality is the core of Fatalism that states values as the determining factor to facilitate or impede development and modernization. His idea of values-determining-development comes down to Talcott Parsons’ works — The Structure of Social Action (1937), The Social System (1951) and Towards A General Theory of Action (1951). Instead, he has referred to Weberian economic sociology — The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958) and The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1977) — both translated by Parsons. According to Bista, fatalism affects problem-solving and goal-achievement behavior and turns education into a ritual. The lower castes are not fatalistic, they are laborious, and also “are beginning to derive much benefit out of the extended market economy where they can sell their services and products at competitive rates”. Dominant Brahministic ideology relegates the concepts of rights, privileges and obligations into the cosmic domain, creates a lack in achievement motivation, and people fail to keep contractual relations. Bista charges the temporal orientation of Nepalis who, he thinks, confirm to B-Theory of time which assures no sense of separation of past, present and future in real ontological sense and see “time” as a continuous flow as opposed to A-Theory. Hence, Nepalis have their own version of non-punctual “Nepali time” as opposed to punctual “English time”.
The fifth chapter, Politics and Government locates chakari and afno manchhe as the bedrock of Nepali politics and bureaucracy. In this chapter, Bista praises the king as “the father figure who protects the interests of his children (people)”. He calls party-less Panchayat as democratic and states “king has never been autocratic”. He implicitly hints that democracy (social change) should strongly resonate with the cultural requirements or a right way of life as an a priori of a democratic system.
In sixth chapter, Education, Bista thinks education in Nepal is limited to qualifying certificates for government jobs. Education is benefitting Brahmin elites as it is along with afno manchhe, people get lucky for government jobs.
In the last chapter, Foreign Aid and Development, Bista feels like “Ranas were particularly disinterested in foreign aid since it represented, for them, an alien intrusion into their private domain”. This is not quite true. Rana Prime Ministers exchanged a hefty sum of pound sterling currency with Mongoloid youths to fight in World Wars on behalf of England, and they treated state coffers more like personal bank accounts. According to Bista, there is lack of future orientation and planning, there is no public ownership of infrastructures built by foreigners, and there is rampant corruption. Fatalistic syndrome of dependency is the biggest fear for Bista.
Fatalism has remained as an interesting read to students, academicians and tourists despite its empirical inconsistencies. It discredits so-called “fatalistic” Brahmanistic principles guiding the country’s elite, yet praises the biggest fatalistic establishment — monarchy. The proposition served by Fatalism is interesting because it is phenomenologically oriented to those who are interested in Nepal’s development. This interestingness can be located to the Sociology of the Interesting — the sub-field of Sociology of Knowledge — founded by American sociologist Murray S Davis. According to Davis, a proposition is considered great not because it is true, but it is interesting. Davis considers textbook methodology makes an intellectual work boring, and, hence, an interesting work breaks mundane methodological barriers and literally makes audience to “sit up and take notice”. Looking back to anthropologist Alan Macfarlane comparing the flavor of Fatalism to De Tocqueville’s Ancien Régime and Weber’s Protestant Ethic, the both works seem interesting. Ancien Régime proposed the positive co-variation between a social group’s desire for revolution and its standard of living instead of negative; and, Protestant Ethic confirmed that religion was an independent variable in a causal relation instead of being dependent to economy. Likewise, Bista has crystallized behaviors of elites into a structured concept of “fatalism”;has aimed to explain caste system, family structure, socialization, values and personality traits, politics, education system and foreign aid through a single concept manifesting in each sphere; has considered previously believed individual traits as holistic trait; and has shown previously “unrelated concepts” as related to each other.
The interestingness of the book doesn’t mean that the theory it holds is true or it is consistent with the methodological guidelines taught in schools. It simply draws the eager audience phenomenologically closer and inspires them to look around and see.
Bista’s work can be refuted as a hasty duplication of modernization theory of Talcott Parsons overridden by Weberian economic sociology, but it feels like its impact is destined to last longer.
