SEARCH FOR KIRAT IDENTITY TRENDS OF DE-SANSKRITIZATION AMONG THE NEPAMUL SIKKIMESE

Communities choose their identities over time with distinct objectives in mind. Nepamul Sikkimese (Sikkimese of Nepali origin) had to struggle at various periods in the last 150 years for their citizenship, political rights and recognition of Nepali language as an Indian language. The year 1990 turned out to be critical for them. The democratic movement in Nepal let loose a movement of ‘janajati’, an under-current that spread in Sikkim as well. The movement received a momentum after the government of India accepted the recommendations of the Backward Class Commission that had termed most of the Sikkimese Nepamul as Other Backward Classes. When pressed for the implementation of the above decision of the government of India in Sikkim, the former Chief Minister of the state ruled out such a possibility, and lost the support of the majority in the State Assembly. Within the next few weeks his successor government promptly extended the ‘OBC ’ status to as many as eight Nepamul communities and provided them with all the contingent constitutional facilities. Some years after that event, two OBCs, Limbus and Tamangs, were declared as ‘Scheduled Tribes”. This has resulted in a mad rush among the rest of the ‘OBCs ’ to clamour for ‘Scheduled Tribe ’ status and as many as eight of them approached the State Government with their ‘ethnographic reports’. These reports identify existence of myths, clothing, food habits, languages, architect, arts and crafts and other cultural traits painting each of them as distinct communities, disclaiming a common cultural tradition of Nepamul. The State is encouraging this trend with a distinct goal in view. This process of tribalization of the communities from within the Nepamul fold has serious conceptual and sociological implications, which we propose to uncover in the present paper