English - Support to Participatory Constitution Building in Nepal ...

The Remake of a StateFor the majority, local places (villages, markets or religious institutions)provide the basis for social or societal life. The way in which groups andindividuals resist the state, and the way social forces are co-opted bythe state, can 'change [the state's] social and ideological underpinnings'(Migdal et al. 1994, p 12).In order to conceptualise state-society relations, Migdal avoids categoriessuch as class or ethnic identity which can modify as much as they explain.However, 'society', understood as a structural variable existing undera given state, is not the only expression of local or subordinate space;local spaces can take subnational or transnational forms. Such 'translocal'(Kaiser 2003) spaces can take the form of cross-border networks ofseasonal labour migrants or long-term relations between the diaspora andthe homeland. Alternatively, one or more of these cleavages may providethe vehicle for conflict, mutual stigmatisation and inter-spatial violence- thus pitting 'selves' against one another. Different ethnic groups mostlyin Terai belt of Nepal and their relation and ethnic affiliation with similargroups in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh provinces of India are some examplesof such cleavages. It is too far complicated for foreign interest groupsand the UN forces to comprehend the differentiation of local space. It isbecause such spaces are fractured by local militia groups and demarcatedby their rivalries.At times of civil war or political violence, we can expect that localdiscourse will be contested between fighting groups. Minor differenceswould be stigmatised, and popular transcripts would be produced in partin a response to contrasting elite discourses of local, ethnic, religious orregional 'selves'.A second set of post-conflict spaces are those of the elite: the spaces ofthe sub-national, national and regional political leaderships which canmake some claims to sovereignty over localities. These are elites whoare not seen as outside 'interveners' but leaders accepted as 'internal'or 'ours' (those at or near the top of a larger 'we' group) by a particularconstituency. Nepal's Terai could be a case of such a type. It can be seenin the context of the 'Ek Madhes, Ek Pradesh' (One Madhes, One Province)slogan by mostly Maithili speaking people, irrespective of fairly wellpresent Tharu, Awadhi and Bhojpuri speaking ethnic groups, or Madhesi-Pahadi divide in the same region. One could expect elite discourse to befractured by the violent articulation of difference and the contestationof 'inside'/'outside' and 'us'/'them'. Violence is based on a 'discourseof exclusion' between groups with 'exclusionist identities' along the9