ABSTRACT
One approach to the question of Rai cultural identity would be to situate it along a tribe-caste continuum. One could set up polar ideal types – the isolated tribe at one end, the caste within a more or less Hindu state at the other – and discuss the multiple dimensions involved in the passage from the one condition to the other, the variety of pathways linking the end-points, the criteria for assessing passage along them, the modalities of causation, and so on (cf. Urhahn, 1987; Caplan, 1990; Gellner, 1991). But this would be to look at the matter from the outside, and my purpose here is rather to look at it from the inside, to undertake an exercise in empathy. What does it feel like to undergo Hinduization, to move along the tribe-caste continuum, to ‘enter the caste system’? How does a Thulung who is caught up in the process experience it or conceive of it? Hinduization has so many different aspects than I cannot aspire to any completeness. For instance, I do not enter the debate on Hinduism as a subcontinent-wide phenomenon (cf. Stietencron, 1989), or even attempt to characterize the Nepalese variety of the religion.
