Tharus are genetically, culturally and racially the sons of Buddha – Subodh Kumar Singh

Continuing with the series of interviews with researchers and scholars studying about the Tharus, Voice of Tharus spoke with Subodh Kumar Singh, an eminent Tharu scholar currently residing in the USA with his family. 

Subodh Kumar Singh

Subodh stands tall among Tharu researchers with his noted books The Great sons of the Tharus: Sakyamuni Buddha and Ashoka the Great, The Return of the Mauryas and Community that Changed Asia. Having served as a political analyst with the US Embassy in Nepal, he followed the footsteps of his father Ramananda Prasad Singh whose The Real Story of the Tharus brought forth the glorious history of the Tharus.

Voice of Tharus (VOT):  Welcome to Voice of Tharus. You have carved a niche among Tharu scholars and worked towards telling the world that Tharus are sons of Buddha. Can you please tell our readers how did you research on this theme?

Subodh Kumar Singh (SKS): I was really enthusiastic to know about the real history of the Tharu community as I was desperately searching for my identity. I was no doubt very much impacted by my father's (Ramananda P. Singh) earlier research on the Tharu people. 

I started doing research on the culture and traditions of the Buddha's clan of the ancient past and it revealed that the rites and rituals practised by the Shakyas and Koliyas of Kapilvastu and Devadaha exactly matched with customs and traditions of the enigmatic Tharus – right from birth to death.

An Indian scholar had rightly said that the culture is what remains after you have forgotten all that you set out to learn. The clan of the Buddha followed Theravada and thus came to be known as the Tharu of today. I found out through my research that the Tharus are genetically, culturally and racially the sons of the enlightened Buddha. The native Tharus of the lowland Nepal Terai are a mixed community predominantly of Mongoloid extraction.

VOT: You have written three books on Tharus and their history. Can you share with our readers what the books talk about?

SKS: The book The Great Sons of the Tharus: Sakyamuni Buddha and Asoka the Great talks about the origin of the Tharus. It explains why the modern Tharus are the descendants of the Shakyas and Koliyas of the ancient world. It highlights the rites and rituals of the Tharu community which exactly matches with the Buddha's clan. It talks about malaria and why Tharus are immune to it. It talks about the migration of Shakyas and Koliyas to the Kathmandu Valley and that the valley was named as Koligram, the settlement of the celebrated Koliyas of the Yasodhara's clan.

The second book The Return of the Mauryas mentions about the Shakya Mauryas of the Terai.  It explains how the descendants of Emperor Ashok re-emerged as a formidable force in the Gangetic plain, and even had swayed over Nepalmandal (Kathmandu Valley). It also states why the Nepal Terai is known as "Tharuhat". 

The third book Community that Changed Asia talks about the mythical Aryan Race theory and how it was used as a tool by the Europeans to divide and rule the people of the Indian sub-continent. It also highlights the similarities between Tharu and Burmese culture.  It tells about the Shakyas and Koliyas migrating to the Arkansas (Burma) to establish their own kingdom. Burmese Kings' claim of being of the Shakyamuni's clan, according to Buddhist literature books, is factually accurate.

VOT: The Tharu youths are now more informed about their history. Do you see the advent of social media as a major factor in raising awareness? How do you think a wider mass can be educated on this?

SKS: The advent of social media has indeed played a significant role in raising awareness among the youths. The Tharuhat based FM radio can equally play a vital role in spreading and educating the general mass about the Tharu's history and their great legacy.

VOT: What is your view about the young Tharus? How can they be inspired and encouraged to dig their roots and research about Tharu origins?

SKS: This is the opportune time for the Tharu youths to start doing research about their glorious past, as the politics of identity has emerged in Nepali politics and this has created enthusiasm and awareness among the Tharu youths.

VOT: What is your advice to Tharus and scholars interested on researching about Tharu origin, culture and tradition?

SKS: I would simply say that you need to start researching about your culture, customs and traditions by going to the Terai because the state sponsored textbooks are not going to be of any help. You need to comparatively study the cultures and traditions of other communities living in the Terai and that will help you to understand your own culture in a vivid manner. You will definitely have to study the ancient history of the Terai region and also of South Asia to really understand the ancient Tharu community that helped to change Asia.

VOT: Are you continuing with your research and writing? Can you share with us your future plans?

SKS: I am still engaged in my research work and will continue to do so.  I really don't have any future plan as such.

Tharus were negatively impacted by the massive migration from the hills – Arjun Guneratne

Arjun Guneratne (screenshot of his YouTube interview) (c) Earth Day Revival

Arjun Guneratne, a socio-cultural anthropologist, is no new name to Tharus and followers of research on Tharus. He is the front-runner foreign researcher on Tharus along with Gisele Krauskopff, Chris McDonaugh, Ulrike Muller-Boker, Kurt Meyer and Pamela Deuel.

His research in Nepal on the emergence of an ethnic identity among the Tharus of Nepal and its relationship to processes of state formation has led to a number of published articles and a book, Many Tongues, One People: The Making of Tharu Identity in Nepal, published by Cornell University Press in 2002.

Arjun is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Asian Studies at Macalester College’s Department of Anthropology.

Sanjib Chaudhary from the Voice of Tharus spoke to Arjun about his research and future plans. Here’s the excerpt of the interview.


Voice of Tharus (VOT): Welcome to Voice of Tharus. You have carved a niche among scholars researching on Tharus and their history. Can you please tell our readers a bit about your research?

Arjun Guneratne (AG): When I started in the field of Nepal Studies about 26 years ago, my main interest was in how ethnic identities were formed and the relationship of that process to state formation. I was interested in this process in both Sri Lanka and Nepal, but chose to study it in Nepal because I believed (and still do) that one cannot learn to be a good anthropologist until one has come to understand a society very different from one’s own.

My interests have developed in the years since, and I am now focusing on environmental anthropology and the history of science. I’ve edited a book of papers by a number of scholars discussing how different communities in the Himalayan region conceptualise the environment, and I am currently working on a book about the development of ornithology in Sri Lanka. That’s my history of science project.

VOT: Why did you choose to research on Tharus? Can you cite any anecdote?

AG: Actually, I wanted at first to do research in Myanmar, but abandoned the idea when it became clear that I wouldn’t be allowed by the government there to do the kind of social science research I had in mind. I turned to Nepal as another interesting country in the South Asian region (I was mostly exposed to Buddhism growing up, so perhaps that had something to do with it). When I started reading up on Nepal I discovered that all the foreign scholars were writing about the mountains and their people but the Tarai was being largely ignored—not just by foreign scholars, but even the Nepali ones.

I thought there was more scope to say something original there, so I began to focus on the Tarai and discovered the very scanty literature about the Tharus (this was the 1980s).  There were only three scholars, all anthropologists, who had written anything about Tharus in Nepal in contemporary times: Gisele Krauskopff and Chris McDonaugh, both Europeans, and the Nepali scholar Drone Rajaure. Most everything else had been written in the 19th and early 20th centuries by British colonial officials on the Tharus of their side of the border, except for a book on the Rana Tharu by an Indian anthropologist named S.K. Srivastava. Reading this material made me very interested in the Tharus and I ended up doing research in Chitwan, but I travelled all over the Tarai from there.

VOT: Your book Many Tongues, One People: The Making of Tharu Identity in Nepal is considered one of the milestones in Tharu research. Can you share a bit about the book, its content and how it materialised?

AG: My original research on the Tharus focused on how they came to see themselves as a single ethnic group, even though historically, the different groups of Tharus living in the Tarai thought of themselves as different people and didn’t intermarry. I discovered that this process of identity formation had a lot to do with the policies promoted by the Nepali state with respect to “national integration” on the one hand and the development of the Tarai on the other. Identity formation was a project pursued by the upper echelons of Tharu society, which became more mobile (both spatially and socially) as the Tarai was developed, and as Tharus were negatively impacted by the massive migration from the hills to the plains that took place after the eradication of malaria.

My book, Many Tongues, One People (the title captures the central conundrum I was trying to explain) describes all this, but in addition, I have written on other aspects of, specifically, the lives of the Tharu people of Chitwan. The book is based in part on the work I did for my PhD dissertation at the University of Chicago, but includes a lot of additional fieldwork conducted during the early 1990s. There’s a lot of material on the culture of the Chitwan Tharus in the dissertation that didn’t make it into the book. And my wife, Katherine, has written about her experiences of living in a Tharu village in Chitwan in her book, In the Circle of the Dance.

VOT: What is your view about the young Tharus? How can they be inspired and encouraged to dig their roots and research about Tharu origins?

AG: Many of them are in fact researching their origins. I was impressed by the extent of the activism I discovered among young Tharus when I was doing my initial research; many of them had started organisations and some were publishing magazines and pamphlets, and a few went on to pursue graduate education.

The Tharu Culture Museum in Bachhauli, Chitwan is entirely the work of young people in Chitwan, who have taken the initiative, in the context of rapid social and cultural change, to preserve the artifacts of their past and explain them to the new generation of Tharus as well as to other Nepalis and to foreigners. Perhaps people in other districts might do similar things, or perhaps the Bachhauli museum could be expanded and become a national museum to preserve artifacts of Tharu society and culture from all over the Tarai.

VOT: What is your advice to Tharus and scholars interested on researching about Tharu origin, culture and tradition?

AG: Just do it! And don’t stop with the Tharus; study the whole Tarai and the inter-relations of all the different peoples who live there.

One thing I might add is that throughout the Tarai there are organisations of Tharus putting out publications about their culture, history and society, but there is no way for someone interested in this material to access it conveniently. Often, much of it is eventually lost. It would be a good idea if it could be collected and preserved in some central place or places — perhaps a national or university library in Kathmandu, but also in the Tharu Culture Museum in Chitwan.

VOT: Are you continuing with your research and writing? Can you share with us your future plans?

AG: I am indeed continuing to do research, but although I still write from time to time on Tharu culture, my main focus at the moment is on Sri Lanka, the country of my birth. When the project I am working on is done, I’d like to return to work in Chitwan. I’m very interested in the knowledge people have of the natural world, and also how Chitwan Tharu society has changed over the years, for instance because of labour migration (a topic that one of my students is researching in Chitwan), and of course, there is scope for updating my book.  So there are a number of avenues for future research in Nepal open to me, all of which I find interesting and compelling.

VOT: Thank you Arjun for your valuable words and time.

For more information, visit his website and browse through his publications. 

Modernisation and acculturation are forcing the Tharus to be assimilated into the mainstream – Uday Raj

Uday Raj

Uday Raj, a researcher from Western Nepal, has discovered a historical hand-written manuscript in Tharu language. Inspired by the Tharus and their rituals, he is in the final phase of writing his book Tharu: A Revelation, Saga of Struggle and Survival that focuses on social, cultural, religious, historical aspects, and language and literature of the Tharus of mid-western development region, Nepal.

Sanjib Chaudhary from the Voice of Tharus talked to Uday Raj about his research and the forthcoming book.  

Voice of Tharus (VOT): Welcome to Voice of Tharus. You have been researching on Tharus for a long time. What inspired you to research on Tharus?

Uday Raj: I was born and brought up like a member in a Tharu village which still has majority of Tharus. So far I know I have been participating and observing rituals, worships, feast and festivals of the Tharus. There are variations in Tharu language. My mother-tongue is Nepali, but I can speak Deukhuriya Tharu dialect fluently. I think intimacy with the Tharus since childhood and their distinct traditional and cultural background tempted me to study systematically the Tharu community.

VOT: You have written books and articles on Tharus and their history. Can you share with our readers what the books and articles talk about?

Uday Raj: I have been writing about the Tharus for long. Here’s what my book has to say about the Tharus.

Tharus are one of the indigenous ethnic groups of Terai region of Nepal. It is agreed that the Tharus are the first dwellers of Dang and Deukhuri valley. They have been inhabiting where there is easy access of water, forest, and plain land for cultivation. Even today they have not crossed the Mahabharat range for settlement. Many Tharus still write 'Chaudhari' as their surname. However, Chaudhari is the title given to a land revenue collector. Tharu is the tribal name.

Tharus have different groups and clans. Morangiya, Chitwaniya, Dangaura, Desauriya, Kathariya, Rana etc. are the groups and Dahit, Ratgaiya, Satgouwa, Jaandchhabba, Ultaha, Pachhaldangiya etc. are the clans of the Tharus. Tharus, in fact, made the cultivable land in many parts of the Terai region.

Tharus sing, dance, and celebrate different festivals throughout the year. They have some unique cultural traits. They have different songs for different months, seasons, and time. Similarly, maadal (drum) is prohibited to play from Dhurheri to Hareri. Ultaha Tharu clan has opposite house structure than that of other Tharu clans. Ultaha makes the door in the north and puts the deity room (Deurhar) in the south side. Dahit clan steals vegetables once in a year for ritual worship.

Tharus are followers of animism. They have deep inter-relationship with nature and believe in supernatural power. Gurwa, a shaman or healer, performs ritual functions in individual family and the Praganna. Some Gurwas had received Lalmohar to control epidemics and dangerous wild animals in the past.

VOT:  You have discovered a historical hand-written manuscript in Tharu language and currently working on a book about Tharus. Can you tell a bit about them?

Uday Raj: Tharus have very old epics such as Barkimaar and Surkhel. Dhakher is a Tharu clan, who recites different epics of mantras on the occasion of ritual worship. Dhakher transfer the mantras orally to new generation.

Tharus draw mural paintings in their houses. Murals of different domestic as well as wild animals and birds are drawn on the wall in and outside the houses. It shows their deep faith in animals and birds. They draw mural painting of Raavana (one of the characters of the Ramayana) on the occasion of Ashtimki (the birthday of Lord Krishna) every year and worship at night.

A hand-written manuscript in Tharu language

While I was researching on Tharu scriptures, I found 'Sagun Darshan' written in Tharu language. This book, I think, is a historical hand-written manuscript. Sagun Darshan was used to find out the properties, animals, and family members that went missing or got lost from the house.

My forthcoming book 'Tharu: A Revelation, Saga of Struggle and Survival' focuses on social, cultural, religious, historical aspects, language and literature of the Tharus of mid-western development region, Nepal.

VOT: What is your view about the young Tharus? How can they be inspired and encouraged to dig their roots and research about Tharu origins?

Uday Raj: Tharus of new generation are in search of their identity. They are greatly concerned and conscious about the loss of tradition as well as culture and at the same time they are struggling for their rights and cultural protection. However, there is a trend of reform among educated Tharus. They are bringing modifications in their traditional way of life. There is still debate on the origin of the Tharus. Only mythological and verbal interpretation might not be true. That is why Tharu scholars themselves should dig out their roots and carry on with further research.

A page from the historical manuscript

VOT: What is your advice to Tharus and scholars interested on researching on Tharu origin, culture and tradition?

Uday Raj: There is a lot to be done. Modernisation and acculturation are forcing the Tharus to be assimilated into the mainstream. Tharu youths are attracted towards the new and modern lifestyle. We should encourage the youths to search and protect the Tharu identity. Tharus have rich culture. Scholars and researchers should focus to expose cultural identity and age-old tradition.

VOT: Are you continuing your research and writing? Can you share with us your future plans?

Uday Raj: I have plans to research more on the Tharus. Tharus have historical epics interconnected with Hindu story (theme) and the characters of the Ramayana, the Mahabharat, and so on. Tharu literature is rich in verse. Their typical culture and tradition are disappearing day by day.