Ethnic Identity and Everyday Life: Madheshis and NON-Madheshis in Nepal's Eastern Tarai

This paper is an excerpt from the PhD research on ethnicity and everyday life on the backdrop of ongoing ethnic contention between the Madheshis (Indian origin) and non-Madheshis (Hill origin [Pahadis]) in Nepal’s eastern Tarai. Interaction between the people of Madheshi and non-Madheshi ethnic background when taken as a part of everyday life of the people living in an ethnically mixed setting needs to be studied with a different lens. The research brings out the idea of “ethnic intersection” from the study of the everyday experiences of the Madheshis and non-Madheshis. Ethnic intersection simply refers to where the elements of two different ethnicities/ethnic identities crosscut or are shared. The idea of ethnic intersection unearths the greater possibilities of commonalities of, and interdependence of ethnic elements despite the impermeability of the boundary between them. The preliminary finding illustrates that ethnic intersection is a conceptual category that could be employed to understand various dimensions of inter-ethnic contact, communication, dependence and co-existence. Furthermore, there are several predefined domains with their specific attributes that provide the space for the intersection and dissection of certain ethnic elements.