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Village Walks: Tourism and Globalization among the Tharu of Nepal
ARJUN GUNERATNE AND KATE BJORK
Summary Arjun Guneratne and Kate Bjork focus on what it was like for an ethnic group, the Tharu, to become the objects of tourists' curiosity (the "tourist gaze"). The article describes tourists arriving in Pipariya, a Tharu village located near the Chitwan National Forest in Nepal's tarai region in 1989. They report on what the tour guide says and how the tourists and villagers respond. The so-called "village walk" is a good example of cultural tourism (there is also recreational, medical, religious, eco-, and sex tourism). It is usually one stop on a more broadly structured tour of Nepal's mountains, cities, and the Chitwan forest itself. The authors stress the importance of the anthropological study of tourism as a significant part of globalization research. They point out that nearly 100 million people go on tour every year and spend billions of dollars. Their impact on local economies as well as on people's ways of life represents a significant globalizing force.
From the Tharu's point of view, the way they are characterized by Nepal's tourist industry is both significant and humiliating. Originally the tarai was a heavily forested area bordering the foothills and valleys of the Himalayan Mountains. Despite the land made inhospitable by malaria, the Tharu still managed to settle there, tilling small forest plots and hunting for their subsistence. All this changed in the 1950s when the insecticide DDT largely eradicated the mosquitoes that carried malaria. As a result, settlers from Nepal's hills and India's plains soon infiltrated the area and cleared most of the land for cultivation. Settlers soon outnumbered the Tharu, who adapted to the newcomers. Tharu now worked in tourist hotels and farmed in the same way as other rural Nepalese, and their children attended school. For the tourist industry, however, the Tharu past seemed like a natural tourist attraction. Tourist brochures claimed that the Tharu were "a primitive native people" who were "untouched by civilization." Tour guides echoed this view as they walked tourists through Pipariya. In addition, most guides belonged to Nepal's two highest-ranked ethnic groups, the Brahmin and Chhetri, and treated the Tharu as inferiors. They brought tourists into Tharu houses without permission and treated those inside with disrespect. Tourists themselves were largely ignorant of the Tharu and occasionally treated villagers like zoo exhibits. From the Tharu perspective, tourists could usually be tolerated as guests. (There is no word for "tourist" in their language; they call them "guests.") Their greatest concern was the negative way they were portrayed by the tourist industry.
In 2009, one of the authors revisited Pipariya and encountered a different picture. The Tharu had constructed a small museum. Museum exhibits represented how they used to live, successfully divorcing their past from the present. (The "tourist gaze" often makes people more aware of their culture and its past.) The museum was the first place that tourists visited and deflected most of them away from the village's residential compounds. Globalization had also impacted the Tharu in other ways. Many young men have gone to work in foreign countries and send money home regularly. A few have even managed to acquire green cards for work and residence in the United States.
According to Guneratne and Bjork in "Village Walks," most Tharu men from Pipariya wore Western-style clothes, whereas many Tharu women continued to wear their traditional dress.