Queer Heritage making in times of political turmoil: A personal field research report from Kathmandu
Marion Wettstein
“Maybe this is also a chance!” she explained to me with shining eyes, “it is a wake-up call to establish our own businesses and survive from them instead of being dependent on foreign aid money; it is a chance for the Nepali Government to step in and show its support for us”. Holding on to my cup on this early spring afternoon in 2025 while sitting with her in a tiny coffee shop at Dumbahari Marg in Kathmandu I couldn’t help but being impressed by the confidence and strength of this young transwoman. It had only been a few days back that Nepal had received the official letter from the American Government that US-Aid programs would end by the end of the month. And the queer communities of the country would be among those who would lose substantial support through this decision: One of the largest LGBTQ+ NGO of Nepal, the Blue Diamond Society, would have to lay off hundreds of staff and would have to close nearly all their offices outside Kathmandu. HIV prevention, Prep supply, and other medical programs would have to be closed down immediately.
But in this very moment, everybody was still thrilled that the largest LGBTQ+ activist conference of Aisa, the ILGA conference, had just been successfully held in Kathmandu. The letter of the US-Government had reached the LGBTQ+ community during the last days of the conference, during the cultural celebrations and final farewell ceremony. Having attended the conference for several days, I could observe how everybody decided to stay strong and positive in this difficult moment. Though entirely in shock, priority was given to celebrating the great achievements of the conference, postponing the funding sorrows to later. The international guests – over 600 people from more than 140 countries – should leave Nepal with a feeling of hope against all odds.
The fight of the Nepalese queer communities for legal and social recognition is internationally celebrated as a success story. Indeed, within two decades they had succeeded in getting a third gender category being officially recognised in legal documents as the first country in Asia. Even if in practice the implementation of the law is still a matter of legal battles, and many members of queer communities face social exclusion and violence, Nepal’s development in matters of gender and sexual diversity is remarkable.
When I began my research on “queer heritage-making in times of political turmoil” in summer 2023, I became aware that a highly dynamic social and cultural process had just started to unfold before my eyes. I arrived just in time for one of the biggest pride parades of Nepal that is organised by the Blue Diamond Society since twenty years on the day of the gaijatra (gāī jātrā) festival. Gaijatra – or saparu (sā pāru) as it is called in local Newari language – is a ritual celebration for the commemoration of the deceased of the year. The fact that the Blue Diamond Society had chosen the day of this Newari death ritual as the day of their pride parade had lead to criticism, as I new from an article Jessica Birkenholtz had published in 2022, and in which she discusses the tensions around the gaijatra pride parade in detail. These tensions had arisen within the queer communities just before the COVID pandemic brought a halt to public life in Kathmandu. I was therefore highly excited to experience the resumption of the event during my field research.
In the run-up to the gaijatra pride parade I had interviewed several members of different queer communities and it became apparent that there would be queer groups and individuals who would not attend the gaijatra pride by purpose. Instead, they would attend one of the prides organized in Kathmandu by other, smaller communities at other times of the year. Considering the pride during gaijatra an appropriation of a local Newari death ritual, there were especially young members of the queer community who criticised the event. One of them rhetorically asked me: “Why do we still need a pride during gaijatra?” When everything started twenty years back, they related, it had for sure been a strategically clever idea to use the publicity of the gaijatra to gain media attention for the LGBT+ cause; to highlight the mourning of the dead in a time when many members of the queer community died of HIV/Aids; and to relate to the cross-dressing aspect of the public procession during the traditional form of the gaijatra. Traditionally however, the cross-dressing aspect of gaijatra/saparu is not perceived as relating to modern global interpretations of queerness. Nowadays, critical voices suggested that as there was pride month now and there were many prides that do not appropriate local ethnic heritage, it makes more sense for the queer youth of Kathmandu to attend one of these events instead.
Counter voices, however, explained to me that the pride during gaijatra had become a tradition by itself, some sort of queer cultural heritage. The pride during gaijatra was still the pride in Nepal that attracted the highest media coverage, nationally and internationally, and it was still the largest pride in Nepal in terms of numbers of participants. This is also precisely because it is held during a national holiday – the gaijatra – which enables members of the queer community from across the country to participate. Some of them, for instance, travelled to attend from the southern lowlands or from the far west. Due to substantial foreign financial support – amongst others from the US Ambassy – members of the Blue Diamond Society from outside Kathmandu could be provided with small travel funds to attend the pride in the capital. As a result, sexual and gender diversity from all over Nepal could be successfully represented in this one event, making it obvious that queer people are everywhere, in all regions of Nepal, from all ages, in all social classes, and in all ethnic groups.
As in most countries nowadays, communication about events and happenings in queer communities largely runs over social media. When I arrived in Nepal, one of the first people from the queer community I ran into urged me: “Really? You’re not on Instagram? Without Instagram you will not get anywhere with your research here, go get yourself an Insta account!” This is how for research purpose I had to install and use a highly addictive social media app I had hoped to avoid in my life. And my advisor was absolutely right. Most events I would get to attend and most contacts I would get to know for my research on queer heritage-making in Nepal would be owed to social media. This was also the only way how I came to know at what date and time and where exactly the assembly for the start of the gajjatra pride parade would be held.
Conveniently, the gathering spot was near a well-known tourist space in Tridevi Marga in Kathmandu. Just opposite of it there was a coffee shop with an elevated balcony, where I installed myself half an hour before the indicated time to see how the assembly of people would start. The first people that came to gather were the police. I counted about 50 police in uniform and started to get slightly alert. But soon I noticed that the colorful pride participants on the scene seemed completely relaxed about it. Police, as it turned out, were present to accompany the parade and were perceived by participants as a support rather than a sign of tension. I mingled among the crowd and started to chat with a group of third genders that had arrived in their local traditional attire. They proudly posed for my camera, and for everybody else’s.
The start of the parade got delayed by more than an hour because the guests of honour – the representatives of the European, Australian, and American embassies – had not yet arrived. In the meantime, people passed their time with dancing. Some were performing traditional folk dances for a cheering audience; others successfully encouraged the crowd to join dancing to popular Nepali songs. Just as in other countries, the parade’s community was loud, proud, and colorful. But next to rainbow colors and phantastic show costumes, the brilliant colors of South Asian Sarees, the glittering gold of wedding ornaments, and manifold handwoven textiles of ethnic groups were worn. When the parade finally set off, hundreds of dancing and singing people moved down the narrow streets of the tourist quarters of Kathmandu.
Later on, the pride participants assemble at the large festival ground of Tundikhel for an evening of dance, music, and show that attracted additional audience from the neighbourhood. Backed by a large video screen, all performances were accompanied by sign language. When night fell – fast as it always does in the Himalayas – the composition of the festival crowd changed. In the dark, the majority of participants were young men who enjoyed a rock concert for free. Together with their favourite Nepali and Hindi songs, they received the activist’s message of tolerance and respect towards sexual and gender diversity. Nobody foresaw at that time, that very soon the big festivals during gaijatra pride would have to be downsized due to severe funding cuts, and that the traditional parade route would be taken over by a different key player of the queer community who would implement his very own strategy of queer heritage-making.
Since this first pride parade at the beginning of my research, I witnessed many special events organized by one or the other queer group in Kathmandu: For instance a Rainbow Teej celebration, whereas teej usually is a traditional Hindu festival for (married) women; a Rainbow Tourism conference aimed at turning Nepal into a top destination for queer tourism; or a Mr. Gay Nepal beauty pageant with the mission to spread the message of queer-friendly Nepal to the world..
Besides attending the big shows, being part of smaller gatherings and meetings is crucial for my research. Haning out in special restaurants that serve as safe spaces, turning up at Pink Tiffany’s bar before midnight on Fridays, or joining the open house at queer art space kaalo.101 in Patan are essential aspects of field research in order to get a feel for the diversity of the queer communities and their dynamics. While I do conduct semi structured, individual interviews, the research method I experience as way more adequate, sensitive, and effective is what I would conventionally call ‘hanging out for a chat over coffee’.
Another crucial aspect for my research on queer heritage-making is the documenting of specific temples and objects that are claimed by parts of the queer community to be essential for queer heritage in Nepal. As it happens, one of the most well-known but also most controversial protagonists of the queer communities in Nepal has release a film during my research in which he recurs to heritage practices, temples, and erotic carving traditions in order to claim that aspects of queerness had once been an integral part of Nepalese society. These aspects, thus his claim, can still be detected in Nepal cultural heritage today.
During the course of my field visits and social media analyses since 2023 the internal split within the queer community of Kathmandu, which had, amongst other things, begun with the critique about gaijatra pride, got stronger over the years. And it turns out that this split simultaneously happens to be a split between differing strategies of queer heritage-making employed by different stakeholder from among the queer community. While a small but media-effective and politically influential part of the queer community of Nepal that is led by the above-mentioned filmmaker and political activist strongly emphasizes queerness within the established heritage of Nepal and ventures into rereading this heritage with a queer twist, other parts of the community show a reserved attitude towards the notion of heritage. As the concept of heritage has become closely attached to one specific person and his agenda, his critiques are currently testing options of how to handle queer heritage and cultural traditions in an alternative way. While some might play with visual symbols or approach the discourse by preferring the term ‘cultural tradition’ over ‘heritage’, others completely avoid notions of heritage. Given the current political and social dynamics in Nepal, the continuation of this research on queer heritage-making in times of political turmoil promises to be a highly interesting endeavour.
References:
Birkenholtz, Jessica Vantine. 2022. Un/Queering Intersections of Religion and Pride in Nepal”, in: Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 38 (2), 69–88, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/867770.