THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

of their shop with stout wooden planks.
Another theft occurred which made the rift between Kamala and Bhim
Bahadur acute. Bhim Bahadur's younger brother allegedly tried on a
watch belonging to a female student while she was working in the fields
and did not return it. When challenged about it later he said the watch
was lost. The student went to Bhim Bahadl~r, who, rather than
castigating his brother, apparently turned on the girl and questioned
her morals. The girl became distraught and, as she had previously been
living in the 'girl's hostel' at Kamala's house she asked Kamala to
intervene. Kamala was most upset by Bhim Bahadur's behaviour, As a
teacher she felt he had no right to act in such a way. She had always
regarded him as a brother (they shared a common ancestor four
generations back), but he had betrayed her trust in him. While the
watch episode was undoubtedly serious, we felt that there were other
tensions which exacerbated the situation.
That Dasai-, many people in the village were sporting 'democracy' T-
shirts like those we had first seen in Kathmandu the previous April.
They symbolised for us the way in which political events at national
level impinged on the lives of the inhabitants in Tamaphok. In the
subsequent turbulent t i mes, some social re!a t ions became strained, new
ones formed. Yakha identity became more complex as new allegiances were
established and people related the new doctrines to their own lives and
cultural values. New dimensions of knowledge about the world outside
also had to be added to the cultural repertoire.
Many of the pol i t ica! debates which f o! lowed the pro-democracy
movement tended to emphasise ethnic rights and empowerment. Both Kamala
and Bhim Bahadur independently asked to borrow our copy of van Driem