The Tharu Cultural Museum: A Conduit for Cultural Revitalization and Indigenous Identity Creation

Abstract

This thesis centers around the interrelationships between a community museum and the local community in the process of cultural revitalization and cultural identity creation. The project focuses on how a community-based museum negotiates and revitalizes the meaning of the Tharu cultural identity in a historically marginalized indigenous Tharu community. This is illustrated through the case study of the Tharu Cultural Museum and Research Centre, Chitwan, Nepal in relation to the local community efforts to establish the museum and its endeavor to bestow meaning to their cultural identity by reviving and sustaining their original culture. This project is based on the empirical data collected from the fieldwork using semi structured qualitative interviews and field observation. Secondary sources of data such as documents related to the Tharu people’s culture, and the museum was reviewed. In discussing the research questions, the concepts of community museum practices, cultural identity, indigeneity, and cultural revitalization was discussed within three approaches of understanding the role of museums. These approaches include traditional approach, bottom-up approach and institutional approach. With reference to the Tharu cultural museum and the local community, this project argues that while the Tharu culture, traditions, and indigeneity faced threats due to multiple factors such as migration, displacement, national assimilationist policies, bonded labour system, and the endemic malarial disease, they were penetrated by a cultural reviving movement within the community that worked for the enhancement of their indigeneity through museum practices. The incredible community sense of socio-cultural awareness, self-actualization of the community self-determination, and indigenization revitalizes the meanings of the Tharu cultural identity and indigeneity through community museum practices and vise-verse.