With the heightening of a heated nationalism debate, this book is a timely contribution to the constitution making process in Nepal. There has been no dearth of constitutions in Nepal with those of 1948, 1951, 1959, 1962, 1990 and 2007. Nepal has been going through a fresh constitutional crisis in recent years. The process of drafting the new constitution which started with the establishment of a popular Constituent Assembly failed in 2012, and presently another constituent assembly election is being sought. The book under review sheds interesting light on this process and unpacks the overall legacy of constitutionalism in Nepal and socio-political conflicts involved in the Constitution making processes through the case study of the 1990 Constitution.
The author argues for a framework and perspective that makes a strong case for constitutional ethnography in Nepal. Malagodi draws a parallel between ‘Factual diversity-Formal equality’ that existed in the making of the 1990 Constitution and in the post-1990 democratic context with regard to ‘the Nepali people’ vis-à-vis ‘the extremely diverse nature of Nepali society’ (p. 8).