On producing diverse historians

Diversity in institutions and research is necessary for the vitality of history as a discipline.

In the 1980s, most anthropologists who did research on Nepal were non-Nepalis and most historians who researched on Nepal were Nepali citizens. There were, of course, a few honourable exceptions in both camps. By the 1990s, the situation began to change for the set of anthropologists of Nepal. Although new videshi anthropologists enrolled in universities in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, France, Australia and a few other countries continued to come to Nepal to research, the number of Nepali anthropologists also began to grow steadily. Many in the latter group were trained at Tribhuvan University (TU), where the joint anthropology and sociology department was founded in 1981. Some Nepali anthropologists were also trained in universities in the US, Europe, Japan and elsewhere.