“Women are the pillars of Our Culture”: Bohna as a resurgent cloth among the Dhimal

Bohna is the traditional ethnic dress woven and worn by Dhimal women. It is an everyday dress which Dhimal women wear it in all kinds of social spaces and events: home, fields, markets, cinema halls, colleges, mela, and other places. In the recent decades, with the resurgence of indigenous political movements and Dhimals’ localized social movements for revival of their customary practices, bohna has emerged as a powerful marker of Dhimal indigenous identity. This paper examines the historical, cultural and political embeddedness of bohna in Dhimal society. The paper highlights the creative agency of Dhimal women by showing how weaving and exchange of bohna recreate and connect the embedded relations of affection, exchange and mutual obligations between Dhimal women.