What is not in a name? Toponymic ambivalence, identity, and symbolic resistance in the Nepali flatlands

This paper seeks to understand how elites utilize toponyms to either underscore territorial claims and belonging to a nation or to undermine those claims. Analyzing the names of the Nepali flatlands, Tarai and Madhes with a focus on the latter, it shows how ambivalent meanings attached to the toponyms became instrumental in symbolic resistance against an exclusionary idea of the Nepali nation and the struggle for belonging to it. Drawing on interviews with politicians, activists, political analysts, and journalists we propose to understand toponyms as temporary anchor points around which elites strategically assemble otherwise ambivalent identities to place demands in ways that are understandable to state officials. This article highlights the complexities and contradictions in place naming processes when entangled with ethnic politics and territorial restructuring.