Power and Precarity of Everyday Intellectuals in Nepal’s Maoist Movement, 1996–2006

While previous studies on the Maoist armed conflict in Nepal (1996–2006) have primarily addressed its structural causes, ideological foundations, greed and grievance dynamics, and the roles of combatants, this article instead examines how grievances and ideological narratives were framed and mobilised during the armed conflict. In doing so, it introduces the concept of “everyday intellectuals,” comprising such actors as teachers, journalists, activists, artists, and educated youth within local communities, and contrasts these actors with the Maoist party ideologues who constructed and controlled the movement’s framing and narratives. Drawing on framing theory and scholarship on revolutionary intellectuals, the article shows that everyday intellectuals played an essential role in conflict mobilisation by disseminating Maoist ideas among ordinary people in rural and remote areas. Although the movement depended significantly on their labour, it also subjected them to coercion, regulation, and marginalisation. This contradictory dynamic made everyday intellectuals simultaneously empowered and vulnerable. They exercised agency in translating and mobilising Maoist revolutionary ideas but lacked the authority to define them. Thus, the article concludes that everyday intellectuals in armed conflicts occupy a contradictory position, as they are indispensable to mobilisation yet remain vulnerable to marginalisation.