Between 2006 and 2015 Nepal embarked on a joint constitution writing and federal restructuring project that brought federalism experts, constitutional lawyers, Constituent Assembly members, regional political elites, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens into a common debate on the ideal organization of the country to achieve broad goals of the post-conflict Comprehensive Peace Agreement: social inclusion, democracy, and economic development. As the national debate became entrenched in the politics of designing provinces, determining subnational autonomy, and maintaining national unity, international experts and donors became increasingly frustrated at what they perceived as the literalism Nepalis applied to the task of restructuring. However, for individuals enrolled in constitution writing, spatial order and social-political order were understood to be undeniably entangled, making the questions of autonomy and unity animating the public sphere fundamentally spatial questions about the nature of sovereignty and the future of the state. Building from my ethnographic research amongst public intellectuals on the State Restructuring Committee, this paper addresses the conceptual and historical frameworks employed by constitution writers in the design of Nepali federalism. By examining past episodes of territorial-administrative reorganization at regime transitions alongside discourses of “unification” and metaphors of the state as stone, I ask how spatial representations inform the sensibilities of constitution writers and shape the form of a Constitution.
