Michael Allen interviewed in Kathmandu by Mark Turin 18th September 2005


0:00:05 Introduction; born 1928 in Ireland; anglo-irish family; protestant boarding schools then Trinity College, Dublin which was also protestant; by twenty had become an atheist; studied philosophy, called 'mental and moral science' at Trinity; four year degree, a mixture of psychology, logic and metaphysics; got a first class degree; with such a degree could become a Church of Ireland clergyman or apply to one or two protestant firms, Guinness being one; started as a trainee brewer; spent dreadful three years at Park Royal in London; rescued by schoolfriend, Peter Somerville-Large, who was teaching in Kabul; gave up job and went to Afghanistan; great ambition to get into Russia and cross Siberia to the Bering Straits and then to America; failed to get through the borders

0:04:26 First introduction to anthropology was meeting Swedish archaeologists and linguists at Bamiyan; then met Frederick Barth in Peshawar who described what he was doing as an anthropologist; attracted to the idea; went to Nepal and on to Bhutan; eventually got to Australia; spent nine months working in a gold mine, saving money to go to study anthropology in Chicago; got to Sydney and realized all the money would be spent getting to Chicago; found that Sydney University had a department of anthropology; went to see Professor Elton (1956) who said there were only five professional anthropologists in Australia and none near retirement; was offered chance to enrol as M.A. qualifying student in anthropology; successfully went on to do M.A.; thesis on male initiations in Melanesia

0:08:49  Childhood; hopeless at school; already getting deaf ; always reading literature; read Sven Hedin which really excited me; romantic notion of exploration; anglo-irish of the previous generation had been running the Empire; houses I knew as a child full of Tibetan materials and objects from Afica; own family did not have foreign links; father was a stock broker living on the outskirts of Dublin; family very anxious by departure from Guinness into an unknown world but never attempted to stop me; have younger sister and much younger brother; brother was a latin teacher who has become an explorer in later years, leading expeditions; own experiences had obviously affected him

0:14:47 Own students have also shared a fascination with the other; now scholarships are much less generous in time which makes possibility of doing much where a language has to be learnt more difficult; now two-thirds of students in Australia are working on aspects of Australia

0:16:10 John Barnes had arrived in Sydney when I finished the M.A. qualifying period; got on well together and when Barnes took the chair at A.N.U. he took me and another as his first PhD students; Barnes didn't change the policy of research being primarily on Australia and the Pacific; Sir John Rennie keen for further work to be done in Vanuata and proposed sharing expenses of research with A.N.U.; my comparative work on Melanesian male secret societies had shown the most interesting area to be northern New Hebrides; combination of fascination and money led me to work there; however, if there had been similar possibilities in Nepal I would have gone there; no knowledge of South Asia in the anthropological field; Basham had only just arrived at A.N.U.; area I had expected to find full of cults had been christianized so people going to church all the time and cracking coconuts; didn't touch on the extreme forms of masculinity which had always intrigued me and possibly linked to the gender-structured life I lived in Ireland; all my work since has been on gender culminating with work on Newar and Kumari

0:21:51 First came to work in Nepal in 1967 although had been there in the fifties; got PhD in 1962 when new universities beginning and all wanted anthropologists; got a job at Sydney; only once tried to get a job in Ireland, at Queen's Belfast; luckily did not get it as troubles began; by then had married an Australian and had children so roots there; in 1967 had a year-old daughter; came to Nepal from Ireland and arrived in April; little girl fell into nettles and nearly died; stayed a year, then back to Nepal in 1972 with a second daughter; there for nearly a year; came again in 1978 for a similar length of time

0:26:57 Juggled work between Vanuatu and Nepal over the years; each has informed the other; Irish research later as until the eighties the emphasis had been on the other, not at home; had considered doing research on gipsies but too daunting; stimulus had been an article in 1984 on visions of the virgin Mary in Ireland; unheard of before there, and finally exposed it as a fraud; got a grant to work in Ireland in 1988 and spent a year there and again in 1990 and 1992; ambiguity of working there; stayed in hotel where the waitress was one of the main visionaries; became friends with the family who all wished I would become a believer; accompanied Irish pilgrims to sites in Europe; parallels with the Sai Baba cult; global aspect and wealth of Ireland make it possible to travel from site to site; visionaries invited to lecture on luxury cruises financed by wealthy catholics; own children identify with Ireland and travel there often

0:36:44 Now present myself as Australian scholar rather than Irish but in the past it was useful to be Irish; early work in Nepal; not affected by schools of anthropology; in the sixties met very few foreigners; met Haimendorf in London but not in Nepal, had gone there to try to learn Newari but not being taught; met Snellgrove there too; saw myself following Haimendorf's interest in the Newar; looking for sacred places, initially Swyambu; began to discover the Newar community there, observing their rituals; then began to look at specific cults and finally Kumari; hopeless with languages though twenty years ago was reasonably fluent in Nepali; never mastered Newari and had to use interpreters; another reason for going to Ireland; also aware that David Gellner was wanting to do same thing and could do it far better

0:45:50 Contact with Nepal has endured; similar long contact  with Vanuatu; historical perspective shows the huge changes in the Kathmandu valley; population; vehicles; land use; army theatre; core of continuity, especially among the Newars; own expertise on Kumari much used; Patan Kumari that I first knew now fifty living in the same house as the present one; still childlike; an autobiography of a past Kumari



Interest in working in Ireland triggered by report of people seeing visions of the Virgin Mary at Knock - 2.50