THE BHUTANESE REFUGEES: BETWEEN VERIFICATION, REPATRIATION AND ROYAL REALPOLITIK

Occasional Papers in Sociology and Anthropology - Peace and Democracy in South Asia, Volume 1, Number 1, January 200

Reading Nepali Maoist Memoirs

A study of the Maoist memoir as a new literary genre in Nepali, focusing on five examples published since 2009

The Catalogue of the Hodgson Collection in the British Library

A report on the completion of the online catalogue of the Hodgson collection in the British Library, including a biography of Brian Houghton Hodgson (1901-94)

Writers, Readers, and the Sharing of Consciousness: Five Nepali Novels

In his seminal book Literature, Popular Culture and Society, Leo Lowenthal argues that studies of the representation of society, state, or economy in the literature of a particular country or time contribute to our knowledge of ‘the kind of perception which a specific social group— writers— has of specific social phenomena’ and therefore to our knowledge of the ‘history and sociology of shared consciousness’ (1961: 143). This discussion will focus on five Nepali novels published between 2005 and 2010, i.e. during the final months of the internal conflict between the CPN (Maoist) and the monarchical state, and the period of political transition that followed. The novels were selected mainly because they have been widely read and discussed, at least in Kathmandu, and can therefore be seen as possessing sociological as well as purely literary significance. Three of them (Narayan Wagle’s Palpasa Café, Narayan Dhakal’s Pretkalpa, and Krishna Dharabasi’s Radha) won one or other of the two major Nepali literary prizes awarded each year, and the other two (Yug Pathak’s Urgenko Ghoda and Buddhisagar Chapain’s Karnali Blues) have achieved a high public profile. The paper will summarize the content of these novels and provide some translated extracts. It will then analyze and discuss them, with a particular focus on (a) Dhakal’s, Dharabasi’s, and Pathak’s use of the past (b) the influence of the Maoist insurgency and the imprint of Maoist ideology (c) the location of each novel’s central protagonist in relation to urban metropolitan perspectives and (d) implied and actual readerships. The paper will explore the sociological significance of the commercial success of several of these books in light of the increasingly close relationship between Nepali literature and the Nepali print media. Finally, it will ask whether the expansion of the readership for Nepali novels in recent years is a sign that the Nepali novel is now breaking out of the narrow elite sphere of ‘art literature’ and becoming a part of what Ashish Nandy calls ‘the popular.

Before the Dust Settled: Is Nepal’s 2015 Settlement a Seismic Constitution?

Two significant institutional developments occurred in the aftermath of the major earthquakes that struck Nepal in 2015: a new national constitution was drafted and promulgated and a National Reconstruction Authority was established. The constitution had been promised for over seven years, and was now completed within just over three months, while it took seven months for a Bill establishing the NRA to be passed in parliament. Many commentators have posited a direct causal relationship between the earthquake and the ‘fast-tracking’ of what was in certain respects a contentious constitution. Drawing upon conversations and interviews conducted in Nepal over the winter of 2017–18 and a close reading of media discourse and political analysis from 2015, this article will examine and assess the extent of this supposed causality. Given that the most radical and contentious change ushered in by the new constitution was the introduction of a federal structure for the state, particular attention will be paid to the evolution of the debate on this issue

The changing face of Nepal

A summary account of social and political change in Nepal over the past thirty years