Passion and Piety in Nepali Poetry

Padma Devkota

Passion and Piety in Nepali Poetry

    In an essay titled “Is Nepal Small?” Laxmi Prasad Devkota, the most revered poet of Nepal, describes his country in three simple words: “Beautiful, serene, vast” (3). Today, the beauty of its yet largely unmolested nature, especially of the northern sublime snowcaps and the lower mountains, remains the major attraction for nature lovers and international tourists. Located between two giant neighbors, its vastness may seem paradoxical. Nepal’s area of 147,181 square kilometers is no indicator to its vastness: it is a country that has sufficient resources to feed its population of about 30 million. It is also capable of accommodating more than sixty ethnic groups and more than seventy languages in a culturally rich and harmonious national existence. However, its serenity has succumbed to bangs and blasts of political unrest for some time past. This recently secularized Hindu nation, which is also the birthplace of Buddha, has today exploded into fragments as a result of political and ethnic rivalry for power rather than for peace, progress and prosperity. Perhaps peace had also meant too much of passive submission to dominating groups in the feudal past. Perhaps peace had also been a non-critical acceptance of the unmarked as normal. Perhaps peace had also been a rising level of inarticulate anger that has finally found its expression against those who refused to see poverty, disease, and untimely death outside the centre of power. Politically, Nepal is now seeking to emerge out of a tenacious feudalism into a democratic republican state with a greater emphasis on human needs and rights.
    The earliest but little known Nepal was inhabited in the north by the Tibeto-Burman Kirata. The Indo-Aryan Khas comprising the Brahmin and the Chhetris came from the south and settled to rule. However, it was in the southern Terai belt of what is today Lumbini that King Ashok (268-31 B.C.) converted to Buddhism and built his stupas. From here, Buddhism has spread all over the world with its central message of peace and compassion. In Medieval Nepal, the division between the vikshus and the vajracharyas or the “teachers of the thunderbolt” led to sectarian Buddhism, of which Vajrayana has flourished in Nepal. Today, despite the large Hindu majority of 80.6% compared to the 10.7% of Buddhist population, the two ways of life have blended so smoothly that temples and stupas are one in faith though two in form. Children of Nepal grow up reading stories of Buddhism and Hinduism alike.
    Given this common ground from which our writers peck and pick to construct their monuments of art, some of the major themes of Nepali literature centre around peace, love, pity, and compassion—themes that are a part of the Buddhist imagination, which is also the major focus of this symposium. I would however like to begin introducing Nepalese literature by briefly sketching its history. One way to understand this history is to follow the evolution of the Nepali mind through the two polar oppositions of passion and piety: passion for the basis of all life and piety for the continuation of all life and creation itself. In a broad way, it would seem that passion is related to life on earth, and piety to life hereafter. However, the consequences of both pious and passionate acts are felt experiences that only the living can describe. This is probably why the enlightened Nepali mind seeks to balance passion and piety rather than to renounce one in favor of the other. Addressing exactly such a tension between passion and piety, between instinctive attraction to the beauty of a female form and the restraining voice of social and moral responsibility, Laxmi Prasad Devkota writes in “To a Beautiful Prostitute”:

O daughter of the earth, the thing called man

Is dominantly earthy! Nor I for one

Enter the frigid cave, disdaining flesh!

In the past, the Vajrayana monks, too, refused to disdain flesh, gave up celibacy and preached the possibility of enlightenment in this very life.
    Let us now trace the development of Nepali poetry, which records significant events of national and cultural life from its earliest days in the hilly wilderness through devotional fervor and amorous/erotic emotions to a mature modernity that coincides with the present reality of globalization. In slightly over two and a half centuries of growth, the Nepali vernacular itself has undergone drastic changes to meet the requirements of expression of a once largely spiritual population that is going global today. An offshoot of colloquial Sanskrit known as Prakrit, Nepali has already established itself as a national language favored unanimously by its speakers. Enriched by other languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Persian and English, it is now the most powerful medium of national instruction and cultural expression.
    Although much of the earliest literature of the Age of Heroic Poetry (1744-1815) was written in a language imbalanced by an abundance of foreign linguistic influence, the content was largely national. This literature is said to celebrate the bravery of heroes who, in one way or another, contributed to the unification of the numerous mini-kingdoms sprawled all over the present geographical boundary and to the preservation of national sovereignty and independence. On closer look, however, the distinction between eulogy of national heroes and panegyrics of feudal lords often blurs out of focus. Although the cult of hero worship yet forms a significant part of folk culture of Nepal, it is deplorable that even the more recent Nepali criticism has not wished to displease the Shah rulers by outlining self-evident features of feudal panegyrics on the one hand and the myth of individual greatness has not yielded to appreciation of human achievement on the other. This is especially self-evident in the daily news in channels and print that highlights people rather than actions. Nevertheless, there were a few songs by Suwananda Das, Gumani Pant and others that used native words, rhyme and rhetoric to glorify their national heroes.
    The following Age of Devotional Poetry (1816-1882) found in Bhanubhakta Acharya (1814-1868) a hitherto unprecedented elevation of devotional fervor that gushed out in his highly original transcreation of Ramayana in mellifluous meters. Poet Acharya’s Nepali version of Valmiki’s Sanskrit epic imparted meaning to the daily activities and aspirations of the god-fearing populace of the day by reinforcing their ideals of piety and devotion. It also provided culturally enhanced entertainment in the form of public poetry that was recited on important occasions such as marriages so that much of this poetry was committed to memory and transmitted to other places and peoples through dramatic recitations rather than through the print media. Proper communication network connecting the various mountain pockets of Nepal as well as the print media were yet lacking in a nation that was, nevertheless, aware of its cultural integrity.
    Bhanubhakta Acharya is today acclaimed as the first significant poet who nurtured the Nepali language in its cradle, who sought to enhance the afterlife of his fellow beings through devotional literature and who attempted to refine the social and domestic conduct, especially of women, through works such as “Education of the Bride.” The anger he expresses in one of his poems against bureaucratic delay in the performance of administrative tasks is more a personal resentment at being harassed than a political awareness of the need for democratic behavior.
    The Age of Amorous/Erotic Poetry (1918-1950) saw the rise of Motiram Bhatta who discovered, recognized, and published Bhanubhakta Acharya’s Ramayana some forty years after its composition. In doing so, he also wrote a biography of this first great poet of Nepal in 1864. Motiram’s major contribution to Nepali poetry was the introduction of the gazal, a rigorous, lyrical form of classical, devotional poetry borrowed from the Urdu language. However, he went beyond the scope of pious devotion to a deity to celebrate the beauty of the female form. His love poems, different from the devotional poetry of the day, caught immediate public attention. Today, the gazal has established itself as an important form of Nepali poetry.
    Pre-modern or New Age (1918-1950) is also an age of literary awakenings. With the rise of formal journalism in 1901, Gorkhapatra, the national daily, was established. It also published poems, stories, and articles besides its regular news features. Similarly, the newly formed Gorkha Language Publication Committee not only published books but also censored them so rigorously that periodicals such as Sundari (1906), Madhavi (1908), Gorkhali (1916), and Nepali Sahitya Sammelan Patrika (1932) started coming out from India to evade the repressive atmosphere of governmental censorship in Nepal. All these publications, nevertheless, helped spread awareness among the more conscious Nepali people who, learning the significance of political freedom from their neighboring country, had slowly started opposing the autocratic Rana Regime from various cities of India. Many Nepali writers, too, had chosen to reside in India and to express themselves from there. Thus, much of Nepali literature, especially in the decade of the forties, was written and published abroad. The trumpet call for rebellion against the autocratic Rana Regime in favor of a cabinet-led parliament guided by the monarch formed the first step of a long inactive nation towards democracy. The bugle poet Dharinidhar blew from Darjeeling echoed from the Himalayas down the hills to the plains:

Awake, awake, now awake, arise!

Fall to work, to work, now strive towards progress!

It was in this context that Bala Krishna Sama once remarked: "What Darjeeling thinks today, Nepal thinks tomorrow."
    The Modern Age (1951- ) of Nepali literature, ushered by the Triumvirate Lekhanath Poudyal (1885-1966), Balakrishna Sama (1903-1981), and Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909-1959), coincided with the political movement for democracy in Nepal. Although Nepali criticism synchronizes literary modernity with the first advent of democracy in 1951 and the consequent opening up of a closed Nepal to the vast and yet largely unwelcome world, the reality as we have already seen was that modernity had already pervaded the consciousness of her writers and thinkers. If the external signs of modernization of Nepal were clear in her increasingly active participation in international events, in the rise in tourism and in the accumulation of foreign aid, the more subtle symptoms showed themselves in a desire for greater freedom of thought and expression and also in a growing interest in understanding the human condition as opposed to clinging on to an age-long tradition of attempting to safeguard the after-life. Writers felt their social responsibilities were more immediately significant than their spiritual quest.
    On the political side, the Nepalese Congress, the leading party of the day stationed largely in India because it was banned in Nepal, not only took an active interest in her struggle for independence from British Raj, but also sought the help of Indian political leaders and thinkers to reestablish King Tribhuvan to the throne of Nepal by ridding the country of its autocratic Rana Regime. This Rana oligarchy did not give the Nepalese people the right to free self-expression, the right to information, the right to organize themselves for creative and constructive work, the right to move around freely or the right to dissent. Troubled by this jeremiad, the more conscious elite that had gone to India fortified their democratic ideals through the Indian experience. And, students, self-exiled activists, conscious writers, and many other Nepalese residing in India assisted the Nepalese Congress in its attempt to establish democracy in Nepal. The Nepalese Congress, taking the lead, even resorted to armed resistance against the Rana rulers and, on Sunday February 19, 1951, succeeded in declaring a parliamentary democracy in Nepal.
    During this struggle for democracy, Lekhanath Poudyal, an employee of a powerful Rana, Bhim Shumsher, grumbled at home. Obviously, his contribution to the Nepali language cannot go unnoticed. He polished, refined and enriched the language to the extent that it has provided many other writers a modern medium of self-expression. Although orthodox in his pursuit of Vedanta philosophy and classical in his adherence to the conventions of Sanskrit poetics, the poet survives in his spontaneous emotional gushes and extraordinarily smooth flow of language. Gods and nature are a greater part of his poetic diet than contemporary social and political issues. His best known poem, “A Parrot in a Cage” equates poetry to compassion for those whose freedom has been snatched away. The parrot deplores “a life subjected to a bond” and accuses the human race of being “hostile to virtues fair.” Literally, this poem is an exposition of human domination over the animal world. Spiritually, it analyses the fate of a human soul “tied to a dying animal.” And, politically, it is the poet’s personal expression of anguish and anger as an employee of Bhim Shumsher. Regarded as one of the first poems criticizing the autocratic Rana families, it remains one of the very finest examples of Nepali poetry, finer than its sequel, “The Parrot Out of the Cage,” which celebrates the political freedom experienced by the Nepalese people after the overthrow of the 104 years old Rana Regime.
    Balakrishna Sama, born to the Rana family, stayed home to refine his art. He is the most influential Nepali playwright; but, he is also a poet, short story writer, essayist, painter and musician. In this respect, he exhibits more facets to his personality than Lekhnath Poudyal. Sama, who wrote more poetry in his later years than in his youth, used both classical meters and free verse. Since he was basically interested in philosophic enquiries, some of his poems have a powerfully speculative tone. In “Nine Emotions” the poet applies the nine rasas of Sanskrit literature to sketch the horrors, pity, glory and joys of Nepal’s battle with the English. He welcomed democracy by changing his aristocratic surname Shumsher to “Sama,” meaning “equal.”
    Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s contribution is by far the largest. A prolific writer more interested in newer creations than in refinement of the older ones, in twenty-five years of his poetic career he produced almost fifty books including plays, stories, essays, criticism, translations from and to world literature, a novel, and poems ranging from four lines to an epic of 1,754 verses. Although he wrote prolifically in English too, these works are just beginning to see the light of day. Devkota’s writings are unsurpassed in terms of intellectual and creative intensity. In fact, he has remained a literary institution in himself and embodies the entirety of Nepalese Romantic Era in his oeuvres.
    Devkota is first and foremost a poet. He was drawn into politics by circumstances. He lived during a Rana oligarchy that preferred to keep the populace ignorant and submissive. Political rulers of Nepal have always sought to control education of the public for their own advantage. Instructional materials were politically controlled during the Panchayat Regime. Recently, Tribhuvan University remained without a Vice-Chancellor, a Rector or a Registrar for almost one whole year and higher education suffered utter neglect at the hands of political leaders. Vacant university posts greatly disturbed scholars and academicians, some of whom also quit their jobs out of frustration. These posts were politically filled at the beginning of May 2007 after the eight-party alliance had superciliously presumed the right to appoint their cadres to such posts. This was in keeping with Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s opinion reported earlier in the press that the street is more important than education. Although this leader of the Nepali Congress is neither a dictator nor an autocrat, attitudes such as the one he expresses here have considerably harmed the growth of the nation by promoting mediocrity.
    Devkota would not have agreed with Koirala for he perfectly well understood Thomas Jefferson who wrote: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never shall be.” When Devkota was young, books were a rare luxury. Therefore, a total of forty-six people including the poet had decided to open a public library during the rule of Bhim Shumsher. However, even before they had the opportunity to submit this proposal to the authorities, they found themselves under police detention and were released only after paying a fine of Rs. 100.00 each and signing a document to the effect that they would never venture to open a public library again. This is the beginning of Devkota’s political career.
    Next, in 1947 Devkota went into self-exile to Vanaras, India, where the banned Nepali Congress had its office. From there, he edited Yugvani, a literary magazine patronized by the Nepali Congress to raise the political consciousness of the Nepali people. While on a lecture tour to Kolkata, he learnt of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and, struck with grief, composed over fifty sonnets in English, thirty-six of which have been included in Bapu and Other Sonnets. Influenced by Gandhi’s non-violence, the poet addresses him as a “demi-Buddha” who equates God with Truth. Gandhi is described as a “Promethean man” who smiles and makes politics holy. However, the poet is everywhere clear that what Gandhi stands for is more important than who the man is.
    And, finally, after the advent of democracy in Nepal in 1951, Devkota became the minister of education in the cabinet of Dr. K. I. Singh for about 118 days. During his tenure, he opened a lot of schools all over the country, made Nepali the medium of national instruction, and contributed greatly to the establishment of Tribhuvan University.
Devkota lived with passion for poetry and compassion for humanity. His preaching of love and compassion were not empty ideals but everyday acts of love and charity. Returning home with his salary, he would distribute it freely to people who sought financial help and reach home empty handed. Seeing a beggar shivering in the frigid cold one day, he took off the coat he was wearing and gave it to the beggar. Endowed with an extraordinary sensibility, he reacted to people and events of everyday life with such unusual genuineness of feeling that people failed to understand his behavior, which to them was impractical, almost abnormal. In a poem titled “The Lunatic,” really the first powerfully modern confessional voice in Nepalese literature, Devkota satirizes the insensitive, mediocre, and materialistic society by pitting its reality against the subjective and aesthetically far more pleasing world of the mad persona he adopts. The sensibility of the mad persona comes close to Buddhahood in the following lines:

Shocked by the first streak of frost on a fair lady’s tresses,

For a length of three days my sockets filled and rolled.

For the Buddha, the enlightened one, touched me in the depths,

And they called me one distraught.

Such things, he says, occurred time and again. And, in the same breath, he also denounces the political leadership of those that, in the name of the people, had gained heights of power but had remained emotionally cut off from the grassroots:

Look at the strumpet-tongues adancing of shameless leadership

At the breaking of the backbones of the people’s rights!

Devkota was not convinced that Nepal was a democratic nation yet.
    This was indeed contrary to the feelings of the masses, including that of many of his contemporaries. The general atmosphere of celebratory euphoria after the political turnover of 1951 took some of Devkota’s contemporaries off of their heels. Poet Siddhicharan Shrestha, for example, was the first to invite writers to redirect their thoughts and expressions to meet the challenges of the new democratic age. The enemy, meaning the Rana Regime, was defeated. Writers now needed new subject matters, styles and techniques, he said. A group of writers were convinced, but Devkota was not. He looked at simple, every day things such as the electric light that dimmed and brightened whimsically at night and refused at times to emit enough light to show itself. Sometimes the lights would go out all of a sudden for the whole night and not come back. The poet then felt that the government had told him to go to bed when he wanted to work late night for the nation. Neither a conscious writer nor a democratic leader ever saw anything wrong in the supply of electricity. Complacency and fatalistic acceptance of mediocre performance, Devkota thought, could not be democratic behavior. This is how he examines himself in the essay titled “The Electric Bulb”:

I feel as if I were unworthy of democracy. One who cannot feel alive to the ugliness of one’s surroundings, to the presence of one’s powerful wants; one who shows no measurable degree of reaction to the denial of home light, be he ever so blatant about abstract political ideals, is never a true democrat, never a conscious citizen.

He found the “protesting voice of conscious individuality” absent “even in those who rule and command.”
    Devkota, therefore, challenged both Siddhicharan Shrestha and the popular political leaders of the decade by demanding a change in attitudes and behavior, not in personalities on the top rung of the government. Especially after he attended the Afro-Asian Writers’ Conference in Tashkent in 1958, Devkota became more critical of democracy in Nepal and more concerned with the fate of writers at home. In an essay written originally in English Devkota comes down hard upon the apathy of the Nepalese government:

When I compare the lot of the writers of the U.S.S.R. with those of Nepal, I feel like comparing contrary poles—where there is perpetual sunshine on the North, we find eternal darkness in the South. Writers’ fates are determined by socio-political philosophies and the systems that evolve out of them. We, the writers of Nepal, are the most unfortunate of human tribes, robbed of our royalties, denied our copy-rights, no human laws working our literary defences, general frustration writ large upon our shriveled brows, making our rough shifts for mere existence as if we apologized to live in a society where, amidst general apathy and negligence, we command the best brains. We are a scattered lot, a routed regiment of intellectuals, pushed back by a political tide, that, started by ourselves, has rushed so far ahead of us, towards exploitative heights that we are left behind merely like scum and filth, too base to be lifted up to the positions of our natural claims. And the boasted democracy of today, whose army is a feudal and profiteering group of sordid self, cut off from the masses, divorced from popular interests, confidently balanced on a tottering economy, sounding its programmes and projects like blaring bugles of nonsense, conscious of its own unworthiness, yet superciliously demonstrative of its own achievement, is a democracy without the people, a vision of equality among giants and dwarves, mountains and dales, of liberty among a slavery of economic dependence, and fraternity among a riot of crossing multifarious interests. And it is, above all, a democracy without Enlightenment…. It is a democracy where the torch-bearers have no place and no claims on respect. (“The Necessity of a Strongly Organised Writers Union for Nepal”)

Devkota was far too discerning to be misled by political slogans. As a writer, he constantly leagued himself up with the grassroots without denouncing anyone because he was intolerant of certain attitudes, not people. I have a feeling that Manhae carried a similar flame of imagination in his struggle to upgrade human life in Korea.
    What followed in the 1950s in the name of democracy and modernity was a flood of experimentations in literary styles, techniques, forms and subject matters. Literary productions began to be shaped by political ideals, international influences, social utopias, current economic realities, longings for freedom, notions of equality and other aspirations of the awakened mind. Writers emphasized political goals of freedom and democracy and the individual’s passion for democratic ideals overtook the need for pious moments of spiritual experience. And the whole world flooded into Nepal, changing its life-style, thoughts and behavior. After all, democracy can at the most give writers and artists the freedom of self-expression; what they can make out of that freedom is the business of art.
    The decade of the fifties, in fact, saw a Renaissance of the creative and artistic spirit that flourished in various trends and movements seeking to express itself through new images, similes, styles, and structures. As Devkota and Siddhicharan Shrestha walked their own literary highways, Romanticism practiced by these two remained one of the major influences on the younger generation of writers. The refinement in poetry practiced by Lekhanath and Sama was a second important influence upon younger writers. However, there were others who refused to be influenced by preceding literary canons and strove for total break from tradition. Some turned to Progressivism as early as 1950 and adopted leftist ideals and practices. Yet others experimented with literary styles and techniques. These, in turn, were to have their impact upon the writers of the following decades.
    A small group of young poets of the fifties including Mohan Koirala, Bairagi Kainla, Ishwar Ballav and others decided that they would never be able to write like Devkota, Sama or Lekhanath. So, adopting the free verse style initiated by Gopal Prasad Rimal, they rejected the Classical norms of poetic composition and found a voice of their own in a more purist language. Throughout his poetic career, Mohan Koirala continued evolving in terms of themes and styles. His strength lies in recording the external as well as psychological changes in the social and political arena and also in denouncing those that stifled democracy for personal advantages. He clearly wanted enlightenment to permeate throughout the nation like the sunshine. His comments on social and political issues are very poignant. In “The Fiddle,” he writes:

Where are those rotten wise men who said,

“May all beings be happy”?

Where are the men who said,

“Truth, not Falsehood, shall triumph”?

This is indeed a strong rejection of a naively optimistic faith in the ultimate victory of the good over the bad in the context of felt realities of day to day modern existence where competence and civilized behavior are constantly undercut by the pragmatic self-promotions of the wielders of economic and political powers.
    Bhupi Sherchan’s poems too express a mellow tone of sadness, but not of defeat, resulting from the miserable socio-economic conditions of human existence. Unlike Haribhakta Katuwal who bursts out sporadically in powerful utterances as when he condemns life itself—“What a damned life, this life!”—Bhupi is thoughtful, precise and poignant. He is perhaps the next important poet after Devkota and Mohan Koirala. A leftist from a wealthy family, this contradiction inherent in his personal life so haunted him that he stopped thinking of isms and started writing about things that really touched him. His poetry, therefore, is honest, passionate and ironic. He chose to write about simple and ordinary things such as a candle, the clock tower, a bicycle or the courtyard, but it was his extraordinary perception of ordinary things and the simple but powerful language in which he expressed these that caught the attention of his readers. His collection of forty-two poems in A Blind Man on a Revolving Chair (1969) became one of the most influential best sellers after Devkota’s Muna Madan. His statements of simple truths have hit hard and have stuck to hearts that have felt it once: “This is a land of uproar and rumor…” he wrote about Nepal. This truth still bites.
    In 1960, Nepal took a politically nasty turn. King Mahendra dissolved the parliament, imprisoned the major party leaders and imposed a partyless Panchayat Democracy run by the king’s cabinet. Freedom of expression was once again lost and forced submission was advertised by the government as good national conduct. However, Nepal was not a watertight compartment anymore. The international world had penetrated its frontiers. And the western world that flooded into the country was mainly young, frustrated, disillusioned, and drugged. A small group of Hippies with a mission of peace, love and freedom stood in opposition to the domination of controlling power structures of the west that suppressed and enslaved individuals. These were lost in the larger crowd of Hippies who came to Kathmandu with a vision impaired by drugs, influenced by sex and inspired by individual freedom to practice a superficial lifestyle of their own. These caught the imagination of the Nepalese public, of which a large number of youths and some older writers too cherished this new lifestyle. Since tourism was a major industry of the country, the government failed to deal effectively with this movement, which left its stamp on the cultural life of Kathmandu. Many people then accepted tourism as a necessary evil.
    The western world has often penetrated eastern cultures both with its ideologies and commodities. I would believe that Asian reactions to such cultural penetrations are similar in many cases. An intelligent guess at the general history of our literatures is that they all begin in some oral tradition under the influence of some religious or philosophical system—Buddhism and Confucianism in Korea, Hinduism and Buddhism in Nepal—and build their own paradise where gods, nature and human beings are united. The sable influence of deities upon the human psyche has often proved to be a fatalistic acceptance of status quo, which in turn has been reflected both in the life and literature of the nation. There is no doubt a powerful love of nature expressed in much of early literatures that also uphold human values. In doing so, such literature even tends towards the didactic to maintain behavioral patterns suited to age-old ideals. The single dominant message of such literature is the ultimate victory of good over evil. Modern Asian literature under the liberalizing influence of the west has widened its scope of subject matter and themes, and, in the name of self-criticism, it has basically proved itself to be a literature of dissent vis-à-vis its own tradition on many levels. In Nepal, the general acceptance of the inevitability of a two-way cultural osmosis and a general faith in the society’s capacity to transform the received into the desirable, which may not always succeed, have remained the two best options for a continued cultural connectivity. While global influences cannot be resisted, we hope that they will nevertheless be transformed by the culture they come into contact with and turn into what societies desire the most.
    Thus, the young Hippies in Kathmandu in the 1960s, seeking to escape into the exotic wilderness of their own innate drives either through meditation or with the help of Bacchus and his pards, helped break some of the taboos of the conservative society that had nevertheless begun interrogating tradition. In 1934, Devkota’s Muna Madan had rejected the caste system as a wrong measure of man. In 1940, the Nepali Congress Party had organized a public picnic where caste and untouchability were rejected as harmful social behavior. In the 1950s, Freud and Marx had already influenced the writers to the extent that both traditional morality and feudal value systems were under interrogation. An ardent student of Freud, Pushkar Lohani was among the first poets to write openly on issues of sexuality. His daring use of even religious images as sex symbols, offensive no doubt to orthodox Hindus, nevertheless fail to attain meditative heights. The poet succeeds at the level of images and symbols. In the days that followed, many younger poets, both male and female, were soon to produce tons of texts that frankly and openly discussed sex.
    The literature after 1960, taking its cues from writers and movements of the earlier euphoric decade, was both a continuation of the trends and experiments already started in the decade of the fifties and of renewed struggle for democratic values and practices. At its worst, poetry became a garbled grumble behind sable clouds that could not pour down as yet and, therefore, remained padded, abstract and suggestive. Reduced to political slogans, poetry often barked at corrupt politicians and political practices. The sole purpose of such artless writing was to achieve another democratic victory for the people. Passion for political ideals had submerged the priests at the altar of the Muse. Therefore, when in 1989 the people’s movement succeeded in restoring a multiparty electoral system to the country, these poets had lost the subject matter of their poetry and produced very little for some time after that.
    At its best, Nepali literature continued trying out new ways of making itself heard both by the public and by the rulers. Many new literary trends appeared after 1960. Since it is not possible to discuss all of the dozen or so of such movements, I will mention very briefly only a few of them.
    In 1963, Indra Bahadur Rai, Bairagi Kainla, and Ishwar Ballav started a movement from Darjeeling called the Third Dimension. These writers believed that Nepali literature was incomplete in itself because it was two dimensional. It lacked the third dimension of depth to provide a complete picture of the human individual. So, they added well sculpted pictorial images to their writing but remained modern in so far as they were attempting to communicate more clearly and precisely with their audience. While Bairagi Kainla is relatively more concrete, Ishwar Ballav is more abstract and difficult. Indra Bahadur Rai is incisive, concrete, and powerful as a writer. These very poets and writers move towards postmodernism with their campaign of lila lekhan or mirage writing, which is founded on concepts that are closely related to Derrida’s deconstruction. The illusiveness of truth is linked with the incapacity of words and language itself to capture reality. Monolithic truth is rejected as multiplicity of interpretations is advocated. This line of reasoning, reinforced by western deconstruction, has found many followers.
    In 1966, Parijat, Manjul and several other writers of the left adopted the common penname “Ralfa” and suppressed their family name to sign their creative writing. This came to be known as the Ralfa Movement. Since they were writing not only against social discriminations based on religious and economic caste, sex and ethnicity supported by traditional and conservative faiths and values but also against the suppression and exploitation of the people by the government, the common penname strengthened their voice.
    In 1969, Shailendra Sakar, Pushkar Lohani, Manjul, Parijat, and others were part of what is called the Unaccepted Group. These writers argued that the ugly is as much a part of reality as the beautiful. All human beings are not born the same: some are handicapped, others are intellectually or morally feeble, yet others are sexually aberrant. Writers, they argued, should embrace the whole of humanity in their vision, beautify the ugly and present it in a palatable way to the public.
    Even as some writers were refusing to cooperate with the government by rejecting awards and prizes offered by institutions that it supported, the Young Writers’ Front consisting of twenty-one writers opposed established publications that refused to encourage new and young voices. Oppositions to establishment came in stranger ways than this when, on September 28, 1974, Shailendra Sakar, Kashinath Tamot, Kavitaram, Dhruba Sapkota, and others lined up in New Road, the main business street of Kathmandu, to shine the shoes of passersby. This Shoe Shine Movement, as it was later called, spoke of the degree of respect that the Nepalese government had given to its writers.
    On May 24, 1979, after the announcement of the referendum for a multiparty democracy, Mohan Koirala, Toya Gurung and Dinesh Adhikary among others began the Street Poetry Revolution. They read their poetry in the open streets to raise the awareness of the people. This movement caught the imagination of the public and spread throughout the country. Since these poets were bent on making the multiparty democratic system work, they spoke daringly against the partyless Panchayat Regime.
    In this way, writers have struggled to establish democracy in Nepal. With the Second People’s Movement in 1989, the Panchayat Democracy came to an end. However, feudal attitudes and practices still remained. A powerful group of Maoist insurgents who were dissatisfied with constitutional monarchy among other things launched an armed revolution in 1996 and threatened to bring down the regime. When, in February of 2005, the king dissolved the government and declared a state of emergency and imprisoned political leaders, mass protests were organized by the seven-party opposition and the Maoists. After the peace accord between the Maoists and the government in 2006, the Maoists were allowed to enter the parliament in mid-January 2007. Today, dissatisfied with the eight-party coalition, they are beginning to show signs of unrest.
    It is important for people to understand that democracy is a continuous struggle for the rights of citizens, not just a moment of victory over its assailants. Supported by systems of free and fair elections, it must involve the participation of the people in a rule of law. Walking the streets of Kathmandu today, one is witness to more instances where laws are broken than upheld. Civility, respect for the individual and tolerance of opposing ideals are conspicuously absent in public behavior. This is also why poets are still vociferously upholding the cause of democracy. While writers of the left are united against monarchy, those of the right are not upholding it.
    Poetry, especially after 2002 has expressed unity among writers for a democratic republic. Such poetry expresses today ideas that Nepalese people are powerful enough to uproot monarchy, that the struggle of the people against suppression is a present reality, and that the people are competent enough to rule themselves. This faith adds up to the hope that a democratic government will also rid the society of discriminations in the name of race, caste, region, and sex. Progressive poets, especially, are clear today that they no longer can accept the king as an incarnation of God. Amar Giri writes:

I cannot

like my grandparents

believing you to be an avatar of Vishnu

forgive your heaven of plunder

(“Time Awakened from Loss of Consciousness”)

To Ramchandra Bhattarai, the king is a white elephant, a big economic drawback.
Confident that democracy will be established, poets today are more outspoken than ever in the past. The following lines by Dil Sahani, for instance, would have been suicidal during the Panchayat Era:

I want to parade along the street

wearing emperors’ crowns like shoes…

(“I Write the History of Progress”)

Hope is the keynote. And the call to struggle for democracy echoes everywhere. Images of rivers of blood and poisonous bugles that pollute the air are common. Faith in the power of words is high.

They are afraid of words

Yes, afraid of words

because

they are afraid of truth

* * *

These lords of missiles

these rulers without policy

are terrified by a small pen

(Rishiram Bhusal “Our Words”)

And, among the wielders of such small pens are young women such as Dr. Aruna Upreti, Sudha Tripathi, Sita Sharma and others who are also very active and outspoken.
Poets and writers all over the world are a race of people united by a common flame. They dream of a better world for the whole of humanity and actively participate in the struggle to achieve it. In Nepal, writers today aspire for democracy, the rule of law, a just society, economic prosperity, plenty of opportunities for everyone, respect for life and liberty, and all such values that form the basis of dignified human life.
    When I reflect upon the last five or six decades of Nepal, I am satisfied that struggles and conflicts have become a part of our daily national life. In fact, conflict has been one of the strengths of the nation: on the one hand, it does not allow people to remain indifferent on matters of national importance, and, on the other hand, it promotes interrogation of tradition and status quo. We have yet to learn from the topographical diversity of Nepal that the world’s deepest gorge and the tallest peak actually exist in the same country. Our poets and writers have pointed out that differences in terms of ethnicity, religion, region, and so on are to be respected rather than to be feared. They have also upheld the dignity of human life and constructive work even as they continue spreading the message of love, compassion, peace, justice, universal fraternity and sorority. This is the message that our writers have to give to the world. They have a great faith in human potentials and they greatly revere the dignity of human life.

May 10, 2007