Nepali Literature as World Literature?:
A Symposium and Workshop

Acharya, Pushpa
Pushpa Acharya is a Postdoctoral Fellow in South Asian Literary and Cultural Studies at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and South Asian Studies from the University of Toronto. His research explores Nepali, South Asian, Indian Ocean, and Anglophone world literatures.

Many Shakuntalas: Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s Shakuntala Epics in Nepali and English
-    Asma Sayed and Pushpa Acharya
Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s epics, Śākuntala Mahākāvya (in Nepali) and Shakuntala (in English) present an intriguing literary phenomenon: two original epics inspired by the same mythic episode—the story of Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā from the Mahābhārata, which is dramatized in Kālidāsa’s play, Abhijñānaśākuntalam ("The Recognition of Shakuntala"). Instead of translating one work into another, Devkota composes two distinct epics in two different languages and poetic traditions. These works are authorial self-transcreations—creative reimaginings that reinterpret an ancient Sanskrit narrative in two new languages. In this way, Devkota participates in the longstanding South Asian tradition of retelling foundational myths—akin to the multiple versions of the Rāmāyaṇa or Mahābhārata—but engaging two literary systems: vernacular Nepali and literary English. His Nepali Śākuntala draws upon and simultaneously departs from classical Sanskrit epic conventions. Notably, it adapts a dramatic material into an epic form while also reflecting local Nepali ballad traditions. Devkota’s creativity extends further with a Nepali lyrical poem (khaṇḍakāvya) titled Duṣyanta-Śakuntalā Bheṭa, which echoes the form reminiscent of Kālidāsa’s Meghadūtam ("The Cloud Messenger") which focus on one story. Engaging with the works of Milman Parry and Albert Lord (on oral-formulaic composition), Gregory Nagy (regarding diachronic epic composition and re-performance), A.K. Ramanujan and Paula Richman (focused on plurality in South Asian epic retellings), and Gérard Genette (exploring palimpsest and hypertextuality), this essay addresses two questions: How do we define, locate, and interpret bilingual self-rewriting? How do Devkota’s Nepali and English epics draw upon, diverge from, or create new poetic traditions in both languages? 

Megharaj Adhikari is a Literature, Media, and Culture Ph.D. candidate at Florida State University. His research focus is Twentieth and Twenty-first-century American Literatures and Transnational Narratives centering on Modernism and literary canons, institutions, and infrastructures. Adhikari serves as a peer reviewer for Critical Humanities, an open-access literary journal published by Marshall University, Virginia (USA), and Manusya, Journal of Humanities, sponsored by Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. He also holds the position of advisor for the Global Literature and World Religion series published by Palgrave McMillan. Adhikari is a Delegate Assembly Member of MLA (Modern Language Association) representing professional issues for graduate students.

Asynchronous Modernism in Nepal: Poetic Resistance and Kathmandu's Contested Realities
-    Megharaj Adhikari
Examining the cultural impact of the Beat poets in Nepal, this paper analyzes how Abhi Subedi integrates and transforms the countercultural elements of the Beat movement to articulate a Panchayat era Nepali subjectivity. Set against the mid-60s and early 70s influx of countercultural seekers - known as the Hippie movement that grew out of the Beat Generation's rebellion against conformity - into Kathmandu, it explores how Subedi’s poetry synthesizes the countercultural ideologies of the Beat poets with the spiritual, sociopolitical constructs of post-1960 Nepali poetry written in English. Subedi’s poem “Kathmandu Odyssey”– marked by fragmentation, spiritual introspection, and rebellion – echoes modernist and Beat influences while his invocation of the country’s capital, Kathmandu and Nepali idioms grounds the text firmly in the local. Subedi’s juxtaposition of the Buddhist chant “Om Mani Padme Hung” with the countercultural irreverent Beat-inspired expression “forty-five degrees fucking over the sky,” demonstrate how the glocal operates as a site of both tension and transformation. This glocal literary fusion unveils the ambivalence of cultural exchange and fostering transnational solidarity. This positions Nepal not as a passive recipient of global modernism but as an active participant. Informed by a transcultural perspective and drawing on Roland Robertson’s theory of glocalization, this analysis interrogates Subedi’s work and challenges the binary framing of the exoticized East and the revolutionary West. Subedi’s collection Chasing Dreams reveals connections between the Beat ethos and Nepali cultural phenomena. To complement the primary source, this study will integrate excerpts from the documentaries Kathmandu Odyssey (Dir. Kharel, 2003) and How the Drug War Destroyed a Hippie Paradise in Kathmandu (Dir. Krainin 2018) highlighting Subedi’s involvement with the Hippie movement. By blending historical accounts, literary analysis, and personal insights, the study underscores how the Hippies, the successors of the Beat poets such as Ginsberg and Kerouac, fostered cross-cultural exchanges that inspired creativity and ideological shifts in Nepali poetics. Subedi’s poetics neither mimics nor rejects the Beat legacy but adapts it, presenting the Nepali consciousness shaped by the political oppression of the Panchayet autocratic regime, spiritual depth, and cultural hybridity. This research contributes to understanding Nepal’s literary evolution through a transnational lens.

Puspa Damai (Ph.D. The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) is Professor of English at Marshall University, WV, USA. He has two edited volumes forthcoming: one on literary and cultural theory and another on Nepali literature. His articles have been published in journals including CR: The New Centennial Review, Discourse, Postcolonial Text and JCLA: Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics. He is the founding editor of Critical Humanities, a digital, academic journal published by Marshall University. He also edits Routledge’s book series, South Asian Literature in Focus.

Worlding in Nepali Epic Poetry
-    Puspa Damai
This chapter explores the notion of worlding within the context of Nepali mahakavya, or epic poetry. It is structured into four distinct sections. 1) The genre of Mahakavya – this section revisits the tradition of mahakavya as understood in Sanskrit poetics, detailing how Indian literary theorists such as Dandin and Rudrat have defined it, while also offering a brief comparison to Western interpretations of the epic genre as discussed by Aristotle, Mikhail Bakhtin, Walter Benjamin, Northrop Frye, and Masaki Mori. 2) A historical overview of Nepali epic poetry – this section outlines the history of Nepali epic poetry, highlighting significant epics, their authors and themes. 3) The concept of Worlding and world literature – this pivotal section expands on the idea of “worlding” in contemporary theory, referencing key theorists such as Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Edward Said, Pheng Chea, and Frank Moretti. 4) Worlding in Nepali mahakavya – this section examines four primary categories within Nepali epic poetry: religious epics, mythical epics, Western-influenced epics, and socially conscious epics. Beginning with Bhanu Bhakta Acharya’s The Ramayana, the chapter discusses at least one epic that exemplifies each of these four sub-genres. The chapter posits a preliminary argument that if world literature exists, it will take the form of an epic. It suggests that epic literature as a form of world literature must convey the nature of the world it represents. The chapter asserts that Nepal's ongoing production of epics, even in an era dominated by visual and digital arts, is due to the fact that the world envisioned by epics, particularly Nepali epics, has yet to materialize. Lastly, the chapter contends that contrary to the common belief that epics are tales of nobility and grandeur, the enduring relevance of Nepali epics lies in their celebration of the ordinary, the humble, and even the subaltern.

Christoph Emmrich, Associate Professor of Buddhism at the University of Toronto, PhD Heidelberg 2004, is a specialist of Newar, Burmese, and Tamil religion, language, and literature. In Nepal, he works on manuals for rituals involving girl children and adolescents from the early 17th century till today, on the poetics and pragmatics of jewelry and beautification, on the role of lists in prescribing, selling, and buying materials for worship, on the circulation of Burmese monastic biographical travel literature between Nepal and Southeast Asia, as well as on Newar Buddhist script activism, early print culture, and modern translation practices. He runs the Toronto Newar Summer School and is a member of the Nepalbhasa Translation Collective / that produces literary translations of Newar poetry. His नेपालभाषा मंकाः भाय/्हला latest book Writing Rites for Newar Girls: Marriage and Menarche in Kathmandu Valley Ritual Manuals is forthcoming with Brill.

World Literature as For the World vs. World Literature as Of the World: The Case of Malla Period Newar Literary Cosmopolitanism, 1200-1800
-    Christoph Emmrich
This talk is an attempt to redefine world literature not as one written for the world, but as a one which is in conversation with the world. It will try to do so on the basis of a literature by writers who have regarded themselves as “world-literate” and as having reproduced within the reach of their own multilingualism, the confines of their own elites, as well as within their own comprehensive networks a literature that reflects, contains, and transforms the world as they created it afresh as poets and translators. The “world literature” discussed in this talk is that produced in the cities of Yem̃ or Kathmandu, Khvapa or Bhaktapur, and Yala or Lalitpur) in the language known as Old or Classical Newar between the 13th and the 18th centuries. Over that period, Newar literati rewrote large parts of Buddhist narrative literature circulating in South Asia, provided commentaries on Hindu śāstric and scientific treatises taught throughout the Sanskrit cosmopolis, engaged with travellers from north of the Himalayas in translating Sanskrit texts into Tibetan, sang songs shared with yogis of Bengal, and composed multilingual dramatic works that could compete with the polyglot pieces staged at courts all across the large parts of Asia. The literature produced in the Kathmandu Valley in those 600 years was, if not the world’s, truly of the world. This talk first reflects on what kind of world Malla-period Newars drew to create their own world’s “world literature.” Then it will try to explain a literature whose production and reception were confined to an area of roughly 1000 m2, but which received and produced works that managed to recreate and to contain all that the world of South Asian literature had to offer. Finally, it will ask what this means for understanding Newar literature also in a more conventional way as “world literature.”

Khem Guragain holds a PhD in English from York University, an MA in Literatures of Modernity from Toronto Metropolitan University, and an MA in English from Tribhuvan University. His specializes in postcolonial literature, with a particular focus on Dalit, Adivasi, and Indigenous literatures, especially in relation to caste and indigeneity in South Asia. His work explores how Dalit and Adivasi literatures intervene in nationalist discourses, arguing that these texts challenge dominant Brahminical narratives and the colonizer–colonized binary central to postcolonial theory. Guragain contends that Dalit and Adivasi subalternity is shaped by caste- based hierarchies rather than colonial structures, and that these literatures destabilize elitist discourses, moving beyond the frameworks of postcolonial theorists and subaltern historians who often overlook the centrality of caste in South Asian society. His research engages broadly with caste, subalternity, indigeneity, minority and diaspora literatures, with a focus on their intersections with discourses of nationhood, identity, and belonging. He currently teaches English and communication courses at Seneca Polytechnic and has presented his work at prominent academic conferences such as MLA, SALA, CACLALS, ACGS, the Indian Ocean Conference, and the South Asia Conference.

The Complexities of Nepali Dalit Literature: Unveiling New Perspectives in Sharad Poudel’s novel, Likhe
-    Khem Guragain
The discourse surrounding Nepali literature faces significant challenges, both in its positioning within South Asian and global literary fields and in its internal dynamics. Within Nepal, literature produced in the Nepali language—officially recognized as the "national language"—is entangled with nationalistic and hegemonic assumptions that obscure the country’s multilingual and multicultural realities. These tensions complicate any singular conception of "national literature" and expose fractures in Nepal’s linguistic and cultural identity. Globally, "South Asian" literature is often equated with Indian and, to a lesser extent, Pakistani writing, rendering Nepali literature largely invisible within dominant frameworks of world literature. Caste, a central force in shaping Nepali identity, operates as an inherited social structure that confers privilege or disadvantage, reinforcing a rigid hierarchy with Brahmins at the apex and Dalits—historically deemed “untouchables”—at the bottom. Despite its pervasive influence, caste remains insufficiently examined in Nepali literary discourse. Representation of Dalit experiences are often filtered through an outsider’s lens or fall into a reductive "discourse of pity," failing to articulate authentic Dalit subjectivity. In this context, Sharad Poudel’s novel, Likhe emerges as a significant literary intervention. The novel traces the journey of a Dalit protagonist from his early life as a child-servant in an upper-caste household in Parbat, Nepal to his later experiences as a laborer in Delhi, where he is pejoratively labeled “Bahadur” by Indian employers. This paper argues that Likhe critically engages with the structural realities of caste-based marginalization and dehumanization, offering a rare and grounded portrayal of entrenched social inequalities. In doing so, this paper not only illuminates Nepali Dalit identity within contemporary socio- economic and religio-political contexts but also positions Nepali literature as a vital and often overlooked contributor to world literature. It frames caste as a distinct analytic lens for understanding racialized oppression—one that predates modernity and remains deeply embedded within, yet not confined by, the structures of modern institutions and systems. 

Saraswoti Lamichhane is a poet, translator, and editor. She has translated several literary works from Nepali to English and vice versa, which includes contemporary Nepali poetry by women authors. She is a co-editor of Kavya: Representative Nepali Poetry in English (Grey Sparrow, 2023) and co-author of Six Strings: A Joint Anthology of Poems (2011). Her new poetry collection is forthcoming with Mawenzi House Press in 2026. She has received grants and awards from Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Writers’ Guild of Alberta. She holds an MA in English (Pokhara University) and a Creative Writing Certificate (University of Toronto).

English Translation of Indra Bahadur Rai’s Manifesto and Discourses on Līlā Lekhan
-    Saraswoti Lamichhane
I propose to translate Indian Nepali writer and scholar Indra Bahadur Rai’s manifesto and discourses on līlā lekhan, a seminal literary-theoretical text originally written in Nepali. Emerging at the intersection of South Asian philosophical traditions and the postwar global aesthetics, līlā lekhan articulates a Nepali literary vision with global implications. By introducing non-Western epistemologies through the philosophical concepts such as līlā (play), vastutā (materiality or thingness), and bodh (awakened understanding), the manifesto opens new ways of thinking about language, truth, and creative writing, and literary criticism. Eurocentric paradigms often frame contemporary non-Western literary theory as derivative. Rai’s work, instead, reveals how Nepali literature contributes to global theoretical conversations—not as reflection from the margin but as philosophical production. It challenges center–periphery models and reorients world literature to include voices rooted in regional philosophical and multilingual traditions. This translation itself is a literary and political intervention. It makes visible how Nepali literature can move transnationally, not only through narrative content but through theoretical frameworks and modes of reading. Rai’s concerns with language, meaning, ethics, creativity, and reading resonate deeply with questions of literary responsibility in postcolonial societies. The translation will serve as a contribution to the evolving materials from the intellectual traditions in the Global South, by inviting international readers to consider Nepali literary theory not just as cultural expression but as critical methodology.

Bishupal Limbu is Associate Professor of English at Portland State University. His research focuses on contemporary and comparative literature, particularly in relation to representations of migration, precarity, and underdevelopment.

Nepali Literature in Translation: The Case of Shirisko Phul by Parijat
-    Bishupal Limbu
World literature, as some have argued, is literature that circulates in translation. Literature from Nepal, whether in the national language (Nepali) or the many indigenous languages, is rarely translated and circulates in very limited circuits, mostly confined to scholars and experts rather than popular reading publics. How does translation contribute to the creation of a world literature from Nepal? This paper will consider this question by examining two translations of a canonical work of Nepali literature: Shirisko Phul by Parijat, winner of the Madan Puraskar in 1965. Translated as Blue Mimosa in English and La fleur bleue du jacaranda in French, this slim novel is perhaps the only work of Nepali language literature that exists in two European languages. (A partial translation into German has also been published in a magazine.) Whereas the English translation was published in 1972, only a few years after the novel’s appearance, the French version appeared much later in 1998. Furthermore, the English translation itself was reprinted in a revised translation in 2019. Shirisko Phul is therefore one of the few works of Nepali literature that can claim to have a more extensive circulation and potentially a larger readership in translation than in its original language. If translation expands the novel’s reach and influence, does it also produce less positive effects? I will, on the one hand, attempt to answer this question by comparing the original and the two translations, and, on the other, develop a reading strategy that moves away from an account of translation in the terms of gains and losses. By doing so, I am interested in thinking about how world literature can be an imperfect yet enabling category for Nepali literature.

Amber Marie Moore holds a PhD  in Buddhist Studies from the University of Toronto. She completed her BA in Buddhist Philosophy and Himalayan Languages at Kathmandu University and an MA in Religion and Culture from Wilfrid Laurier University. Her area of specialization is  Buddhist Philosophy, Tibetan, Newar and Nepalese Buddhist manuscripts and narratives,  Buddhist dance, and the intersection between philosophy and Buddhist tantra. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher in the Philosophy Department and a researcher and lecturer in the Dept for Religious Studies at University of Toronto. Her post doctoral research looks at the idea of philosophy as a practice and draws on Vajrayāna Buddhist sources to envision new positions on the nature of being, the self, and the idea of liberation. She is currently working on her forthcoming book, The Legend of Vajrayoginī:  The Vaṃśavalī of Samkhapura in the Maṇiśailamahāvadāna. Amber has taught courses at U of T on topics such as South Asian Religions, Buddhist Studies, Tibetan Language, Buddhism and Science, Practices of Mind, Body and Breath, Buddhism and the Environment, and Buddhist Dance.

Genre Fluidity, Linguistic Equivalence, and Literary Circulation in the Translation of Nepalese Buddhist Literature
-    Amber Marie Moore
In this paper, I examine Buddhist narrative genres within the literary corpus of Nepal, exploring how narrative categories influence literary circulation locally and globally. Using the Newar Buddhist Maṇiśailamahāvadāna (MŚM) as my central case study, I analyze how the interplay of genre terms and conventions, nested stories, past-life framing, and ritual performance contexts, shape textual movement and reader reception. Drawing on Lydia Liu’s notion of translation as epistemological crossing, I discuss how Newar Buddhist genres employ flexible narrative structures to navigate cultural boundaries, resisting straightforward translation into Eurocentric forms of discourse. I argue specifically that the MŚM exemplifies genre as an adaptive strategy, blending tantric and exoteric narrative forms to maintain cultural resonance while complicating its global circulation. Finally, I demonstrate how genre fluidity in Nepalese contexts serves not only to ensure literary survival, circulation and local relevance, but to enrich broader discussions of genre theory and world literary studies.

Sanjit B. Pradhananga is a PhD student in English literature at the University of Washington – Seattle. His research focuses on Indigenous literary traditions in South Asia, with a particular emphasis on Newar literature in Nepal. His current work examines the emergence of Nepal Bhasa short stories in the mid-twentieth century, analyzing how short fiction and the magazines that carried them helped shape a modern Newar public sphere and articulated collective cultural and political identities. He also explores the translation of Newar literature during the period, critically interrogating the politics and techniques of translation that shaped how these works were rendered and circulated, and for whom. More broadly, his scholarship seeks to place South Asian Indigenous or Adivasi literatures in conversation with global Indigenous traditions, tracing shared resonances while attending to the hyperlocal articulations and deployments of Indigeneity across different South Asian contexts. Before beginning his doctoral studies, Sanjit worked as a journalist and editor at The Kathmandu Post and ECS Media, where he wrote on Nepali arts, literature, culture and heritage preservation.

A “Pau” to Muna Madan: Nepal Bhasa Short Stories, National Margins, and Transnational Connections
-    Sanjit B. Pradhananga
This paper critiques the national literary canon of Nepal by re-reading the first modern short story in Nepal Bhasa, Chittadhar Hridaya’s “Pau” (“A Letter from Lhasa”), through the lens of Indigenous literary resistance. “Pau” was written after Hridaya’s release from a four-year prison sentence for composing poetry in his mother tongue and was published under a pseudonym in Dharmodaya, a magazine edited by exiled Newar Buddhist monks. Though often interpreted as a tale of emotional loss, I argue that “Pau” is a politically charged counter-narrative to Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s Muna Madan, a canonical work in Nepali literature. By echoing its plot while shifting its language, genre, and cultural grounding, “Pau” subtly undermines the monolingual and hegemonic impulses embedded in Nepal’s national literary canon. The paper foregrounds the ways Nepal’s literary institutions have long equated Nepali-language literature with “Nepali literature” as such, erasing the multilingual and multiethnic realities of the nation. I position “Pau” as a key text that disrupts this erasure and makes visible the cultural and political stakes of writing in a minoritized language under conditions of suppression. I further argue that reading “Pau” through Indigenous frameworks – while recognizing the contested status of Newars within Nepal’s Adivasi Janajati discourse – opens up space for Newar literature to be read not as marginal but as central to debates around national belonging, literary self-representation, and cultural survival. Finally, I propose that such a reading situates Newar literature within World Literature not as a minor tributary but as an active site of trans-Indigenous and transnational dialogue. This shift challenges hierarchies that place Nepali-language literature at the center and allows for a more plural, polyphonic mapping of literature from Nepal.
 

Kritish Rajbhandari is Assistant Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College, USA, with interest in Indian Ocean literature, postcolonial studies, as well as Nepalbhasa (Newar) literature and translation. He teaches courses on South Asian, African, and world literature at Reed. His monograph The Indian Ocean and the Historical Imagination in Afro-Asian Fiction is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press as part of its Studies in World Literature series. He has translated two books of Newar poetry: Purna Vaidya’s ल: ल: ख: (Drops of Water, kuta pipāka, 2019) and Durgalal Shrestha’s चिनियाम्ह किसिचा (Chiniyamha Kisicha, Safu Publication, 2023). He is a founding member of the Nepalbhasa translation collective that aims to produce and publish joint translations of Nepalbhasa literature into English. He is also part of an editorial team working on the English translations of Karunakar Vaidya’s Newar folk stories.

The Global Newar Novel
-    Kritish Rajbhandari
This paper will trace the emergence the global Newar novel by examining two contemporary novels in Nepalbhasa by Newar writers: Shree Laxmi Shrestha’s koronāyā kichalay (In the Shadow of Corona) (2021) and Malla K. Sundar’s sepțembar 17 (September 17) (2021). Both novels follow Newar characters in the diaspora presenting Newar culture and identity as enmeshed within the contemporary histories of globalization, pandemic, mass media, global war, and environmental crises.  Shree Laxmi Shrestha’s koronāyā kichalay is set in the pandemic-era Netherlands, and follows its protagonist Nhasala as she navigates a life in isolation away from her home and separated from her family in a world shut down by the Covid pandemic. Malla K Sundar’s sepțembar 17 revolves around the life of Romulus, an orphan found abandoned at a train station in Chicago, with the only evidence of his parentage being a note indicating that his mother is a Newar from Bhaktapur. The novel follows Romulus’s quest to reconnect with his Newar identity and heritage through the Newar diaspora in the US, while he gets swept up in global events such as the American invasion of Iraq where he gets deployed. Unlike postcolonial novels about global migration that thematize negotiations with cultural hybridity, these novels, that I term, global Newar novels, meld global connections with deep attention to preserving Newar language, culture, and identity. In this, they also depart from the tradition of Newar fiction centered around the family, locality, and the nation. These novels, I argue, widen their geographical scope through their global orientation while being rooted in place as the locus of Newar identity. Drawing on theorizations of the global novel (Ganguly, Barnard), this paper traces how these contemporary Newar novels adapt the novel form to conjoin the cultural politics of Newars as a linguistic and ethnic minority in Nepal to the contemporary moment marked by global migration, disasters, wars, and mediatization.

Shiva Rijal, a PhD on cross-cultural theatre, has been teaching western drama and Nepali performance cultures at Tribhuvan University for the last twenty five years, and have also been conducting researches on the performance cultures of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal and Bali, Indonesia. Currently, he is writing an interpretative history of modern Nepali theatre. He can be reached at: shiva.rijal@cden.tu.edu.np

Worldling Nepal in Balakrishna Sama's Plays
-    Shiva Rijal
Nepalis fought and lost the 1814–1816 war with the East India Company, a defeat that halted expansion and hurt the economy. The rise of the Rana autocracy in the 1840s and British India’s hold after the 1850s turned that hostility into friendship: Rana rulers kept power by working with the British, a bond that peaked when Chandra Shumsher Rana sent more than one hundred thousand Nepali youths to fight for the Empire in the First World War. Britain thus became both the force Nepalis once fought and the one they later served. This history frames the work of Balakrishna Sama (1902–1982), Nepali playwright, poet, artist, and critic who began writing drama in the 1930s, an era of political consciousness. Drawing on his autobiography Mero Kavitako Aaradhan (My Veneration of Poesy, 1998) and the plays Mukunda Indira (1939) and Prem Pinda (In Honor of Love, 1952), this paper asks how Sama views Nepal’s place in the wider world—at once in dialogue with South Asia’s traditions and with the literary and philosophical heritage of the West, largely British yet not exclusive. Historian Pratyoush Onta reads Mukunda Indira as a portrait of Nepal as a fossil state—Indira standing for the homeland, Mukunda the Western-educated figure—but the play’s form and dialogue reveal tensions. Sama uses Anustubh verse to echo Shakespearean blank verse; Indira, though tested for purity like Sita, speaks with satire about women’s lives, and Mukunda, living with other women, still insists on testing her. He also portrays Newar and other groups. Sama seeks to imagine a nation where tradition, patriotism, and Hinduism persist, yet the form and thinking of his drama arise from a blend of East and West. Sections on the literary magazine Sharada show print culture as a tool for creating and sharing Nepali literature. Through these works, Sama presents Nepal as a motherland while adopting methods comparable to the rise of national literatures in English and Hindi, forging a new literary world for Nepal.

Asma Sayed is the Canada Research Chair in South Asian Literary and Cultural Studies in the Department of English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. She specializes in postcolonial and diasporic literatures in the context of narratives of exile and displacement from South Asia and East Africa. Her interdisciplinary research is informed by feminist and critical race studies and focuses on marginalization of gendered and racialized people as represented in literature, film, and media. Her publications include six books and numerous articles in a range of periodicals, anthologies, and academic journals.

Many Shakuntalas: Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s Shakuntala Epics in Nepali and English
-    Asma Sayed and Pushpa Acharya
Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s epics, Śākuntala Mahākāvya (in Nepali) and Shakuntala (in English) present an intriguing literary phenomenon: two original epics inspired by the same mythic episode—the story of Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā from the Mahābhārata, which is dramatized in Kālidāsa’s play, Abhijñānaśākuntalam ("The Recognition of Shakuntala"). Instead of translating one work into another, Devkota composes two distinct epics in two different languages and poetic traditions. These works are authorial self-transcreations—creative reimaginings that reinterpret an ancient Sanskrit narrative in two new languages. In this way, Devkota participates in the longstanding South Asian tradition of retelling foundational myths—akin to the multiple versions of the Rāmāyaṇa or Mahābhārata—but engaging two literary systems: vernacular Nepali and literary English. His Nepali Śākuntala draws upon and simultaneously departs from classical Sanskrit epic conventions. Notably, it adapts a dramatic material into an epic form while also reflecting local Nepali ballad traditions. Devkota’s creativity extends further with a Nepali lyrical poem (khaṇḍakāvya) titled Duṣyanta-Śakuntalā Bheṭa, which echoes the form reminiscent of Kālidāsa’s Meghadūtam ("The Cloud Messenger") which focus on one story. Engaging with the works of Milman Parry and Albert Lord (on oral-formulaic composition), Gregory Nagy (regarding diachronic epic composition and re-performance), A.K. Ramanujan and Paula Richman (focused on plurality in South Asian epic retellings), and Gérard Genette (exploring palimpsest and hypertextuality), this essay addresses two questions: How do we define, locate, and interpret bilingual self-rewriting? How do Devkota’s Nepali and English epics draw upon, diverge from, or create new poetic traditions in both languages? 

Anu Thapa is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on film and media history and theory and decolonial perspectives.  She is currently working on a book project that examines the intersection of religion and technology in cinematic special effects. Her works have appeared in NECSUS, CrossCurrents, and Cinema & Cie.

Johnny Gurkha and the Scopic Regimes of Sub-Coloniality in Nepali Literature and Empire Documentaries
-    Anu Thapa
The enduring allegiance of Gurkha soldiers, facilitated (and even enforced) by the Nepali rulers since 1815, has received much literary attention. In British empire’s military writings, the Gurkha soldier has been praised as ‘bravest of the braves,’ albeit embedded within a monolithic representation.  In Nepali literature, however, these soldiers are less exulted over, as their loyalty to the nation and their morality is called into question. Furthermore, as Pratyoush Onta has pointed out, these fighting men are glaringly missing from the writing of a bir (brave) Nepali national history in literary discourse that was crucial to the formation of a Nepali identity in the early part of the twentieth century. Both the general enthusiasm present in British works and the wariness in most prominent Nepali literature stem out of a singular view of the Gurkha’s mercenary nature, which is equated to a simplistic input-output logic, i.e., the belief that these men will fight an enemy not their own for monetary gains. By taking a relational approach to an array of Nepali and British texts, this paper identifies the persistent ontological flattening of the Gurkha body in the representations of the Gurkha soldiers. I argue that such leveling of the Gurkha body— to war technology in British works and to automatons in Nepali writings—highlights the inextricable ties between the natural body (physis) and the synthetic (techné), and ultimately pushes against postcolonial framework’s hierarchical dualisms, such as self/other, subject/object, superior/inferior, colonized/colonizer, and masculine/feminine. Works analyzed to this end include: B. P. Koirala’s short story, The Soldier; Bhupi Sherchan’s poems To the Children of Partridges, Quails, and Sacrificial Oxen and The Clock Tower; and British military writings, particularly the 1945 empire documentary, Johnny Gurkha.  A relational analysis of Gurkha representations in these texts from the center and periphery reveal the scopic regimes of sub-coloniality, a condition of colonial being that is neither sovereign nor under the direct rule of empire, and one that is often lost in the comparative approach embraced by postcolonial studies.