write an essay on postmodernism in nepal

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Primary Survey of Postmodern Traits in Nepali Stories

Govinda Raj Bhattarai

‘Postmodernism in Nepali stories’ is an issue quite intricate to explain, but the urgency of the present time doesn’t allow us to escape from the responsibility on the pretexts of its conceptual complexity. It’s high time we launched discussions, deliberations and discourses on this issue. We are already too late.

As soon as a discussion is launched on this issue, several assumptions of the postmodern thought and its pervasion come to the forefront. Should we examine it from the grounds of philosophy, economics or literature? Or, from postmodern music or culture? Since every aspect and dimension of life, from philosophy to folk experiences, show pervasion of the postmodern and its practice, it will be difficult to address each of those aspects. In this write-up, one genre of Nepali literature—the short story—has been taken up to examine the entry of postmodernism and its use, and a short discussion has been undertaken to suggest how the same can be explained.

It Informs about Shift of Paradigm

              The direction of creative artefacts in Nepali literature has changed. Accordingly, it’s high time we changed the paradigms of literature and evaluation. This is not an abrupt outcome. Incidentally, it was after the political change of 1989 that Nepali literature started exhibiting a shift in its overall direction. More than the changes inside Nepal, it was global development that induced a rapid shift towards the evolution of an open, liberal society. Its impacts have started appearing in Nepal as well, especially in its literature and culture. It was at such a time when articles on postmodernism started appearing. Even books started burgeoning in the decade of the 2050’s BS. When we look back from today, we can notice that the number of books written in support or opposition of postmodernism has crossed one and a half dozen. This is not a trivial number. There are adequate grounds to enter those works and plan a PhD dissertation. This is a matter of joy.

              The books published so far on postmodernism are listed below in chronological order of their publication:

1. Marxvad ra Uttar Aadhuniktavad (Marxism and Postmodernism; Rishi Raj Baral, 2052)

2. Nepali Sahitya Itihasko Rooprekha : Uttar Aadhunik Prastuti (An Outline of Nepali Literary History: A Postmodern Presentation; Shanti Raj Sharma, 2056)

3. Aakhyanko Uttar Adhunik Paryawalokan (The Postmodern Inquiry of Fiction; Govinda Raj Bhattarai, 2061)

4. Uttaradhunikta: Bhram ra Wastavikta (Postmodernism: Illusion and Reality; Ninu Chapagain, 2061)

5. Uttaradhunik Aina (The Postmodern Reflections; Govinda Raj Bhattarai, 2062).

6. Uttaradhuniktavad ra Samalakeen Yathartha (Postmodernism and Contemporary Reality; Rishi Raj Baral, 2063)

7. Uttaradhunik Jigyasa (Postmodern Curiosity; Krishna Gautam, 2064)

8. Uttaradhunik Bimarsha (Postmodern Discourse; Govinda Raj Bhattarai, 2064) 

These are central works dealing with postmodernism. Eight/ten other books of peripheral importance have been published, which have their bearing on postmodern background, and signal that our creations, reading culture and analysis are fast changing. For example, we can refer to Govinda Raj Bhattarai’s Paschimi Baleshika Chhitaharu (The Spray of the Western Drip-Edge, 2061), Pemba Tamang’s Aakhyandekhi  Parakhyansamma (From Fiction to Para-fiction, 2005) etc. Besides them, the works of Abhi Subedi, Mukesh Malla, Mohan Raj Sharma, Laxman Prasad Gautam and others have crossed the watermark of two dozens, which, albeit through scattered pieces of writing, have explained the postmodern idea, and are constantly registering their presence in the entire discourse. As a result, three students have registered themselves for PhD programme on this subject. The number of MA and MPhil dissertations submitted to various universities in Nepal has crossed three dozens. A detailed description of these works has been presented in the essay “The Entry and Practice of Postmodern Ethos in Nepali Criticism” in Uttaradhunik Bimarsha (Postmodern Discourses, 2064) by Govinda Raj Bhattarai.

              The grounds of shift in paradigms have become clear both in creation and criticism of Nepali literature. The objective of this write-up, however, is limited to the presentation of an introduction to postmodernism in Nepali short stories, though these references have been made to prepare a background for the same. Not only short stories, but other genres of literature too are in need of newer perspectives for their study and analysis. This is applicable to issues other than literature as well. There are three grounds pertinent to this claim:

a. Philosophical grounds

b. Structural grounds

c. Stylistic grounds

This short write-up, however, cannot address all these grounds in detail. I shall try to explain certain things in brief. Viewed from philosophical grounds, we should understand reality or truth as an entity relative to one’s perspective. We should believe in its instability, which needs constant amendment. We must believe that the grand-narratives have either died out, or they deserve an end. Accordingly, the inversion and absence of the older values should lead to an inquiry for newer truth, and following it, we should be ready to embrace a new, pluralistic path. Such endeavours will foreground those thoughts, ideas, individuals and cultures which were hitherto back-grounded and lead to the evolution of newer centres. Establishment of multiple centres is one of its aims. Resistance and deconstruction of a singular centre is its objective.

              Some newer structures can come up: generic disruption, inter-generic collage, indeterminacy of the limits of characterization and plot, and the presence of novelty and unconventionality; but all these are not imminent necessities, because novelty has been invited merely for breaking away from the dictates of classicality and fixity. We must be careful lest this becomes yet another instance of conservatism. Removal of one dictator should not be followed by the enthronement of another. Since it is a search for freedom from older constraints, postmodernism offers a room for exploring uncertain forms and processes. Postmodernism is in itself a new paradigm that can be constituted by many newer structures. The belief that no structure is, in itself, the ultimate will give birth to newer structures. Let newer values replace older structures (truths/illusions). All these manoeuvres undertaken to attain such a goal can be term ‘deconstruction’.

              This does not have many pre-determined stylistic grounds. An artist is always in an open-ended atmosphere. Let him/her play the role of an inventor. Since he/he is an individual breaking open from all types of structural bondages, there are ample examples of such rupture, but there are not many limiting rules. Many things depend on individual invention.  Pun, tone, trace and images appear. Opposition and satire can come forth. Fantastic imagination can occupy the central position. Many things are subjected to inversion. For this to happen, it is not necessary for any of the erstwhile ideologies to get erased. Be it any thought for that matter—realism, existentialism, Marxism, psychoanalysis or any other—its use in a postmodern context invites liquidity and novelty. After this, what follows next, in terms of its content, is a fourth issue for exploration. The content is the same; all that is new is the perspective to look at it, and that is always a different one. That is free of any finality.

Current Situation itself is Today’s Reality

Time has changed. Our socio-cultural conditions have changed. So have our educational, political and international scenarios. This change itself is the reality of our time. We write this change. Our new stories are about diasporic conditions. We have stories that envision our space in the cyber culture. There are stories that are committed to writing the issues of superhuman world, while there are stories on war and intercultural realities too. Ethnographic stories about various cultural groups have asserted for themselves a generic claim. Translated literature, transcreation, and deconstructive writings have several processes. Especially the marginalized characters, situations and conditions are getting into the body of contemporary writing. All these are new scenarios that invite newness. Accordingly, Nepali literature is taking newer turns and adopting newer styles.

The stories we are writing today are gradually moving away from modernist prescriptions. A group of writers has started adopting postmodern trends. The stories of the past could be analysed on grounds of their structure and system, but the present day stories demand post-structural analysis. They can be explained only through deconstructive and postmodernist approaches. The works in the past used to be more individualistic; but now, newer and darker forces bent on swallowing the individual have appeared, and so, our writing has turned towards the safety of the human kind, and the safety of the mass. Authors committed to ethnographic and cultural writing, gender awareness, and equality turn towards such issues. Their stories are the stories with postmodern consciousness.

Postmodern Study of Nepali Stories: A Background

Not much time has passed since Nepali stories started getting analysed from postmodern perspectives. Govinda Bhattarai’s article on deconstructive criticism and Nepali literature, published for the first time on 43 rd issue of Kavita in 2049 presented the theoretical aspect of such study. The stories of Indra Bahadur Rai, Dhruva Madhikarmi and Ramesh Raj Panta, and the poems of Udaya Niraula discussed in the article have been taken as instances to explain the deconstructive process. In reality, deconstruction is the pivot of the very philosophy of postmodernism.

A few years later, Bhattarai’s yet another essay “Nepali Kathama Nawaprayog: Drishti ra Ghanaghor Jungle ” (Drishti ra Ghanaghor Jungle: New Experimentations in Nepali Stories) was published in Garima , issue 249, 2060. This essay claims: “Dhruva Madhikarmi’s story collection Dhristi ra Ghanaghor Jungle collects fifteen short stories. Of them, four stories have become milestones of Nepali short stories. These four stories are: i) Arko Sudamako Katha (The Story of Another Sudama), ii) Sudama Number Dui (Sudama Number Two), iii) Dristi ra Ghanaghor Jungle (Drishti and the Dense Forest) and iv) Euta Dantyakathako Punarokti (The Retelling of a Fairy Tale). Of them, the last named story was published in the year 2039. This clearly indicates that Dhruva Madhikarmi was a pioneer in writing new stories. That time can be regarded as a point of departure.

Another important work in this line is “Uttaradhuniktavadko Sandarbhama Nepali Akhyan”, i.e., Nepali Fiction in the Context of Postmodernism. Though he article mentions ‘fiction’, it is basically an analysis and discussion of Nepali short stories. The work was published in Samakaleen Sahitya 45, 2060. This long write-up, in the beginning, presents the points to differentiate postmodernism from modernism. These points suggested by Ihab Hassan are considered valid even today.  For example, if viewed from modernist or structuralist perspective, our creation appears bound, while in the new, it is free. Similarly, a creation used to be considered a ‘product’ earlier, which is now considered a process. That used to demand reading; this demands de-reading. That used to be considered certain; this uncertain. That used to be considered timeless; this one is instantaneous. Besides these, this article, for the first time mentions the differences between narrative and anti-narrative, between reader-centric and author-centric discourses.

That essay, on the basis of the standards discussed above, makes an analysis of the stories included in the story-special edition of Samakaleen Sahitya . Samakaleen Sahitya had, in its 25 nd and 26 th issues, published 32 and 34 stories respectively, making the number of stories 66. All these stories were those written in the 50’s of Bikram Sambat. The essay under discussion has analysed those stories. While doing so, attempts were made to foreground the novelty seen in their style, plot, characterization, theme, incident, etc. The collections contained stories by Kavitaram Shrestha, Kumar Gyawali, Govinda Bahadur Malla, Dhuswa Saymi, Dhruva Chandra Gautam, Parashu Pradhan, Manju Kanchuli, Meera Rem Pradhan, Manu Brajaki, Madhav Lal Karmacharya, Ramesh Vikal, Bishwambhar Chanchal, Shailendra Sakar, Lil Bahadur Chhetri, Amod Bhattarai, Avinash Shrestha, Gopal Parajuli, Ismali, Santa Regmi, Khagendra Sangraula, Tej Prakash Shrestha, Rishi Raj Baral, Nayan Raj Pandey, Narayan Dhakal, BB Lakandi, Rajab, Basu Baral, Vijay Chalise, Sarubhakta, Gopal Ashk, Dhoomketu and others, which have, in one way or another, transgressed the limits of traditional short stories. The new stories have replaced the erstwhile central idea and structure.

A Model of New Analysis

              This write-up discusses how, at that time, postmodernist reading of the stories could be done. I remember a couple of contexts here. “Hari Sharan Ramko Punaragaman”, or “The Return of Hari Sharan Ram” by Ismali tells us that members of many communities that had been kept subjugated and oppressed for centuries are of the feeling that they should wipe out or peel off their own caste (surname). They feel that if they can do so, they can stay hidden or live without any identity, and by that token, get freed from servitude and stay free from inferiority complex. In the story, Hari Sharan replaced his real surname ‘Mochi’ by ‘Ram’. This is the consciousness of the oppressed class in the contexts of Madhes. The story depicts the Jhas and the Mishras, people of high and cultured social classes, as antagonists. Similar is the story “Sangram Bahadur Karki” by Khagendra Sangraula. Basu Baral’s “Nalu Arthat Nalika Deshar” too is a similar story.

              In Dhruva Madhikarmi’s “Krishna ra Sudhama -2”, Krishna and Sudama are depicted as businessmen, hard-pressed by the oddity of the present time. Sudama is no longer a poor man, and there is a different mystery underlying his love for Krishna. His wife is in a different role. This is a deconstructive story. Another example of deconstruction appears in Avinash Shrestha’s “Dantya Kathabhitrako Dantya Katha” — ‘A Fairytale inside a Fairytale’. This story presents Prince Dikpal in a different role. The story is a collage of poetry, play and fiction. By that token, the story transgresses generic limits by mixing them. This is a new possibility discerned in other literatures as well. Use of fantasy, which is one of the predominant features of postmodern stories, is found dominantly in the stories of Morash. Sarubhakta’s “Nani Dhangre ra Meri Najanmeki Chhori” is an example of nature writing, in which, characters have been picked from non-human world. This way, the writing that attempts to analyze novelty in 56 Nepali short stories has hinted the need to develop newer perspectives to look at Nepali short stories.

Some New Story Collections 

Since then, the stories have continued this newness and have registered a huge gallop in this direction. In the meantime, about fifty new storywriters have come up, some with collections and others in scattered writings. Many more are coming. Women writers are equally active; many writers are emerging from marginal groups. The number of translated stories too is on the rise.

              In all these works, novelty and shift of paradigm is clearly discernible. I hereby list a few works of this period in order of their year of publication:

Sunyawat (2058) by Hiranya Kumari Pathak

Uttarardha (2058) and Sitaharu (2060) by Parashu Pradhan

Baikhari (2059) by Mohan Raj Sharma

Chaubatoko Charaitira (2059) by Hiranya Bhojpure

Samaya Bimba (2059) and Sandheko Dain (2062) by Biwash Pokharel

Manasthiti (2060) by Badri Palikhe

Nepali Youn Katha (Nepali Sex Stories, Part I, 2060), edited by Pramod Pradhan

Mann Manai ta Ho (2060), Ani…(2062) and Nishabda Prashnaharu (2063) by Ilya Bhattarai

Sipahiki Swasni (2059), African Amigo (2060), Chhapamarko Chhoro (2064) by Mahesh Bikram Shah

Timi Gayeki Bhaye (2060) by Radhika Ray

Purush Gandh (2060) by Pradeep Menyangbo

Saathi Barshama Hridayaghat (2060) by Dhruva Chandra Gautam

Santrasta Aankhaharu (2061) by Matrika Pokharel

Pratinidhi Katha (2061) by Sanat Regmi

Tusharapat (2061) by Tita Tamrakar

Chhatima Taap Rakhera (2061) by Aamod Bhattarai

Baluwama Arko Nepal (2061) by Rakshya Rai

Bisancho (2061) by Ratna Prajapati

Andhakar (2061) by Dhruva Sapkota

Kajol Khatun (2061) by Phulman Bal

Maun Bidroha (2061) by Jaleshwari Shrestha

Dobhan (2061) by Bhagawan Chandra Gyawali

Sanghuro Dharatal (2062) by Chandra Kala Newar

Orchestra (2062) by Durga Binaya

Atmahanta (2062) by Narayan Dhakal

Swapnayatra (2062) by Narendra Raj Paudel

Hawan (2062) and Kagajma Dastakhat (2064) by Neelam Karki Niharika

Jadoma Bhok (2062) by Rajendra Parjuli

Dosro Prahar (2062) by Baba Neupane

Swapnabhanga (2062) by Shyam Krishna Shrestha

Upama (2062) by Sita Aryal

Ananta Pahiraharu (2062) by Sijana Sharma

Jhola (2062) by Krishna Dharabasi

Dosro Vishwayuddha (2062) by Roshan Thapa Nirab,

Nepali Youn Katha (Nepali Sex Stories – Part II, 2062), edited by Laxman Prasad Gautam

Dwandwa ra Yuddhaka Katha (Stories of Conflict and War, 2063), edited by Govinda Raj Bhattarai and Bishnu Bibhu Ghimire

Samakalin Nepali Dwandwa Katha (Contemporary Nepali Stories of Conflict, 2063), edited by Laxman Prasad Gautam

Tanya , Indrakamal ra Adhakar (2063) by Avinash Shrestha

Tirsana (2063) by Laxmi Upreti

Aama Januhos (2063) by Maya Thakuri

Bhoomigat (2063) by Bhagirathi Shrestha

Rajendra Bimalka Katha (2063) by Rajendra Bimal

Chiriyeko Mutu (2063) by Homnath Subedi

Bighatan (2063) by Harihar Khanal

Nepali Youn Katha (Nepali Sex Stories – Part II, 2064) edited by Bimal Bhaukaji

Aafanta Dushman (2064) by Basu Jammarkattel

Leela Dharana ra Kathaharu (2064) Ratna Mani Nepal

In a similar way, Stories from Nepal (2003), published from Sajha Prakashan, Selected Stories from Nepal (2005) published from Nepal Academy and Beyond the Frontiers published from Gunjan are works that include stories by 75 authors in English translation.

              More or less the same authors appear in English and Nepali versions. Those contemporary names have appeared in the works mentioned above. Of them, the majority had tilted towards postmodern writing. Time has made them turn towards postmodernism.

Newer Avenues of Creation and Nepali Stories

Postmodernism promotes diversity and plurality. It moves exploring newer avenues of creation. It seems alternatives to the centre-seeking tendency of the erstwhile practices. Accordingly, it develops newer parameters of criticism.

              Of the many avenues of creativity that have appeared today, cyber culture is one. The world has been pervaded by cyber practices today. Globalization has made the world culture singular. Such a world is quite mechanized. One strand of Nepali short stories reflects the influence of cyber culture. Our writers have started writing cyber stories. This issue has been discussed at length in my book Uttaradhunik Bimarsha — the Postmodern Discourses.

              Another avenue of creation is war. War literature occupies a formidable space in world literature. In case of Nepali literature, the preceding decade has bequeathed a huge body of war literature. Many storywriters have come forth with war as their themes. At the present time, war stories are making a huge gallop. The number of collections with war stories has crossed a dozen, and the number of storywriters is around a hundred. This is a big diversion. At the moment, unless we refer to the following collections, we will hardly know anything about war stories:

Dwandwa ra Yuddhaka Katha (Stories of Conflict and War) edited by Govinda Raj Bhattarai and Bishnu Bibhu Ghimire

Samakalin Dwanda Katha (Contempary War Stories) edited by Laxman Prasad Gautam

Chhamako Chhoro by Mahesh Bikram Thapa

Dwandwa ra Dhuwa by Punya Kharel

Aatmahant a by Narayan Dhakal

Aarambha arthat Suruwatka Kehi Katha by Dhir Kumar Shrestha

Jadoma Bhokka Kehi Katha by Rajendra Parajuli

Some stories in Beyond the Frontiers, edited by Padmavati Singh and Govinda Raj Bhattarai

Some stories from Andhakar by Dhruva Sapkota

Some stories from Maun Bidroha Jaleshwar Shrestha

Some stories in Kajol Khutun by Phulman Bal

Some stories from the collections of Rajendra Bimal

Some stories from Sitaharu by Parasu Pradhan

Some stories from Swapnayatra by Narendra Raj Paudel

For analysing war literature (also stories), one need to use the theory of trauma. Though they are yet to appear in collections, many writers are, at the moment, writing war stories. Their study holds different significance.

              There is yet another dimension of postmodern writing, namely disporic and emigrant writing. This poses a different scenario. Of those writing from abroad, the important ones are Hom Nath Subedi ( Chiriyeko Mutu , 2064), Rajab, Kamala Saroop, Govinda Giri Prerana, Nagendra Neupane, Mira Rem Pradhan, Rakshya Rai and others, while those from inside Nepali writing on such themes include Ilya Bhattarai, Padmavati Singh, Mahesh Bikram Shah, Manju Kachuli, Raju Babu Shrestha and many others, who have penned stories depicting hybridity and difference resulting from an intercultural encounter upon reaching foreign countries.

              Postmodernism also lends freedom to translation. At the moment, those who have been translating stories from world literature and enriching Nepali literary corpus include Khagendra Sangraula, Bhuvan Dhungana, Narayan Dhakal, Kumud Adhikari, Ram Chandra KC, Byakul Pathak and many others. This is a novel avenue. This has ushered Nepali story into a new realm of diversity and novelty.

              There is yet another new avenue of creation: environmental writing. This aspect is yet to enter Nepali story. However, its presence can be felt in poetry, essay and novels.

              Finally, another very important salient feature of postmodernism is deconstruction, rewriting and reinterpretation. This aspect has become apparently discernible in Nepali short story. There are several instances where inter-generic collage can be noticed in the structure of a story, exemplified by some of the stories of Sarubhakta, Avinash Shrestha, Dhruva Chandra Gautam, Roshan Thapa, Narayan Dhakal and others.  Of the many types of experimentation, we can notice newness in stories by “Sylvia” by Kumar Nagarkoti. Morash too is an extremely successful experimental storywriter. We can also notice such experimental nuance in Parasu Pradhan’s Sitaharu in the way he mixes characteristics of stories and novels in his fictions. The stories of Rajab too are equally experimental.

              Nepali short story is moving towards a new direction. It is assuming a very different style and technique. Characters, setting and incidents are myriad. From the ethnic world, not many works have poured in. Yet, writers like Phulman Bal, Nabin Bibhas, Indrish Sayal, Prakash Angdembe, Raj Kumar Dikpal, Indira Chongbang, Dhan Hang Subba, Dr. Bishnu Rai, Apsara Lawati, Bhadragol Kirati, Krishna Dev Chaudhary etc. have written stories that deserve a significant attention.

              A Nepali short story is fast assuming a global dimension. It is breaking away from traditionalism. They have, at the moment, started echoing the voices of the margin. These are the postmodern models of Nepali short story. It’s high time we had a separate collection of such stories. This is evolving.

Soles, Robert. Elements of Fiction: An Anthology . New York: Oxford, 1981.

Bhattarai, Govinda Raj. Paschimi Balesika Bachhita . Kathmandu: Nepal Academy, 2061.

—. Uttaradhunik Bimarsh. Kathmandu: Modern Books, 2064.

[Translation of Bhattarai’s “Nepali Kathama Uttaradhuniktako Prarambhik Sarvekshyan” by Mahesh Paudyal. Source: Rupantaran, 2076]

[Prof Govinda Raj Bhattarai, PhD (b. 1953) is a poet, novelist and critic of high repute. Professor of English at Tribhuvan University, he retired from his job a few years ago, and has since then devoted himself fully to literary works. He made his debut in writing quite early. His seminar works of repute include novels  Muglan ,  Socrates Footsteps  and Socrate’s Diary, theoretical non-fictions like   Kavyik Andolanko Parichaya  (Introduction to Poetic Revolutions),  Aakhyanako Uttaradhunik Paryawalokan  (Postmodern Study of Fiction),  Paschimi Balesika Bachhita  (Drops of Western Eaves ),   Uttaradhunik Aina  (Postmodern Mirror),  Uttaradhunik Bimarsha  (Postmodern Discourses) and  Samayabodh ra Uttaradhunikta  (Time Consciousness and Postmodernism). He is also among Nepal’s pioneering translators and essayists.  He can be reached at  [email protected] ]

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• DOI: 10.3126/JER.V1I0.7946
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Post-Modernism and Nepal's Education

• Shreeram Lamichhane , M. P. Wagley
• Published 16 April 2013
• Education, Philosophy
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Post-Modernism and Nepal's Education

• Shreeram P Lamichhane
• Mana P Wagley

The postmodernist critique of science consists of two interrelated arguments: epistemological and ideological. Both are based on subjectivity. First, because of the subjectivity of the human object, anthropology, according to the epistemological argument, cannot be a science; and in any event the subjectivity of the human subject precludes the possibility of science discovering objective truth. Second, since objectivity is an illusion, science, according to the ideological argument, subverts oppressed groups, females, ethnics, third-world peoples etc. ! e greatest accomplishment of postmodernism is the focus upon uncovering and criticizing the epistemological and ideological motivations in the social sciences.

DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jer.v1i0.7946

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Contemporary Nepali Literature: Fiction -- Postmodern Consciousness in the Contemporary Novel

Mukul dahal ( [email protected] ). editor: pen himalaya (penhimalaya.netfirms.com).

This essay is part three of the author's "Contemporary Nepali Literature: A Bird's Eye View."

Today's Age is the age of unrestrained consciousness and endless experimentations. The world today is a globalize village. Human civilization has seen an unimaginable development of information technology and human consciousness has experienced unforeseen changes in spheres of various activities. The impact of this all is obviously apparent in contemporary Nepali novels There is a discrepancy between the new culture that has evolved out of new changes and the culture that has been in the society for long. A group of people are in favor of new techno-culture and another group of people are worried about their long standing indigenous culture. Shova Bhattarai's novel Antahin Anta (The Endless End) has been set against such mongrelized culture. Swapna Sammelan (An Assembly in a Dream) is another novel worth mentioning in this connection. This is quite a fresh attempt to erase boundaries of time and collect characters from history, from cultural anecdotes and religious books and depict them as the live characters of cyber village. Peter J Karthak's Pratyek Thau, Pryatyek Manchhe (Each Place: A Man), Taranath Sharma's Nepal Dekhi Americasamma (From Nepal to America), Saru Bhakta's Samaya Trasadi (Temporal Tragedy) and Tathakathit (So-Called) too bring to light this cultural displacement.

Deconstructing or rewriting of the successful novels in the past has been another trend. It is believed that a text is never complete. There are numerous gaps to be filled or there are numberless possibilities to develop it into a new form. This notion has come into play in the area of Nepali fiction. Krishna Dharabasi's Sharanarthee (Refugee) is one of the most successful novels to represent this trend. In Sharanarthee Krishna Dahrabasi has drawn a corpus of characters from various sources: characters of different novels and short stories, the writers themselves in the guise of fictitious characters, the charecters drawn from the society and fictitious charecters in true sense. An echo of Roland Barthes's declaration of the death of the author too is heard in it. The characters themselves are conscious that they are being written by the author. They meet and put question to the author. Apart from the play of the characters, there are other experiments too in it. Existence of plural genres in the same work is one of them. A reader comes across various genres in Sharanarthee. History, essay, story and interviews all appear there. Characters appear and disappear throughout the novel. The author has deliberately planned it in order to display Leela (a game). Krishna Dharabasi has become a major Leela writher since the literary movement Leela Lekhan (Leela Writing) was founded by Indra Bahadur Rai some decades ago. The movement uses a queer mixture of oriental philosophy and most recently developed literary theories and principles in other areas of knowledge. Dharabasi's another novel Aadha Baato (Half Way) has opened up new horizon of literary discourse. The volume can traditionally be called his autobiography but he has chosen to call it a novel. Aadha Baato is the story of his own life and the characters are all real people active members of society: poets, artists, politicians, teachers, professors, peasants, businessmen and so on.

A kind of pastiche art can be seen in Dhruba Chandra Gautam's Agnidatta+Agnidatta , one chivalric Agnidatta of the age of Chivalry and the other his modern incarnation. Dhruba Chandra Gautam's colossal output and ceaseless experimentation to come up with something new each time has placed him in the center stage of Nepali fiction. There is an ample blend of fact and fantasy in his novels. Banira Giri's Shabdateet saantanu (Santanu Beyond Words) is not in the prose fit for a novel as such. It is very much like a prose poem.

Nepali novelists are also attempting to explore and establish new centres. They no longer depict the stereotypic characters such as an ideal protagonist, a landlord, a bourgeoisie or a pretty damsel or a protagonist essentially from high caste group. People are not troubled by such elements but by the consumerized culture or some conscious dark force. Khagendra Sangraula's Junkiriko Sangeet (Music of the Fireflies) and Pradeep Nepal's Ekkaisau Shataabdiki Sumnima (Twenty First Century Sumnima ) seek to delve into such collapsing social institutions and emerging new values. Saru Bhakta's Paagal Basti (Lunatics' Colony), Taruni Kheti (Maid Farming), Samaya Trasadi and Chuli (The Peak) explore new centers.

Contemporary Nepali Literature: A Bird's Eye View

• Historical Background
• Lyrical Poems (Ghazals and Lyrics)
• Postmodern Consciousness in the Contemporary Novel
• The Short Story
• Drama and Theater
• Bibliography

Last Modified: 11 March 2004

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"The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries." -Rene Descartes

Postmodernism in Nepali Literature: A Theoretical Mismatch

• Mahesh Paudyal                                                                                           

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Postmodern Conditions in Nepalese ELT: An Interview with Dr Govinda Raj Bhattarai

Interviewer: Bal Ram Adhikari

Professor of English, Govinda Raj Bhattarai’s career straddles English language teaching and literary writing. He has contributed to the field of Nepalese ELT as an ELT practitioner, material producer, and teacher educator.  A former NELTA president, Bhattarai is also synonymous with postmodernism in Nepali literature.  His writing has ushered in the mode of Nepali creative writing, especially Nepalese criticism, essays and fiction, what we call the post-modern era in Nepali literature. He is appreciated and also criticized for the use of subjective perspective in criticism, fusion of facts into fiction in essays, and intertexuality in fiction writing. Here we are trying to explore the dynamic space between postmodern thoughts and ELT practice in Nepal– the areas Prof. Bhattarai has been long associated with.

1 Seven years ago you co-authored an article entitled English language teachers at the crossroads highlighting the possibilities and challenges Nepalese ELT practitioners had ahead. Could you elaborate on your use of English teachers being at the crossroads from the postmodern perspective of the paradigm shift in theory and practice that we have been experiencing in all academic fields?

Bal Ram, as I am representing my nation, that is, a unique   existence made up of a particular history and geography and politics, I am aware of this time and space that is giving voice to my observation into the quantification of a very vague, say abstract, phenomenon. This phenomenon is philosophy, because your question is ultimately related to philosophy.  Therefore, I must ask your permission to allow me to use some extra bites (of space) for my words so that I can make ‘our’ position clear. Extra space because your question demands such an answer as reads like an intertext or transtext that is like a text made up of various texts, and yet no text is written there. This may demand some elaboration naturally.

In pragmatics or discourse analysis, even socio-political beliefs like one’s religion, education, social relations, or any activity one partakes every day are taken as a text. Every moment one lives contributes to a larger text.  That text draws its meaning from innumerable disciplines and natural facts. In fact the world since time immemorial has been governed by one philosophy or the other — of politics, art, literature, culture, science, religion.  In totality, say of LIFE.

Philosophy is like a package program that we require to live this life as a person or a society.  Every such philosophy is supplied by a particular TIME and SPACE.  Every linguistic, cultural or religious group,   a race or nation or any territory cultivates its own philosophy over a period of time that governs the life-cycle of the people. That package has everything for the followers’ education, their literary principles, marriage systems or death rites, interpretation of dream, role of a mother or use of painting for that matter. Sets of philosophy keep changing from time to time.   Sometimes if the ‘consumer’ communities or nations grow weaker, they are forced to ‘buy’ some new sets like modern (or foreign) goods from alien lands. And gradually, people are forced to relinquish their native or indigenous philosophy and adopt or gradually nativize the alien one (s).   A community cannot survive without a philosophy or a set of belief system. Something should occupy its mind all the time.

The Oriental world and our ancestors had their own set of philosophy. It was quite rich, almost incomparable to any in the world, but the outside world (especially the West) encouraged us to humiliate our own mother, and we were forced to adopt a new mother. It was colonization of not only land, but also of our mind and thought, and attitude towards life. This kept destroying us and different parts of the world for more than three hundred years. We were destined to be free, ultimately, but were left dented and semi-paralyzed with a master slave ‘dichotomy’ and a psychosis of ‘we can’t do, we do not deserve, we are inferior’, and worst of all, ‘we don’t have’. Their so called enlightenment rescue project had half destroyed us. Frantz Fanon, in his The Wretched of the Earth (1963 trans.)  has rightly said:  Colonization is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.

Yes, we were perverted in this, as our native philosophy was disfigured gradually by them. And we didn’t know. Our geography was not colonized  but our minds were. Even today, we have no regrets, and feel content to witness an avalanche of irreparable loss eroding us every moment, because we are brainwashed to accept all defeats with a smile. This was the first wave of all driving us away from our own ‘civilization’. This is teaching us every moment to be like them and not us. How ridiculous!

Now I would like to touch upon the second wave in passing that tried to obliterate what was left after the first calamity. The second wave was the philosophy based on sheer materialism that was represented by Marxism. Slogans for equality and material development brought the second wave of whirlwind easily. At that moment man lost his faculty of reasoning temporarily; as a result that swept away much that was left of what human beings possessed as precious values.

The second wave also believed in colonizing crowds of mass   within their own ideological cages, and kept them warring militantly against great nothingness, devastating people in an unprecedented scale. They obliterated a permanent world (of native and indigenous philosophies) with a utopian haven of false assurances. We have seen millions of brothers and sisters being divided into classes, and prepared for unending clashes; gone for this and left in ruins and ravages. This philosophy proved a successful destroyer of native brands of philosophical packages. These are the greatest enslaving campaigns human beings underwent until the dawn of the 21 st century. These two together clouded some centuries of human history. Both these waves were great homogenizing forces.

Have we ever stopped and thought of these forces? These factors deeply disturbed the human mind, especially in our part of the world.    It may take centuries to heal the scar and to repair the moral, or say spiritual, degradation.

We were the great architects of our own education, in fact we had crafted a draft for world education, but since the lock to its entrance was broken with the western key, we have become oblivious of the treasure rooms. Since then we became great followers of the western world.

As we are bereft of everything, we feel so; we possess this sort of inferiority because we do not look at our own faces, so we are following them.  Our gullibility sells at a high price, so we are used to mimicking everything.  Greek philosopher Epictetus had proclaimed: Only the educated can be free, but today we can see in our contexts the reverse seems to be the reality . I can hardly see any trace of our education system based on our values or philosophy of education.

Let me relate this to your concern of a paradigm shift. Modernism was a kind of hegemony that had its roots in the west, and was nurtured by materialism because modern science fed it, though not as sheer as that in Marxism.  In fact the west governed the world of thought, and so of philosophy and art, for about a hundred years, ending in the Second World War in the west. All our activities from writing to teaching were molded accordingly. Colonization transported them very easily. However, history shows that modernism freed the world from the ignorance and brutality of the dictatorial past, but then people wanted more options, newness and greater degrees of freedom.  In apt words, they wanted to keep progress of the world going like new inventions that can never be stopped.

It was during 1970s that this desire for progress led man to postmodern convictions. Postmodernism encouraged man to stand boldly for his freedom, and to possess an ever questioning mind to find the truth for him. Let him explore his own personal truths, let him protect his local truths and let him stand for his national truths as well and defend his beliefs. It is therefore that new disciplines like ethnic studies, women’s studies, cultural studies, diasporic studies etc are emerging today. Truth is the ultimate means to happiness and one can gain a new truth by doubting his present condition, his status, or all accepted beliefs and facts. Stuart Sim (2012) regards postmodernism as a rejection of many, if not most, of the cultural certainties on which life in the West has been structured over the past couple of centuries. He regards the Enlightenment as a western project to oppress humankind, and to force it into certain set ways of thought and action not always in its best interests. Postmodernists are invariably critical of universalizing theories as well as being anti-authoritarian in their outlook. To move from the modern to the Postmodern is to embrace skepticism about what our culture stands for and strives for.

At the same time I feel postmodernism is both a liberating as well as, and no less than, a homogenizing force. Contradictorily, it promotes ‘individual’ existence but is yoked to technology in such a way that the latter has been the tool for the promotion of the former. Therefore, postmodern features we experience are characterized by a ubiquitous phenomenon; moreover instead of being a liberating agent, it is in fact an all-homogenizing force.  A sheer hegemony, and another kind of all encompassing techno-driven colony. Postmodern premises defeated one grand narrative of dictatorship and colonialism, and at the same time this cultivated a newer variety (of colonialism) with the help of technology known as postmodern condition in Lyotard’s words. A bigger grand narrative can be seen.  Despite this, the only hope this promises us is local freedoms in different scales, though we cannot breathe without technology and we cannot revive the local power we lost. Let’s move ahead with boons and curses both on our heavy shoulders.  This is our present predicament and sits on our shoulder like a boulder on Sisyphus’ head.

For me postmodernism is nothing more than a search for freedom, freedom from all sorts of bondage, and a deep search for alternatives to the existing values and principles. It is a quest for remaking, resetting, rethinking, revisiting, reinventing– everything that matches the pace of time. It also indicates a faster pace of human progress (or decline) in a completely techno driven world.

Postmodern is a philosophy of options and alternatives, it calls for a break with the structure bound, center seeking modernism. This has had a deep influence all over the world and global forces spread it very fast. We can see traces of this in Indian literature and critical works produced as early as 1970s. Nepal was attracted much later.

I introduced the term Deconstruction as vinirmaan into Nepali for the first time in 1991. (Please refer to Kavyik Aandolanko Parichaya ; Introduction to Poetic Movements published by Royal Nepal Academy).  In a span of twenty years now, we have traversed a long route and are near the centre of Nepalese philosophy of postmodernism, which stands first of all for freedom from the fear of dictatorship, because this philosophy empowers the modern man to be free. This may mean differently for the rest of the world.

Against this historical and theoretical backdrop, let me come back to your concern of ELT. Yes, this idea dawned upon me when I became aware of enormous changes being introduced in critical theories of Indian academia. I was also aware of the western publications where the new paradigm had permeated all the fields of academic and scholarly activities. New paradigm had been a buzz word, and they indicated postmodernism as a great change agent. Subsequently I had begun to see new horizons in the Nepalese contexts as well. Gangaram-ji was also aware of this so we drafted that idea and published an article titled English language teachers at the crossroads in 2005 issue of the Journal of NELTA.  However, our ideas were crudely shaped. We were a bit skeptical.

The following year, I had an opportunity to attend the 40th TESOL conference held in Tampa, Florida. It was 2006, I had participated for the first time in such a huge (truly international) conference of ELT professionals. I had never imagined that the President of NELTA would be a non-entity among some 8,000 participants (all leading figures, each leading a world of innovative ideas with the support of technology and paradigm shift). The participants represented different corners of the world.  In fact I was at a loss to see such an immense teaching ‘industry’ that had grown so vast and so fast without ‘our’ notice. It struck me not because the number was large, but because I saw Nepal’s ELT could be plotted nowhere till then. It was disseminating all traditional values based on structuralism.

By writing that article, I wanted ‘my’ language teachers to be aware of the changing world scenario, to be aware of a great paradigm shift experienced in the field of our profession, that is, language teaching. I  use the word ‘my’ as a President of NELTA because my duty was to address all the ELT professionals in the country, to tell them what changes are taking place in the philosophy of teaching and learning, so that they can cope up with the changing situation. In fact, each and every action of life is geared according to some philosophy.

Yes, my intention was to remind them of the ‘postmodern’ turn, or to tell them how things (beliefs and philosophies) have changed in the world and how these have changed our world, that is, language teaching. We spoke out clearly — philosophy of thought and perspectives have changed, teaching methods and learning techniques have changed, teaching materials have changed, we are facing a world governed by drastic changes. If we are not aware of this, our traditional, rule-governed ‘structural’ methods will surely fail us and leave us in a blind alley.

I could tell them the breaking paradigm shifts proudly because I  felt almost ‘desperate’ to see a different world of ELT professionals– the language teachers, materials producers, publishers and technology   at TESOL conference in Tampa .

A fast developing electronic culture is introducing miracles every day.  Words have now got wings, and voices can fly and visually the world is omnipresent– I saw great magical works being performed there.

I had used the word postmodern in Nepali, referring to its critical zones. But I was wary of using this in teaching industry, so we in passing mentioned the word ‘postmodern’ categorically.  Now it has become a buzzword in our academic world, this has been introduced in the syllabus and textbooks as well in research– though this has led to much frustration and confrontations. The use of postmodern may still sound an avant-garde’s effort before a dogmatic noun? However, no other word can capture the aggressive time that was (and is) molding our life at an unprecedented scale.

It has been more than two decades now that I have been using the term specifically to characterize some of our literary efforts in Nepal. But gradually, I began to feel that there is no field of knowledge or life untouched by a kind of newness. People have begun to feel the expansion of global force and its encroachment into their private world. The giant is all encompassing, and so modern life becomes impossible to survive without succumbing to it. Is it our defeat if the global world flattens us into one? There is no answer in this flat earth, in the words of Thomas Friedman in his The World is Flat (2002).

2. Postmodern thought is taken as the continuous process of suspecting, revisiting and redefining our beliefs in the nature of truth and of knowing, and the nature of reality. What can be the implication of this epistemological and ontological process of thought for teaching in general and English language teaching in particular?

You are right.  In answer to question 1 above, I have made it clear that postmodernism claimed a great shift in total philosophical standpoint.  Like any other philosophies that provided a departure from existing practices, this also brought all encompassing effects.  There is no field of knowledge or skill, the foundation of which is unaffected by this paradigm shift.

In the beginning I concentrated on the principles of writing and criticism, mostly in Nepali literature. A whole decade of my writing was confined to the introduction to and practice of postmodern criticism.  Gradually my duty expanded and my attention drew towards its total effects.  I presented    for the first time a paper entitled Postmodernism in Education in 2008. It was in Sukuna Multiple Campus of Morang. Never before had I faced such a vehement criticism in my academic career.  Some fundamentalist teachers attacked me severely and the dogmatic critics who were backed by dogmatic political beliefs were against my proposal. My points were: doubt your beliefs and works, stop and question your practices, may be you were wrong so far, may be you can discover new unexplored areas which can open up new vistas in teaching.  Philosophies keep changing and so do teaching principles. You put a question: Is my method of teaching appropriate? Are we following appropriate curriculum, or do we need to stop and rethink over it?  All our socio-political values and norms have changed; they are changing so fast, so should not our system of education follow such changes endlessly?

There is no fixed set of values and truths or our perspectives.  In my childhood days the philosophy of education was guided by a maxim (in Sanskrit). It read:

laalayet  bahabo doshaa  taadayet bahabo gunaa

tasmaat putram cha shisyam cha  laalayennatu taadayet

I learned this by rote (it was in our textbook) in grade VIII, so whenever the teacher punished us physically, I thought this is the way how teaching was prescribed in the shastras. This verse literally means: there are many defects in caressing or loving, and many benefits of beating,   therefore, every son as well as a disciple (student) should be beaten.

This philosophy remained our norm for more than three thousand years. At the dawn of the twenty first century, we are shocked to find that this moral principle excludes girl children from education, and moreover this advocates beating the boys severely. But we have realized that this principle was totally wrong, and so female education is given higher propriety. Moreover, teachers and parents are warned against child abuse, which includes beating or corporal punishment or any kind of harassment– mental or physical.  Now our educators are changed and the persons to be educated are changed, so the contents of education, methods and materials of teaching are changing in such a way that we cannot believe what the world is doing today.

We can hear the slogans for girl education, women education, inclusive education, education for the deprived like blind and deaf or prisoners and criminals.  We are correcting our mistakes of yesterday all the time, at every step of life. Our philosophies are temporary, always at a state of flux, keep changing continually.  This is only an instance.

I kept convincing people of the paradigm shift, and gradually I got more support from them, especially from Prof B N Koirala of the M Phil program supported my cause. With his support, I delivered some lectures there, likewise some guest lectures were arranged annually at KU too. In the meanwhile,   an article appeared in Shikshya Journal of Secondary Education board.  My campaign invited me to a country wide tour; I visited from Ilam to Surkhet, Jhapa to Mahendranagar. Postmodernism visited with me in the form of literary principles and writing, of thinking and teaching, and many more. I presented papers, delivered speeches; attended discussion sessions, and the new generation now became quite aware of the nature of the new truth. I wrote not less than 500 pages in a matter of a decade. Consequently, everybody started to realize that the time has changed, our values and beliefs have changed, and the very foundation of existing philosophy is shedding its old leaves.

This foundation of philosophy is called epistemology.  I need not define this concept any further. But then, since we teachers are supposed to earn our living by trading in or dealing with principles of education or teaching we need to know the very meaning of epistemology. It is no more than what we are doing, which education we are imparting, what kind of truth it contains, which truth we consider final, what its foundation is, and the question of whether the foundation is strong or shaking, or has already been demolished in other parts of the world.  This is not specific to teachers only, what happens if a farmer does not know about the new breed of animals or seeds and manures and continues with old practice? He will spoil everything and ruin himself. So we traders of truth should also be aware of the new brands of education on sale in the world market.

As a result of untiring efforts of years, our academicians saw the worth of this element and they allocated some teaching hours to the M Ed Education course.  Likewise, postmodernism has crept into almost all Masters’ level courses. In a matter of a decade we can see a different picture today. Education stands for a whole cycle of processes– from the production of learning materials to their delivery mechanism and the evaluation of outcomes. In each stage we are (and must be) just provisional, tentative, keep our decisions at a state of flux so that we remain open to anything new. This is how knowledge and education widens and broadens.

Postmodern perspectives will help our teachers realize that nothing is final, not even the best principle in practices. No truth is final, no belief and practice.   We must keep on looking for new possibilities. And technology has expedited this in an unprecedented scale.  It is like applying Derrida’s principle of gaps and absences. If you doubt you can find a new truth hidden, unexplored in the gap.  Truth comes from absences. And a final thing is never achieved, we are chasing a mirage because our physiological world also keeps changing, the pace of techno-culture has brought changes at a tremendous speed in our belief system, value system.  It is here that we also apply another postmodern term differance that Derrida coined, which stands for the perpetual difference in meaning, and the nature of truth and reality.  You try to grasp and it evades. This very principle applies to education too.

The second point is ontology, a branch of philosophy that discusses how truth is tasted, or what is it that exists? This also leads to the question of ‘existence’ or ‘being’ and its classification. This forms the content of knowledge.  This allows us insights into the nature of objects and existence and ways of measuring the same. We need to know this because we need to define air, water, mass, solid, feeling, anger, and sleep, or anything that we are supposed to teach.

Our experiences related to ontology are not final either. Therefore, knowledge system is not decisive, and we need to believe in the fast changing nature of everything including philosophy. And this applies to education. The pace of change was quite slow in the past, now it has become tremendously fast.

The whole of education system is manifested physically in curriculum, textbook, evaluation cycles, yet its soul is the content, what we teach.  We need to leave our whole education system open ended, and in a state of flux. ‘Open ended’ will be a better word so that you can add or delete or modify the particles of truth with the change in our belief.         As a result, some outdated beliefs will be deconstructed and replaced with new ones, the way a cycle of gradual decay and regeneration is unendingly active in nature. So, education system as a whole should be like belief system in eastern epistemology of revolving in chakra, that is, the cycle.

In the absence of doubting mind and skepticism, education will be devoid of creativity, innovation and regeneration. ELT is not an exception.  Every thing comes under these philosophical premises. Actual students, their teachers and those who confine themselves to the functional or performance level may not perceive its underlying level. This calls for the critical and reflective eyes to see the undercurrent.

When we come to a deeper level of philosophy, we come face to face with a problem that forces us to think about what we are doing, and to question whose philosophy is guiding us. Not only ELT, the whole of education system is based on western epistemology, or ontology for that matter, ours is completely different and fully ignored. I regret this state (of our epistemology and ontology) being ignored. The whole of our education world is misfounded on ‘their’ system or pattern.

Whatever may that be, the performance level cannot notice this. A core, national body of educationists should oversee and take diversions and decisions, which is not easy either. We don’t have a separate philosophy for language teachers. But then, I made it clear before, the postmodern turn has a deep influence over our total system of thought and function. Now the world should accept the existence of margins. Which means there is no ‘only one’ English, there are multiple varieties, each seeking their identity and recognition. Secondly, we no longer stick to a prescriptive viewpoint and accept or reject a piece of text accordingly.

Nepal is also producing its own variety which may be colored by its sound, vocabulary system, and sentence structure. Every native variety is sure to be colored by it language and color. So we must be liberal   towards this to some extent, this will be ratified by the principle of multiple centers, or decentering of a grand narrative– that we cannot produce perfect English. We are spending more than 30 percent of our budget allocated to English education. What is the use of this if we fail to reap the harvest of our investment? Innumerable factors are sure to make our variety a different one. So we speak English the way we do, read it the way we do, and write the way we can. This does not mean that we will be happy with its creolization or pidginization. My point is, let us not worry too much, let us not feel humiliated and debase ourselves.  We do learn it for functional values, which stands for communication needs of different types. Writing represents the core of Nepali variety. We should not hesitate to welcome creative writings in different genres.  We have produced a quite substantial number of books in both literary and technical English. Creative writing should be regarded as a variety of Nepalese literature. Ours has been excluded so far. And we cannot wait until we produce the English of British or American or even Australian variety. Among world varieties, Nepali will be one, though each of sub-centers will have one epicenter that will regulate our English to a large extent, not to a full extent, however. I have explained to you why we think so. We have planted this tree, and it has started bearing fruit which will help us grow globally.

I welcome firstly all translators of Nepal to come boldly ahead and play a more vibrant role in the enhancement of knowledge industry; I suggest them to use untranslatable native terms and concepts instead of losing our sense or choosing a circumlocutory path. Let the world know we do a namaste and not good morning .

I welcome secondly all writers from the Nepali Diasporas to use untranslatable Nepali terms as they are in their English texts. Don’t try to make your texts read as if they were written by a perfect British or American writer. This applies to all creative writers using English as a medium and writing about Nepal, wherever they are.

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4 Responses to Postmodern Conditions in Nepalese ELT: An Interview with Dr Govinda Raj Bhattarai

The curriculum which is developed based on traditional subjects or disciplines emphasizes on factual knowledge rather than procedural knowledge that creates boredom on students. Carrying many books and exercise books to school has de-motivated students towards school and its environment. Moreover, having heavy content in different subjects do not get students out of routine work that obviously destroys interest and enthusiasm towards life. Excessive use of paper pencil test has really given torture to students as they are given pressure on kind of repeating dull work (on factual information) from early ages. These all have been helping to exterminate the creative and critical thinking of the students. Similarly, Teacher-centered teaching learning process has been helping to develop more dependent learners. To the extreme it has damaged the normal psychological development of the students. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce school counselor or psychological clinics in school. We need to sit for a while, think, reflect and go with enthusiasm and courage to transform ourselves from traditional way of teaching to learner center approach. We need to be committed to create child friendly environment in which every child will feel secure and free to express their thoughts, his or her ways of learning. Better not to give always lectures to students standing in front of class thinking that I know everything but encourage them to learn, help them create knowledge on their own. As knowledge is transitional it keeps on changing. Make them creative and critical thinking skill so that they can find their ability and can make progress in their lives. Time has already gone. I think it is late to make teachers, parents………aware on knowledge construction rather than knowledge transmission. It is necessary to help students to construct knowledge. Therefore, our teaching learning should not be always based on teacher centered approach but ……………on which we need to focus on their interests, capacity as well as need. We should not treat them as an objects rather than a subject to be treated equally and valued their opinions and views. It is necessary to teach them problem solving, cooperative, collaborative and critical thinking and creative skills from the nursery class. It is necessary to understand that the children need to listen to their internal voices in their individual minds for their successful learning. We need to involve them project type of learning where the students can search, find and experiment as well as learn on the topic of their interests. Instead of teaching them factual knowledge they need to be encouraged to explore the topic that is the successful learning. This is the era for knowledge construction not for knowledge reproduction. Therefore, emphasis need to be given knowledge generation. Together, the changes necessitate a rethinking of our most basic metaphors for conceptualising the nature of knowledge. From being something noun- like that can be acquired and stored for reasonably predictable future use, knowledge might now be more appropriately considered using verb-like metaphors (Gilbert 2005), as something constantly in circulation, creating the energy and condition s for even further knowledge generation in the spaces between people and things (Castells 2000). Respected gurus Mentioned: doubt your beliefs and works, stop and question your practices, may be you were wrong so far, may be you can discover new unexplored areas which can open up new vistas in teaching. Philosophies keep changing and so do teaching principles. You put a question: Is my method of teaching appropriate? Are we following appropriate curriculum, or do we need to stop and rethink over it? All our socio-political values and norms have changed; they are changing so fast, so should not our system of education follow such changes endlessly? Thank you Anil

[…] Postmodern Conditions in Nepalese ELT: An Interview with  Dr Govinda Raj Bhattarai […]

thank you very much so far as policy is concerned they are sounds in terms of not in achieving but in terms of tusk of elephant…….. however if we see or read curriculum regarding its philosophical base we find many terms are used like child centered, democracy, activity based,…………, …………. i think they are written for the rhetoric. words are written with no definition. it may be to show others and if we raise questions on what basis we are developing curriculum? what is the philosophy? , theory? practice? when we talk about education we need to be very clear on some of the questions before starting developing curriculum, or anything ……………..like what is knowledge? how is it created? who are children? who are teachers? what is content? teaching learning process? ………….. they are not explicitly written. it is necessary to write them explicitly in the document. similarly, every teacher also needs to develop his/her philosophy of education. while developing a belief above mentioned things may be considered. Do i believe on knowledge transmission or knowledge construction? similarly knowledge is god given or transitional. if knowledge is transitional than what is the use of transmitting them……similarly if we believe that students are human being. Do we treat them with humanity? Do we respect them? Do we value their opinions? i think the students of this age need to develop some qualities like cooperative and collaborative skills, self discipline, active, creative and critical and independent, love for life long learning and knowledge of technology, respecting the diversity………… These skills need to developed from the first day of schooling. therefore, the question is for us where we are creating such environment in our surrounding……………………………. Anil

It is a tragic fact to observe in our education system that, as our Guru says, we can hardly see any trace of our education system based on our values or philosophy of education. So it is very high time that we were aware of this fact. Nevertheless, it is never too late to amend, to learn, and to awake. So let’s join hands and let the world know that we say Namaste, not good morning. I suppose we can begin this by Goodmaste! That is, we should not delay to develop our own variety of English, Nenglish, or Nepanglish, or Nepali English, or any.

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Modernist art and Uttam Nepali

Abhi Subedi

The demise of the senior painter Uttam Nepali (1937-2021) triggered some discussions about modernism in Nepali art. But this came in the form of news reporting and interpretations, which is an encouraging surge of interest in modern arts in Nepal. I was very impressed by the quality of questions that the young reporters asked me, especially about the origin of modernism in art and literature at the same time. Nepali's death also triggered some discussions among the artists and academics who are proposing to organise an online discussion about modernism in Nepali paintings, and Uttam Nepali's role in that. I have suggested to them to call it a "modernist" movement in Nepali painting. Though I cannot discuss the reasons for that alternative in detail here, I can at least allude to the need for such a mode of discussion.

Modernism is not only discussed seriously, but is also bandied about by art and literary critics in Nepal. The theorists of modernism being unable to explain it with a sense of finality call it an "unfinished project", which has become a favourite expression among both admirers and detractors of this concept everywhere. In Nepal, modernism is the most extensively used term among both literary and art critics. A confession is in order. In my entire oeuvre of Nepali literary and art criticism published over several decades, I have not been able to categorically and definitively explain the traits of modernism. That is partly because of the nature of modernism, and partly because of the fast and uncertain shifts in the priorities of modern Nepali society.

The Nepali public sphere is very politically oriented. As shown by the elections and spread of organisations, the influence of communists is pervasive in Nepal. Modernism is not a favourite subject of discussion among communists. There is no space to discuss the reasons for that. But the heuristic value of the term "modernism" is very high for us in order to discuss such topics as art, literature and architecture in Nepal.

Modernist style

Art, especially paintings and poetry, are credited to have made modernism a subject of discussion in Nepal. In the following section, I will only focus on the modernism introduced by art and artists. And finally, discuss the features of Uttam Nepali's modernist style in art.

King Mahendra (1920-72) who took power after dissolving the first elected Parliament and jailing the charismatic first elected prime minister of the people Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala (1914-82) in 1960 had some ideas about making Nepal a modern state. But his advisors and the elites who were around him did not have any clear ideas about the shape of such modernism. Mahendra knew, however, that Nepal, which was a semi-feudal state, couldn't be modernised without implementing land reform and changing the patterns of land holdings. He also appeared to have believed that the land reform programme was part of the modern imagination. That is a different subject. But Mahendra curiously saw the paintings of Lain Bangdel (1919-2002), and the music of Ambar Gurung (1938-2016), and some literary works of writers as the forms of modernism. He encouraged Bangdel and Gurung to work in Nepal. King Mahendra convinced Bangdel who lived abroad, in London at that time, to come to Nepal. Bangdel in full coordination with the king's people came to Nepal and made the first exhibition of his paintings at Saraswati Sadan of Tri-Chandra College in 1962. They were modernist abstract paintings. The king inaugurated the exhibition and encouraged Bangdel to stay on and take responsibilities at the academy.

Modernism as a form in art can be said to have begun with that exhibition. That was a turning moment in the field of modernist art creation and exhibition in Nepal. Nepali artists were exposed to modern techniques way back in the 1920s in Calcutta when Chandra Man Singh Maskey (1900-84) and Tej Bahadur Chitrakar (1898-1971) were sent for training in modern art by Chandra Shamsher Rana (1863-1929) in 1918. The period was very interesting. A debate between Orientalist and Western schools was going strong at the art school in Calcutta. My theory, which I have written in a lengthy article published in a magazine of art (Sirjana, No 7, 2021), is that modernism in Nepali art began when these two artists returned and started working. But Bangdel, who introduced later fully modernist paintings, was followed by Uttam Nepali who came not long after that after completing his education in Lucknow, and made exhibitions of his abstract paintings at this and other places.

By opening the exhibitions of modern painters and encouraging modern musicians, Mahendra clearly showed his interest in modernism. But the king's interest in modernist paintings could also be interpreted as part of his policy of ostensibly showing the modern consciousness in arts and literature, and giving continuity to his dictatorial non-partisan rule known as Panchayat that ended after the people's uprising in 1990.

Anarchist thoughts

But what is the spirit of modernism that we see in paintings then? My view is that the modernist painters and poets found their mediums useful to express their free and sometimes little anarchist thoughts and feelings. Remarkably, Uttam Nepali, being both a poet and painter, used his modernist paintings to create a cohort of painters and poets. That was a cohort of modernist sensibilities and consciousness represented by both poets and painters. Poets whose poems were selected by the artist Uttam Nepali for the paintings exhibited at the Nepal Academy of Fine Arts in September 1975 are all considered modernists by Nepali critics.

The poets selected by Uttam Nepali belong to this category of poets that include modernist poets like Iswor Ballabh (1937-2008), Tulasi Diwasa, Bairagi Kanhila, Madan Regmi, Banira Giri (1946-2021), Basu Shashi (1936-92), Mohan Koirala (1926-2007), Krishna Bhakta Shrestha, Dwarika Shrestha, Kali Prasad Rijal, Upendra Shrestha (1936-2010), Mohan Himanshu Thapa and Bhupi Sherchan (1937-90) and others. The 32 paintings mark a mood of experimentation in form, and the free use of motifs for both paintings and poetry. Poets to avoid direct censorship chose to write in modernist forms and styles. These 32 abstract paintings represent even today the essence of the mood and message of modernism in Nepali paintings and poetry.

But I do not want to end by giving the impression as though Bangdel and Uttam Nepali were the only two modernist painters. They are mentioned because they were the pioneers and also we are paying tribute to Uttam Nepali, alias Uttam Dai. The essence of the power of the paintings of our times can be captured by correctly assessing the works of many modernist painters of Nepal, and the spirit of the works of the cohort that also includes the modernist Nepali poets. 

Abhi Subedi Abhi Subedi is a poet, playwright and a columnist.

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Postmodernism in Nepali literature a theoretical mismatch

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Postmodernism

Postmodernism

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on March 31, 2016 • ( 22 )

Postmodernism broadly refers to a socio-cultural and literary theory, and a shift in perspective that has manifested in a variety of disciplines including the social sciences, art, architecture, literature, fashion, communications, and technology. It is generally agreed that the postmodern shift in perception began sometime back in the late 1950s, and is probably still continuing. Postmodernism can be associated with the power shifts and dehumanization of the post- Second World War  era and the onslaught of consumer capitalism.

The very term Postmodernism implies a relation to Modernism . Modernism was an earlier aesthetic movement which was in vogue in the early decades of the twentieth century. It has often been said that Postmodernism is at once a continuation of and a break away from the Modernist stance.

Postmodernism shares many of the features of Modernism. Both schools reject the rigid boundaries between high and low art. Postmodernism even goes a step further and deliberately mixes low art with high art, the past with the future, or one genre with another. Such mixing of different, incongruous elements illustrates Postmodernism’s use of lighthearted parody, which was also used by Modernism. Both these schools also employed pastiche , which is the imitation of another’s style. Parody and pastiche serve to highlight the self-reflexivity of Modernist and Postmodernist works, which means that parody and pastiche serve to remind the reader that the work is not “real” but fictional, constructed. Modernist and Postmodernist works are also fragmented and do not easily, directly convey a solid meaning. That is, these works are consciously ambiguous and give way to multiple interpretations. The individual or subject depicted in these works is often decentred, without a central meaning or goal in life, and dehumanized, often losing individual characteristics and becoming merely the representative of an age or civilization, like Tiresias in The Waste Land .

In short, Modernism and Postmodernism give voice to the insecurities, disorientation and fragmentation of the 20th century western world. The western world, in the 20th century, began to experience this deep sense of security because it progressively lost its colonies in the Third World, worn apart by two major World Wars and found its intellectual and social foundations shaking under the impact of new social theories an developments such as Marxism and Postcolonial global migrations, new technologies and the power shift from Europe to the United States. Though both Modernism and Postmodernism employ fragmentation, discontinuity and decentredness in theme and technique, the basic dissimilarity between the two schools is hidden in this very aspect.

Modernism projects the fragmentation and decentredness of contemporary world as tragic. It laments the loss of the unity and centre of life and suggests that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, continuity and meaning that is lost in modern life. Thus Eliot laments that the modern world is an infertile wasteland, and the fragmentation, incoherence, of this world is effected in the structure of the poem. However, The Waste Land  tries to recapture the lost meaning and organic unity by turning to Eastern cultures, and in the use of Tiresias as protagonist

In Postmodernism, fragmentation and disorientation is no longer tragic. Postmodernism on the other hand celebrates fragmentation. It considers fragmentation and decentredness as the only possible way of existence, and does not try to escape from these conditions.

This is where Postmodernism meets Poststructuralism —both Postmodernism and Poststructuralism recognize and accept that it is not possible to have a coherent centre . In Derridean terms, the centre is constantly moving towards the periphery and the periphery constantly moving towards the centre. In other words, the centre, which is the seat of power, is never entirely powerful. It is continually becoming powerless, while the powerless periphery continually tries to acquire power. As a result, it can be argued that there is never a centre, or that there are always multiple centres. This postponement of the centre acquiring power or retaining its position is what Derrida called differance . In Postmodernism’s celebration of fragmentation, there is thus an underlying belief in differance , a belief that unity, meaning, coherence is continually postponed.

The Postmodernist disbelief in coherence and unity points to another basic distinction between Modernism and Postmodernism. Modernism believes that coherence and unity is possible, thus emphasizing the importance of rationality and order. The basic assumption of Modernism seems to be that more rationality leads to more order, which leads a society to function better. To establish the primacy of Order, Modernism constantly creates the concept of Disorder in its depiction of the Other—which includes the non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-adult, non-rational and so on. In other words, to establish the superiority of Order, Modernism creates the impression- that all marginal, peripheral, communities such as the non-white, non-male etc. are contaminated by Disorder. Postmodernism, however, goes to the other extreme. It does not say that some parts of the society illustrate Order, and that other parts illustrate Disorder. Postmodernism, in its criticism of the binary opposition, cynically even suggests that everything is Disorder.

Jean Francois Lyotard

The Modernist belief in order, stability and unity is what the Postmodernist thinker Lyotard calls a metanarrative . Modernism works through metanarratives or grand narratives, while Postmodernism questions and deconstructs metanarratives. A metanarrative is a story a culture tells itself about its beliefs and practices.

Postmodernism understands that grand narratives hide, silence and negate contradictions, instabilities and differences inherent in any social system. Postmodernism favours “mini-narratives,” stories that explain small practices and local events, without pretending universality and finality. Postmodernism realizes that history, politics and culture are grand narratives of the power-wielders, which comprise falsehoods and incomplete truths.

Having deconstructed the possibility of a stable, permanent reality, Postmodernism has revolutionized the concept of language. Modernism considered language a rational, transparent tool to represent reality and the activities of the rational mind. In the Modernist view, language is representative of thoughts and things. Here, signifiers always point to signifieds. In Postmodernism, however, there are only surfaces, no depths. A signifier has no signified here, because there is no reality to signify.

Jean Baudrillard

The French philosopher Baudrillard has conceptualized the Postmodern surface culture as a simulacrum. A simulacrum is a virtual or fake reality simulated or induced by the media or other ideological apparatuses. A simulacrum is not merely an imitation or duplication—it is the substitution of the original by a simulated, fake image. Contemporary world is a simulacrum, where reality has been thus replaced by false images. This would mean, for instance, that the Gulf war that we know from newspapers and television reports has no connection whatsoever to what can be called the “real” Iraq war. The simulated image of Gulf war has become so much more popular and real than the real war, that Baudrillard argues that the Gulf War did not take place. In other words, in the Postmodern world, there are no originals, only copies; no territories, only maps; no reality, only simulations. Here Baudrillard is not merely suggesting that the postmodern world is artificial; he is also implying that we have lost the capacity to discriminate between the real and the artificial.

Fredric Jameson

Just as we have lost touch with the reality of our life, we have also moved away from the reality of the goods we consume. If the media form one driving force of the Postmodern condition, multinational capitalism and globalization is another. Fredric Jameson has related Modernism and Postmodernism to the second and third phases of capitalism. The first phase of capitalism of the 18th -19th centuries, called Market Capitalism, witnessed the early technological development such as that of the steam-driven motor, and corresponded to the Realist phase. The early 20th century, with the development of electrical and internal combustion motors, witnessed the onset of Monopoly Capitalism and Modernism. The Postmodern era corresponds to the age of nuclear and electronic technologies and Consumer Capitalism, where the emphasis is on marketing, selling and consumption rather than production. The dehumanized, globalized world, wipes out individual and national identities, in favour of multinational marketing.

It is thus clear from this exposition that there are at least three different directions taken by Postmodernim, relating to the theories of Lyotard, Baudrillard and Jameson. Postmodernism also has its roots in the theories Habermas and Foucault . Furthermore, Postmodernism can be examined from Feminist and Post-colonial angles. Therefore, one cannot pinpoint the principles of Postmodernism with finality, because there is a plurality in the very constitution of this theory.

Postmodernism, in its denial of an objective truth or reality, forcefully advocates the theory of constructivism—the anti-essentialist argument that everything is ideologically constructed. Postmodernism finds the media to be a great deal responsible for “constructing” our identities and everyday realiites. Indeed, Postmodernism developed as a response to the contemporary boom in electronics and communications technologies and its revolutionizing of our old world order.

Constructivism invariably leads to relativism. Our identities are constructed and transformed every moment in relation to our social environment. Therefore there is scope for multiple and diverse identities, multiple truths, moral codes and views of reality.

The understanding that an objective truth does not exist has invariably led the accent of Postmodernism to fall on subjectivity. Subjectivity itself is of course plural and provisional. A stress on subjectivity will naturally lead to a renewed interest in the local and specific experiences, rather than the and universal and abstract; that is on mini-narratives rather than grand narratives.

Finally, all versions of Postmodernism rely on the method of Deconstruction to analyze socio-cultural situations. Postmodernism has often been vehemently criticized. The fundamental characteristic of Postmodernism is disbelief, which negates social and personal realities and experiences. It is easy to claim that the Gulf War or Iraq War does not exist; but then how does one account for the deaths, the loss and pain of millions of people victimized by these wars? Also, Postmodernism fosters a deep cynicism about the one sustaining force of social life—culture. By entirely washing away the ground beneath our feet, the ideological presumptions upon which human civilization is built, Postmodernism generates a feeling of lack and insecurity in contemporary societies, which is essential for the sustenance of a capitalistic world order. Finally, when the Third World began to assert itself over Euro-centric hegemonic power, Postmodernism had rushed in with the warning, that the empowerment of the periphery is but transient and temporary; and that just as Europe could not retain its imperialistic power for long, the new-found power of the erstwhile colonies is also under erasure.

In literature, postmodernism (relying heavily on fragmentation, deconstruction, playfulness, questionable narrators etc.) reacted against the Enlightenment  ideas implicit in modernist literature – informed by Lyotard’s concept of the “metanarrative”, Derrida’s concept of “play”, and Budrillard’s “simulacra.” Deviating from the modernist quest for meaning in a chaotic world, the postmodern. writers eschew, often playfully, the possibility of meaning, and the postmodern novel is often a parody of this. quest. Marked by a distrust of totalizing mechanisms and self-awareness, postmodern writers often celebrate chance over craft and employ metafiction to undermine the author’s “univocation”. The distinction between high and low culture is also attacked with the employment of pastiche, the combination of multiple cultural elements including subjects and genres not previously deemed fit for literature. Postmodern literature can be considered as an umbrella term for the post-war developments in literature such as Theatre of the Absurd , Beat Generation and Magical Realism .

Postmodern literature, as expressed in the writings of Beckett, Robbe Grillet , Borges , Marquez , Naguib Mahfouz and Angela Carter rests on a recognition of the complex nature of reality and experience, the role of time and memory in human perception, of the self and the world as historical constructions, and the problematic nature of language.

Postmodern literature reached its peak in the ’60s and ’70s with the publication of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Lost in the Funhouse and Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth , Gravity’s Rainbow, V., and Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon , “factions” like Armies in the Night and In Cold Blood by Norman Mailer and Truman Capote , postmodern science fiction novels like Neoromancer by William Gibson , Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and many others. Some declared the death of postmodernism in the ’80’s with a new surge of realism represented and inspired by Raymond Carver . Tom Wolfe in his 1989 article Stalking the Billion-Footed Beas t called for a new emphasis on realism in fiction to replace postmodernism. With this new emphasis on realism in mind, some declared White Noise in (1985) or The Satanic Verses (1988) to be the last great novels of the postmodern era.

Postmodern film describes the articulation of ideas of postmodernism trough the cinematic medium – by upsetting the mainstream conventions of narrative structure and characterization and destroying (or playing with) the audience’s “suspension of disbelief,” to create a work that express through less-recognizable internal logic. Two such examples are Jane Campion ‘s Two Friends, in which the story of two school girls is shown in episodic segments arranged in reverse order; and Karel Reisz ‘s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, in which the story being played out on the screen is mirrored in the private lives of the actors playing it, which the audience also sees. However, Baudrillard dubbed Sergio Leone ‘s epic 1968 spaghetti western Once Upon a Time in the West as the first postmodern film. Other examples include Michael Winterbottom ‘s 24 Hour Party People, Federico Fellini ‘s Satyricon and Amarcord, David Lynch ‘ s Mulholland Drive, Quentin Tarantino ‘s Pulp Fiction.

In spite of the rather stretched, cynical arguments of Postmodernism, the theory has exerted a fundamental influence on late 20th century thought. It has indeed revolutionized all realms of intellectual inquiry in varying degrees.

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If modernism was an aesthetic movement how come postmodernism becomes bad for society? I think modernism caused more struggle and stress for ordinary people and they found relief in postmodernism. Contemporary people always found reasons not to be part of any movements and they did nothing good or bad, it’s very strange that small groups of people make big movements in literature, movies, architecture and the rest majority are forced to read, watch and entertain. In my view, marketing play a big role here considering the fact that human races have tendency to follow and react what they see and what they hear. Reality is not just about the sufferings and losses. A moving window in a computer screen is a virtual reality. Watching and enjoying that window movement while a war is going on in some other countries is very much better than going there and being participating in it. No-one wants to think the war doesn’t exist. They know war does exist and they don’t want to make it more worse. So whenever you talk about postmodernism, make sure you are not completely against this.

So informative, expressed in limpid way

Hello Can you please add up more to your excerpts With more original, important translated articles by the theorists with examples and analysis please

Hi Kindly find this category https://literariness.org/category/postmodernism/ if you are in search of Postmodernism related articles. You could also find articles on the key theorists by just browsing through http://www.literariness.org . Thank You. Share the site with your friends

Nasrullah Mambrol

HI! how can i give references to your articles?

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Postmodernism, Nepali Literature and the Question of Theoretical Consonance

• June 10, 2023

Mahesh Paudyal

Without being burdened by the imperatives of defining categories—as those related with ‘postmodernism’ are terms overwrought by discussions across the academia all the world over and are conceptually indefinable—this paper claims that there is very little detection of symptoms that are conspicuous and identifiable as symptoms of postmodernism in Nepali literature, though in painting, music, films and fashion, one could probably make a tally of things, both structurally and thematically, and make a table of the postmodern. Postmodern is not something that conforms to strict bracketable traits; rather, it encompasses many things at once, and therefore, is plural. There are many postmodernisms, and different authorities of the theoretical conundrum position themselves on different ends of the same thing, sometimes even to the degree that they contradict one another, and nullify the whole attempt to define. In fact, postmodernism sprang from the debates about finalities, and sought to jeopardize any attempt towards finalizing, normalizing, stabilizing, defining, fixing, coding, symbolizing, classifying and universalizing a concept or a code. Still, for a purpose Spivak might call ‘strategic essentialism’, we might tacitly agree upon a few trends that have been recognized as postmodern, as cited in several occasions by critics of high acclaim like Govinda Raj Bhattarai and Krishna Gautam. Thus, we can see if Nepali literature—whose one facet has been claimed as strictly postmodern qualifies to that rank.

One important irritant persistently creeping into any theoretical discussion about modernism or postmodernism is  history . The discipline is so pervasively and so intricately connected with politics that it cannot be done away with, when literature is discussed, both in relation to modernism or postmodernism. Besides this, history is an indefinite repository of meta-narratives and grand-narratives, and hence its inevitable relation with modernism and postmodernism is quite self-evident. Modernism was  necessarily  about criticizing history and seeking a break from it—a move away from history’s totalizing and centralizing impact towards individual self-awareness, and therefore, away from institutional identities towards individual identities. History—along with religion at its core—as modernism depicts, was an eclipse that cast a heavy shadow of pessimism, fragmentation, hopelessness, spiritual banality, and loss of faith in politics, religion, and God, resulting into a conditional continuation of faith in science and reason. For postmodernism, history is an epoch of the past to be objectively alluded to— neither to criticize nor to eulogize—but to present it in a form different from the one presented by the traditional, nationalistic historiography and to lay bare paradoxes and contradictions within itself, so that it looks altogether different and multiple. Krishna Dharabasi’s  Radha  which deconstructs the traditional Radha-Krishna binary could be a case in point, but it alone doesn’t make up an example of postmodernism in Nepali fiction simply because of its feministic bias, which creates another set of binaries. Nabaraj Lamsal’s  Karna , which topples the meta-narrative of the  Mahabharata  in relation with its depiction of  Karna  as villain is interesting and calls for a confused attention whether it is a postmodern experiment, but the author’s  bias—which the postmodernists would never show—is very apparent, and hence, the epic, both in form and content, is still modern. Jagdish Ghimire’s  Sakas  is apparently too critical of history and deals more with its psychological impacts than the structure of history itself, and therefore, continues to be an example of a modern text.

It will be a beneficial idea to continue the discussion by considering the very term ‘postmodernism’ as a tripartite: post-modern-ism, as Eva T.H. Brann suggests. ‘Ism’ as she claims, is “running in droves” and for this, we must locate a whole group of writers—not critics who foist incompatible categories—who make such an ‘ism’ a trait of a group. In case of Nepali literature—be it in poetry, novel, story or any other genre—the claim is repulsive, because there is no such group. Some critics claim, the practitioners of  Leela Lekhan , a type of writing that sees life as a game with various facets, like the life of Lord Krishna, are postmodernists.  Leela Prastav  of Indra Bahadur Rai and his followers, does, to a great extent, identify its proposal with postmodernist practice, but writings coming out of the pen of most of these writers do not rigorously foreground postmodern ethos. The  Prastav  is Derridian to a great extent—as it allows no finality to any interpretations and leaves everything to a lidless end—and it will be a lame mistake to claim everything Derridian—which is a linguistic, and strictly speaking semantic idea—with postmodernism, which is a cultural category.  Leela Lekhan , as it has a definite manifesto, summarily defies the quality of being postmodern, because it defines itself, sets rules for itself, and claims definite patterns for itself, and this is something postmodernism never, never does. A postmodern work, as Leotard contends, is not composed in accordance with any previous universal rules, or meta-narratives. This is to say that a postmodern tendency doesn’t rest on a set manifesto; its traits evolve out of itself, and need not—and does not—conform to any proposal.

There is (was) a group of poets in the east that incepted in the 90’s as Rangavadi, and their practice, to a large extent, defiled most set rules, and sought to identify for itself a unique identity as poets. They even took up concrete poetic trends, and defiled classical rules and norms for poetry.  Rangavad attempted to see life as a spectrum of colors, and its different combinations. But by the very name and definition, it has a structuralist inclination. Moreover, thematically, the group chose issues of identity, race and recognition, and picked characters from the lower strata of life, especially from the ethnic minorities in the Eastern hills of Nepal, thereby making their positions more akin to structuralist Marxists, and not sustainably postmodern. There is no other group identifiable in Nepali literature which has practiced a sustained exercise of literary endeavor that qualifies to the rank of ‘ism’, and is still identifiably postmodern. A few authors tried something called ‘mixism’—a name neither theoretically accepted, nor established as an experiment. It was an attempt to mix generic forms of poetry—ghazal and lyrics—but unlike collage and pastiche that settled down as identified postmodern experiments—owning mainly because of the fact that its pioneers could produce their own practitioners and successors—mixism failed to gain currency, and did not evolve as an ‘ism’. It was aborted before late.

Another test-case is in relation with the prefix ‘-post’ in postmodernism. Modernism in Nepali literature doesn’t coincide with modernism in the West. Modernism in the West overlapped with the rise of industrialization and the maxima that marked the limits of colonial expansion. It also took along settled polity, established political systems, expanse of the market, rise of education, and pervasion of market economy. These parameters are repulsive in Nepal. The latest political questions in our case is not one of experimentation as is true for it the West. It is more a question of finding ways to replace the erstwhile feudal set up—represented by the vestiges of monarchy and landed nobility—by a more egalitarian society. These are questions America tackled in the 1770s, France also in the 1770s, England in the second half of the nineteenth century, Russia in the 1920s and China in the 1950s. This political modernism prepared grounds for their literary modernism, and now when the modernisms in these countries have matured, it is obvious that they seek an escape from their own tedious continuity, and so, postmodernism became inevitable.

But the same is not true for Nepal. The collapse of Ranarchy in 1950 marked the first most remarkable manifestation of a consciousness for modernizing. It intended to end and did end a centralizing, closed, dictatorial, conservative and coercive rule of the Ranas, to be replace by a better, humane and democratic system. But, since the 1950s, our politics has not been moving forward; it has just been oscillating between a mean position, the back-tracking being more apparent than forward swinging of the pendulum. The most important question the nation was facing back in in 1950 was as to what kind of polity should replace the Rana oligarchy. The same question loomed over in 1960, 1971, 1979, 1991, 2005-06, and continues to pose today in 2020: what kind of polity should replace the past system, and by the same token, the Rana legacy of dictatorship, feudalism, inequality, and willfulness?  Ever since the question was settled in 1947, for once and (seemingly) forever, India has moved ahead. We have oscillated, more backtracking than swinging forward. We have, therefore, failed to cash the most important political event that was apparently modernist in the sense that it was a show-cashing of the highest degree of consciousness, something like what Kant called a freedom from ‘self-incurred tutelage’ for enlightenment. All political movements in Nepal since 1950 are nothing but newer versions of the same thing; just a revised echo of the 1950 revolution. Even by claiming that we have accepted the idea of federal system doesn’t confer upon us a title of the postmodern. This was a question most Asian and African nations dealt with, long before the onset of modernism, or almost during the time we have identified as modern. This is, at least, a step towards modernizing ourselves.

If modernism in literature is to be seen in connection with the ground reality of the country and not just as a disjoint category called consciousness—this the Marxist might refute as  impossible —Nepal is still struggling to achieve a good shape of modernism. Accepting literature as realistic depiction of the fact supplies us the reason that ‘fact’ in today’s Nepal is pre-modern. I am aware, that in urban spaces like Kathmandu and Pokhara, due largely to the expanse of media and the Internet and direct interaction with the Western culture, symptoms of change are traceable, but literature—if it has to be Nepali literature in strict sense of the word—cannot behave as an island by neglecting the voice of the 70 percent of the nation’s population, which, as facts claim with authority, is living in a pre-modern situation. We are still seeking to define our political system. The fundamental question, still, is to replace the economically stratified society strewn with untellable inequality by an egalitarian equation, to ensure the minimum rights of women and children, to allow roads to every village, to manage an uninterrupted supply of power to every household, to manage rice in remote districts of Mugu, Humla and Kalikot, to supply pills to the victims of diarrhea in Jajarkot, to manage text books for school-going children etc. Even the minimum that makes a country modern has remained a far cry in our country. How then comes the questions of the postmodern, unless it is willfully foisted upon an incompatible cultural space by ambitious critics and reviewers at an incompatible time?

What is plain, therefore, is that like the nation itself, our literature is struggling more to register its departure between pre-modern and modern. Since there was no strictly identifiable literary phenomenon that spark-plugged modernism in Nepali literature, its bracketing within the limits of time is a question without answer. Critics have identified 1937—the year first prose poem “Kaviko Gaan” was published by Gopal Prasad Rimal and “Prati” was written by Laxmi Prasad Devkota—as the point of departure, but I am of the opinion that a generic form can never set in motion a new movement in literature. It has to be an epoch-making political event, or a ground-breaking, edge-cutting, content-determined work of art—like Joyce’s  Ulysses  for example—that should mark the limit. Seen this way, real and visible modernism started in Nepal, politically, only around 1950 with the of collapse, or attempts to topple the Ranarchy, and the exercises to replace it with a more democratic system has  not  been achieved even today. Time, therefore, is not politically ripe, to think of postmodernism in our case. If literature can divorce with politics and can carve for itself a new trajectory of development, I am unsure what actually inspires and propels literature. The same is true for postmodernism, and I agree with Linda Hutcheon: “What I want to call postmodernism is fundamentally contradictory, resolutely historical, and inescapably political” (4). If it is merely ‘imagination’ that matters, we are simultaneously in all ages: pre-modern, modern, postmodern, and to contain all these at once, we are in a  romantic  era, which will last forever, because imagination will last forever.

There are critics who cite the case of increasingly dominant body of writings that echo the voice of the identity groups and the subalterns to bolster their claims that such writing is postmodern. In the first place, much of such ideas are inspired by the Marxist dialectic of have-verses-have-nots, and are bent on giving the have-nots a voice. There’s nothing new and strictly postmodernists in that. The whole premise, if explained as postmodernist, has the fear of being self-defeating, because in order to refer to and identify a group, the writer has again and again got to pull into discussion the existence of another group—allegedly a dominating one, a bourgeois one—and once again, the structuralists’ favorite binaries figure out. Postmodern text should, instead, try to dismantle the very premise that enables such binaries to stand, and theoretically argue that nothing that defines groups as haves or have-nots, or oppressed or dominant, ever existed. Postmodernism is never prescriptive; it is merely demonstrative.

As for the subalterns’ claims, nothing save the denouncement of nationalistic historiography is postmodern, and the whole project—led initially by Ranajit Guha in India—was pointed out to be neo-nationalistic in the sense that all that led the project were elites, and the subjectivity of the subaltern was, in the long run, their invention. The project was, therefore, plagued by the fact that it contrarily confirmed Spivak’s concern that a subaltern lacks the infrastructure that allows it a real voice. The same is true for all writings about the subaltern in Nepal. It has neither questioned the foundations of binaries, nor developed a methodology markedly different from nationalistic historiography. A few novels in this line like Taralal Shrestha’s  Sapanako Samadhi , Yug Pathak’s  Mangena  and Rajan Mukarung’s  Damini Bheer  have dealt with history and juxtaposed the subaltern vis-à-vis the bourgeois history, but structurally, they reproduce the traditional novel, and thematically, there is nothing like the  nouveau roman —like Alain Robbie-Grillet’s  The Erasers , for example—that questions the very praxis of the binaries that enable the visibility of the subaltern in comparison with the elites and the aristocrats.  The project, therefore, is not postmodern.

The last point this essay tackles in relation with the confused idea of postmodernism relates with the literature of Nepali Diaspora. In the first place, the theoretical premise in which Diaspora is being confused with emigrants is pathetically wrong. There is no doubt that a huge chunk of Nepali population is abroad—most of them for work, and a few naturalized in the past two decades—but most of them are emigrants and not Diaspora, because they still have homes and families here and are likely to return any day. Those naturalized abroad have an extremely short history out of home, and therefore, they do not possess the qualities necessary for defining a population as diasporic—namely a faint memory of the homeland, an ambivalence of conformity, a situation of cultural hybridity, a difficulty that impedes coming home, an organized effort to create an imaginary homeland, and an inability to mix with the host culture, etc. Their children can be diasporic, but they have not become writers yet. The real Nepali Diaspora are people living from centuries in North-East India, Bhutan, Burma and some settled ex-army men’s families in Hong Kong, UK and Brunei. But they either have contributed little to the corpus of Nepali literature, or, their writing doesn’t show postmodernist trait in an extent that it inspires a different theoretical classification.

What then is all this fuss about postmodernism in Nepali literature? Much of it is a confusion, coming out from critics who are not, in fact, attempting to show postmodernity in any work of art, but are trying to explain and interpret western postmodernism to their eastern students. Secondly, there is an anxiety associated with our critics to cash in hand any fashionable western theory and use it outright, without considering whether the soil and air here is prepared for that. Third, the confusion of postmodernism and postmodernist is rampant. Fourth, the tendency to lump every post-structural experiment as postmodern too is there in our case. All these points—one to four—are at once prone to questioning by the single fact that postmodernism tries to locate that the owners of information in the news age have now changed from institutions to individuals, but in case of Nepal, almost all the information and knowledge is still controlled or regulated by institutions—either directly by the state, or private institutions that control the information technology—and therefore, the postmodern condition is not yet traceable. Yes, the question that our literature reflects a neo-natal category called postmodernism—at least on our case—can be accepted at least.

The best idea, therefore, is to see how Nepal can streamline and nurture its own alternative modernity—as projected by Sanjeev Upreti. We need to see if we can combine our nascent modernity with some of the strengths of the western postmodernity—like its apologies for pluralism and liberal humanism—and carve a more defined and matured modernity. We have to wait and see if more of experimental fictions like those of Kumar Nagarkoti—gradually moving out of Joycian hangover, though—and poems like those of Manprasad Subba come and enrich our literature till a formidable body of work that is postmodern in the real sense becomes traceable. We must wait and see if the likes of the film  A Clockwork Orange Time Bandit  or  Blade Runner,  or novels like  1984  and novels of Thomas Pynchon become visible in Nepali literature. Since the possibility is a far cry as postmodernism is fast dying out and becoming anachronistic, it too will be a good idea that literature can still do well by foregoing or dispensing with postmodernism. It is not necessary that we must always subscribe to any idea that is Western. How about making genuine and committed efforts to identify and define our own type of unique modernism, and free ourselves from the anxiety of postmodernism? Harold Bloom’s children-of-mind better remain silent; anxiety of influence is not always a good idea!

A note of caution before I end! There are two groups of people, who have made postmodernism a buzzword, of late, in Nepal. In the first group are vehement critics of the phenomenon—most of them being Marxists—who are inspired by Frederic Jameson’s explanation that postmodernism is the “cultural logic of late capitalism”, and therefore quite coercive. Second group consists of the enthusiasts of critical theory—most of whom are democrats—who champion the postmodern claim for multiplicity, and therefore, argue that it can give voice to the hitherto silenced communities. Both the stands have their strengths, but are pathetically plagued by sheer limitations. The first group oversees the idea that postmodernism has vaporized before settling down—even for a brief spell of time— in Nepal, especially in literature and therefore, their fear is about a non-existent Sandman. The second group makes up a contingent of neo-normativists, who want to replace one state of affairs—namely, a society characterized by one group’s hegemony—by another, but they oversee the fact that by siding with another prescriptive or idea, they become positivist, and put the very notion of postmodernism into question by being prescriptive. I am, therefore, arguing for a third polemic: postmodernism only sparingly influenced Nepali literature in apparent fashions, and therefore, it will be the best idea to explain it away as something that came in the western metropolis, and died out there itself. Its aftershocks did reach our thresholds, but subsided without leaving any traceable change or damage. We are already in an era of planetarity and a borderless globe. What we need to embellish, at the present, is the idea that our modernity needs maturity, and we must work in that line for a few more decades, and give a final shape to our alternative modernity.

[Paudyal (b. 1982) is a faculty at the Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University, and a critic. Author of books in various genres including fiction, poetry and plays, he is also a translator of high acclaim. He has represented Nepal in several academic conferences abroad. He is the Chief Editor of The Gorkha Times. He can be reached at [email protected]]

• Ratna Book, 2005. 
• United Publications, 2011. 
•  Jagdish Ghimire Foundation, 2012. 
•  “What is Postmodernism?”  Harvard Philosophy 1992. 4.7. 
•  Rai, Indra Bahadur, with people like Krishna Dharabasi and Ratna Mani Nepal 
•  “What is Postmodernism?” The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. 81.  
•  Gautam, Laxman. “Modernism and Modern Nepali Poetry.” Dancing Soul of Mount Everest. Ed. Momila. Trans. Mahesh Paudyal. Kathmandu: Nepali Art and Literature Dot Com Foundation, 2011. xxxviii.
•  Hutcheon, Linda. A  Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2004.  
•  Upreti, Sanjeev. Siddhantaka Kura. Kathmandu: Akshar Prakashan, 2011. 
•  Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Verso, 1991.

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