This excerpt is from a testimony recalled by an eyewitness, who claimed to have seen four Naxalites being killed in an ‘encounter’ by the police in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It appears in the interim report of the Civil Rights Committee (an unofficial, voluntary committee set up to investigate several ‘encounter’ killings of Naxalite prisoners) released in 1977. The committee was comprised of prominent civil society figures, lawyers, activists and journalists. The report claimed that the police ‘encounters’ they investigated were, in fact, extra-judicial killings. This claim anticipated what is today widely recognised in the public sphere, namely, that ‘encounters’ by the police or armed forces are often staged. The report was submitted to the prime minister of India and released to the press. The opposition raised questions in parliament regarding the claims of the report and a judicial commission of inquiry under Justice V. Bhargava was set up by the Andhra Pradesh government to conduct public hearings on the alleged encounters of Naxalites during and after the Emergency.

The report was a result of a fact-finding investigation. Fact-finding investigations are the predominant mode of activism for civil liberties groups in India. In a typical fact-finding investigation, an inquiry team is established on a one-off basis. The team visits the scene or site of the case, ascertains facts, identifies those who are culpable and makes demands or recommendations.

Background

The first legal code of modern Nepal, the Muluki Ain, promulgated in 1854 by Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana, systematized every aspect of Nepalese society, from criminal and religious law to the caste system and property rights, reinforcing existing social structures that benefitted the dominant caste-Hindu elites. Largely influenced by ancient Sanskrit treatises and Brahminical social ideas and practices, the Muluki Ain labeled Nepal's Tamang community, along with several other lower-caste and Indigenous groups, as masinya matwali (enslavable alcohol-drinker) and murmi-bhotiya (people from the border [P. Tamang 2018: 45–46]). This categorization further deteriorated their social status, legally sanctioning their oppression, domination, and strategic exclusion in Nepal. They were converted into mere slaves or bonded laborers and subjected to compulsory labor (rakam) and porterage (Holmberg and March 1999: 6). The Tamang community had to bear the terrible sense of loss of their caste status and remained identity-less almost a century because of the exploitative and exclusionary attitude of the Nepali state toward them. The Tamangs had to wait till 1932, nearly 80 years after the promulgation of the Muluki Ain, to get back their caste status and ethnic recognition. In this regard, A. Hofer (2004) reminds us, “A decree signed by King Tribhuvan and the then Rana Prime Minister Bhim Samser lays down that, instead of the hitherto employed designations Lama and Bhote, henceforth the designation Tamang may be used officially” (Hofer 2004: 125). Although this allowed the Tamangs the permission to write their surname – “Tamang” – and be recognized as an ethnic group with their distinct culture and history, it was only the beginning of a long struggle for equal rights (P. Tamang 2018: 55).

Manjushree Thapa's The Tutor of History (2001), set in post-1990s Nepal, portrays characters pursuing romantic and economic desires amid democratic and market reforms. This chapter examines desire, choice, and action in Thapa's novel to explore how democracy challenges traditional power structures and empowers women. Thapa's novel presents a democratic ethos that extends beyond formal institutions to everyday experience. By examining how democratic practices shape the experiences of gendered “others,” I argue that the novel envisions women as active citizens shaping a more equitable society.

The Tutor of History follows an election in a small Nepali town and a courtship between Binita, a widow who runs a teashop while caring for her daughter and cousin, and Rishi, a history teacher and communist activist. The romance links the election campaign with domesticity, connecting democratic practices to private life and public opinion to private desires. The characters hope that democracy's transformative potential will challenge entrenched power structures, empower marginalized women, and foster inclusive development. Desire in the novel erupts from “the gaps in history” that fail to remember marginalized others (Thapa 2001: 57). When Binita and Rishi express their amorous desire for each other, their romantic desire presents them with an opportunity to start a new life that is free from the oppressions brought to a widowed woman by the past, tradition, and orthodoxy. The novel imagines women as full citizens in a democracy where universal suffrage allows them to dream of and choose new ways of living. Desire, choice, and action thus become tools for political and personal transformation. The novel envisions a democracy where individuals can pursue their desires without coercion from the state or institutions tied to gender, caste, and class.

The excerpts mentioned above are part of a debate, which took place in 1984–1985, on the arguable failure of political parties and the emergence of groups referred to as non-party political formations. Defending the emergence of these groups, Sethi argues that the formation of such groups was necessitated because political parties had been ‘side-tracking the issues of direct concern to the people’. In contrast, Karat, on behalf of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI[M]), argued that non-party groups played into an ‘imperialist strategy’ and were anti-left.

Against the backdrop of the existing scholarship on masculinities, this chapter examines iterations of masculinity in South Asian literature, particularly in literature from Nepal. As such, the chapter analyzes Yogesh Raj's 2018 Madan Puraskār winning novel, Rahahār (Defeat at War), and Laxmi Prasad Devkota's poem “Pāgal,” or “Crazy,” published in 1953. The choice of these two literary works is partly subjective, and partly because they not only fit the topic of hegemonic masculinity and its other seamlessly, but there is scant scholarship on these works that is available to a wider audience. Even though Raj's novel revolves around the Kathmandu Valley of the eighteenth century and showcases social and gender dynamics during that time frame, the novel also demonstrates a continuum of masculinity at work, and not just orthodox or primitive masculinity as one would assume given the story's timeline. While the Gorkhali forces of King Prithivi Narayan Shah embody aspects of primitive or orthodox masculinity, King Ranajit Malla of Bhaktapur not only practices heterodox masculinity, but he also comes close to what some critics call “cacodoxy,” that is, an iteration of masculinity that overlaps with elements of femininity. As the ironic title of the novel suggests, King Ranajit practices supple forms of masculinity during his long reign of the Bhaktapur city-state, and, after his defeat at the hands of the Gorkhali, he accepts his position of a defeated king, begging the victor to grant him one last wish, namely to go to Kanshi, the present-day city of Varanasi in India.

Since time immemorial The non-stop river of our life deemed Your statement as truth And we considered ourselves untouchables.

—Amgai (2016), translated by Rabindra Chaulagain and Narayan Pokhrel

Caste System and Practices in Nepal

The Western District Court of Nepal issued a ruling on December 5, 2023, finding 26 individuals guilty of murder and caste-based discrimination (Amnesty International 2023). Out of the 26, 24 received life sentences, while the remaining 2 were sentenced to two years in prison. The tragic incident that led to this verdict occurred on May 23, 2020, when Nawaraj B. K. from Jajarkot district ventured into Rukum district with his companions to bring back his girlfriend as his betrothed. Unfortunately, they were met with hostility from villagers, who hurled stones at them, eventually driving the group of 19 young men to the banks of the Bheri River, where they met a catastrophic fate (Adhikari 2020). Nawaraj, a member of the Dalit community, was in a relationship with Sushma Malla, who was from the so-called higher caste of “Thakuri.” Sushma had invited Nawaraj to her village with the intention of eloping. However, what was meant to be a romantic rendezvous turned into a massacre due to the perceived insult to the honor of the upper-caste family and their neighbors.

The Sanskrit-derived word dalit, meaning “broken,” or “ground down,” is the term most commonly used in contemporary South Asian scholarly, political, and literary discourse to denote people belonging to castes that have been discriminated against, oppressed, and exploited by those who rank higher than them in the Hindu caste system. “Dalit” is often referred to as a Marathi word, because it was in that language that it first achieved its political currency, but it is now current in every major South Asian language, including Nepali, and is used to mark the Dalits’ unashamed assertion of their identity and their claims to active political agency.

In Nepal, where they are defined by caste, Dalits number approximately 3.8 million, constituting just over 13 percent of the total population, according to the government's 2021 census. Huge social, political, and legislative changes over the past 60 years have led to improvements in the Dalit life experience.

However, while many individual Dalits have managed to acquire an education and prosper, Dalits overall remain at the very bottom of Nepali society in terms of all key development indicators. They continue to face discrimination, exclusion, and violence, both direct and structural, and efforts to improve their condition are routinely compromised by pervasive social stigma.

In the winter of 1984, large-scale and targeted violence against Sikhs engulfed New Delhi's suburbs such as Sultanpuri, Mangolpuri and Trilokpuri. The country witnessed a massacre that left an indelible scar on its history. Between 3,000 and 17,000 Sikhs were killed, and over 50,000 forced to flee their homes. Amid all this violence and curfew-bound streets, a group of like-minded people—university professors, government officials, doctors, lawyers, students and members of civil society groups—took to the streets carrying nothing more than notepads and pens. They had first gathered at a friend's place, and divided themselves into two teams. One was led by the People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) and the other by the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), both of which were civil liberties groups that had been set up about a decade ago in the early 1970s.

Both teams navigated the violence-prone neighbourhoods, documenting testimonies of the survivors, destruction of gurudwaras and people's allegations against Congress leaders for having orchestrated the carnage. They interviewed victims, police officers, neighbours, army personnel and political leaders. They collected perpetrators’ information, car numbers and locations which had been targeted during the riots. The testimonies they recorded revealed that mobs had precise information on Sikh households across the city and were armed with kerosene and sulphur powder to set fire to those. Instances of complicity by officials were also recorded, including the names of those who looked the other way. This systematic documentation and its release in the form of a report exposed the chilling coordination behind the violence and revealed how massacres often unfold with calculated precision.

These two responses to essentially the same question, that is, what factors led to the emergence of civil liberties activism, represent the contrasting motivations and political contexts behind the setting up of civil liberties groups in India. Simon sees their first appearance as a pressure group to lobby for the release of Naxalite political prisoners in the early 1970s.

Dolpo is a Himalayan Indigenous minority community currently settled within the northern political boundary of Nepal, bordering Tibet, China. Since the territorial conquest of Mustang and other regions within the Himalayas, initiated by King Prithivi Narayan Shah and his forces under Bahadur Shah during the 1800s AD, the Dolpo community, primarily composed of semipastoralists engaged in subsistence farming and barter exchanges, appears to have followed a trajectory akin to that of Mustang (Regmi 1995). Subsequently, the Nepalese government exerted active control over northern border points with China by the 1950s, largely in response to the increasing presence of the Khamba rebellion in the border areas (McGranahan 2018). Prior to this governmental oversight, the people of Dolpo predominantly adhered to their customary governance system, sustaining subsistence-based agriculture, relative autonomy, and trans-Himalayan trade for nearly a century. Upon the consolidation of territorial control, the rural region witnessed not only the presence of Indian police and officials from the Nepali government, but also the segmentation of Dolpo communities into various political administrative divisions, including village development committees (VDCs) and wards, which were subsequently integrated into the district-level administrative entity known as Dolpa. These mechanisms emerged as a moral framework to proselytize the recalcitrant raite (subject). Despite the inclusion of certain community members within these lower-level structures, Hindu authorities implemented these social and political realities without consulting the Dolpo community.

With the strengthening of Indigenous movements during the 1990s and the subsequent institutionalization of the National Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NFDIN) in the early 2000s, the Nepalese government recognized the Dolpo as one of the 59 Indigenous nationalities.

Nepali Dalit literature is a recent development in the literary history of the country. Nepali is one of the many modern Indo-European languages widely spoken in Nepal and in some parts in India. It is primarily written in the Nāgarī1 script. It was recognized as the national language of Nepal in 1958. Besides, it has been recognized as a major Indian literary language by the Sahitya Akademi2 in India (Hutt 1991: 5). The oldest literary specimens in Nepali are the royal edicts inscribed on stelae and copper plates, dated to the thirteenth century. Since the seventeenth century the literary canon in Nepali has been dominated by high-caste Hindu writers. The first notable Nepali poet was Suvanand Das who composed panegyric verses to praise King Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha in the eighteenth century. Brahmin writer Bhanubhakta Acharya (1814–68) is widely considered as the “Father of Nepali Literature” (Hutt 1991: 5). Although high-caste Hindu writers dominate the field of literature in Nepal, many writers from different ethnic groups and marginalized castes have emerged in recent years to write about their struggles and experiences. Nepali Dalit literature is unquestionably the literary expression of Nepali Dalits. Emergence of Dalit literature in Nepal represents the act of writing back to power and caste hegemony by the Nepali Dalits.

The social structure in Nepal, much like in India, was heavily influenced by the caste system, resulting in a social hierarchy among the various groups of people. This system impacted the traditional customs and practices of the people, leading to the establishment of untouchability. Before introducing Nepali Dalit Literature, it is important first to introduce the broader sociocultural context which the Nepali Dalit literature is an integral part of.

No sooner had the House of Gorkha under the Shah kings succeeded in conquering its neighboring principalities during the end of the eighteenth century than it followed the policy of distributing the newly acquired land as salary and reward among its bhardars, that is, royal members, military officers, priests, and local landlords beyond the Gorkha. This paved the way for the rise of an influential elite class of confederates responsible for collecting taxes from peasants and also for the economic gap between landlords and peasants across the nation known as Nepal in later years. On top of that, this elite class promoted their language, known as Khas-kura, and their version of the Hindu religion mainly through promulgating the Muluki Ain in 1854. With it, the ruling class hegemonized their social and moral values among the castes and communities of diverse historical and cultural origins. This research aims to examine the way the feudal characteristics of Nepal as a nation manifest in modern plays of the 1930s. The question it aims to address is: how did “land,” “language,” and “religion” become dominant forces in the plays of the period? For this, I have chosen two plays, Mukunda Indira and Sahanshila Sushila, written by Balkrishna Sama (1903–1981) and Bhimnidhi Tiwari (1911–1973), respectively, in the last years of the 1930s, the decade that also saw the first wave of political uprising that gradually set the ground for the 1950 democratic revolution.

Rise of the Elites/Indigenous

The formation of Nepal as a new nation mainly from the 1770s under the leadership of the Gorkha king Prithvi Narayan Shah (1723–1775) paved the way for the rise of the elite class of the Khas Arya ethno-linguistic group.