Reclaiming the Kirat Root Culture in Rajan Mukarung’s Khuwalung: An Iconic Emblem

Abstract

This study analyses the representation of Khuwalung in Rajan Mukarung's play Khuwalung: An Iconic Emblem. The play has reclaimed the root culture of the Kirat and re-created the identity of the Kirat while educating the audience regarding Khuwalung. It has examined the text in light of relevant theoretical insights from Heather Ahtone and Steven Leuthold’s discourse on indigenous aesthetics. Ahtone’s and Leuthold's ideas concerning metaphor, symbolism, song, and cosmology are vital for understanding local indigenous bodies of knowledge and contemporary art. They believe that to be familiar with indigenous cultural metaphors and symbols is to understand indigenous aesthetics, as the metaphors and symbols are manufactured through culture. Moreover, it is supported by Stuart Hall's critical insight of representation in relation to stereotypes while approaching the play. This qualitative study is based on the interpretation of the play through close reading. Further, personal interviews and available literature on the text have been used to interpret the text under scrutiny while analyzing the text. This study has given prominence to indigenous aesthetics to reclaim the value of the Kirat root culture. Moreover, it has linked the indigenous activism anchored to Khuwalung to academic research. Keywords: indigenous literature, reclaiming culture, Kirat, media, power hegemony