(Mis) representation of People’s War in Nepal: A Critical Study of the Three Representative Works on the People’s War

Abstract

As the Maoist insurgency was raging in Nepal, many readers and well wishers of Nepali literature anticipated that the market would be flooded with realistic and authentic literary works, depicting the devastations, heroisms and ordeals of the war. But close study of People’s war literature reveals the scarcity of representative and archetypical works on the theme of a decade long 'People’s War.' To prove this claim, I have categorized and surveyed three kinds of writings: hard-core, anti-war and middle-path literary works of People’s War. To clarify this claim, I have tried to analyze the three works of Ajya Shakti’s ‘Andhisang Khelda’, Mahesh Bikram Shah’s ‘Chhapamarko Chhoro’ and Gobind Bartman’s ‘Sohra Sanjhaharoo’ applying Theodor Adorno’s Cultural Criticism as the ideas of Immanent and Transcendent. Those who wrote in the favor of 'People’s War' became the victim of immanent criticism and they only presented ideological positive aspect of war only; who penned anti-people’s war they did not catch the spirit of realistic panorama of people’s war and headed towards transcendental criticism. The reason behind this is that they limited in city and based on big media houses of Kathmandu. The middle- path writers tried to apply dialectical criticism, but they raised only dark side of People’s War and also came to be seen limited in city areas with the secondary data and information. As a result, there has not yet been written representative and archetypical People’s War literature.