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