Battling and Rescuing as Double Heroism in Ayo Gorkhali: A History of the Gurkhas by Tim I. Gurung

The main aim of this paper is to study the dual heroism of the Gorkhas: ‘battling’ and ‘rescuing’ in the book Ayo Gorkhali: A History of the Gurkhas by Tim I. Gurung from the evolutionary perspective. The book is about the Gorkhas’ bravery in battling as well as rescuing exhibited in wars around the world because of which they brought victory and power to Britain. Despite their defeat in the Anglo-Nepal War (1814-1816), the Gorkhas were able to impress the British authority for their bravery, dedication and discipline. The British East India Company began to recruit the Gorkhas in their army. They succeeded to suppress robberies, banditries and mutinies and establish peace and order in the society. In every theatre of war including the First and Second World Wars, the Gorkhas battled bravely for Britain and kept her name always high in the world. In this paper, the researcher has consulted books, journal articles and documentaries related to the Gorkhas and their heroic performance in wars. The Gorkhas are found to be brave in both ‘fighting’ as well as ‘making rescue’ of their co-warriors, officers and civilians during the wars. They have been known as the ‘bravest of the brave’ in the world. This paper will be new insights for the future researchers in the particular area of study.

Teaching History of Bravery and the Politics of Textbooks in Nepal: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This paper examines a saga of the brave history of Nepal which has often been part and parcel of school education in Nepal. The brave history in the textbooks has been treated as a means of enlightenment and a catalyst to cultivate national character. On close inspection, however, teaching history embarks a political enterprise – an articulation of interest to shape the idea of the citizenry. Using the method of critical discourse analysis and post-historicist ideas, this paper takes historical accounts attributed to three pillars of the national narrative of brave history – Bhimsen Thapa, Balbhadra Kunwar, and Prithvi Narayan Shah, as depicted in the government school textbooks for analysis. The paper examines how the history of bravery has been negotiated and maintained as a comfortable and simplistic narrative at the cost of teaching history more critically in order to inform students and examine emerging questions about the national heroes by excluding the other side of historical narratives. Finally, this paper proposes education at any level cannot be taken as value-neutral, and history should be studied historically.

The Feminist Utopia in Prema Shah and Rokeya S. Hossain: Linking the Real to the Ideal

Prema Shah’s “A Husband” and Rokeya S. Hossain’s “Sultana’s Dream” present two complementary versions of women’s world: the real in Shah and the imagined in Hossain aspire to make the other complete. The worldview that each author projects in their texts reasserts the latent spirit of the other one. The embedded interconnectedness between the authors under discussion reveals their unique association and bond of women’s creative unity towards paving a road for the upliftment of women in general. The paper seeks to find out the historical forces leading to the formation of a certain type of bond between these two authors from different historical and socio-cultural realities. Shah locates a typical Nepali woman in the protagonist in the patriarchal order while Hossain pictures the contemporary Bengali Islamic society and reverses the role of men and women. Hossain’s ideal world and Shah’s real world form two complementary versions of each other: despite opposite in nature, each world completes the other. Sultana moves to the world of dream to seek a new order because Nirmala’s world exercises every form of tortures upon the women’s self. Shah exposes the social reality dictating upon the women’s self while Hossain’s protagonist escapes into the world of dream where women control the social reality effectively and successfully. Overall, Shah and Hossain complement each other’s world by presenting two alternative versions of the same reality, creating the feminist utopia.

The Nature-Human Relationship: An Ecocritical Reading of Self in Keats’ Poem

This study analyzes the fusion of self and nature in John Keats's ode "Ode to a Nightingale" from ecocritical perspective. To do so, the ecocritical insights envisioned by Arne Naess, Bill Devall, George Sessions and Timothy W. Luke have been used as theoretical parameters to analyze the primary text. As the focus of the deep ecological trend, the uniformity between the human self and nature is represented in this text. This uniformity restores the significance of realizing the self with nature. This realization leads to the fusion. The fusion combines harmonious relationship between the self and nature to form a single entity. Due to this process, the selected primary text merges human beings and natural sublimity by means of a nightingale bird. When human beings cannot make positive attitude towards nature and act accordingly, their self does not get chance to be attached with nature. Nature is essential for all entities. The destruction of natural world causes the destruction of self. This destruction gets a solution only when there arises symbiotic bonding between human beings and nature. This bonding adds new knowledge in the existing scholarship being itself different from the previous research works.

Masculinity in Numafung, a Film Directed by Nabin Subba

The prevailing gender practices in the Limbu culture promote asymmetrical power relations not only between males and females but also between dominant males and subordinated males. This practice is portrayed in the feature film Numafung by Nabin Subba. Thus, the paper aims to investigate how the practice of hegemonic masculinity has affected the life of individuals, both males and females in Limbu community in the film. It scrutinizes what sort of problems do the conventional masculine roles bring in the characters’ lives. This paper also intends to assess the reasons that force the males to perform the conventional gender roles. To analyze the text, R.W. Connell’s and Michael Kimmel’s idea of masculinity theory has been used as an approach. These theorists propose that masculinity is a constructed entity that is achieved through constant performance: a series of cues observed, internalized and repeated over time. Illuminating the gender practices in the Limbu culture, Numafung unfolds the cultural dynamics of the Limbu society in the light of hegemonic masculinities. The paper concludes that cultural practices such as ‘sunauli- rupauli,’ ‘mangena’ and ‘jari’ keep their hegemonic masculinity intact. The paper further concludes that the male characters of Numafung embrace hegemonic masculinity because gender is a socio-cultural construction; being part of that society, one hardly can escape from the socially enforced gender roles.

Global Capitalism and the Lahures : A Study of Modernity in Anagarik, a Film Directed by Rambabu Gurung

The Nepali men, also known as the Gorkhas, who joined the colonial British army during and after the Anglo-Nepal War (1814-16), are considered the first foreign economic migrants. These Nepali men, who used to be popularly known as Lahures in their villages, proved to be one of the major harbingers of modernity in Nepal. Since the 1990s, other types of Nepali economic migrants, along with these Lahures, have shaped the Nepali modernity. Against this backdrop, this paper analyzes the Lahure culture in Rambabu Gurung’s debut film Anagarik [The Unbecoming Citizen] in the light of discourses of modernity. Locating the Lahure culture in the national as well as international historical contexts, this study fleshes out a few major findings. Firstly, the Lahure culture is a significant factor, which has heralded and sustained modernity in Nepal. Secondly, it connected Nepal to the world outside even during the Rana rule. Thirdly, the recent trend of Nepalis migrating abroad for employment is nothing but the variation as well as continuation of the same Lahure culture. Fourthly, the Lahure culture is symptomatic of Nepal’s status as a peripheral country in the capitalist world order. This paper is expected to contribute to the ongoing debates surrounding modernity, international migration and Nepal's position in the global capitalist order.

Demystifying the Magic in Diamond Shumsher’s Seto Bagh: History Reconsidered

Diamond Shumsher’s masterpiece, Seto Bagh, is a significant historical novel in Nepali literature. The novel made a vibrant debut in depicting historicity in fictional prose in the Nepali context. In particular, the reconsideration of the portrayal of history from a new perspective is relevant. Traditionally, this is considered a historical realist novel. Nevertheless, magical elements are profusely used in the novel. In this study, this niche opens up avenues to re-evaluate the historicity vis-à-vis magical elements. I have adopted Maggie Ann Bowers’ and Wendy B. Faris’s notions and perspectives on the theoretical lens of magical realism to demystify the magic and history in the text. Further, I have adapted the content analysis method to analyze the textual evidences from the selected novel. The main finding exhibits that the novelist has amalgamated historical facts with magical elements like supernatural beings and happenings. Thus, the novel is an example of historical magical realism. This implies that only established beliefs and theories are not sufficient to judge the literary works rightly. Therefore, new lenses should be explored to enter into the world of fictional prose works as such.

The Politics of Body in Bhisham Sahni's Madhavi: Rethinking the Mythical Performance

Madhavi, a blessed body with eternal virginity, is the central character of Bhisham Sahni's play Madhavi. This paper attempts to explore her boon of eternal virginity as a patriarchal scar inscribed by the society on her womb. How do her ultimate rejection of that scar and the final journey to actual eternity become the insightful performances to respond to the societal body politics? This is the major concern of the study. In this interpretation, mainly the concepts of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler regarding the body politics and the notions of Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, Roberta Mock, and Richard Schechner concerning the body and its performance are synthesized as a theoretical framework to analyze the textual evidence and to observe the performance of the politically conditioned, condemned and trivialized body of Madhavi. Finally, the study ascertains that the perpetually subordinated body gradually comprehends the society and insightfully performs liberty against the hegemonic power bloc. In the play, the proactive proposal of Madhavi to Vishwamitra for lovemaking and her ultimate disappearance into nature in search of actual eternity can be a leading evidence of the insightful performances towards liberty.

Silencing and Breaking the Silence: Resisting Patriarchy in Brajaki’s “Annapurna’s Feast” and Thakuri’s “War”

The aim of this paper is to analyse Manu Brajaki’s story “Annapurna’s Feast” and Maya Thakuri’s “War,” using the resistance theory. It explores the nature of resistance and its significance presented in the stories. The paper argues that both female protagonists of the stories resist injustice happened in their life due to their gendered identity as women, but the way they resist is different: one directly shows the courage and declares to fight against it whereas another silently inherits all the patriarchal value although her silence speaks out loud and gives agency to her voice. To elucidate this statement, Hollander and Rachel L. Einwohner’s concepts on resistance is used. Both stories depict the life of the housewives who are victimized due to existing patriarchal values. The female protagonist of Brajaki seems so resilient whereas Thakuri’s protagonist directly speaks out for the injustice. Both stories present the female protagonists’ silence and courage to speak out as their ways to resist and expose their difficulties to speak out.

Dialectics of Trauma in the Short Stories of Alice Munro

This paper argues that difficult relationships in human life followed by memories, introspection, retrospection, foreshadow, flashback, and awful remembrances are coloured by pain and trauma. Unresolved trauma affects the way one perceives others and oneself in relation to others, which has a significant impact on relationships and often results in behaviour that is not conducive to healthy relationships. Complicated, disordered feelings and distressing emotions that give rise to anxiety find an expression in relationships, either overtly or covertly. This paper will focus on how the characters, suffering from anxiety due to stressed relationships, in the short stories in The Progress of Love, written by Alice Munro, employ defence mechanisms to repress their trauma and project a different version of themselves as responsible individuals who are capable of leading a normal life. The dialectic of trauma covertly present in the narrative will be unravelled using Judith Herman’s theory of trauma. Further, this analysis will investigate and foreground how the underlying trauma finds indirect expression in complicated relationships.