Socio-Cultural Values and Ecological Awareness in Sakela Sili in Kirant Rai in Nepal

In the Eastern part of Nepal, Kirant Rai in traditional attires perform Sakela Sili, a dance style performed twice a yearin a larger circle to honour of Sakela, a deity in Kirant Rai community. The performance of Sakela or Sakkew involves singing and dancing simultaneously. Sakela connects the Kirant to their original source of energy, cultural root, origin and the civilization. Ethnic Kirant Rai, including youth and the old in their dance steps of working in the farmland and worshiping gods, with their hands and legs raising low and high, embody their connections to the terrestrial and celestial, profane and sacred, and the humanity and the divinity to maintain a perfect balance of art and life. The dancers in their body movements blend their passionate intensity to work and aesthetic response to art and embody socio -cultural practices and ecological awareness. While dancing, they work and dance for representing the life in totality. The Kirant Rai work pleasingly, and they dance with their strong passion to work. This paper as an instance of qualitative research employs both emic and etic perspectives to find out how such Sakela Sili performed shapes the socio - cultural values and ecological awareness among Kirant Rai community.

Women in Public Space: Socio-cultural and Political Undertones in Sudraka’s Mrcchakatika

Any work of art directly or indirectly is a product of contemporary society. Sudraka’s Mrcchakatikais an amalgam of the extremely complex socio-cultural circumstances, economic relations of their society, and cross-cultural influences of Greek presence in India. This confluence of various forces is visible in Sudraka’s delineation of women characters especially Ganikas. Construction of woman persona i.e. Vasantasena is as per the theories of art and popular notions prevalent in those days however she does not conform to the tradition wholly, in many respects she challenges the accepted norm of the women prevalent in those days.

The Journey Within: Inner Calling as Spiritual in R. K. Narayan’s The Guide and Robin Sharma’s The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

The Journey within begins when people start contemplating about the real purpose of their existence. The contemplation of longing to know the real purpose of life starts in the process of sitting with mindfulness – meditation which transcends the survival purpose of life. It leads to spirituality, the ability to talk to oneself or the heart - the inner calling, leads humans towards the perception of Divine within oneself, treasure within oneself and happiness within oneself. R. K. Narayan’s The Guide and Robin Sharma’s The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari carve out spiritual traces where protagonists find pleasure and happiness. In The Guide, the transformation of Raju from a tourist guide to spiritual guide for the sake of humankind and his interconnectedness with the Divine owes much to the self-realization as well as to his heart. In the same way, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari transcends the material prosperity and reaches to the state of ecstasy as exemplified in spiritual preaching of the monk - Robin. Following the spirituality as theoretical tool, the article the central characters and explores their transformation towards spiritual awakening.

Nature as Woman in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!

The present paper explores the metaphoric and symbolic meaning of feminized nature in Willa Cather’s novel O Pioneers! through the perspective of ecofeminism. The reveals that the invasion of human beings into nature is related to the patriarchy, the inequality between men and women and the binary opposition of man and nature.It primarily focuses on the characters towards nature especially in two ways – the desirable peaceful nature as a virgin and the chaotic destructive nature as a witch. This paper basically analyses how nature or land in the novel is portrayed like a virgin and a witch at the same time when the Nebraska prairie is changed into agricultural farmland. The portrayal of nature or land as stubborn or unruly land in the novel reflects the negative attitude of male characters towards nature and as such their failure to understand the Nebraska prairie especially the land of Hanover. This paper concludes that the association of women and femininity with nature in environmental discourse perpetuates patriarchal traditions and domination.

Critique of Capitalist Ideology in Bhattarai’s Muglan

This article explores Govinda Raj Bhattarai’s worries about the innocent youths to be the Muglanis forced by the dominant capitalistideology of the society in his novel Muglan. In the novel, he presents the critical situation of the youths who are compelled to leave their motherland just for survival but they get sold like cattle and are enslaved and forced to do hard physical labour in the cruel foreign land. The article applies neo-Marxist insights to study devastating results of elitist bourgeois ideology of the society over the life of poor innocent people in the novel. It mainly borrows ideas from Luis Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” along with the ideas by Terry Eagleton and Antonio Gramsci. The article shows Bhattarai’s critique of elitist bourgeois ideology of the society that he does through his choice of the protagonist, Sutar, who along with other youths leaves his home and goes to muglan but gets robbed, sold and forced to work as road builder in the foreign land of Bhutan. By showing the hopelessness of better life for the youths in their native land, Nepal and their pathetic condition in the foreign land, Bhattarai critiques the elitist ideology of Nepalese society.

Searching for the Way in Life: Yang Zhu’s Theory of Tending Life in Liezi

Known as a Taoist, Yang Zhuw lived in the Warring States Period. In his only transmitted work named ‘Yangzhu’in Liezi, he presented the “tending life” theory which was considered by most scholars as a sort of “hedonism,” “extreme egoism” or “indulgence.” However, the “tending life” theory should not be simply regarded as an avocation of physical enjoyment. First, ‘Yangzhu’ defined Tao（the Way） as a “weak power” which only assists things to “auto-generate” and “self-transform,” so that “tending life” is also a pursuit of the ultimate meaning of Tao. ‘Yangzhu’ further argued that the best way of “tending life” is not to restraint and suppress one’s natural desire, for the realization of “tending life” should be based on the preservation of the body. ‘Yangzhu’ discusses the relationship between the “Ming”(name/reputation) and the “Shi”(Reality), which reveal that the attachment to the “reputation” is the main obstacle of the realization of “tending life.” At last, Yang Zhu proposed that the most ideal life should “roaming as the nature prompt” through a dialectical discussion. Therefore, the theory of “tending life” also reflects a pursuit that to some extent transcends the physical life.

Zadie Smith’s White Teeth: Dubious Existence of Cultural Authenticity

This paper argues the cultural authenticity is a questionable conception. Zadie Smith’s debut novel, White Teeth features characters like Samad Miah Iqbal and Hortense Bowden who aredetermined toretain cultural purity. Through this projection,presumably, Smith intends to satirize their efforts and substantiates her claim that cultural purity cannot maintained, especially, when the immigrants come to the host country. Despite the guarding of one’s culture, the breaching of the cultural integrity has visibly taken place in the novel

No more “Us’’ Versus “Others”: Critique of Cultural Trauma in the Movie Partition by Vic Sarin

On 15 August 1947, the glory of Indian Independence has introduced with a political hubris, dividing British India into two separate independent nations: secular India and Islamic Pakistan. The partition brings trauma in the life of millions; nevertheless, this trauma itself becomes the victim of nationhood and community both in official history and literary writing. In this background, the study examines how a Hollywood movie Partition directed by Vic Sarin in 2007, exceptionally surpasses that tendency of dividing the community into ‘‘as’’ and ‘‘others’’ imparting Indian partition trauma politically. While analyzing the behavior and action of major characters along with the overall imparted theme of the movie, it rethinks the customary archives of community and nationhood depicting partition memory objectively. The protagonist never pronounces a single word of communal intolerance even when he has been mocked and tortured in the name of religion. Conversely, some characters in the movie always attempt to massacre the truth of trauma spreading communal bile; however, the overall essence and message of the movie keep that alive. Rethinking cultural trauma and using the approach of memory, the study concludes that this in-between movie appears as “West Running Brook” that exceeds the common communalization and perpetual politicization in the history of depicting Indian partition. Eventually, the study establishes that sharing pain seems to work as a healer among victims to overcome their trauma on one side and uniquely it adjoins the British as a party in Indian partition trauma in the next, which has been blurred considering insignificant in the one-to-one conflict between two giants.

Countering Anthropocentric Perspective of Ecology with the Dictum of the Gita

Human beings and the natural world have remained in constant collision with each other since the beginning of human civilization. The biosphere is shared by millions living beings including human beings. From the early days of human civilization, human beings kept themselves in the centre and developed an attitude of us and them, human beings us and the entire plants, animals and elements them. In Complete anthropocentric perspective of development of about ten thousand years, human beings never thought about the impacts upon the natural world and as a result the entire earth is in disfigured appearance now. In this essay, I have made an argument that only karma irrespective of the benefits can slow down or even reverse the conflict between human beings and the natural world.

‘Kha Me’Jatra of Bhaktapur: An Intangible Cultural Heritage of Nepal

The main aim of this paper is to explore and highlight the Kha Me Jatra as an important intangible cultural heritage of Bhaktapur and Nepal as well. Not only status and glory, but the unique identity of our nation is also represented by the temples, monasteries, images, feasts, festivals, the mountains, rivers, forests, lakes as well as various beautiful places. These globally renowned properties have made our nation peculiar, popular and prestigious in the world. Nepalese people observe and commonly participate the celebration of many wonderful festivals and fairs celebrated in different parts and days in the year. For instance, people of Bhaktapur celebrate different colorful festivals and Jatras on the special auspicious days of every year. Every festive event of Bhaktapur has its own specialties. Through the perspective of intangible cultural heritage among them, Kha Me is one of the important Jatra which is celebrated on the ninth day of Dashain, the greatest festival of Nepal. ‘Kha Me’ is a pure male buffalo which is reared in the name of goddess Bramhayani in Bhaktapur. It is brought in Gathemunga festival and kept in the ground floor of the temple of goddess Durga. During the ninth day it is taken in an open street for the procession. It is a typical Jatra which represents indigenous feature and identity of Bhaktapur, the cultural capital of Nepal. But, unfortunately, this peculiar and popular festival has still remained an untouched issue of the academia. No one has explored and highlighted it as an intangible cultural heritage from the perspectives of cultural, religious and social significance.