June 6, 2004

It was April [2004] and the 14th anniversary of Janaandolan Diwas or ‘People’s Movement Day’ in Nepal. The celebration marks the success of the Nepalese in choosing a ruler of their choice in 1990. Fourteen years later on the same day, Nepal is struggling once again for ‘people’s power’ to prevail after it was last hijacked in October 2002 when the present King Gyanendra dismissed the prime minister and took over executive powers.

The city of Kathmandu at this time is a scene of intense agitation as the movement to restore democracy, led by the five political parties, is gaining momentum. As I land in the Valley, I am told that a three-day ‘bandh’ (strike) has been called by the Maoists (a regular feature in Nepal). There is added chaos on the already conjested streets of Kathmandu, as sit-ins and protest marches on the Palace Road have begun before the bandh. I fervently hope that I will get to interview a Nepalese writer.

Today, the anti-monarchy and pro-democracy rallies are rocking Nepal. It is at one of these rallies, where Manjushree Thapa — Nepal’s leading novelist/writer — sustains head and back injuries, ending up in the emergency ward of the local hospital.

When I call to meet her, I find Manjushree still weak and nursing three stitches on her forehead. I manage to begin a conversation on the phone with her but considering her health, we agree on continuing the interview via email.

Manjushree Thapa’s last achievement is her novel, The Tutor of History, which has earned her the status of ‘Nepal’s, very own Arundhati Roy’. She is presently working on a non-fiction book on democracy in Nepal and besides co-editing a collection of writings on Nepal she is also in the process of translating a manuscript of contemporary Nepali literature into English. Her contributions to the print media by way of articles are numerous and she is also a gender specialist, assisting the World Bank to research and write a ‘Gender and Social Exclusion Assessment Report’ on Nepal. Her writing career spans nearly 14 years during which she has written mostly on politics and gender related topics. I send her some questions.

If the political condition in your country had not been the way it is — volatile and rife for activism — what subject would you have chosen for your literary pursuits?
Manjushree Thapa: My central passion is not politics per se, but its effect on people, how it shapes them by disabling or enabling their freedom. The search for freedom of human subjectivity is the recurrent theme of my writing. If I weren’t writing about politics, I would still be writing about this.

So tell me how you got injured?
MT: It turned out that that day [April 4, 2004], the government unleashed a particularly brutal backlash. More than 60 people were admitted to the emergency ward of the hospital where I too landed and hundreds more went to other hospitals’ emergency wards. One man had 14 rubber bullets; another, five. So I suppose I was lucky just to be hit on the head (for which I had to get three stitches) and on the back by policemen with lathis.

As a woman how do you deal with the gender ‘insensitivity’ in your region? What problems have you personally faced while writing on ‘gender issues’ considering your press and publications are all state monitored?
MT: As an individual, I— like most Nepali women — have suffered from the deeply entrenched disrespect for women here. The patriarchy’s resistance to gender equality is great, and this does manifest in the behaviour of many colleagues and peers who are oterwise liberal.

Writing about gender issues has not been a problem, though. Thanks to the work of many women’s rights activists such as leading advocate Sapana Pradhan Malla, there is a guilty awareness, in Kathmandu at least, that there is a problem here. Malla has, for example, pointed out all the gender discrimination in our constitution and laws, which make it impossible for those who claim to be ‘liberal’ to ignore the problem any more.

The resistance for women, however, comes at a more personal, day-to-day level — everything from jokes and quips and snide innuendoes to veiled and unveiled threats. There is a disconnect in much of Nepal between the public stance of people and their private behaviour. It is in the more private arenas that women face the greatest challenges.

You have written in English and Nepalese both — which is easier/more expressive for you?
MT: English is my first language, and it is easier for me. I don’t write literature in Nepali, only articles and essays. I don’t feel as confident in Nepali as I do in English.

How would you assess contemporary South Asian writers?
MT: This is a rapidly expanding field, with a lot of talent rising, particularly after Salman Rushdie opened the way for a younger generation. I particularly admire Amitav Ghosh’s nonfiction writing, which is just genius. Another recent book I admire is Geeta Hariharan’s, In Times of Seige, which is very tightly controlled, without the frothy language that often accompanies South Asian writing. Nadeem Aslam’s first novel, The Season of the Rainbirds, greatly moved me when it came out. I hear that he is due to publish a second novel, and am very much looking forward to it.

Do you feel that because we live in a region which is insensitive to gender perspectives, writers originating from here have ‘cashed in’ on the issue?
MT: The Indian academic Suzy Tharu speaks about the need to discover the ‘hurt’ that motivates social grievances. I find this formulation very provocative. I don’t think it is possible to ‘cash in’ on the hurt that is caused by gender discrimination (or caste or ethnic or religious discrimination). The hurt is so great that writers keep returning to the topic, to investigate it. It would be cynical to call that ‘cashing in’.

Tell me a bit about your novel.
MT: The Tutor of History takes a panoramic view of life in a small town in Nepal, focusing on two protagonists as they defy orthodox Hindu prohibitions in order to act on their love. The novel starts as an election gets on way, and it ends as the results are announced. The vote rigging, ballot stuffing, intimidation and violence that occur in the novel’s background mirror the clipped, curtailed personal choices that the protagonists, in the foreground, are asked to content themselves with.

I was especially keen on creating a polyphonic cacophony of the townspeople’s divergent, discordant views, thus evoking the conservative yet changing social attitudes that the protagonists must negotiate. My other major concern in the novel was to inflect the English with the Nepali language. I feel that writing about non-English societies in English amounts to an act of translation. It was my intention to infuse my novel’s English with its characters’ mother tongue, Nepali.

And how would you say that you are different in approaching the problems of South Asia or even Nepal in your writings?
MT: In India, one hears a lot of discord between English writers who live abroad and those who live in India. Those who live abroad are accused of somehow exploiting their roots. For my part, I feel that generally, most English writers from South Asia come from the elite classes, and they can be as out of touch with their country whether they live there or not. To overcome that, they must make a special effort.

For me, the bigger gulf is that between writers who write in South Asia’s regional languages and those who write in English. The regional language literature tends to be rich, varied, complicated, while the literature in English is sometimes all fluff. Though I write mainly in English, I have always aspired to write as though I were writing in Nepali, with the same complexity, without catering to a dumbed-down foreign audience.

Journalists maintain that ‘activism’ and journalism should not merge as one is unable to do justice to either. At some point the demand of one might be sacrificed for the ideology of the other... comment.
MT: As I am not a journalist, I would prefer to comment on nonfiction writing. As a nonfiction writer who has reported on human rights abuses and the Maoist insurgency, I find that, first of all, it is a writer’s duty to write what s/he witnesses. Any other motive — of advocating one political view or another — must be supported by facts. The truth is what matters.

How did you get into writing? Was it ‘in the family’?
MT: I was born in 1968, and lived in Canada with my family for two years as a child; as a result, English was always my first language. I studied junior school in Kathmandu till my family moved to Washington DC where I went to college. Subsequetly I returned to Nepal and eventually discovered my interest in writing. In 1996 I received a two-year Fulbright fellowship to study writing at the University of Washington, in Seattle, USA, and there I did my Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing. Back in Nepal since 1998, I’ve been focusing intensively on writing, both fiction and nonfiction. My next book, Forget Kathmandu, is due to be published by Penguin India this winter.

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