Contents of this Issue

• Nepali Literature Through a Glass, Darkly (Khagendra Sangraula)

Reviews

• Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality (Richard G. Wilkinson)
• The Rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, Charity and the Poverty of Representations (John Hutnyk)
• Development Aid to Nepal: Issues and Options in Energy, Health, Education, Democracy and Human Rights (Harald O. Skar and Sven Cederroth)

Khagendra Sangraula

Spun into the web of words produced from their investigations and inspections, social researchers and literary writers endeavour to hang before us mirrors reflective of individuals and society. Ironically, sometimes those mirrors present merely a pitiable reflection of the writers' own intellectual abilities and moral sensibilities.

British researcher Michael Hutt has investigated modern Nepali literature for nearly two decades, engaging in editorial work, commentary and, most extensively, translation. Within this web of collected, original, and transformed words, he too has hung a mirror. In it Nepal's reflection appears murky, superficial, piecemeal: his own reflection appears clear, sharp, and whole. Reviewing Hutt's Himalayan Voices, fellow British academic David Gellner dubbed him with the title of "foremost foreign expert on modern Nepali literature". What is the basis for such an assessment? Is it the polish and fidelity of the mirror of Nepali literature that Mr. Hutt has created (and within it, true reflections of the images of society that Nepali literature itself produces)? Unfortunately, no. Peering into the mirror one can make out, dimly backlit by the never-quite-setting sun of the enduring empire, a few of the characteristics lending plausibility to that title: the English language, white skin, the sterling pound. And gathered round, slavishly worshipping these signs of 'modern civilization', one part of the Nepali intellectual community, whose adulatory stance lends native authority to the lal mohar stamped upon Hutt's credentials by his fellow countryman. Thus has his expertise on Nepali literature become an established fact.

What, then, of the fate of Nepali literature, whose faithful image Hutt's mirror is ostensibly designed to reflect? For years his mirror has mainly refracted images of the literature given its own lal mohar by the Royal Academy. About the peculiar features and limitations of that reflection of Nepali literature much could be said. But for reasons of space, here I present just a few examples that testify to Mr. Hutt's intellectual skills, moral sensibilities and apparent love for commando culture.

In The Nepali Literature of the Democracy Movement and its Aftermath he writes of the creative assistance to expression rendered by the censorship plastered upon the consciences of citizens during the Panchayati Raj: "The existence of censorship (which was, more often than not, self-censorship) produced many great and memorable works of allegory". But in reality, artistic works like those Hutt seeks to credit for their allegorical form are produced not by censorship; their form is the end result of intellectual effort to break the chains of censorship, a profoundly different matter. Hutt expresses concern that, after the downfall of the Panchayat, the regime's censorship may have become exaggerated. If the scope of the Panchyati Raj he inspects were expanded to include the innumerable literary works in newspapers and journals smudged out by the black soot of censorship, the many books stolen and destroyed by the authorities, the anonymous handwritten poems, allowed no publication outlet, scattered secretly in the streets, and the many writers persecuted simply for criticism of the regime, he would surely be saved from such ignorant and absurd commentary. No less absurd are the acrobatics he engages in to surreptitiously conceal the ugly aspects of the Rajat Poetry Campaign's mandalization, through instilled terror and proffered enticements, of independent consciences and poetry alike.

Individuals knowledgeable in English, Nepali, and the art of translation - Taranath Sharma, Pratyoush Onta and others - have meaningfully commented on various injustices to the original found in Hutt's translations. In the arts of discarding parts of the text with abandon and inserting things willy-nilly, Hutt is unrivalled. In some cases this seems merely to reflect a lack of respect for or comprehension of the original text, but in others it actively helps to create his cleansed image of commando culture and his feeble image of opposition to it.

Translating from Bimal Nibha's portrait, in his poem, Patan, of the aspirations and beauty of the People's Movement's opposition to the autocratic Panchayat, banished from Hutt's mirror is: "And protest against injustice". Just four small words, but within them the essence of the andolan. In a short satirical essay discussing the fate of poems founded upon the security of bayonets and plated silver coins, I wrote: "Now praise-filled talk of the brave Nepali people rose toward the stratosphere; along with the gang of commandos, talk of Chandani Shaha slipped inside a hole. It's amazing! Who was where yesterday; who's reached where today?" In Hutt's English mirror, the "gang of commandos" was smudged out altogether. For the "foremost foreign expert", "commando bhaiharuko dalbal" are evidently merely three lifeless words. But for those who experienced the cruelty of Panchayati culture, commando is an unforgettable, ugly sign of the fear, pain, and wrath produced by Panchayati oppression.

Words convey human feelings and experience. Words have life of their own, rhythms, and dignity. For nonsensically - whether whimsically or willfully - pruning others' words, it may seem rude to dub Mr. Hutt a word-stalker and an assassin of meaning. But, unfortunately, to express the essence of his destructive sport in any words but these is impossible.

And it is in this light that we must examine the spectre of a Hutterized Bhupi - hacked to pieces and condemned to lay exposed so for years to come, before an international audience. Bhupi's words dance to many rhythms - melancholy and slow, fast and furious - but always they dance, creating dazzling patterns in a few short steps. Simplicity and spareness, rhyme and alliteration, repetition and precision, revelation of the subject only after its portrait is before us - these are key elements of Bhupi's wordcraft. Satirical, outraged or bemused, profound portraits of the injustices and sufferings of Nepali life written from a sometimes tortured vantage within it - these are what much of his wordcraft was dedicated to. Hutterized Bhupi speaks in unrecognizable plodding, disjointed prose and has nothing much to say. Beyond the artistic travesty, Bhupi's moral stances, and sharp-eyed critiques are frequently smudged out. Consider the final stanza of Sadhain-Sadhain Mero Sapanama:

yasari nai sadhain-sadhain mero sapanama
Malayaka asankhya-asankhya manisharuko
aasuko ek thulo sagar banchha
jasko pratyek laharma
ek lash mathi uthchha
ek lash tala dubchha
tara dubnubhanda agadi malai
pratyek lashle ghrinale herchha
ah, mero sapanama malai
mero bipanako itihasle ghrina garchha

So always always in my dream
a great ocean forms:
the tears of the men in Malaya;
a corpse rises up and a corpse sinks down
in every ocean wave,
regarding me with hatred.
Ah in my dreams I am loathed
by the history of my awakening.

Inviting confusion by omission of "asankhya-asankhya", actively misleading by translating Malayaka manisharu as "the men in Malaya", Hutt then adds a footnote expressly identifying them as Gurkhas, thus erasing Bhupi's image of the ocean of tears of the people of Malaya, that is, erasing his critique of the war in which his countrymen were fighting on the side of imperialism. Whose are the bobbing corpses and who do they regard with hatred? For English readers contemplation of those questions is foreclosed by the translation. Its final line completes the hatchet job, obscuring Bhupi's harshly honest, complex relation to the history of our country.

A similar erasure is achieved by the translation of galat as "lie" in Galat Lagchha Malai Mero Deshko Itihas. Two senses of wrongness pervade the entire poem: the incorrectness of the resplendent national history that is told and displayed, and the moral wrongness of the history that has transpired in Nepal. The second sense fades from the poem in the mirror. In Ghantaghar, several pure Michaelian inventions are added; of Bhupi's few words, several are dropped. All rhythm is lost and so is the profound still portrait effected by the whole. In Sanjhko Naya Sadak Š, a stark image of citizens treated as refuse by the Panchayati Raj is made opaque in the mirror. And on and onŠ "kathaibara, bichara/'Bhupi' Sherchan!"

The distorted overall image of Nepali society through its literature reflected in Hutt's mirror is not just a composite of deformed details. Selecting for translation pieces which will, in practice, represent the whole, entails responsibility for careful contextualization, and attention to contemporary contexts. In a recent volume under Hutt's editorship (in the Journal of South Asian Literature), no discernible standard of literary or social value, or representativeness guides the selection, rather it seems based on a whimsical "hi-hallo" announcing, 'even in Nepal, there is literature!' And, included there is B.P. Koirala's The Colonel's Horse. At this historic moment, when Nepali women are joined in struggle for personal recognition and rights, what is the point of presenting that hapless image created a year before 7 saal, of a woman seeking compensation from a youthful horse for the sexual satisfaction she cannot get from her elderly husband? Carefully contextualized, it could have a point. Without that, is it not appalling derision of the aspirations of women who, in addition to other rights, wish to fulfill, in a natural and healthy way, their sexual desires? Even on the basic questions of what to translate when, and why, we find reflected not an iota of the wisdom of Nepali literature's "foremost foreign expert".

Despite years of effort, a superficial, distorted and ugly image of Nepali literature and the Nepali sensibilities reflected therein has been created by Hutt's spinning of Nepali words into English ones. That his fellow countryman can blithely stamp a seal of approval upon his mirror of Nepal, that the clearest image reflected is the pitiable one of Mr. Hutt's own lack of craft and reactionary sensibilities, and that some members of Nepal's literary community have long gazed in uncritical adulation into such a mirror, are facts that do not make up a pretty picture. It is no source of pleasure to gaze or comment upon it. But gaze and comment we must for, confronted with such a mirror, we Nepalis need to pause and reflect on its sources.

(Khagendra Sangraula is a fiction writer and essayist. The essay of his mentioned above was published in Jan-Andolanka Chharraharu.)