The Other Nepal

Puspa Damai is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Marshall University, USA. His academic interests have been shaped by this transnational movement of people, disciplines, ideas and ideologies. He studies and teaches post-colonial literature (including multi-ethnic American literature) in order to investigate the issues of colonialism, empire and cosmopolitanism.

• Introduction Puspa Damai; Part I. Re-casting Otherness: 1. The Treatment of Alterity in Sama's Epic Chiso Chulho Abhi Subedi; 2. The Sweeper and the Mirror: The Emergence of Dalit Consciousness in Nepali-Language Literature Michael Hutt; 3. Systemic Discrimination and Caste-based Violence in Nepal Rabindra Chaulagain and Narayan Pokhrel; 4. Nepali Dalit Literature: Texts, Contexts, and Concepts Mim Bahadur Pariyar and Jyoti Biswas; Part II. Ethnicity, Indigeneity, and Struggles for Cultural Autonomy; 5. Exploring Women and Janjatis as (Not) Others in Nepali Fictions Tulasi Acharya; 6. Ramshekhar's Dhintalla and the Newar Language Movement Kritish Rajbhandari; 7. Naïve Indigenous Servants and Alienated Masters: Social Hierarchy in Modern Nepali Plays Shiva Rijal; 8. History, Memory, and Dissent in Contemporary Tamang Poetry Kumari Lama; 9. Brahmanical Knowledge Production in the Himalayas: High-Caste Authors and Dolpo in Nepali Literature Tashi Chhering Ghale; Part III. Gendering Alterity: 10. Masculinities and Other-ing in Yogesh Raj's Ranahār and Laxmiprasad Devkota's 'Pāgal' Ubaraj Katawal; 11. Democracy, Development, and Desire in Manjushree Thapa's The Tutor of History Pushpa Acharya; 12. A Phenomenology of Love in Shirishko Phool Menuka Gurung; 13. Madhesi Women's Struggle Against Patriarchy and Nationalism in Nepal Priti Mandal; 14. Women and Disaster in Contemporary Nepali Literature Kritika Chettri; Index.

'Since 1990, Nepal has deployed means both peaceful and, at times, violent, in an urgent quest for a just and equitable democracy. The Other Nepal meets this moment of the nation's civil rights reckoning, upending long-held assumptions about its history, language, discourse, and artistic expression. The scholarship here is rigorous, wide-ranging, and timely, critically examining, and also expanding, myriad alterities within the nation. This is a valuable new contribution to global scholarship on Nepal.' Manjushree Thapa