Ganga Bahadur’s books: landmark proletarian novels and the Nepali communist movement
Michael HUTT
Abstract Based on literary research and interviews conducted in Kathmandu, this article takes as its starting point the contents of a bookcase belonging to an ex-Maoist combatant now living in retirement in Kathmandu and the “syllabus” promulgated by the then Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) for the ideological training of its cadres. It goes on to chronicle the process by which a number of “landmark ‘proletarian novels’” (Denning 2007, 706) came to be translated into Nepali from Russian and Chinese, and the ways in which Maoist cadres were inspired and influenced by these works during the course of the “People’s War” in Nepal between 1996 and 2006. Finally, the discussion moves to a consideration of the relationship between the impact of these translated texts in the Nepali context and broader conceptualisations of “world literature.”
Keywords: Nepal, Soviet Union, China, Maoism, communism, translation, world literature
Notes on contributor
Michael Hutt is Professor of Nepali and Himalayan Studies at SOAS (the School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London. He has published extensively on Nepali literature, of which he is also a noted translator, and on Nepali politics. His recent publications include Poetry and Politics in Post-Rana Nepal: the life of Bhupi Sherchan (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2010); Eloquent Hills: Essays on Nepali Literature (Kathmandu: Martin Chautari, 2012); and “The Last Himalayan Monarchies” in Facing Globalization in the Himalayas: Belonging and the Politics of the Self (edited by Gérard Toffin and Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka; New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2014).