नेपाली दलित साहित्य / Nepali Dalit Literature
The Sanskrit-derived word dalit (‘broken’, ‘ground down’, or ‘oppressed’) is the term most commonly used in contemporary South Asian discourse to denote members of the range of largely artisanal castes formerly known as Untouchables. Dalits number approximately 3.5 million in Nepal, constituting 13.4% of the total population, according to the 2021 census. Despite huge social and political change over the past 60 years or so, Dalits remain at the very bottom of Nepali society in terms of all key development indicators. They continue to face discrimination, exclusion and violence, both direct and structural, and efforts to improve their condition are routinely compromised by pervasive social stigma.
The history of Nepali-language literature dates back to the late 18th century, but the almost total absence of Dalits from this literature until the recent past—whether as the subjects or authors of texts—is very striking. The earliest published Nepali Dalit writers were probably TR Bishwakarma and Jawahar Roka, whose poems and stories began to appear in the late 1950s, but until the major political change of the 1990s most references to Dalits in published Nepali-language literature, and to Dalit-related issues such as untouchability, caste-based oppression and discrimination, came from the minds and pens of writers who were not Dalits themselves.
The struggle for Dalit liberation has a longer history in India than it does in Nepal, and the emergence of a distinctive Dalit voice in Indian literature—first in Marathi, later in Hindi, and now increasingly in English—has been an important element of this struggle since the late 1970s. Indian Dalit writers have achieved some success in changing the terms of their own representation, particularly in the field of life narratives, and there is a growing scholarly literature on Indian Dalit writing (see, for instance, Beth 2007, Brueck 2014, Ganguly 2012.)
Nepali Dalit writing, which has been growing in volume in recent years, has a much lower profile and has remained unstudied until very recently. My current research project aims to fill this lacuna. Its end product will be a book, tentatively subtitled Readings in Nepali Dalit Literature, which explores the history of Nepali writing by and about Dalits, charts the emergence of Dalit Consciousness (dalit chetana) in Nepali-language literature, and introduces the lives and works of Nepal’s Dalit writers. The project was funded for two years (2022-4) by a small personal research grant from the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust which enabled me to travel to Nepal to engage with Dalit writers and access archives and libraries. I hope to be able to return to Nepal in 2025 to explore literary production among the Madhesi Dalit and Gandharva communities.
The vast majority of Nepali Dalit texts have appeared in journals and newspapers; by my counting, 23 Nepali Dalit authors have published a book of fiction or poetry to date. Here is a first listing of Dalit-authored book-length literary works, followed by a bibliography of critical and analytical literature.
My first publication emerging from this project is an article in the Far Western Review, which is available here: The Emergence of Nepali Dalit Literature. Two further essays, on the development of Dalit Consciousness in selected works of Nepali fiction and poetry, will appear during 2025/6 in the form of chapters in books edited by others.
I am most grateful for the generous assistance and enthusiastic support this project has received and continues to receive from writers, editors, librarians, academics, booksellers and numerous other friends old and new in Nepal. हार्दिक धन्यवाद !