Along with some other members of the Association, I put forth the view that the use of Nepali was greater today not only in its spread but also in its depth. The occasion was not appropriate to elaborate an argument with supporting evidence. That is exactly what I would like to do here by discussing one book in whose creation I was involved some years ago. If I discuss this book here to make that argument, I do so not because there aren’t other examples that others could use to make the same argument but simply because this book – like the other 19 Nepali language books I have edited or co-edited in the past ten years – is part of the long fieldwork that I have been doing on Nepali academia for the past two decades. This is then a report on a part of my fieldwork that pertains to the question mentioned above.
Key Concepts
In late December 2004, Nepalko Sandarvama Samajsastriya Chintan, a volume of essays edited by Mary Des Chene and this writer, was published by Social Science Baha. It was a book sponsored by the US-based Social Science Research Council (SSRC) who had hired Mary to put together a volume of essays on important social science themes in the Nepali language. Some years after having researched the cultural history of the Gurkhas for a 1991 PhD in anthropology from Stanford University, Mary had earnestly started to read Nepali literary and cultural books. Having co-founded the journal Studies in Nepali History and Society in 1996 and translated several Nepali literary writings into English by the turn of the century, she was well-suited to carry out the work that SSRC wanted her to do.
By late spring 2001, Mary had recruited a number of writers to contribute chapters to the book, and when she needed help in recruiting some more, she asked me to join the book-making project. She also hired my Martin Chautari colleague Bhaskar Gautam to manage various aspects of coordination between the editors, writers, reviewers and other stakeholders of the book-making enterprise.
The essays for this book were all written between mid-2001 and early 2002. Drafts of various chapters were discussed by several reviewers during a three-day residential workshop in Dhulikhel in November 2001. The first round of copyediting was done by Mary and writer-politician Ahuti in the summer of 2002. In 2003-04, it was subsequently copyedited by Basanta Thapa of Himal Books. Due to various reasons, Mary’s illness being the primary one, the book was not published until the end of 2004.
Nepalko Sandarvama contains 18 essays on diverse topics such as democracy (writer: Stephen Mikesell), political parties (Krishna Hachhethu), regionalism (Pitamber Sharma), capitalism (Chaitanya Mishra), public health (Sharad Onta), liberalization and structural adjustment (Hari Roka), globalization and TB control (Ian Harper), food security (Jagannath Adhikari), knowledge of water (Ajaya Dixit), human rights (Gopal Siwakoti ‘Chintan’), participatory development (Govinda Neupane), population control (Anit Bhattarai), nationalism and the Janajati (the late Harka Gurung), secularism and Hindu Kingdom (Sudhindra Sharma), Dalit liberation (Ahuti), feminism (Seira Tamang), postmodernism (Manjushree Thapa), and media (me).
Two essays that were written for this volume were rejected by SSRC’s reviewers who evaluated the book manuscript submitted by the editors. This happened not because they were of any less quality but because the reviewers did not like the ‘angle’ of the authors. These were on Mao Zedong thought (Mahesh Maskey) and fascism (Rajendra Maharjan). Subsequently, they were published in the journal Studies in Nepali History and Society and Mulyankan magazine, respectively.
For each of the themes discussed in the book’s chapters, the writers have elaborated some theoretical concerns derived from relevant social science thinking and elucidated them in Nepal-specific contexts. There was no standard format; hence the reader is likely to find variously structured, very long and thikkaiko length essays in this volume.
As can be seen from the above list, all of the writers, except for two, are Nepalis. The two exceptions, Mikesell and Harper, both anthropologists, have Nepali spouses and have lived and worked in Nepal for many years in the past. Their essays were first written in English and translated into Nepali by Anil Bhattarai and Khagendra Sangraula.
The quality of the essays varies a bit. For instance, sociologist Chaitanya Mishra’s essay on capitalism is a pithy exposition on the theme, representing the mature reflections of a senior Nepali academic of the Marxist tradition. My own contribution – an essay on media and liberal democracies – is eclectic in its approach and amateurish in its execution.
Reading it today, I can see that while my enthusiasm for the topic was great, my knowledge of it was very limited.
Despite the variance in the quality of the essays contained in this book, it has gone on to become a best-seller amongst non-textbook social science writings in Nepali. According to sources at its distributor, Himal Books, about 3,000 copies have been sold in the market. Another 1,000 copies were distributed by the publisher to academic institutions and individuals as gifts.
Several booksellers in Kathmandu have told me over the past year that there is a constant trickle of individuals who come looking for this book in their shops. Perhaps the lineup of several internationally known social scientists has done its trick. Or the fact that it received good reviews in many of the influential Nepali media publications has something to do with this continuous demand. The book might also be in demand because influential academics like Mishra have repeatedly mentioned it in book babble columns as something young Nepalis should read.
Whatever might be the cause that attracts readers to this book, I would like to think that its high quality is a result, first, of the commitment of the authors to deliberate on the assigned themes by engaging with an adequate corpus of existing literature on the topic. All writers have extensively read English language sources along with relevant materials in Nepali and other languages to elaborate aspects of the themes they were analyzing. Many dozen reference books in English demanded by the authors or thought to be useful to them were purchased abroad and made available to them.
Second, the process undertaken to create the final text in Nepali was rigorous. The first drafts prepared by the authors were reviewed by the editors and external reviewers and, as mentioned above, thoroughly discussed in a workshop. The drafts were subsequently revised. In some cases, the revisions were extensive. The revised versions were again read by the editors. Finally, each chapter was meticulously copy-edited with authors being asked to clarify issues that the copy-editor and a ‘guinea pig reader’ was unable to understand. At the end of this process, a 600-page book emerged, and to enhance its utility for readers, a team of Martin Chautari researchers prepared an additional 31-page index, perhaps one of the most thorough indexes available for a book published in Nepal.
This then is the story of a book that answers Dixit’s question. Yes, some folks who are reading in English are writing in Nepali for an audience that deserves critical social science writing in the Nepali language. The existence of this book shows that it can be done. SSRC’s money might have helped, editorial engagement might have been crucial; but in the end, it was the commitment of the individual writers that made this book possible.
Looking Beyond
But as a co-editor of this book, I do not want to overstate the case. During the launching ceremony of Nepalko Sandarvama in late December 2004, I made the point that we needed many more similar books on topics that we had been unable to cover in it. In other words, the burden of creating such a book from its early idea to eventual realization had to be shared by many other members of the academic community, as editors and contributors. The fact that Nepalko Sandarvama has been found useful by a large number of readers suggests that such books will do well in the market.
Unfortunately, it can be nobody’s argument that the Nepali intellectual landscape is full of such edited volumes with contributors who read in English but write in Nepali. Single authored monographs by writers who read in English but write in Nepali have been published before and after the appearance of Nepalko Sandarvama, but not many edited volumes that demonstrate the collective possibility of social science writing in Nepali have been published in the last five years. Why is this so, I am not sure. I can guess some reasons but then that exercise is best left for another occasion.
Pratyoush Onta is a historian at Martin Chautari in Kathmandu.
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