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Language, Literature and the Formation of a Nepali Public Sphere in India, 1914-1940

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Language, Literature and the Formation of a Nepali Public Sphere in India, 1914-1940 ‘We Nepalis’ Language, literature and the formation of a Nepali public sphere in India, 1914-1940 Rhoderick Alasdair Macdonald Chalmers School of Oriental and African Studies A thesis submitted to the University of London in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy ProQuest Number: 11015826 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11015826 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 2 Abstract This thesis examines the processes which led to the emergence and development of a form of Nepali public sphere in India in the early twentieth century. It proposes that an analysis of the rational-critical modes of discourse adopted by this sphere, and their extension into areas of social, cultural and political institutionalisation offers the best way of understanding the formulation of a modem Nepali identity which has proved persuasive to this day. The central chapters focus on the way in which popular publishing built up both a large readership and the infrastructure which was adopted by more discursive journals; the contours, complexities and contradictions of the dominant rhetoric of social progress which they fuelled and propagated; the way in which rhetoric was incarnated in various organisations and social structures, and the extent to which social mobility allowed power relations to be redrawn while other paradigms of exclusion continued to delimit participation in public life; finally, it offers an assessment of the summation of these processes insofar as they contributed to the development of a clearly articulated, self-aware, and delimited sense of Nepali social consciousness and community belonging. This thesis is based on materials that have been almost entirely ignored by previous historical or literary studies, primarily published Nepali journals and books. It challenges many of the presumptions which underlie traditional approaches to the areas studied and offers specific critiques of a number of influential theorisations of Nepali history and society. At the heart of its analysis is a commitment to understanding the intellectual processes of community conceptualisation and rationalisation as they were experienced and expressed by Nepalis themselves in the period in question. This also entails a detailed dissection of issues of power and authority, of tendencies towards both contestation and the development of normative understandings, and, throughout, of the role of language in enabling and mediating these processes. 3 Contents Abstract ..............................................................................................................................................2 Contents ............................................................................................................................................ 3 T ables ................................................................................................................................................6 Illustrations ........................................................................................................................................6 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... 7 Note on translation, transliteration and citation ............................................................................9 Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................................11 1. Introduction: the foundations of a Nepali public sphere in India....13 1.1. Critical contexts ...................................................................................................................... 18 1.1.1. Locating the Nepali public sphere................................................................................................... 18 1.1.2. The problem of Nepaliness..............................................................................................................28 1.1.3. The Nepali critical tradition..............................................................................................................34 1.2. The Nepali language and its speakers ................................................................................ 40 1.2.1. Language............................................................................................................................................40 1.2.2. Nepali communities in India: a brief introduction......................................................................... 47 1.3. Sources and organisation of the study ............................................................................... 51 2. Popular publishing, print-capitalism and the Nepali readership 58 2.1. Banaras and the birth of Nepali print-capitalism .................................................................58 2.2. The creation of a readership ................................................................................................ 65 2.3. Popular literature ....................................................................................................................72 2.3.1. Waves of love: the lure of\ aharl literature.....................................................................................74 2.3.2. Popular religious literature............................................................................................................... 83 2.3.3. Sava! and military literature.............................................................................................................87 2.3.4. Novels, stories and tall tales............................................................................................................92 2.4. Publishing, promoting, advertising ....................................................................................... 97 2.5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 106 Contents 4 3. Visions of social progress: discourses of learning,unnati and the mother tongue.............................................................................................110 3.1. From literary to discursive sphere: re-reading early Nepali journals .............................111 3.2. The urge for upliftment .........................................................................................................119 3.2.1. The rhetoric of vidya and unnati ................................................................................................... 119 3.2.2. The sense of backwardness .......................................................................................................... 128 3.3. The centrality of language: unnati and (matr)bhasonnati............................................... 133 3.4. Tradition, progress and morality: competing concepts and the normative tendency. 143 3.4.1. Progressive and regressive versions of unnati ........................................................................... 143 3.4.2. Morality and social order................................................................................................................ 150 3.5. The place of women: subjects and objects .......................................................................156 3.6. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 167 4. Building and bounding the public sphere: institutionalisation and exclusion......................................................................................................169 4.1. Background ...........................................................................................................................169 4.2. Education: recognition, consolidation, propagation ......................................................... 172 4.2.1. Rediscovering early Nepali textbooks and teaching methods..................................................172 4.2.2. Darjeeling, Parasmani and the new model.................................................................................. 179 4.3. Institutions: from cultural expression to political consciousness ....................................188 4.3.1. Drama: extension of medium and audience................................................................................190 4.3.2. Libraries and literary associations.................................................................................................194 4.3.3. Political consciousness and organisation....................................................................................201 4.4. Constituting the public: the composition of civil society .................................................. 213 4.4.1. Participation in the public realm....................................................................................................213 4.4.2. Education,
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