Institutionalization of the Roma Chatterji Patua Scroll Collection, Patua Scroll Exhibition, Teach-in, and Ramayana–Ravana Seminar

Partners: Dr. Sasanka Perera, Dr. Pooja Kalita (Colombo Institute), Dr. Roma Chatterji

August 2025

In collaboration with Millennium Art Contemporary (MIAC) and Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS), Colombo, Sri Lanka

Between August 4 and 11, 2025, the Colombo Institute for Human Sciences (CI) hosted a pathbreaking outreach initiative focused on transnational folklore, visual culture, and the politics of heritage in South Asia. Anchored around the donation and institutionalization of Prof. Roma Chatterji’s personal Patua scroll collection on Ramayana-Ravana tales. It was led by Dr. Sasanka Perera and Dr. Pooja Kalita from CI. the event comprised four integrated components:

  1. Institutionalization of the Roma Chatterji Patua Scroll Collection

  2. Five-day exhibition of Patua scrolls at MIAC

  3. Three-day teach-in by Prof. Roma Chatterji

  4. Concluding dialogue session with participants.

Together, these components formed an inclusive, accessible, and richly layered program aligned with the Heritage as Placemaking (HaP) project that highlighted how heritage is not simply a matter of a tangible monumental past but of active, negotiated, and sometimes contested placemaking.

The heart of the initiative was the formal establishment of the Roma Chatterji Patua Scroll Collection at the Colombo Institute. Comprising around 50 scrolls painted by the Patua artisan community of West Bengal, these works represent an intricate blend of mythology, daily life, and political commentary; rendered in vibrant visual narratives. By becoming the repository for this collection, the Colombo Institute has transformed into a distinctive site for the study of folklore and visual culture in Sri Lanka. This marks a significant moment in placemaking, as the Institute becomes a discursive and physical space for exploring a specific form of Indian folk art in a Sri Lankan context. Importantly, this complicates the notion of placemaking in productive ways.

These scrolls, though geographically displaced from their original context, now serve to open up new spaces for cross-cultural understanding and academic inquiry. They allow us to explore how different communities imagine place, from the Patua creators to the diverse viewers encountering them in Colombo. In this sense, the Institute now functions as a bridge between Sri Lanka and the folk heritage of India, opening up long-term possibilities for the study of folk traditions within Sri Lanka itself.

The Exhibition

The five-day exhibition from 4th to 8th August curated and hosted at Millennium Art Contemporary (MIAC), displayed a selected set of scrolls. The exhibition included guided tours, gallery talks, and walkthroughs by Prof. Roma Chatterji for students and general audience. Participants noted the visual and narrative power of the scrolls and appreciated the rare opportunity to engage with regional art forms often excluded from mainstream heritage platforms. Feedback consistently reflected an appreciation for the exhibition's accessibility, storytelling depth, and its capacity to challenge dominant narratives around epics and identity.

The Teach-in

Following the exhibition there was a three-day teach-in with Prof. Roma Chatterji. CI collaborated with Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS) in Colombo on this front. The Teach-in series was attended by scholars, students, artists, and educators. Prof. Chatterji drew from her extensive fieldwork and scholarship to explore the visual politics of Patua scrolls, reinterpretation of epics like the Ramayana in popular culture and cartoonification of mythology in Indian comics, decolonial representation of heritage. Each session emphasized the HaP themes of placemaking, erasure, transnational solidarities, and bureaucratic interventions. the politics of representation. A notable outcome was the genuine democratization of knowledge, many expressed that the teach-ins challenged their assumptions and offered new tools for thinking about culture beyond geographical borders.

The Dialogue Session

The final session of the outreach event was a dialogue session. It was a participatory deliberation session among participants of the teach-in and interested parties. The participants had the opportunity to reflect on what they had learned and actively shape the intellectual outcomes of the program. This session also offered a more egalitarian space for sharing ideas. This further aligns with HaP’s commitment to inclusive knowledge production and challenges hierarchies in how heritage is discussed and theorized.

The Mithila Murals Project

Partners: Dr. Sabin Ninglekhu, Dr. Sasanka Perera, Dr. Pooja Kalita, Sapana Sanjeevanai

December 2024

In December 2024, HaP principal investigators, Dr. Sabin Ninglekhu and Dr. Sasanka Perera, along with research fellow Dr. Pooja Kalita co-organized an outreach program with Sapana Sanjeevani, one of the founding members of PayalSapanaPaints, a Nepal-based feminist art collective. This project spanning over two days from the 8th to 10th December brought together 10 Mithila and Madhubani art practitioners from different districts around the Mithila region in Nepal and India. The residential workshops were held at the Cultural Village in Janakpur. After the workshop the women-led group of artists also collaborated in a placemaking project where they painted the walls of the Janakpur Railway Station, which is also the station that connects India and Nepal.

Centrally the workshop was able to address a crucial impasse one ongoing reluctance among the younger generation to take up this art form. And secondly the challenge of bringing in newer themes. For example its confinement to religious themes, has resulted in the “over-dependence on monotonous forms to meet the market needs or is under the direct appropriation of institutionalized politics or religion or a combination of the two”. In this workshop the artists tried to address these problems and to create a space for personal narratives and collaborative work.

Below are impressions from their workshop alongside snippets from a report detailing the Mithila Murals Project.

PayalSapanaPaints

Artists at work. Photo: Sabin Ninglekhu

PayalSapanaPaints, is a Nepal-based feminist art collective. Sapana’s deep reservoir of knowledge, ideas and insights rooted in the lived everyday circumstances provided us the intellectual and creative direction in putting the outreach program together. Sapana is a practicing Mithila artist and is quite well-known in Nepal for experimenting with the art form as a political narrative inspired by personal subjectivities of womanhood, or more specifically Madhesi womanhood rooted in the Mithila heritage. Sapana also comes from a family of Mithila artists – her mother and her aunt, her mother’s sister who is no more, are considered pioneers in the art form, who have inspired other artists that helped put together the Janakpur Women Development Centre – a collective of Mithila artists

“Well known Mithila artists like Sita Devi, Ganga Devi, Pano Das, Revati Mandal have been able to represent their own everyday circumstances through the interpretation of personal stories in their art and are well recognized for this ... The aim of this outreach was to bring artists from different backgrounds 4 along the lines of caste, region, ethnicity as well as different districts of the Mithila region in both India and Nepal to help break the monotony of repetitive themes and motifs and explore together, with a sense of community, various themes that are relatable to the artists vis-à-vis their personal stories.”
“December 8th and 9th 2024 were focused on mural painting by the artists, a first in the history of the city of Janakpur given the mixture of artists representing geographic, caste and cultural diversity in general. With critical attention to the socio-cultural locations of the artists, we used the outreach also as an opportunity to ignite public conversations around caste-based and place-based narratives that dominate the art form, and the necessity to challenge this domination for the creative, and at times even radical, growth of the art form.”
“A first of its kind, the women-led mural painting project was able to incite dialogue between the artists and the public, in the short and long term, and in ways that are direct and indirect, particularly around culture, religion and patriarchy as they intersect with gender and sexuality, and in the process, added to Janakpur’s placemaking.”
“We felt from the inception that painting the wall served many purposes. This is why we envisioned this project in the first place. The very act of ‘doing’ art collectively and in public space along with the legacy that follows in the form of the murals on the walls of an iconic heritage site of a religious town such as Janakpur, is symbolic to us, in bringing a form of art and the artists hitherto not taken too seriously by the state, into the public domain and closer to public attention. Such a collaborative act also reframes the state-society relationship, with women as protagonists, beyond borders. To note, it is the railway station that connects Nepal with India.”
“We believe strongly that through the space we co-created through the outreach, the artists were able to mobilize their agentive capacity to interpret and articulate art rooted both in the fixed nature of traditional forms and the mutating everyday life. In this sense, of followed through by them and others, this effort will mark the beginning of an epistemic break in Mitila and Madhubani art.”

PayalSapanaPaints also co-hosted HaP’s 2024 Winter School, read the blog posts here.

Herne Katha

Lead partner: Dr. Stefanie Lotter (SOAS)

May 2024

In collaboration with Anusha Khanal, Bidhya Chapagain, and Kamal Kumar from Herne Katha.

This outreach initiative supported research and community outreach for a new Herne Katha episode on Ex Gurkha families in the UK. The research part of the project explored the narratives of Nepali diaspora communities in the UK, with a particular emphasis on ex-Gurkha soldiers and their families in the UK. In particular, the project was situated in the towns of Aldershot, Fanborough and Reading. The aim was to understand how ex-Gurkha veterans and their families navigate and preserve their Nepali identity and cultural heritage while living and settling in the UK. The community screening part of the proposal provided a platform for engagement with UK Nepali communities and scholars.

By employing ethnography, interviews, and participatory observation, the group was able to engage with the Nepali diaspora in the UK (mainly Gurung, Magar, Rai, Limbu) to gain an in-depth understanding of their cultural experiences in the diaspora.

Herne Katha is a web documentary series which tells the tales of the extraordinary lives of ordinary people and communities in Nepal.

The projecthas now reached unimaginable heights. Herne Katha is now more than a series; it has become a collective movement. With over 1 million followers and 80 million views over 5 years, the stories from Herne Katha have managed to bring together people from all walks of life, within Nepal and globally.  

Narrated in a journalistic style, Herne Katha provides a radical approach to storytelling. 

They feature unheard, marginalized and silenced stories from Nepal. Each episode features a different part of Nepal where the local communities tell their stories – in their own words and in their own style.

Blog post by Lex Limbu: Herne Katha Features The Life Of Nepalis in Aldershot

Published below is a blog post by Lex Limbu a blogger currently based out of London and Kathmandu. The post was first published on 26th September 2024 and has been republished here with his permission.

The recent episode of Herne Katha has taken many Nepalis in the UK by surprise. In Belayatka Gham-Joon Haru, Bidhya Chapagain has traded uneven hilly terrains or the plains of Terai to the gentle life of Nepalis in Aldershot. The town which has historically been the home of the British Army is often dubbed as the home of Gurkhas or Nepali town. NepAldershot is a popular term among non-Nepali taxi drivers. The near-hour long episode features the lives of elderly Nepalis, baje and bojus, who have swapped their life in Nepal for Aldershot. Chapagain does well to find out the reasons and circumstances that have brought the bajey and bojus to the UK.

In the video, we are quickly able to understand the meaning of Aldershot and surrounding towns such as Farnborough for the elderly Nepalis. For many parts of Aldershot provides a chautari, a place to meet and chat; it provides a place where they can get by with just their mother tongue. Even the vendors in the market are heard speaking in Nepali. The vendors go further, stressing how businesses such as theirs are supported and sustained by the Nepali community. This is not surprising.

From jewellery shops, convenience stores, event venues, places of worship; Nepalis have comfortably ventured into all these avenues and more! There’s even a Nepali barbership, salon and a tattoo parlour.

There are some themes that really come through. Many of the elderly Nepalis came to the UK to get what they felt they truly deserved all along… justice. While we don’t see any active clips of protests, we are told about how things are far from equal for large section of the retired Gurkhas. At present, many elderly Nepalis are making do’ with their state pension. Some for them, some for their loved ones and some to buy Gold. After all, it’s the Nepali boju baje’s sustaining the gold shops in Aldershot as one boju tells Chapagain.

Some baje’s and boju’s share stories of the jobs they took up shortly after arriving in the UK. From cleaning, making momos to childcare, Mangali Magarni boju from Myagdi steals the show with her stories. Her strong demeanor and ability to laugh at lifes hurdles is powerful. Widowed at twenty-five, things have never been smooth for Mangali boju and it’s great to see her get her moment through Herne Katha.

Loneliness is something that comes through here and there but it’s not something that we as community are comfortable talking about.

The Nepalis that reside in Aldershot, many of whom are or have links with the Gurkhas, have actively worked to preserve the story of Gurkhas. They’ve gone further with the recent statue of Kulbir Thapa VC, which stands tall in the heart of Aldershot – forever to tell the story of the brave Gurkhas. I cannot help but wonder whether we are missing that storytelling of Gurkhas right here in Kathmandu. Till today, I find myself having to explain the Gurkha history and the story of the present-day Gurkhas… right here in Kathmandu.

Maybe that’s something we can work on…

If you have watched this episode, let me know your thoughts.

Mukti's Marvel

Partners: Pushpa Palanchoke, Folk Lok and Let’s Play

July 2024

In collaboration with Tahnani Dapha Khalah and Dapha Dhuku, and Shree Bishwo Rastriya Secondary School and Hilltown International School

This outreach project in Kirtipur, Nepal, brought secondary school students from two schools, one government and one private, together through a games workshop based on a graphic novel on the multidimensionality of music, heritage and place. Through a partnership between Tahnani Dapha Khalah and Dapha Dhuku, and Shree Bishwo Rastriya Secondary School and Hilltown International School the project aimed to enhance a social fiction and make it representational of both the past and desired future, before it is sent to publication, by working with twenty five secondary-level students from a government and a private school in Kirtipur.

In what follows below, Pushpa Palanchoke, the lead organiser of this initiative reflects on the workshop and it’s goals and outcomes.

Download the graphic novel here

Pushpa Palanchoke, lead organiser of this initiative reflects on the workshop and its outcomes:

Mukti’s Marvel: Collaborating, creating and playing; placemaking

Photo courtesy of the author.

Meta-narratives on heritage often overlook the interests of younger generations. Teenagers are frequently perceived as passive participants, merely expected to absorb heritage knowledge and pass it on to future generations, without fully recognizing their capabilities or addressing assumptions about their lack of motivation (Zhang et al., 2024). Globally, Authorized Heritage Discourses, often influenced by nationalism or ethnic identity (Smith, 2006) seek out experts and authorities who shape these narratives, and Nepal is no exception. Such discourses significantly impact the national curriculum, which in turn affects the younger population. Although local governments, particularly in the Kathmandu Valley, support incorporating local heritage into the curriculum, the experience of youth growing up in a diverse, urban environment like Kathmandu raises questions: How do they perceive heritage, and what are their expectations for its preservation?

Between July 19th-27th, our collaborative team led by Folk Lok, a community-based arts program reached out to 25 students from two different secondary schools of Kirtipur municipality— Shree Bishwo Rashtriya Secondary School and Hilltown Secondary School. These students from grade six to eight came from different socio-cultural and ethnic backgrounds, perfectly representing the heterogeneous Newa urban settlement of Kirtipur. Half of the students were Newa from Kirtipur’s localities and the other half represented different ethnicities from different geographical regions (as far as Far-Western Region) of the nation with recent history of having to move to Kirtipur. In recent years, Kirtipur municipality, home to Tribhuvan University, the country's oldest university, has emerged as a major destination for migrants from across the nation.

As part of HaP outreach, we engaged with the students through various activities in three phases based on a graphic novel titled Mukti’s Marvel. The graphic novel is a social fiction that places a young teenage girl named Mukti at the center of a Dapha music tradition. Dapha among Newa indigenous people is a music tradition that incorporates singing with Khim barrel drum invocations for Newa protecting deities, and seasonal, socio-historical as well as celebratory or tragic songs. These songs are sung in groups and during different times of the year and hours of the day. Each Newa neighborhood with high influence of agricultural sedimentary living has at least one dapha music group. These historical groups first were established by Malla courts in 1600s as caretakers for temples these neighborhood housed. Dapha music tradition hence is an amalgamation of musical elements under Raag and Taal system, common to most South Asian music traditions, and rituals and festivals based on the agricultural calendar of the Newa people. The social fiction, Mukti’s Marvel is a result of my three years of collaboration as Folk Lok’s lead (in support of Satori Center for the Arts) with Tahnani Dapha Group of Kirtipur, and my observation of their musical traditions and associated rituals, history and folklore, and its aspirations to adapt to the current socio-political environment. 

The social fiction is intended to;

  1. contribute to the revitalization of dapha music heritage by informing young audiences specifically about the unique dapha tradition, and in general about underlying indigenous values.

  2. encourage gender-inclusive placemaking within music heritages by introducing female protagonists in association to men-dominated heritage. 

The outreach with 25 students of the schools was designed with objectives to:

  1. reach out to the audience outside of the dapha community and Newa ethnicity, and share with them the joy and values of the dapha music heritage that are still of relevance to present-day society.

  2. create an environment of exchange between the traditional dapha community and young audience further receiving feedback from the latter to enhance the graphic novel. 

Photo courtesy of the author.

The outreach was designed as three overlapping phases including storyboard coloring contest, game design workshop and contest, and heritage walk. The total twelve students from each school were grouped into four groups of three for all of the activities. 

For the coloring contest students were provided with a set of acrylic color kit and pencil color. The school which didn’t have art class facilities was also facilitated with a ninety minutes of coloring basics workshop. The groups were given a week of time to color a total of forty pages of visual storyboard of the graphic novel. They were explicitly mentioned to be open to engaging with the visuals the way they like, and were not given any specific instructions. They were, however, suggested to be mindful about specific elements like the color of the temples’ roof. The intention for this contest was to have students engage with various plots and characters of the story creatively on their own will. Many of the participants responded to this as a fun activity that not only allowed them to understand the storyline of the novel, but also to work with students from different classrooms of their own school. Many also shared about their challenge of not having enough time to read the dialogue boxes and the narrative texts, hence lacking context for the activities that followed in later phases. Almost half of the participants shared about the language barrier because of the English texts and suggested the need to have the text translated into Nepali language. 

The coloring contest was brought to a decision by members of Tahnani Dapha Khalah picking Group A from Hilltown Secondary School whose color palates resonated best with their tradition. Their work also visibly showed group-effort put into completing the task. The members of the group were Sudeshna Dangol, Mishan Karki and Sachita Maharjan. Misan Karki mentioned how she enjoyed learning about different Newa deities and musical elements of Dapha through coloring and other activities that followed. This will be a reference for our illustrator going forward to pick color palettes for various characters and their moods in the graphic novel. The winning group is excited to have contributed to this effort. 

Photo courtesy of the author.

The second phase of the outreach invited same groups to participate in three hours of game-design workshop– where these participants were led by facilitators of our collaborators Let’s Play and volunteers of Local Youth Nepal to first play and understand a game based on folklore of Bagh Bhairav temple inception and later design similar game based on different plots of the graphic novel. The workshop allowed young participants to explore existing games and recreate them based on stories of various characters of the novel. For many of them their favorite characters were Mukti, the protagonist young girl and her pet chick Khecari who turns into a carousel being and her ride in her voyages to the other realities. The participants created various games incorporating other characters like Nasa Dya and Gana Dya, Indrayani Goddess, Laal-Heera and Kutiya Buri. These characters, most of them who Mukti meets during her multiverse travel, created much space for the participants to explore dynamics between human and godly world in Newa epistemology.

The designed games were taken out to final phase where students were taken for a heritage walk to Kirtipur town in the route of Devi Pyakha, a processional masked dance Tahnani Dapha Khalah hosts annually. While the women lead of the Dapha Khalah showed around the route, and shared about their experiences with Dapha while walking around, Let’s Play led game play in various open public spaces of Kirtipur like Layaku, Dev Dhoka, Bagh Bhairav Temple and Tahnani Dapha Khalah.

Photo courtesy of the author.

The gameplay and heritage walk provided participants with opportunities to engage with details of each plot in the novel and further connect them with the traditions of Tahnani Dapha Khalah on ground. Those who complained about the language barrier and lack of understanding the context found themselves enjoying the overall exchange with the Dapha Khalah. Tahnani Dapha Khalah hosted a welcome offering of saga (an offering of red-marks on forehead) at their Phalcha, and brought the engagement to a culmination with communal samay feast and gifts offering to each participant at Ankha Chen. The elder masters at the Dapha group rejoiced seeing young people of their grandchildren’s age engage enthusiastically with them and their tradition. A master commented he was very impressed to see them design games using the musical and cultural elements of their tradition. As per a suggestion from a young participant to make the graphic novel interactive, we are exploring ways to incorporate some of the designed games between the chapters. Based on the engagement of the audience and players, Group D of Shee Biswo Rashtriya Secondary School were announced winners for designing and executing the best game. The group members Bhabesh Timalsina, Saurab Limbu and Khushbu Limbu had designed a game similar to red light and green light; hold and run. Saurab Limbu shared that it was a great opportunity for him to creatively and artfully engage and understand Newa ways of doing and being. 

The outreach program reveals that young people, even when growing up in a heterogeneous urban environment, have a dynamic and interactive relationship with heritage, contrary to the perception that they are passive observers. The students engaged in the program were not merely absorbing information about the Dapha music tradition but actively participating in creative processes that allowed them to reinterpret and personalize their understanding of this heritage. Their participation reflects a desire for heritage to be presented in ways that are accessible, engaging, and relevant to their lives. For instance, the challenges some students faced with language barriers and time constraints during the coloring contest indicate that traditional modes of heritage transmission might not always align with their needs or capacities. However, when given the freedom to explore heritage through activities like game design and interactive walks, the students demonstrated a strong ability to connect with and reimagine the cultural narratives.

Photo courtesy of the author.

Moreover, the students’ engagement in designing games based on the novel and their enthusiastic participation in the heritage walk suggest that they view heritage as something that can be integrated into their daily lives in creative and playful ways. They are not just interested in learning about the past; they want to experience it actively and see how it can be adapted to their contemporary world.

This indicates that young people expect heritage to be more than a static set of traditions to be preserved. They seek opportunities to engage with it in ways that are inclusive, interactive, and reflective of their diverse backgrounds. By doing so, they are not merely carrying heritage forward but are also transforming and revitalizing it to fit the evolving cultural landscape in which they live. 

References:

Adhikari, R. (2020). Local Curriculum and Mother Tongue Education in Nepal. INVENTIVE A Peer Reviewed Open Access Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 2. https://digitalglobenepal.com/1_Dr.%20Rishiram%20Adhikari.pdf

Rolling, J. H. (2017). Arts-Based Research in Education. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of Arts-Based Research (pp. 493–510). Guilford Publications.

Smith, L. (2006). Uses of Heritage (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203602263

Smith, L. (2015). Intangible Heritage: A challenge to the authorised heritage discourse? Compilation- Revista d’Etnologia de Catalunya, 40, 133–142.

Zhang, Y., Ikiz Kaya, D., Van Wesemael, P., & Colenbrander, B. J. (2024). Youth participation in cultural heritage management: A conceptual framework. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 30(1), 56–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2023.2275261

Jal, Jungle, Jameen: Nature as Culture in Kirat Heritage

Lead partner: Dr. Sabin Ninglekhu (Social Science Baha)

January–June 2024

In collaboration with SOAS University of London (Dr. Stefanie Lotter), the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) in Ahmedabad, India, University of Southampton (Prof Bryony Whitmarsh), the action-research NGO “Indigenous without Borders” (collaborators: Niranti Tumbapo, Kailash Rai, Govinda Chhantyal), and place-based collectives of heritage and identity activists in the following four districts in the eastern provinces of Nepal: Terhathum, Panchthar, Khotang and Sankhuwasabha

The initiative’s title—Jal, Jungle, Jameen—translates in English into “water, forest and land”: the three sites central to indigenous Kirat heritage in Nepal and India.

This outreach project brought together a team of seven researchers and activists representing five different academic and research institutes in India, Nepal and the UK to strengthen networks with Indigenous without Borders (IwB). Through the partnerships formed, “Jal, Jungle, and Jameen” organized a series of traveling workshops conducted in Province 1 in Eastern Nepal, creating grassroots-level outreach with locally based collectives of activists, artists, heritage preservationists and oral historians in the four districts. The goals of the initiative is to engage in indigenous coalition building through trans-regional and international partnerships, while strengthening intellectual and political conditions for the future that will arrest the project(s) of erasure and strengthen the project(s) of decolonization through a series of timely, everyday interventions.

In addition to its series of traveling workshops, “Jungle, Jal, Jameen” will produce four multi-lingual essays and a documentary to reflect on the initiative’s work and to preserve its teachings for both local and international audiences. The excerpt below, by Dr. Sabin Ninglekhu, is one of the aforementioned essays produced as part of the project.

Publication by Dr. Sabin Ninglekhu in The Internationalist Newsletter, for issue #98

This post is an excerpt of a longer piece. It has been republished with permission and was first published in The Internationalist Newsletter for issue #98. The entire version can be found here.

Poster credit: The Internationalist Newsletter, Issue #98

For issue #98 of The Internationalist, Dr Ninglekhu writes on the "No Koshi" movement in eastern Nepal which resists the erasure of Indigenous identities by rejecting the province name "Koshi" and fighting against imposed development projects like a cable car on sacred land.

History bears witness to a universal truth: The inauguration of the colonial future begins with the erasure of the Indigenous past. In March 2023, as part of an ongoing federal restructuring of the Nepali state, the provincial government of as-yet-unnamed “Province No. 1” of eastern Nepal made the parliamentary decision to name the province “Koshi.” 

The Indigenous Kirat, predominantly the Rai and Limbu ethnic communities, rejected this name on a few important grounds. First, with its mythological origins rooted in Hinduism, “Koshi” represented neither the history nor heritage of the geographic territory. Second, the ruling government had deceitfully deployed their electoral advantage in the provincial parliament to sidestep deliberative dialogue necessary in something as historic as naming a province. In doing so, they had reneged on the promises made to the Indigenous people during the election time. 

This was how the “No Koshi” Indigenous movement was born; negligible to the state in its nascent phase, but less so after their more-than-expected showing in a recent by-election in one of the important constituencies in eastern Nepal.

At the heart of this ongoing movement is a demand for the right to name one’s territory and land according to the heart’s desire. To put it pointedly, the movement has declared “Enough!”; enough with the project of erasing and replacing Indigenous names of places, landscapes, rivers, forests, graveyards, hills and rocks, with Hindu names, as a primary and preliminary form of neocolonial domination and control. The resurgent “No Koshi” movement is persistent and relentless, not violent but also not peaceful, and filled with creativity deemed necessary to deal with uncertainty. 

A motley crew of activists and anthropologists, architects and geographers, photographers and writers, many of us of the Indigenous background, embarked on a journey of eastern Nepal to document the resurgent Indigenous movement carried out in the spirit of critical solidarity with the movement. On the journey, we passed many rivers and their tributaries, hilly mounds and graveyards, ponds and forests. We spoke with young students and activists, political leaders and local historians, returning migrants and farmers who never left. Through their telling, we have come face-to-face with histories, stories and anecdotes that spoke of the sacred bonds people in these parts have historically shared with nature. 

So, when names are erased, it is not just the names that are lost. Remembering and forgetting are powerful tools for exerting domination and control. New names remove old traces. And when the past is no longer remembered, what is lost is the legitimacy necessary to make claims over the present time. In turn, what is ultimately taken away, seized under broad daylight, is the power to chart a future. 

During the journey, each day left behind an impression that made this clear — after a decade of dormancy, the indigenous movement in eastern Nepal is back at the forefront. And reclaiming the names — of water, forest, and land — that were lost or stolen, effaced or erased, through stealth and by force, was the first fight to be fought, and won, in this permanent war of attrition for reclaiming power. 

Images from left to right:

In Phalaicha, Panchhar, the protestors of the 'No-Koshi Struggle Committee', discussing the ups and downs of the ongoing movement; Photo credit: Sabin Ninglekhu.

Many like the protestor pictured, member of the ‘No Cable Car Struggle Committee’, keep guard  along the trail to discourage the Armed Police Force (APF) from setting up camp in Mukkumlung; Photo credit: Sabin Ninglekhu.

Trees, including Rhododendron, cut down following the government’s order; Photo credit: Kailash Rai.

Funeral procession of the cable car; Photo credit: Sabin Ninglekhu.

Mask carrying the rings of a tree trunk that was cut into two by the Nepal government; Photo credit: Mekh Limbu.

Read the entire article

Jhijhiya dance, from the Tarai to the Valley

Partners: Dr. Monica Mottin, Mithileshwar Jhijhiya, and EITV2024

March 2024

In collaboration with the Heritage as Placemaking Spring School “Living heritage, performance, and placemaking” (Organized by Dr. Monica Mottin, Dr. Monalisa Maharjan, and Binita Magaiya)

This outreach initiative supported the travel and performance space for Mithileshwar Jhijhiya, a team of jhijhiya dancers from the Dhanusha district of Nepal, to Kathmandu, welcoming them as performers in the international festival of folk music, Echoes in the Valley. During their time in Kathmandu, the team interacted with other folk musicians from Nepal and abroad and shared their work with participants of the HaP International Spring School “Living Heritage, Performance, and Placemaking.”

Mithileshwar Jhijhiya performing in the Janakpur area, Dhanusha district.

Mithileshwar Jhijhiya in Kathmandu. Photo by Anjali Sah.

Dr. Monica Mottin, lead organizer of this initiative, describes its impact and the potential for future collaboration:

Jhijhiya dance and the Mithileshwar Jhijhiya

Jhijhiya dance is a Hindu religious dance that is practiced ritually by Maithil women of specific castes during Dashain to worship goddess Durga and to protect their communities from negative energies. Over the past decade, it has also become a much loved symbol of Maithil identity and is performed on stage as a folk dance during cultural programs by dancers of any caste, even though it is not usually known outside Maithil circles. The Mithileshwar Jhijhiya perform ritually in their own village during Dashain, but over the past couple of years they have also performed on the stage during cultural programs in Janakpurdham and in the surrounding areas. Since last December, they have performed regularly at the Cultural Village in Mithileshwar as an income generating activity that has infused new interest in practicing this dance.

 

Monica Mottin (fifth from left) poses with the Mithileshwar Jhijhiya group after their performance in Echoes in the Valley.

 

I (Monica Mottin) have met this group and other jhijhiya groups in Dhanusa district while researching heritage performances for HaP. Led by Mr Pancha Mandal, the Mithileshwar Jhijhiya team includes Mamta Kumari Mandal, Sarita Kumari Mandal, Laxminiya Kumari Mandal, Sudira Kumari Yadav, Rubi Kumari Mandal, Meenu Kumari Mandal, Sabika Kumari Mandal, Chandani Kumari Mandal, Sanjhira Kumari Mandal, Sarita Kumari Mandal, Prem Devi Mandal, Shiv Kumari Mandal, Kiran Devi Mandal, Shushila Das, Ram Lochan Mandal.

“From the Tarai to the Valley”

Thanks to the support of HaP Outreach and Engagement fund, in March 2024, fourteen team members and a representative of the Cultural Village travelled from Mithileshwar to Kathmandu to both perform at Echoes in the Valley and interact with the participants of the HaP International Spring School on “Living heritage, performance and placemaking”. The aim of the HaP Outreach and Engagement project “Jhijhiya dance: from the Tarai to the Valley” was twofold: First, it sought to provide the jhijhiya team with an international platform that could appreciate their art while offering the Kathmandu audience a new experience, as Maithil heritage performances are almost never showcased in Nepal’s capital. Second, the initiative created a space for exchanging experiences about the dance and other personal stories related to individual heritage practices between the dancers and the Spring School students.  

The published schedule for Echoes in the Valley, which featured Mithileshwar Jhijhiya’s performance on a main stage in Itum Baha, Kathmandu.

Teaming up with Echoes in the Valley and the HaP Spring School

Echoes in the Valley has turned out to be the ideal arena for partnership, as it is not just a music festival. To quote the producer Bhushan Shilpakar, “EITV is a philosophy.” The festival, in fact, aims at offering families a space to engage with music and other artistic and creative activities while at the same time discovering the places in which the festival takes place. Started by a group of Newar men in 2017, over the years the EITV organizing group has been mindful of including female performers, groups from non-Newar backgrounds, artists from throughout Nepal and abroad, well-known performers and new groups. An EITV volunteer called this year’s additions “revolutionary” because of the participation of both the jhijhiya team and a group from the Sunuwar Kiranti community. EITV organizers have also found that this formula really works. Before and after performing, the jhijhiya team were accompanied by two EITV volunteers, Anjali Sah and Shishir Kharel, to visit Kathmandu and Patan, as most of the artists had never been to the capital (and those who had, had not gone sightseeing). Even though two artists suffered from motion sickness after the night bus ride to Kathmandu, the enthusiasm was such that they preferred to visit the valley instead of resting at the hotel. 

Thanks to Anjali Sah’s translation, the interaction between the Spring School participants and the jhijhiya team was much appreciated by both parts and ended in a multilingual exchange of songs. One of the Spring School students also remarked that a community group could never participate in an international event like EITV in other South Asian countries, and praised the freedom and openness that currently exists in Nepal.

 

After their performance in Echoes in the Valley, Mithileshwar Jhijhiya sit with the participants of the HaP Spring School and discuss aspects of their work. Photo by Monica Mottin.

 

Videos taken during after Mithileshwar Jhijhiya’s performance:

Mithileshwar Jhijhiya perform at the Echoes in the Valley Music Festival, Kathmandu, on March 23, 2024 (Video courtesy of Monica Mottin)

Mithileshwar Jhijhiya singer performs a Maithil song during the interaction with participants of the HaP Spring School (Video courtesy of Monica Mottin)

HaP Spring School participant László Stachó breaks into a folk song during the interaction with Mithileshwar Jhijhiya on March 23, 2024 (Video courtesy of Anjali Sah)

Shaheera Pesnani, a HaP Spring School participant, performs a folk song for the group, March 23, 2024 (Video courtesy of Anjali Sah)

Theater and Social Change Workshops at Mountview Academy, London

Partners: Dr. Monica Mottin, Dr. Stefanie Lotter, Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts (London)

Yearly, in January

In January 2022, HaP researchers Dr. Monica Mottin and Dr. Stefanie Lotter established new community ties with Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, London, by leading a workshop on theater and social change for MA Applied Theater students there. This workshop was expanded and adapted in January 2023, when Monica Mottin returned to teach a new group of students, using her research on community and folk theater in Janakpur and Patan, Nepal. This now-yearly workshop is popular with students—Monica delivered it again in 2024. This initiative seeks to broaden ideas about the embeddedness of theatre in society and guide students toward understanding the political and developmental framing in the Nepali context.

Below, Monica Mottin shares her experience and explains how outreach such as this can connect the research of Heritage as Placemaking to new audiences, often in rewarding and surprising ways.

Monica Mottin (top row, second from left) with Mountview MA Applied Theatre students on January 25, 2023.

“The Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts is one of UK’s leading drama schools, located in Peckham, London. I was invited by the Course Leader Maria Askew to deliver a lecture/workshop for students of the MA Theatre for Community and Education on January 25th, 2023. Titled “Theatre in Nepal: between Heritage, Politics and Development,” the session aimed to broaden the students’ ideas on how theatre is embedded in society, with specific focus on Nepal. It was also an opportunity to make exemplify the connections between my previous research on social and political theatre with my Heritage as Placemaking project on heritage performance. All in all, political theatre, social theatre and folk dance-dramas take all place in the streets that in different ways become places for collective reflection and sharing.

“For me, outreach is a really important and enjoyable moment; it’s an opportunity to share academic research with audiences that are usually interested in a topic and experts in their own right. In this instance, the students were thrilled to know the way in which the Kartik Naach is preserved and how the changes introduced by the organizing committee in the name of preserving the dance may affect the relationship between the dance and the local community that is the original target audience. At the same time, some students had practical experience of doing community theatre, and were very familiar with the challenges involved. They raised interesting critical questions about how forum theatre is practiced by some groups in Nepal; in particular, they pointed out potential effects of doing long street theatre tours on sensitive issues like gender violence without any follow-ups to provide a safe space for audience members who may have been triggered by the topic.”

— Monica Mottin

 

Stefanie Lotter (second from left) and Monica Mottin (right) with MA Applied Theatre students at Mountview in January of 2022.