The Iconization of Yogmaya Neupane

Professor Michael Hutt, Department of the Languages and Cultures of South Asia, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

According to a popular tradition, on 14 July 1941, an elderly female religious ascetic named Yogmaya Neupane committed suicide by hurling herself into the raging Arun River in Bhojpur district of eastern Nepal. Sixty-seven other people followed her example, and none of their bodies was ever found. On 8 March 2011, to mark International Women’s Day, a statue of Yogmaya Neupane was unveiled in the district headquarters town of Bhojpur. This was the latest development in an iconization process that constructs and promotes Yogmaya as Nepal’s first female revolutionary. This lecture will try to establish the facts of Yogmaya’s life, so far as this is possible, present and discuss a selection of verses from Sarvartha Yogabani, the text that is held to preserve her utterances, and then analyze the attempts that have been made by various activists and scholars to construct her as, variously, a feminist rebel, a social reformer, and a progressive poet.

Biography:

Michael Hutt is Professor of Nepali and Himalayan Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. He completed a Ph.D on the history of the Nepali language and its literature at SOAS in 1984 and has been engaged in teaching and research relating to Nepal and the Himalayan region at SOAS since 1987. From 2004 to 2010 he was Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures. Hutt’s primary interest has always been modern Nepali literature, but his published work also reflects interests in Himalayan politics, the Nepali media, and the Bhutanese refugee issue. His publications include Himalayan Voices: an introduction to modern Nepali literature (1991), Nepal in the Nineties: versions of the past, visions of the future (1994), Unbecoming Citizens: culture, nationhood, and the flight of refugees from Bhutan (2003), Himalayan People's War: Nepal's Maoist rebellion (2004), and ‘Things that should not be said: censorship and self-censorship in the Nepali press media, 2001-2’ (The Journal of Asian Studies 65: 361-92 [2006]). In 2010 he published a book entitled The Life of Bhupi Sherchan: poetry and politics in post-Rana Nepal (New Delhi, Oxford University Press) and an article on the selection of Nepal’s new national anthem is forthcoming in Nations and Nationalism. During 2010-11, together with Dr Pratyoush Onta of Martin Chautari in Kathmandu, he launched a British Academy-funded  project on the construction of public meaning in contemporary Nepal, and conducted his research on Yogmaya as a part of this project.

Organiser: Bloomsbury Gender Network hosted by the SOAS Centre for Gender Studies