Sovereign Woman The Poetry of Banira Giri

By Wayne Amtzis

When a voice of assured affirmation anchors itself in an act of violation and violence as victim, the words "transformation" and "overcoming" can only approximate the writer’s intention. In the poem "Wound," Banira Giri does more than raise a voice against rape and the personal wound the victim bears, she transforms through the powers of language and the inner strength of adversity overcome, the stigmata of violation into an emblem of power. "Wound"—already the softening occurs, the doubling of the act, the vowels, not the disavowal, the "V" for violation, like a flag waving in the wind, like something touched not with one lip but two. And so the tongue takes over: man misleads, sentences us; woman miraculizes, brings forth out of emptiness...and we take note—of the images drawn through the eye of her affirmation. Creation borne out of memory. Where innocence is victimized, where rape follows upon avowals of friendship, where chance meeting where brute strength overwhelms, what remains is the ad infinitum of Violation, the signs of blood of "cruel intimacy...spread on the gravel of the crossroads like an unclaimed corpse."

"Violation!

From the outset
your every thrust
blazed as fire,
tore through the skin as thorns do,
pierced as a blade,
appeared as the night of the dark moon

But these days
your every stroke,
a mere touch,
and as for my self
I’ve become
the oven that contains the flame,
the bush that raises up thorns,
the sheath that holds the blade,
fangs for the cobra’s deadly poison,
darkness of the night that swallows the
moon

Only intensity of language and conciseness of imagery can assimilate what has happened. The stigmata of rape like an unhealing wound, like a brand claiming an animal is turned round not at the point of entry but from the deepest recesses of consciousness. It is there that woman triumphs. Man cannot go deep enough, he can not find her to claim her, for the vehicle of his claiming lacks depth, for it is always in retreat even as it attacks. Violation is all that he is. Wound is the source of her triumph, and in that triumph resistance cries out: you have done this to me, you will not do it again.

Wound! Maul and smother me
Lick with your slathering flames
Your force converted for I’m hardened to it

Where you store weaponry of thrust and
violation,
I burrow and hide, grazed from all sides by
firing guns
flameburst upon flameburst all about and
everywhere

But it is surely so, violator
Violation! tearing your ears, listen

Your armory will be emptied —I will not
your armory will be emptied —I will not

Giri’s voice insistent in its climactic victory resounds with an insurgent force. In "From The Lake Love" the author works with an imagined act of violence. A high mountain lake is taken to be the body of a woman that all are drawn to and partake of in a ritual of rape and dismemberment. The aware reader recoils as she is drawn in. The woman of the lake in forced submission to the many gives herself to the one who fathoms to the depths her worth. Against a preconscious memory marked by collective violation, legend would have its readers overcome trauma with the amnesia of love and the rites of marriage. Beneath the beauty of the language one asks: Is this not rape? Is this not violation? Is this what culture conceals?

a woman without compare...
immersed herself, emerging
her gentle comely form turned to gold
Then and there a gaggle of youths
grabbed her, tore her to pieces
and shared her among themselves
...among them a youthful hunter
...stole away with her heart.
...On full moon nights

in the dreamlike shimmering of Sarover
...transformed into white swans
murmuring their love talk,
...waiting for the wedding procession,
...band...implements...ceremony...
hand-woven leaves for the feast.

For Giri and for the culture she seeks to reclaim in her poetry, a crime more consequential than violation is abandonment. Within her writing the ideal of wholeness, of man and woman complementing and completing, of world and beings sustaining and surpassing, is seen as a given within nature and when seen well, when understood, is taken up and affirmed in human creation and in culture. In "Pashugayatri" she portrays the cultural loss when the task of sustaining has been abandoned.

in this holy land of Pashupati,
completely helpless, bereft and naked,
pitiful Bagmati... ...stagnant within

...only scars of memory...
the rush of her waters, an encrusted scab

... through the dry banks of her chest
(she) whispers the Pashugayatri mantra..
and she is shocked
"Ay ai, Men are men after all,
though they throw a flood of filth into the

Bagmati,
though they make the Bagmati a River-Of-Sand
...who is she to have them listen...?"
She herself feels ashamed, troubled, sobs
In preparation to enter the underworld for ever,
seen by no one, for the last time,
stops for a moment during the still of night,
tries to wash the feet of Lord Pashupati, but cannot

Bagmati, of only a thin line, only a name,
breathless, weak, waterless, Bagmati
disheartened while trying to bid farewell to
Pashupati
the whips of sand
chase her
the whips of sand
drive her out

In a world where culture mattered, where symbol embodied living force, the writing of Banira Giri would be recognized for its sustaining power, for its capacity to project enduring sources of creativity into a mode of awareness. At the heart of her enterprise the Sovereign Female reigns. Where it should be praised, it has been diminished; where it should be established, it is abandoned; where it should be protected it is assaulted. Unfortunately the power of her voice, the intensity of her language and her willingness to take up the forms of traditional culture and revitalize them from a more deeply realized source does not warn nor awaken those who will not hear it. Where man appropriates, woman creates; where creation itself is violated, what use is poetry?

(The translations by W Amtzis used here appear in Journal of South Asian Lit Vol. XXII-XXIII and are forthcoming in FROM THE LAKE, LOVE: Poems by Banira Giri)

Preposterous Poems

By Manjushree Thapa

Life in Kathmandu gets odd: witness the publication of Hillary Clinton in Poems, a compilation of odes to Hillary Clinton by Nepali poets, including such prominent figures as Vice-Chancellor of the Royal Nepal Academy Mohan Koirala, Gopal Parajuli, Govinda Giri Prerana and Visnuvibu Ghimire. This book is the translation of the original Nepali Euti Nari Kabitama, and it is nothing if not a testament to the peculiarity that the literary community of Nepal is capable of.

The premise of the book is preposterous: "to honor women, on the global level, through honoring Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton," and to support the "protection of woman-power, and liberation of women...because, in various countries of the world, women still have to live like slaves, and to work in their favor has become our responsibility."

The poets fulfill their responsibility to the world’s women by singing such paeans to Rodham Clinton as:

Like a Vedic woman she stood/Just and compassionate (Bambahadur Jital). You seem to hide within you/The spark of divinity (Daivajna Raj Nyaupane). ‘Beautiful indeed she is! As if an incarnation!’ (KM Shah Raza Niyazi). O Hillary!/Many thanks to you/For your patience (Komal Oli). I see a similarity between the snow-river and Hillary (Kuber Limbukhim). I know, Sister Hillary/As in a diamond light is scattered/Deep within your inside/Sita and Savitri reside (Lalgopal Subedi). The real love is sacrifice and forgiveness/Another dimension of greatness/Its unique example/Is the name Hillary (Navaraj Karki). O Hillary, you are so just (Prabha Bhattarai). Rodham walks all alone/caressing the folds of earth/The eastern flanks, the western banks/consoling countless broken heart. (Rambabu Subedi). Whoever hates an endless absurdity/He should regard Hillary as exemplary (Sharad Kumar Bhattarai). You are for me a source/Of the message of life everlasting (Usha Shrestha). Multiply, O Hillary! (Vimala Nepal). O moon!/ You are not only the First Lady of the USA/You are also the true wisdom for others (Yuvaraj Bhattarai "Deepjyoti").

To ward off criticism, perhaps, Bal Awara makes the defiant proclamation: And if we feel like praising someone/We will do so—/We don’t seek permission. Fighting words, these!

English odes are today, like Keats’s Grecian urn, archaic: the impulse towards exalted eulogies in Nepali literature is also thankfully on the wane. Hillary Clinton in Poems does contain some more contemplative works such as Bhuvanhari Sigdel’s complex feminist verses, and Gaurav’s admission: I saw her in Nepal too/And at her personality/I was drenched in the shower of joy/And then I forgot her/Because/Sorrows of the world were greater than her. Perhaps most interestingly, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai shows the worlds of a Namche bazaar yak herder and Rodham Clinton meeting: And those who saw [Pasang], say/Hillary Rodham Clinton must have used some charm/And therefore Pasang is so happy/And early in the morning/Has come down to her working field.

As for Mohan Koirala, Gopal Parajuli, Govinda Giri Prerana and Visnuvibu Ghimire—they are all accomplished writers capable of some of the most finely crafted works rooted in Nepali society. They surely know that their Rodham Clinton poems do poor justice to their oeuvres. Similarly, editor Pudasaini must agree that those devoted to women’s liberation should turn less towards the most powerful women of the world and more towards the powerless who abound in their own society. Professor DP Bhandari, who wrote the introduction, obviously needs no reminding that such praise as "she has proved herself to be a wife par excellence" (by tolerating her husband’s infidelity) and such denigration as "superficial logic-chopping feminism" undermine the book’s stated aim of working for women’s liberation. And translators Tara Nath Sharma, Govinda Raj Bhattarai and Tirtharaj Tuladhar have long records of making excellent, valuable selections of works to translate.

Sadly, for the production of this collection, all these fine men seem to have kept their best judgement at bay. Hillary Clinton in Poems is at best an oddity, at worst an embarassment. Those who insist on being sympathetic might read it as an expression of Nepal’s charmingly skewed dialogue with the world; but most will probably see it as a reflection of the poverty of our imagination. Are there not enough deserving subjects around us that Nepali writers must focus on a person—despite her accomplishments—so eminently irrelevant to Nepal? And—having chosen such an improbable subject—are we incapable of approaching it (and ourselves) critically? The question is purely rhetorical: of course, Nepali writers usually show far keener judgment than this. It is to the great credit of the Nepali literary community that this book is an aberration far removed from the norm.

(M Thapa is a writer)

Recent Arrivals

By Ramesh Parajuli

The eighth issue of semi-annual journal, STUDIES IN NEPALI HISTORY AND SOCIETY Vol. 4 No 2 (Mandala Book Point, December 1999, Kathmandu) has been published. This issue contains three research articles: "Statemaking and Space on the Margins of Empire: Rethinking the Anglo-Gorkha War of 1814-1816" by Bernando Michael, "With Love and Aesthetics: Notes for an Ethical Translation of Nepali Literature" by Manjushree Thapa, "The Kohla Project: Studying the Past with Tamu-mai" by Judith Pettigrew and Yarjung Tamu. This issue also includes one commentary: "Illusions of Grandeur: The Story of the Lumbini Master Plan" by C.K. Lal and a bibliography: "Nepali and Nepal Bhasha Literature in English Translation: A Reference Bibliography" by Mary Des Chene and Bhaskar Gautam.

TRADED RESOURCE FLOWS FROM HIGHLAND TO LOWLAND: UNDERSTANDING ECONOMIC LINKAGES (ICIMOD, 1999, Kathmandu) by Kamal Banskota and Bikash Sharma is a study that attempts to understand the economic linkages between the highland and lowland. The study has attempted to document some important flows that originate from the highlands. The authors have also tried to quantify the magnitude of different flows and to address relevant issues pertaining to the subject.

TWICE BLESSED: THE ART OF GIVING (TEWA, 2000, Lalitpur) by Rupa Joshi et al is a collection of ten essays on philanthropy. A number of essays in the book relate to the traditional values and culture of philanthropy. Remaining articles elaborate the concept of and need for modern philanthropy. The book’s Nepali version -"Alikati Tewa: Paropakarko Kala" is also available. Though both versions contain ten articles each, both of the two versions have one different article. Some articles, originally written in Nepali are translated to English and vice versa.

PARTICIPATORY FOREST MANAGEMENT: IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES’ DEVELOPMENT IN THE HINDU-KUSH HIMALAYAS (ICIMOD, 1999, Kathmandu) edited by Anupam Bhatia deals with the forest polices and human resources of Nepal. This publication is the outcome of the Regional Workshop held in China on participatory forest management. The workshop proceedings and the studies and papers presented at the workshop have been published in six volumes. This volume (V) is of Nepal and it has tried to analyze forest policies and acts of Nepal which are considered one of the most progressive pieces of legislation in this field.

ECONOMIC LIBERALIZATION IN NEPAL: SEQUENCE AND PROCESS (National Labour Academy & Oxfam GB-Nepal office, 1999, Kathmandu) by Keshav P Acharya et al is a systemic chronicle of the process and sequence of economic reforms in Nepal beginning since 1985. The book explores what, in which sphere of the economy, when and how liberal kinds of policy interventions were executed in the country. The book’s Nepali version —"Nepalma Arthik Udarikaran: Prakriya ra Kram"—is also available which makes the book accessible to those readers who cannot comprehend the English language. Divided into six chapters, the book will be useful to policy makers and executors, academicians, activists and researchers.

Double Trouble

By Joel Isaacson

In the first ten pages of Wally Lamb’s second novel I Know This Much is True, forty year old Dominick Tempesta’s twin brother Thomas chops off his own right hand with a khukuri in an American small-town public library, believing that god has commanded him to do so in order to prevent the 1990 Gulf War.

Like a revolving searchlight, this horrific act illuminates the terrain that surrounds it with blinding iterative flashes whose brilliance distorts through too-stark revelation. We are made to re-evaluate events and people more than once. The continual reference to past events as the plot moves forward in time allows us to watch individuals change, mature, and ripen or disintegrate over the course of their lives. This is something that the novel can do better than any other art form. An author who can exploit this special capacity as well as Lamb does, holds one of the keys to the kingdom of fiction.

While reading Lamb’s first novel She’s Come Undone, which is written from a female point-of-view, I had to continually look back at the cover to see if there wasn’t really a woman author’s name on it; his point-of-view character was that convincing. So when I opened I Know This Much is True I already expected brilliant characterization. I was not disappointed, but this second novel does not focus on character in the way the first one did. It is, rather, the relationships between characters that form the warp on which the plot is woven: the gross and subtle lines of force that pass between one will and another, transcending time, space, even death.

The primary relationship is between the twins, Dominick and Thomas, who are identical in appearance, but quite opposite in temperament. Dominick: tough, pragmatic, a survivor. Thomas: sensitive, idealistic, and a born victim. The twins don’t know who their father is. Their browbeaten mouse of a mother will not tell them. Their childhood home is ruled by her husband, a violent, narrow-minded tyrant.

From early childhood, Dominick feels responsible for his double. He covers for him, protects him, defends him. Along with genuine love for Thomas though, Dominick experiences resentment and anger at the limitations and burdens his devotion imposes on him. Adolescence brings with it the social stigma of being always associated with his geeky twin. The development of this conflict in Dominick’s psyche is a main theme of this novel.

And then, in their late teens, Thomas begins a descent into dark psychotic episodes. At first Dominick is able to write these off as his brother’s usual quirkiness but eventually the progressive onset of paranoid schizophrenia is undeniable. He watches helplessly as his twin recedes further and further from him, into the inner spaces of madness where Dominick cannot reach to help him.

The reader sees the world through the eyes of Dominick, whose life is in shambles over what has happened to his twin. Dominick has come to the end of his material, intellectual, and emotional resources - and is filled with an anger that has already destroyed his marriage and his career He passes cynical judgement on the world around him.

Frustrated in his attempts to free his brother from a hospital for the criminally insane, Dominick encounters Dr. Patel. She is the middle-aged psychiatrist in whose care his brother has been placed. Patel is both wise and professional. She appreciates the effect that one twin’s progressive madness and horrid self mutilation must have on the other, and (apparently out of charitable compassion) begins to work with Dominick. Their therapeutic sessions provide the author with a means to reveal the heart of a close mouthed tough-guy.

Dominick is not a complex character, and the element in him that aspires to nobility has a long way to go. He is, at best, a diamond in the rough. His innate good instincts have been brutalized and turned back against himself. Rather than identifying with Dominick, I found myself pitying him; feeling protective of him, just as he is of his paranoid schizophrenic twin. He’s basically a decent guy trying to survive, protect his brother, and generally control damage while his world is collapsing around him. I kept turning pages till the end, just because I had to see how he’d make out.

What this book lacks is economy and elegance. It’s a great shaggy beast of a novel. At 900 pages, it’s a little too long. It’s also a little heavy handed. The ending is a little too pat and tidy. Its strong points are strong indeed though: compelling story, well drawn characters, good psychological insights, and for the most part, very good technique. Despite some undeniable shortcomings, this is a very good read.

(J Isaacson is a writer and architect)

Development of Development Thought

By Shyamal K. Shrestha

As compared to other topics in its field, development economics is characterized by the existence of different methodological approaches that vie and jostle with each other for dominance. Along with seminal contributions, each such approach or theory has a telescopic vision encapsulating the meaning and process of development. However, this does not mean that sometimes there is no convergence of views between contending theories.

According to the author of Development Theory: A Guide to Some Unfashionable Theories, the book "does not deal with economic theories of development, but rather with the theories of economic development." The discussion begins with Karl Marx, who premised that capitalism is a mode of production under which the working class is exploited in a most ruthless way, and in which severe crises recur within society. He insisted on the progressive historical role of this mode of production in developing productive forces. But based on the real world experience, Marx was increasingly led to believe that capitalist colonization through imperialism, while bringing about a rapid development in backward areas, was hindered by "the unchanging character of the old mode of production as opposed to the solvent effects of trade." On the other hand, the main objective of Lenin’s works was to explain the opportunism, revisionism and chauvinism (in brief, the split within the entire European working class movement) at a specific economic, political and social conjecture of "impending social revolution."

The Neoclassical Theory of International Trade forms the basis of the case for specialization on the part of nations seeking free trade. Originating in the writings of Ricardo, the theory has been developed further by Heckscher, Ohlin and Samuelson, who advocate that free trade necessarily reduces the differences in real per capita income between trading countries. The policy recommendation which emanates from this theory is that underdeveloped economies should liberalize their foreign trade and specialize in the production of goods in which they have a comparative advantage. However, when some of the highly unrealistic assumptions are relaxed, the theory is found to be wanting in substance. The Neoclassical Theory of Growth—propounded by Solow—concludes that a higher savings ratio or a lower rate of growth of the labour force will lead to higher output per worker. Consequently, it will also lead to higher income per capita of the population as a whole. The theory’s drawback lies in its failure to explain technical progress, which is "exogenous."

Raul Prebisch and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) School are leading critics of the Neoclassical Theory of Trade. They argue that there is a permanent tendency for the terms of trade to shift against agricultural products, implying the need for developing countries to industrialize behind protective tariffs. Prebisch was the first Director-General of the UNCTAD from 1964 to 1969. He made proposals for improving the export incomes of primary producers, for increased aid and for an expansion in trade of export of manufactured goods from the developing countries. Perhaps no other development theory is as vociferously against capitalism as is the Dependency School, represented by Gunder Frank, Cardoso and Amin. The tenets of the theory may be summarized as follows: the basic characteristic of capitalism is not the device for the development of the productivity of social labour but the transfer of surplus from capitalist satellites (the periphery) to the metropolis (the centre). Critiques of this school point out the theory’s inability to explain the emergence of newly industrialized countries, all of which have experienced a process of rapid capitalist industrialization.

W. Arthur Lewis (in an article titled "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour" published in 1954) viewed developing countries as characterized by dual economies of urban growth centres within large areas of traditional agriculture in which the latter was the source of labour supply that kept urban wages low. Wages remained at subsistence levels until urban industrialization had absorbed the surplus labour from the agricultural sector. Lewis’s model assumed the modern sector to be self-sufficient in agricultural products, which represent the bulk of wage goods, and ignored the problem of the agricultural surplus. The shortcomings of the model also lies in its exclusive focus on the supply side of the modern sector and the neglect of inadequate aggregate demand that was subsequently held responsible for curtailing growth. Later theorists like Jorgenson, Fei and Ranis, and Kaldor focus on the specific role of agriculture and industry in the development process. Harris and Todaro attempt to explain the persistence of rural-urban migration in the presence of high urban unemployment.

Of paramount concern to developing economies is raising the agricultural surplus, the determinant of which is linked to the productivity of labour in agriculture that is identified as the ‘triggering’ factor in overall economic development. Development Theory identifies a few socioeconomic causes of the extremely low agricultural labour productivity in underdeveloped economies. Skarstein avers that these causes are not in the sphere of market relations but rather in the embedded agrarian class structures, modes of exploitation, inter-sectoral terms of trade and corresponding institutional structures, including land tenure, tenancy systems and peasant-state relationships. What is relevant with respect to liberalization is that "market orientation" per se is not a sufficient pre-condition for agricultural productivity growth in underdeveloped economies.

Development Theory discusses a broad range of theories of economic development and underdevelopment while emphasizing the usefulness of holistic approaches that view development as a historical process. The book should be of immense value to all those who wish to explore development paradigms further.

(SK Shrestha is a Research Associate at the Institute for Integrated Development Studies, Kathmandu)