Speaker: Anna Stirr

University of Hawai’i Mānoa/Institute for Advanced Study

Cultural revolution, as in revolution by cultural means, has been an important part of communist movements throughout the past century, yet its meanings in practice have varied. In Nepal, the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) claims that it was the first communist group to use folk-based musical theatre to promote its ideology in the 1960s, and the first to combine communist cultural rhetoric with the rhetoric of indigeneity and cultural preservation, never jettisoning the terminology of cultural revolution. But what does cultural revolution look like in the contemporary context of Newah communism in NWPP’s main political base of Bhaktapur? 

The Nepal Bhasa Sahitya Ta:munjya is a festival of Newah language and culture hosted by the NWPP in Bhaktapur every autumn. With the slogan Janata Mwasa Bhasa Mwai (If the People Survive, the Language Survives), the festival features speeches, literary readings, and performances mostly by artists, while the politicians mostly listen rather than dominate the speaking platform. As befits an event hosted by a communist party, there is strong emphasis on the virtues and values of the working people, along with an equally strong emphasis on maintaining the vitality of Newah language and culture; the point of the festival is that the two go hand in hand. Far from promoting only a socialist realist aesthetic, encouraging revolutionary abandonment of old customs and cultures, or disparaging ethnic and caste issues as mere identity politics, the NWPP champions ethnic heritage and its artistic manifestations as central to the people’s identity. The Ta:munjya is an expression of this concern in the Newah context, a celebration of cultural production in a language with a history of state suppression, and a way to encourage Nepal Bhasa’s flourishing. This paper investigates how party-affiliated artists aim to unite communist and Newah cultural expression toward the ends of both class struggle and cultural and linguistic vitality, through analyzing the relationship among music, dance, and lyrics in a performance at the 2018 Ta:munjya. I focus specifically on the NWPP-affiliated cultural performance group Aastha’s musical arrangement of the poem ‘Wala Wala Karl Marx’ and their accompanying dance. Based on ethnographic research that included participant observation in rehearsals and the performance, formal interviews and informal conversations with Aastha members and party leaders, and musical and choreographic analysis, I identify elements of this performance meant to signify communist affiliation and Newah cultural heritage within a contemporary international milieu. Relating these elements to NWPP ideology and goals, plus communist and general popular trends in songwriting and choreography in Nepal over the past few decades, I situate Aastha’s ‘Wala Wala Karl Marx’ and the Ta:munjya within discussions about proletarian internationalism, performance and the modern, and cultural and linguistic heritage, preservation, sustainability, and vitality. I argue that this yearly event has been a successful platform for artistic production in Nepal Bhasa and related Newah idioms of music and dance, and for experimentation with the idea of what cultural revolution can be.