B. P. Koirala’s Vision of Modern Nepali Self in Selected Short Stories

Abstract

Modern Nepali novelist and short story writer B. P. Koirala (1914-1982) draws on historical contexts to invent characters and plots in his short fiction. He places his protagonists at the crossroads of the intense personal, psychological desire and the political responsibility to the collective. Koirala's political reading manifests in his fiction, such as "Shweta Bhairavi" and "Ek Raat" [A Night], collected in Sweta Bhairavi (1983). In the fiction, the author seriously contemplates the nature of the modern Nepali self by bringing both the personal and the political together into a single frame of the narrative. This paper critically analyzes "Sweta Bhairavi" and "Ek Raat" to explore the meeting of the personal and the political at the crossroads, enabling the author to reflect on the nature of modern polity. Koirala advocates for the liberal quest of the modern self through his protagonists in both short fiction. This paper reads the two fictions through the Foucauldian lens of new historicism and argues that the seemingly personal narratives carry the utmost political undertones in Koirala's writings, as he contemplates social history through his fiction. This paper concludes that Koirala's fiction challenges the oppressive order in ethics and politics in the quest for a modern, liberal self.