rameshkumarlimbu: Prabha pdf

Twice Marginalized Nepali Folklore

Lately, for two days (31st March and 29th April) were the festive events in folkloric sphere. Many well-known Nepali social scholars cum folklorists were emphatically expressing that these are the first and the most notable documentation of folklore and folklife on Dhimal, Tharu, Gandharva, Gopali, Meche and Aathpaharia Rai people of Nepal. Now, it is your own duty and responsibility to get awakened and identified by yourselves. While, from the Secretary to the Minister for Culture and the Chancellor of Nepal Academy as well have spent words of urgency and support to this field. Most of the researchers, enthusiasts and also participants from the respective communities have given a big round of applause. Truly, I thought and I did the same because it was really a pioneering effort done by Nepali Folklore Society which has been carrying out systematic research on folklore for the past one decade under the chairmanship of Prof. Tulasi Diwas, a renowned Nepali folklorist. Such research works obviously help to understand folk traditions, culture, tangible and intangible cultural heritages of the folks and decipher the implicit meanings in their myths, stories, proverbs, jokes and riddles. However, it embraces manifold questions such as who the folks are, what folklore does really mean, why aforesaid study is mostly folklore, or more specifically, why biblical episodes, Dhammapad, Garud Purana, Rudri, Chandi, Saptasati, Satyanarayan, Krishna Lila are not folklore, why there is a crisis on folklore studies, and is the country, now, really going to take initiative on it. The notion of traditions tends to explain the all-inclusive unity of the approved diversity. Different Nepali traditions, such as the ancient tradition, the ruling tradition, the regional traditions, the folk tradition, philosophical and religious tradition, and ethnic or national traditions – all of which are woven together to form national identity of Nepal. History as a significant national heritage would get blended with claims to the nation, to tradition, to change and continuity and to the persistence of the past in the present. This persistence is understood by those historical documentation displaying as evidence to support contemporary views as an affluent source for folklore studies but inherent problem is that most of the written history belongs to on interest of the state ruling class, their valourizations and eulogisations. They have got mostly written version of traditions, have got procurement of naturalization, and hence got manifested themselves out of orbit of folklore. Those traditions, thus, have established legitimacy as a standard norm of the country and eventually Garud Purana, Rudri, Chandi, Saptasati, Satyanarayan, Krishna Lila and among others do not fall under folklore. On the other hand, instead of encouraging and promoting cultural beliefs of the marginalized people and regions, the state happened to endorse repressive state ideologies against their folk valuables. Therefore, in Nepal, a folklore study has been a subject of the marginal groups and identification of the marginalized people for dominant groups generally despise for being a folk. The idiomatic of “Unity in diversity” has been very much successful in persuading outsiders and insiders however the state overlooked the diverse tradition of the marginalized and downtrodden ethnic people. Consequently, folklore study is facing dire crisis not only in Nepal but also in other countries with similar state of affairs. The term folk refers to the people belonging to different groups which share a common factor like language, religion, culture and traditions. It comprises the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community passed through the generations by word of mouth. Study of oral traditions is major tool for folklore studies as they have very less, if not none, written documents. Ethnic groups have been living laboratories in which the processes of acculturation and assimilation could be observed and analyzed at firsthand. The knowledge of such kind is known as folklore. The very notion of folk conjures up the feeling that it belongs to the field of illiterate and marginalized people, of far remote from the mainstream. In this sense, although Nepali folklore comprises multiplicity of subordination, yet broadly, it is doubly marginalized tradition – marginalized folklore of the marginalized community. Because of this reason, many of Nepali folklores have been already died out and many of them are on the verge of disappearing. Therefore, preservation of these traditions of survivalist has insistently been responsibility of all Nepali people and the government of Nepal, or else, it will obviously drag out to the national developmental activities as present emerging world trend seems to be a democratic welfare nation. The Post-people’s Revolution of Nepal 1990 can be labeled the springtime or the key period for the folklore studies in many respects as marginalized people got hardly any freedom to practice their culture and traditions. Yet, they are the folks and their traditions, culture, language, religion as folklore, the objects to be explored into. Many historians and social scientists have noted that indigenous folklore is a significant indicator of a group’s traditional values. They believe that multi-ethnic relationships would create a “melting pot” in which both dominant groups and minorities would adjust themselves to common ideals and purposes in the form of culture contact and traditions in conflict, cultural assimilation and acculturation. But, in the case of Nepal, indigenous traditions and knowledge are found being overtly overlooked. In the field of education, indigenous knowledge (IK) plays a fundamental role in learning because it is the knowledge base that indigenous children have acquired in their families and communities. It is the knowledge base which has defined who they are and how they perceive their world, their self-esteem and identity with which they come to the learning process in the formal classroom, and will acquire and connect relevant newly learned concepts. Although an interest in Indigenous Knowledge has began in a growing number of academic disciplines, important calls for the preservation of IK at the international level, began in 1992 at the Conference of Rio de Janeiro on Bio-Diversity, and in December of the same year the United Nations declared 1993 the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People. The study of folklore and folklife continues to grow in the United States colleges and universities. In accordance with the survey carried out by Ronald L. Baker, until 1986, at least five hundred and nine American and nineteen Canadian institutions used to offer folklore courses, generally in English departments, with introductory folklore being the most popular course, the degree in folklore programs offering colleges and universities are steadily increasing. Whereas, there is no college and university in Nepal offering folklore courses specifically. In a nutshell, such effort of Nepali Folklore Society involving in the study of marginalized groups is, thus, really commendable. Thanks For You Visit!

rameshkumarlimbu

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

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