Reflections of a Madheshi About Nepali ‘Mainstream’ History, Memory, Recollections, and Remembrance

Chautari Foundation Lecture – 2025
"Reflections of a Madheshi About Nepali ‘Mainstream’ History, Memory, Recollections, and Remembrance"
by CK Lal

Friday | November 28, 2025 (मंसिर १२, २०८२)
3:30 PM | Martin Chautari
Thapathali, Kathmandu

Abstract
In recent years, scholars have begun to question victors’ accounts of Nepal’s past. Yet personal memoirs—most often penned by prominent politicians and retired bureaucrats—continue the long tradition of courtier chronicles, offering rose-tinted retrospectives filled with selective memories that reinforce dominant historical narratives. Interview-based recollections, frequently ghostwritten or mediated through the muted voice of the recorder, have emerged as another popular genre. Audio-visual media now provide additional forums for recording and publicizing the reminiscences of public figures.

A rich tapestry of such narratives allows us to examine, from the margins, how hegemony is intellectually produced and reproduced as the “national” imagination. Madheshis—whose land, language, and lifeways have long been intertwined with the history and culture of the Ganga plains—are as central to understanding Nepal as the monarchical histories of the hill regions, yet they remain largely absent from these memoirs and recollections.

This lecture explores how Madhesh occupies little space not only in Nepal’s historiographical tradition but also in the memories of those who have shaped the very idea of Nepal. By tracing anecdotes, recollections, and the hazy memories of prominent personalities, it reflects on the silences and distortions in the making of a lopsided “national memory”—one that continues to shape the country’s politics and culture today.

Bio Note
C.K. Lal is a public commentator, newspaper columnist and a dabbler in playwriting. He currently writes a regular column for both The Kathmandu Post (in English) and Kantipur (in Nepali) newspapers. His academic contributions include chapters “Imagining South Asia in a Unipolar World,” “The Complexities of Border Conflicts in South Asia,” “Nepal’s Maobaadi,” “Cultural Flows Across a Blurred Boundary,” “Nepal’s Quest for Modernity” and “Ramraja Prasad Singh: The Warrior Revolutionary” in various publications.

His concept notes named Nepaliya Hunalai... (2011) and Mithila Manthan were widely debated in the public sphere. In 2006, he was voted the most prominent columnist of Nepal and covered as one of the Fifteen Influential Nepalis of the decade in 2014 by Nepal newsmagazine. His Nepali language play Sapana ko Sabiti was staged in 2010 to popular acclaim.

He has been a Asia Leadership Fellow (2008) in Japan, Martin Chautari Fellow of Public Life and Public Knowledge (2010) and Poynter Fellow (2013) at Yale University in the USA.

His current areas of interest include the notion of nationa-lity, the power of ethnonationalism, the idea of secularity, democratization of society and challenges of institutionalizing plurality. He reads and writes in four languages—Maithili, Nepali, Hindi and English.

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Started as a monthly informal discussion forum in October 1991, Martin Chautari, a premier academic institute of research and policy in Nepal, has dedicated 35 years to fostering informed debates on all subjects of public concern through rigorous research, quality publications and a continuously running critical discussion series.

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Chautari Foundation Lecture is an occasion both of mature reflection on Nepal’s past trajectory and of stimulating debate on the future by some of the best public minds.