Lecture Series

Sanjeev Uprety
on
Nepali Masculinities: Ranas, Shahs, and Gurkhas

The lecture compares British representations of Gurkha soldiers with their representations concerning the manhood of the two of the most powerful and influential of the Rana Prime Ministers – Jung Bahadur Rana, and his twentieth-century successor, Chandra Shumsher Rana – who visited England in 1851 and 1908, respectively, to argue that the pre-modern, oriental masculinity of Jung Bahadur and the imperial, anglicised masculinity of Chandra Shumsher were defined in relation to the supposed effeminacy of the Shah Kings of Nepal, as also the ‘boy scout’ young adult masculinity of the common Gurkha soldiers.

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Sanjeev Uprety is Lecturer with the MPhil in English Programme at the Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu. He received his PhD from Brown University for the dissertation titled ‘Double Mimesis: Representations of Mimicry, Masculinity, Modernity and Nation in colonial and post-colonial narratives 1850-1947’. He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines and is the author of the recently published novel, Ghanachakkar.