Part of POA Opening Studio: Contemporary Indigeneity

Muktik Dagar: A Path of Liberation — Talk by Lavkant Chaudhary, Indu Tharu, and Priyankar Bahadur Chand

Jokhan Ratgaiya, a Tharu poet and editor of “Muktik Dagar” (Path of Liberation), published poetry and essays during the Nepal People’s War in the late 1990s. In 2001, he was killed during this war. In 2020, surviving volumes of “Mutik Dagar” were rediscovered, with writings on the systematic dispossession of Tharu lands, the bonded labour system, and other structures of oppression.

In Nepal, a collective amnesia seems to have obscured the trauma of the conflict years, with reflections on reconciliation often reduced to hollow rhetoric. Drawing on the legacy of “Mutik Dagar”, Per°Form Fellows Lavkant Chaudhary, Indu Tharu and Priyankar Bahadur Chand present recent collective efforts of resisting and remembering as active sites of cultural production.

Lavkant Chaudhary is an artist from the Indigenous Tharu peoples of the Tarai, and his art directly addresses issues related to his community and their struggle for rights and recognition within the history of the Nepali nation-state. By embedding archival matter and Indigenous vocabularies in his art, he aims to unravel the multiple injustices of indentured servitude, extrajudicial killings, environmental degradation, and political disenfranchisement Tharu peoples have faced. Paramount to this practice are narratives of resistance and resilience that disrupt and challenge these longitudinal cycles of suffering.

Indu Tharu is an artist, poet, and activist. As an Indigenous Tharu woman, her writings, performances, and installations actively address the systematic erasure of her community’s voice. She explores themes of remembrance, loss, and violence and their impact on individual and societal consciousness. Her works are particularly informed by the recent People’s War in Nepal (1996–2006) and its effect on her family and community. Drawing from her family's archives, she investigates the role of underground publications in the struggle for Tharu identity recognition. Additionally, she has been documenting the contributions of Tharu women in various social movements across the Tarai. Her poems have been performed at numerous protests and are published in her book "Nilambit Nibandha."

Priyankar Bahadur Chand is a researcher incorporating archival and field-based methodologies in his works. His ongoing study includes assembling and contextualising the archives of the SKIB-71 art collective, looking at the long history of disease and territory in the Tarai, recording body marking traditions along the Indo-Nepal borderland, and exploring the visual historiography of cultures across the Himalayas. He is also a co-founder of Kalā Kulo, a space working with experimental and speculative approaches in Kathmandu.

Images courtesy of Lavkant Chaudhary, Indu Tharu, Priyankar Bahadur Chand.