During the dark days of Rana Government oppression, some illustrious Newah writers, with a firm belief that people can be widely aroused and their level of awareness highly raised through literary activities, untiringly wrote literary works through which they gave message to the oppressive Government and to the oppressed Newah people that speaking and writing in one’s own language is the inalienable democratic national right of the people. Poet Siddhi Das Mahaju, Nisthanand Vajracharya (father of revival of Nepalbhasha prose), writer and educationist Jagat Sundar Malla (whom famous American writer Barbara Adams wrote as a “prophet before his time”), poet Yog Bir Singh Kansakar who also is the father of “library movement”, the brilliant scholar and researcher religious reformer and journalist Jagat Man Vaidya (famed as Dharma Aditya Dharma Acharya) and Sukra Raj Joshi are unforgettable figures of Nebalbhasha literary revival of the early Twenteeth Century. The history of Newah people’s fight for their linguistic and literary rights shines brilliantly with the historic struggle of Fateh Bahadur Singh, Siddhi Charan Shretha and Chitra Dhar Tuladhar “Hridaya” who were given punishment respectively of imprisonment for life, for eighteen years and for six years by Rana Government for the crime of defying Government order to them to stop writing poems in their own language.
Likewise Chiniya Lal Singh, a Newah educationist, with a firm belief that education to people in a wide scale can raise their consciousness resulting in noteworthy contribution to democratic struggle, established and ran a public school named “The Mahabir Institute“ for which he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison and was recognised by the Nepalese people as an illustrious martyr to the cause of democracy. In the same way, believing that libraries can widely spread consciousness among the people, a Newah poet Yog Bir Singh Kansakar organised a group of people and made preparations for establishing a public libbrary. The movement was suppressed and he, the leader, was punished by Rana rulers. Later Prem Bahadur Kansakar, the famous Newah political leader, following the footsteps of Yog Bir Singh Kansakar, established a public library Pradipta Pustakalaya, for which he was put under surveliance and the library was occasionally shut down by the Government.
It is not logical to come to any conclusion basing only on past records and ignoring the present and not looking to the future. Late Jawahar Lal Nehru, former prime-minister of India once said: “Those who have no future always speak of the past”. But it is highly encouraging to state that the present history is also full of brilliant feats shown by Newah leaders and Newah people in the struggle for democratic rights of Nepalese people and for promotion of culture and civilization of Nepal. Apart from the personages mentioned above, we can cite with pride the names of Kedar Man Vyathit, Tanka Vilas Vajracharya, Triburbar Singh Pradhan, Vishnu Bahadur Manandhar, Devendra Lal Shrestha (Kaila Baa), Vishnu Sundar Pradhan etc for their contribution to the emancipation of Nepalese people. While looking back to the history of the recent past, we find that we have attained the present stage of Nepalese people’s independence as a result of liberation from the shackles of nearly three decades of “Panchayat” autocratic rule (in the garb of so-called “partyless demoracy”) and from the slavery imposed by nearly two-and-a-half century medieval feudal monarchial rule of Shah
dynasty (later added by Rana military oligarcy), which has been achieved by Nepalese people thanks to First People’s Movement of 1990 and second People’s Movement of 2006.
Newah Organization of America July 14th, 2015
