Nepal Now: On the Move
We're talking with the people migrating from, to, and within this Himalayan country located between China and India. You'll hear from a wide range of Nepali men and women who have chosen to leave the country for better work or education opportunities. Their stories will help you understand what drives people — in Nepal and worldwide — to mortgage their property or borrow huge sums of money to go abroad, often leaving their loved ones behind.
Despite many predictions, migration from Nepal has not slowed in recent years, except briefly during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. About 1 million Nepalis leave every year to work at jobs outside the country. Tens of thousands go abroad to study. Far fewer return to Nepal to settle. The money ('remittances') that workers send home to their families accounts for 25% of the country's GDP, but migration impacts Nepal in many other ways. We'll be learning from migrants, experts and others about the many cultural, social, economic and political impacts of migration.
Your host is Marty Logan, a Canadian journalist who has lived in Nepal's capital Kathmandu off and on since 2005. Marty started the show in 2020 as Nepal Now.
Nepal Now: On the Move
Recovering Nepal’s stolen art and restoring its culture
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I’ve lived in Nepal for over a decade now, and I’m still astonished to see where, and what, Nepalis worship. Temples and shrines are mostly obvious—sometimes because roads or sidewalks will curve sharply to avoid them—but as I’m walking through my neighbourhood I might spot a smudge of auspicious vermillion powder on a tree trunk, a tiny niche in a cement wall, or even on a sidewalk.
That is why I was not surprised when today’s guest, Roshan Mishra of Taragaon Museum and the Global Nepali Museum, stressed that Nepal’s is a living culture. And that is one of the main reasons he is among a group of dedicated culture activists who have just launched a new campaign to repatriate idols and other works of art that were stolen from Nepal after it opened to tourism in the 1950s.
One estimate is that 70-80 percent of ‘gods and goddesses’ were spirited from the country until the 1990s. Activists have been trying for years to get them back, with some success. Mishra says the strength of the new Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign is that it adopted a process to work with the Nepal department of archaeology and other institutions, inside and outside the country. Since it launched informally in January of this year, more than 25 possibly stolen objects have been identified, a “huge achievement”, he says.
Just one note: when describing the launch of the new campaign Roshan refers a couple of times to the DG. That is the director general of Nepal’s department of archaeology.
I’m happy to be posting this episode in the middle of one of Nepal’s biggest festivals—Dasain. To everyone listening who is celebrating, Happy Dasain!
Resources
Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign
Global Nepali Museum
Lost Arts of Nepal
Nepal Now social links
Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.
Music: amaretto needs ice ... by urmymuse (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.
http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/urmymuse/57996 Ft: Apoxode
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Music by audionautix.com.
Thank you to Himal Media in Patan Dhoka for the use of their studio.
