In a bid to reach out to a larger groups of readers, Sajha Prakashan has translated two phenomenally successful books -- Munamadan by Laxmi Prasad Devkota and Basain by Lil Bahadur Chhetri -- in Limbu and Tharu languages, respectively. [break]
“We will bring out these two books into the market soon,” Dhirendra Khanal, manager of Sajha Prakashan, said.
After publishing Devkota´s and Chhetri´s magnum-opuses in two different regional languages, the Sajha Prakashan aims at rebuilding its image of monolingual publishing house into a multilingual one. Established in 1964, the Sajha Prakashan had been publishing books only in Nepali so far.
Both Devkota and Chhetri´s books brilliantly deal with poor Nepali villagers´ undying resilience to fight perennial poverty. The new editions of these books in regional languages are expected to strike chords with Limbu and Tharu communities where migration for the improvement of livelihoods is a pretty pervasive phenomenon.
While Munamadan has been translated by Ran Bahadur Menyangbo, journalist Krishna Raj Sarbahari has converted Basain into a Tharu-language novel.
As an advanced form of Gorakha Bhasha Prakashani Samiti set up about 100 years ago, the Sajha Prakashan was largely guided by the late king Mahendra´s infamous doctrine of promoting only Nepali language. Mahendra´s doctrine reigned for long even after the end of the Panchayat regime in 1990.
After the fall of Panchayat, indigenous rights activists had occasionally been criticizing Sajha for being indifferent to promoting regional languages. “We also wanted to become a multilingual publishing house,” Khanal said. “The onset of federal democratic republic turned out to be an appropriate occasion to do away with our image of monolingual house.”
Sajha Prakashan has already published a few books in some regional languages. According to Hom Bhattarai, publication chief of Sajha, the country´s only publishing house has recently brought out language learning books in Rai (Bantawa and Chamling) and Magar languages.
“We are likely to publish this book in Limbu, Tamang, Gurung, Tharu and Nepali languages, too,” Bhattarai said. Sajha recently published a Maithili grammar book and an Awadhi dictionary as well. “Our attempt is to keep all dying regional languages alive,” Bhattari says.
A 2001 Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) report says that a total of 92 regional languages exist in Nepal. Linguists, however, say that the number of languages spoken by different ethnic and indigenous groups could be even higher. Linguists have long been stressing on the need of introducing a concrete and comprehensive program to revive the dying languages.
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