Rabi Thapa Lecture—Purity and Pollution in Contemporary Kathmandu: Reflections on Nepali Environmental Management

Rabi Thapa is a writer and editor based in Kathmandu, where he runs the literary magazine La.Lit. He is the author of the short story collection, Nothing to Declare (Penguin India 2011), and a biography of Kathmandu's tourist quarter, Thamel, Dark Star of Kathmandu (Speaking Tiger 2016). He is currently working on a book on the environment.

Western visitors to the Indian subcontinent may experience sensory overload, even revulsion, faced with differences in environmental hygiene. There, too, cleanliness is next to godliness, but if the rituals of Hinduism and Buddhism are intact, the rural environments in which they flourished have been supplanted by urban sprawl, combining in a confused amalgam of ritual and natural pollution. The example of Nepal, centered in the chaotic capital of Kathmandu, is used to illustrate how traditional South Asian cultures are maladapting to modernity, particularly in how they relate to their human, natural, and cultural environments.

Sponsored by The Barbara B. and Bertram J. Cohn Professorship in Environmental Studies.