KARAN SHRESTHA

Working across drawing, sculpture, photography, film and video, Karan Shrestha explores the relationships to land and history of indigenous communities in Nepal. His ongoing project Stealing Earth addresses the notion of nature conservation in relation to indigenous groups who have been forcibly displaced from their land to make way for national parks. Chitwan National Park, the first protected area in Nepal, was established in 1973 after having been a popular destination for hunting and trade amongst Nepal’s royalty and British colonists for over a century. Since then, it has become the face of biodiversity protection and tourism development in the country. The National Park has been steadily expanding over the years. An entire battalion of the Nepal Army has been mobilized to patrol it, with estimated 800-armed troops in four sections within the National Park. Stealing earth addresses how the rhetoric of conservation is used to enclose land, forest and water for the wealthy and powerful and push the indigenous people further into the margins. Activists Chhabilal Neupane and Chitra Bahadur Majhi affirm in their book Samrakshit Chhetra ka Dwanda – Conflicts in Protected Areas, ‘The upper class see the forest as a source of profit for the tourism industry, a place for recreation and escape for foreigners and wealthy Nepalis, a research site for environmentalists and academics. But for the local and indigenous communities like the Bote, Majhi, Musahar and Kumal, the forest is home. Their lives are entwined with the forest ecosystem.’

Excerpt from Karan Shrestha, ‘A telling’ (2018)

‘Nature’s ways aren’t mysterious; it is giving abundant, consummate. Our home – the jungle, unfurls in greens and browns. No boundaries separate. Occasionally, a solitary tiger hunts us the grazing rhinoceros rams us to the earth wild elephants migrating trample our shelters even the tenacious bamboo and the chopped wood succumb to the raging river changing course. Bhagya-ko-niti when the waters recede, our feet stand firm on wet soil again. No crocodile can devour us. No insect bite can sting. What has been taken is returned. We are not leaving…. In waiting, silence betrays our anger. Hasiyas rust, nets tangle, the smell of bitter spinach fades and the taste of freshwater fish escapes, Our knowledge of the jungle slowly wanes. Our children depart for noisier lands while the new man and his force profit, conserving, when care is needed protecting, when respect should be kept nikunj-prashashan, Stealing earth for beauty. Beauty, driven by ideas of purity ruins us and harms all that is true. Inside us, wild bushes still grow yearning for deeper roots, there is no conciliation.’