413
Vol. 22 No. 2, October 2022, pp. 413 – 421
DOI: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4840
Available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/JOLL/index
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Reification of Bourgeois Ideology in Bhattarai’s Muglan
Bimal Kishore Shrivastwa
bimalksrivastav@gmail.com
Department of English, Tribhuvan University, NEPAL
Abstract
Article
information
This paper aims to explore how innocent Nepali youths reify the elitist
bourgeois ideology of the Nepalese society that forces them to go to Muglan, a
term, denoting foreign country for Nepali people, and confront unexpected blows
there in Govinda Raj Bhattarai’s novel, Muglan. Reification signifies the ideology
and perception of people residing in a capitalist society. The study of the impact
of reification demonstrates the reality of a society. Bhattarai is critical to the way
Sutar Kanchha, the protagonist of the novel, obsessed with the dominant
capitalist ideology, goes to Bhutan to earn. But he gets robbed there and he is
forced to do tough physical labor like an animal. To survey terrific effects of the
dominant capitalist ideology of the Nepalese society over the life of the poor
Nepali people, the research paper applies neo-Marxist insights, with special focus
on Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci. The chief finding is that Bhattarai is
critical to persisting capitalist ideology of the Nepalese society that forces
innocent Nepali youths to leave their country just for survival. But, in turn, they
get robbed and are compelled to work like slaves in the cruel Muglan. It is
expected that researchers intending to explore on Nepali literature from the neo-
Marxist perspective will find the paper a useful reference.
Keywords: Bourgeois; exploitation; ideology, reification.
Received:
28 July 2022
Revised:
28 August
2022
Accepted:
7 September
2022
Introduction
This research study is concerned with
noticing the impacts of the reification of the
capitalist ideology by people in Govinda Raj
Bhattarai’s novel, Muglan. Reification connotes
the social consciousness of the people living in
a capitalist society (Lukacs, 1971; Marx &
Engels, 1994). It is a representation of social
consciousness which identifies the human
relationships with thing-like characteristics
(Mehmood, 2018). After the demise of semi-
feudalism in Nepal led by the political
movements in the first decade of the twenty-
https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/JOLL/index
mailto:bimalksrivastav@gmail.comuthor's
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414
first century, Nepali people have obsession
with adopting the lifestyle of the capitalist
class (Bista, 2008). Mishra (2014) argues,
“Potentially, and in a specific sense, the
recognition that Nepal is a capitalist state
constitutes no less than a revolutionary
recognition” (para. 2). The struggle between
the proletariat and the bourgeois has been
reflected by many Nepali writers such as B. P.
Koirala, Parijat, Govinda Raj Bhattarai and so
forth. The term, ‘Muglan’ refers to the Mugal
Empire of India between the 16th and 19th
centuries. For Nepali people, Muglan connotes
a foreign country where youths go to earn. The
publication of Muglan in 2012 heightened
Bhattartai’s place as a canonical writer in
Nepali diaspora literature (Hutt, 1998; Mishra,
2021; Neupane, 2021). Govinda Raj Bhattarai
is a “novelist, essayist, linguist, literary critic,
and translation consultant of Nepali literature”
(“Govinda Raj Bhattarai”, n. d., para. 1). Muglan
is compared to the great works of Nepali
literature like Ramayana by Bhanubhakta,
Muna Madan by Laxmi Prasad Devkota and
Tarun Tapasi by Lekhnath Poudyal. Muglan is
“the first book, a fiction detailing the road
construction works in Bhutan and the harsh
life of the innocent people of Nepali origin that
were suppressed, exploited, and terrorized
there” (“Criticism is a parasitic plant…” 2020,
para. 13).
The novel, Muglan is “set in the early 19th
century, partly in India and mainly in Bhutan”
(Mishra, 2021, p. 50). It relates a pathetic tale
of the Nepali youths who go to Muglan with the
high ambition of earning money. At the outset,
Sutar Kanchha and Thule go to Dorling, that is,
Darjeeling, West Bengal, India, from the
eastern border of Nepal for marketing. But
instead of coming back home, they flee to
Muglan with the high ambition of being
recruited into the army, so that they can earn
money and support their families. But their
expectations are shattered by the end of their
journey to Muglan. They have to work as road
diggers in the form of the bonded laborers in
the the Ha Paro Mountain at Bhutan where
they meet their tragic death (Atam & Baral,
1999). The paper is concerned to depict how
the proletariat youths of the Nepalese society
are always betrayed by the brutal and
inhuman elitist bourgeoisie people living in
different parts of the world. They are
purchased and sold like cattle in the filthy
capitalist world of human trade. They become
bondage laborers and are compelled to work
as road builders in the dark forests and rocky
hills of Bhutan. The research questions the
paper raises are: Why does Sutar Kanchha run
away from his own society? Or why does Sutar
fail to resist against the elitist bourgeois
ideology? Thus, the rational of the research lies
in observing what is not addressed by other
researchers. It is how Bhattarai critiques the
capitalist ideology of the Nepalese society that
forces the energetic youths of Nepal to go to
Muglan in the text, Muglan.
There are some writers who have
narrated the stories of the Nepali people going
to abroad for accumulating wealth and
accomplishing their desire for material
possession. Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s renowned
poetic play Muna Madan, published in 1936,
depicts a man’s obligation to go abroad to
supply wealth to his family. Mishra (2021)
observed Madan, the protagonist of the play,
going to Lasha leaving his beloved, Muna, and
his old mother back in Kathmandu to in his
material passion and finally meeting his tragic
death. Other noted Nepali diasporic novels
such as Yamapuriko Mahal [Edifice of
Yampuri], Muluk Bahira [Out of the Country],
Saran̊ ārthi [The Refugee] also expose how the
materialistic drive force Nepali people to
suffer in foreign country (Koirala, 2011).
Govinda Raj Bhattarai’s debut novel, Muglan is
regarded as “a pioneering work of Diaspora
Studies in Nepal” (Neupane, 2021, p. 57).
Now, let’s assess the critics’ evaluation
and reviews made on the novel, Muglan, from
multiple perspectives. The novel is mainly
taken as one of the significant migration
literatures by a group of critics. Muglan, like
many other Nepali novels, chronicles the story
of Nepali youths migrating to foreign countries
as breadwinners so as to accomplish the
family’s economic problems (Subedi, 2007;
Neupane, 2021). Mishra (2021) marked
Bhattarai dealing with gender issues in the
novel in these words: “Muglan deals with the
problems faced by men in patriarchy. Though
the protagonist and his companions have
emulated traditional masculinity and hoped to
live like men, they fail” (p. 44). Koirala (2011)
appreciated Bhattarai for creating such a
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415
powerful fiction and securing his position as a
canonical writer in Nepali literature. Subedi
(2014) surveyed the linguistic aspects of the
novel, Muglan, and finds Bhattarai switching
and mixing codes, that is, using words and
phrases from Indian and Bhutanese languages.
The power of Muglan lies in its magnetic
appeal because it is written with ink of blood,
paper of skin and the pen of bone (Atam &
Baral, 1999). The critic, Subedi (2007) marked
the novel dealing with the tragic tale of Nepali
youths who are forced to meet a premature
death in the foreign-land, Bhutan.
In this way, some renowned critics have
analyzed the text, Muglan from diverse
perspectives. However, sufficient study of the
novel from the neo-Marxist perspective has
not been made. Here lies the research gap.
Hence, the present paper aims to study the
impact of reifying the elitist bourgeois
ideology by ordinary people in a society in the
light of Muglan.
Methodology
The analytical procedure of the paper is
textual as it is constructed and guarded by the
circumference of neo- Marxist approach. Neo-
Marxism is the post-Marxist criticism emerged
in 1960s to address the issues social inequality
and exploitation of the monopolistic capitalism
(Black & Anderson, 2004). It applied the
qualitative approach to research method.
Regarding the textual approach, Belsey (2005)
remarked, “There is no such thing as ‘pure’
reading: interpretation always involves extra-
textual knowledge” (p. 160). The hypothesis is
to be tested through textual analysis. Apart
from the intensive study of the text, Muglan by
Bhattarai, as the primary data, the related
materials from the secondary resources such
as articles on the text published in websites,
journals, and magazines are analyzed to
discuss the impact of imitating the capitalist
ideology by poor and common citizens of a
society.
Reification is a central concern of neo-
Marxism that stemmed from the Marxist
thought in the 1970s and 1980s. If Marxism,
theorized by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
views society as the endless history of class
struggle, neo-Marxism regards that economic
exploitation is an external cause (Tyson,
2006). A researcher, Postone (2003) believed
that Marx’s idea of class struggle is related to
reification because it is a product of social
consciousness. Marx and Engels (1994) stated:
“All science would be superfluous if the
outward appearance and the essence of things
directly coincided” (p. 592). He implied that
human ideology is always evolving because of
the changing mode of economic foundation.
Neo-Marxists question that the present trend
of capitalist mode of production that has given
birth to capitalist ideology. Neo- Marxists
demand for competent labor. Althusser (1999)
contended,
It is not enough to ensure for labor power
the material conditions of its reproduction
if it is to be reproduced as labor power. I
have said that the available labor power
must be competent, that is, suitable to be
set to work in the complex system of the
process of production. (p. 1485)
In the capitalist society, the repressive state
apparatuses force to do complex job. The
poor people enjoy in their imagination rather
than in their real life situation. Therefore, the
ideology of the state impels the poor people
to make a beautiful dream of their happy
existence. Althusser (1999) stated:
There is, therefore, a cause for the
imaginary transposition of the real
conditions of existence: that cause is the
small number of cynical men who base
their domination and exploitation of the
people on a falsified representation of the
world which they have imagined in order
to enslave other minds by dominating
their imaginations. (p. 1499)
Capitalist bourgeois society imposes its
ideology to the proletariat people through its
subtle and powerful mechanism.
Marx and Engels (1994) believed that
people would change the existing system one
day by revolting against the bourgeois class.
But neo-Marxist critics believe that people
support the capitalist system consciously
because they have no alternative to reject it.
Zizek (1999) remarked, “The most elementary
definition of ideology is probably the well-
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416
known phrase from Marx’s Capital: ‘sie wissen
das nicht, aber sie tun es’ – ‘they do not know it,
but they are doing it’” (p. 312). Classical
Marxism advocates that false consciousness
persuades general people to remain under
capitalistic ideological shadow. A notable neo-
Marxist philosopher, Gramsci (1994)
ruminated that ideology is a means or tool of
hegemonizing the proletariat. The civil society
and political society, according to Gramsci
(1994), operate in a society to maintain their
hegemony:
What we can do, for the moment, is to fix
two major super-structural levels: the one
that can be called ‘civil society’, that is,
ensemble of organisms commonly called
‘private’, and that of ‘political society’ or
‘the state’. These two levels correspond on
the one hand to the functions of
‘hegemony’ which the dominant group
exercises through the state and ‘juridical
government’ (p. 12).
The capitalist ideology of the elite group is
either maintained forcefully or through
consensus.
The neo-Marxist approaches, discussed
above, are the key theoretical tools used to
analyze how the poor people in Muglan reify
the capitalist ideology and suffer later on.
Results and Discussion
The study explores how Bhattarai’s
Muglan portrays the tendency of the innocent
Nepali youths to reify the dominant bourgeois
ideology which forces them to flee abroad for
earning more without being conscious of its
aftermath consequences. The dominant
bourgeoisie ideological system of a society
makes the people aware of their economic
limitations and forces them to argue that
economic prosperity brings happiness
(Althusser, 1999). At the same time the
patriarchal society of Nepal aids the young to
go abroad for earning. The father of Pakhe
Kailo in the novel, Muglan, assesses that
Kanchha can go to foreign country for earning
because he is a male. Pakhe Kailo states: “It is
alright for a son to leave home and go to
foreign land” (Muglan, p. 118). This signifies
that reifying the capitalist ideology is not a new
phenomenon in Nepal. Generations of people
from Nepal have been going abroad for making
money. Sutar Kanchha and his friends see no
trace of happiness in the land of Nepal
because there are no job and income
opportunities (Koirala, 2011). They, therefore,
adhere to the contemporary Nepalese
bourgeoisie ideological system that reminds
them of their obligation. The social
consciousness is an inevitable human
phenomenon that stems from the socio-
economic base (Lukacs, 1971; Marx & Engels,
1994). The tendency to reify the bourgeois is
rooted in the Nepalese vein for a long time.
Althusser (1999) believed, “Ideology has
a material existence in the sense that it is
embodied in all sorts of material practices” (p.
1490). This, in turn, generates the idea in their
minds that economic growth enhances
happiness. The young boys of the novel plot to
go to Muglan, foreign country, expecting to
obtain better job opportunities, such as
armies, and better economic status. In the
exposition of the novel, Muglan, the narrator
describes, “Sitting in the truck loaded with
goods, they experienced adventurous
moments. They fancied descending down
towards Muglan and were swept away by the
imagination of being recruited in the army”
(Muglan, p. 2). They feel as if they have
obtained eternal joy. When Sutar is becomes
more imaginative, Thule says, “Wow! How
wonderful it is, Kanchha, to be in the lorry!
This reminds me of being in a cradle” (Muglan,
p. 2). It is wonderful to go abroad and serve in
difficult for the Nepali people because the
reification of the dominant bourgeois ideology
has influenced their mentality. In the novel,
Muglan, the Nepali people are unaware of the
bitter truth that they are victimized by the
capitalist system. Instead, they are not only
reifying dominant bourgeois ideology but also
ignoring the importance of home, family, and
doing simple work without surrendering to the
capitalists. Neo-Marxists believe that we do
not act out of free will. Instead, we are acted by
the system in reality. Althusser (1999) argues,
“It, therefore, appears that the subject acts
insofar as he is acted by the system” (p. 1491).
The desire of the youths to go to Muglan for
recruitment seems to be acted out of their
freewill. But, in reality, it is the social system,
manipulated by the capitalists, that causes
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them to reify the capitalist ideology and go
there.
Bhattarai demonstrates the truth in
these lines:
The boys, who had spent their lives quite
pleasantly working at home and amidst
the cattle and who were drunk with their
youth and vigor, might have been carried
away by wild dreams. They could not
control themselves from the temptation of
getting lost in this colorful world of
Muglan, away from home (Muglan, p. 2).
The minds of the innocent Nepali youths float
into the horizon of imagination to make their
future bright. They are compelled to conceive
in such a way because of the predominant
capitalist ideological system of the state.
Nepali worker go abroad with a great
dream of earning much money. But they do not
know how they are exploited in the foreign
land. Zizek (1999) claims that poor people, in
their obsession to reify bourgeois, do not know
what they are doing in capitalist society. This
situation is marked in this line: “Neglecting to
carry the salt back home after selling ghee in
‘Dorling’, they got into a truck heading for
Siliguri” (Muglan, p. 2).
The Nepali youths are so obsessed by the
conception of a happy future that they are
even ready to confront all the obstacles that
might come in their way. Pitkin (1987)
connects associates reification with social evil
because individuals “treat themselves and
others, as if they were things, not people” (p.
123). They can’t fight against the existing
capitalist system of the country that is
indifferent to their unemployment and
poverty. Bhattarai further reports:
Their minds were possessed by the
unprecedented imagination of reaching
Muglan, recruiting themselves and
becoming lahures [foreign army]. They
followed that man with trembling legs,
supporting themselves solely on the sweet
fantasy of trotting in their boots once they
became lahures (Muglan, pp. 22-23).
The sweet fantasy makes the simple Nepali
youths forget their pain, their hunger, and
their exhaustion. They have a conviction that
every misery and obstacle they tackle today
results in material reward tomorrow.
The ideology of adhering to the elitist
bourgeois trend is not a new phenomenon. It is
trans-historical. Althusser (1999) contends,
“in its Freudian conception this time, our
proposition: ideology has no history, can and
must be related directly to the Freudian
proposition that the unconscious is eternal,
that is, it has no history” (p. 240). The
pervasiveness of reifying the capitalist
ideology is marked in the mentality of the
Nepalese youths earlier because they had the
trend go to Muglan to make their life materially
prosperous. They don’t bother where there
Muglan might be. But they have no problem
leaving their family, village and native land for
employment. When the driver’s helper
demands twenty rupees per head as the fare
for their journey to foreign country, Thule
consoles himself and Sutar says, “It might be
right, yes, our father used to say it took him five
koris while going to Assam” (Muglan, p. 3). This
justifies that the process of leaving house to
support one’s family has been exercised for a
long time in Nepal. In Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s
Muna Madan, the Muglan of the unemployed
Nepalese youths is the Lasha (Mishra, 2021).
The Muglan the Nepalese youths in the early
21st century is Arab, Quatar, Iraq, and Korea
and so on. Some of them suffer in war affected
countries as Sutar in Muglan in Bhutan and
Madan in Devkota’s Muna Madan suffer in
Lasha. This condition of experiencing pain has
become an ongoing process and eternal
process in Nepal.
It is ironical that the bourgeois capitalists
take advantage of ruling over the proletariat
because the ideology of the proletariat is
hegemonized to be ruled. A notable neo-
Marxist philosopher, Gramsci (1994)
ruminates that ideology is a means or tool of
hegemonizing the proletariat. He holds the
opinion that civil society and political society
exercise “through the state and juridical
government” (p. 12) in order to maintain their
hegemony.
In Muglan, a l m o s t all the characters are
ex pl oited by the s ystem of t he elitist
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bourgeois society. The protagonist, Sutar
Kanchha and other youths are exploited by the
capitalists because they blindly reify the
capitalist ideology. They suffer from the
brutality, cruelty and inhumanity of the
capitalist ideology. In the elitist bourgeois
society, the capitalists control the state and
every system to exploit the proletariat as the
commodities. Adorno and Horkheimer (2005)
state:
As naturally as the ruled always took the
morality imposed upon them more
seriously than did the rulers themselves,
the deceived masses are today captivated
by the myth of success even more than the
successful are. Immovably, they insist on
the very ideology which enslaves them. (p.
238)
Honneth (2005) is right in his conception
that “reification is a modified form of human
behavior” (p. 93). Human beings are treated
like lifeless things in capitalistic society. When
the youths attempt to run away from Bhutan,
they were recaptured by the human traffickers
treated inhumanly. We can observe the bitter
truth in this scenario:
After the sound of every whipping,
another one would twirl his moustache
and ask- ‘Will you run away like this?’ The
man would merely whisper something in
a n indistinguishable manner. He
ordered, ‘Go to work from tomorrow. As
a penalty, your two months’ salary will be
deducted. And you will receive only half of
your ration. Understood?’ The four
laborers stood sobbing there with scars of
canning all over their bodies (Muglan, pp.
74-75).
The labors are canned by the atrocious
boss to impose their power on them. This
justifies how the capitalists treat the
proletariat as commodities. Capitalists treat
the labors as commodities in the culture
industry disregarding what is correct or what
is incorrect (Walker & Gray, 2007). In pre-
capitalist society, the rich practiced slavery.
They used to purchase poor as slaves or the
cheap laborers for imposing them with heavy
work.
The repressive state apparatuses are not
unified in the capitalist society (Gramsci,
1994). The police and the prison system, the
military, the state and government are not
homogenized. And they not only operate their
industry privately but also attain their power
through implicit consent of the state
apparatuses. Kanchho and Sutar have to
perform the complex work in Muglan because
they have no any option to challenge the
existing order of the authority. The reification
of the bourgeois ideology makes one
powerless (Blackledge & Anderson, 2004). The
Jimdar commands the youths to do whatever
the work they are assigned to. The irony of the
repressive state apparatuses can be perceived
in the novel in these lines:
The Jimdar kept telling Kanchho and
Sutar, ‘Now you have to work. The work is
digging the road. You have to work from
six o’clock in the morning to five in the
evening. You will have to do whatever you
are assigned’ (Muglan, p. 48).
Kanchho and Sutar are the poor youths
who have to obey the harsh command of the
capitalists. Though their job is tough and
beyond their expectations, they can’t deny. The
proletariat can’t challenge the authority and
power in a society manipulated by the
bourgeois society. Walker and Gray (2007)
highlight the adverse impacts of the reification
in these words: “Human qualities, relations,
actions and even human beings themselves are
transformed in the course of capitalist
production into things, and these things come
to have power over human beings” (pp. 194).
Kanchho and Sutar are transformed as objects.
Kanchho and Sutar have to obey when the
Jimdar iterates, “You will have to do whatever
you are assigned” (Muglan, p. 48). They have
no potential to reject the command of the
authority. In a capitalistic society, the labors
become powerless, subalterns (Gramsci,
1994). The elitist bourgeois compel the
subalterns them to do the tough, complex and
risky task so as to accomplish their motif. The
working class laborers have to carry on
completing the task though it is difficult and
unbearable. It is not that they were not
cautioned. An experienced laborer alarms
them saying, “You all have come here with such
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an enviable physiques and are full of dreams,
but they will suck every drop of blood out of
you and kill you” (Muglan, p. 61). But their
insistence to reify capitalistic dream there
makes them tolerate the subjugation from the
contractors. Here lies Bhattarai’s intention,
that is, to criticize the materialistic society
where human treats human as inhuman.
The youths in the novel, Muglan, are
assured that they will be recruited in the army.
Althusser (1999) does not like the way the
small number of powerful men dominate and
exploit poor labor and enslave their
imaginative minds with their materialistic
drives. Though domination and exploitation
lurk in the life of the proletariat, though the
proletariat cannot dominate the bourgeois in
their real life situation, they build an imaginary
world to cherish their lives. Then they are kept
in Raini Didi’s hotel. The youths start
recreating thinking how pleasant the world of
the army would really be. This illusion is
rendered in these lines:
Looking at his mates and smiling, Karki
said, ‘This is the rice of bageda and this,
the lentil soup of musur. Now the
government will provide us with ration
like this daily. Nothing to worry about.
Now the diet of dhindo is over, right”?
(Muglan, p. 32)
Here, Karki acts as if he knew everything like
a leader and commander of the group. Karki
and his friends soar into the world of illusion
that after their recruitment, they are going to
obtain good payment and facilities. This
displays how their minds are baffled by the
reification of the capitalist ideology. And the
new source of income would transform the
standard of their. But the irony is that they are
ignorant of the filthy world of the culture
industry. They are going to live a sorrowful and
helpless life. In the culture industry, the
capitalists exploit the workers as the parts of
machine (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2005). Karki
and his friends do not know that they are going
to be treated like the cogs in the machine. They
will be kicked out of the industry the moment
the machine parts stop functioning. In the
culture industry, bourgeois seek to sell labors
as cheap objects. Though the capitalists
require labor, they have no problem paying
low wages to the labor. The feelings and
sentiments of slaves trampled in materialistic
society. The possession of power by the
bourgeois assists keeping proletariat stay
isolated like an outsider.
When the Nepalese youths succeed in
escaping from the imprisonment of the
Bhutanese in Muglan, they are tagged “tipaite”
(Muglan, p. 48). They are tagged as offensive
criminals and looked for everywhere by the
police. Althusser (1999) holds the opinion that
the unjust treatment exercised by the
bourgeoisie is found in all cultures of the
world. It has been directly or indirectly aid by
the state authorities and judiciary. As soon as
the Nepalese youths are noticed, the police will
punish them badly. This justifies how the law
becomes blind and brutal for the poor youths
in the mercilessness foreign land.
Gradually, all the characters become
alienated in the novel, Munglan. Feenberg
(2015) opines that reification generates
fragmentation and distance among the closed
fellows in the society. The road contractors
appoint Kanchha and other Nepali youths to
blast the rocks at Bhutan. Thule and Lale do
not come back to the tent from the worksite.
Thule must have been killed by the blast, and
Lale Subba “was biting his teeth forcefully, as if
he was still shivering and rattling his teeth with
cold” (p. 76). He might have been frozen to
death. Rai Kancha dies too. The narrator
describes the death of Rai poignantly:
Rai who had left his parents, home and
village with a hope of seeing them again
after being recruited into the army and
earning money, and making his and their
life comfortable, was lying lifeless today,
offering the last breath of his life to the ‘Ha
Dzong’ on a bare hill, without even being
noticed by the vultures and jackals.
(Muglan, p. 80)
The capitalists are so merciless that they
never consider about the problems of the poor
people. There is no one to understand the
problem of Rai. The capitalists know that
construction of road demands tough labor in
the extreme weather with minimum supply of
food. So, many of the Nepali workers have
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unexpected accidents or die because they are
forced to work in an adverse situation.
Capitalist ideology gives the false
impression that that human progress is
possible only through the material prosperity
(Gramsci, 1994). Though Sutar Kanchha
succeeds in escaping narrowly from the police,
he is penniless. Then he thinks of going back to
his home: “Despite enduring so much I had
almost lost my life. I think of my home, my old
father and mother, my wife in her parents'
house” (Muglan, p. 105). Therefore, he decides
not to go home, but stay working at Chengmari
tea state. He is influenced by the reification of
the capitalist ideology till the end. The
narration justifies this: “He was in his late
twenties, how could he go back home empty-
handed. His parents might have very high
hopes of him. He thought it better to die rather
than go back home empty-handed” (Muglan, p.
151). One is so trapped in discourse of
capitalism that his identity and existence is lost
before he can escape from the capitalist
ideology (Honneth, 2005). He commits suicide
in his disappointment because he was badly
trapped by the elitist ideology of capitalism.
Sutar Kanchha loses his life in his attempt to
reify the superficial capitalist ideology.
Bhattarai’s Muglan displays the irony of
the situation of our life that capitalist ideology
is predominant in the social, political and
economic systems of our state. Innocent Nepali
people have been losing their family, society,
and lives in their passion for reifying the
bourgeois ideology.
Conclusion
Analyzing Bhattarai’s novel, Muglan, the
researcher comes to the finding that novel
depicts impacts of reifying the contemporary
socio-economic system of Nepal on the poor
Nepali people. The Nepalese youths from the
1960s to the present era have been so
influenced by the elitist bourgeoisie ideology
of the Nepalese society that they reify the
superficial capitalist ideology and intend to go
to Muglan. The Muglan was India or Bhutan in
the past because they needed no passport and
visa to go and work there. But today Qatar,
Dubai, Malaysia are the modern destinations
where Nepalese youth go to find job. Every
year, thousands of poor Nepali die working in
the foreign country because they can’t resist
the massive load of the work imposed on them.
The ideology of the youth is a production of the
contemporary capitalistic society. The
working class people of Nepal are forced to go
abroad for employment. But they also have an
elusive dream that Muglan offers them better
economic gain. They aren’t aware of the bitter
reality behind working environment in
foreign countries. Bhattarai depicts the pitiful
condition of Nepali proletariat dominated,
exploited, and tormented by the bourgeois. In
the novel, Muglan, Bhattarai main concern is
the critique of tendency of the Nepali people to
reify capitalism. Sutar Kanchha commits
suicide because in utter disappointment
because he can’t escaping from the bourgeois
ideology. Like Sutar Kanchha, other Nepali
people lose their identity, value, and meet
tragic death in the capitalist society.
Acknowledgment
The researcher extends his gratitude to
the experts of Research and Publication
Department at Post Graduate Campus,
Tribhuvan University, Biratnagar, Nepal, for
providing valuable guidelines during the
preparation of the paper. The researcher has
no conflict of interest to disclose. The
researcher received no fund for the
preparation of the paper.
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