Avowal of Founding Chair of Bhutaneseliterature.com
Dear valued readers, writers and community folk,
Time is in its own motion, constantly moving with arrays of hopes and optimism, clumsiness and tragedies. We are people whose hearts are torn apart by the viciousness of state-sponsored terrorism; a moment imposed to let us feel that we were no worth-living. The time is so powerful that the wounds are getting healed and the time back our memories is getting fainter. With the pace of time-to the generation coming to a role in a community– the transformation of a nation with a long history of cultural and religious tolerance to a nation which formulated policies based on ethnic discriminations to classify its own citizens has been just like a flashback of a momentous film reeled in hallucinated minds. Nevertheless, the bitter reality of brutality aimed at demolishing identity, culture, literature, and arts of a group shall, indeed, never be forgotten.
It is for the same Bhutanese media have a role to play today. We did not have any literature that needed revival. Our culture was forced to remain in a vicinity of disappearance. The up-rooting of hundreds of thousands of people got merely cramped in some researches and media coverage. We were forgotten at large!
It was at the same time we stood up boldly for establishing footprints of the journey we took. Expressing with writing could be the most important tool to let the world know about our pains and restlessness, our woes and miseries. A lot of actions undertaken for creating a difference, in a time when the circumstances were intertwined creating the hegemony of vulnerability, amply signify the sheer calls we had for a brighter future. Nepali Bhasha Parishad (which would later be transformed to Nepali Sahitya Parishad, Bhutan) came into existence with the motive of preserving the culture and uplifting the language and its literature.
The journey with a ragged-sack of timid memories did not stop here. We started flying across the Atlantic, over the Alps. The time again made us dispersed across the globe. The foundation laid down for the language and literature went torpid. The questions of identity yielded tougher realities.
With a vision of carrying-over the ground works for literature, Bhutaneseliterature.com made its first appearance online from 7th May 2009 from abroad. With subsequent approaches of institutionalizing the only forum dedicated to entire Bhutanese literature, different boards were made, the editorial team was declared and finally, the board of trustees was formed on 17th April 2010 which shouldered the responsibility of the publication. These boards, in their active tenure, made significant contributions for the betterment of language and literature.
Bowing to the need of the time—the time to restructure the Parishad making it a representative literary platform at the time when geographical boarders got redefined, at least in our perspective—Nepali Sahitya Parishad, Bhutan decided to bolster its position as Literature Council of Bhutan. And for the mutual co-existence and to be a part in fostering the objectives of the eldest literary body, we decided to go under the management of Literature Council of Bhutan.
I hope that this equation will lead to a solution as wide-spread and conspicuous literary projects, wider literary developments and augmentation of the achievements. I express my gratitude to the board of trustees which was headed by Mr. Pashupati Timsina, together with the editorial team and entire team members for their tireless work to give a direction to this forum. Our work could have always remained incomplete had they not dreamed for its prosperity.
With a dream of literary entirety!
Ramesh Gautam
Founding Chairman
Bhutaneseliterature.com