Where Interests Collided: Examining the Conflictual Relationship between the Nepali State and Its Citizens through the History of Public Libraries

Abstract

This paper looks at the conflictual relationship between the Nepali state and its citizens through the history of the public libraries of Nepal. It seeks to explain the causal factors that led to the birth, growth and subsequent decline of Nepal’s public libraries. And it shows that the libraries set up and run by citizens were, apart from and more than performing a supplementary role in the country’s education system, also part of the nascent public sphere where ‘private people came together as public’. But since the country’s autocratic regimes wanted no social formations outside their direct purview, and the libraries were involved in creating ‘public opinion’, they were targeted by the state.