On archiving private papers

We don’t have a strong tradition of holding personal papers in public archives or repositories.

Working on and off for almost a decade, the historical sociologist Lokranjan Parajuli and I were able to put together articles written by the political and literary historian Leelanateshvar Sharma Baral (1923-97) on domestic politics and the foreign policy of Nepal during the Panchayat regime in the form of a 500-page book ( Autocratic Monarchy: Politics in Panchayat Nepal , 2012). Baral–who often signed his official name as LS Baral but chose to write literary history and criticism under his pen name Isvar Baral–wrote these 13 articles (one was co-written) between 1960 and 1982. In the book, Parajuli and I wrote a 44-page introduction that sketched Baral’s life and work, highlighting “his educational, research and work record on literature, history and politics of Nepal.”