Fourth Session of the SAARC Talk Series 2025

The fourth session of the SAARC Talk Series 2025 (Virtual Mode) was held on (Tuesday), 29^th July 2025, 3:00 pm (Sri Lanka Standard Time) at the SAARC Cultural Centre (SCC), Sri Lanka. The speaker of the fourth SAARC Talk Series 2025 was Bhushita Vasistha, a Nepali writer and Fulbright scholar with an MFA in Creative Writing from San José State University. Ms. Vasistha’s talk titled ‘Nepal, the Phantom Colony: Rethinking South Asian Postcolonialism Beyond the Borders of Empire’ focused on examining Nepal as a “phantom colony”- a state that, while never formally colonised, nevertheless reflected many colonial dynamics due to its proximity and geopolitical positioning. She argued that Nepal’s literary isolation stems not from lack of quality or history, but from structural disconnects: a late opening to the world (1951), minimal infrastructure in the mid-20th century, and absence of contextual frameworks that link Nepali literature to global conversations.