Bhanu Dhungana, a Bhutanese poet of Nepali descent, has lived in Canada since 2011. He is a cultural activist, educator, and social worker. Living in Windsor, Ontario, Dhungana has remained engaged in educational initiatives, language preservation, and literary work. Through these efforts, he has helped shape identity and belonging among communities that experienced displacement from Bhutan and later sought refuge and resettlement in Canada.

Dhungana was born in November 1972 in Dorokha, Dechukha, Bhutan. He is the third child of Chandra Lal and Divyashree, who had five sons and two daughters. Growing up in a farming family, he contributed to the household as a shepherd, grazing cattle and goats. He did not have formal schooling in his early years, yet he listened regularly to recitations of Bhanubhakta Acharya’s Nepali Ramayana and other texts such as Krishna Charitra (The Life of Krishna). These recitations gave him an early introduction to literary language, narrative form, and the world of books.

At the age of fourteen, he began a small business growing black cardamom and oranges, which he sold in nearby towns. This livelihood was later affected by political developments in Bhutan. In 1988, political movements demanding rights for Nepali speakers gained visibility, and the position of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese became increasingly precarious. After that period, Nepalis could no longer carry on business freely, and state laws increasingly targeted Nepali-speaking Bhutanese through discrimination and restriction. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the state also enforced Driglam Namzha,   a code of etiquette and dress. Under this system, men were required to wear the gho, also called bakhu, a knee-length robe tied at the waist, and women the kira, a long dress worn with a blouse and outer jacket. During one monsoon rice-planting season in those years, government officials pulled Dhungana’s father from the field for not wearing the required dress while planting rice. They also forced him to leave the village. Police harassed Dhungana’s porters, referred to as dhulaiwala, meaning men who carried goods and loads, looted his black cardamom, and harassed him repeatedly. In April 1993, he left Bhutan and arrived at the Khudunabari refugee camp in Jhapa, eastern Nepal, joining other refugees there, including one of his uncles.

In the refugee camp, Dhungana and others helped establish an open school that charged two Nepali rupees a month. The school operated as a community initiative. Some among the camp residents taught, some helped run the school, and Dhungana himself studied there while also assisting in its operation. He moved quickly through the early grades. The following year, his family also arrived at the refugee camp. During this period, he cared for two sick brothers and went through the death of his mother, yet he continued his studies and later passed grade ten, the School Leaving Certificate in Nepal, with high marks. He also studied Nepali literature through the New Delhi Board and completed Bhushan and Alankar,   literary qualifications associated with higher secondary and undergraduate-level study in Nepali language and literature.

From 2003 onward, while living in the Khudunabari refugee camp, Dhungana worked in camp administration for nine years. This work involved the management and organization of camp affairs. In 2007, he became deputy camp secretary, and from 2008 to 2011 he served as camp secretary. During these years, many refugees still hoped to return to Bhutan, yet neither Bhutan nor Nepal moved toward a political solution that would make repatriation possible. In March 2011, Dhungana came to Canada through the resettlement program that relocated Lhotshampa (literally, “southerners”) or the Nepali language-speaking Bhutanese refugees to Europe, North America, and Australia.

In August 2011, a few months after arriving in Canada, Dhungana and others started a literary forum called Aankura Sahitya Chautari in Ontario. The organization taught Nepali language and literature to children and introduced them to stories, poetry, essays, ghazal, and rubai. Members organized events in one another’s houses, creating a weekly door-to-door literary gathering within the community. This effort later led to the formation of a school for teaching Nepali language in 2015, supported by the Ontario School Board’s Multicultural Office. The initiative later expanded into online Nepali language classes, supported by the Ottawa Catholic School Board, with more than forty students enrolled across Canada.

In “Hamro Bhasha Maryobhane Hami Kahinko Rahadainaun” (“If Our Language Dies, We Will Be Nowhere”), published in Nepal Touch on 3 February 2024, Dhungana reflects on the centrality of language:

“I am a Bhutanese of Nepali origin, and Nepali language means more to me than life because it embodies nationality, identity, and Eastern philosophy. The culture is enriched by the Bhanubhakta Ramayana, representing folk literature translated into Nepali. . . . The world’s most enduring and greatest living wealth is language. One’s own language is primary. Knowledge of other languages is beneficial.”

Dhungana also served as president of the Bhutanese Canadian Association, organizing cultural events that included Nepali folk singing, duet performances, and women’s sangini dance, a traditional song-and-dance form associated with communal celebration.

Dhungana’s literary organization celebrates the anniversaries of two major Nepali poets, Bhanubhakta Acharya and Laxmi Prasad Devkota, every year, along with other regular events. The group has organized spring literary events in US-Canadian border towns, including Detroit–Windsor and Niagara Falls. He is also associated with Bhutani Nepali Sahitya (Bhutanese Nepali Literature), an organization linking Bhutanese Nepali writers in North America. He often participates in multilingual poetry readings at the Windsor Public Library Central Branch, where he recites poetry alongside writers working in Burmese, Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, and other languages. These readings carry the sound and presence of Nepali language and poetry into wider public literary spaces.

Dhungana’s writing journey began in the refugee camp. He took part in debates and public speeches and was encouraged by Shiva Lal Dahal and Netra Subedi to continue writing and publishing. Supporters sometimes gave him Nepali dictionaries and Nepali keyboards. During a health camp, he wrote a poem on AIDS awareness, “U AIDS Aayo” (“Watch Out, AIDS Is Here”). His reading was remembered as so forceful that some members of the audience rose from their seats in alarm. This performance later led to work in the library, where he wrote his second poem, “Yo Sharirchahi Kavitako Maadal Ho” (“This Body Is the Maadal Drum of Poetry”). In that poem, the maadal, a traditional Nepali double-headed drum, becomes the central image through which the body, use, fatigue, and mortality are expressed:

This body is the maadal drum of ashes

Now you can play it any way you want

But once it gets tired

The ashes will go away.

He continued writing more poems and reading them in the Bhutanese Nepali events.

In 2017, he published his first poetry collection, Nabhaye Samma Detroit (Until Then, Detroit). The collection is shaped by longing for return to Bhutan. In the title poem, the speaker commits to staying near the Detroit River until return to the homeland becomes possible. The poem asks why, despite fifteen rounds of talks with the United Nations Human Rights Commission and repeated efforts by different governments, refugees still remain unable to return. The collection includes forty-five poems and records dispossession, suffering, and the barriers that continue to prevent return. In the poem “Ma Khaniyuko Phal Ho” (“I Am the Fruit of the Fig Tree”), the Bhutanese government appears through the image of a drooping fig tree, its decaying fruit and leaves suggesting a state that does not serve its citizens or foster development.

After 2017, Dhungana turned more fully toward metrical Nepali poetry after years of writing in prose. He has used metres such as Bhujangaprayata, Sragvini, Shardulavikridita, and Totaka  . These are Sanskrit-derived classical metrical forms that entered Nepali poetry through long literary tradition. Each metre follows a prescribed pattern of syllabic weight and rhythmic movement. Their use places Dhungana’s work in conversation with older formal lineages of Nepali and Sanskrit poetics while also showing his command over patterned verse. Written in Shardulavikridita metre, his poem “Kavya Paan” (“A Sip of Poetry”) expresses the continuation of dream and hope: “Even if only the soil is left behind, not the path of the heart ahead, / We may find dreams on an enchanting path if we become travelers of hope.”  His poems return often to land, crops, animals, and rural imagery. Poetry, in his understanding, opens the heart and becomes a path toward freedom. He sees writing as continual practice, penance, and creativity, a companion sustained over time:

Let’s get up from today

Let’s get together from today

Always wishing

Let’s do Divine Sadhana (“Hami Ek Hunu Parchha,” “We Must Unite”)

His poems often rework familiar words and images by placing them in new relations. He asks readers to return to them for further meaning, depth, and interpretation. His style seeks freshness in language, image, vision, thought, and living. He also draws at times on less frequently used words and on Sanskrit-derived vocabulary.

Bhanu Dhungana’s significance lies in the way his literary and cultural work connects Bhutan, the refugee camps in Nepal, and the Nepali-speaking diaspora in Canada. His poems preserve the memory of expulsion, camp life, deferred return, and resettlement. His work in language teaching, literary organization, and community cultural life has helped sustain Nepali literary practice among younger generations growing up outside Bhutan and Nepal. He occupies an important place in Bhutanese Nepali diasporic writing. His career brings together poetry, education, community leadership, and language activism within a single literary trajectory, and his writing gives lasting form to the historical experience of displacement and to the continuing cultural life of Bhutanese Nepali communities across borders.

References

Dhungana, Bhanu. “Chari Pharki Aau.” Bhutanese Literature Dot Com, vol. 14, no. 4, 20 Feb. 2022, https://bhutaneseliterature.com/चरी-फर्कि-आऊ/.

Dhungana, Bhanu. “Hamro Bhasha Maryobhane Hami Kahinko Rahadainaun.” Nepal Touch, 3 Feb. 2024, https://nepaltouch.com/news/9016/02/2024.

Dhungana, Bhanu. “Hamro Vaishvik Vanadana.” Nepal Touch, 11 July 2023, https://nepaltouch.com/news/8570/07/2023.

Dhungana, Bhanu. “Jutaun Hami Jutnuparcha.” Nepal Touch, 28 Nov. 2023.

Dhungana, Bhanu. “Kakali.” Punya Foundation, 20 June 2022, https://www.punyafoundation.org/काकली/.

Dhungana, Bhanu. “Kavya Paan.” Bhutanese Literature Dot Com, 7 May 2021, https://bhutaneseliterature.com/काव्य-पान/.

Dhungana, Bhanu. “Mato Ko Naso ra Sharanarthiko Tala.” Nepal Touch, 16 Dec. 2021.

Dhungana, Bhanu. Nabhaye Samma Detroit. Discourse Publications, 2017.