In the early 1980s, the Janakiya Samskarika Vedi saw itself as a cultural resistance movement involved in establishing its own cultural sphere of ideas and ethics as opposed to the earlier bourgeois ethos. However, its attempt to clearly separate the realms of the cultural and the political was opposed by adherents within the Vedi and also by other left groups that saw the �¢����seizure�¢��� of power and establishment of a left wing hegemony as the overarching goal of the revolution. However, attempts by the Vedi to assert its own autonomy were hindered by the fact that it had a symbiotic relationship with the radical left political parties. While opposing the dominance of those political parties, it also relied on the latter for support. This article traces the short history of the Vedi, its attempts to chart its own independent existence, autonomous from the "party line" and how it disintegrated in the weight of own contradictions.
