Anjana Bishankhe

Anjana Bishankhe has been active in Nepali leftist politics for more than three decades and has twice represented in the House of Representatives - serving on the Accounts Committee during the 2062/63 interim legislature-parliament, and on the Education and Health Committee in the 2074 House. She has served as a standing committee member of the Nepal Communist Party (Maoist Centre) and as secretary for Bagmati Province; following party unification she now sits on the party’s central committee and is faction in-charge of its health organisation. She played a leading role in building the Inter-Party Dalit Women’s Network. She holds a Master’s degree in Anthropology, is faculty on JFP’s Just Futures Fellowship and has also been part of the Damal Fellowship, where she finds that collective study, joined to her own experience and understanding, helps build sound ideas. In the Nepali context she argues that the caste system is the very foundation on which class is formed, and that the two cannot be looked at separately; keeping social transformation at the centre, she intends to substantiate that understanding through further study.