Natural disasters like flood, earthquake and landslides are common occurrences in Nepal. Along with the socio-economic costs, the bigger disasters have more often than not brought political consequences too. We choose the 1934 earthquake to argue that revisiting such a natural disaster through archival sources will not only provide a more nuanced understanding of the event, but also compel the research community to ask questions that will have implications on how states and societies can better cope with natural disasters and what kind of bearing the nature of the state will have on the aftermath.
