Yogmaya Neupane (Nepali: योगमाया न्यौपाने) (1867–1941) was a religious leader, women's rights activist and poet based in Bhojpur district of Nepal.

[1] According to the prevalent Brahmin customs of the period, Yogmaya was married off by her parents to a boy named Manorath Koirala, when she was just 7 years old.

During her journey she came in contact with many renowned religious leaders, including Swargadwari Mahaprabhu Abhayananda Second, who was highly appreciative of her devotion and thus guided her with the Yogic spiritual education under the Joshmani saint tradition.

The tragedies and discrimination faced by Yogmaya in her pre-ascetic life heavily defined her outlook on the injustices present in the Nepali Hindu society.

Despite being a follower and preacher of Hindu spiritual philosophy, she felt that the patriarchal society around the time was unfairly discriminatory towards women and in the case of Nepal, towards the lower economic class as well.

The then Prime Minister of Nepal, Juddha Shumsher Rana also decided to meet Bhandari following which he gave a spoken assurance to adhere to the holy vow of truth and sent him to give the message to Yogmaya.

She was welcomed by Juddha Shumsher during her visit there, where he reportedly asked what she wanted and in response Yogmaya replied 'the alms of the holy order of truth and justice' (in Nepali: सत्य धर्मको भिक्षा).

Then, before leaving the Kathmandu Valley, Yogmaya handed a 24-point appeal to the prime minister detailing the reforms she and her followers wanted to see in the country.

This alarmed Juddha Shumsher and his followers, who began seeing Yogmaya as a threat to their political establishment and so made special preparations to send her back to Bhojpur that year.

She declared that it was time to establish a new era by destroying the injustices, superstitions and corrupt practices that had taken hold of the Nepali society.

In the pretext of Juddha Shumser not fulfilling his assurances, Yogmaya made a plan to sacrifice herself by sitting on a giant pyre along with 240 willful disciples in a ritual called the Agni Samadhi and thus commanded her followers to post a public appeal to the common people for any kind of alms they could give to her group by the Kartik Shukla Purnima.

With the administrators not paying heed to her appeal yet again, Yogmaya set the date for her sacrifice to November 12, 1938 and publicly began making preparations for the same.

[1][8] Fearing a mass reprisal if the mass sacrifice was allowed to happen, Juddha Shumser ordered the disruption of the event by deploying around 500 security personnel to the event venue on November 11, following which 11 male disciples were jailed at Dhankuta while most female participants of the disrupted agni samadhi ritual, including Yogmaya and Nainakala were kept in close arrest in the Radhakrishna Temple at Bhojpur.

She set the new date of the event to July 5, 1941, which was the day of the holy Harisayani Ekadasi and personally allowed only a select group of disciples to join in with her.

After the 1980s, notable Western scholars, including Barbara Nimri Aziz and Michael Hutt researched and published their literary works based on Yogmaya.

A local organization has also been formed in Bhojpur by relatives and locals of Yogmaya Neupane called the ‘Yogamaya Shakti Pith Tapobhumi Bikash Tatha Vikas Sanstha’, to promote her work and activities as well as preserve the places where Yogmaya spent a significant time during her ascetic life around Nepaledada and Dingla.

[13] The Nepali novelist Neelam Karki Niharika was awarded the top prize in the 2018 edition of the Madan Puraskar for her biographical novel Yogmaya.