| ashu |
Posted
on 11-Jun-01 12:00 AM
Only Words
by Bhupendra Rawat
Thanks to the shot fired by Girija Prasad Koiralas
administration and heard around the world, I recently
wondered whether the most powerful man in Nepal is Dr.
Babu Ram Bhattarai -- a leader of the Maoist
guerillas.
What made me think like that? Easy. How else is one to
characterize a man, whose 1000-odd-word ranting and
raving -- published in this newspapers sister
publication last week -- so shook the Koirala
government that that it felt justified in arresting
the editor, the publisher and the managing director of
the newspaper on charges of treason? Treason . . .
now, the very word conjures up images highly-placed
officials selling state secrets to foreign governments
a la Kim Philby and the rest of the characters out of
the Cold War.
Some say that it would have been a civilized act had
our representative government expressed its
displeasure, say, by way of a statement or perhaps
through a civil lawsuit. And that its throwing the
newspapers top staff into jail, when the whole world
was looking, made it appear all the more raw, crude,
autocratic, undemocratic, helpless, and, yes,
powerless.
Then again, what were those people thinking? After
all, in one form or the other, the Koirala government
has always been that way anyway: raw, crude and
totally undemocratic. In that sense, it deserves
praise for carrying on with what comes to it
impulsively. Besides, by giving undue importance to
Dr. Bhattarai's article, Girija & Company have
unwittingly assured Maoist supporters that, yes,
Maoist words are influential enough to start
suspending the freedom of the press. No wonder Babu
Ram always thinks that his adversaries are strategic
idiots.
Meantime, having missed that issue of Kantipur, I
ended up shelling out twenty bucks for a photocopied
text at a news-stand in Baneswor. But, in all honesty,
I found Dr. Bhattarai's article to be merely a work of
horror-fiction. True, Dr. Bhattarai's writes in a
thriller-like fashion, and that he lets his
imagination run wild. But, ultimately, anyone who
thinks that the CIA is a part of the FBI makes you
convinces you that the guy has been underground for
far too long. Still, being an optimist, I decided that
should Maoism go the way of the Dodo, Dr. Bhattarai
could – given his love for the macabre, passion for
bizarrely twisted plots and a dazzlingly flowing
writing style – easily switch careers to become the
King of Nepal . . .. um, the Stephen King of Nepal.
To his credit, Dr. Bhattarai likes to think big --
taking, as he does, a gnarled view of history to
demolish the arguments of his less knowledgeable
critics. He fancies that he and his colleagues are
fighting a just war against greedy Imperialists and
neighborly Expansionists – all in an effort to save
this wretched nation.
But ultimately his patriotism starts to sound like
that of a scoundrel. That's because when the Maoists
have to kill, as they have, hundreds of their own
poverty-stricken compatriots to ostensibly square off
with some alleged outside forces and punish dissenters
within their own ranks, you become certain that were
the power to go to the Maoists, they too would have no
qualms about crushing all dissent and making everyone
sing the bhajan of their to-be-blindly-obeyed Comrade
Prachanda.
Yes, Girija & Company deserve all the outrage for
imprisoning the newspaper's staff. But democratic
Nepalis should not allow Babu Ram and his ilk to
use democratic arguments to suit their needs now,
only to see them denounce similar arguments in the
future.
|
