| ashu |
Posted
on 15-Jun-01 04:58 AM
This was published in today's Kathmandu Post.
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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 other such 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.
Apart from giving excessive
importance to Dr. Bhattarai's article, Girija &
Company have also 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. In all honesty,
though, 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 says that the CIA is a part of the FBI makes you
think 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 be sure, 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 rebels are
fighting a just war against the greedy Imperialists
and friendly, neighborhood 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
poverty-stricken Nepalis to ostensibly square off
against 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 and other
Commanders.
Yes, Girija & Company deserve all the outrage for
imprisoning the newspaper's staff.
But at this time, democratic Nepalis should also be wary of Babu Ram and his ilk using democratic arguments to now press
for the releases of the editors. They are doing so
not for democracy, but to suit their own needs now.
After all, pretty soon, given their history, they'll
be denouncing the same democracy that gives
them, at least in theory, the freedom to publish
their disagreeable views in a national newspaper.
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