| Sajha.com Archives | |
| Username | Post |
| ashu | Posted
on 11-May-03 08:58 PM
Human rights in Nepal should extend to the rights gays and lesbians too. oohi "enjoy going to gay parties for good music, great food and to watch very creative constumes -- and all that as a straight man" ashu ktm,nepal ************ Coming out When he set up the Blue Diamond Society, Sunil Babu Pant thought gays were rare in Nepal, and that they would be as rare as the blue gems. Two years later he has discovered they are as common as left-handed people. Since 2001, almost 10,000 Nepalis have contacted Blue Diamond in Kathmandu alone and through its network, an even greater number have come out of the closet in other towns. We realised we could not afford to wait for others to speak for us. If we were to end the continuous marginalisation that we faced, we had to be prepared to struggle for our own rights and concerns, says Pant. Their efforts are already paying offthe national strategy against HIV/AIDS recently recognised men havng sex with men (MSM) as a vulnerable group in Nepal. And only last week senior police officers pledged to sensitise the police force about the issue. Its a promise the Blue Diamond Society hopes will end police brutality and exploitation of the Nepali gay community. Sunil is a computer professional who trained in the former Soviet Union, and worked in Japan and Hong Kong. After returning home to Gorkha he resigned from his technical job and turned to social service. He worked with destitute women, but it was when he moved to Kathmandu and came in touch with the underground gay community that his idea for an organisation for homosexuals was born. The Blue Diamond Society has had to struggle against taboos and mores. The first attempt at registering the society was denied because the officials objected to the very concept of homosexuality. Pant was pressurised to change the organisations objective into correcting homosexual behaviour but finally found a loophole that allowed him to work in the area of male health. That was the easy part. He was then faced with the challenge of coaxing MSMs to join the society because they were afraid of being targetted by homophobes. The society estimates that about 95 percent of MSMs are forced into heterosexual marriages by their families who dont want scandals. The homosexuals suffer from depression, low self-esteem and social ostracisation. We are forced to lead a split lifedifferent on the inside from what we show on the outside, he says. Pants own family and friends have been incredibly supportive of his work, but he knows this is rare. The society slowly gained their trust over the years. This Friday, they are holding a fashion show and beauty pageant. Participants are metas and tas (those who assume female roles and their male partners) who are intent on carving out a social space for themselves. Pants other concern is the plight of women who are attracted to members of their own sex. He wonders, If Nepali men who enjoy greater freedom, decision making and mobility are tormented so much for their sexual preferences, how much more horrendous the situation must be for women! http://www.nepalnews.com/ntimes/issue143/nepali_society.htm |
| lonely | Posted
on 11-May-03 10:48 PM
nice one... Ashu...I still remember an article you wrote some years back about..."10 things that they don't teach in harvard business school " that was published in TKP. Do you have a copy of that?? I was thinking that would really be useful to me if I could get a copy of that now.... |
| ashu | Posted
on 12-May-03 12:20 AM
Lonely, The above article was copied and pasted from the week before last's The Nepali Times newsweekly. I did NOT write it. As for that "what they don't teach you at Harvard Business School" humor piece which I wrote a long time ago, I am sure it's somewhere in my computer's hard-drive . . . will mail it to you if you send me an email at ashu@sajha.com You know, I haven't written humor pieces for a long time, and now with the emergence of talented humorists such as M.P., I feel nervous about writing/posting such humor pieces. :-) oohi ashu ktm,nepal |
| rook | Posted
on 12-May-03 07:38 AM
Does this Blue Diamond Society have a home page ? |
| ashu | Posted
on 12-May-03 02:55 PM
Rook, Not to my knowledge. BTW, democracy is NOT all about Girija and Gyanendra and their actions and reactions. It's ultimately about Nepali janata's having legally-protected CHOICES to lead their lives in ways they see fit without infringing upon others' right to live in peace. oohi ashu ktm,nepal **************** Times are a-changing A gay fashion show in the capital shows Nepaliness is becoming more inclusive. By Daniel Lak To paraphrase Anup Pahari, speaking at last months conference on the agenda of change in Nepal, democracy is a sloppy business. He spoke of tabloids and political crises. To that, throw in scandals, irreverent art, loud disagreement with national nostrums and comedians poking fun at almost everything. Add inclusion to democracy and you end up with something even more discomfiting to the comfortable classes, now almost united in their loathing of political parties, human rights groups and all the other noisy sections of society, busy demanding their rights. I started to think seriously about some of these things at that conference, and later at a magnificent beauty contest for men dressed as women sponsored by the Blue Diamond Society. That was, in every way, a ground-breaking event. For one thing, it was held at City Hall. Think of it, a gay mens event at a government building in Nepal! And Im not aware of anyone raising any serious objections to it. None of the usual guardians of orthodoxy and traditional traits of nationality was given space in the newspapers to trot out their tired lies. The event screamed loudly, WE HAVE GAY MEN IN NEPAL! MANY OF THEM ARE LEARNING TO BE PROUD OF THEIR SEXUALITY! Inclusion is a tough business, especially in a society like this thats been exclusionary for so long. And where, evidently, democracy has not widened the social net to include Nepali citizens from outside the caste and economic mainstream. This newspaper has reported on the scandalously mono-caste (Bahun) civil service. Add to that political leaderships from left to right, the business elite, even many NGOs and human rights groups whose boards and top people are uniformly from already-privileged sections of society. Where are the dalits, the Tharus? Hell, where are the women? This country has fewer women in economic and public life than almost any other outside of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. There are reasons for this. Despite democracy, definitions of Nepaliness have remained intact from earlier days. They have also stayed as the purview of the state or a select and exclusive elite. National dress, patriotic folk songs, poetry about natural beauty and officially sanctioned history are all part of the package. More and more citizenssubject to modern pressures from media, economic migration and generational changehave noticed just how these official definitions are beginning to show signs of severe strain. Eventually, they may simply become irrelevant. The two boulders on either side of Nepals yam are often cited as reasons for strict definitions of citizenship. Without a careful and mandated way of expressing nationalism, Nepalis might simply start to behave like North Indians or Tibetans, much assayCanadians differ little from Americans, Belgians from the French or Dutch, and Austrians from Germans. Whoa, I can already hear the screams of outrage from those other small countries. What helps those smaller and larger countries co-exist culturally is not state mandated culture, but inclusion. Gay men, members of ethnic minority groups and, yes, women in Canada, Belgium and Austria have fought hard for inclusive policies in their own countries. By doing so, they have strengthened their nationality. By changing traditional definitions, they have created indigenous, natural change that is resilient and lasting. They have banished outmoded, largely irrelevant orthodoxies that were frayed at the edges and in danger of becoming rotten to the core. In Nepal, small steps are being taken to broaden the definition of society. Gay men hold a fashion show, the last census allows people to declare their religion rather than simply assume Hinduism. A few political leaders promise inclusion of dalits and other communities, some organisations work tirelessly for the downtrodden. It all helps ensure that the underprivileged will continue to shove outward against the stranglehold of a self-servingyet massively short-sightedelite. The comfortable classes will protest, or perhaps they will send their servants out to do so. But they will lose the contest and the nation will emerge as a stronger, more self-confident place. Its a sloppy business. But someones got to do it. http://www.nepalitimes.com/ |
| forget-me-not | Posted
on 12-May-03 03:08 PM
Ashuji Thank you. I will be writing you soon. |