| Username |
Post |
| Biswo |
Posted
on 14-Sep-03 07:56 PM
"Yes, Sir. That's me."
"So, you were with the Maoists, and ran away from the school to join the militia?"
"That's correct. We were eleven classmates when we ran away from a school of Kavre four years ago. I am the lone survivor rightnow."
"You are supervisor in this engineering project of a 'B' class contractor, right?"
"Right."
"Not a bad job for a higschool dropout, and a twenty one years old."
"Not at all." He laughed.
"So, the rest (ten) of your classmates are dead. Did they die in gunfight with the army?"
"Most likely. But honestly, I don't know."
"Don't you think you were forcibly taken away from school to join the so called army?"
"Hee, ke kuro gareko sirharu jasto bujhne maanchhe le pani. Do you think anyone would run away from the school because someone else forced him?"
"Well, ok. But may be you didn't realise how you were forced. And since you stayed with them so long, you felt this stockholm syndrome. You started feeling like the Maoists were your protector."
He didn't understand what I said. A few days later , a boy, ethnic Rai, from Kalika Prastawit Madhyamik Bidhyalaya, Bakachaul, Khotang would tell me that though most of his classmates were recruited by the Maoists, he refused to join them.So is recruitment,to some extent,voluntary? Or are kids that much brainwashed already?
"You still support the party?"
"I do."
"But you are not an active member anymore?"
"No, I am not. The killing of my all classmates kinda shook me up very badly."
"What about the killings? Will you go back to kill people?"
"I didn't kill people. But I was in a group that robbed the bank. And I don't want to go back to fight. It just doesn't sound like a good thing anymore, especially after I figured out all my classmates who ran away with me are dead."
"After giving up the rebellion life,what do you think is the charm in this world of mortals like us? Money?"
"I don't know. Not definitely the money. I had laakhau-laakh rupees in my hand after we once robbed the bank. I could have run away then. I didn't."
"So, what exactly do you think the Maoists are doing?"
He looked at the horizon. And thought for a few minutes before he lectured:" We still have slavery in our country. The Maoists are trying to organize the downtrodden class, and launch the first real manumission in the history of Nepal!"
--
And that was a flat out wrong assumption.
The history of Nepal is too long to summarize like that. Just after the starting of our civilization, there was this struggle among shavya people (civilized ones, as opposed to the slave ones) about how to handle increasingly unruly slaves. Bishwamitra, a contemporary of Yeyati (a son of Nahush) had launched a movement to manumit the slaves of all world(that is Indian subcontinent), and the civilized people have started to brainstorm whether the slaves should be kept at all. Stories of Mahabharat indicate that actually Bishwamitra was a lot of successful in liberating the slaves. Readers are urged to read the classic novel Madhavi, written by Madan Mani Dixit who happens to share birthday with me:-), to know some other interesting facts about those Vedic days.
We didn't have Spartacus. We didn't have no revolutions from the slaves. The servitude however seems to be relegated to the lower caste people with the implementation of rigid caste system, without necessarily condemning them to the life of slaves.
--
Nepal's hilly states have no clear history, not to my knowledge at least. Tibet however has a somehow documented history and that says it had the serfdom. And it is probably from that part of the world that we got the serfdom here, that is until Chandra Shamsher announced another modern era manumission.
[continue..]
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 14-Sep-03 07:57 PM
Kathmandu as a state was a rich state, and it probably never made any of its citizens slave. It didn't have stratified caste system until Jayasthiti Malla learnt about the caste system and imposed it in Kathmandu too.
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So, who are the slaves here in Nepal?
Poor ones. The poorer/more powerless you are, the more slavery you are subjected to in your life. And that makes most of Nepali, to some extent, slaves. Even now, without any real authority in their hand, the politicians and civilians in Nepal are slaves of the king. They vie for 'darshanbhet' and the king's family is sacrosanct even if they kill the commoners. Some smartalecks now call for 'melmilaap' between the democrats and the kings, but I wonder where was such pressure when BP extended his hand for the melmilaap and the royals not only rejected those hands, but put the messenger into prison. No one seems to willing to settle the score with the royals. We talk about Maoists killing innocent civilians rightnow. But we forget that king's regime had killed armless civilians in Pishkar, and Chhintang. That cruelty was not less, and no one less than the king was responsible for that. No one seems to be concerned with the fact that people were killed in the forest of Sukhani in the pretext of changing their jail house. It is tragedy of our nation that we let the Shah clan rule our nation for so long without asking anything in return. They didn't have to successful to rule us. Look at the kings and their programs: they brought panchayat, it failed, they brought bhumisudhaar, it failed, they brought gaau pharka, it failed, they brought new education(nayaa shikshya), it failed, they brought this shantikshetra prastawa, it failed, they brought this aadharbhut aabasyakta program, it failed, they roared to be constructive king while dissolving parliaments, and that too failed. Too many failures and no one ever asks for accountability from these royals , because most of [or at least those who matter and who make the clamour most] our leaders/erudite civilians have lost their guts to tell the truth to the king to his face. When they meet the king, it seems they sip the tea,and badmouth about the leaders, and come back being 'impressed' with the king. We have slavery, but it is lessened to just below the thresold of popular tolerance level, and it is in such subconscious level that people enjoy it like the pigs enjoying dirty soil of excrements.
More slavish are however the cadres of Maoists. They are the real slaves in my opinion.After joining the party in their teenage, they have been blinded to see only one side of the world. They are after Prachanda and his lunatic theory like a blinkered horse. In the name of eradicating the slavery from the nation, they have ironically ended up being slave themselves.
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| KaleKrishna |
Posted
on 14-Sep-03 10:23 PM
Bishwoji, it is always nice reading your comments, however ain't we slave to our ego and selfishness. Are we as an individual destined to die unaccounted able to liberate the chains of greed and other vices that is in total reflected in our society.
Yes, slavery has been entrusted upon us, but is it because we lack discipline to perform our respective task whatever it is. Was not the last decade an perfect opportunity to shread the chains of slavery, what happened?
We are pushing our neck more closer for the strap of slavery either in one or other form of autocratic master.
History of slavery goes to the cave ages when the then evolving humans felt the necesity of group. Naature has made it a win-win situation, but anthropological manipulation has exploited it.
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| VincentBodega |
Posted
on 15-Sep-03 08:58 AM
Biswojyu,
Great analysis but I cant sit without putting forward few comments of mine?
You talked about slavery. Slavery that citizen experienced from the rule. Well what do you say about our society? Is there slavery in it? Take for example religion, customs, culture etc. isnt that slavery of some sort? There is slavery no matter what. If you have a thought then you are a slave to it. And I dont think there can be any existence without slavery.
Having put my views on "slavery," my question is that whats wrong with slavery? If theres a system, there will be slavery. I dont see any running from it. In the US and in Nepal, slavery exists cuz we have never stopped passing judgements and opinions.
Then you talked about all these "policies" of the Shah's that failed (please dont assume on where I stand on this). When a policy fails is it only the proprietor who is to blame. Look at all the policies in theory, analyze them. I think they were superly designed. If I cant use a sword to save my life then I cant blame the sword can I now? We have lost our "lives." Lets stop blaming the sword. May be its time for us to develop the skills so that next time we get a sword may be we can win this fight, irrespective of the kind of sword we get.
About the maoists, I dont know what they are doing? If they are trying to eradicate slavery well first of all they stop watching Goddamn hindi movies. Salman Khan sure cant eradicate slavery.
my two cents,
-- BV
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 15-Sep-03 04:13 PM
>however ain't we slave to our ego and selfishness.
If we allow ourselves to be the slave, then yes Kalekrishnaji, we are. For example, it is said that all individuals covet of a beautiful girl walking in front of him, everybody tends to have lewd thoughts, but only very few venture to go and stop the girl and satisfy their lewd desire. In my opinion, those who monstrously reach out to those girls are the slaves of their desire. Ditto is for those who are slave to their ego and selfishness. One more example : King Gyanendra in the present context serves as an excellent example of a slave of his own ego.
>Was not the last decade an perfect opportunity
> to shread the chains of slavery, what happened?
Yes, it was. Not the 'perfect' opportunity, but an imperfect one. Our inadept leadership blew the chance. But again, that was what I was pointing out, so many people succumbed to the slavery because they rarely thought it was slavery they were wallowing in so happily.
--
Dear Vincent,
>Is there slavery in it? Take for example religion,
> customs, culture etc. isnt that slavery of
> some sort?
Slavery is defined as a condition in which an individual is entirely subjected to the will of another. In this definition, religion, specifically, Hindu religion that we may primarily be interested in, shouldn't constitute a force that exerts slavery to individuals. One is free to renounce the Hinduism with impuntiy. People have done that previously too. Please note that slavery means subjection of oneself entirely to the will of others, getting rid of that often entails facing the punitive measure from the owner.
I would like to refer to the American south of the past when not only slaves but even their corpses were ,owned by the masters. So, the medical schools of north were often in the want of corpses for medical students, while medical schools of Louisiana etc southern states had abundance of corpses, frequently given to the schools by the slaveowners. Hence there was a 'charm' to attend to the southern medical schools in those days.
>whats wrong with slavery? If theres a
>system, there will be slavery.
Vincent, it is a wrong interpretation, and a grossly mistaken generalization of 'system', which normally means an organized set of interrelated rules, ideas and principles governing specific situations. Systems by themselves are not slavery. Sometimes, normative regulations may sound like they are rules of servitude, but as long as they treat all human being equally and as long as they allow every person in the system theoretically a right to occupy any position of the authority, those systems shouldn't be considered the systems with slavery. Democracy is an excellent system where each individual theoretically is able to occupy any position in the system, hence sans slavery. While in traditional monarchy like ours, not only the monarchs are above constitution and hence above all rules, no other individual can theoretically be a monarch.
> When a policy fails is it only the proprietor who is to blame.
Yes, often that is the truth, because the buck should stop at some point. How come a ruler who had almost thirty years, eighteen of those years as a dictator, and yet couldn't be successful in all his programs? Who should I blame for that? Surya Bahadur, Lokendra Bahadur, Kirtinidhi, Nagendra Prasad or the boss of these all people?
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