Military History | How To Make War | Wars Around the World Rules of Use How to Behave on an Internet Forum
Nepal Discussion Board
   Return to Topic Page
Subject: stories from the inside.............
Indigo    7/4/2002 3:28:26 AM
Chandra's Story By Lucia De Vries Nepali Times CENTRAL NEPAL, May 8, 2002 -- It was a picture-perfect day. The snow mountains to the north were shining, and the Kali Gandaki flowed placidly at the bottom of the steep valley. Children, some in neat uniforms and others in tattered blue tunics were on their way to school. The women were busy collecting water, Saraswati had a doko on her back and was on her way to her field. Then, three gunshots. Two weeks after Chandra’s death, villagers look away when his name is mentioned. His sister Laxmi and sister-in-law Nila bury their heads and cannot speak. Nila hasn’t been able to inform her husband, who works overseas, about his brother’s death. “He’s got many problems of his own, the news would only make him worry.” The security forces come by often, interrogating and sometimes beating family members of Maoists, and going through their things. “We can’t even show you Chandra’s pictures,” says Nila. “We burnt them the day he died.” Chandra was a Kami. His mother died when he was just five, at ten he nursed his father on his deathbed. One of his sisters took care of him. Rajendra was his childhood friend from school, and recalls: “Chandra didn’t even have money for slippers, he always went barefoot. He couldn’t afford a school uniform, so he stitched it himself.” Chandra and Rajendra were always at the top of their class. After fifth grade, Chandra moved away to work his way to secondary school. He sold newspapers, and took up the job of his metalsmith ancestors. He paid his way through college and graduated in English and sociology. “In the twenty five years I’ve known Chandra I never saw him angry,” recalls Rajendra, still using the present tense. “He had a passionate nature, but would always convey his thoughts in a gentle way.” Chandra said he wanted to be a teacher, or a singer. But the odds were against him. Rajendra, a bahun, got a job as an English teacher at a local school. Chandra decided to migrate to the Gulf for work, and tried to put together some money, but couldn’t raise enough. The next thing Rajendra heard was that Chandra, then 23, had joined the Maoists. It is late spring in the village now. Time for the chaite huri storms that lash the hill-towns, swaying trees, rattling doors and blowing roofs away. These days, with the storms come armed men. At night, the knock on the door means they are Maoists, some strangers, some relatives. Dressed in fatigues, carrying guns, they demand food and shelter. At times they cover the walls of the school with revolutionary slogans. Few people have the courage to refuse the rebels’ demands since they have heard enough rumours about cruel retaliation. But the security forces are never far behind. It does not take long before soldiers, wearing similar fatigues, arrive on patrol. All young men are suspect, they are interrogated and sometimes beaten up. “Here we are caught between the Maobadi and sena,” says one of Laxmi’s neighbours. “Anytime, anything can happen to us.” The headmaster tries to get to the school early to whitewash slogans on the walls. The local Kamis make gagri brass pots, but since the Maoists started using them for their improvised explosives, the security forces are strict. Hari is an 18-year-old who failed his SLC and has joined his uncle’s smithy to learn the ancestral craft. His face is blackened with smoke and dust. “Last week they came and said we were helping the Maobadi to make gagri bombs,” says Hari, “but this is our only livelihood. Now we don’t know whether we can carry them down to the bazaar anymore.” The women face different problems. With the young men gone, their workload is overwhelming: tending the fields, taking care of the children and elders. They have to fetch water, forage for fodder and fuel, and tend the fields by hand. After some encounters with the security forces, the women don’t dare go into the forest anymore. Says Nila: “We try to tell them we’re just women and want to live in peace. But because our boys have joined the Maobadi, for them we are the enemy.” The son of one of Chandra’s neighbours joined the Maoists when he was 13. “He had always been a strange child, always running off here and there”, his mother, Saraswati recalls. “I always had to drag him back after school.” The security forces interrogate her from time to time, but Saraswati doesn’t care anymore. Her face hardens when she talks about her son: “My love for him died when he joined the Maobadi. My big fear is that he will come and take his youngest brother to the jungle.” Night falls fast in the village these days. Rajendra talks quietly, and tries to articulate his anger. “Our leaders still don’t know what drove people like Chandra to become Maoists.” Rajendra hates the Maoists, but says he loved his friend. He is quiet for a moment, then says: “People change all the time, Chandra may have changed his political views, he could have been a leader and one day
 
Quote    Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title     Newest to Oldest
Nepali dimag    Peru and nepal   7/4/2002 3:33:10 AM
Peru and Nepal maoists When Allessandro, from the University in Lima Peru came to Nepal 5 years ago to discuss exchange of mountain technology, especially seeing if species of plants and animals indigenous to Peru could survive in Nepal and vice versa, we never imagined that the mountains of both countries would also harbour a similar species of revolutionary. Yankee imperialism was discussed, yes, and the ravages of free market economics, including the dumping of toxic wastes and genetically altered , experimental produce in poor countries like Peru, but the Senderos Luminosas (Shining Path ) and the Tupec Amaros were never even mentioned. At the time when Allesandro was giving his slide shows and lectures on mountain ecology at ICIMOD in Jawalakhel, people were disappointed in the performance of Parliament and the Government Ministries, but they still had hope that change would come. When Allessandro came to Kathmandu , the Samyukta Jana Morcha was the third largest party in Parliament, and highly respected, especially as its members had been at the vanguard of the movement for the restoration of democracy. Although those who knew Dr. Babu Ram Batterai were aware of his interest in the Senderos Luminosas movement in Peru and his admiration for Abimael Guzmann, its leader, most dismissed it as youthful idealism. TODAY, three years and four governments later, Nepal is sinking in a stagnant cesspool of corruption, inefficiency and mismanagement . It is in danger of becoming a political and economic satellite of India and has already become an open box of chocolate for the always ravenous multi-national corporations beating their way to its free-market, unregulated door. Today, three years and four Governments later, Nepal's press has been marking the anniversary of last years launching of "the people's war." Today three years and four Governments later, people from the spectrum of political parties are saying that the Samyukta Jana Morcha is the only party able to bring substantive change in the condition of Nepal and its people. Today, three years and four governments later the Maoists have become a force, if not yet to reckon with, at least strong enough to prod and disturb those who had been complacently getting fat on corruption , smuggling, and Congress Party largesse. Coming across a headline in the Kathmandu Post on April 3 , reading "Govt is still trying to figure out root cause of Maoist war'", one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the Maoist movement was born in desperation, deprivation and realization on the part of long oppressed people's that the Congress Government was never going to help them. Rather Congress Party's representatives and its police were making their already miserable lives even more miserable. If even the so-called communist UML-dominated Government hasn't figured out that the root cause of the "Maoist war" is POVERTY than the country is REALLY in trouble. Reading the book, "The Shining Path" , about the Maoist movement in Peru , written by British newspaper correspondent, Simon Strong, and listening to the BBC coverage of the hostage drama in Lima, one suddenly realizes with a shock of recognition that the situation in Nepal which produced the year old Maoist movement, is in many ways comparable to the situation in Peru. Similar conditions of the native Indians in the Andes gave birth to the movement called the Shining Path, whose leader Abimael Guzman is presently in jail, and the Tupec Amaros, who are presently holding Fujimori's brother, among others, hostages in the Japanese Embassy in Lima, Peru. (The latter's leader, Victor polay Campos is serving a life sentence in a prison near Lima.) The following observations on Peru from Strong's book, could just as well have been written about Nepal.: " The Shining Path (read Maobadi) advance demonstrated the relative failure of the other political parties to capture the aspirations of the poor. Just as the rest of the Left was throwing in its revolutionary towel, linking hands and switching to the democratic arena, Guzman (read Batterai) was doing what they had never dared. To blow the whistle on the Shining Path was almost to betray their guilt and to concede ideological and political weakness." This is the quandary facing the UML today. Despite all the pronouncements about giving top priority to ending the people's war, it may find itself caught "between the devil and the deep blue sea." Does it sacrifice its increasing respectability in the eyes of the money-showering West , for a return to its revolutionary image and adherence to the anti-free market policy of the rich subsidizing the poor, or does it relax in the comfortable bourgeois chair in which it is presently sitting? Among the conditions in parts of Peru which Strong describes , which could almost apply equally to Nepal, pertain to remote areas of deep poverty, especially an area known as Ayachcho. Stron
 
Quote    Reply



 Latest
 News
 
 Most
 Read
 
 Most
 Commented
 Hot
 Topics