Thursday, September 24, 2015

In The News (113)

लिम्बुवानको कार्यालय कांग्रेस र एमालेले फोडे
कांग्रेस र एमालेका कार्यकर्ताले इलामस्थित संघीय लिम्बुवान पार्टी र संघीय समाजवादी फोरम नेपालको कार्यालय तोडफोड गरेका छन्। जिल्लास्तरीय नेताहरुकै नेतृत्वमा सयौंको संख्यामा रहेका कार्यकर्ताले दिउँसो कार्यालयमा तोडफोड गरेको संघीय लिम्बुवान पार्टीले जनाएको छ। ..... बन्द गराउँदै हिँडेका लिम्बुवानका कार्यकर्ता र खुलाउँदै हिँडेका कांग्रेस÷एमालेका कार्यकर्ताबीच जम्काभेट भएपछि स्थिति तनावग्रस्त भएको प्रहरीले जनाएको छ। सामान्य झडपछि बन्दकर्ताहरु भागेको र कांग्रेस÷एमालेका कार्यकर्ताहरु नाराबाजीसहित तोडफोड गर्न लिम्बुवानको कार्यालय पुगेका थिए। ..... संघीय समाजवादी फोरमका जिल्ला सचिव यामप्रसाद लिम्बूले गुण्डागर्दी शैलीमा पार्टी कार्यालय तोडफोड गरिनु गैरराजनीतिक चरित्र भएको टिप्पणी गरे। ..... ‘संविधान जारी हुनुभन्दा अघिदेखिको शान्तिपूर्ण आन्दोलनको निरन्तरतामा सरकारवादी पार्टीकै नेतृत्वमा कार्यालय तोडफोड हुनु निन्दनीय छ’, लिम्बूले भने, ‘यो अलोकतान्त्रिक र गैरराजनीतिक क्रियाकलाप हो। यसले परिस्थितीलाई बिगार्ने काम गरेको छ।’ ..... संघीय लिम्बुवान पार्टीका जिल्ला अध्यक्ष्ँ डम्बर लोरिन्देनले तोडफोडमा संलग्नहरुलाई पक्राउ गरी कारवाही गर्न माग गरेको बताए। .... ‘तोडफोड गर्नेको पहिचान भएको र कारवाहीका लागि प्रशासनलाई जानकारी गराइसकेको छु’, उनले भने, ‘प्रशासनले कारवाही गर्दैन भने पार्टीले कुनै हालतमा छाड्दैन।’ ..... उनले इलाममा अहिलेसम्म नभएको घटना भएको भन्दै यसले नसोचेको मोड लिन सक्ने बताए। यसअघि सोमबार कांग्रेस/एमालेले झापाको दमकस्थित लिम्बुवानको केन्द्रीय कार्यालय र समाजवादीको नगर कार्यालयसमेत तोडफोड गरेको थियो। ..... इलाम बजार तनावग्रस्त बनेको छ। व्यापक प्रहरी परिचालित छन्। दुवै समूहबीच झडप हुन सक्ने सम्भावना भरहेकाले बजारबासी त्रसित बनेका छन्।
थारु मोर्चाले पनि नाकाबन्दी गर्ने, मधेशी मोर्चासँग सहकार्य गर्ने निर्णय
मधेशी मोर्चासँग आगामी रणनीतिबारे छलफल गर्न थरुहट/थारुवान संघर्ष समितिका केन्द्रीय नेताहरु मधेश जाने भएका छन् । ..... यता, समितिले थारु आन्दोलनकारीहरुलाई ज्यान मार्ने मुद्दा दर्ता गराएर प्रशासनले थारुलाई तर्साउन खोजेको भन्दै मुद्दा फिर्ता लिन चेतावनी दिएको छ ।
फोरमका नेता यादव बारा वाट राती पक्राउ
बजारमा खाना पकाउने ग्याँसको अभाव
ग्याँस आउँदैछ : निगम
तराई क्षेत्रको तनावका बेला उपभोक्ताले अनावश्यक सञ्चिती गरेपछि बजारमा खाना पकाउने ग्याँसको अभाव भएको छ । .... बन्दले आपूर्तिमा असहजता आएको समयमा अभावको डरले उपभोक्ताले बजारबाट अतिरिक्त ग्याँस सिलिन्डर उठाएपछि ग्याँसको अभाव भएको ..... ‘आज पनि एकसय देखि डेढसय बुलेट ग्याँस ल्याउने हाम्रो योजना थियो,’ घिमिरेले भने, ‘मधेसी मोर्चाले नाकामा अवरोध गर्दा समस्या भएको छ ।’
Is India losing sight of things in Nepal?
The only reason a close neighbor and a friend could send her high-ranking official to a neighboring country just 48-hours before her historic moment is to be a part of that moment. But it was clear that Jaishankar hadn’t come for the celebration. Nepalis started pondering about the possible message that Jaishankar would pass on to their leaders. ..... It soon became clear that he didn’t have a message; he only had a threat. Jaishakar had a list of tough questions: How would the world’s endorsement of your constitution matter if India did not welcome it? What if the violence does not cease in Madhes on September 21, a day after the promulgation of the constitution? And if the violence continues across the border, do you expect us to keep quiet? ..... Having read some of the Indian history books and been privy to some of Jaishankar’s meetings with our leaders, I can, confidently, say this: His stiff body language and the harsh tone matched the arrogance of British Viceroy, Lord Curzon. ..... That Jaishankar, otherwise a suave and polished diplomat, made no pretense of courtesy and decorum with the sitting and former prime ministers of a sovereign country says a lot about the anger that has gripped New Delhi establishment. One of the measures of the quality of your friendship is, how you maintain respect and decorum even at the seemingly difficult moments. Post Jaishankar’s visit, New Delhi’s anger is matched by a rage in Kathmandu. ...... The next day, a Delhi newspaper clarified that use of ‘a’ in front of ‘constitution’ was deliberate, as India does not see it as ‘the definitive constitution.’ ..... ‘A constitution’ that Nepal has promulgated is far more inclusive and progressive on almost all counts than the Indian constitution. It is more progressive in terms of fundamental rights. It reserves 40 percent seats in the parliament to be elected through proportional representation system so that Nepal’s diverse communities find place in the legislative body. Nepal is perhaps the only country in the world that has now reserved at least 33 percent of the seats for women in the federal parliament, provincial assemblies, and at the local bodies. Local bodies will have forty percent representation at the ward level. President and Vice President will be from different ethnicities and gender. And there are now seven constitutional commissions that will advance the cause of marginalized groups. ........ To complement the constitutional provision, we already have an affirmative action Act that reserves 45 percent of the state jobs, including in the security agencies, for the minority groups. ..... These constitutional and legal guarantees will eventually make our state and polity one of the most inclusive in the world. ..... Only through narrow prisms of Babus and the agencies it is possible to miss such a progress. ..... Thankfully, India is more than Babus, and we remain confident that its diverse political class, the civil society, and the media will take note of this historic moment in the life of her closest neighbor and be with her. ..... As a husband of a woman with a great sense of self-respect and the father of a three-year old daughter,

I feel ashamed to my core that we have institutionalized unequal citizenship rights for women in the constitution.

I have many other reservations, too. ........ Is there a problem in Madhes? Yes there is a serious problem. Have our politicians done enough to address it? No, they haven’t. And they have been inept and slow ..... But the larger and deepening problem that we are facing in Nepal today is something else: It’s the rising communal sentiments and growing communal divide. ........

CK Raut, who has been campaigning in Madhes for the last couple of years for statehood, has been consistently drawing crowds larger than any Madhesi party has been able to.

The hate speech that he routinely practices and the call for formation of a separate state for Madhesis has radicalized the masses on the ground. ....... The collective hate speech and the disinformation campaign against the Pahadis in Madhes is now so visceral that very few Madhesis protesting on the street really know or care about what the real demand is. ...... India has grappled with similar challenges and violence in Punjab, Mizoram, Nagaland, Kashmir, Jharkhand, and Gorkhaland for decades now. ...... If the violence in Madhes continues, it will harm the fragile internal balance of Nepal, spill across the border and will eventually sour India-Nepal relations. ..... Narendra Modi’s election as India’s prime minister and his immense affinity toward Nepal had marshaled attention and admiration of this new generation of Nepalis. ......

Had India welcomed Nepal’s constitution, it would have cost India nothing.



Nepalese writer Manjushree Thapa explains why she burned her country’s new constitution
The new statute bars Nepalese women from conferring citizenship to their children independently of men. It also prohibits children of Nepali women and foreign men from holding high office.
I don’t know when I realised I wasn’t equal to my brother. My mother was a medical doctor, my father a PhD; there was never any question that my sister and I would have the same educational and professional opportunities as my brother. When we were old enough to understand such things ‒ I may have been nine or ten ‒ my parents explained that when the time came, they’d will their property to us evenly. My sister and I were promised that we were, in all ways, equal. But by that time I already knew that the rule of our family wasn’t the law of the land. I understood that outside the shelter of our exceptionally socially liberal family, in Nepal, my brother was more valued than I. ...... Concepts such as rights come later in life, but the feeling of our lesser worth is inculcated early in Nepali girls. Is it when we’re praised more for our looks than our achievements? Is it when the expectations of us are shaped, violently, to make us fit an impossible ideal? Is it when we’re reminded, over and over, to behave demurely, to be pleasing, to agree, to smile? The messages come from all directions, all the time. We’re taught early in life that we’re just girls. ...... I’m in my forties now, and living, for the moment, in Canada. I’ve successfully eluded the impossible ideal of Nepali womanhood. I haven’t married, I don’t have children, my family life is happily unorthodox. My mother didn’t make my sister and me spend our menarche hidden away, as girls of our caste were expected to do; we’ve never been considered untouchable when menstruating. I don’t defer to my partner; I don’t defer to men in general. From the age of fourteen I’ve identified as a feminist. ...... But by law I’m a Nepali woman, and therefore, by law, lesser than a Nepali man. Though I’ve lived in the US and Canada for half my life, I have, against the advice of well-wishers, and with some abiding, perhaps misguided, loyalty, retained Nepali citizenship......... Nepal’s civil code has been guided by Hindu law, which sees women as the property of either their fathers or husbands. There’s a Nepali adage ‒

“Women have no caste”

‒ which goes to the heart of the Hindu patriarchal devaluation of women. Our identities are defined by men; we have no essence, no identity, of our own. ...... When I first became politically aware ‒ in my early teens ‒ Nepal’s civil code was so hateful it

assigned punishment for rape according to whether the victim was a virgin, married, or a prostitute, because her worth relied on her sexual purity.

Women couldn’t inherit parental property. Abortion was illegal. There were only one or two women in government at any given time; often there were none. There was no concept of affirmative action to correct that. ......... The adage, “Women have no caste,” has been interpreted by constitution after Nepali constitution as, “Women have no nationality.” Our bodies are considered mere vessels for men to pass on their nationality, be that foreign or Nepali. ...... When I turned eighteen I obtained my own citizenship through my father, not my mother. ..... If I’d had children I wouldn’t be able to confer citizenship to them.......

No other country in South Asia discriminates between men and women’s citizenship rights; only 26 countries worldwide do. Nepal long ago ratified the UN’s Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. A young generation of Nepalis is forward-looking, progressive, embracing of social liberalism. So we really believed things would finally change.

...... all of Nepal’s major political parties, be they conservative, liberal, leftist, or radical, have consistently been united on one point: that equal citizenship rights for women threatens Nepali sovereignty. ....... in the mind of the Hindu patriarch ‒ since women have no caste/nationality, their bodies are possibly traitorous, hosts to foreign babies, and ‒ given Nepal’s open border with India ‒ specifically to Indian babies. These traitorous female bodies have to be controlled for the sake of the nation; women must not be able to confer Nepali citizenship independently of men......... In the past few years Nepal’s feminist movement did everything short of taking up arms to change the minds of Hindu patriarchs. They put on demonstrations, rallies, and marches to the point of exhaustion. They sat at meetings with party leaders, with the president, the prime minister, the speaker of the house. They led awareness drives and media campaigns. They even went on hunger strike....... When all other arguments were exhausted, Hindu patriarchs returned to

the same hateful argument: “It isn’t about women, it’s about the open border with India.”

Nationalism beats, as a final refuge, in the hearts of Nepal’s Hindu patriarchs. Incredible as it sounds, they are ruled by

a deep-seated xenophobia, a fear that Indian men will marry Nepali women, and the children ‒ born of Indian seed! ‒ will populate Nepal.

Nepal will then no longer be Nepali; it will be Indian. “We agree with you,” Nepali feminists have been told. “But you have to consider our national identity.” If women are to be loyal to Nepal, we must accept unequal citizenship rights. ....... Not only can women not confer citizenship to their children independently of men, the children of Nepali women and foreign men will be barred from high office. No such restriction applies to the children of Nepali men married to foreign women. And Nepali men can, as ever, confer citizenship to their children independently of women.......

News of this vote felt violent, like a slap, a blow, a punch to the gut. I spent days reeling, in shock, raging and impotent, bewildered and ill, thinking: a country that betrays its women doesn’t deserve women’s loyalty.

....... Unequal citizenship rights will leave more than

four million stateless

in Nepal. This means they’ll have no recourse to government services; the stateless are intensely vulnerable. ..... it feels deeply personal, as though I’ve been dealt a psychic wound that won’t ever heal now. Perhaps my shock is a post-traumatic response to having my worthlessness ‒ just a girl, just a woman ‒ reinforced every day for all of my life. As I’ve grown older, and more confident, I’ve come to feel that

being a Nepali woman is akin to being in an abusive relationship.

The relationship in this case is with a state that holds our paperwork captive, and uses its power to humiliate, demean, and demoralize women, to keep us down. ........ I’m through with being abused by my own country. I can’t accept the constitution’s privileging of the male bloodline over the female, of semen over ova. I can’t accept the empowering of the male body and the negation of the female body, the erasure of women’s agency as full human beings. ...... I read about BR Ambedkar burning the Manusmriti, the text that enshrines caste, and also gender, bigotry in Hinduism. After September 16, I followed the news of others in Nepal who were going to burn the constitution ‒ in the Madhes, in Indigenous communities. I was hoping not to have to do so myself. ....... I’d gone to the banks of Boulder Creek and quietly, without ceremony, burned it. ...... The act felt funereal rather than defiant. I was mournful rather than angry. Something in me ‒ hope, perhaps, for a better future for Nepal ‒ had died. My loyalty had faded. “Mann nai maryo,” were the only words I could speak. The fire flared, blazed briefly, and flickered out. My emotions toward my country burned away.


प्रचण्ड भारत विरुद्ध युद्ध गर्न तयार
आत्मसम्मानको लागि प्रतिवाद गर्ने
मधेशी र थारु फकाउने एमाओवादीको ११ सुत्र…..
डा. बाबुराम भटट्राईले आन्दोलनकारी शक्तीलाई हातमा लिएर पार्टी फुटाउने तयारी गरेपछि प्रचण्डले पनि ११ सुत्र खोजेर मधेशी र थारु फकाउने प्रयास गरेका हुन् ।

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