Words Matter

Pahadi/Madhesi
Pahade/Madhese
Pahadwasi/Teraiwasi
Pahariya/Madhesiya
Pakhe/Madisey
Thepche/Kale
Topi/Dhoti
Sikkime/Indian
Bahadur/Khali-Shishi
Mercenary/Madey

When Kunda Dixit was in town, I got to meet a lot of people who really struggled to understand how the word "madisey" was offensive. I am trying to make a point here that words matter.

It is a vertical split, if you think about it.

Kunda Dixit In Jackson Heights

In The News

• We had no other choice: Koirala He further added that the demand for ‘total democracy’ being demanded by the alliance of seven opposition parties was a ‘borderline’ with republicanism...... ‘Now it is up to people to decide whether they want the institution of monarchy or not’ ....... Amik Sherchan said how could the parties believe that the king had kept open the doors for dialogue when the doors of the Birendra International Convention Centre (BICC) had been shut.......... Leaders of major Indian political parties, who had arrived Kathmandu at the invitation of the NC, expressed their solidarity and support towards Nepal’s pro-democracy movement. A senior leader of ruling Congress (I) of India, Anil Shastri, said there was a wave of democracy flowing around the world and that Nepal could be no exception.
• SC issues stay order on RCCC probe; Rawal released Rawal who was arrested this morning by plainclothes security men sent by the RCCC, was released following the court decision this afternoon...... The SC in its statement said that at a time when the constitutionality of the RCCC was being questioned, its actions on a case which already decided by a constitutional body - the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) – could not proceed until a final court verdict came....... for the first time the Supreme Court mentioned about the constitutional ground of the RCCC formed by the King.......
• NC General Convention Kicks Off Representatives of political parties of India and Switzerland also addressed the inaugural function, stressing that multiparty democracy should be restored in Nepal at the earliest.
• SC Order On Petro Hike The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday ordered the government to be present before it in a hearing to discuss whether or not to issue an interim order in the case against the government’s petro-price hike decision....... Besides, the court also issued a show cause notice to the government on the matter..... A single bench of justice Arjun Prasad Singh issued the order following a hearing on a petition filed by advocate Chandra Kanta Gyawali against the price hike........ Similarly, the apex court ordered the government to be present before it on September 7 to discuss the issuing of an interim order regarding the government ban on union of civil servants.
• Defensive About Democracy The 1990 People’s Movement brought unprecedented political and economic freedom to Nepalis, but democracy died young. This book is Mahat’s attempt to figure out what went wrong, what went right, and an effort to trace the structural stresses that contributed to the country’s present state...... The road network more than doubled between 1990 and 2002, the proportion of Nepalis with access to electricity went up from nine percent to 40 percent, and those with access to safe drinking water nearly doubled. The average life expectancy of Nepalis rose six years to 59 within a decade........ Mahat sounds defensive, and the reason is that there is such a concerted offensive now to uproot democracy....... ex-minister gives us a peek behind the scenes at the struggle to craft policy reforms necessary to make change happen...... the nation is being dragged back not just to pre-1990 but pre-1960...... dictatorship was worse: just look back at the 1960-1990 period, the two and half centuries before that, or post-October 2002..... the rise of Maoism, but argues that much more of a factor was the entrenched feudalism and the traditional disregard of Kathmandu for the rest of the country....... after 1990 power was transferred from Kathmandu’s oligarchs to a new breed of rural middleclass Nepalis. Many of them turned out to be hill bahuns, so what we saw was parliament, politics and the bureaucracy more bahun-chhetri dominated since 1990 than ever before........ devotes an entire chapter to rake up Arun III and thinks its cancellation was a ‘national loss’........ Ten years after the $1 billion project was cancelled, he is convinced the two Aruns would have delivered the cheapest firm energy. What Mahat doesn’t point out is that in place of Arun III we have dozens of smaller plants that generate nearly twice the energy built in half the time for less than half the cost of that mammoth project......... Subsequent chapters are on corruption (graft in Nepal was blown out of proportion by a newly-free press)...... Kul Chandra Gautam of UNICEF argues in the foreward, ‘democracy tends to be a self-correcting system, and given a fair chance the distortions can and will have been rectified’.
• RCCC Takes Rawal Into Custody As per the order of the Commission, police arrested Rawal from his residence at Ghattekulo at around 9:45 a. m...... legal community in the country were dismayed at the RCCC’s act of `detaining’ Rawal after he had approached the Supreme Court for protection against ‘illegal detention.’.... The constitution of the kingdom of Nepal, 1990, guarantees the citizen’s right against illegal detention...... executive committee member of Nepal Bar Association and advocate Tikaram Bhattarai said the RCCC’s act of arresting Rawal in a sub-judice case was clearly a contempt of court. He even alleged that the RCCC was trying ‘to take law in its own hand by spreading fear and intimidation.’....... The Commission on Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) had investigated twice in the CSWA case in the past and ordered to send the file against Rawal into pending saying that it did not find any evidence of irregularities committed by the former Civil Aviation minister in the episode.
• Maoist suspect released after 7-years The Supreme Court (SC) Monday released Bishal Khadka, after seven years in preventive detention...... Khadka was released in the presence of a SC registrar. He was arrested on suspicion of being a Maoist seven years ago. A division bench of justices Kedar Prasad Giri and Ram Prasad Shrestha ordered the released of Khadka.