The Warped Reality Of
Nepal's Ruling Elite
Or Why You Should See The Protests In Front Of The UN For What It Truly Is
Human Rights Watch Report:
Like We Are Not Nepali
- Do not be fooled by the Nepalis protesting in front of the United Nations today. If this keeps on for too long, you might as well see ISIS sympathizers, or Assad supporters doing the same in due course of time. Because these people are rooting for people guilty of similar crimes.
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi did more for the earthquake victims of Nepal than any other single person on earth, and he started doing within minutes of the earthquake striking. The busiest person on earth took time out of his schedule and acted as if an earthquake had struck his own country. I’d know. I followed the earthquake’s aftermath for all my waking hours for weeks in a row. Modi’s role was astounding, heartwarming, and the only ray of hope for many for long.
- Nepal’s ruling elite, the Khas, are people who literally all of them, 100% of them, migrated from India over the centuries, primarily fleeing the invading Mughals. Today Indophobia is their central organizing principle in Kathmandu. It is like a Harvard study showing all homophobic people are gay. How do you explain this irrationality? It is easy.
- Nepal is not a democracy. Nepal is proof sham elections, rigged elections don’t a democracy make. The last elections held in Nepal were thoroughly rigged. The state security agencies overwhelmingly dominated by the Khas rigged the elections so as to strengthen the status quo parties.
- Nepal is a corrupt country. 50% of the country’s annual budget is put to personal use by about 50,000 people in the country. It is a country of 30 million. It is relatives of those 50,000 people who are running up and down the street in front of the United Nations today.
- Coming to America is social mobility in Nepal that mostly only the ruling Khas elite can afford. And these “protests” are proof. Similar protests were organized in London when Prime Minister Modi recently visited.
- Even the corrupt, and the unfair, and the prejudiced have a right to hold rallies.
- But this is also, at some level, casteism. Narendra Modi’s lower middle class, and lower caste background is offensive to these ruling Brahmins of Kathmandu. It is amazing how their Brahminic ideology is immune to Modi’s political stature, gifts, amazing goodwill, and sheer power. India is a large, powerful country in South Asia, and Nepal is 200% dependent on India for pretty much everything. But casteist Brahmins of Nepal seem to think he is but a passing fluke. He has not lasted a thousand years like their casteist ideology, and he will be gone in a few years unlike their casteist ideology, or so they think.
- Within weeks of the earthquake striking the hashtag #GoBackIndia started trending on Twitter in Nepal. How do you explain that? After Modi did so much for the earthquake victims. Who is on Twitter in Nepal? Not the masses. The same 50,000 people who put 50% of the country’s budget to personal use are the people on Twitter in Nepal.
- You’d think that after the massive earthquake the politicians of Nepal would set aside all political work to focus on relief work for something like six months. But no. They instead figured out the post-earthquake scenario was actually perfect timing to push a summarily unequal constitution down the country’s throat. The earthquake was a godsend to them. The people were deemed too weak to protest. And they were. As inhuman as that logic sounds, that is what happened. The ruling politicians immediately started acting like the earthquake did not even happen. These people were not in shock. They really are that unfeeling.
- The international community has pledged four billion dollars in aid for the earthquake victims. That was months ago. India’s pledge is fully 25% of that offer. And they are still managing to blame Modi for the fact that that money has amazingly gone untouched. Untouched! How do you explain that? The way corruption works in Nepal is, they wait until the last minute to spend the money. And once the deadline looms, as it does in this case at the end of the year, the money then is spent in a hurry. Because in that chaos looting becomes so much easier. There are no plans to take those four billion dollars to the earthquake victims. But there are massive schemes by those 50,000 people to loot the four billion dollars. That has been their bread and butter for decades. Nothing new is going on.
- The earthquake victims really do face a brutal winter. But the blame is being placed in the wrong place.
- The earthquake victims are being held hostage by the ruling elite in Nepal. The earthquake victims are Janajatis who have been marginalized by the Nepali state for centuries. And that marginalization sees continuity in the country’s new constitution that was supposed to give them a path to equality.
- The new constitution of Nepal, if it goes unchallenged, will be like a permanent earthquake to the Janajatis of Nepal. Ask the people protesting in front of the United Nations today. They are all practically relatives to the ruling elite in Nepal. These are people who feel the earthquake victims have not had it bad enough.
- It is the Madhesis of the southern plains who are fighting for themselves as well as the Janajatis. The Madhesi protests have gone past three months now. For the first few weeks they were hounded out of their district headquarters. Close to 50 were killed in contravention to national and international law, all duly recorded in a Human Rights Watch report. These people protesting in front of the UN are the Nepali Assad supporters. They sure have a right to protest. But ask them what they are protesting. They are protesting because they think they have a right to uphold human rights abuses.
- In recent weeks the Madhesis have resorted to protesting at the Nepal India border. It has been a weapon of last resort. The ruling elite had the option weeks ago to heed their demands and make constitutional amendments accordingly. They have refused to do so. Instead they have been doing what they have always been doing. They have been engaging in India bashing. India is being blamed for the fact that Madhesis have been protesting.
- These people in front of the UN fundamentally believe in a hierarchical social, political order. To them that is landscape. To them that is as natural as hills. Or the craters on the moon. It is an eery reality but it is what it is. Don’t let them fool you into thinking Modi is the reason Nepal’s earthquake victims might be facing a harsh winter. The fact that the man who has done more than any other person on earth for Nepal’s earthquake victims is being blamed for the sad plight of the Nepal earthquake victims should tell you. These are people with warped mindsets. They don’t deal with reality and facts. They don’t deal with logic.
- Nepal is a human hostage situation. The ruling elite in Kathmandu stands between the four billion dollars pledged by the international community, primarily India, and the earthquake victims, who are mostly Janajati, marginalized. The ruling Khas elite has inflicted massive structural inequality upon those Janajatis for over 250 years now. The earthquake has been seen as an “opportunity” by the ruling Khas elite to make those structural inequalities permanent. The earthquake victims, in a weak position to begin with, have been deemed too weak, weakened by the earthquake to protest.
- Thank God the Madhesis are protesting, on behalf of Madhesis, but also the Janajatis.
- The Madhesis, vastly marginalized in Nepal, are few in number in America. Close to 40% in Nepal, they are not even 1% of the Nepalis in America. They now find all so-called Nepali organizations in America are deaf to their just cause. An ideology of ethnic superiority is being espoused to project a false image that Modi is the enemy of Nepal and Nepal’s earthquake victims.
True, Modi has been inconvenient to the unjust ruling class in Nepal. But then he is a democrat. He rose up the ranks listening to ordinary people. It is in Modi’s instincts to listen to the millions of protesting Madhesis of Nepal.
- Cut through the fog. The protests in front of the UN today are designed to hoodwink you. Your sympathies should not go with these protesters, but the tens of millions in Nepal they have been subjugating for centuries. Ask them as to why they have so utterly, completely ignored Nepal’s earthquake victims for all these months. Ask them why they so refuse to meet the just demands of the Madhesis. Ask them the simple questions.
- Modi has done more for Nepal’s earthquake victims than any other person. It is Nepal’s ruling elite that has treated those earthquake victims like enemies. It is Nepal’s corrupt ruling elite that has for months refused to touch the four billion dollars pledged by the global community for relief work for those earthquake victims. Not Modi. They should be blaming themselves. Instead they are blaming Modi. These protesters in front of the UN don’t have their facts right. Soon enough, Assad supporters are also going to march near here.
- The very communities of Nepal that have earned so much goodwill for themselves and for the country at large, like the Sherpas, and the Tamangs, and the Gurungs, and the Limbus, are the Janajatis these ruling Khas elite are hellbent on subjugating for yet another century. Don’t be fooled by them. Stand by those Sherpas. Global voices matter.
- Buddha was a Madhesi.
एनआरएन अमेरिकाका अध्यक्ष डा. केशव पौडेलले भारतीय नाकावन्दिको विरोध गर्दै नोभेम्वर १७ का दिन न्यूयोर्कमा हुने विरोध कार्यक्रममा सहभागी हुन सबैलाई आव्हान गर्नु भएको छ ।
Posted by Baltimore Khabar on Monday, November 16, 2015
आज २०७२ कार्तिक २२ । जनकपुर में आन्दोलनकारीयों ने सांस्कृतिक झलक सहित बिरोध प्रदर्शन किया ।
Posted by Brikhesh Chandra Lal on Sunday, November 8, 2015
