Years of living dangerously || Nepal

भिडियो हेर्न तलको विज्ञापनलाई हटाउनुहोस

Growing up in a hill-Brahmin family in the Tarai, I am a first-hand witness to the benign racism against Madhesis, Muslims, Dalits and Tharus of this country. It came as a revelation to me that Prithvi Narayan Shah’s garden of the commons did not exist beyond classroom walls. It hit home when some of my friends were served in paper plates in our homes, or when I saw an old Madhesi being humiliated and forced to give away his seat in a public bus.

It took me a while to realise why blacktop roads suddenly disappeared and the drainage lines ended when I cycled into a Madhesi or Muslim neighbourhood where many of my classmates lived.

Years later, when I traveled into remote and rural districts, learning about the best and the worst practices of development, the Orwellian tint of our democracy revealed itself. From the fisherfolk of Nawalparasi to Tharus living in buffer regions of Chitwan and Bardia National Park who were regularly tortured by security forces, or the victims of development in Chisapani along the Karnali River, people outside Kathmandu silently endured both the oppression and the neglect of the state. Little seems to have changed for the relatives of the victims of the Maoist insurgency or the survivors of the earthquake living in tented camps.

This column, for the past five years, has been an attempt to explain what I have seen and believed growing up in this country. The political events offered new contexts, but it is the sociology of life in the transitional democracy that has fascinated me most, and following it so far has been an exciting journey. I am grateful to Editor Kunda Dixit for convincing me over a cup of coffee to write regularly and thank my readers for both positive and critical response.

On more than one occasion, I have conceded that as journalists we can only offer a subjective view of events, and that there are no universally accepted criteria of truths to which we adhere to while documenting them. The most we can promise our readers is an honest perspective, and I would like to believe I have done that here.

भिडियो हेर्न तलको विज्ञापनलाई हटाउनुहोस

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