Captured peace process

While the nation was rushing toward yet another dramatic political event (non-event?) – the second extension of the term of the Constituent Assembly – Kathmandu streets witnessed a phenomenal event. Some youths clad in fancy dresses with slogans did everything that they thought will build pressure on the politicians to deliver. They typed in Facebook, they tweeted, they sang, they danced to rock tunes overlapped with ferocious sounding words and they surrounded the building that has become synonymous with the uncertainty attached to the fate of the nation.

And yet, except a few polarized descriptions in the media, nothing could be listed as a real achievement.

When this much overdue eruption of the youth surfaced finally, when the youths of all creed and hue came together to protest against this incessant indifference to the aspirations of people, the reactions were mixed. Some admired and welcomed it while others merely smirked at it.

The reactions to this spontaneous development casted some light and naturally projected some shadows on the phenomenon of the middle-class, urban and educated youth of Nepal.

Defining the crowd in these protests, a widely-known columnist went on to name them ‘the urbanites in white who would disappear at the first sight of scuffle.’ This statement shows clearly how our politics is captured by deep malpractices. The very idea that the educated youths should face a scuffle for voicing their opinion and the intellectuals holding such a notion speaks for itself.

I strongly believe that the thing that forced the urban youth of Nepal, also called Twitterati by some media persons and intellectuals, to erupt out on the streets is the feeling of living in a captured nation. The feeling of having no say in one’s future, the feeling of being trapped in darkness is what caused them to look for light out on the streets.

I was made to believe through history text books, nationalistic poems and stories that the country that I was born in has never been under a foreign rule, has never been captured. I prided myself in this notion. It fed me jingoism much through my life only to realize later that things were not really that simple.

I have some understanding now that sovereignty is relative as are many other things in life. Clashes and concurrences of interests are the only determining factors in international relationships. And if we were not captured, it was because we served the purpose of greater powers better that way. Hence, I no longer feel that being proud of not having been captured in history is nationalism.

Ironically, nowadays a feeling of living in a captured nation continuously haunts me.

Nowadays a feeling of living in a captured nation continuously haunts me. This feeling hits through different manifestations. Industries captured by labor unions, education captured by student unions (read groups of aspiring politicians), intelligentsia captured by prejudices, cultural spaces captured by cynicism and the politics captured by fear are just a few examples.

This feeling hits through different manifestations. Industries captured by labor unions, education captured by student unions (read groups of aspiring politicians), intelligentsia captured by prejudices, cultural spaces captured by cynicism and the politics captured by fear are just a few examples.

I also believe there are other sets of youths in this country, who live with this feeling, and whose fate depends more directly on what the leaders in Kathmandu decide.

In 2006, immediately after the agreement between the Maoists and the political parties was signed and the ‘peace process’ began, if I may say so, I was taken by a strange sense of curiosity toward the Maoist fighters. And so I decided to go and find out about them in the Masuria camp.

As an amateur, I presented myself to the sentry at the gate – an aspiring writer wanting to know about the people in the ‘People’s Army.’ Without any references or permissions, I was not only denied entry and any interaction, was also looked upon in deep suspicion.

Although I did not get to interact with the rebels, and I did not get an insight on why they were ready to die, I came back with some education on how the war of the people was being fought. While I waited for a bus back home just outside the camp, a teenage boy in combat fatigues came out of the camp and stood near me, looking intrigued and observing inquisitively. He looked like one of my cousins back home, just 15, who months later would come to ask my opinion on whether he should join the Maoist army or not. When the peace process was said to be on, he was being promised a secure future and a job in the army or the police afterwards if he joins.

This boy from the camp looked as innocent as my cousin and yet he was taught to fight a war so early in his life against his class enemy. Against people like me. Against people like the ones who protested this May in the streets of Kathmandu. And, against those who decided the fate of people like him in remote parts of Nepal from Kathmandu.

After five years today, it has come down to be exactly the same.

Now their fate depends on their leaders in Kathmandu – most from the caste that was told to have exploited them for centuries. Likes of whom they were taught to hate as their enemies.

The politics in Nepal is in mire. Yet the leaders have to come to consensus for the sake of all these youths of the country. For the sake of a nation where the youths in the camps, those who sing in the streets and the ones who are trapped in the confusion in between can live together peacefully.

The irony is that the impasse has as much to do with this deep division as with the lack of faith those fallacious promises to youths created.

dinkar.nepal@yahoo.com