Whenever Martyrs’ Day rolls around, newspaper columns and airtime starts filling with how the contribution of real martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the country is being systematically undermined by the proliferation in the number of state-declared martyrs. The concept of martyrdom, which evolved in strictly religious contexts, has taken a meaning of its own in contemporary third-world politics, where the word’s political linkages seems to have thoroughly subsumed its other connotations. The underlying sentiments behind declaring those who have scarified their lives for the cause of liberty and rights are undoubtedly noble. A democratic society must honor the bold souls who readily paid the ultimate price for the cause of freedom and democracy. As such, declaration of martyrdom is an acknowledgement of their contribution to social transformation and an incentive for all peace and freedom loving people to continue to speak in favor of progressive social changes.
However, Nepal has a checkered history of declaring martyrs: who becomes a martyr seems to depend on which party is leading the government at the moment. In 2009, the Maoist government faced great criticism for declaring more than 7,000 of its combatants as martyrs. The next government under the leadership of Madhav Kumar Nepal came up with a list of approximately 4,000 martyrs, most of whom, during the insurgency, had been at war with the “martyrs” declared by the previous government. At various times, there has been pressure on successive governments to declare people who lost their lives in a variety of non-political strife as martyrs.
Fifty-three people who lost their lives in Madhesh uprising were (rightly) declared martyrs under pressure from Madhesi groups, but perhaps Nepal is the only country in the world that has officially declared ‘financial institution martyrs’ and ‘corporation employee martyrs’, among other hard to place categories. And most appalling of all, no single government entity has a comprehensive record of all these martyrs. The Home Ministry has a list of 101 martyrs who lost their lives during the insurgency; the Maoist and Madhes parties each have records of their own claimants to martyrdom, while the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction, despite nominating some martyrs, has no official records.
Such ad hoc declaration of martyrs undermines the very purpose of martyrdom. It undercuts the contribution of the real martyrs, those who paid with their lives in the course of various struggles. Besides, it opens the door for corruption: each martyr’s family gets Rs. 1 million in compensations. So far, such compensation has been paid only to families of 25 martyrs who had lost their lives during Jana Andolan II, but by the time this program expands to include all declared martyrs, the government must have clear criteria for deciding who is a martyr. Such criteria should be well defined enough not to be amenable to misinterpretation, and the process for declaring martyrs must be resistant to pressure from external forces.
Before “martyrdom” becomes a means of minting money for unscrupulous individuals, ends up dishonoring the memory of real martyrs and subsequently eroding the general public’s trust in the state apparatus, the government needs to lay down unbiased criteria to honor those individuals who laid down their lives for the greater good of the country.
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