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Kathmandu Thursday October 04, 2001 Ashwin 18, 2058.
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Ultra-conservative values
Iam writing in response to Ganesh Khaniya’s
disturbing article entitled "Pub culture,"
that appeared in your October 2 edition. Khaniya, in his attempt to blame Nepal’s
woes on cultural liberalisation, manages to show us that, in fact, the ultra-conservative
values he espouses are more probably what anchors Nepal’s culture and economy to
"poverty, illiteracy, and backwardness."
Not only does his piece contain an obvious tone
of class prejudice when he says that the only people who go out to bars are "derailed
young lads from well-to-do families," but also more disconcerting is the gender
prejudice he evinces when he laments the presence of young women working in nightlife
establishments. In a country where most women grow up virtually indentured to their own
families, kept away from education, and then married off at a young age to serve the
families of their husbands - shouldn’t Khaniya examine how the restraints of his
conservative values leave many girls with no other option but to dance in night clubs? He
speaks of the mental perversion that results from alcohol and "navel-gazing,"
but what about the widespread mental perversion of parents dictating their teenage
daughters to marry men 20 years their senior?
As a foreigner living in Nepal, the most salient
problem that I see (other than the maltreatment of women) is the utter dependence that
most young people have on their families. Khaniya calls for "creative youths" to
lift Nepal out of its darkness, but how can a young person really develop his
individuality and creativity if he or she adheres faithfully to his or her parents’
mandates? And why do spouses need to "repent"?
Clearly, the writer does not see the
interdependence that exists between social and
economic development. Just look at many of the ultra-conservative Muslim states throughout
the world, and the economic despair those puritanical values have led most of them to
nowhere.
Joe McClellan
via e-mail |
