Refugees, nations and pain

By ABHI SUBEDI

Sadness pervaded a small nation in diaspora, the shanty towns of the Bhutanese Nepalis in Jhapa and Morang, when media reported in a few words that the process of the refugee repatriation was stalled due to internal engagements of the government leaders in Thimpu. It is a double in miniature of what has happened in South Asia in the 20th century. Nations have risen and fallen under the spell of words at various times. Words have become swords in the post-colonial South Asia. There is a direct link between discourses and nations. But the nation formation process has taken a trajectory in history—from displacement and pain to settlement. The Bhutanese Nepalis have a unique position. Sandwiched between discourses, they languish on the corridors of the nations. They wait in the twilight zone of history and look at the indifferent, inefficient and mistaken politicians of Bhutan and Nepal for solution. But the leaders of Bhutan right now enjoy the greatest luxury in the world to keep this nation in diaspora waiting, to use a line from poet T S Eliot’s The Waste Land, like ‘an engine throbbing’. The luxury of keeping over a hundred thousand refugees in a limbo, in their perennial pain, is a bizarre manifestation of sadism.

But the Bhutanese refugees are going back to their old homes they have been forced to leave years ago. New journeys of the refugees are never straight. By that token, they will be compelled to move into the new texture of a nation. New lines will have been drawn inside their territories when they reach home. Cartographers must be busy now redrawing the map for that purpose. Refugees are often compelled to follow the painfully ambiguous contours inside the nation’s territory. A surrogate nation, a ghetto, is created even for people who rightfully return to their home spaces.

Territory, terrains and terror are the three homonyms that reflect the fate of the South Asian history. Nations have risen and fallen and the cartographers have changed the contours on the maps of the nations in South Asia so many times after the departure of the British colonial power in the forties. People, who hold power, imperial or civil, create new frontiers. Words and sentences create the borders of the nations in this region. Textual power became the greatest strength of the Western colonial rulers especially in the 19th century. The war of independence was the battle of texts. Mahatma Gandhi tried to create an alternate discourse of coloniality. He reduced the code; spoke minimum words that people could understand. But he was not a minimalist. He understood the power of the colonial texts. I think Gandhi’s sparse clothing, wispy loin wear and what Churchill called in the British Parliament his "half-naked fakir" modus vivendi, were all the powerful simplification of the complex and verbose colonial texts.

But Gandhi’s simplification of the colonial text did not solve all the problems. Imitation of the Western texts in power structure became the style of politics in South Asia. Western search for more complex knowledge in our own part of the world in the 19th century showed our own indifference to our own traditions of texts, and their awareness of what we had with us changed the mode of the power structure. The massive archival collection and shipment of documents, monuments and icons to museums was part of the great textual movement during the later days of the colonial rules.

Though we were not under the colonial rule, Nepal remained an important waterhole for the collectors. The trend continues even today. To read anything about Nepali art and archival constructs we have to read books that compile, illustrate and analyse the items now under the custody of the Western individuals and museums. It is a debatable subject whether such holdings or cataloguing have helped preserve the old archival items or not, but my concern here is the discussion about the textuality that is related to the rise and fall of the nations in this region.

The greatest bone of contention, to use the little antiquated expression, was not only the text but the indexing and illustration of the texts. The British India was a big text that continued to dominate thinking even after it was split into two nations. Politicians and religious leaders became the new cartographers who unscrupulously drew lines between the same people.

But such illustrations and textual analyses have caused the deaths of the millions in this region. People have made grand movements across the length and breadth of the subcontinent changing their locations, and cultural and emotional terrains. Bloody trains ran between India and Pakistan. Cartographers had misread the text. Misreading a text could be costly, the irony of which do the postmodernists or deconstructionists explain. We can misread texts in luxury too sitting behind the windowsill looking outside into the rain. But when you misread the texts of the nation it costs very dearly.

The text readers were merciless power mongers and megalomaniacs. They even made women’s bodies the new maps and made textual interventions. They branded millions of Hindu and Muslim women’s bodies, which was an act of sinister cartography.

Most alarming of all is that such misreadings continue to influence the actions of the rulers in South Asia even today. Three million people of Bangladesh paid with their lives for an independent nation, the second phase of territory formation and reading of the historical text.

The Bhutanese people of Nepali origin were thrown out of their homeland because the Bhutanese power holders misread the historical text. The cultural texts and geographical texts are not always the same, but the Bhutanese regimes justified their misreadings of the text which involved language, ethnic discriminations and a wrong definition of the textual power called a nation. These refugees are the consequences of the misreading of the Bhutanese grand narration. Only such and such people, and such and such language groups and such and such cultures can survive. Others must go.

But where would the Bhutanese people of Nepali origin go? Where would the Muslims, or the Buddhists or the Hindus or the Christians of anywhere go, for that matter? This destination question is a point of confusion and pain. New nations created a bewildered and displaced diaspora in South Asia that is condemned to live in difficulties.

Bhutan is making the latest experiment in drawing cartographer’s lines across its own people’s terrains. Hence, it is the bizarre and vulgar misreading of the colonial text. A nation when it draws imaginary lines within its own territories, creates terrible casualties for itself. Dictators often create horrors and force people to leave the land. But we can not say the same thing about the Bhutanese government. It perhaps respects human rights, and runs a parliamentary system of government. It is bizarre to create a situation of attrition among its own people and draw a line that is bound to fail. The Nepali hill nationalists’ attempt to draw a line between themselves and the Madhesis is similarly a bizarre dream and is bound to fail.

The most sensible thing for the South Asian nations to do is to stop misreading the text of nationalism. They should stop drawing new territories with people’s blood. Their cartographers’ quills should rest in their inkwells and the Bhutanese refugees should go back home.

Eternal life, and other worrying scenarios

By NOCHOLAS D KRISTOF

Wanna live to the age of 600? This may not be as absurd a question as it sounds. Genetic medicine is making enormous strides, and it may hold the promise - or maybe it’s the peril - of eventually making us something closer to immortal.

"Our life expectancy will be in the region of 5,000 years" in rich countries in the year 2100, predicts Aubrey de Grey, a scholar at Cambridge University. (This is, of course, a great prediction to make, because none of us will be around in 2100 to mock him if he’s wrong.) At a moment when we’re all fretting about whether we’ll be blown up tomorrow by nuclear terrorists, it may seem odd to worry instead that we’ll someday survive forever. But just to give you something new to bite your lip about, let me tell you about roundworms.

Roundworms are ideal specimens for geneticists to play with because they grow old and die in less than three weeks. By tinkering with two genes, scientists have produced roundworms that live six times as long as normal. (The catch is that the worms are unusually sluggish. Imagine the globe as a nursing home for sluggish Methusalehs.)

Other research on aging concerns human cells. Scientists generally think there is a natural constraint, the Hayflick limit, on how many times such cells can divide in tissue culture before they decay and die. But some work indicates that human cells given a copy of the telomerase gene can divide indefinitely, a step toward immortality on a cellular scale.

"The high priests of our secular age, the molecular biologists, have begun to address mortality in a way no group, no generation and no society has ever dreamed of before," Stephen Hall writes in his new book, "Merchants of Immortality."

Sure, our organs may give out. But scientists are now breeding special kinds of pigs that may be able to grow replacement hearts and lungs - and one day pigs will grow human hearts and lungs, with human DNA, not their piggy equivalents.

"Immortality, in many mythologies, is the defining difference between gods and mortals and, even if the myths are incorrect, not an attribute to be assumed lightly," notes my New York Times colleague Nicholas Wade in his fascinating book "Life Script." "Would one dare do anything so risky as carouse, drive a car, hit the ski slopes, if three hundred years of life would be thereby imperilled?"

It feels as if we are drifting along toward new genetic technologies without thinking through where we are headed, without an adequate regulatory structure and without enough scientific education so citizens can make well-informed decisions. Life extension is not everything, after all. Near-starvation and castration both bring unusual longevity, but few of us choose either option.

Congress has still not gotten around to banning human reproductive cloning (partly because the bill that would do that goes too far). But the fundamental questions that we face in genetics go far beyond cloning.

"We’ve evolved now so that we can master our own evolution," said Charles Cantor, chief scientific officer at a gene discovery company called Sequenom. "I don’t think we have the wisdom to manage it, but we have the tools."

What does it mean that we humans could master our own evolution?

Consider dogs. DNA tests show that all modern dogs evolved from wolves and were initially bred by cavemen who knew nothing about the genome. Yet the dogs were rapidly transformed into everything from toy poodles to Great Danes. If we begin to reshape our own genetic code, we could presumably achieve even greater variation among our human descendants.

Partly I’m worried because I lived in China in the early 1990’s when ultrasound scans became widely available. Used properly, ultrasound machines can save lives, but in China they were used to find out if fetuses were female so those fetuses could be aborted. Now China has one-sixth more boys born than girls.

International Herald Tribune
China’s politics of opportunism

By DR SHREEDHAR GAUTAM

Some national and international newspapers have highlighted the Joint Declaration signed by Sino-Indian leaders during the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to China two months ago. The political analysts of the news magazines have noticed serious shift in China’s foreign policy concerning India and about its commitment to the principles of Panchashila. The Joint Declaration says, "India recognises the Tibet Autonomous Region as part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China". Consequently, the Declaration shows Chinese government’s movement towards recognition of Sikkim as an integral part of India, no matter how the small Himalayan state came into the Indian Union. China’s official line on Sikkim came in the form of agreement on expanding border trade through Sikkim. It says, "Desirous of opening another pass on the India-China border and setting up an additional point on each side for border trade… the Indian side agrees to designate Changgu of Sikkim State as the venue for border trade market; the Chinese side agrees to designate Renqinggang of the Tibet Autonomous Region as the venue for border trade market. India has interpreted that an additional point for trade to be opened on the India-China border amounts to implicit or de facto recognition that Sikkim is a part of India. Chinese official have also indicated that they will gradually sell the issue of the recognition of Sikkim to their people, which has been shown on official maps as an Independent kingdom.

Indo-China agreement on such a vital border issue comes close on the heels of their vacillation over taking even a formal stand opposing the US-led one-sided war and occupation of Iraq. India’s vacillating foreign policy came into light when it agreed to think over the request of US that India send its troops as part of a ‘stabilisation force’ to Iraq under the US occupation. There are reports of clandestine negotiation between the Indian government and the Bush Administration despite India’s official rejection to send troops in the present context. All these signals make the mockery of the commitment to strengthening multi-polarity as a basis for resolving issues, affecting the entire world. China’s stand on Anglo-American occupation of Iraq is as dismal as India’s. It should not be forgotten that China’s wavering policy started long ago, soon after the takeover of power by China’s leader Deng Xio-Ping. It culminated into the dismal surrender to the Western Powers when China absented itself from Security Council meeting that "authorised" the UN to use force against an independent country. Now China’s role in strengthening multi-polarity at international level is discouraging. Just a few days ago, State Councillor, Tang Jixaxuan, outlined China’s foreign policy in his meeting with Jalal Al Talabani; member of the "Leadership of the Iraqi Governing Council", in Beijing. The Councillor simply raised the issue of ensuring stability in the post-Saddam Hussein context without showing concern to the illegal occupation of Iraq. He further said, "The re-establishment of normal order would be required in this context, as indeed desired by the larger international community too."

Tang Jiaxuan, however, did not utter a single word against growing violation of international law by the occupying forces. China, like other capitalist countries, is fully preoccupied with its ‘economic development’, even by compromising basic tenets of international law. China could have played a significant role in preventing the occupation of Iraq, though it would have lost heavily in terms of its trade with the western countries, especially with the USA. It is in this context that China’s recent overture to India, in connection with opening up of new trade route in Sikkim, should be considered. Some political pundits have termed it as a shocking event in China’s foreign policy, but if we evaluate the entire gamut of Chinese policies, this is quite natural. Despite reports of China’s denial to this effect, meaning imminent recognition to Sikkim as an integral part of India, knowledgeable sources say that this is a well-planned and calculated decision. Now China does not fight for values, but for the ‘material prosperity’ at any cost, without displeasing the Western World in the name of socialism. Moreover, China knows that India is a growing Asian power, with a lot of potential. If so far, China has refrained from recognising Sikkim as an integral part of India, it is not because of its principled stand on the question of Sikkim’s annexation to India, but to reserve its right of bargaining in any future official talks between the two countries. The Joint Sino-India Declaration in Beijing in June is just a logical conclusion of the unprincipled policies of both countries. They want to please the only superpower through all means, by not taking diametrically opposite line on vital issues of their national interest. .

We do not know for sure whether the acceptance of trade through Nathula means China’s acceptance of Sikkim as part of India, but we do know for certainty that China is no more a power speaking in favour of oppressed, suppressed and enslaved. It had long ago forfeited the image nurtured by leaders till 1976 with great care and sacrifice. It could do nothing even when the US led forces in Yugoslavia bombed its own embassy. This time too it has remained a mute spectator to the US led unjustified war on a Third World Country, Iraq. The country, which cannot give even a moral support to a country being victim of most inhumane war, can never be trusted to speak in favour of people who are in injustice or deprived of their fundamental rights. The opening of the trade route might result in China’s de jure acceptance of Sikkim’s 1975 accession India because what concerns China is business, not the principles.

In such a situation of today we, Nepalese should not have any illusion that China will come to rescue in case of danger to our national sovereignty. China’s decision to open trade route through Nathula and India’s growing strong relationship with China should give us a message that it is for us to safeguard the sovereignty of the country. Nepal should not think that Sino-India conflict can play a positive factor in our national interest. Therefore, the recent Sino-Indian agreement to open trade route through Sikkim and Tibetan region only reveals how in the present capitalistic system commercial interest supersedes all other concerns. No country can depend upon other counties for the sake of security or prosperity. It is a pity that China has shown rapid degeneration in its earlier image created by the Panchshila principles in the guise of economic growth. However, the present world scenario cannot last long, and a new era is bound to dawn, which will promote international relations in terms of human values not in terms sheer selfish opportunistic consideration.

Obsessed citizens

By HITESH KARKI

D uring the entire journey to the dot, department of transportation that is, we were busy guessing as to line of what length would be awaiting us. The lines never seem to end in this city, and that too the ones standing in front of government offices where one’s obesity is like a medallion proudly displaying the post one holds. Propelled by that particular popular belief, we were busy wondering how much of our working hour would be consumed by the queue.

On the contrary, when we reached the place, surprisingly that was not what we had expected. A line of no more than 20 souls stood in front of the counter. A maximum of half an hour, so I thought, only to be surprised by what my dear friend had in his mind. In spite of having ample time to stay in the line and follow the normal procedures he straightaway went upstairs, me following him behind. A knock on one of the doors and he was pleasantly greeted by the man on the big leather chair, (obviously an obese fellow!) a towel covering its back. After a short exchange of greetings, the ‘cuckoo- cuckoo’ alarm bell rang, and within few minutes there stood a peon holding a tray with three cups of tea. While we left the cups on the table to let the tea cool down, he took out the documents from his pocket and asked to take out mine as well and handed it over the man on the chair. With another ring of alarm, the same peon instantly appeared, took the documents from the hakim saab and even before we could mange to sip off the entire cup of tea, the peon reappeared holding receipts in his hand. To our delight, the work was done.

As we readied ourselves to leave the place, I glanced at the line and there were no more than four people. I recounted and it was four!

Feeling victorious of the fact that we had managed to get our work done without standing in the queue, we left the place. But then the destination as I found out was not back to office but to another government department. Seeing that there was enough time in hand he asked me whether I would mind accompanying him to the Telecom department. He wanted to apply for a new Sim card.

However, this time around the scene was quite different. There was indeed quite a long line compared to what we had just seen a while ago. ‘What do we do now?’ He did not say anything and went to a booth, drew out a phone card, and made a call. I immediately joined the line just to ensure that in case the need arises to pay the money in the counter this time around we would save whatever little time we could. ‘Hey C’mon’, he waived towards me with a gleeful face. So once again, we went up the stairs, met the similar kind of person (in terms of obesity) seated on a similar sort of chair and were surprisingly offered with a similar cup of tea which even tasted similar! Like the ‘re-run’ of the events that had unfolded just half an hour ago, in less than ten minutes the card lay on the hakim-saab’s table.

Funny how and why we are so much obsessed in forcing ourselves to believe that it’s no one but the obese leaders, bureaucrats, spoiling the nation.

Freedom lost

ARJUN BHANDARI

T he swamp deer in the Royal Bardiya National Park and the Shukla Phanta in Kanchanpur roam more freely than we hapless Nepalis do. We cannot travel as freely as these meek animals do in the jungles though they are always in constant fear of the Royal Bengal Tiger. It is quite unintelligible why people have a phrase of law of the jungle to compare a lawless society. The phrase seems animal-biased if we, the social animal, look at it from wildlife point of view. Wildlife biologists say a tiger never pounces on an antelope unless he feels extremely hungry. The fierce animal could kill as many herbivorous animals as it wished had it not maintained its own natural discipline, or say, the constitution of the jungle in terms of political science of mankind. The tiger limits itself within its discipline and allows other animals, like the antelopes, to continue with their freedom of movement, grazing and breeding.

Once the law of the jungle, as we quite often use it to refer to a nation or a society plagued with lawlessness, ceases to function, there will be no existence of wildlife in the jungle. There can be no comparison between human civilisation and the world of wildlife, as the former has, to burrow a Marxist terminology, a history of class struggle whereas the latter has an evolutionary history of mutual co-existence in the same habitat. No tigers will be "burning bright in the forest of the night" in the absence of the antelopes and alike. This is the bottom-line of the mutual co-existence between the carnivorous and herbivorous animals that maintain their presence in nature. It is only the human being that is responsible for the destruction of the ecosystem, not the animals themselves.

In stark contrast with that of the human being, no wildlife experts have yet come across any instances of animal rights violation by a powerful species like tiger sharing the same habitat.

Nothing is more significant than freedom, which is possible only in democracy. One knows where the shoe pinches only when his/her freedom is curtailed either in the name of maintaining law and order or of "people’s liberation", as claimed both by the state and the Maoists.

In his essay entitled What I believe in, Two cheers of democracy, 1951, E. M. Forster says, "Two cheers for democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three."

Since the Maoist insurgency broke out, we the hapless ordinary people have been deprived of these two cheers. In Nepal’s present context, we have been deprived of the freedom of expression and movement. We cannot justify that we are enjoying the freedom of expression because we have press freedom. The press freedom is meaningless when ordinary people in the rural areas are gagged from expressing their voices to the media. Is it called freedom where an elected representative in a Maoist-held area hesitates to speak out his mind even during interpersonal conversation? Interpersonal conversation is the primary level of freedom and the best ways of communication that led to the rise of the modern mass media. A situation in which people are put a gag even at private level of conversation can be called the lowest level of freedom.

And, how can we define the freedom of movement when government forces have set up security checkpoints every kilometre or so on all major highways even during the cease-fire period? One develops a morbid feeling while passing through the arduous security checkpoints on the major highways and landing into the Maoist strongholds. There has not been any substantial change in manners of the security forces and the Maoists before and after the cease-fire followed by the 22-point code of conduct. How long should it permeate among the people before they finally regain the two cheers of democracy?

With the government and the Maoists announcing the third round of peace talks for Sunday in Nepalgunj, we can expect of regaining the long-lost freedom of expression and movement. Let us hope the peace talks come up with lasting solution to the problems raised by the Maoist rebels. Let us also hope we, the ordinary Nepalis, may be able to travel and speak as freely as the swamp deer in the Royal Bardiya National Park.

(The writer can be reached at arjun_bhandari2001@hotmail.com)

Life span increased!

TILAK P POKHAREL

W hile the beleaguered Lokendra Bahadur Chand government was holding peaceful talks (not peace talks) with the ‘frantic’ Maoist rebels inside the much sophisticated Shankar Hotel in the capital on the second week of May, the Maoist militia in the hinterland of Rukum district, one of the Maoist hotbeds, were trying to make their way easy by saying that the talks had already been ‘deadlocked’. According to one of my friends who works in the district as a peace worker for a human rights organisation, the rebels ruling the rural terrains seem to be hungry about resorting to violence again. "The talks in Kathmandu are being held just for the show," the friend quoted a local Maoist leader as saying.

Yes, the local Maoist leaders know more than what their leaders do. So they say that the talks are being held just for the "show" and not to resolve the over seven-year-old armed insurgency that has claimed over 7,500 lives. This might also be the reason why they start maiming, if not killing, innocents after their bosses declare the cease-fire. Rebel leaders - Dr Baburam Bhattarai, Ram Bahadur Thapa "Badal" and Krishna Bahadur Mahara, among others - had said that they were committed to peace and "would do their best" to make the peace process a success. According to a recently published INSEC report, the Maoists have outnumbered the government forces in killing or maiming the innocents, in violation of the March 13 code of conduct signed by their leaders and Chand’s men to govern the cease-fire. Congrats comrades!

Three months have passed since the holding of the second round of talks and after much ups and downs in the six-and-half-month old peace parleys, the Round Three is going to be held on Sunday for the "sake of holding" it. The top Maoist leaders (Rabindra Shrestha, Krishna Dhoj Khadka, Rekha Sharma, Muma Ram Khanal and Bam Dev Chhetri) whom the government recently released have been the added problem to the rebels! The Maoists, who were all prepared to go back to jungles, had to vow to sit for the third round just because the government released their leaders. How can they stop their men from resorting to violence in the villages? My suggestion is - try to hold the talks at the earliest. Give any reason you like (as there are a host of issues like five kilometres, king’s public commitment that he accepts the agreements reached between the government and the Maoists, illegitimate government...) for the "failure" of the talks and go back to jungles. If the government does any dilly-dallying in holding the talks, that could be the ripe reason. If all these reasons don’t work, there could be a perfect cause to abandon the peace process - people’s (or cadre’s?) wish.

This was the story of "jungle-love" of our Maoists. Now let’s get into another love story, the banduk (guns)-love of the government and its Royal Nepal Army (RNA). The story begins right from the May 9 evening after the second round of talks were held. Upon hearing that the government agreed with the Maoists to limit the army movement within five kilometre from their barracks, the chief of army staffs allegedly went to Baluwatar (the Prime Minister’s official residence) shortly after the joint press conference held to announce the agreements reached between them.

The government ministers who confirmed the agreement vis-a-vis limiting the army movement at the press conference also started to twist the whole story. The then Information Minister and a member of the government negotiating team Ramesh Nath Pandey publicly denied that any of such agreement was reached. Likewise, the government had agreed to expedite the process of releasing the top Maoist leaders during the first round of talks held on April 27. But it was lost in the "process" until they received a Maoist bombshells in the July-end.

The RNA wanted to execute medics’ duty too in the rural terrain where the doctor saabs usually hesitate to go. So, it invited violent confrontation with the village honchos (Maoists), killing almost a dozen of them, according to media reports. For the rebels, it was the crime "greater" than slaying the innocent rural chaps.

Then, the rebels started ambushing the army convoys. So has started the reports of clashes between the rebels and the RNA men to pile up. After all, the 22-point code of conduct was signed neither by the rebel commander of Rukum nor by the RNA men. And, there is also a saying - "rules are made to be violated".

Disregarding the code of conduct and the government-Maoist peace process, the life span of hundreds, if not another thousands, of Nepalis has certainly increased. Before the poor Nepalis wait for another resurgence of violence, which could be much graver if it starts anyway, they have some more time to live. The acts of the rebels and the government show that another wave of confrontation is imminent in the near future.