Cease-fire and emerging challenges

By RITENDRA TAMANG

The citizens of Nepal have been drowned in severely precarious situations by the impetuous actions of their own government and the intrusive Maoists. After the protracted tragic events destroyed so many lives, infrastructures, and resources, recent truce and peace talks between the Maoists and the ruling government seem to have achieved a calm and peace in Nepal.

Such a political climate is a significant upshot within the political context of Nepal. Though the implementation of a ceasefire is an indispensable element of the peace process, one that may further expose political options for settlement, alone it cannot suffice for the continued sustenance of peace. The political leaders, Maoists, and citizens of Nepal must collaborate and create a new culture of peace, coexistence, and harmony. To this end, the indissoluble commitment of all pertinent leaders must continue toward making progress. 

The prospect for peacemaking, though not an effortless process, is impressive and encouraging. Currently neither the Maoists nor the government has fully internalised the need to reaffirm their actions to signify a dedication to the prevention of further violent ruptures. Such stands of reluctance and rigidity from different political parties are more likely to make the existing ceasefire fragile. Therefore, it is important to assess the ceasefire between the government and the Maoists in relation to its sustainability and relevance.

The current ceasefire will accurately reflect meaningful relevance when it actually results in providing access to freedom for those who have been deprived of their basic human rights as citizens of a country. Meanwhile, the current ceasefire has given impression to the citizens of Nepal that this peace process will end the prolonged political violence and chaos in the country.

A declared "ceasefire" also represents a willingness to live peacefully and democratically, and a desire to achieve honor through one’s thought, political expression and leadership. Per se, it is the only way to have a real sense of security and safety, as well as to end fears instigated by the actions of various politically driven interests. Any further attempts to validate political power through the use of violence to control ordinary citizens, which produces a system of governance that does not care about the rights of the people, must be stopped. The affirmation of the value of life and dignity for all citizens of Nepal is crucial for sustainable peace. Thus, the government of Nepal must affirm the rights of every Nepali citizen and provide opportunities to question the peace process.

The discussion of ceasefire, that is, a halt to all political instabilities in Nepal, only makes sense in the context of a meaningful political process based on democratic frameworks. This process should assure the Nepali citizens that the government and pertinent political parties are truly concerned in producing a viable political settlement that would give them legitimate rights to peace, security, freedom, and economic prosperity. Such a scenario would make a ceasefire relevant to the realities of the people of Nepal, and create a process vital to development efforts.

However, prevailing circumstances and lack of cooperation among various political parties may threaten the foundation for a stable ceasefire. The government agencies, leaders of political parties, and Maoists need to acknowledge their own past mistakes, failures, and crimes to engage in bringing about a true peace. Without accountability for the most severe crimes against ordinary citizens, there can be no lasting peace. With all due encouragement for the efforts of all, no sustained progress would result as long as key leaders of all the political parties adopt a realistic strategy for ending the violence and returning to a fruitful peace process. The ceasefire initiatives have to reflect a genuine process of soul-searching on all sides (ie, government, Maoists, political parties) regarding the root causes of the current conflict and ways to deal with them.

Peace must be sustained by fostering a continuous dialogue between the government and the Maoists, by including of all other pertinent political parties, and accompanied by a continuous ceasefire, which would promote national appeasement efforts with a view to fostering participation in the democratic and political processes as essential aspects of achieving peace in Nepal. Both the government and the Maoists must reaffirm their commitment to the ceasefire and adopt measures against those who violate truce in order to sustain the political settlement process. The efforts of political parties must go beyond alliance building between the political forces that have conspired against the common interests to sustain their own survival. They must create a political space to enable Nepali citizens to participate in constructing peace, thus, creating a new sense of ownership that should sustain the commitment towards the prosperity of the nation.

At the outset of the current ceasefire, an infusion of internal support becomes critical in order to add momentum to the current peace process in Nepal, help stop the wretched human suffering, and smooth the ripples of grief that have spread throughout Nepal. Cessation of hostilities is a crucial element in the process of building up an atmosphere of peace, goodwill, and the normalisation of daily life. Such efforts can help spring Nepal from despair to hope, from obstinate conflict to workable concord, and engage in finding resolutions. Again, firm commitments of the stakeholders to be partners acting together in the interest of peace for the nation is essential.

The government of Nepal must institute reforms that address the legitimate quantum of the insurgents and protect human rights for all citizens of Nepal. The government must also tackle key economic reforms, as the efficacy and confidence of the government will be judged by how it influences the livelihood of citizens. Reaching the vision of prosperity will require a strong and sustained political will, commitment, and a concerted effort from the government and all the political parties - a movement from within the ranks of those in power.

The government of Nepal and all the leaders of various political parties, inclusive of Maoists, must come up with tangible plans of progress and provide opportunities for citizens to participate in the peace process by demonstrating a shared vision for Nepal, and by dealing with many disagreements within various political interests that have been proved as hurdles in the efforts of negotiating solutions. No stipulating conditions from any political interests that hinder the peace process must appear. Rather, a creation of a congenial atmosphere for peace and normality must be sought through democratic practices. It is critical that both the government and Maoists continue to honour the current ceasefire, and that both the government and insurgents stay the course, as they are dealing with difficult issues, making real compromises, and remain committed to finding a permanent solution.

Gnawing guilt

By DAMARU LAL BHANDARI

Journalism is an insurance to enable one to not only learn how to write but how to write well. Still incumbent upon aspiring scribes is they must have the nose not only for what passes as news but also for style, class and taste. (More of that later on.)

What is also a must in the journalistic instinct. If this is missing one is never likely to be able to write a nuanced news story. More so for political reporters who are — as is happening currently — likely to find the political scenario refusing to change or develop appreciably. This can hit performance. Admittedly, filing news stories was never as challenging as now.

Insurgency began with token "smash up and run" cases. Rebels — or was it the media all on its own — soon spread the word around that they were fighting against a number of ills surrounding governance.

Brutal acts of violence was enough to encourage certain species of scribes to make field visits and come up with "He said" and "He claimed" type of stuff. What I knew all along was travelling to Rukum and Rolpa to find out the cause of insurgency was tantamount to look for golden bowl at the end of the rainbow. The problem lies elsewhere but no one knows where. At best, it’s a case of transparency missing all along.

Stories of gore filled up the newspaper pages alright, but what remained under a shroud has not been "exposed" yet. And if the initial indication is anything to go by, it goes without saying that no one should expect any "expose" on the issue. How will historiographers write down the history?

However, it was not the media alone, which failed to make a head or tail out of the hydra of protracted insurgency. Even the successive governments, too, failed to gauge the seriousness of the crisis. It appears that no one tried to assess what was unfolding not across the remote parts of the country but there were the people indulge in playing chess with poor people serve as pawns.

Far from assessing the worsening scenario and looking up for a political solution, there were people who saw solution in the so called "Kilosera" and "Romeo." Both the operations ended up inflaming the naive population against the ruling establishment. Security forces would have served a purpose had they not antagonised the innocent people all along.

There has not been much headway since. Only difference is of scales. Yet there were phases when it appeared that the political parties might disentangle the issue but to no avail. Claims to the effect that there indeed is a link between political instability and insurgency are in place now. Didn’t they come to a cease-fire after the parliament has been dissolved?

The claims that the government and the rebels are settling for talks came as a bombshell to most including yours truly. All the more surprising is the willingness to talk when there is no elected government in place. This is what is sending the members of the species reeling to the ground after having failed to make sense of it all.

No matter how doggedly one may give it a try, no one is able to come up with any approximation of the day’s subterranean political sketch these days. Unfolding scenario has defied speculation and logic all along. It indeed is a sorry scenario for vibrant press.

Consider also dyspeptic readers, who hurl abuse just in the event their queries go unanswered in any news story. This has remained a challenge ever since the rebels ran amok in the countryside. Only good thing the hydra of insurgency has done to the nation is it has exposed the media.

One thing is for sure, though. Maoist insurgency is not only about bad governance, improper distribution of resources and injustice. Until someone writes home about what went into rebels taking up arms, recent history will never be complete. Forget the "style", "taste" and "class"; the guilt issuing out of failure is gnawing at the entrails.

Whose write is it anyway ?

That question was brought home to me years ago when I was a struggling feature writer in the Statesman, Calcutta. Apart from my duties of writing and editing features for the paper, I used to occasionally pen short anecdotal pieces for a column called ‘Now and Again’ on the editorial page.

One day I was thrilled when I was told that a ‘Now and Again’ of mine had been selected for inclusion in a text book for students which was being edited by my old school friend John Mason, who was the English master in La Martinierre, Calcutta. My delight, however, was shortlived. For the then editor of the Statesman deemed that if John, or anyone else, wanted to reproduce my article, permission would have to be sought and obtained from the newspaper, and not from me, the writer. Moreover, the Statesman would have to be paid Rs 250 (a tidy sum in those far-off days) by way of reprinting rights. Considering that the Statesman itself paid only Rs 150 for ‘Now and Again’ to begin with (except in the case of staffers like me who weren’t paid anything extra at all) asking for 250 for reprinting rights was not just cheeky it was downright mumps.

In the end John, reluctantly, had to drop my piece from his book. But that wasn’t the end of the chapter. For the incident left me with an abiding interest in the business of copyright, in all its many legal and ethical aspects.

As both a freelancer and a publisher, I have at different times had to sit on either side of the copyright fence. When I was editing the Statesman Literary Supplement (a few years after the ‘Now and Again’ fiasco), I published a short story by the well-known Indian author Ruskin Bond. A reader wrote in to the Statesman editor (not the same fellow, but another chap) saying that he had, some time ago, read the same short story by Ruskin in an American publication, the Christian Science Monitor. The Statesman editor instructed me to write a stiff letter to Ruskin saying that he would not be paid for his story as it had already appeared elsewhere earlier. I did as required, and was shame-faced to get back a rather bemused letter from Ruskin (whose work I have always greatly admired) saying that if the Statesman didn’t want to pay him for the piece, so be it. But that far as he knew, from experience gleaned from a lifetime of writing, copyright always vested with the author who was at liberty to offer his work to other publications — provided, of course, that there was no obvious conflict of interests. Since the Christian Science Monitor was published in the US, and the Statesman in India, he had not seen any conflict of interest in this particular case, which is why he had sent us the story. Which, as the true writer that he is, he thanked me for publishing. With or without payment.

The ticklish question of copyright becomes even more intriguing when one looks at what might be called ‘self plagiarism’. Plagiarism — palming off someone else’s work as one’s own — is of course is a mortal sin which no real writer worth his printing ink will ever contemplate. But what if one were to plagiarise from oneself? This issue cropped up years ago when my superboss in the TOI noted, with an indulgent twinkle in his eye, that an entire passage of an article I had recently written for the TOI had been taken from an earlier piece I had done (on bargaining for fish in Calcutta) for the Taj hotels’ in-house magazine.

Before I could say anything, he assured me that as far as he was concerned, such ‘self-plagiarism’ — borrowing from oneself — was fine. Why constantly re-invent the wheel? If one has a telling anecdote to relate, or has put together a particularly pithy sentence, or coined a memorable phrase, why not recycle such material, in different contexts and different permutations and combinations? The only caveat was that the reader — the final arbiter of what is write and what is wrong — should not get a sense of deja vu and feel short-changed.

It is said that in all the realms of human experience and narrative, there are only six basic plot lines. What would happen if we didn’t allow ourselves a bit of literary recycling? Let’s look at a scenario where a struggling ink-stained scribe brings a manuscript to a publisher, who casts a supercilious eye over it and says: What’s this? Boy and girl from two warring families meet, fall in love and come to a sticky end? What unoriginal piffle!

The publisher snorts and throws the MS into the wastepaper basket. Thus putting paid, for once and all, not only to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but also to West Side Story and to most of the tragic romances ever written or filmed or sung.

I’m no Shakespeare, nor was meant to be. But apart from that story about bargaining for maach in a typical Bong fish market, I have re-recounted a number of incidents, re-used a number of phrases in my writing: Punning is the lowest form of twit; he had a habit of putting his foot in his mot; journalism is literature written in a flurry — and forgotten even faster.

I’ve coined these, and many other tropes, and feel, rightly or wrongly, that as long as they are not rejected by the reader there’s no harm in keeping them in circulation. My justification for creative self-plagiarism comes from the highest source. For — as I have suggested earlier in this column, and doubtless elsewhere — when the Creator created man in His own image, didn’t he become the First Self-plagiarist?

Or take Adam and Eve, who we are told invented original sin. Leaving subsequent humankind to ponder the question: What’s so original about sin, anyway? Who holds the original copyright?

Case dismissed, without costs.