Promoting Handicrafts
Private Sector’s Cooperation Essential

CRAFTS, which are the indigenous creations, convey the expressions of human beings. They try to tell us about nature and life.

Crafts may be the expressions produced by beauty or loathsomeness. They may be in the form of sharing in the interest of mind and nature apart from enjoying arts. However, some expressions might be better and others not.

In fact, the world of art and craft is immense. What we know of the culture of human beings through centuries has come to us from the surviving arts and crafts scattered like a crystal bowl thrown on marble.

One has to collect these stray pieces in order to study and to know how arts and crafts developed in an area, their styles and manners shaped out of the climatic conditions and the culture. Since no one could collect all pieces completely, it is difficult to say these with precision.

Craft treasures give up a glimpse into the core and kernel of the collective mind and societies that created them. Each craft object is made for the beauty of its form or the delight of its colour. There is always a purpose in each craft. It may be utilitarian, religious or social.

The articles made for utilitarian purpose combine beauty as well. The craftsmen who produce them are true artists because it is here the uniqueness of art lies.

In Japan and Switzerland, handicrafts are popular and developed to a fine level. These countries have reaped benefits from this business.

In reality, handicrafts reflect the pristine culture of a country. The fragments of vases and vessels unearthed from the banks of Indus, the carved metal bowls and coloured tiles from Euphrates, the miniature wooden toys and gold ornaments from the bank of Nile reflect the culture of ancient times.

It is undoubtedly astonishing to see certain typical handicrafts such as the artistic fans and parasols, delicate porcelain cups and slender bamboo vases, the microcosm of toys such as the women and the priests, agile monkeys and delightful bugs.

Fine arts such as painting and sculpture form a significant part of handicrafts such as toy making, metal and wood-carving and pottery. In such handicrafts, there is an unlimited scope for the creative imagination of individuals.

In the revelation of beauty, handicrafts can be superior to the creation of artists. Transcending limitation of mere abstract of aesthetic beauty, they enter the realm of practicality of daily use. In such craft works, one can observe the democratic approach to arts.

Actually, it was the necessity that enabled men to make handicrafts of different kinds. Perhaps basket is the most pristine type of handicraft. Thereafter evolved feather-work quill-work, bead work, stringing, sewing, embroidery and weaving. Vegetation and coloured filaments were used to make baskets.

The early gathering of fruits might have required a container, something which could carry more than a man’s hands could hold. Therefore, man devised baskets which enabled him to advance from a hand to mouth existence depending on the seasonal fruits to a position of comparatively independence by storing up a reserve of food.

Today, pottery is in vogue in many countries. However, the clay on the shore hardening under the sun might have suggested pottery. As man invented baskets, he invented containers made of clay. Time and experience brought out various forms of pottery.

The spider making webs might have suggested weaving. Marks incidentally made on wet clay might have led to the inception of designs. Temptation of adornment might have lead to jewelry, likewise, out of the luxuriant bamboo around, man might have constructed the hut to live in and vessels to store.

As time rolled on, man made cups, vases, bridges and canoes. From grass to ivory or from leaves to gold, he made of a variety of articles for his daily use.

Till now hundreds of crafts have sprung forth. They have become part of our heritage.

In fact, art and craft is valuable for nation. Like arts, crafts reflect the state of the human society through individuals. Actually, each individual has small or big proportion what mankind as a whole have in them.

Although a few may have more than ordinary skills in some crafts, every man may have some working knowledge of other crafts. This versatility of skills contributes to the economic independence and security of individuals. Apart from this, excess absorption of energy and power in a trade provides no alternative in case of unemployment.

No doubt, Nepal has gained popularity in handicraft production. The age-old profession is not only a traditional means of livelihood of a small percentage of population but also reflects Nepal’s rich culture and people’s love for art since time immemorial.

In general, Nepali handicrafts include pashmina, woolen goods, silver jewelry, metal crafts, hand-made paper, silk products,
cotton garments, textiles, wood crafts, thankas, bone and horn products, ceramics,
incense, leather goods, beads and bamboo products. They are exported to almost everywhere in the world including Europe and America where such artistic commodities are highly valued. As traditional hand-made products are in high demand in the international markets, there is a bright prospect of the development of handicrafts production in the country.

According to the Handicraft Association of Nepal, Nepal is one of the major handicrafts exporters in the world with the annual export of about seven billion rupees. Apart from earning foreign currency, handicraft export will also help spread Nepal’s image in the world as a country that produces such traditional artistic goods.

Since handicrafts are mostly designed to reflect the local culture and tradition, this will help preserve our age-old tradition and culture. In addition, this will give life to the traditional occupation that is on the verge of extinction under the shadow of modernity. The most important of all is the development of tourism, the backbone of national economy, promoted by the handicraft export. Once Nepal is recognised as one of the most attractive tourist destinations, people far and wide will be lured to visit the country.

In this regard, the government’s commitment to promoting industries that produce handicrafts comes as a great relief, especially to those who have spent many years in the profession that is facing hard time for survival. In order to encourage the entrepreneurs and produce skilled human resources in this sector, the government in cooperation with the private sector needs to launch some concrete programmes such as establishing training centres and providing loans at low rates.

Immigration Triggers Culture Clash In US

By Michelle Boorstein

WHEN Ahmad and Sharifa Shaban married in 1974, the conditions they agreed to were standard for Cairo newlyweds: an oath that the bride was a virgin, a US dollars 30 dowry and a declaration that the union was in accordance with "Almighty God’s Holy Book."

By the time the Shabans divorced 24 years later, the gastroenterologist and his wife were living in a posh southern California neighbourhood, had two kids and US dollars 3 million. The couple had Americanised, but the wedding document they signed all those years ago was pure Egypt.

And that’s where the culture clash began.

He flew in an expert, who said the document was a prenuptial agreement under Egyptian law and that the couple’s assets should be split up by an Islamic authority - a move his lawyers thought would get him a better deal.

She hired an American lawyer who laid it out a little differently. "But see, you’re not in Egypt," the attorney said.

With immigration to the United States higher in the past decade than at any time since the 1930s, cases like the Shabans’ have become daily fare in family courts - intimate battles balancing culture, family values and law in one public forum.

But trying to reconcile U.S. law with immigrants’ ideas about everything from child discipline to dividing assets can be tricky.

Until they were pressed to do so in the last five to 10 years, family courts made few allowances for their increasingly international constituents. There was no push for legal forms in multiple languages, translators or experts on foreign culture and family law.

Then the population started to change. According to the Census Bureau, more than 10 per cent of Americans are now foreign-born - and more than one-third of that group came here in the 1990s.

Now family courts are starting to try and accommodate immigrants, even as advocates criticise the system for not keeping up.

Among other steps, there is more cultural-literacy training for judges, a push for certified translators and more research about culture in court from groups like the American Bar Association.

"We realised most people who are judges and attorneys are not like those people who end up in court," said the ABA’s Karen Aileen Howze, who writes guides for court workers on cultural issues.

In the past, judges might have simply made do without translators, for example - but not today, said Justice Jeremy A. Stahlin, of the Probate and Family Court in Suffolk County, Boston.

"I think there’s an awareness that it’s unacceptable, totally unfair and unjust" for different populations to get unequal levels of service from the courts, he said.

This shift wasn’t prompted solely by demographics, but also by a wider discussion in society in general: What are American values in an increasingly diverse nation?

"We don’t know what it is to be an American because we’re made up of so many groups, people are afraid the country will disintegrate," says Alison Dundes Renteln, a professor at the University of Southern California who studies cultural defence in family and criminal cases.

There are no hard figures on how often cultural issues arise in family courts these days, but people who work there say it is frequent.

"It’s one of the biggest issues," said Judge Mary Sheffield of Phelps County, Missouri. Phelps recently stepped down as president of the National College of Probate Judges, a group which routinely handles family issues, including estate administration.

The impact of the country’s growing ethnic diversity was put at the top of the agenda recently by several prominent judicial groups, including the State Justice Institute, a federally-funded think tank for judges and the National Centre for State Courts, both in Washington.

But policy discussions can only go so far. In many areas of family court law, judges have wide discretion, using their own cultural compasses to navigate broadly worded statutes, such as those forbidding abuse or neglect.

Dealing with litigants from other countries brings new challenges to the job:

-When deciding custody cases, should judges take into consideration the stigma that children in some places, including parts of West Africa, face when they are in the care of their mother alone?

-In nations from Japan to Guatemala, parents who are viewed as healthy and nurturing share their bed with their young children, while some American judges consider that unwholesome. How can judges reconcile those views?

-At what age can children be left home alone - and for how long?

"Sometimes, families leave their children with children who they consider old enough to baby-sit, and then they wind up in court because you left an 8-year-old with an infant," Sheffield said.

Working as a probation officer and clerk in the Middlesex County family courts, just outside of Boston, Angelo Gomez Jr. knew judges who would give girls under the legal marriage age of 18 permission to marry.

Some judges would allow girls as young as 14 to marry, saying it was a matter of cultural custom. Other judges wouldn’t give their OK - they believed the girls were squandering their opportunities.

Although judges are allowed to grant exceptions to the marriage age limit, Gomez says, "the discrepancies between the judges is amazing."

Should culture figure into a judge’s decision? Court workers from attorneys to psychologists to judges themselves say the goal should be an educated judiciary - which can recognise the cultural context of people’s actions and take that information into account.

One recent afternoon in Bronx Family Court, a woman from Ivory Coast was desperately trying to get her children brought back from that West African country so she could have a custody trial against her husband, who she claimed was abusive. The woman was having trouble persuading the judge that the reason her own relatives in Africa wouldn’t help her retrieve the children was because they were ashamed she had left her husband.

"It’s hard for a judge to understand her powerlessness," said Dorchen Leidholdt, the woman’s attorney and the director of a battered women’s advocacy program in New York City called Sanctuary.

Judges from Missouri to Massachusetts concede that there are gaps in their cultural understanding, and they support state efforts to get them training.

"I’m not sure any of the judges here really know what the cultural differences are - there’s a big problem. But it’s just a matter of getting into school and learning," said Judge Haywood Barry, who recently retired after 24 years working on family issues in south-eastern Tennessee.

States in recent years have been offering more cultural diversity courses at judge training conferences. The sessions can explain the traditions of an immigrant group that is growing in a particular region, or they can answer judges’ cultural questions.

Tiffany Roper, a child advocate near the Mexican border, says she sees the ramifications of an uneducated judiciary all the time.

Some judges consider immigrant homes unstable because cousins and uncles come and go, she says. They’ll hint at problems like drug use, for example, in custody cases.

"They’ll say, ‘There’s a lot of traffic coming in and out of the home, if you know what I mean,"’ says Roper, co-director of the Children’s Rights Clinic at the University of Texas law school. In reality, she says, extended family members are as welcome as immediate relatives in Mexican homes.

In the southern California divorce case, judges found the Egyptian wedding document too vague and said putting the case in a religious official’s hands would not guarantee compliance with California law. But Dr. Shaban’s attorneys said the judges had no understanding of Islamic law, which they argued would guarantee a fair settlement for all under California statutes.

One judge wrongly said the wedding document was in Persian, not Arabic; another suggested the physician had essentially purchased his wife, which Shaban said reflected "nothing but ... ignorance."

But cultural ignorance can cut both ways. Many newcomers don’t understand the U.S. court system, or have been raised in places where judges are symbols of terror.

"What people expect affects what they ask for," says Leslye Orloff, an immigration law specialist at the NOW Legal Defence and Education Fund.

The bottom line, many judges say, is that people who live in America have to follow American rules.

"I’d try to recognise if someone has come from a different cultural background and grew up with a different idea of the norm," says Stahlin. That would help put the person’s behaviour in context, he says, but it probably wouldn’t change his ruling.

That’s what happened in the Shabans’ case.

The marriage document may have been a prenuptial in Egypt, but county and state appeals courts agreed that it wasn’t specific enough to be one under state law. Sharifa Shaban was ultimately awarded the standard share of a divorce in California, 50 per cent.

In U.S. dollars, that’s US dollars 1.5 million. (AP)

All Rich People Are Not Greedy, Selfish

By RRS

IS IT magic of globalisation? Or a mere showy gossip? One may be prompted to raise such questions seeing world’s richest man and top political elite brainstorming on the issue of eradicating the global poverty.

Yes, just a month back, billionaire Bill Gates, rock star Bono and US treasury secretary O’Neill held extensive discussion on how to fight global poverty at the World Economic Forum. Former Mexicon Ernesto Sedillo, senators Hillary Clinton and Patrich Leahy were also the participants of the international meet. As they were distilling arguments in a New York’s posh hotel, thousand of people across the world were chanting anti-globalisation slogans outside of the place.

The scene was not only contradictory but also ironical. Besides many connotations of the event, it was obvious that even the richest man has a feeling to the pathetic situation of majority people living in this planet."

Contrary to the popular views that the rich men are always greedy and selfish, these people tried to show that they could not be aloof to the critical problems faced by the mankind. Though they may be an exception in crowd, the ‘isms ’like capitalism and communism do not rule them. So Gates said: "The terms of international trade were too favourable to the rich world, a disparity that feeds resentments." It sounds he was not a follower of Mammon.

Can the wealthy Nepali learn from the Samaritan act of rich persons abroad?

For example, Gates and media mogul Ted Turner have donated money to the United Nations for the implementation of its health and social programmes. Turner has provided billions of dollars to the UN as the relief package to get rid of its from heavy debt.

Undoubtedly, Nepal is a poor country. But all Nepalis not poor. There are some who can be examples like Gates and Turner. There is a clear reason why this scribe wants to raise this matter now. This is high time for them to do charitable works.

Currently, the nation is reeling under various crises due to terror perpetrated by the Maoist terrorist. The government is urging the donors for more aid to fight terrorism and poverty. Now the government badly needs the support of its citizens in its fight against economic slump. For the affluent Nepalis, it is also an opportunity to prove their honesty for the country.

The question may arise as in which sector they do such work. There are many areas where they can contribute. One area could be assistance to the victims of the Maoist violent campaign. This scribe has a modest proposal for them. Recently, "PM Fund" has been set up with a view to provide relief to the security personnel and other people who were wounded or displaced by the Maoists. The Fund also helps to the widows and other persons badly affected by the brutal and barbarous attacks of the terrorists.

Now the government has decided to cut off some amount of money from the salary of the civil servants and employees for the Fund. Likewise, a football match is to be organised for the same purpose.

No doubt that it is duty of all Nepalis to assist the government. But is it wrong to say that some rich Nepalis should exhibit their generosity for the country at this critical hour? This is also an opportunity for them to surplus the concepts that the rich are selfish.