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ANARCHY |
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ANARCHY |
Does It Work? Nepal, a colorful plethora
of diversity, risks being led along the wrong path By AKSHAY SHARMA Time - 3:00pm A group of students pour into the streets
of Durbar Marg and head to a nearby garage to buy about four tires. "They come over
and pay 350 rupees per tire," said Samrat KC, the owner of the garage in front of
Tri-Chandra Campus. "And as the mob gets agitated, they come over and try to loot the
other tires from my garage. All of the tires have become useless." The students set fire to the tires. As the
flames begin to pick up, more come out and chant slogans against the government. They
carry over dry wood, construct a barricade, and start to throw stones at vehicles coming
up the road. The police cordon off the area and divert heavy traffic.
As the going gets tough, the police
in their body armor move up toward the barricades the students have created. Through a
hand-held speaker, the inspector warns the students of the force he would be compelled to
use to quell the protests. As the police move forward and douse the
flames, the students run into the nearby college grounds and start pelting them with
stones. Some stones strike the fiberglass shields the police officers have. Over the days, students across the country
burned tires and created roadblocks, sometimes by setting fire to the trees. Many
Kathmanduites wondered where the stones and bricks come from. "There are two lorries
in Shanker Dev Campus and each brick costs about 2 rupees," a student leader told
SPOTLIGHT. "So what we basically do is buy a brick and split it into four or five
pieces." The clashes on the streets of Kathmandu
created havoc in the educational system, leaving many wondering what kind of culture the
country had adopted. It is apparent that the students have struck fear into the hearts and
minds of the local population. "We in Nepal, a colorful plethora of
four castes and 36 sub-castes, are a vulnerable target for anarchism and we might be
exploited in the wrong path," says an expert. Security personnel said the attacks were
carried out by anarchists. "A group of young men came running and threw petrol
bombs," one police officer said. But it was propaganda that did its best to keep the
people up-to-date with the events. Nepal is laced with one foot in the 21st
century and the other in the 16th century. "The democratic system is the country is
in crisis so we will continue to fight to preserve it," said student leader Gagan
Thapa. The variety of activities carried in Nepal
by the student wings of political parties seems to reflect the attitudes that
characterized the anarchist in the later nineteenth century that was already prevalent at
the London Congress. Some thought in terms of conspiratorial activities, some held a
revolutionary movement must always spring from a broad upsurge of people. "To many young people, the name
"anarchist" has a romantic ring: to older it signifies beards and bombs. It is a
system of social thought which aims at fundamental changes in the structures of the
society and particularly at the replacement of authoritarian states by cooperation of
individuals. As such anarchism has a respectful pedigree," said political scientist
Ramesh Nepal. The current scenario in Nepal reflects the
events that took place in the West between 1886 and 1889, the idea of propaganda by deed
and various aspects of revolutionary violence for copious discussions, as it had been
observed to have occurred at different times in Nepal. It was a time when anarchist groups
in Germany, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Italy were most of the focus was on the
distribution of products of labor. Europe had has its share of anarchists
until 1907, after plans for a congress had been frustrated by the police in 1900, that
they finally began to assemble their own international. During the intervening period,
perhaps in reaction to the organizational complexity of the syndicate wing of the
movement, the purist anarchist had tended to stress the pattern of individual militant
group acting autonomously. |
Send your feedback to the
editor: spotligh@mos.com.np |
