Inviting 'Evan the terrible'!

One has to confess that Nepal's ethnic communities do possess certain fundamental grievances and have every right to demand its redress from the State. Likewise, it has got to be accepted that the State that is confined to Kathmandu and its environs only cared little to address grumbling of various sorts that have been plaguing the communities residing largely in remote and mountainous topography of the Kingdom.

In this way communal and ethnic grievances that need urgent attention from the state could be found from the length and breadth of the country. It is not that a particular ethnic community or for that matter a special Nepali tribe has been hit hard by the negligence of the state. The fact is that there could be several other genuine tribes and ethnic communities that need special attention from the establishment in Kathmandu in order to uplift their living standard and above all in order to make them feel that they too were an inalienable component of the state.

Understandably, Nepal as a nation-state is composed of these very neglected components as well. Their resentment towards the state is logical. These communities have every right to demand proper and respectable solutions to their long-standing grievances. To this extent we would favor their anger towards the state as genuine which has so far not been kind enough towards their legitimate difficulties and by the same token the states' carelessness towards them that has been continuing till to date since the very first days of the existence of Nepal as a nation-state.

The advantage of a democratic system is that it allows grievances to surface. The system based on equality, liberalism and fraternity make possible the issues to come into the open and also possesses democratic solutions to the issues. Democratic solutions, needless to say, have elements that brush aside the use of aggressive methods for arriving at its real and just solutions.

However, what is irrational and improper is that to get one's demands met with resorting to the use of violent mechanisms. Violent behavior and violent methods could in the beginning appear the shortest route to arriving at solutions; however, the mechanism adopted thus is not an everlasting one. The best way is to sit together and initiate talks with the establishment and get the solutions to the real issues that need urgent attention from the state. Care must be taken that any crazy method in the process used to pressurize the state should not find any place for alien forces to penetrate into our internal affairs. The spirit should be to sort out the differences on our own rejecting third and the ugly faces to come in. History is on record to have exhibited aplenty of examples wherein foreign powers when invited to get out of the internal mess of one's own country have either ceased to exist or at best remained as the stooge of the country or for that matter the powers thus invited to meddle in one's internal affairs.

It is in this light we are bit apprehensive of the sudden emergence of some Tigers or Lions or whatever it is in the Nepal's Terai belt in the recent weeks. Reports reveal that it is a fragment of the original Maoists group which felt that the leadership under which they had been working wholeheartedly too had been no less than those who had been treating the terai community as second class citizens. The Tigers upon taking birth recently have reportedly been targeting cadres of their own mother organization of the recent past.

If this is true then what could be concluded is that the Maoists mother group is a divided lot with chances of further split.

All said and done, the Tigers of the Terai must not get lured by alien powers, which would wish very much to use them for their exclusive hidden national interests. We have in our neighborhood forces that do not wish to see a united Nepal for a variety of reasons and the tragedy has been that we more often than not have been knowingly or even unknowingly been used by alien forces. Our weakness lies here. When we become weak, others will surely wish to benefit from our weaknesses.

We are Nepali. We will remain a Nepali. We have to fight with a Nepali government for the redressed of genuine Nepali problems. A Nepali has every right to go in disagreement with the other Nepali in order to secure one's place and standing in the comity of one's own society. However, what would be really a historical blunder of the of the highest dimension if the Tigers seek clandestine support from alien forces in order to penalize the central Nepali government located in Kathmandu. If done so would be a classic example of inviting "Evan the Terrible" for the moment but that would cost dear for the rest of the time.

Let's not forget the emergence of the LTTE of Sri Lanka. Let's go into the past and remember which force on earth supported the birth of the separatist LTTE. And by the same token let's also not forget as to how the LTTE later pounced on the one who had remained instrumental in giving birth to the LTTE at the very first place.

The communication should be clear. Let the Tigers understand that we are first Nepalese and then divided on communal and ethnic lines. An enemy in one's own society is far better than an alien friend. The internal enemy could be convinced. The unidentified friend from an alien land will have no limits to his or her desires.

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