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Memoirs
Back to the
Village Dreams
by Satis Shroff
Once upon a time there was a kingdom in the Himalayas called Nepal.
People in the outside world also called it the Land of the Sherpas, the
Land of Yetis and Yaks, the Land of the famous Gurkhas and the Land of
the highest mountains in the world. It was ruled by a Gorkha king named
Prithvi Narayan Shah, who in 1768 brought the different kingdoms
together through his conquests. The rise of the House of Gorkhas (Shah
dynasty) has endured since 238 years till November 21,2006.
In 1974, I happened to be a part of a scenario known as the ‘Back to the
Village Campaign.’ It was a strange sight in the mountain kingdom of
Nepal, which was a forbidden land twenty-four years ago. University
professors, lecturers, bank managers, His Majesty’s section officers and
other cadres, who normally barked at peons in the offices of His
Majesty’s Government to bring them tea and snacks from the nearby
tea-shops, were digging with shovels, lifting stones, plastering up the
stone blocks with cement. The place was a remote locality of the Balambu
village panchayat. And the motley crowd of workers were urbanized
white-collar job-holders and citizens of Nepal, working shoulder to
shoulder with their rural brothers under the ‘Go to the Village
National Campaign’.
The national campaign had a branch office at Balambu, which was located
18-kilometres from Kathmandu along the Kathmandu-Thankot road. In 1975,
with a view to enable one to acquire first-hand knowledge regarding the
progress made by the government and semi-government workers in the
development tasks of the village panchayats in the suburbs of Kathmandu
Valley, a couple of journalists from the pro-government media: The
Rising Nepal, Gorkhapatra and Radio Nepal were invited to take part in a
surprise whirlwind tour of these areas. The ten panchayats where the Go
to the Village National Campaign was being implemented in the valley
were: Naikab-Nayabhanjyang, Purano Bhanjyang, Saritartha, Machhegaon,
Mahadevsthan, Thankot, Dahachowk - Chowketar and Ward-Bhanjyang.
The Go to the Village Campaign was the brainchild of King Mahendra, the
father of King Gyanendra Shah, and was launched in the Nepalese month of
Pousch 1, 2024 (Nepalese calendar). The National Campaign was intended
to mobilize the masses, taking into consideration the fact that Nepal
was predominantly an agriculture-based country. A country where the
village forms the most important unit. And every village had its five
elders who so-to-say ran the village.
It was believed in the palace circles, and in the panchayat government,
that if there was to be an awakening at all in the country, it had to
come from the rural masses of Nepal, and a so-called tentative ten-point
programme was implemented in the villages of the kingdom, in which His
Majesty’s civil servants, students and workers from the urban areas were
deputed to go to the villages and help ‘to strengthen and popularize the
sentiment of nationalism and national unity’. Nepal’s masses were to be
acquainted with the Panchayat Democracy, and thereby develop and further
strengthen it.
The panchas at the grassroot-level were required to stick to the
principles of the non-aligned foreign policy that the country had
adopted, a far sighted policy of the ruling Shah dynasty to maintain
their power. As long as you were non-aligned, you could rule a kingdom
as you pleased, and there were no allies who’d look over the shoulder
and protest when human and other rights were misused. The Kingdom of
Nepal had always been a special case as far as geo-politics were
concerned. India had a patronizing attitude towards Nepal because it was
the only Hindu Kingdom, and India’s Hindus and Buddhists flocked to
Kathmandu’s holy temples like Pashupati and Swayambhu. After all the
Goddess Sita from the Ramayana came from the Nepalese town of Janakpur.
Moreover, Gautama Buddha was a prince from Lumbini, another place of
pilgrimage for the Buddhists and Hindus. Thanks to the assistance of
Japan’s Zen and Shinto Buddhists, Lumbini is an attractive place now.
A campaign was to be started against corruption, injustice, oppression
and bungling of works that were of national reverence. The campaign was
to make the village population active and conscious. Efforts were to be
made to render assistance for the successful implementation of the
existing land-reforms, civil code, social reforms and development works
which had a national bearing. The idea of cooperatives was to be
expanded and propagated. The people were to be made aware of the
importance of the forests and wildlife, and were to be encouraged to
plant tree-saplings. Since agriculture was the mainstay of the country,
agricultural output was to be given greater priority. Cottage industries
were to be encouraged and extended in keeping with the blueprint of the
national campaign.
All this was the gist of the Go to the Village National Campaign, which
a Nepalese linguist named Tara Nath Sharma once dubbed as ‘an echo of
Mao Zedong’s repressive measure of closing down the universities and
sending teachers, intellectuals and writers to villages for mandatory
manual labor during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Showcase villages were taken as examples and the development under the
Panchayat government shown to the media. Prior to the implementation of
the National Campaign, modern medical facilities were unheard of in a
village like Satungal and the local population had to resort to the
shamans of the village, who would practice their ‘strange, archaic,
unscientific, mysterious and useless occult art on the simple
taboo-ridden villagers (sic).’ The exorcists and shamans didn’t demand
money for their services, but the villagers paid them in kind, by
sacrificing their best roosters, goats and other animals.
Things slowly changed and a dispensary was set up by the local unit of
the Campaign, and the doctors started coming on a three-day rotation to
the village and treated the patients. Sample medicines were distributed
‘whenever possible’ (most of the time it wasn’t possible), and the
dispensary trained volunteers from the ten panchayats of the area as
health assistants. Some of the diseases that were (and still are) common
tend to be: ascariasis, hepatitis, colitis, amoebiasis and malnutrition
in general. The villagers talked about the family-planning programme,
which was also active in the hamlet and the rural population of the
village had been vaccinated.
At Chowkitar village, a farmer showed the patch where he was growing
pear, plum and peach from the seeds provided by the Campaign and which
had been distributed by the local panchayat office. I had the impression
that simple Nepalese villagers didn’t know that the seeds that were
distributed by their respective panchayats could be used by them, and
they’d be free to make a profit out of the produce. Nobody had told them
anything about it. There was an unspoken loathing on the part of the
villagers, when it came to interactions with the government officials.
Many farmers seemed to have the notion that the products obtained
through the use of government seeds would be confiscated.
That the villagers were fully aware of the importance of the forests was
amply evident in the higher reaches of the villages, for the mountains
were dotted with saplings of Pinus roxburghii. The saplings were, of
course, provided by the Department of Forestry, and the planting was
done exclusively by the Campaign workers. The farmers were too
apprehensive about the consequences of bureaucratic involvement. Soil
erosion, which has been a prime factor for the lessening of yield in the
remote areas of Nepal, can be checked to a considerable extent through
the much-publicized tree-planting ventures. The Nepalese farmers were
shown films of the royal family King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, Crown
Prince Dipendra, and the other two princes Gyanendra and Dhirendra
planting saplings in different regions of Nepal to the accompaniment of
the ironical song ‘Nepal ko dhana, hariyo bana’ (Nepal’s wealth
is its forests).
If, for instance, there was a conflict regarding land-ownership- rights
in the Eastern part of Nepal, as in the case of my college-friend Karki,
the petition had to be filed in front of the Narayanhiti Royal Palace as
a last instance of justice on earth. Even though Mr. Karki was educated
in a college in Kathmandu, and could read and write in Nepali and
English, he was obliged to have a petition filed, and written, by an
official petition-writer, whose duty was to write a letter in longhand
with sentences that were standard examples in circumlocution and
archaic, courtly, subservient manners of expression. Having paid the
writer for his trouble and artistry, one had to leave the matter to the
Gods, and wait and pray that it be heard somewhere in the chambers of
the spacious, modern Narayanhiti palace. For Vishnu, who is also called
Budanilkantha in Nepal, reposes on his bed of serpents in the primeval
waters, couldn’t be bothered with such earthly matters. Vishnu’s
preserving and restoring power has, in the past, been manifested to the
world in a variety of forms through his incarnations.
During a visit to Lalitput I met Tschering Lama, a lean, bespectacled,
restaurant-owner, who’d bought a plot of land smack on the shore of the
beautiful Phewa Lake in Pokhara (Central Nepal). He was extremely proud
of his new acquisition. Sometime later, when he actually wanted to build
a house on his patch of virgin Nepalese earth, he came to know that the
land definitely hadn’t belonged to the man he’d bought it from, and that
his purchase document wasn’t worth a rupee. The land was the property of
the Royal Family, and as such, not for sale to the commoners.
Mr. Lama was awfully disappointed, frustrated and depressed, because his
life-savings had gone in this bargain. He’d had plans to build a lodge
for the foreign tourists and also cater to their gastronomic delights.
And there he was, a broken man with a glum expression on his face. He
did have his smart attitude though, and that’s one trait I really admire
among the Nepalese from the mountains. They keep a stiff upper lip.
You can see this smartness even under desperate situations amongst the
hill-tribes and the Gurkha war-veterans from Flanders to the Falklands.
The Nepalese are indeed a stoic, proud and sympathetic people, and a
visitor to Nepal notices it, and learns to cherish it after a journey in
the teeming cities, crowded trains and blazing plains of the Indian
subcontinent. If you’ve had the pleasure of traveling around in India
with its maddening crowds, a visit to Nepal can be so exhilarating. Due
to the tourism trade, the tourist or traveler might be pestered by
curio-sellers and money-changers in Kathmandu’s famous Freak Street (Jochhey
Tole, as the Newars call it) and at the bazaars in Thamel. But the
people in the countryside are grateful if, and when, they have visitors.
These visitors were, before the tourists came en masse, travelers,
ascetic holy men (sadhus), monks and pilgrims, or trading Thakalis and
Tibetans with mule and yak caravans, and it was normal for the travelers
to be questioned about their heritage, caste, birthplace and so forth.
A Nepalese invariably asks, ‘tapaiko jat kay ho?’ Which caste do
you belong to? This is because the caste-system and tribe-clans are
well-established in Nepal, and every Nepalese name also bears evidence
to his or her caste or tribe. For instance: Birendra Bahadur Karki. The
first name is this case is Birendra, and then comes ‘Bahadur’, which
means ‘courageous’ because all Nepalese males would like their sons to
be brave and courageous. And finally ‘Karki’, which denotes that the
person belongs to the sub-caste of the Chettris, the second highest
order in the Nepalese Hindu hierarchy.
The life of a Hindu, from birth till his remains are turned to ashes, is
saturated with religion. Everything he or she does, even eating and
drinking, is connected with a religious ceremony. Whereas India has
thrown away the shackles of colonialism, as well as the privilege of
hundreds of Rajas and Maharajas, because it is a secular state in
accordance to its constitution, Nepal still remains Hindu, perhaps due
to the fact that its doors were closed to the outside world, and foreign
influence kept at bay. But in this Himalayan enclave which has been
conserved by dynasties of Shah kings and Ranas who usurped the throne,
there are also other ethnic Nepalese who practice other religions, like
Buddhism, Animism, Islam etc. India has solved the problems of
underprivileged tribes and castes by giving them the status of
‘scheduled’ and has created scholarships from the school-level to the
University level.
The reason why the Maobadis under Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Comrade
Prachandra, became stronger in West Nepal (Rukum, Rolpa, Jajarkot und
Salyan) was because of Nepal’s general poverty, corruption, nepotism and
lack of perspective. Only a small section of the Nepalese population
benefited from the schools, colleges und universities and the blessing
of Nepal-aid from foreign countries and mountain-tourism. The Maobadis
are fighting now for the banishment of monarchy and removal of the
feudal structures in the society.
In Nepal it was always difficult for a poor dalit (lower caste) or
someone from the hill-tribes to set foot in Kathmandu, and give them a
good education. It is a sad fact that only the rich can send their
children to the best English schools in Kathmandu, Darjeeling, Kalimpong
or Gorakhpur. The rest of the Nepalese parents sent their children to
the government-run schools, where the standard of education was
miserable. Nevertheless, thousands of Nepalese students pass their
School Leaving Certificate exams and go to colleges and universities,
with an English handicap.
In the Hindu society of Nepal, the King has always been the patriarch,
who swears to his descent from ancient Vedic heroes who were worshipped
by the people. A Newsweek interview with the former King Birendra Shah
also didn’t help to throw new light into this ancient tradition, for His
Majesty coughed up a diplomatic reply and that was it. The Bada Raj
Guru, a Brahmin, was the first State Minister in ancient times, though
the Nepalese Raj Guru has still retained his power, because in this
Hindu set-up every governmental or stately decision is associated with a
religious ceremony. For instance when the King of Nepal leaves his
Narayanhiti Palace and visits his own country or other countries, the
court astrologer is consulted to choose an auspicious day. The King is
for the Hindus, not only the protector and preserver of ancient Hindu
culture, but is also a manifestation of tradition and development in the
Hindu world.
In September 1995, I was astonished how far the winds of democracy had
swayed into Kathmandu valley. In Kathmandu Valley there are three former
kingdoms: Kathmandu, Bhaktapur (Bhadgaon) and Patan (Lalitpur). At the
Rato Bangala, an elite school in Patan smack in the middle of the Sri
Durbar, run by a dear family I personally know, I had the privilege of
taking part at a school theatre and there were parents and guests from
Kathmandu’s upper society. A literary natak (play) in Nepali was staged,
in which the protagonists played the role of the people of Kirtipur
during the times of Prithivi Narayan Shah. The entire play was from the
viewpoint of the besieged and cheated Kirtipurians, and not from the
angle of the attacking and marauding Gorkha king in 1768.
I found it rather innovative and courageous on the part of Patan’s
man-of-letters Mr. Kamal Mani Dixit, in comparison to the pre-democracy
days when everything was controlled, and lips feared to speak about
human rights and democracy. The people of Kirtipur had put up a
brilliant fight in those days, but were defeated, and the males of this
brave kingdom, located on a hillock near the Tribhuvan University, had
to pay a terrible price. The Shah king ordered the lips and ears of the
Kirtipurians to be cut. Only the traditional wind-instrument players
retained their lips and ears. It was a bloody affair with a huge pile of
lips and ears. The barbaric treatment meted out to the Kirtipurians
spread like wildfire in the other parts of Kathmandu Valley and soon
Patan, Bhaktapur and Kathmandu fell.
If you are planning to go to Nepal soon, do visit the brave town of
Kirtipur, near Kathmandu. The triple-roofed Bagh Bhairab temple walls in
Kirtipur are still decorated with swords and shields of the Kirtipurian
troops defeated by Prithivi Narayan Shah’s victorious Gorkha army. There
is also an image of Vishnu astride the Garuda. Underneath you’ll see the
elephant-headed God Ganesh and Kumar. The Nepalese king is also revered
as an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. I don’t want to sound like
Borat, but blood sacrifices are made on two auspicious days: Tuesday and
Saturday mornings. Another place in Kathmandu valley where such
blood-sacrifices are made is in the temple of the Southern-Kali, where
the Nepalese cook their lunch and have a feast after the temple visit.
I had a chance to meet King Birendra at the reception in La Redoute
(Bonn) and had a small talk with such niceties as ‘How long are you in
Germany? When are you returning?’ At the Graf Zeppelin Hotel in
Stuttgart and Echterdingen airport, where I had the opportunity of
handing Queen Ayeshwarya, who was a fellow poet despite her cruel role
during the democracy revolution in 1990, a bouquet of flowers which I’d
brought along from Freiburg im Breisgau. The late Madame Busak, the
Stuttgarter Royal Nepalese honorary consul, was also there, in addition
to Herrn Späth, the then Minister-Präsident of Baden-Württemberg. The
Nepalese anthem never sounded more nostalgic then, and the traditionally
quaint, triangular Hindu Nepalese flags fluttered in Stuttgart’s windy
airport as the Bundesgrenzschutz played the Nepalese and German anthems.
In the meantime, Nepal’s multi-party government and the Maobadis have
signed a peace accord and declared a formal end to a ten-year war of
terror that killed more than 13,000 Nepalese. The agreement paves the
way for the Maoists to give up their weapons and be confined to
UN-monitored camps. An assembly will draft a new constitution and decide
the future of the King Gyanendra Shah’s dynasty as the monarch of Nepal.
One thing is definite: the Maoists and the other communists don’t want
the 200 year old monarchy anymore. What is encouraging, and curious, is
that they have vowed to honor the outcome, even if the assembly decides
to maintain a ceremonial monarch, stripped of his powers. A new wind
blows in the Himalayas. Will the Maobadis give up all their arms like
the Khampas (Tibetan freedom fighters from Eastern Tibet who’d come to
Langtang) did in 1974, after they were confronted by the Royal Gurkhas?
With a little bit of monitoring from the UN and Swiss officers, it might
be possible to fill up a few containers, but will all the Maobadis
surrender their arms? We can only hope and trust them to do so.
What will happen to the angry, restless, mobilized Maobadi fighters and
child soldiers? Will they go back to their schools, if not destroyed, or
for treatment in case they are traumatized? Will there be social
programs for those who suffered under the atrocities of the government
troops and the Maobadis? There’s a lot to be done in this country under
the shadow of the Himalayas. Will it be a back to the village dream,
after the triumphal march of the Maobadis into Kathmandu, heads and
hands smeared with red vermilion powder and automatic guns in their
hands? Or will the new government use the manpower resources by
mobilizing and subliming their youthful energies, towards the
development of new jobs and a new economy?
January 7,
2007
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