Representing the Khawas

Bhotani Devi Khawas is the only member representing the Khawas community in the CA. Bhotani Devi came from a politically and socially aware family. Her uncle was a deputy Pradhan Pancha during the Panchayat and her father-in-law, who was also affi liated with the Panchayat, once gave shelter to the landless on public land. He joined the Nepali Congress in 1980 and was jailed for seven days with Nepali Congress leader Krishna Prasad Bhattarai.

Parenthood planning for mother-child wellbeing

ASMITA MANANDHAR-When Sabeena Parveen, 28, wanted a sibling for her five-year-old daughter, she was concerned about her chances of conceiving for the second time. Due to the complications in her first pregnancy, she was worried about added difficulties she might face. To add to her woes, she wasn’t able to conceive despite numerous efforts for six months. It was then she and her husband decided to have an expert’s supervision for her pregnancy planning.

“We decided to plan from the beginning. So the doctor checked my menstrual cycle and advised on the right time for me to conceive,” says Parveen, who is now a happy mother of a nine-month-old toddler.

Restorative justice

Gopal Dahit/Sakun Sherchan- Agradhikar literally translates as “pro-original rights” and prescribes not “preferential rights” but “restorative justice” for citizens who have been oppressed and subjugated with forced nationalism causing the destruction of the original practices of communities and leading to discriminatory and unlawful human rights practices. Agradhikar as restorative justice has been the touch word in the language radar of the Adivasi Janajati expression of self-determination. Agradhikar can be defined as reclaiming the inheritance of wasted social, symbolic, cultural and economic values.
The Adivasi Janajatis are evaluating through dialogue and expressing by story-telling their experiences of discrimination, marginalisation and exploitation and how they can be partners in the state building process as equal citizens. They reminisce about the sequential and structural discrimination of Adivasi Janajatis, Dalits and other marginalised groups demanding social, political, economic and educational opportunities. Such rights as these marginalised identities have been demanding are specified in the declaration of UNDRIP, ILO Convention 169, CERD and CBD Convention 1992.

Learning to Loathe

CK LAL- Before Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas (1916-1999), it was popularly believed that there was no way of upward mobility in the phenomenally rigid Hindu caste system. Backing his hypothesis with meticulous observations and rigorous analyses, Srinivas claimed that a slow but perceptible process in India allowed “low” Hindu castes, tribal and other peripheral groups to change their customs, rituals, ideologies and ways of life in the direction of high—the so-called “twice-born”—Varnas. The perceptive Kannadiga termed the process ‘Sanskritization’ in the early 1950s. He also came up with catchphrases that encapsulate complex processes of society and politics, such as ‘Brahmanization’ and ‘vote bank.’

Learning of one’s candidacy on the radio

Rukmini Chaudhary

Rukmini Chaudhary was only 12/13 years old during the popular People’s Movement of 1990. Her father Krishna Gurau Th aru was the Regional Chairperson of the Nepali Congress, Constituency-4 in Chitawan. Th ere used to be torch rallies, and strikes under his leadership. She was responsible for informing her father about the arrival of the police while he used to conduct meetings at home. Other than during meetings, her father never stayed home. Police would take them to the police state t question about the whereabouts of their father. However, despite several attempts by the offi cers, they never divulged any information.
She recalls, ‘Although they would try to lure us by giving us food, we did not say anything. When our uncle came to take us back, we would be released.’ Rukmini’s father was actively involved with for Nepali Congress for some 40 years. It was her father’s political involvement that inspired Rukmini to get involved in politics, accept challenges and face them with determination. But after she married Sanatan Devi Satgauwa Th aru of Deukhuri, Dang in 1997, she spent a few years as a housewife adjusting to her new home. Her husband was in a technical assistant post in the VDC. She says, ‘When my husband’s job was going to be permanent, it was politicized.

#Occupy Baluwatar

ARPAN SHRESTHA- Only the perpetrators of the horrendous TIA rape and robbery are perhaps not enraged with the ugly abuse of powers against a young returnee immigrant who owned forged travel documents, the news of which transpired into peak tolerance for many. Similar cases could have happened before and there are definitely many untold, unreported and unfiled cases of violence against women (VAW) in Nepal. Given the context, how do voters across the divided society unite and fight for law, order and justice without having to take shelter under donors, I/NGOs and political parties, non-profits or even religious outfits?

This piece doesn’t intend to show a roadmap to the question just asked and nor exerts the resignation of authorities on moral grounds because in a moral society, resignation would’ve come voluntarily. But isn’t our political climate too obvious? What follows is strictly a close observation of what was initially a drop-in petition to the Caretaker Prime Minister (CPM) to take immediate action against the accused of the TIA rape case and how it evolved to the yet evolving ‘organic and leaderless’ movement that is now OccupyBaluwatar.