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| Sunday, 7 May 2006 |
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Features |  |
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Shangri-Lost The mountain nation is on fire amid the Himalayan splendour, PETER DALGLISH says, fuelled by poverty and a rigid caste system Over the past 20 years I have worked with bruised and battered street children confined to jails and mental institutions, with girls struggling to read and write in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, and with semi-nomadic boys living on abandoned oil barges on the White Nile in South Sudan. I arrived in Nepal in October, 2002, expecting an easier assignment, with opportunities for trekking and mountain biking in a country associated in the public imagination with the kingdom of Shangri-La. But from my first encounters with destitute girls and boys employed in the nation's many brick kilns, carpet factories and coal mines, I knew that modern Nepal was in reality a paradise lost, characterized by heart-wrenching poverty and plagued by a rigid caste system that has been aptly termed the "apartheid of South Asia." While political commentators sought to reassure Nepal's pampered urban elite that they had nothing to fear from the 11-year-old Maoist insurgency, my frequent travels into the heartland of the country revealed a nation on fire. The past two weeks of political protests across Nepal, bringing tens of thousands of ordinary people into the streets of Kathmandu to demonstrate against autocratic rule, forced a tired and drawn King Gyanendra finally to relent. In a televised address just before midnight this past Monday, the beleaguered monarch announced that the parliament dissolved in May, 2002, would reconvene, and democracy would be restored. The book opens on June 1, 2001, the day that Crown Prince Dipendra, allegedly high on drugs and alcohol, murdered the reigning king and queen and more than nine members of his immediate family. Thapa describes an uncaring, dysfunctional ruling class, that turns a blind eye to signs of social decay and corruption in its ranks. Even as a member of a privileged and highly educated family, the author develops empathy for the plight of Nepal's so-called "low-caste" citizens, who have become the driving force of the Maoist revolution. "If I had grown up in one of these villages, and were young, uneducated, unqualified for employment of any kind, and as a female, denied equality with men - hell, I would have joined the Maoists, too," she announces after visiting rebel strongholds. Such frank language likely contributed to Forget Kathmandu being taken off the shelves in Nepal's bookstores by government authorities, and led to the book being traded as contraband, more difficult to obtain than the hash and marijuana offered up to tourists in Thamel, Kathmandu's unofficial backpacker headquarters. I received my copy wrapped in plain brown paper, and shared it only with friends who swore a blood oath not to reveal their source. But Nepal remains a country of extraordinary beauty, home to seven of the 10 highest mountains on earth, and the domain of many rare plants, birds and animals that benefit from the rugged isolation provided by the Tibetan Plateau. Peter Dalglish is a lawyer and serves as an adviser to the Swiss NGO
Terre des Hommes on working children and child soldiers. |
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