Birth is a beginning…not an end, unlike how the Caste System in Nepal treats it.
If you are struggling with mental health issues—especially when those issues are fueled by the bleakness of the world around you—one coping mechanism is to look for the funny side of things. Doing so allows you to laugh when you might otherwise spend all your time crying.
This is an account of a coping mechanism I adopted while in Nepal and how, in the process, I ended up documenting the shocking level of patriarchy and sexism that exists there.
Since the formation of the modern Nepalese state via the expansion of the Gorkha kingdom approximately 250 years ago, the country has been internally colonized by hill-origin, so-called high-caste Hindu men through the poor, minimal, and selective education of the population. Consequently, all four pillars of democracy have remained monopolized by this demographic, even throughout the nation's thirty-year democratic experimentation. This data-driven analysis details their continued hegemony over the Executive branch. Until the population attains a significantly higher level of education, these entrenched power structures are unlikely to yield.
If the data is to be believed, Nepalis register for and show up to the polls in amazingly high numbers for a country where voting is restricted to a single day, must be done in person in one's constituency, and often relies on the recognition of symbols over names. While some see this as a sign of deep-rooted trust in the democratic process, that trust is tragically misplaced. The truth is simpler and far more cynical: Elections in Nepal are rigged. They are a 'Big Fix'—manufactured by national political parties to preserve the dominance of the old Khas-Arya establishment.
Autocratic Shah monarchy and feudal Rana oligarchy entrenched structural discrimination and systemic casteism in Nepal for more than two centuries, structurally privileging the ruling caste, the hill so-called high caste Hindus. Shackled by their legacies in the twenty-first century, Nepal still struggles to make progress. But, even as challenging and daunting as fighting against and correcting them in order to create a just and equitable Nepali society for all may appear, there are ways forward. Education has a major role to play.
In a three-post blog series, I am reproducing the answers Grok 3 provided on the subject. This one--the third and final one in the series--details the way forward.
It's virtually impossible to address a social ill without the society first acknowledging it for what it is. When the education system does NOT do that, what chance is there at all of there even being a discourse about it, forget take steps to address it?! That is the situation with the caste system in Nepal.
A vast majority of poorly educated Nepalis raise their sons by pampering and pandering to them. Consequently, Nepali society ends up with an inordinately high percentage of arrogant and ignorant males who believe they deserve -- or are entitled to -- all the male privileges society affords them. One entitlement they believe in is to the bodies of females.
Of course, quality education for the masses is the solution.
