I visited Nepal for the first time in three years the Summer of 1993. During my stay in the country, I wrote to a number of my friends abroad. This is a reproduction of the first snail mail I sent my good and dear friend E in the US. It provides a glimpse into what Kathmandu was like then.
Oli-garchy utterly failed the people of Nepal during these unprecendented times of the Coronavirus pandemic. But Oli will rise again...if Nepali people have their way, just as Deuba has now risen...for the fifth time in just 30 years!
I avoided being part of Nepali associations and organizations all the years I lived abroad. Luckily, that wasn't too difficult most of the time because most places I lived in neither had any sizeable Nepali population nor organizations.
One reason behind the avoidance was a discovery I made about many Nepali men -- you can take them out of Nepal, but you can't take Nepal out of them!
When left is right and right is left; when might is right and right is wrong; and when the wrong get their way and are held is high esteem, what is left?!
I'll tell you what is left...Nepal.
You are left with the country of Nepal...where pride is the new shame!
A brief history of the tradition of bandh (shut downs) in the country and how this tool employed by everyone from political parties to trade unions to even disgruntled families, along with the politicization of education, have robbed many youths of their potential. The youths, invariably, were always the ones mobilized to enforce them!
These extracts from Unleashing Nepal describe how, through education, the Rana Regime and the Shah autocrats furthered their ethnic and nationalistic agenda, enabling the social, political, and economic advancement of the hill so-called high caste Hindus (Khas Aryas) while oppressing -- and hindering the advancement of -- the others.