Received: from mp.cs.niu.edu (mp.cs.niu.edu [131.156.1.2]) by library.wustl.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id QAA02573; Wed, 17 Dec 1997 16:40:19 -0600 (CST) Received: by mp.cs.niu.edu id AA11110 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for nepal-dist); Wed, 17 Dec 1997 14:14:29 -0600 Received: by mp.cs.niu.edu id AA11105 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for nepal-list); Wed, 17 Dec 1997 14:14:27 -0600 Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 14:14:27 -0600 Message-Id: <199712172014.AA11105@mp.cs.niu.edu> Reply-To: The Nepal Digest <NEPAL@cs.niu.edu> From: The Editor <nepal-request@cs.niu.edu> Sender: "Rajpal J.P. Singh" <A10RJS1@cs.niu.edu> Subject: The Nepal Digest - December 17, 1997 (4 Poush 2054 BkSm) To: <NEPAL@cs.niu.edu> Content-Type: text Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 248
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The Nepal Digest Tues Dec 17, 1997: Poush 4 2054BS: Year6 Volume69 Issue3
SEASON'S GREETINGS! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Today's Topics:
Prejudice IV: The Story of the Nepali Plains
Armed Forces and the Constitutional Framework
Green Tara Foundation
Nepalese Activities in UK, Sagarmatha Times
Volunteer Work
Graduate study in pokhara
Khoj Khabar
******************************************************************************
* TND (The Nepal Digest) Editorial Board *
* -------------------------------------- *
* *
* The Nepal Digest: General Information tnd@nepal.org *
* Chief Editor: Rajpal JP Singh a10rjs1@mp.cs.niu.edu *
* (Open Position) *
* Columnist: Pramod K. Mishra pkm@acpub.duke.edu *
* Sports Correspondent: Avinaya Rana avinayar@touro.edu *
* Co-ordinating Director - Australia Chapter (TND Foundation) *
* Dr. Krishna B. Hamal HamalK@dist.gov.au *
* Co-ordinating Director - Canada Chapter (TND Foundation) *
* Anil Shrestha SHRESTHA@CROP.UOGUELPH.CA *
* SCN Correspondent: Open Position *
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* TND Archives: http://library.wustl.edu/~listmgr/tnd/ *
* TND Foundation: http://www.nepal.org tnd@nepal.org *
* WebSlingers: Pradeep Bista,Naresh Kattel,Robin Rajbhandari *
* Rabi Tripathi, Prakash Bista tnd@nepal.org *
* *
* +++++ Food For Thought +++++ *
* *
* "Heros are the ones who give a bit of themselves to the community" *
* "Democracy perishes among the silent crowd" -Sirdar_Khalifa *
* *
******************************************************************************
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To: The Nepal Digest <nepal@cs.niu.edu>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 06:05:23 +0530
Subject: These are topics.
From: kantipur@juno.com (Himal Ghimire)
Reading Nima Puri's article published in The Nepal Digest (TND) of 4th December
1997, I could not stop myself from writing this response. before i
proceed, i would like to tell you that this is not any kind of personal
attack.
I totally agree with you that there are people who hate government and
politics, but arn't there people who like it? You ask if we are running
out of topic, but answer this question. arn't political and governmental
issues a topic. I Look at TND as an electronic paper focused on the
debatable issues regarding our country Nepal. I may be wrong, but if i am
right i don't see any other topic that is more important than government
and politics in our country. In the past 7 years there have been 2
general elections and six priministers. On top of that ministers have now
started a system of changing the Inspector General of Police (IGP) evry
time the government changes. Soon we might see a day when the Supereme
Court judge and even the king will be changed along with the change in
government. There are plenty of issues like these that arte going on in
our country and you what poems and stories in this newspaper. i do agree
that one a week or once a month is fime but how often do you want that.
I personally think that it is better if people like you, who are abroad
start thinking about the political benifit and how to develope the
country instead of expressing the desire to read poems and stories. Come
on let's be realistic. let's think for a second -- arn't those Nepalese
who are here supposed to be the future of Nepal?
Keep it up TND. this is all i have to say.
Himal Ghimire
8346 Willowdale Way
Fair Oaks, CA 95628
Phone : (916) 967 - 7375
e-mail : kantipur@juno.com
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Date: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 00:26:22 -0500 (EST)
From: "Pramod K. Mishra" <pkm@acpub.duke.edu>
To: The Nepal digest Editor <nepal-request@cs.niu.edu>
Subject: Prejudice IV: The Story of the Nepali Plains
Dear Editor,
Ever since I gained awareness of my surroundings as a child in a
Rajbanshi tribe in the hinterland of Morang, an eastern plains district
in Nepal, I knew two things. One, that there was Desh somewhere in the
south, where my mother and I couldn't go, and there was Morang in whose
jungles we lived; and, two, that I was an abominable nothing, not a
Deshwali Pannit like my father, who spent much time in his Desh; nor one
of the hill men, a few among whom lived in scattered wooden houses in the
clearings of the jungle as farmers and repaired to their hills at the
onset of dust, heat, and malaria.
It was only later I knew that I was not even a Rajbanshi, either,
one of whose courtyards we lived in and whose language I spoke, and a
few among whom had become my mother's mother, brothers, and uncle by
faith and so mine as well. Nor was I like any other Deshi who set up
"kirana" stores or worked as fishermen, carpenters, barbers, and seasonal
workers, such as planters, weeders, jute washers, and harvesters. A few
literate among the petty traders had become our masters at what later
became the village school named after the then Crown Prince of Nepal.
When I walked through the village bazaar in my bow legs to go to
or come from school, the women of these Deshi fishermen and carpenters
pointed their accusing fingers at me and whispered and gestured among
themselves about some unspeakable social affliction I was said to have
been born with. For some unspeakable reason, I was considered
unspeakably worse than everyone around me; the nature of my predicament
such that it could only be whispered about and expressed in gestures.
But Autumn Moon, the club-footed, knock-kneed boy, himself a
laughing stock among the village children for his limp, openly called me
names and made me mad. And because he was physically weaker than I, I
very often kicked, pushed, and thrashed him for insulting me. My
thrashing, however, had no long-term effect on his filthy mouth. But the
precise nature of my affliction I didn't know at the time--neither did I
have the courage nor the wherewithal to investigate it. As for knowing
the "nothing" part of my being, there was nothing to know about nothing.
I was just a grimy, snotty, bow-legged ugly little boy with no
claim on anything--no language, no culture, no religion, no family, no
house, nothing. I had already spent time by then as an untouchable
urchin in the cell of a police station along side other adult criminals
near Calcutta. So in this unspeakable vacuum of nothingness in the
Nepali jungle, I became curious about others who had something and were
somebody.
Only much later, when I became a college teacher in Biratnagar,
did I know that the Rajbanshis, the Dhimals, the Tharus, the Gangais,
the Satars, the Khabas--the tribes in the Nepali plains--were not the
only inhabitants of the Terai. Although I had met in later years a
teacher or two among these non-tribal Madhesis at the village school
whose alumnus I was, I didn't know them well. It was only in this
college in Biratnagar that I knew the plains dwellers from mostly the
Maithili-speaking districts of Saptari, Mohottari, Dhanusha, Siraha, and
so on, who were derisively called Madise by the dominant hill dwellers.
These college teachers were not the tribesmen. Far from it.
They came from the same castes and languages as people from the other
side of the border, people I had met and lived with in my college days on
the banks of the Ganges. These people came from all castes and taught
more than one subject. There were high castes and low; some taught the
humanities and social sciences, some the sciences (Later I found out that
at one time at Trichandra college, Kathmandu, different men with their
last names as Jha taught Sanskrit, Newari, Nepali, English at the same
time, and had there been Hindi and Maithili as subjects, I have no doubt
that these would have been taught by other Jhas, as they did on the banks
of the Ganges).
The Brahmans among these were more fierce, more aware of their
social and political status. These people felt caught in the web of
Nepali politics of de facto discrimination against the inhabitants of the
Terai. They resented being called Madise, definitely a pejorative term
when pronounced with a twist of the tongue and bitterness, ethnic malice
and hatred in one's mouth by a hill person. These plain dwellers
preferred to call themselves Madhesi, as though the "h" instead of
nothing and 'i" instead of "e" made hell of a lot of difference, changed
their political and cultural status. Indeed, I, too, felt that the word
"Madise" carried in it a pejorative connotation, like nigger, kike, or
faggot for certain groups in the United States, because it was used by
the dominant people, the Nepali-speaking people of the hills, to hurt the
Madhesis and look down upon them. These people from the hills, by virtue
of their caste and language status and link with Kathmandu's power
establishment, wielded unsaid political and cultural power--the country
seemed to belong to them alone. Because "Madise" was a term given to the
plain dwellers by those who discriminated against them and generally
didn't like them, these Brahman Madhesi college teachers hated that
term. They were the ones among the Terai people who resented their
dominated position the most. So they clung to their caste status more
fiercely and volubly.
On the other side of the border, their position would be as
respectable as the position of any dominant group in any culture; but in
Nepal, they were lumped together with the rest of the plain
dwellers--with the lower castes and tribes. They couldn't distinguish
themselves and evince their comparable, no, even loftier lineage to
others. Some of them were mad that they couldn't explain their
superiority by virtue of their birth and marriage genealogies that dated
back to the seventh century, a tradition begun to maintain caste purity
and prevent contamination (it would be interesting to investigate the
historical reasons for the origin of these family genealogies). At
marriage time, since the seventh century, any member of the Brahman caste
had to go to a registrar called Panjikar to see if the groom's both
parents and the bride's both parents had impeccable blood, pure and
unadulterated, in the caste. Only after the verification of purity down
the lineage line could marriage be fixed and consummated.
But these Madhesi Brahmans were hard put to explain the
superiority of their blood and language to the Nepali-speaking folks, who
knew no other kind of superiority but their own. Indeed, all the
Madhesis were looked down upon, as though they didn't deserve treatment
as respectable human beings. Culturally, this was more true in areas
where the hill population outnumbered the Terai population, such as
Biratnagar, but in western districts, where the ancient settlements of
these Madhesis outnumbered the recent hill population, the old Birtawala
and other hill folks had adopted the linguistic habits and dress codes of
the respectable Madhesis. That's why, when you heard them speaking
Nepali, their accent was like that of any Maithili-speaking Madhesi. In
addition, they wore dhoti and kurta, and a "gamcha" lazily hung on their
shoulders. Not only that, their teeth looked as black and rotten, their
mouth as red and bulging as that of any paan-eating Madhesi gentleman of
means. Nonetheless, politically, by virtue of their affiliation and
identification with the dominant ideology of the Nepali state, they
carried more political and cutural clout.
Despite their cultural position as dominated people, they did get
some positions of power in the Panchayati state, these high caste
Madhesis--Bhumihar, Rajput, and Kayastha completing the high caste
quatrain. A few among them became zonal commissioners, one or two
ambassadors, one or two in the courts and the palace and the Panchayat
cabinet. These were token appointments, and the appointees carefully
guarded their position and status and followed the rituals of power and
position with more than usual zeal. Because these Terai high caste
people had their own traditions that emphasized education and power, they
were educated, but instead of becoming power-wielding officials with a
revolving chair and a mighty pen that wrote signature and turned the
fates of men and society and their future, majority of these plain
dwellers became teachers and technicians--health assistants, teachers
from college down to primary schools, quite a few even doctors and
engineers and overseers. But they could never become Royal Army
officers, hardly any police officials, and few civil servants.
But, truth be told, because of their caste consciousness and
cultural affiliation across the borders in India, these Madhesis, too,
like the hill folks against them, were deeply prejudiced against the hill
folks, especially against those who were poor and came from non-high
caste hill backgrounds. (But I must say that when they found the hill
men mistreated on the south side of the border in the buses, trains, and
on railway platforms, these Madhesis defended their countrymen from
insult and assault). For example, they considered even the hill men of
high castes relatively less civilized by virtue of the latter's long
abode in the hills, where traces of civilization and sophistication--in
matters of bath, toilet habits, cuisine, caste rigidity, tradition of
music and literature--were few and far between. And because marriage
system even among the hill high castes is a little flexible, because
widows could traditionally remarry if they couldn't live as widows and
had guts to find a man who could run away with them; and a married woman,
if unhappy in her marriage, could elope with another man, their ways were
considered not so sanctified--and so inferior. Furthermore, there is a
tradition of becoming a hybrid caste for the progenies of permissible
intercaste unions among the hill dwellers in Nepal. The more rigid and
orthodox you could be, the more stubborn your belief system, the more
superior your status among both hill and Madhesi castes. In a nutshell,
you can say overall that these Madhesi high castes were more conservative
in caste matters than the hill high castes, and they were immensely proud
of it. And it's one of these Madhesi Brahmans who once told me, "I would
rather be dead as a Brahman than live as any one else." And he was a PhD
in English and a nice, soft-spoken man.
Most of the lower caste Madhesis followed the examples of their
high caste fellow Madhesis. They obeyed caste rules, followed the
cultural mores of their castemen on either side of the border, carried an
ambivalent attitude toward the Nepali state because of the rampant
discrimination against them in social, political, and cultural matters.
And because of the vast ocean called India lies on the south side of the
border, they get a whiff of the dominant wind from the other side and
become complacent and proud. Alas, only if they knew the treatment their
fellow lower castes receive on the south side of the border--these proud
ignorant fellow Madhesis!
In the latter half of the eighties, when the Panchayat system
seemed as firmly ensconced as the Himalayas, when one by one the
university teachers, lured by gains and frustrated by delay in change,
were being inducted into the corrupt and corrupting system, and when we
lost the major executive positions even in the Nepal University Teachers'
Association one year to the system, in the latter half of the eighties,
in a casual conversation with us one of the leading and respected
democrat intellectuals wondered while sitting on the grassy ground on the
eastern side of Rani Pokhari in Kathmandu, "What has happened to our
people in Nepal? Even our people in the Terai are doing nothing under
such oppressive, despairing conditions. We know the volatility of people
on the other side of the border when Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency
and suspended the Indian constitution, but on our side the same people
have lain docile and dead, no fire, no energy, nothing." Who could
understand what he was saying better than I? In my college days I had
known first-hand the agitation of the people on the other side of the
border during the Emergency.
The same evening, I went to the staff room and raised this
question to my colleagues. One of them, a Tirhute Bahun whose ancestors
had been brought to the Valley from the Mithila region in the times of
the Malla kings, said, "Da Terai is dead. Dere's nothin happenin dere.
Nobody knows dere how to pronounce a Sanskrit line anymore."
Was the Terai dead? Was the Madhesi culture dead? Was the
tradition established by the Maithili culture dead? Where have you gone
Yajnaavalkya, Gargi, Maitreyi, Sita--the ancient Madises and Madesinis?
Where have you gone Siddhartha the Madise? one felt like asking. Of
course, one could ask only silent questions then.
The culture of Mithila goes back to the times of the Vedas, in
which the region is called Videha, because of King Janak of Janakpur,
who, too, was called Videha, a saint in the garb of a householder, whose
famous daughter, Sita (who is also called Vaidehi), became the heroine of
Valmiki's "Ramayana." In the ninth century, on the other side of the
border, the First Sankaracharya, in his sub-continental crusade to
reestablish the dominance of Hinduism and wipe out Buddhism, had
encountered a householder named Mandan in a little village. Shankar had
heard about this simple villager's scholarship. With Mandan, Shankar
debated for several days, at the end of which the formidable Shankar
triumphed. But then a strange thing happened. The wife of the
householder, privy all this time to the scholarly exchange from behind
the door, came out and challenged the celibate Shankar into an
intellectual duel. They went through the whole gamut of shastras, but
Shankar remained unfazed. So Bharati, for that was her name, lured the
celibate into the uncanny realm of sexology. Shankar was dumbstruck by
the woman's discourse on human sexuality. Having known no woman other
than his mother, he knew nothing about it. So he conceded defeat and
vowed to return after having mastered the formidable "Kok Shastra." He
had died young, and I'm not sure if he obtained the forebidden knowledge
or died obtaining it.
Just the other day here in North Carolina, while browsing through
the CD's in a local CD store, I stumbled upon Vidyapati's name. The
writing on the front cover of the CD was in French--"Chants d'amour de
Vidyapati" (Love songs of Vidyapati) and the titles of the songs, too,
were in French and German; it was produced by Radio France. For a
moment, I couldn't believe my eyes! Then I thought, maybe Vidyapati's
songs had been translated in French and rendered into melody. I asked
the manager if I could listen to the CD just in case. He said, sure. So
I listened. I was dumbfounded at the original songs, the same Maithili
songs I had sung and read and had happily memorized like many a Bengali,
Nepali, Urdu, Bhojpuri, Sanskrit, Hindi, Rajbanshi song and poem.
Vidyapati had composed those songs in the 14th century in India, but also
in Nepali Madhesh. And these songs warm the hearts of millions
everywhere they were sung, far beyond the regions in which they had
originated six centuries ago.
For the first time perhaps anywhere, Vidyapati's songs had
legitimized, from a woman's perspective, the rights of women to their
sexuality and made women the subjects and agents in erotic acts and
expressions rather than just objects of male gaze and lust. In one of
his songs, not included in the CD, he makes a woman lament her unequal
marriage to a child groom, "Piyaa mora baalak, hum taruni he, kaun tuup
chukli bheli janani he . . . ." (My husband is a child but I'm a young
woman. What virtue I didn't earn in my past life that I was born a
woman." And I know for a fact that in the villages of Mithila, there's
still a tradition of writing poems and lyrics, learning classical music,
intricately painting the mud walls and courtyards, and pursuing knowledge
for its own sake. So why is the culture of the Madhes dead?
Now I think that maybe you need a palace, a kingdom of your own,
or a clear acceptance and recognition of your rights and culture in order
to be culturally and intellectually alive. If one doesn't have a palace,
how can one leave it or not leave it--either way creating a sensation and
feeling the weight of both leaving it or living in it? You need a
rightful share in the political power and you need legitimacy of your
culture--your language, dress, way of life, including paan- chewing--in
order to awaken to selfhood, knowledge and excellence. But every little
culture, every little language group cannot have a kingdom of its own in
order to realize its full excellence; the world would be full of kingdoms
and their wasteful kings. Nonetheless, in many parts of the world, war
rages on in order to have a kingdom in the absence of honest legitimation
to diverse cultures and languages within any political borders of
nation-states.
Or, more importantly, the caste system has proved to be the
undoing of the Terai. The non-tribal Madhesis are too engrossed in their
castes and clans to think of anything else as the arbiters of their sense
of self and cultural capital. Maybe it's true that they have nothing
more to offer than the rotten leaves of the Panjikars' family
geneologies. Once you belong inflexibly to a caste, you receive a
certain degree of ready recognition and respect, which is not going to go
away. The deadened caste rituals of birth, initiation, marriage, and
death replace the need to be in perpetual search for excellence in all
human endeavors. The need to be perpetually alert gives way to the
comfort of an unavoidable caste complacency. So the only risk you need
be aware of and against which you need to build fortifications is the
loss of your caste, like my Brahman colleague; and once that's secure,
then the other thing you need do is look for a way to earn your living to
feed yourself and your family and follow the rituals. And in an effort
to earn a living, no matter what kind of crimes you commit and corruption
indulge in, there's nothing to be ashamed of and worry about, because
your ever-stable caste is your conscience-keeper and morale booster,
always at your rescue from birth to death. As long as you have the
security of caste, you have no need to worry about anything else, any
fall. And when the insecurity and humiliation of political dispossession
combine with the stifling security of caste identity, the result is a
death-blow to all vitality and creativity in the culture. Survival of
the body and maintenance of its purity become the only mantra worth
chanting, sleep or awake.
And in all this the Brahmanic ideology has been the one prime
instrument of destruction and decay. If a culture or a language becomes
the sacred preserve of one narrow group of people, stagnation and rot set
in. The suffocating confines of religious codes create a stale pool of
ideas and talent, blocking new talents from cropping up from unexpected
quarters. All human creativity is reduced to the level of rituals in
such a situation by those who think the culture is their paternal
property. And the Brahmans are the ones who are most trapped in the
Brahmanic ideology, which has not only prevented them from breaking into
new grounds but stunted the rest of the society's unhindered growth.
This dangerous ideology is afloat wherever caste system is
practiced. It propounds that only the Brahmans, and with some concession
the other high castes, are capable by divine ordinance to pursue
knowledge and become professionals to run the society; education doesn't
come to others naturally, because God hasn't made knowledge for others
nor others for knowledge, particularly the lower castes. Even if by the
force of circumstance, the well-to-do lower castes have sent their
children to schools in recent years, it's only for pragmatic reasons, not
as part of the natural order of things. A set of stifling ideas still
pervades the conversations, language, songs, beliefs, attitudes, and
consciousness of men and women in the Terai, and all these cultural
sources of knowing and interpreting the world come, in one way or
another, from the mainstream Hindu religion in the region. So a
non-tribal Madhesi may be ignorant about everything else, but he is never
ignorant about his caste and what it means in the society at large.
No wonder, then, that the fertile land of the Terai can yield
bumper wheat or rice or corn, but is so dead and dying when it comes to
producing vibrant culture and leadership. Whatever brilliance and
whatever vitality that has come about in recent years in the region, it's
mainly because of the settlement of the hill people in the Terai,
devastating as these settlements have been to the local tribes and their
livelihood. These people from the hills had the guts, the courage, of
course supported by the political ideology of the Nepali state, to leave
the hardship, the beauty, the climate, the cold crystal water, the
scented pines, their generations-old neighbors and neighborhoods of the
hills and come down to the plains and cut the dense forest for
livelihood. I'm not talking about the Birtawala hill people who lived in
Kathmandu and maintained their large landholdings in the plains,
originally political gifts to them by the rulers, but the new settlers,
who came down for a few bighas of land. These people have the courage,
the vitality, the brilliance, the political confidence to do new things,
think in new ways.
Of course, the closer these people from the hills have gotten to
the Panchayat system and benefitted from the corruption of Cold War easy
foreign aids and lived in the towns, the less they have retained the
original vitality of the first generation hill dwellers. That's why, you
see a drastic change in lifestyle among the new settlers of the Terai
towns. For example, in the hills, the women worked in the kitchen and
the fields from sunup to sundown, brought brimful water vessels a mile or
two down from the water source, cut firewood, bore children alone, did
all kinds of work and still survived the harsh patriarchal codes. But
once these men and their women settled in the comforts of the Nepali
towns in the Terai, they began to employ maids to do the dishes and
cooking, boys to get grocery.
Their sons, clothed in the latest fashions and toiletries, map
the streets of the towns from one cinema hall to another every evening,
beating about the bush, killing time on the steps of popular shopfronts
all day long. Their daughters go to college as part of a marriage fad,
as a need to look attractive to the potential grooms, not for a serious
pursuit of knowledge that would make them confident and self-dependent.
These young, energetic, vibrant young women frequent the film halls of
their towns to watch the Hindi melodramas so they can get out of the
boredom born of inactivity and learn their lives' lessons. Decay has
already set in at this intersection of caste- clan security and pride,
and film and now T. V. images. There's hardly any serious emphasis on a
systematic cultivation of their mind, their soul, and body through
literature, music, the arts, and sports. Preservation of virginity
rather than acquisition of knowledge and development of talent still
characterize their and their parents' paramount concern, and those who
rebel against the ideology of virginity and caste do not do so inspired
by a solid base of knowledge but by the teenage rebellion shown in the
formula Hindi films. But you can't make lifelong decisions and channell
your life based on teenage whims and Bombay film messages, meant to play
on the fantasy of the sexually repressed people of the region.
The parents and male elders are of no help, either, in this
matter, for they still believe in the old feudal morality, as the culture
still remains Panchayati--caste and clan based. And the towns have
developed hardly any innovative ways to capitalize and train these young
energies. All the towns in the Terai are mushrooming and expanding
without any thought to their hygiene and culture; without any plans for
adequate parks, playing grounds, adequate roads. The schools are of no
help, for most teachers read one thing, if they read at all, and believe
in something quite different, the book teaching and learning good only
for helping students pass exams; their syllabi do not encourage curiosity
and questioning, instead emphasize rote-learning and getting
certificates. And the salary these teachers get these days is not enough
to pay even the rent, let alone have enough for a basic dignified
living. So these teachers overwork in too many places.
The colleges are worse--their teachers ill-paid, ill-fed, mired
in petty group and parochial politics and gossips, well-to-do among them
wasting their time playing popular Puploo, Nepal's national pastime for
the prosperous; their privileged pupils desperate to show off the clouts
of their castes, clans, source and force. As a college teacher, I nearly
got beat up more than once by many of these college scums of prosperous
Nepali parents for not letting them cheat in the exams. As for
name-calling, don't even talk about it. You should have been there to
witness the ridiculousness of the whole enterprise called college
education in Nepal.
Because the political system was bad, a system in which nobody
was accountable for anything, least of all those who wielded power,
college teachers, like every functionary of the state, did only their
offiicial duties. Everyone, from the vice chancellor down to the peon,
seemed scared both of the students and their guardians, let alone the
mysterious sources of power in the government. Everyone afraid to lose
one's izzot, the all precious honor, a concoction made of caste, clan,
wealth, social and professional position. But since I didn't think I
possessed this strange bird called izzot in the first place, I wasn't
afraid of losing it in doing what I thought was right. Besides, my
izzot, if I had any, was not something, I told my colleagues, that could
turn into water in a mere fist-fight with a well-groomed, spoilt
hoodlum son of some corrupt functionary or feudal lord. And if izzot was
such a fickle commodity, to be guarded at the expense of one's personal
dignity and sense of justice, then one and one's society and the nation
would be far better off without it. But you never knew whether a college
ruffian's father, or father's father, or mother's somebody, or his
somebody's somebody was a cook, a functionary, a secretary in some
important places.
So the only good thing that happened in Nepali colleges in those
days was the student politics--against the Panchayat system, because in
the absence of people's awareness and courage in opposing political
tyranny, these students acted as the vanguards of political change. I
admired both the democrat and the progressive groups. But what surprised
me here was that the women student leaders almost always became
treasurers in these students unions, as though that was a transferred
role from their household in which a woman kept account of the day-to-day
expenses that a bunch of keys hanging by her waist symbolized and to
which they would return after their stint as student union treasurers--a
smooth transition, I suppose.
Once I asked a bunch of these female college students, seated in
rows on the steps of the college, Why is it that you guys always become
only treasurers? Why don't you field women candidates for other
positions? Why not have even all female student union for a change for
God's sake? They collectively looked at me as though I had gone out of
my mind. Of course, many among these student activists, men and women,
loved comrade-handshakes more than political and intellectual analysis,
but the serious among them, despite some of their sold out college
teachers and despite much of the curriculum, did do some serious thinking
about their society and its political system.
Among other damages it inflicted, and whose repercussions Nepal
will have to face for decades to come, the Panchayati Raj, and the
supposedly new things and new ways it brought about in Nepal's national
life during its thirty-year tenure, the Panchayat Raj decimated the
tribes that lived in the forests and the open lands where the jungle
ended. The Tharus, the Dhimals, the Khabas, the Rajbanshis of Morang and
Jhapa have been finished--their land, the only source of income, gone for
the most part, partly rendered unproductive by deforestation but mainly
sold; their way of life vanished and vanishing with the disappearance of
the forest, which served for these tribal villages as sources of more
than one thing; their self-respect turned into drunkenness and gambling.
The political leader called zamindar they had of their own tribe
in times past, too, is finished after the inactment of land reform in
B.S. 2018; his land and power gone for good. And when your most
respectable person in the tribe, no matter how tyrannical, is reduced to
a beggar, you don't have any role models left, nor can you, like the
caste Madhesis of other districts, look across the border for inspiration
and encouragement. If there's nobody who comes from your tribe is
important or is accorded importance by the state ideology, then there's
nothing but despair staring in your face. And the only people these
tribesmen see in positions of power now in Nepal, from a police official
to an office clerk, are aliens for them. What has happened to the tribes
in the eastern Nepali Terai during the thirty-year Panchayat period is
terrible.
One at times thinks that the caste Madhesis of the Terai, because
they felt dispossessed, became compulsively self-serving and conserved
everything indiscriminately. They didn't raise any noise when the vast
jungle in the Terai was cleared and sold to India in the late seventies
and early eighties. Many among them, the rangers and foresters, indulged
in the Bramha loot along with the patriots. What made Sundar Lal
Bahuguna in north western India found the "Chipko" movement to protect
deforestation and what prevented the caste Terai people from doing so?
The answers could be alienation, the need to just survive, and lack of
democracy. And caste system that played such a vital role in this
passivity still continues to be so in all matters of public concern in
the Terai. If anyone has doubts, one needs to attend a meeting of the
Sadhbhavana Party for a knowledge of this aspect of the Madhes. Even
those who are educated among the Madhesis, politically, socially, and
intellectually, they continue to be as good as their uneducated fellow
Madhesis--caste, family, clan, blind imitation of India and Indian ways
in bad matters still characterize their private and public lives and
thinking. Maybe the advent of democracy will change all this to some
extent. But only maybe.
*******************************************************
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 1997 14:06:36 -0600
From: "Rajpal J. Singh" <a10rjs1>
To: The Nepal Digest <nepal@cs.niu.edu>
Subject: Armed Forces and the Constitutional Framework
Continuing "curiosity killed the cat :)" thread -
1) What role does the constitution allow Nepal Armed Forces
to play within its framework today?
2) Do the men and women of the Armed Forces swear legioncy/alliance
to the crown or to the nation?
3) Does PM or the parliment has authority to declare nation's
participation in a war? Or does this authority still lies in
the hands of the crown?
4) Are the Armed Forces accontable to the defense ministry,
the parliment or to the crown?
5) Do Armed Forces take direct orders from the defense ministry,
the parliment or from the crown?
6) Is the role of the Aremed Forces in Nepal in par with the
democratic norms of a constitutional monarchy?
7) Is there any loop hole in the current constitution for a military
take over?
So long,
RJPS
"Democracy perishes among the silent crowd." - Sirdar_Khalifa.
******************************************************************
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 09:31:34 -0500 (EST)
From: murari r shivakoti <murashi@wam.umd.edu>
To: nepal@cs.niu.edu
Subject: Forwarding
CALL FOR IMMEDIATE WEBSITE NOMINATIONS
This is a impromptu note hoping to elicit a quick response in line
with the demands of the so-called information age. Himal is going
monthly with the January issue, and that issue's cover feature is on
the Internet/email and their meaning for the Subcontinent. We are
carrying a section on "Best South Asian Web Sites" in the magazine,
which we will also place on our own web site and spread the word. The
homepages may be of any kind, as long as there is a proximate or even
remote link to South Asia or South Asians.
Please assist us by sending in nominations for up to three web sites
that you have visited and liked, together with a paragraph of
appreciation on each. The para would include any information you think
is useful: why you like the site, its distinctive aspects, whether it
is utilitarian or utopian, is it updated often or does it not need to
be, and so on. Any other ancillary information which would help us put
a polish on the Internet/email issue as a whole would of course come
handy to us editors here in Kathmandu, who are Web Neophytes. Also,
you might want to pass this note along to other friends who you think
will be able to contribute nominations.
Our deadline is short: we need to have your stuff in by the morning of
8 December, Monday (Nepal time). I really hope that you and other
Friends of Himal will contribute to what I hope will turn out to be a
useful and interesting exercise.
All the best!
Kanak
Please note:
Himal is going monthly in January.
and
Find out all about the Himal Conference on
South Asian Mediocrity, to be held in early May.
How? By reading Himal.
by reading Himal.
GPO Box 7251, Kathmandu, Nepal
Tel: +977-1-523845, 522113, 521013 (fax)
himalmag@mos.com.np
Now you can also advertise in our web site:
http://www.himalmag.com
Also, Film South Asia '97 report at
http://www.himalmag.com
%%%%%Editor's Note: Dear readers, do not forget to vote for %%%%%%%
%%%%% http://www.nepal.org ;) %%%%%%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
*************************************************
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 13:48:56 -0700
From: Leigh Davidson <davidson@nmmnh-abq.mus.nm.us>
To: nepal-request@cs.niu.edu
Subject: Green Tara Foundation
Hi,
I am on the board of the Green Tara Foundation whose missions is to distribute
funds to people of Tibetan descent in the areas of education, clean water
systems and sustainable agriculture. We are looking for contacts in these
areas to set up programs. Thank you in advance for your response. Leigh
Davidson
*****************************************************
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 97 03:20:48 UT
From: Mickey Veich <mveich@classic.msn.com>
To: tnd@nepal.org
Subject: Response to Greta Rana
In America many years ago, an old song was very popular. I think sometime
between the two great wars, specifically world wars I and II. The song's
words, in part, go something like this..."How ya gonna keep 'em down on the
farm, after they've seen Paree?"
I would suggest applying the same question to America's Nepalese visitors who
come for an education. Why not an education at Tribhuvan University or
Kathmandu University. And Kathmandu Univ. is allegedly the first successful,
non-government subsidized school in Nepal. I'll tell you why you can't keep
them down on the farm!
America's Nepalese visitors either stay on for the wonderful salaries, quality
of life, quality of work, quality of education, and a government run as
efficiently as any other government in the world. In fact, America enjoys the
oldest democracy in the free world. We even jail our crooked politicians.
Then ask yourself the next logical question. What will Nepal's newly educated
sons and daughters return to? Will they return to their families who have
enjoyed gifts of thousands of dollars from their working children over the
years? I think not.
I know many Nepalese in America, both students and, yes, newly minted
citizens. One in particular, whose story is typical. He is an undergraduate
student who started working part-time as a restaurant busboy. He diligently
worked his way to the position as the restaurant's manager, all while
attending undergraduate school. The student, now the restaurant manager, is
salaried at US$35K. He also shares the tips (almost equal to his salary)
received by the waitstaff. Last year he sent his family several thousand US
dollars. (not his first gift)
Does his family enjoy the reward of having sacrificed their only son to
America? You bet! They don't want him to come home! If this son of Nepal
returns upon completion of his studies, what will be his reward? Where will he
work? Will he find a restaurant in Birganj, Kalaiya, Hitaura, or for that
matter, in Kathmandu? Perhaps Pokhara? What will Nepal offer this long lost
son? Something global, no doubt? You speak of a global village of the 21st
Century. I think he will look for work with the foreign devils who pay
exorbitant salaries and then complain because his salary is not up to par with
that of his benefactors.
Do you also suggest that ex-pats, whose salaries are in the US$35-75K range,
give up those benefits and come to Nepal to work as volunteers? America
continues with that experiment. It's called the US Peace Corps. What has Nepal
done for them lately? Little, I'll bet.
Peace Corps Volunteers are paid the same wage as their counterpart. And that
is the poorest salary of all Peace Corps Volunteers worldwide. How long should
one volunteer for? The rest of one's life? Perhaps, because even the poorest
salary in Nepal is still enough for daily dal bhat, kasiko masu weekly and
experimental pau roti from the bazaar. (BTW, those same ex-pats you so
flippantly castigate are paying the tuition for the student mentioned above)
You suggest that ex-pats have no problems, e.g.,"...coming home to servants,
comfort, and an ex-pat community that does its best to create a non-Nepali
setting." You live in a fantasy world! American ex-pats are charged with the
responsibility of creating and nurturing cultural exchanges as well as
educational events that can be exported to American upon their return. Do you
speak from the experience of having been there and done that? Or were you
never invited to the home of an ex-pat? Is your spouse a host country national
helping foster mutual understanding, or is he merely someone who only works
for those poverty wages you mention, the wages disbursed by those foreign
devils?
And the young doctors you allege who don't go into the villages because they
lack equipment. In reality, what they lack is incentive, not equipment. They
see no future! It's a question of lacking idealism and altruistic motives.
It's not equipment. In addition to the foreign devils' over-inflated salaries,
those same devils have been supplying equipment for forty years. I remember
when the Russians built a cigarette factory near Birganj in 1962. Then the
local farmers were supposed to displace 600 bigas of rice by planting tobacco.
You can't eat tobacco! What happened to the factory?
Then the Americans brought tractors. One tractor put 100 farmers out of work!
That didn't work either.
Education before family planning you say? What do you propose Nepal should do
with all the unplanned mistakes? How will you educate the mistakes? More
foreign money for scholarships and grants? You are wrong! You allege the West
fears immigration? Why then do America's annual immigration quotas continue to
rise beyond allowances? Under Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Deva, Nepal didn't
permit immigration of Nepalese. Nepal's allowance was never used. Does Nepal
now permit immigration? If not, Why not?
You mention the North American Indian. The first wheel he saw was on the
carriage of a gun. And he still can't figure it out. When Europeans landed in
the Americas they found a population cooking and eating their own people,
sacrificing young women and decorating their leaders' bodies with gold, bloody
skins and painting their faces blue. Only 500 years ago! Who told them gold
was great? They prayed to gods for rain, crops, more virgins to sacrifice and
they killed the handicapped, and, like Hitler, believed that might made right.
Survival of the fittest was the order of the day. What are you suggesting, Ms.
Rana?
You say that for the government to thrive they have to pay its people a living
wage. Are you a communist? Do you believe that Nepal should extract from each
according to his ability and provide to each according to his needs? You
forget that for communism to survive it must first begin in a functioning
industrialized nation. That is, at least, if you believe in Marx. Please visit
post-communist Russia and ask them how well communism functions.
And, pray tell, where is that living wage to come from? From Nepal's abundant
industries? Who will pay the taxes to support the Nepal government's giving
program, all the non-licensed haircutters on the bridge over the Baghmati or
all the dhoti wallas? You are a simpleton to dismiss Nepal's perceived ills as
primarily caused by overpaid ex-pats. What are you and your spouse doing to
help Nepal? Please be specific.
Your overly simple suggestion that Nepal needs to get into the 21st century
global village as if it were a mere, overnight task, lacks depth. How should
they accomplish this fete? Nepal must first get through centuries 19, and 20.
I see you have an e-mail address in your office AND your residence. Where on
Nepal's socio-economic scale does that put you?
I would be interested to hear what your suggestions for reform might be, that
is, if you have any constructive suggestions. Furthermore, you print your
title as senior editor, but you fail to name the publication? Please correct
me if I fail to see the light but your carping does more harm than good.
Aru kura garaunla, Jai Nepal, Jai Himal,
Mickey Veich, aka, Punya Ratna Bajracharya
***************************************************
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 22:16:10 -0000
From: Balmukund Joshi <B.P.Joshi@btinternet.com>
To: tnd@nepal.org
Subject: Nepalese Activities in UK, Sagarmatha Times
Dear Editor,
Please find enclosed the news from Sagarmatha Times, November edition
relating to Nepalese Activities in UK and other Nepal relating news.
From
Mr B.P Joshi (Editor-in-Chief) and Mr Sohan Panta (Editor)
Nepalese Activities in UK
Royal Audience
His Royal Highness the Crown Prince Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev
gracefully gave Royal audience to the Editor-in-Chief Mr Balmukund Prasad
Joshi and Publisher Mr J.B. Tandon of the Sagarmatha Times, published in
UK on 19 Nov at the Royal Nepalese Embassy, London. HRH the Crown Prince
also gracefully enquired about the Sagarmatha Times and its web-address on
the Internet.
=09On the same occasion the latest issues of Sagarmatha Times were present=
ed
to HRH the Crown Prince.=20
HRH Crown Prince in Reception
=09His Royal Highness the Crown Prince Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev
gracefully attended a reception hosted by His Excellency the Royal Nepalese
Ambassador Dr Singha B Basnyat and HRH Princess Jotshana Basnyat at the
Royal Nepalese Embassy on 19 Nov. HRH the Crown Prince met the =20
Nepalese participants of World Travel Mart 97. In the same occasion HRH the
Crown Prince also met foreign guests and enquired on the tourism
development of Nepal.=20
Prince Of Wales to visit Nepal
=09His Royal Highness Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales is to visit Nepal
in January 1998. As per our special source of information, HRH Prince
Charles will be accompanied by high level officials of the Buckingham
Palace.
=09WTM Reception
=09Royal Nepalese Ambassador Dr. Singha B. Basnyat and HRH Princess Mrs
Jotshana Basnyat hosted a reception on the happy occasion of Nepalese=20
participation in the World Travel Mart 1997 ( WTM ) at the Royal
Nepalese Embassy. Ambassador Dr Basnyat told the gatherings that the
participation of Nepal in WTM is to success the Visit Nepal Year 98 (VNY
98) and is ultimately to support the economic develeopment of the Nation.
=09In the same reception the Secretary of Ministry of Civil Aviation and
Tourism of Nepal, Mr Dipendra Purush Dhakal said in his brief speech that
the preparation of VNY is completed in planned manner and also hoped that
the participation of Nepalese are of encouraging. He also assured that
Nepal is a safe destination and the visitor could have everything except
sea beach. He further reiterated that Nepal will became a most popular
destination soon.
=09The programme was conducted by Mr Ashok Pokharel of PATA Nepal Chapter a=
nd
were attended by big numbers of Nepalese and foreign guests.
Sharma in world tour
=09Mr Madhav Prasad Sharma of Lagankhel , Kathmandu Nepal arrived London o=
n
29 Nov for 4 days stay on his way to world tour on a motorbike. Mr Sharma
has visited number of Asian and European countries before arriving in=20
London. The schedule was delayed by 50 days due to his hospitalisation in
Turkey due to a road accident while traveling.
=09In a meeting with our correspondence Mr Sharma says his mission of wor=
ld
tour is to introduce Nepal to the world as a place of Buddha and peace and
harmony.
=09Mr Sharma is being looked after in London by social workers Mr Hari KC
and Mr Iswor Manandhar.
Activities of Yeti-Midlands and North UK
=09As per communique received from Manchester, following are their
activities :=20
Dance workshop : A workshop is going to be held in Manchester from 7th
December. The workshop will be conducted by Choreographer Andrea Young
under the coordination of Mrs Jamuna Mali free of charge.
Meeting : The executive committee of 16th November approved the report
submitted on Dashain and Tihar. The Vice-Chairman Mr Buddhi Ram Shrestha
and his wife hosted lunch during the meeting. Next meeting will be
held on 25 January 1998.
Euro-Tour : In view of popularity of Euro-Tour 1997, the Euro-Tour 98 has
also been organised. Dr. Deepak Upadhyay and social secretary Mr Sobhan
Amatya (Tel : 0161 442 9012) may be contacted for advance booking.
Book Publication : For enhancing the bravery of Nepal and Nepalese, the
book "Gorkha Medal" written by Chandra Bahadur Gurung is to be published in
English. The necessary preliminary work has already started on the book and
most probably should be distributed for sale soon.
Association Fund : To keep up the transperency policy, the association
feels importance of information on association fund. and published in
own news bulletin and Sagarmatha Times. The present balance of the
association is, as at pound 7035.91=20
Britian-Nepal Society AGM
=09The Britian-Nepal Society Annual General Meeting 1997 was held at the
Royal Nepalese Embassy on 20th November. The AGM was attended by about 70
society members. The AGM re-elected old executive committee in the
chairmanship of Sir Neil Thorne.
Nepalese beer popular in UK
=09The Nepalese Iceberg premium beer is the only beer in Nepal to be export=
ed
to the overseas countries. Mr C.K Bhandari, the proprietor of Marklink,
the sole distributor of the beer in UK had a painful experience on winning
over Nepalese and British officials before approval for the import in UK.
=09The manufacturing company has recently started producing the beer in a
small convenient bottle for export to UK only. The beer is becoming very
popular in the British market.
=09As per our correspondant, the market can be further developed with the
help of Nepalese mission and other various Nepalese organisations in UK.
Miss Nepal returns to Nepal
=09Miss Nepal Jharana Bajracharya, the contender of Miss World title recent=
ly
held in the Seychelles returned to Kathmandu on 28th November by Royal
Nepal Airlines, London-Kathmandu flight.
=09Miss Nepal confirmed to our correspondent Mr Ishwor Manandhar that she i=
s
very happy to have taken part in the Miss World competition and thus=20
representing Nepal there for the first time. She further said, the
participation also plays a positive role to introduce Nepal and Visit =
=20
Nepal Year 1998 to the outside world.
=09Mr Hari K.C and Mrs Nirmala K.C hosted a farewell dinner in honour of Mi=
ss
Bajracharya on 27th November in Gurkha Tandoori, London.
Interview with Miss Nepal
Mr Hari K.C and Mrs Narmila K.C hosted a farewell dinner in honour of Miss
Nepal, the Miss World Contender, Miss Jharana Bajracharya in Gurkha
Tandoori Restaurant, London on 27th November 1997. Sagarmatha Times (ST)
correspondent Mr Ishwor Manandhar had a brief interview with Miss Nepal
(MN), the synopsis are as follows :=20
ST : How did you feel when you were living with Miss World contenders
from different countries ?=20
MN : There were very modest and caring of each other. But most of the
contenders had no knowledge of Nepal. Even the judges of the competition
were asking me about Nepal and Nepalese religions.=20
ST : What will you do once you return to Nepal ?=20
MN : I shall be visiting Hong Kong, China, Singapore, etc=85 soon to
promote Visit Nepal Year 1998. I shall also be very much involved in
charity and social works. I am also planning to write a book on the role of
females in Nepalese society.=20
ST : Do you have any advice/suggestions to future Miss World
contenders from Nepal ?=20
MN : I think, the winning of the 'Miss World' title is not that
important. That is simply a title. The main important matter is, how to
introduce Nepal to the world. It was very sad to know that people did not
know about Nepal and it's location in the world map.=20
Nepal Kingdom Foundation Activities :=20
Royal visit : Her Majesty the Queen Aishwarya Rajya Laxmi Devi Shah, HRH
Crown Prince Dipendra Bir Bikarm Shah Dev, HRH Prince Nirajan Shah and HRH
Princess Jotsna Basnyat gracefully visited Reading to visit Nepal House,
Nepal Kingdom Foundation, The commemorative plaque, Ram Tamang memorial
library and resource centre and Buddhist Viharas.=20
The Royal entourage also visited Standard Nepalese Restaurant, Reading .
=09During the Royal visit, the NKF officials Mr Chandra Sagar Lama, Mrs
Pasang Laxmi Tamang, Mr Padma Prakash Shrestha and other Nepalese residing
in Reading welcomed the Royal entourage with flower bouquets.
National Remembrance Day : For the first time, Nepal and Nepalese community
members are recognised by the London Borough of Haringey during National=
=20
Remembrance Day. But it was never recognised by the British
Government to lay wreath at the Cenatoph Whitehall, London inspite of
painful long efforts of NKF. Mr Padma Shrestha and Miss Samdipa Shrestha of
NKF and Mr Mahanta Shrestha of Sagarmatha Times laid wreaths in respect of
Martyrs of the World, on behalf of Nepalese community.
High Level Support : Rt. Honbles. Babra Roche MP and Jane Griffith, MP are
persuing the Nepalese cause at higher levels.
World Travel Mart : Mr Padma Shrestha of NKF visited Nepal pavillion at the
WTM and also attended reception at the Royal Nepalese Embassy and
exchanged views with the participants on the success of VNY 1998.=20
*********************************************************
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 08:55:50 -0000
From: Peter Whicheloe PLC <peter.whicheloe@Inchcape.com>
To: tnd@nepal.org
Subject: volunteer work
Please send me some information on the work that you do in Nepal, and
what availability's you have for volunteers with work experience in
culture preservation. would also like any information on how to become
a trekking guide in Nepal, either with a local company or on how to set
up an environmentally sound organisation.
Thanks
My email address is: peter.whicheloe@inchcape.com,
or my real address is 28 Pine Grove, Wimbledon, London SW 19 7HE
Look forward to hearing from you,
Sarra Whicheloe
***************************************************
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 22:49:17 -0800 (PST)
From: "Robyn E. McClintock" <rem@ecst.csuchico.edu>
To: tnd@nepal.org
Subject: graduate study in pokhara
namaste! I will be coming to Nepal at the end of January to do graduate
research and am trying to find information and contacts in the pokhara
area. I have been e-mailing with a dear friend,(peace corps worker who was
stationed in rajbiraj) her name was Lillith Iversen. She was in Kathmandu
prior to leaving Nepal in the last few days so we had many wonderful
e-mails. She was trying to connect me with another Peace Corps worker in
Pokhara, Kat Le, katle@himal.wlink.com.np I have been trying to reach
her but haven't had any reply...how reliable is the net access in Pokhara?
I would deeply appreciate any information about relevant/practical issues
concerning getting set up in Pokhara. I will be travelling with my family,
husband and two daughters. My husband must leave after 2-3wks so I would
like to settle in during that time. Is it difficult to find rentals there,
any hints? Also how can I find a list of schools that I might be able to
volunteer? I am a graduate student in Social Sciences with a degree in
Philosophy and Social Work. I have am also experienced in health
care/counseling/nursing. My research is in how the sacred is brought onto
conflict resolution. Looking forward to hearing from you. Robyn McClintock
rem@ecst.csuchico.edu
Your life is your message.
Robyn McClintock: rem@ecst.csuchico.edu
*****************************************************************
Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 16:09:06 -0700
From: Kala Pandit <knpandit@nwrc.ars.pn.usbr.gov>
To: info-tnd@nepal.org
Subject: Khoj Khabar
Dear TND Editor:
Could you please post the following message in the forthcoming issue of TND.
..............
I am looking for Badri Adhikari who has been residing in Canada for a long
time. He originally belongs to Tiram, Pyuthan but later on migrated to
Masuriya-Deukhuri, Dang district. If anyone knows about him, please pass on
this message.
Badri Adhikari jee:
If you happen to find this message, please contact me. My e-mail address
and telephone numbers are printed below.
Kala Nidhi Pandit
Northwest Watershed Research Center, USDA-ARS
800 Park Boulevard, Plaza IV, Suite 105
Boise, Idaho 83712 USA
Tel # 208-422-0706 (Work)
208-342-6241 (Home)
Fax # 208-334-1502
E-mail: knpandit@nwrc.ars.pn.usbr.gov
OR
pand9551@uidaho.edu
Home-page: http://www.uidaho.edu/~pand9551
Home Address: 1601 Joyce Street, Boise, ID 83706 USA
******************************************************************************
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* *
* Digest Contributions: mailto:NEPAL@MP.CS.NIU.EDU *
* THE EDITOR RESERVES THE RIGHT TO EDIT ARTICLES FOR CLARITY. *
* Contributors need to supply Header for the article, email, and full name. *
* *
* Postings are divided into following categories that are listed in the *
* order below. Please provide category-type in the header of your e-mail. *
* *
* 1. Message from TND Editorial Staff *
* TND Foundation News/Message *
* 2. Letter to the Editor *
* Letter to TND Foundation *
* 3. TAJA_KHABAR: Current News *
* 4. KATHA_KABITA: Literature *
* 5. KURA_KANI: Economics *
* Agriculture/Forestry *
* Health *
* Education *
* Technology *
* Social/Cultural Issues *
* Environment/Population *
* Women/Children *
* Tourism *
* Foreign Policy *
* History *
* Military/Police *
* Politics *
* 6. CHOOT_KILA (Humor, Recipies, Movie Reviews, Sattaires etc.) *
* 7. JAN_KARI: Classifides (Matrimonials, Jobs etc) *
* 8. KHOJ_KHABAR (Inquiring about Nepal, Nepalis etc. ) *
* 9. TITAR_BITAR: Miscellaneous (Immigration and Taxex etc. ) *
* *
* COPYRIGHT NOTE *
* -------------- *
* The content contributors are responsible for any copyright violations. *
* TND, a non-profit electronic journal, will publish articles that has *
* been published in other electronic or paper journal with proper credit *
* to the original media. *
* *
******************************************************************************
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 11 2000 - 11:15:58 CST