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Book Review Pages
The Kathmandu Post Review of Books

29 November, 1998
Vol. 3, No. 15
Issue Coordinator: Manjushree Thapa

Produced by
Martin Chautari for
CSRD and The Kathmandu Post

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Contents of this Issue

Essay

Reviews

NRIs in Nepal

C.K. Lal

The clamber into the hills from the plains below is as old as history. The Mahabharata mentions the Kirat Kings of the Himalayas, and Emperor Ashoka trekked to the birthplace of the Buddha and erected a pillar on the spot. Adi Shankara is believed to have set the tradition that only Keralites Brahmans of a certain sect could be eligible for priesthood in the holy shrine of Pashupatinath. Raja Harisingh, the Tirhut king of Karnataka origin, fled to Kathmandu valley upon pursuit by the invading Muslim army and founded a culture that continues to give the valley its distinctive identity. But all these visitors didn't come in hordes, and were easily assimilated into the local population. The early 20th century clearing of the Tarai forests by the nobles of Kathmandu valley, and an almost simultaneous famine in the neighboring states of Bengal, Bihar and Awadh, forced many Indians to choose a life of considerable difficulty in the plains of Nepal. Over time, they came to be known as Madhesis - people of the Madhes. Never a term of endearment, Madhesi has degenerated into a label of scorn, and can mean anything from being devious, dirty, cruel, uncouth or - a plain Indian.

Not Man, a Madhesi

Old-timers insist that there is no exaggeration to the following anecdote, and that it is based on real life. In the days when there were no toilets, the ladies of noble families also visited the banks of Bagamati to attend to the calls of nature. Some of them had servants. These servants were instructed to shout 'Man' to save the ladies the embarrassment of exposed derriËres. On one misty winter morning, a servant could not recognize a Madhesi and did the shouting as per the instructions. The lady sat up, threw a glance towards the intruder, and resumed her business nonchalantly. The ignorant servant was duly reprimanded, "Didn't you see? He was a Madhesi, not a man." Ladies go to toilet nowadays, but this attitude has not changed much.

Handy Goblin

In the Hindi blockbuster of all times, Ramesh Sippy's 'Sholay,' a mother would instill the fear of Gabbar in her child if it wept at night. The goblin evoked in the Valley of Gods is handier - mothers here simply have to mention a Madhesi, pronounced Madishe. The symbol so taken is often a poor little Bihari with a jute sack on his shoulders, calling from house to house collecting empty beer bottles and old newspapers. Braving the stray dogs, abusive natives, resentful street children and a less than tolerant police force, these hapless scavengers provide a service without which Kathmandu would become one huge refuse dump. Nobody is grateful. The government has already levied a tax on their cargo, and there is clamor for more levies on them.

Onion, Potato and Tomato

Until Biharis came with their cycles, street vendors were almost unknown in the Valley. These days, one can buy anything from carpets to cosmetics, fruits and vegetables, utensils, toys and tin-food from these very enterprising salesmen from across the border. Their Nepali is a joy to hear and lends itself so well to caricature that Nepal Television cannot produce a single soap without them. They do not take offense if haggled with rudely. Even their merchandise compares well in price and quality with the those in the burgeoning departmental stores in Kathmandu. And what do they get in return? Eight to ten people lodging in dingy basements, abuses from anyone with an urge to vent his or her anger, and a small profit at the end of the day to money-order back home to Laloodom.

Moneyed Marwaris

There was a time when Marwaris were respected as sahujees. No more. These days, they are depicted more as practitioners of unfair trade practices. They are assumed to be harmful for the nation's economy, in spite of being one of the largest private sector employers and the largest tax-paying community. If a local smuggler is caught sneaking in goodies, he is dismissed as a misguided person. To turn him into an object of sympathy, associate his name with any manipulative Marwari - real or fictional. The clamor of blood would be astounding. This, despite the fact that no big-time Marwari runs his show entirely on his own - the norm, rather than the exception, is to have a local noble as a sleeping partner, often with a controlling interest. Many Marwaris insist that people of their community who arrived from Burma in the 1970's cheated the government and gave them a bad name. Be that as it may, the fact is that they have become minor players in foodstuff and textiles, lucrative trades that they had dominated for years.

Competitive Craftsmen

Plumbers from Udisa, electricians from UP, carpenters from Bihar, bricklayers from Bengal - one can't build a house without them these days in Kathmandu. Contractors love them - they work longer hours for lower payment. Owners like them too - they hardly need any holidays. But the traditional craftsmen from Kirtipur and Madhyapur are not happy about these aliens who have undercut them out of the market. Hence a call for their ouster can arouse frenzy. At middle class dinner tables, much concern is shown about Indian domination of the Nepalese labor market, but come daylight, these bleeding hearts go to Kopundole, Baneshwar or Kalimati and hire an Indian hand at nearly half the going rate of a comparable Nepali laborer. Free-market and jingoism survive cheek-by-jowl without any contradiction.

Labor and Religion

Even Nepali employers do not like local laborers. Apart from being too easygoing, they are often considered to be potential troublemakers. They prefer Madhesis instead, whose lower salaries, longer working hours and lack of rights to organize make them attractive. This has resulted in a situation where almost all garment workers are Indian. Indian dyers man the Nepali carpet industry and till yesterday, nearly all machine-men were Bengali. A large number of these immigrants are Muslims who take up the whole thoroughfare in front of the Royal Palace for Jumma Nawaz. It does not help the flow of traffic that Fridays are half working days. The Kashi, Kashmir, Ajab, Nepal attraction for the Indian tourists is gone. Earlier they were amazed to see a more beautiful valley than Kashmir peopled by more devout Hindus than in Benares. These days, Muradabadi Muslims dominate the brass-ware market and Kashmiri Muslims enjoy a near monopoly in high-end handicrafts sales. Once again, a case of Hindu Shangri-la gone sour in the only Hindu Kingdom of the world.

Identity Crisis

Having nothing to differentiate them from their temporary immigrant brothers, Madhesis who have made Nepal their home find themselves at the receiving end of much misplaced scorn. Consider the Nepali proverb that a dead Madhesi more cunning than a living Nepali; picture a Pahariya Bahun with his Yadav compatriot from the plains, and one might have to turn the old adage on its head. Any Madhesi is suspect in the valley. They have to keep proving their allegiance to the country, very much like Hindus in Sri Lanka and Muslims in India. This is ironic in a way, because Madhesis have less dependence on India than many Pahariyas who have, for generations, been saluting the tricolor for their livelihood. Madhesis pretend to support Pakistani players in Indo-Pakistan cricket matches to impress their friends, but go home and weep in silence over India's defeat. This would be hilarious if it weren't so pathetic. If not for themselves, the Indian team should get into the habit of winning every now and then to keep the morale of the Diaspora high.

Nepal has India's largest diplomatic establishment in the world, barring England, with whom they have an altogether different kind of relationship. What this diplomatic corps does to keep employed is a mystery. The Hindi term for a country bumpkin is "Vadheshi." One thing is for sure, these diplomats do not stoop low enough to associate with local Madhesis - no matter whether resident or immigrant.

(CK Lal is a prolific columnist)

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Communities and Conservation: Natural Resource Management in South and Central Asia
Editors: Ashish Kothari, Neema Pathak, RV Anuradha and Bansuri Taneja
Publisher: Delhi: Sage, 1998
Towards Conserving Communities

Anil Bhattarai

Till not long ago, official, state-led conservation efforts in South Asia, as well as elsewhere in the world, focused exclusively on regulations which were based on codified laws. During the seventies, many countries in this region passed legislation and created institutional structures for the implementation of conservation policies. These policies focused exclusively on the establishment of Protected Areas in the forms of national parks, wild life sanctuaries, and nature reserves, etc., which were very centralized and had little flexibility within them. There was little room for the participation of local communities in making decisions regarding the use and management of natural resources lying within these Protected Areas. The main assumption lying behind these efforts was that human beings and conservation are antithetical to each other, and that nature conservation therefore requires restricting available natural resources from human use. This assumption, however, is changing. Local communities are once again coming into the center-stage of conservation. There is a growing realization that conservation cannot be successful without the participation of local people and of the communities who depend on local resources for their livelihood.

"A sea change is taking place in conservation across the world," write Ashish Kothari, R.V. Anurathd and Neema Pathak in their introductory essay to Communities and Conservation: Natural Resource Management in South and Central Asia. "From standardized policies and programs initiated by centralized and urban-based agencies, a slow but definite shift is taking place towards decentralized, site-specific, community based activities." It is this shift, and many emerging issues within this concept of Community-Based Conservation, that the articles that follow analyze from different angles.

Communities and Conservation compiles revised versions of twenty-eight papers presented at the "Community Based Conservation: Policy and Practice" workshop organized by the Indian Institute of Public Administration with support from UNESCO's "Man and Biosphere Program" in Delhi from 9 to 11 February, 1998. The book is divided into four major parts. The first part includes two introductory essays, which are followed by six country status papers in the second part. The third part includes nine articles which primarily deal with emerging issues in conservation by drawing on the lessons learnt in different countries. The fourth part includes eight case studies, seven of them from different parts of India and one from Sri Lanka. The experiences of Community-Based Conservation have brought into the fore many issues, problems and prospects.

In the book's second introductory essay, Michel Pimbert and Jules Pretty have tried to analyze the institutional structures of conservation bureaucracies and outside agencies. They argue that the current setup "inhibits the devolution of power to the local community." Many other articles call for a change in the state structures currently responsible for conservation. Official conservation policies all over the world were, and in many instances still are very much centralized, and they do not pay much attention to site-specific practices. This oversight has engendered conflict between the goal of conservation and the livelihoods of the local communities which directly depend on the resources within conserved areas.

The emerging experience from conservation at the community level have shown new and promising vistas. New practices and understanding of conservation have led to institutional transformation. G. Raju has outlined the emerging institutions on the basis of the experiences gained in the Joint Forest Management in India and the Community Forestry Users Group in Nepal. Both of these programs are totally different from official structures. They are decentralized, they are run by stake holders, and they are site-specific, and therefore flexible.

They have also brought into the open the fact that the community is also not a bed of roses. This has had wide range of policy implication as far as conservation is concerned. The threat to conservation does not come from those who depend on the natural resources for their livelihoods. On the contrary, these communities are the ones who actually have real stake in conserving resources.

Communities and Conservation can be useful to students of various disciplines who seek to focus on natural resource and conservation, and to planners, conservation officials and researchers who are focusing on these emerging practices at the grass roots, and on the changing policy context of conservation.

(A. Bhattarai is writing a Master's thesis on park-people conflict, and is a member of the Management Committee of Martin Chautari)

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Doctors for Democracy: Health Professionals in the Nepal Revolution
Author: Vincanne Adams
Publisher: London: Cambridge University Press, 1998
The Politics of Medicine

Dr. Saroj Dhital

When the decades of discontent accumulating among the people reached a critical point in 1990, the People's Movement exploded, overthrowing the Panchayat regime. For the most part, popular discontent was aimed at the rampant corruption and violation of human rights.

Less than a decade after the movement for democracy, people seem totally disenchanted with the way democracy is being practiced in the country. Those same people who were ready to give their lives to achieve multiparty democracy are - perhaps painfully but silently - watching revivalists' attempts to bring back an absolute monarchy.

It seems that the country has reached a dangerous point. Discontent has been accumulating again, but not enough energy is left in the people to lead to a catharsis. Corruption and the violation of human rights - the evils that the people hoped to get rid of through the democratic movement - are making their grand presence felt, and nothing substantial is being done to counter these evils.

It has become imperative at this point to review people's motivations and expectations of the 1990 People's Movement, and to look back upon the nature of that movement.

Just at this moment, Doctors for Democracy: Health Professionals in the Nepal Revolution, the work of a western scholar, has established its presence in Kathmandu bookstalls. The title, naturally, creates a strong appeal for students of the Nepali revolution. It is not surprising if the reader expects to find in Vincanne Adam's book the answers to some of the above questions relating to the People's Movement.

Published as one of the works of the "Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology" series, the book appears in a nice getup. It gives a rather detailed account of how health professionals worked for the revolution. In spite of some obvious errors in chronology and in some minute details-which is but natural in a work done retrospectively by a foreigner-Doctors for Democracy provides a vivid and detailed picture of health professionals' involvement in the Movement.

From the beginning, Adams introduces important philosophical discussions into her text. At a time when nothing serious of this sort is forthcoming from those intellectuals allied to political parties which claim to be the leaders and architects of the 1990 rebellion, the appearance of a foreign book analyzing our democracy movement in a philosophical plane is, of course, very much welcome.

Leafing through the first few pages of the book, it is evident that Adams' work is largely based on interviews with Nepali doctors, the most important being her interviews and interactions with Professor Mathura Shrestha. In fact, her conversations with the professor before and after the Movement have served as the window through which she tries to look at the democracy movement.

Although the title of the book Adams has chosen gives her liberty to focus on Nepali physicians' role in the Movement, her opening remarks that the "participation of Nepali physicians in their revolution marked the rise of a professional class exercising a distinctively modern form of power in Nepal" sounds a little too exaggerated and belittling of the role of other intellectuals.

Adams seems intrigued by the thinness of the boundary between the use of politics for people's health, and the vulgar politicizing of medicine. She tries hard, through most of the book, to justify the political actions of medical professionals. In the Nepali context, this fact is so obvious that her exercise was not necessary at all.

Adams presumes that the prototype of Nepali doctors participating in the Movement consisted of those committed to the Alma-Ata declaration. In truth, at least four different kinds of medical doctors were involved in the Movement. This is evident even from the small sample of doctors she has interviewed. While there were doctors who had more or less clear visions, and who could easily correlate politics to people's health, some others were involved in politics simply because of familiar or historical ties to some politicians. For the latter, politics was not at all associated with their profession. Besides them, there were other doctors who were totally unconcerned with politics, but who chose to help the Movement reactively, after witnessing the bloodshed and the blatant violation of human rights. Finally, of course, there were the omnipresent opportunists who opposed the Movement until it became evident that it would end in success, and then switched to the side of the rebels at the last hour.

Failing to make a simple distinction between these different categories of medical professionals, Adams forces herself into the tiresome exercise of trying to solve her self-created riddle concerning politicization and medicine. This has made her book unnecessarily long, boring, and difficult to comprehend for the average reader.

Adams rightly points out that the patrimonialist culture of the social fabric of Nepal has created impediments in modernization. But unfortunately, she equates patrimonialism with collectivism. Throughout the book, she takes collectivism negatively, while glorifying possessive individualism. Even in the introductory chapter, she admits that the collectivism inherent in Nepali society has, in her opinion, created an impediment in the modernization of the country. To her, corruption, nepotism, backwardness and all the darker aspects of Nepali society find fertile grounds in the collectivism inherent in Nepali society.

Should collectivism be understood as a culture of slaves in a patrimonial order, or a process of expansion of the Self and the thinning of ego boundaries? Is individualism a process that shrinks the Self and thickens ego boundaries, or a process that unfolds human potential? Adams misunderstands both these terms in the Nepali context.

But this misinterpretation is not difficult to understand. She laments the fact that Nepali doctors and intellectuals are preoccupied with and tied to Nepaliness in their drive for science, modernity, and democracy. For her, the universal nature and objectivism in science and modernity rule out this possibility. Her very mechanistic way of thinking is evident when she talks about the "production" of different "truths" but fails to conceal her great faith in the "truth" produced in the West.

Reading Doctors for Democracy, one can feel that in spite of Adams' bias (which she has revealed very honestly) she is very sympathetic to the Nepali people. One can even feel the pain she is suffering while being torn between her beliefs on one hand and the reality of Nepal that she witnessed on the other.

Doctors for Democracy has, indeed, challenged Nepali intellectuals to find answers to some fundamental questions regarding the Nepali revolution. The degeneration of political parties into piles of stinking garbage is perhaps heralding the need for another revolution beyond the realms of power politics: a movement that would nourish and be nourished by the "micropower" authored by Foucault, who Adams frequently quotes in her work.

(S. Dhital is a surgeon at the Kathmandu Model Hospital)

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Mirrorwork: Fifty Years of Indian Writing
Editors: Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West
Publisher: New York: Henry Holt, 1997 and London: Vintage, 1997

and

A Fine Balance
Author: Rohinton Mistry
Publisher: London: Faber and Faber, 1995

Through the Looking Glass of Indian Fiction

Rob Millman

Mirrorwork is a rich and colourful tapestry of selections from thirty two works-either novels, short stories or memoirs-prefaced by Jawaharlal Nehru's famous "Tryst with Destiny" speech delivered on the eve of independence in 1947. The anthology is not strictly "Indian" in the broadest sense of the term, for it is a collection of only English language writing. But in his preface, Salman Rushdie argues convincingly and with wry, self-deprecating humour that neither partition nor international boundaries can restrict or define the richness and variety of Indian writing, nor contain the impact that Indian writers are making on contemporary world literature.

Like Alice in Through the Looking Glass, Mirrorwork's readers may cast their gaze over the mirror or truly enter in. Why have certain pieces been included? Is there some intrinsic value in each piece, whether political, historical or literary, which escapes us? Do the short stories achieve the evocative quality and focused incisiveness that marks the best of this ever-expanding genre? Are the extracts from longer works sufficiently self-contained and coherent to stand alone?

Initially, neither Nehru's speech, Sahgal's 'With Pride and Prejudice' or G.V. Desani's 'All About H. Hatterr' conform to a style that rests easily with the reader. The first is crafted for history. The second bears witness to the death of Gandhi through the youthful eyes and emotions of a member of the ruling political dynasty. And the third is a kaleidoscope of language, imagery, events, people and places, which at first appears to mystify a little, and amuse at best. Juxtaposed in between, and in stark contrast to these three pieces, stands the allegorical and historically accurate tale of 'Toba Tek Singh,' capturing the absurdity of partition for those whose lives were already circumscribed by imprisonment in asylums on the wrong side of the divide.

The excerpt by Desani begins elliptically: "The name is H. Hatterr, and I am continuing. Biologically, I am fifty-five of the species." But go through the looking glass. Piece together the life and language of a dispossessed Anglo-Indian. Allow the writing to coalesce. What emerges is a character with a passionate desire to do more than just survive the epochal changes that have destroyed the ease and comfort of his pre-ordained way of life. Discover his anger, his humor and his compassion, and you have begun to unravel the riches that lie ahead in Mirrorwork.

Each early piece in the anthology paves the way for a collection of writings that expand in content and style to explore themes of class, caste, religions, social and family relations, duty, power, sexuality, mystical experience and sensual imagery. There are some magical evocations of place, of mood and of landscapes. There are also chilling and frightening reminders of the harshness of climate, poverty and hunger, as well as the brutality that can assail individuals and entire communities. Yet do not be mislead. Mirrorwork is not a covert political treatise on post-independence India. What it offers is a broad swathe of work from established and emerging writers that is pre-eminently literary, always entertaining, and quite frequently insightful and informative.

Whether viewed through the eyes of a child ('Rana's Story' by Bapsi Sadwah and 'Games at Twilight' by Anita Desai), or the eyes of a youth ('Trying to Grow' by Firdaus Kanga), or those of an adult ('Meatless Days' by Sara Suleri), or those of the writer ('In the Mountains' by Ruth Prawer Jhabwala), there emerges in many characterizations and portrayals a deeply felt search to rediscover or hold on to personal belief, and a desire to assert individual human identity in a world where everything and nothing changes constantly, and sometimes overwhelmingly. This wonderful paradox is most finely and acutely displayed in the wit and humor of Anjana Appachana's short story, 'Sharmaji.' Every single reader, of whatever age or background, will find some personal trait or characteristic reflected in the mirror of this particular tale.

Mirrorwork is a fine collection of writings with a mere handful of selections that perhaps owe more to the inclinations of the editors than to the tastes of, and recognition given by, a broader readership. As an invitation to see what lies through the looking glass of Indian writing, it offers a superb introduction to a host of writers whose work deserves to be read as widely as possible.

If Mirrorwork offers a glimpse of the wealth and depth of Indian writing, then Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance plunges headlong into that world. Set in Bombay and its rural environs during the time of Indira Gandhi's internal emergency, this novel follows the fate of four ordinary people whose lives slowly and inexorably intertwine as their individual struggles bring them together. Mistry plays with time, introducing each of the four characters within the first few pages of the novel, only to steer us back in time on a voyage of discovery. Through the struggles of caste and communalism in rural villages, through the withering of traditional life in the mountains as roads and commercialism bring exploitation in their wake, through the rigid patriarchal control of tightly controlled family life and an early tragic loss, the characters are propelled outwards, forwards, and ultimately drawn into the tight confines of Bombay. There, the powerful undercurrents of the emergency will define the direction and interdependent fate of each life.

Through the eyes, minds, hearts, lives and emotions of the characters Dina, Ishvar, Omprakash and Maneck, Mistry unfolds a world that is as harsh in its oppression and inhumanity as any writer could wish to depict, without resorting to crude shock tactics. The excesses of the emergency are powerfully portrayed and skillfully understated. Onto this background of real events-police round-ups, feudalistic goon squads, enforced sterilization and worse-are grafted the lives of his main characters. Yet throughout this moving story, drama and tension evolves primarily around the growing tolerance, attraction, and tenderness, within and between the main characters in their shared lives and inter-dependency. There are many characters and events in the supporting cast which add to the seamless richness of this novel. A Fine Balance is both moving and enthralling, with perhaps one inevitable and pardonable weakness, namely, that it has to come to an end.

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Morning Raga for Sun Ra
Author: Wesley Ames
Publisher: New York: Copper Mountain Press, 1998
Note: Neither this book nor this author exists. This review is a work of the imagination, a work in progress - one of delusion's games.
Delusion's Games

Wayne Amtzis

In Morning Raga for Sun Ra Wesley Ames goes for the ephemeral jugular. No longer do the exigencies and epiphanies of daily life dominate his gaze; it's the thief in the house-language itself-that's caught his attention. Staking language's survival on its postmodern demise, the book opens with Ames' paean to the intergalactic musings of the musician Sun Ra. Erratic, incoherent, chaotic, this river of disjointed phrases jangling among themselves offers moments of brilliance and eddies of obfuscation. With an onrush of words and phrases, with broken syntax, punning assonance, misspellings that trigger asides, the poem offers language but withholds meaning. Sensing that the sounding presence of voice will not override incapacities of language, and that stunned incoherence may not bring the reader into the poem, as a reader himself, Ames pauses:

"these mistakes
take time
and in the mean
time
we are here"

Then, through repetition and variation, the poem winds back upon itself, forcing the harshness of juxtaposed and unfinished phrasing to sieve through to lines that work, that finally make sense.

"we are two strands --not tangled not knotted
woven of one weaving

the light we give

purified
given again
purifies"

Am/Pm, a series of journal entries written by Ames in the hours before dawn follows upon this re-evaluation and revelation. Experiences of the immediate day linked to events and persons in the past and dreams the poet has just woken from alternate. The recollections quickly move down the page, while the dreams meander. Soon the prose like lines dominate, and an indistinguishable sense of wonder and futility suffuses Ames' world. With his waking voice Ames intrudes. The lived and dreamed reality ("waking dream daydream dream itself") in so far as we speak of them are all marked by delusion.

"winds that carry it lips and tongue that mark it all say "delusion"

undeluded would I speak in this manner?
would you bend to hear me?"

Carried away by this rhetoric Ames hangs the axiom
"language=delusion" over the final portal of the book.

The linked poems in Box 37: phrases (in response) are from personal correspondence. Here we are not privy to these letters, but are shown Ames' words spoken anew. Though it is hard not to be seduced by the chosen phrases, the reader drawn back to the work, wondering who is being spoken to, is not yet willing to take on the guises of the unidentified respondents. The poet's game is to leave us mid-sentence-"our phrases our words/ always in response/ one half the correspondence/ always to be filled in." In these dialogues with absent others, however, Ames falls into his own trap. The respondent's voice is absent and the reader will not be baited. The need to be heard and to hear another speak doubles back upon itself:

"..to be with you to be you I will hear I will listen tell me your
name tell me mine tell me what to say

when you tell me what to say tell me what to say tell me tell me
you are here you are there

tell me." If this is a cry in the wilderness, Ames would do well to
reread his Godot-no one is there.

In his twelfth book Wesley Ames asks more of the reader than he has previously; yet he senses this. In the title poem, unstoppable force is abandoned for light that plays across the current. In Am/Pm the structure of dream indemnifies Ames' world; futility is borne with wonder. It is only in Box 37: phrases (in response) that Ames cannot account for his demands. The jaded reader thirsts for details and will not allow, as the poet would, imagination, no matter how lyrical, to compensate. To console.

(W. Amtzis teaches meditation at the Himalayan Buddhist Meditation Center)

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