Fw: My article on federalism

August 26, 2009

Mr. Hari Thapa

Harijee

I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you that people have "already suffered from Kathmandu's totalitarianism", if only that was true. I even wonder if Kathmandu did ever get to rule over Nepal subsequent to its "unification" by rulers from Gorkha. Till monarchy was abolished, Nepal was ruled by erstwhile monarchs hailing from Gorkha who ruled (merely reigned most of the time) for close to 240 years and they did so, physically, from Kathmandu. They had merely shifted their capital from Gorkha to this valley. Therefore, for those 240 years it was effectively rule of Gorkha, if one is to go on this tangent on ethnic lines. Of these 240 years Ranas (actually Kunwars) were the effective rulers for 104 years and the Shahs were relegated to merely reigning the country. I am at a loss as to whether this period should be called a totalitarianism of Gorkha or else. Tyrants they were as it was a dictatorship of one particular family. Then there were Pandeys, Thapas, Basnets, and so on and so forth. I am not too sure about their root too (I am, I must admit, weak in history). After autocracy of Ranas was overthrown, we had a brief spell of "democracy" in early 60s but during that time Nepal was ruled by Biratnagar, then we had Panchayat democracy which basically meant the Gorkha rule got reinstated, till 1990. I shouldn't forget that once under Shah monarch's Panchayat system, Marich Man Singh did get to occupy the prime ministerial chair. I am given to understand that he was from Salyan. However, after addition of Shrestha suffix in his name, it may be claimed that Kathmandu did get to become a sub-ruler at the fag end of Panchayat system.

After people's movement of 1990 it was Biratnagar ruling Nepal for over 10 years out of about a dozen yeas and Dhankuta and Baitadi too did get to rule by turn for brief periods. And after abolition of monarchy Chitwan (rather Kaski) along with Bardiya did get to rule for 9 months and now Rautahat is taking its turn to rule in conjunction with Morang/Sunsari.

Therefore, all these years all these people ruled Nepal albeit from Kathmandu. But, it is not justifiable to blame Kathmandu for the tyranny of people from different parts of Nepal, merely because they did so from Kathmandu. From this tangent the solution may lie in simply shifting the capital instead of splitting this tiny country into small provinces. In other words, if this is the only reason for going federal, then we should look somewhere else to mitigate the problem.

PS: Please watch Nepal Television tomorrow morning at 8:25 AM.

With best regards,


Sincerely,

Ratna Sansar Shrestha,

-----Original Message-----
From: harith@ntc.net.np [mailto:harith@ntc.net.np]
Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2009 13:03
To: Lal Bahadur Thapa
Cc: Ratna Sansar Shrestha; pradeep.shrestha@hotmail.com; nesocamails@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Fwd: Fw: [NESOCA Mail #2943] Re: Fwd: Fw: My article on federalism

Federalism is highly needed. Kathmandu cannot rule over the country. So
called leaders which has land and house and soul in Kathmandu cannot work
for federalism. It was Maoists movement that worked on ethnic based
concept. We all need to be generous and work on practical concept. We
already suffered from Kathmandu's totalitarianism. We cannot accept
another form of totalitarian group or regional idea that will dominate
other ethnic or region's existence.

Nobody should think that if the country goes to federalism and it will
divided. Federalism is not Kathmandu's demand. People which represents
Nepal should advocate this issue. Elite living in Kathmandu doesn't like
the concept. I hope Maoist won't loose their faith from their fundamental
idea.

Best,
Hari Thapa