JOIN USStanding by the door with his clean shaven face and impeccable dress, Yuvrajkumar put up an exterior of a loyal sentinel in an alien country. Kept away from the revolutionary rumblings of his homeland (Nepal), he is fighting another war to meet both ends -- weaving dreams of a bright future.
When the Maoists started tearing apart the societal fabric using high-octave revolutionary slogans and life-threatening weapons, Yuvrajkumar thought that they might succeed in bringing down the monarchy for the greater good of his countrymen. The very moment the revolutionary Maoists strode to the pinnacle of power, Yuvrajkumar hoped a new beginning for the Nepalese rooted in radical, social and political justice. But this high regard for the Maoists vanished the very moment they started savouring power.
“They spilled the blood of commoners to liberate our land from the clutches of royalty. When they succeeded, they forgot the great promises they had made,” said an emaciated Yuvrajkumar. When the zeal and zest with which they fought against the rule of authoritarian royalty was found withered at the altar of power, it was heartbreaking for him. “They could have roped in all and sundry to help build the pillars of democracy. Instead they took cudgels against all those who stood against them,” he adds.
Accusing the Maoists and the current ruling dispensation of riding roughshod over people’s democratic rights, he says Nepal’s cataclysmic journey from monarchy to democracy could not keep the pulverising issue of belly away. If discord creeps into democracy it can be seen as the leaders’ failure to fufill people’s aspiration. And if force is used to stymie dissent it vitiates the democratic fabric of a nation.
Are the rulers, whether from the Left, Right or Centre, belong to the same class in all civilisations? Or do they have any other agenda for butchering their own citizens? What the political establishment in any country would do well to understand is that the vote is not a blind endorsement, but the expression of a fragile hope of a rational participatory relationship with the government.