THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

 This article was rejected by the Brahmin-Chettri editors because they were too terrified to challenge PC perceptions of the janjati, and also because most probably they did not want to be branded racists. Hence rather late I decided to run it in my blog instead. The article addresses the violence against women in the name of witchcraft.  ROMANTICIZING THE JANJATI Ten-year old Suman Nepali’s harrowing eyewitness account of how his mother was killed by his teacher Hira Lama and Hira’s mother Kailimaya Tamang, who tortured her and fed her human feces, was published in NepalKhabar recently. Urban readers were sickened by this account, in which the social science teacher hurled abuse at the young Dalit woman and accusations of being a witch, tied her to a volleyball post in the schoolyard, hit her on the head, tied her legs when she resisted forcible feeding of human feces, and forced it down her throat, and beat her so savagely on her head she succumbed to her injuries two ...

As Nepal gears up for Chinese President Xi’s visit this Saturday afternoon, I thought I’d put forth some thoughts of mine is what is otherwise an entirely male dominated foreign policy environment. All commentators (former and present diplomats, government officials, journalists) in Nepal are male, and this definitely shapes the way we view what international relations between the two countries should be. There is a lot of talk of infrastructure, of course. There’s the trans-Himalayan railway, a much desired infrastructural project after India’s blockade on Nepal. There’s hydropower projects of mega-scope, billions of dollars and thousands of megawatts in the pipeline. China has always been a big builder of roads in Nepal, and with the BRI this is definitely in the equation. Investment in cement factories is also a big one. My views on this has been clear on Twitter. As we invest billions of dollars every year on roads that wash away each monsoon, the viability of roads in mountai...

Annapurna Express, October 4th, 2019 “Change is coming, whether you like it or not.” Wise words from a sixteen year old that is lost amongst the clamor of panicking adults who can’t see beyond their own narrow confines of belief and bank accounts. Greta Thunberg has blown the conch shell, metaphorically speaking. In Hindu mythology, the conch shell was blown at the beginning of a battle of good over evil. In the Mahabharata, the world’s longest epic, a long and destructive battle almost destroyed both sides, but the lesson remains—no matter what the cost, the battle had to be fought to the bitter end for ethical and moral reasons. Once you entered the fray, there was no turning back. The war of the Mahabharata was only 18 days long. But what intense eighteen days! The epic is rich with extraordinary characters, plots and events. The Mahābhārata is the longest epic poem known to humanity. According to Wikipedia: “At about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahābhārata is roughly...