I grew up in Tharu community of terai, as
a son of migrant Kshetriya. My grandfather
moved from hills to plains of terai. Most of my friends from childhood were
from Tharu community, I played with them, ate at their houses, joined their
ceremonies and they did the same. I hung out them so much that I can understand
their language and even speak slightly. I think this is the kind of involvement
people from different backgrounds need to have to understand each other and
live in harmony. (In Chitawan) Initially migrants from hills were a minority
but now are a majority and I see many differences in the way both groups operate
but we all have been able to co-exist with accepting the differences of the
other.
I am a third year
student at Agriculture and Forestry University. Over the course of three years
I have made some wonderful friends, whom I consider as my brothers. Last week I
had a verbal fight with one of my best friends and I felt horrible afterwards.
I said things I shouldn’t have said and I am sure he did the same. It was an
emotionally draining experience and made me think and visualize everything
about the fight, how it started and why did I/we let it be. Then I visualized
the first time we met, the conversations we had at mid night, the pranks we
pulled, the travels we did together. All this made me realize the fragility of
human relationship. It made me realize the importance of dialogue, the role of
effective communication at avoiding, solving conflicts. I guess the importance
of dialogue multiplies many times when we consider two people from different
culture, religion, country.
When I was in
secondary school, Maoist led revolution going on, that lasted for ten years. At
that time, NEWS would call these people as terrorists and had put a price on
their heads. And Maoist would come into our villages at night at write
anti-monarch slogans on the walls and would urge people to rebel against the
system. I didn’t knew much back then about the ideologies they were fighting
for but what I knew was the number of killings that were taking place from both
sides was not right.
After spilling
blood for ten years, the revolution ended with 12 point agreement and coalition
of Maoist with remaining seven parties. Nothing solidly significant in the
lives of poor has been achieved yet and question that comes often in my mind
is: Was it justified? Wasn’t there a better way?
Despite its
horrendous judgement in few cases and imbalanced power structure, the UN has
shown us there is. Its peace keeping mission all over the world has given end
to conflicts, they have successfully mediated the conflicting parties and
helped them overcome their differences. The role of UN through UNMIN was a
praiseworthy one.
One of my brother
is in the army and he has been to peace keeping missions in Africa, whenever he
shares me his experiences, he starts by uttering a few words of the local
language that he learnt in that country
followed by their task, the diversities & complexities of local community.
He showed me his photo with a local translator. The troops used to communicate
with the local people through the translator and it was his ability to speak
multiple language that helped build the relationship and mutual understanding
and he accounts the success of the mission was largely dependent on men like
him.
I have read a few accounts of US soldiers
in middle-east and the help the translators have provided. Amidst such tension,
the lives of soldiers are dependent on the translator helping them decode the
local language.
One thing I have
noticed, anything that is unknown to us, we are afraid of it, we perceive it as
enemy. This is very natural, even in our blood we have antibodies that detects and
kills/attempts to kill anything foreign. May be if we tried to understand what
it is like to be in their position, what they have been through, what could
have happened to them that made them the way they are. I realize that one
person might not fully understand another person at all but what I think
everyone can do is alter the first perception of fear and look at the person
from the eyes of acceptance.
Many thousands of
Nepali workers migrate to foreign countries in search of jobs. People moving to
Japan, Korea have to learn a whole new language just to be able to go there by mortgaging
their home, land and work there for 18 hours a day. While this sort of exchange
does introduce East-Asian culture among Nepalese diaspora but it doesn’t feel
like a two way process. Many end up in Qatar, Saudi Arabia where the working
condition is so harsh and the people are treated more as slaves than workers.
In many cases they are handicapped, many die. Going there might be their need
but this exploitation has to stop.
One cannot shout
global citizenship while the cultural imperialism, exploitation of poor
prevails. Dreaming a global class struggle for equality for global citizenship
does sound a far-fetched but what we can achieve today is increase not only number
of educated people but also number of conscious people, consciousness about the
self, humanity, co-existence and ability to see through the created illusions
and rally around a consensus. I would like to end this by quoting Shashi
Tharoor, past undersecretary of UN, “You don’t have to agree all the time, so
long as you agree on the ground rules how you are going to disagree.”
I believe this is
the long-term solution to our existing conflicts, extremism, terrorism and the
day a threshold level of consciousness is reached through multilingual
effective communication, dialogue, peace building in our hearts and minds, then
you and I will be global citizen in true sense.
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