Rally

Madankrishna Shrestha has the most impressive rhetorical skills among speechmakers in Nepal. Here is how his speech at Basantapur started:

"I see among us those who save lives--I see doctors. I see among us those with a vision to build a better furute--I see engineers. I see among us those who strive to transform Nepal into a nation where the rule of law flourishes--I see advocates and legal professionals. I see among us those who create doctors and engineers and advocates of the future--I see teachers. I see among us those who make the stuff that makes life better--I see entrepreneurs, industrialists, professionals. I see laobrers, I see farmers. I see a multitude hungering for the freedom to work and make an honest living."

I have paraphrased; I have edited and slightly and enhanced, but the effect of the speech is not betrayed. He also knew how to build the audience's reaction: he asked rhetorical questions to get the audience to raise their hands. "Who wants peace? Who is tired of the bandhs?" When thousands of pairs of hands were raised [and almost everybody raised both hands] in response, it made for a very heartening sight.

For, the unpigmented human palm is designed to signal intent over great distances.

The state hijacked the Peace Rally through a vote of thanks in the cabinet of ministers. Similarly, Nepali Congress, through its directive to the government to

invalidate the regional offices of UNHRC, has overstepped its office.

The meeting in Basantapur was not supposed to turn into a rally, for that was a guaranteed method for attracting confrontation with the YCL. The authorities had been told that there wasn't to be a rally, so they were unprepared. But, the mass was large--numerous. Hydra-headed, jubilient, eager. It circled around Tundikhel, and made a turn that proved a mistake.

YCL cadres are camped in the City Hall, the Exhibition Hall across the street, and Sajha Prakashan down the street. Within a distance of 100 meters, there must be a couple of thousand YCL cadres camped in for the long seige of the city. They were prepared, with bricks broken into fist-sized missiles piled on the sidewalk, bamboo canes and strips.

Riot police stopped the Peace Rally twice, but didn't succeed in containing it: mostly because the people at the front of the rally were earnest about their peaceful intentions. They had passed through a throng of YCL protesters earlier, and were given peaceful passage. On the surface, it seemed there was no threat.

But that was the surface. When a group used to facing no

opposition realizes there is an opposing voice, it sits unseasy.

The YCL allowed the Peace rally to pass first, but then cut into the line, cutting off one group from another. Then our revolutionary brethren came out into the street, with their sticks and stones and red flags.

The Peace Rally carried the Nepali flag--not something I agree with. This wasn't about nationalism or partriotism; this was about peace, about putting an end to bandhs, forever.

Across the fence of riot police shields were red flags printed the hammer and sickle inside a white outline of Nepal's borders.

YCL cadres were carrying rocks in their hands, holding sticks high above their heads. I had a change of clothes, a notebook, a water bottle and a laptop in my backpack. Not an even match.

Dr. Niroj Banepali, a beautiful man, smaller than my two fists together but never wavering in his belief, appeared next to me. He had a large grin on his face. Those carrying sticks and stones looked at us as if we had transgressed against a sacred formula by smiling at each other, laughing so close to their spray of angry spit. When it looked like some on our side of the fence were directly taunting some on the other side of the fence, we turned around to talk to a couple of blood-thirsty peace-marchers.

"We are here for peace. We can't react to them. We can't force them to give us passage. We have to ask them, shame them into it."

"Let's sit," I said after a few moments. Banepali was already sitting. I sat down. Some more people sat. A dozen. Soon, twenty. If the number would reach a hundred, the thousands behind us would sit, or that was the hope.

No. There were three on the ground, sitting as if that meant anything: a middle-aged man with white hair and a head with a craggy scar on his crown, Dr. Niroj Banepali, and this man.

That is when comedy of a certain kind entered my life: I needed desperately to urinate. I stood from the street and strayed into the midst of onlookers, quietly watching the procession, expressionless and uninterested. Only when I was well in their midst did I see the half-bricks and stones around their feet, and sticks in their hands. They were carrying red hammer and sickle flags.

"Khai, khai--alikati bato paam ta!" I started saying. Excuse me, could I pass? Of course, they weren't paying any attention to me: they were looking at the rally ahead of them, now stepping out to the pavement, now injecting into the crowd to form a layer few bodies thick. I saw an opening in the wall to my left. I thought--let's go into this compound, chances are, I can pee against a tree, feel relieved.

Wrong. No trees, but lots and lots of YCL and other Maoist cadres. There were children in the compound, who were helping by ferrying freshly split bamboo sticks to the street. Some chose to stand on the top of the roof of Sajha Prakashan, while a young woman--I wouldn't put her age at 18 or above... closer perhaps to 16--yelled at them for "sitting on your knees, while you should be out there."

"What is it?" A man asked me politely, perhaps bewildered that someone, carrying a backpack, had strayed into the party's camp.

"Is there a place where I can urinate?" I asked. I saw the line of jute-sacks lined sewage that had been converted into an open latrine by removing alternative sewer covers. This left concrete platforms perhaps 24 inches wide, with 24 inches wide gap on both sides. On this you'd squat, rely upon the notion that it is the face that people can identify, and therefore is attached to shame, and do your business.

I raised a flap, urinated, went to the water tap that was, miraculously, always running although in a slow trickle, washed my hand alongside a man who was filling up a plastic bottle. Half-dozen men returned from the street to go into what must be the toilets in the building.

One man was using a thin kitchen knife to split a tall bamboo--something that must have propped up the tarpaulin flap over the cooking fire. A boy ran to the street with the bamboo sticks.

I paused to watch the confrontation happening outside the compound. People around me ran frantically back and forth, collecting sticks, stones, bricks. The peace rally seemed to have been hijacked by a few who were intent on a confrontation: later, [today, Saturday the 8th of May], there were news about the rally being "infiltrated" by some who supported other political parties [NC, UML] and were looking for a fight.

I walked out of the compound and into the "peace" side of the rally. Didn't care to stick around any more.

I walked to Kupondole, somewhat disappointed that the rally had lost its dignity so quickly.

An hour or so after I exited that road, police fired 12 shells of teargas into the crowd to disperse it. It seemed, by that point, the YCL and Maoists had been overwhelmed by the not-so-peaceful protesters.

Later, in the evening, Prachanda said the Maoist Party had decide to end the bandhs because the government conspired to "make the people fight each other," and because the party was sensitive towards the suffering the bandhs were causing to the people.

I wish they had been honest about the reason. They created the need for the confrontation, not just in Kathmandu, but across the country. They miscalculated their popularity among the people, and actually lost a lot of popularity during and because of these bandhs.

But, at least for the time being, the bandhs are over.