Nepal's Maoist rulers rile Hindus
By Dhruba Adhikary
KATHMANDU - Nepal's first elected prime minister, the Maoist leader of the
interim coalition formed last August, remains in hot water due to his
enthusiastic involvement with the management of a major Hindu shrine.
Prachanda's efforts to pacify the simmering discontent through a statement in
parliament on Wednesday have had only a marginal effect in calming the instant
- and ominous - flak his moves have drawn from devotees far and wide. And the
beleaguered leader is not out of the woods yet.
The ongoing row began when Prachanda invoked a law legislated
before the erstwhile monarchy was abolished that gave the government a say in
the appointment of priests at Kathmandu's Pashupatinath temple, a holy site for
Hindus all over the world that houses a stone image of Lord Shiva, the third
god of the Hindu trinity.
Over 80% of Nepal's 25 million people are Hindu, while in India an estimated
930 million of its population are followers of Hinduism. The temple area is
overwhelmed by swarms of pilgrims from neighboring countries during the
Shivaratri festival, an occasion marking the birth of Lord Shiva, which usually
falls in the month of February.
Many Hindus strive to visit Pashupatinath at least once in their lives; its
significance can be compared to that of Mecca for Muslims or the Vatican for
Catholics. Locally, those who head to this Hindu holy place frequently include
Ilankovan Kolandavelu, the Malaysian ambassador who is a member of his
country's minority Hindu community.
Revolutionary Prachanda and his minister responsible for cultural affairs,
Gopal Kirati, took the unprecedented step of appointing new priests to conduct
daily worship and rituals at Pashupatinath. In the process, the Maoist
leadership earlier "accepted" the resignations tendered by
traditionally-appointed priests, known as Bhatta, who are of south Indian
origin. This action, which broke a tradition maintained through centuries, was
bound to spark outrage across the country and beyond. Deposed king Gyanendra,
who lost his throne when the constituent assembly declared Nepal a secular
republic last May, issued a statement urging all concerned to keep
Pashupatinath above the political controversy.
"Doesn't new Nepal need a new Pashupatinath?" asked Minister Kirati at a news
conference last week. While he appeared satisfied with what he thought was a
logical defense, the media present could not help but laugh at his remarks.
As the controversy dragged on, Pashupatinath remained virtually unattended.
Devotees were confused and skeptical about the moves of the Maoist leaders,
whose eyes seem to be fixed on the property and daily income of the temple. (It
wouldn't be the first time the temple was utilized as a source of income. When
slavery was formally abolished a century ago, rulers of Nepal took some of the
temple's money, gold and other valuables to compensate those who were required
to free their slaves.)
Meanwhile, some of the immediate stakeholders - including storekeepers, called
Bhandaris - took the case to the Supreme Court. On January 1, the court issued
a stay order until the case was ready for a detailed hearing. But the cultural
affairs minister challenged the court order in public: "We are not going to
honor the Supreme Court on this matter."
To make things worse, the minister directed the temple trust to appoint two
assistants to help new appointees. But in view of the growing public anger, the
Maoist ministers submitted a petition to the court to vacate its earlier order.
A hearing is scheduled for Monday, January 12, and Nepal's public appears to be
prepared to wait till the court delivers its verdict.
But Hindus in India aren't as patient. They have held demonstrations in front
of the Nepal Embassy in New Delhi and elsewhere; television pictures have shown
angry crowds burning effigies of Prachanda. The first high-profile Indian to
return home without visiting the temple was Mulayam Singh Yadav, leader of the
country's Samajwadi Party. He was in the capital this week as a personal guest
of Nepal's president.
Indian Hindu nationalist leader Lal Krishna Advani took up the issue publicly
on Tuesday, saying how "deeply distressed" he was by the ongoing controversy.
He also expressed unhappiness over the way incumbent Indian priests were being
treated.
Earlier, his Bharatiya Janata Party had published a statement claiming that the
controversial action had "hurt the sentiments of people in India". Official
India, however, has remained quiet, which is understandable because of the
country's constitutionally-secular status. Besides, Congress party president
Sonia Gandhi, whose Italian origins enter public debate every now and then, may
not have a particular interest in the temple, given she was barred from
visiting on an earlier visit to Nepal with her husband, then prime minister
Rajiv Gandhi.
Back home, Nepal's President Ram Baran Yadav told Prachanda how concerned he
was over the issue that had hurt the sentiments of millions of people within
the country and beyond.
Whether or not Prachanda anticipated this level of resentment, if not
hostilities against the Maoist leadership, remains a matter of conjecture. In
any case, Prachanda and his comrades later tried to neutralize public outcry by
presenting themselves as patriots; Indian priests were being sacked to make
room for Nepali priests. The objective, according to argument put forward by
pro-Maoist newspapers, was also to prevent monetary donations to the temple
from being misappropriated by Indian priests.
Communications Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara told an audience in the western
region of Nepal that no "foreign intervention" in the country's internal
matters would be tolerated. He praised Prachanda's initiative to appoint Nepali
priests as courageous. Needless to emphasize, Mahara's allusion is to the
Indians. One pertinent question arises here: who is giving Indians a pretext to
be meddlesome if not the Maoists themselves? They were the ones to stir the
hornet's nest.
The masses appear unwilling to accept Maoists as the trustees of the Hindu
religion. Prachanda's refusal to take the oath of prime minister in the name of
god is cited as an example of the party's atheist character. The other relevant
point members of the public often make is that since communists consider
religion as opium, the Maoists' sudden concern and sympathy for Hindus is
absurd and hollow. If the communists worship anything at all, it would be the
portraits of Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.
There are people who are in favor of giving Prachanda the benefit of the doubt,
but they also contend that the Maoists should have adopted proper and
transparent methods to select qualified and competent Nepali priests. And that
has not happened. What Maoists have done, as was admitted by an official of the
temple trust, was to randomly choose priests from among their cadres. Credible
media reports said the Indian priests did not quit on their own accord, but
were compelled to resign.
To make matters worse, the priests the Maoists appointed did not know the
precise manner of how the rituals, prescribed by the first shankaracharya
(temple head), have to be carried out inside the temple. In his book on
Pashupatinath, writer Govinda Tandon explained why the tradition of hiring
priests from southern India was set in motion 300 years ago.
"Catholics go to the Vatican to see the pope; nobody bothers whether he is
from, Germany or Poland,” Sharat Chandra Wasti, an associate professor of
Sanskrit studies, told Asia Times Online. Similarly, Muslims go to Mecca, not
to a political entity called Saudi Arabia, he added.
Wasti, who has spent considerable time doing research on the temple, posed
another challenging question to Maoists: can their government appoint clergies
in Nepal's mosques and churches as well? No, they cannot. Clearly, Maoists are
taking undue advantage of the high level of tolerance that exists among Hindus.
Wasti even suspects that the Maoists have eaten pecuniary bait thrown by some
non-Hindu groups aiming to secure mass conversions.
The legal aspect of the issue too is not favorable to the Maoists. Since the
monarchy, which stood as a custodian of the Hindu character of the country, has
already been replaced by a secular setup, the state apparatus has no authority
to intervene in the affairs of a religious entity. The relevant law has lost
its validity.
"The state's right has to be restricted to maintaining law and order, leaving
[all] ritual matters to religious authorities and devotees," said Badri Bahadur
Karki, a leading constitutional lawyer. This, he added, is the norm of a
civilized, democratic society. Perhaps this is something the Maoists have
failed to comprehend.
Dhruba Adhikary is a Kathmandu-based journalist.
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