Almost all of my good friends are out of Nepal, and right now with self-study, life is all about a cooping in my room, with books. Instead of bar, barbecue or cinema, life is more about books, Internet and sleep. No Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn for the moment. No emails or calendar utility in progress.
Wikipedia has become one important source of entertainment right now. This huge source of information, and my love for history, presents as a great companion in these time of exile. Last night was no different, and when I was done with my books, I went straight to view world maps. Found some irregular border lines, in two places and began my journey for the search of information. Random reading intrigues me, and as much as I presume it to be useless, I just hope, someday everything will come handy.
I began with a small country situated in the horn of Africa – Eritrea. Smaller than Nepal, and bordered with Ethiopia. It’s a developing country, better than Nepal, and has some great good potential, but as with many African nation has fair share of troubles within and outside it, hence a border dispute and fighting with its neighbor has had its toll to the country.
Next on stop was India and its border dispute with China. Apparently there are two border dispute, and as much as I knew about Sino-India war of the late 60s, there was another land mass, near the Kashmir territory that was in dispute. I finally found out more about the seven autonomous regions in China. Tibet plateau is not alone. A long page on these border dispute and the autonomous regions let to a brief history in China, and how Mao came up with a great plan to kill so many innocent humans. Made me sad, and angry. The great leap, the agriculture revolution by the officials which had killed so many innocents, in the name of politics. Reading about these atrocities in the name of a belief made me think the difference between politics and religion. How few smart people ruled the hordes of uneducated like animals. Comparing the democracy with the communism, and the socialist movement with corrupt democracy. A total of 7 million people starved to death during the second agriculture revolution in China – as per the official government figure. An outside figure estimates this to be as much as 48 million, with more people agreeing on terms with the death total of around 30 million. That’s more than the current Nepal’s population of 26.6 million. I was curious to know if something like this had also happen in an entirely opposite scenario, when
I read about the anti-communist genocide by the Indonesian government in the late sixties, in the name of politics. There is a great documentary being released about this, I hope I can see it someday.
Reminiscent and similar to the internet social media rule – 90-9-1 – that for every original source of an idea by one person, there will be nine that will develop on it and improve/degrade it (bake it into their own formula) and distribute to the ninety of us who, with the lack of proper social structure or hence forth the information gap, will follow it. This, I see in both politics and religion – especially in my country (Nepal).
Recently, I met an old friend from Brazil – Sao Palo this past week. We talked about democracy, president Lua, and the evolution of Brazilian culture with its politics. It was a wonderful insight on this huge nation, and I hope Fernando is right when he says, Nepal right now is what Brazil was 20 years ago. I hope, this country turns out great in the near future.
PS.i. This post is not a foul cry to the democracy in Nepal, or the corrupt leaders. I am however, trying to gain knowledge on the evolution of it, and would want to know the path it will follow in future.
Related articles
- Popular struggles in nepal (slideshare.net)
- Getting Ready For Nepal – Part One (stickoutyourtongue.org)
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