Nas,
There is a good reason why certain cast references were banned without any political reasons. You seem to be hasty in classifying myself into uber liberal category but as far as I'm concerned I don't like to identify with any political factions per se but rather support particular actions that deserve supporting like some things Ron Paul has had to say or some things Obama has had to say, but mind you, I don't want to follow any one side without giving a benefit of doubt. As they say politics is about choosing the lesser of the evil. In an ideal world politics should be about bettering the lives of the citizen but unfortunately there are many socio economical variables involved in the personal lives of the politicians that effectively take them away from what they are supposed to be doing. But that's a different story.
In the 10 year old history of sajha, we have seen many things but one thing has always been a constant, and that is the empowerment of castist views emboldened by anonymity. We have continued to see anti bahun, anti newar, anti chettri and anti bhote sentiments poured out without any inhibitions due to the absense of any personal identity. These are the same people who are fighting hard to pull the frogs back in the jar.
Today even the greatness of religion is under serious question. To support castism is like supporting slavery. Those days are long gone and anyone who cannot let go of that would be considered plain stupid if they are to have a open discussion in public under their own identity.
Sajha, trying to be sajha for all, understands that there are some people who are slow to adapt or simply to slow to give up their traditional beliefs in this brave new world where information travels faster than one can say DUH. Hence every now and then there needed to be cleansing of sajha postings of posters who were adamant about their misguided belief of their own superiority. During May of 2011, there came a period when such display of misguided superiority fueled by the safety of anonimity showed up in an unmanagable proportion.
The administrative side of sajha faced a certain dilemma. Either to have to delete 60-70% of postings which were directly or indirectly castist, or to support the freedom of free expression and a self sustaining virtual world where people are free to post their opinions - without being offensive to others based on their caste, creed or national origin. Run as a hobby, the sajha administration cannot possibly monitor the postings 24/7. So a practical decision was made to
replace (not ban) castist hate inciting words such as 'bahun', 'chettri', 'newar', 'jyapu', 'bhote'.
If someone really wanted to go back and edit their posting they could do it and use bahuun instead of bahun and newaar instead of newar and so on.
Surprisingly after this step, castist hate related threads plummeted from sajha and everything was as it should be. Sajha again began to become a site where Nepalis come to help each other out by sharing information, and providing a virtual hang out place where all Nepalis can hang out and feel part of the community they miss back home.
That is, until this thread was revived from the past when castists people raised their intolerant heads to spill the hatred that they carry within them to prove themselves superior to other human beings based on their birth.
People who are still stuck on jaat paat are not to be blamed but the society that existed in the past is to blame. The society itself was dependent on the existing rulers who perpetuated such baseless classifications in order to keep their own position in the pedestals while everyone else was there to serve them. That was the past and we need to realize that and move on to embrace each other as co-existing human beings who have to work together to make our neighborhood, villages, towns, cities and country a better place.
Well Nas when I started writing I wasn't sure what I was going to write but I am happy with the way it turned out and I hope it explains to you that in sajha we don't live in a police state nor a sensor prone state, but simply a place where you have your freedom of speech as long as you don't lose respect for humanity.
