Source: http://www.kiratisaathi.com/?L=blogs.blog&article=612&PHPSESSID=377dc59e475e0431e2b2c180ae1f2f17
Dear Dr. Baburam Bhattarai,
Greetings from America. Congratulations on your party’s fine performance in the election. My friends and I rejoice with you all.
However, your recent not too kind remarks regarding the Gurkhas in the The Economist flabbergasted me, upset many, and pissed off quite a few of my fellow Kirati friends. You seem to have overreacted on this one. Maybe it is your overconfidence in your imminent victory in the election or just plain ignorance of facts.
Please be aware that it’s not the victory that so much matters but the responsibilities you’ll shoulder and tasks you’ll have to carry out after the victory, that matter more.
Your victory may take you to the mountain top but it will be a mountain top of garbage that had accumulated over centuries of mismanagement. Do not be too smug too soon.
To clear this mountain of garbage one shovel will not do, nor two shovels, nor hundred shovels, nor thousand shovels but millions of shovels diligently working on it. At this hour you should be extending your hands and cultivating friendships - making friends not enemies.
You seem to be out of touch with reality. Do you know what I’m talking about?
To call these hard working brave men of the hills, mercenaries is the dumbest thing ever from a Nepali politician. I’d thought with a PhD. under your belt, you’d be smarter than the others. But what a disappointment.
It’s obvious that you’ve a hidden agenda for targeting these simple hill people. You, who should have taken their cause and fought for them, instead are swinging a cudgel at them. Do not be a fool. These people who helped to get you up there can also bring you down. So play your cards carefully.
Do you realize that Nepal is a landlocked country mostly of barren mountains and hills solely dependant on India’s charities and donor countries’ handouts.
Can’t you see Nepal needs outside aid just to keep its people alive and maintain the government machinery? We have no natural resources that have been utilized. Population is growing by the hundreds if not thousands every day. The few arable lands we’ve have been used to their limits and have stopped sustaining any more population growth long time ago. Every day people are starving and babies are dying because of malnutrition.
That is why we had a revolution in which over thirteen thousand innocent, mostly poor hill people died. That is why this election took place in which your party seems the sure winner because these very people whom you are about to betray and backstab helped you. What a way to show gratitude. With friends like you who needs enemies?
So a Dozen of Ex-Gurkhas saluted the portrait of Queen Elizabeth. What crime have they done? Saluting is a gesture that means quite a few things among them are: Hello! I see you - Happy Greetings! - My profound respect for you. - Thank you! I’m grateful for your kindness.
What these Gurkhas did was that they showed their gratitude to the Grand Lady who happens to be the head of the state of a grand country which is giving them employment that their own country denied or couldn’t give them. Now, is that a crime? What is so degenerating about it that could gall you? Why make such a fuss of such a minor event.
Perhaps you’re not aware that Mr. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister Saluted Rifleman TulBahadur Pun VC when the Prime Minister welcome and received him in London. Mr. TulBahadur Pun VC is just a simple peasant of the hills - an old faded but not jaded ex-soldier
Do not live on false pride. You are an educated man of modest means; but my… you do have a super ego! Or is it unchecked envy? Whichever it is, it’s not good.
And I can bet you anything, if the Queen had been there in person she’d have complimented the Gurkhas with a salute in return. Such is the grace of the British Royal Family.
Perhaps you may be right in calling them mercenaries. But understand this that they became mercenaries not to enjoy life but to feed their families. Soldiering is not only a hard life but a dangerous profession. No one would have left their homes if they could find a decent job in Nepal. But jobs in Nepal have always been reserved for a special group in which the indigenous people of the hills have been left out. You know this. Do not pretend you don’t.
These people whom you call mercenaries with envy and disdain are far more superior human beings than those scum bags of the society; the politicians and civil servants who cheat and rob with insolent impunity the very people whom they are suppose to serve.
There are a whole bunch of them some still in the country and some living abroad in comfort and luxury with their ill gotten wealth. Get’em if you can. See if you can find them and bring them to justice. To date not a single one of them had been tried.
You are forgetting one very important thing. That is; Nepal needs a lot of money to build- up and for development. And that money is not in the country. We need foreign exchange desperately. Every penny helps at this moment. We’re in debt to Indian Oil Corporation in billion of rupees. We’re virtually owned by India and dance to their tune.
You should be thinking of how to play foreign policies with international players and not how to hurt the indigenous people of Nepal and pull the rugfrom under their feet. Your worry should be to how to bring in foreign investment and foreign exchange in the country, before the people get frustrated and desperate again and Janandolan III gives birth.
Soon your party will be administrating the country. It is in a mess at present. You’ll need help from every quarter and every penny matters. The Gurkhas whom you call mercenaries with complete lack of understanding and sensitivity bring in foreign exchange that the country desperately needs. Just leave them alone to do their jobs; the country will be better off for it.
The country needs foreign exchange. You should be encouraging, enticing and making it easy for Nepalese who’ve gone abroad to come back – not wave cudgels at them!
The country needs the expertise and investment of the expatriates. This popular slogan of four words says it all:
It’s the economy, stupid.
Yours Sincerely,
A well-wisher
P.S.
I apologize for the many mistakes you’ll encounter in this letter and for the poor writing style. I’m a high school dropout. I had to leave school and find a job to feed my family and myself. I mean no malice towards you. It is just a genuine complaint from far away, and a friendly suggestion.
By the way I’m also a Rai – but without the Bhatta - just Rai. Please remember me. I’d like to return to Nepal and work and serve my own country if you’ll find me a job. Since I’ve been out of the country for a long time, perhaps I might fit in the foreign policy department! I mean it. They say, you can never know what you are capable of until you try. Please help me to try.
