Saraswoti Gyawali’s "लालटीनको उज्यालोमा" is a book you would want to read if you want to know how the Maoist in Nepal were able to win the hearts of the public and won the war in 2006.
Saraswoti is the wife of the current Minister of Foreign Affairs for Nepal. However, both, her husband, Mr. Pradip Kumar Gyawali, and Saraswoti were the former Comrade of Nepal’s Maoist party. The couple has three grownup children.
Saraswoti is the wife of the current Minister of Foreign Affairs for Nepal. However, both, her husband, Mr. Pradip Kumar Gyawali, and Saraswoti were the former Comrade of Nepal’s Maoist party. The couple has three grownup children.
लालटीनको उज्यालोमा depicts the prehistory era of the Maoist party in Nepal. Built based on the ideologies of Karl Marx and Mao Zedong, the Maoist terrorized the royals, the oppressors and the capitalists in Nepal. In one incidence, for example, Saraswoti and her team humiliated one such oppressor in the public for selling the village girls for money. The incidence occurred in Ardhakhachhi district of Nepal. For her crimes the oppressor's face was painted black and she was forced to wear a garland of shoes around her neck!.
The Maoist's victory was short lived, however. Their government lasted less than a year and the country fell into the hands of a coalition government, followed by a national election after a year.
Yes, the Maoist were able to drive the royals out of the power, but it came at the cost of 13,000 lives and more than that many youth left the country as migrant workers for oversees. Thus, Saraswoti's satisfactions for being able bring some positive changes in the country during the insurgencies outweighed by the loss Nepal incurred.
The Moist party in Nepal also violated the fundamental principles of communism: "Property rights and Redistribution of property by occupying more private properties than any other governing party in the county had ever done!
I left Nepal when the Maoist were working underground as rebels. Their activities were not known to general public like myself. But I did share some of their nationalist sentiments! To be honest, however, neither the rebels nor I knew the true meaning of Maoism, then. We had no real awareness of what Mao or Marx were really like. We only knew their unrealistic ideologies.
Whatever the Maoist understood at the time of revolution and however they managed to get rid of the monarchs, what is happening in the country is not what they had envisaged initially!
Writing that, however, I find Saraswoti's book heroic, and I respect the couple for who they are, more than what they have done for Nepal.
