Tharu
Autonomy: When The Slaves Rise Up On The Nepal Plains
By A World to
Win News Service
06 May
2004
In
the western lowlands of the country, the Tharu ethnic community has
long been dispossessed of its land and turned into serfs by wealthier
migrants from the hilly regions to the north. These powerful landlords,
or Zamindars, as they are called, are more often than not members of
so-called higher caste groups, mainly Brahmin and Kshetri, who have
also access to political power. These Zamindars wield positions in the
bureaucracy, the military and business. Moreover, they control the mass
media. In short, they represent the most important section of the ruling
class in Nepal.
Having appropriated
the land from the Tharu community, the Zamindars subjugated the Tharus
and turned them into bonded labourers (in return for food, clothing
and shelter) on the very land they previously owned. This is a system
of slavery by another name, the kamaiya system.
The Tharus are
an aboriginal people who inhabit the western plains of Nepal. They constitute
a sizeable minority of the population, a national minority (around 1.2
million), who at one time were self-sufficient farmers. Several years
ago National Geographic magazine graphically portrayed these people
as exotic beings with their very quaint customs and traditions. For
many years the Anti-Slavery Society, based in Britain, has been trying
to reach a wider audience about the Kamaiya system in Nepal. In 1997,
the Times of London carried an exposure on the plight of the Tharu people
under the Kamaiya system.
Since the people's
war reached the Terai (lowlands), it has greatly inspired the masses
of the people, especially the dispossessed and the downtrodden, who
rose up to reclaim their ancestral land. The programme of the Communist
Party of Nepal (Maoist) calling for the seizure and redistribution of
these lands found resonance among the underdogs in the southwestern
plains of Nepal. The party's words and deeds aroused a great deal of
revolutionary enthusiasm among these formerly deprived, who readily
joined Maoist cadres and the fighters of the People's Liberation Army.
At the outset of the people's war, the party announced its programme,
which includes the slogans "Land to the tiller" and "Land
to the landless". For the first time, women as well as men were
able to own land. Indeed, this programme, part and parcel of the new
democratic revolution led by the CPN(M), the first stage of a revolution
which will eventually open the doors to socialism, was given effect
and made meaningful
through the people's war. It has proved to be the real harbinger of
freedom from oppression and slavery for the people of the Terai.
In 2002, the parliament
under the king, declared the Tharu people free from the Kamaiya system
even as these people, by then rebellious, had begun to retake their
property - with many of the landlords already in full flight - under
the impetus of the Maoist advances in the south-western region.
It became all too
apparent that the parliament's declaration was more than a mere political
stunt. It was a vicious conspiracy between the imperialist powers, the
government, and certain foreign-funded non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) to wean the Tharus away from the Maoist revolution. Indeed, this
declaration of "freedom" by the parliament rang hollow in
the ears of the former Kamaiyas.
To hoodwink these
Kamaiyas, the regime sanctioned the distribution of tiny plots of land
to a small number of families. What took place however was that, in
the areas still under the old regime's control, some land earmarked
for distribution has indeed been parcelled out to some select members
of the Tharu community, while the rest of the land is being held as
"a carrot to the donkey". Thus the regime schemes to keep
the people hoping, in vain, that the rest of the land would be distributed
among them. Until today, no further land has been distributed, simply
because that was never the old state's plan. Moreover, it is not possible
to redistribute them under the present reactionary system. Hence, many
of the former "freed" Kamaiyas are moving back to their former
landlords to resell themselves into bondage. The New York Times (6 February
2004) revealed, for example, that Phool Kesari, a Tharu former slave
whose husband was taken away by the Royal Army as a suspected Maoist
sympathiser, was considering going back to her former zamindar. Phool
Kesari believes that she will never see her husband alive again. Cases
such as hers are common in the areas controlled by the Royal Nepal Army
today.
Flying in the face
of an obvious reality, that is, the truly chain-shattering process of
people's war that is gaining momentum, the same article asserts that
"the Maoists did little or nothing to free the Tharus from bonded
labour; the pressure on the government came from domestic and international
organizations." Nevertheless, it had to concede that in the village
of Bardya, "young Tharus talk happily about how the landlords have
had to flee the Maoist wrath." Bal Krishna Chaudhary, an 18-year-old
Tharu student from a family of former bounded labourers - and whose
eldest sister, Sita, was a Maoist supporter, taken away by the RNA two
years ago - was quoted as proudly saying, "all the zamindars are
scared of us now". The Maoists, he insisted, "speak for the
people, speak for the Tharus."
While claiming
that the insurgency has "wreaked havoc" and caused "great
damage" to the country, the article admits that the people's war
"wrought changes in the balance of power between the landed and
the landless that the multiparty democracy failed to do since 1990."
Very recently,
the royal government announced a new plan "to eradicate poverty"
by redistributing land. This plan calls for imposing limitations on
the amount of land a landowner can hold. The government proposes to
compensate the land it acquires from the zamindars, supposedly to be
redistributed to the landless poor. These peasants would, however, have
to pay the government by instalment.
Through this process,
there is every likelihood that an enormous concentration of land ownership
would take place, and would provide great opportunities for foreign
investors, foreign banks and the World Bank to acquire this land. Consequently,
poor and even middle farmers (let alone the Kamaiyas of the Tharu community)
would lose their land and become dispossessed - further impoverished,
even pauperised, thereby having to sell themselves into bondage. In
marked contrast to such machinations, the revolutionaries have been,
as they promised, expropriating the land and redistributing it to the
landless poor.
The uprising of
the Tharus has indeed shocked the old establishment of Nepal. Colonel
Dipak Gurung, the spokesman of the Royal Army, said that the Tharus
are a "very meek people; they normally don't resist." He claims
that "by nature, by culture, they are submissive." But under
conditions of the prevailing people's war, these so-called "meek"
and "submissive" people have begun to take up arms to throw
off the yoke of oppression, and for the first time, to take their destiny
into their own hands.
In the same week
the New York Times article appeared, new and startling changes were
taking place in the very same region: amidst joyous outpouring among
the people, the Tharuwan National Autonomous Region was declared . Scores
of thousands of former Kamaiyas openly rejoiced at their new-won freedom
and empowerment. Events such as these are possible only under a new
power, in the red base areas of the region, controlled by Maoist forces.