suchithkc
Kathmandu, May 11: India's home minister calls up his counterpart in Nepal and orders him to drop the demand for a new inspection of the border between the two neighbouring countries, warning that otherwise, the government in Nepal would topple. This is the plot of a Nepali film.
An Indian police inspector strolls into the office of a Nepali team sent to inspect the 1,800-km border and holds out the familiar black brief case filled with money. 'Take this for your daughter's education and leave the border inspection to us,' he tells the head of the Nepali survey team.
'You know that you can't do a thing without our approval. You can't even appoint a priest in your own temple without our endorsement.'
A young Nepali working as a waiter in a restaurant in India is slapped and abused by a customer when he accidentally spills water on her. The owner of the shop rallies behind the customer and both drag the nationality of the waiter into the abuse. It makes the man chuck his job and the other outraged Nepali employees too leave in a show of solidarity.
These and other images, where Nepal's bigger neighbour India emerges as a scheming, bullying villain, have begun to circulate through Kathmandu valley where at least three theatres are screening 'Dasgaja', the Nepali take on border disputes with India.
Gaja is a land measurement unit, meaning nine sq ft. Dasgaja, literally, is the no man's land, the 90 sq ft area that, as per international conventions, has to be left vacant on each side of an international border. The film depicts the atrocities perpetrated by Indian border security forces on Nepalis and shows the hero and his band of armed men reclaiming Nepali land by removing the border pillar wrongly erected by India in connivance with corrupt Nepali ministers.
While many of the scenes are steeped in melodrama, there is however no denying some of the bitter truths sown in the tale scripted by director Dayaram Dahal that have been souring relations between the two neighbours.
'Nepal's border districts have a roti-beti relationship with India,' says Dahal.
'People go to India for jobs and marry their sons and daughters to families across the border. However, due to the open border we share, there are now growing problems on both sides. We are asking the authorities to resolve them at a diplomatic level or else it could spill into violence one day.'
According to Nepali organisations, there are border disputes with India in 62 of Nepal's 75 districts and over 13,500 hectares of Nepali territory has been 'grabbed' by India.
There are also mounting allegations of India's border security patrols entering Nepali territory and assaulting villagers. Nepali workers returning home from India are frequently fleeced by them.
'There are similar complaints by Indians too,' Dahal concedes. 'So we are asking the authorities of both countries to take note of the problems or declare there are no problems.'
A deep problem does exist but neither side is ready to acknowledge that.
In 2008, India's then external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee visited Nepal and said 98 percent of work on delineating a new border had been completed. The new strip maps were to have been formally signed by both sides 'very soon'.
Last year, when Mukherjee's successor S.M. Krishna visited Kathmandu, there had been no progress.
Not just the border maps, other bilateral pacts like signing a revised extradition treaty have also been lying on the backburner for years.
Meanwhile, the Nepali perspective on border conflicts is gaining ground in Nepal. In the past, India's Hindi film industry Bollywood helped form public opinion on the border battles with Pakistan, painting the Islamic neighbour as the villain.
Now, in Nepal, the boot is on the other leg.
'I can identify with the characters of this film,' says 28-year-old Bhupesh Adhikari, watching 'Dasgaja' in Kathmandu's Gopi Krishna theatre.
'My home is in Jhapa in eastern Nepal but I worked in a hotel in India's Siliguri town. Every time I came home I was asked for money by the Indian cops and abused.'
Four years ago, Nepali director Manoj Pandit first projected Nepal's viewpoint on the border dispute with his documentary 'Greater Nepal: In quest of boundary', calling for the restoration of the land Nepal ceded to the British East India Company: chunks of West Bengal, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
This month, yet another Nepali border tale 'Kalapani' is to hit the cinemas. Director Uddhav Abidit's celluloid tale will also re-open an old wound.
Kalapani, an area in Nepal's eastern Darchula district, on the borders of India, Nepal and China, remains occupied by Indian troops since the India-China war of 1962.
No comments:
Post a Comment