Op-Ed: Upstairs, Downstairs

The problem with living in a country with so many diverse ethnic groups is that every other face looks different. It makes it easy to feel alienated, and to alienate. Santosh Shah recently discovered this. The news of the ‘airport incident’ first came to me through Facebook, and it both angered and ashamed me. Despite the fact that it was not the first time I was hearing of such an incident, I was left unsettled for a long time, maybe because this time it was a friend on the receiving end.

Santosh was making his way to the main gate of the airport in Kathmandu when he was stopped for the usual security checks near the main entrance. Having gone through the procedure tens of times in the previous month alone, he showed them his identity card as proof that he really was a journalist and was there for a purpose. But what started out as a routine check soon turned into an ethnic assault. The officers on duty—government employees kept on duty to ensure safety and security—were neither appropriately dressed (they did not even have a name badge) nor in a fit state to ensure surveillance—they reeked of alcohol. After asking Santosh to step down from his vehicle, they started muttering abusive words making references to Santosh’s Madhesi background. Santosh was intimidated and was made to watch while other passengers were allowed to pass through without so much as a glance, as if mocking Santosh’s request to be allowed to pass through.

Santosh did not resort to making a scene, for abusive works could have been exchanged without much effort and a spare brick for punctuation is always found easily. Instead, he returned the way he had come, and made arrangements to meet his airport guest on the main road, away from the airport gate. Was Santosh’s fault just belonging to a different ethnic group? Or did his being on the wrong side of the power equation have more to do with it? Had the officers behaved the way they did during the working hours in the day, a few calls from the well-known journalist could have immediately put the officers ‘in their place.’ But in the cloak of the night, the authority their job title allowed them to act differently towards a mere ‘Madhesi boy,’ made them act otherwise.

Whether we have realised it or not, we have all been victims of power games, at one point or the other. Some experiences might have been more profound—and hurtful—while others might have gone unnoticed, given the level of immunity we must have developed by now. Nepotism, bribery, corruption have since long felt like a part of our culture to me, and all these have elements of power in them. Ours is a society where our place in the social hierarchy is decided the moment we are conceived. Our surname defines without much effort who we get to stand over and who we get to stand beneath. On our roads we think nothing of forcing our way past; honking or swearing mercilessly as we pass. It is in our society that the bride’s family still stands inferior to the groom’s, a fact rarely admitted but celebrated. And sometimes it feels like we only pretend to be shocked when somebody breaks the rule of subtlety and talks about our ‘culture of power’ out loud.

It has not been long since a minister thought nothing of slapping a government official when he failed to show up with the luxurious vehicle she had asked for—the objective of her visit was never even a concern. She was the one with authority and thought nothing of making use of it blatantly at the slightest provocation. It was later made to sound as if she had to do it in order to stand up for the rest of Nepali women, especially those from the Tarai. She had to show him his place, she said. And our vice-president, soon after he was elected, thought it wise to take the oath in his native language, instead of the national one. Rightly so, maybe. There were strikes against the vice-president, but there was also huge support. Amid all the ensuing confusion, the issues of identity, language and culture were lost.

All these are but examples—a peek into how we tend to react when given the least bit of authority. The police officers at the airport that night, who might have been constantly humiliated by their seniors in the police hierarchy, regardless of their age or ethnic background, must have found Santosh a good target to relay the anger and bitterness. Of course the way he [Santosh] looked came into play for it spoke of his Madhesi background, one not thought much of. But if it was a ‘high-caste’ woman (at the cost of sounding politically incorrect), they might have done the same.

Nepal is at a crucial stage.  Each one of us is betting our well-being on the constitution, and is afraid of being left behind. All the while, the dark possibility that it may never be written still looms over us. And even if it is ever written, several pieces of paper are not going to do much for any of us. Unless we do something about it, there would continute to be an ever increasing divide among ourselves. Santosh is not the first victim of ethnic discrimination, nor the first victim of the power dynamic that so obsesses Nepal. While it is important to recognise that discrimination on the basis of caste, background, colour is still a part of our society and our culture, it is equally important to recognise the extent to which power dynamics have corrupted the system itself. We tolerate discriminatory behaviour because we feel we lack the power to stop it, because we too are afraid of being on lower end of that shifting power scale.

Santosh is only one of the many but he is one of the few who have spoken out. Because he can, yes, but also because he knows it is wrong, and believes it can be changed, and also because he knows he has friends and family supporting him. Such belief and support is maybe what we need right now, more than a constitution.