JUL 26 - Death might be our
only certainty in these uncertain times. Yet our society’s unequal treatment of
its people continues in death. Some Nepalis are celebrated in the media and
elsewhere, especially if they are of prominent stock. There are others whose
lives are not quite remembered in the same way. They meet their ends in foreign
lands, near and far. Often they find mention in a statistic—”One in every 162
Nepali migrant workers who enter Saudi Arabia dies.” Or they become part of a
headline: “Nepalese guard killed in Kabul attack.” Simply put, death is not the
end—not an end to inequality nor of unknowingness.
The floods in the Indian
state of Uttarakhand last month demonstrated that there is a fate that puts some
of us at greater risk of collective social amnesia. It is the fate of those
whose existence is not recognised in official records, remembered in the media
or elsewhere. It is the fate of the unknown Nepali. Despite nation-wide
initiatives such as the decennial census and the recently-completed voter
registration drive aimed at better knowledge of our population, last month’s
disaster demonstrated how little we know and, consequently, how little we
care.
As such, few people will remember the unknown Nepalis who were caught
in those floods. One of those rescued, Raju Rana was airlifted to the Jolivent
Hospital in Dehradun. Having sustained spinal cord injuries, for a while no one
knew what he did or how long he had been in India. Later, he was identified as a
Nepali dolly-carrier or palanquin-bearer, who had been ferrying pilgrims to the
high-altitude holy destination of Kedarnath. The Rukum-native said he personally
knew as many as 15 Nepali workers in the Badari-Kedarnath area who had
disappeared in the floods. Reports in this newspaper said that thousands more
could have been working as porters, palanquin-bearers and manual labourers in
the state.
After floods and landslides played havoc in the region, I
remembered many fellow Nepalis I had encountered during my time in Uttarakhand a
few years ago. During my year and half there, I would run into them in odd,
unexpected places. There was the Nepali cook and his family in the
restaurant-cum-charity for orphans in Rishikesh. Angee or Anjali as she was
called, one of the Western volunteers there, told me that he had fled from the
Rukum-Rolpa region in the face of threats of political violence some 15 years
ago. She would not, however, reveal more nor would she allow him to talk to me.
I would not find out if his departure coincided with the start of the Maoist
rebellion or how he had found sympathetic benefactors in difficult times. I will
also never know how he and his family fared, as the waters engulfed idols and
devotees alike in the region.
Neither will I know about a then-10-year-old
boy who claimed to have run away from home and was at the highway eatery near
Hardwar. As patrons, including me, gobbled down momos, he brought out the
steaming bowls of soup and did the dishes. Under the watchful eyes of the owner,
I exchanged a few words with him but never beyond pleasantries. I watched the
floodwaters on Ganga’s banks in Hardwar rise until they had swept away the
towering idol of Mahadev on television and wondered what became of him.
Of
course, the floods had a devastating effect on the Nepali side as well.
Casualties, injuries and destruction took their toll on both western and
far-western regions in Nepal. While the response might have been untimely and
ineffective at first, the Nepali state is forced to deal with the fate of
citizens within its border. Being stranded in India as a Nepali is, however, a
different matter. It is a special kind of statelessness. Nepalis who leave for
India, or even other destinations through not-quite official channels, are not
registered with any of our government agencies. Crossing over into India, they
are unlikely to have a passport, a citizenship certificate or other such
documentation. In their absence, Nepalis encountered difficulties not only
during search operations but also in claiming relief packages. In addition, they
were also under threat from irate locals, who even disrupted relief distribution
in flood-affected areas where they were stranded. According to Caritas India,
Nepalis in the area were homeless and in need of help after their temporary
shelters were swept away during the floods but they faced additional problems
since they were not reflected in government lists.
While blaming the
Nepal-India open border for these problems is easy, the processes causing them
are not limited to its mere presence. Borders are porous the world over; what
varies is the zealousness with which they are guarded, usually unsuccessfully.
The flow of Nepalis into Uttarakhand matches the ebb and flow of pilgrims and
other tourists, which peaks every year during the summer months of the Char Dham
Yatra and during occasions such as the 2010 Maha Kumba Mela. Even during normal
years such as this one, thousands were reported to have procured permits to work
as palanquin-bearers and thousands more worked as porters. The losses suffered
are unclear. The Foreign Ministry said around 50 Nepalis were still missing in
the aftermath of the floods, while the embassy in New Delhi put its estimates
around 100. As of a couple of weeks ago, the Nepali embassy was still receiving
calls about missing migrant workers from relatives in western districts like
Dang, Jajarkot, Rukum, Rolpa, Salyan. Aggregate border crossing figures provide
some indication of the scale. Compared to a handful of pilgrims, for example,
over a thousand of such Nepali workers and their families crossed over into
Nepal from the Jamunaha border point in Banke in the first four days after the
flooding started.
Few people will ever know about the unknown Nepalis who
were left behind. The country will not remember their travails. They are neither
the rising stars of our highly unequal society nor are they part of our elite’s
celebration of life and death. Even these words are no more than a remembrance
of their stories, which I now wish I had shared earlier. Such is the fate of the
unknown Nepali.
