Nepalese student-activist takes people to streets in protest

Ram Kumari Jhakri was in Finland to observe advance voting in the EU elections

print this

By Katja Kuokkanen
     
      Suddenly all Nepalese student-activist Ram Kumari Jhakri could see was red.
      It was January 2004, and Jhakri was standing in Ratna Park in the centre of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. She was one of the leaders of a protest organised against King Gyanendra of Nepal.
      A portrait of the monarch was just bursting into flames, when a police officer began to approach her.
      ”I saw the officer. Suddenly, he was right in front of me and hitting me with a truncheon”, she reports.
     
Jhakri got blood into her eyes, whereupon she was taken to hospital to get medical treatment. The police used violence to put down the demonstration.
      ”That was where it all started from. Our joint forces put an end to the king’s power”, notes Jhakri.
     
In the spring of 2006, the king made a public statement on television and radio, ”agreeing to relinquish the sovereign power back to the people”.
      Mass protests alongside Nepal’s decade-long civil war (1996-2006), a conflict between government forces and Maoist rebels, played a role in overthrowing Nepal’s absolute monarchy.
      In May 2008, the kingdom of Nepal abolished the monarchy and became a federal democratic republic.
     
This spring Jhakri could have moved on from the leaderhip of her 100,000-member student organisation to national politics, as the Maoists who had been ruling the country resigned from the government. Today Madhav Kumar Nepal, the leader of Jhakri’s party, is the new Prime Minister.
      Jhakri herself rejected a seat in the new parliament.
      ”In Parliament one cannot act according to one’s own conscience, as one has to follow the party’s line”, Jhakri says, while sitting in the lobby of a Helsinki hotel.
      She has now been in Finland for a week in order to observe the advance voting of the European Parliament elections.
     
Nepal is undergoing a change towards a multiparty system, many indirect objectives of which have been reached with the help of the students’ organisation.
      ”We have power. Because Nepal has never experienced any great industrial revolution, the country’s labour movement is not very strong. Neither are the farmers, which is why only the students’ organisation is able to mobilise the people”, Jhakri reports.
      Ram Kumari Jhakri is the first female president of a students’ organisation in Nepal. She belongs to the Magar people, a Nepalese ethnic minority.
      ”As a rule, no women or members of ethnic minorities are appointed as political leaders in Nepal, which means that in a way Jhakri is double-marginalised”, says Johanna Poutanen of DEMO Finland (Political Parties of Finland for Democracy), acting as the Local Programme Co-ordinator at DEMO’s office in Nepal.
     
When the conversation turns from political matters to her person, Jhakri casts her eyes downwards and blinks.
      She comes from a farmer family from Western Nepal with two elder sisters, one younger sister, and three brothers.
      ”When I went to school in 1983, my elder sisters had never attended school. But I really wanted to go there”, she recalls.
      Jhakri admits that inequality between brothers and sisters existed inside the family.
      ”But my mother wanted me to learn how to read”, she says.
      Eventually Jhakri went to Kathmandu in order to study at the university, and there she got sucked into political activism.
      ”The most important thing is to understand that in Nepal politics controls everything. The disparity between the rich and the poor is stark. We have to fight for democracy and freedom and against the social inequalities”, Jhakri declares.
     
Did you say democracy? The student leader herself represents the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist).
      ”The ideology can be changed according to the needs of the society. Communism has to change and become more democratic. The movement will have to involve human rights”, Jhakri declares.
      Ram Kumari Jhakri wants to abolish the Nepalese caste system on behalf of the underprivileged who have no right to speak, as well as on the children’s behalf.
      One-fourth of Nepalese children are denied proper education - a few get only some systematic instruction and some others do not get any education at all.
      In the slums, families do not have any permanent homes, which is why children cannot go to school on a regular basis.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.6.2009


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finland sending pair of forensic experts to suspected Nepalese Army "killing fields" (5.2.2008)

Links:
  All Nepal National Free Students´ Union
  Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) (Wikipedia)
  DEMO Finland (Political Parties of Finland for Democracy)

KATJA KUOKKANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
katja.kuokkanen@hs.fi