Bhupendra Rawat on Ashutosh Tiwari (sounds like!)
Rajesh Babu Shrestha
******************************************************************
From: Bhupendra Rawat <bhupe...@hotmail.com>
To: ne...@cs.niu.edu
Subject: Parmendra Bhagat one oh one
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 08:43:26 EDT
Parmendra Bhagat has become a hopelessly confessional
contributor. Under the bandwagon of racism, he now has one product to
sell: himself, himself and himself. You'll be damned if you try to
argue back: just keep your thoughts to yourself and scroll on and
on. So much for dialogue and discussion. No wonder reading TND these
days takes less than three minutes.
My sympathy for Bhagat's "original position" evaporated for good after
I started reading stuff like: that Bhagat was up till 3 in the morning
holding bull-sessions with his schoolmates in New York, and that he
was going to visit another friend in California. And that he has
friends in elite colleges everywhere on the planet. Wow!! What
insightful pieces of knowledge that 1200-plus of us TND readers had to
know? Don't we have better things to do than watch Bhagat be our
Truman Burbank as in that movie "Truman Show"?
I say that because Bhagat seems to think that his life is so
interesting, so unique and so fascinating that 1200-plus of us need to
know/have to know what he does, who he talks to, who he writes letters
to (we are even shown letters he wrote!), what kind of extracurricular
activities he does, what his summer job is, what his post-college
plans are and other such gripping supposedly masala-daar news.
Well, I can't speak for all TND readers. But, come on, give me a
break!! As a TND reader, I don't want to be treated like a
ten-year-old who's supposed to be gurgling in awe of Bhagat's various
"accomplishments".
On a serious note though: When he first started contributing to TND,
Bhagat had a legitimate observation: That, all else being equal, a
dark-skinned -- and excuse my choice of phrase, "madhisay-looking" --
Nepali citizen has less of chance of succeeding politically, socially
and culturally in the so-perceived Nepali mainstream, which Bhagat
defined as being dominated primarily by Kathmandu-based
high-caste/high-class bahun/chettri/newars. Never mind that the same
argument also holds true for the Rai, the Gurung, the Tamang, the
Tharu, and other ethnic/racial groups in Nepal. Bhagat was waving his
flag for the tarai-basis, and he alone seemed to have insights into
that particular brand of racism.
In support of his assertion, Bhagat offered snippets from his own
life, racist comments left by anonymous people on his web-site, and
tied those up with political education honed in Nepal and liberal arts
thinking sharpened at Berea College (which, in case you did not know,
as Bhagat constantly reminfds you, is "the number on college in the
South" ---- Bhagat's anti-elite sentiments, indeed!)
Anyway, Bhagat's central argument, though heated at times, was pretty
clear and believable. If Bhagat had stopped then, and invited readers
to share in their experiences too, TND discussions would perhaps have
taken a constructive turn, and, had that happened, we would have
learnt more about the extent of racism/ethno-centrism and other such
stuff in Nepal. After all, most TND readers, it's easy to assume, ARE
educated, aware and sensible bunch of people who are, at least in
principle, against racism.
But, no. Bhagat had to have his own show. Perhaps thrilled by this
new-found "freedom of speech" on TND, he started going on a roll:
Borrowing promiscuously from the African American history and Native
American past, Bhagat started asserting kinship with oppressed people
everywhere. A high-class bahun/chettri/newar from Kathmandu was a
suspect: he even has an unpronounceable acronym for those hated elites
(Never mind that Bhagat would later go on to embrace the very sons of
those discriminatory elites as schoolmates and friends!!).
And his ranting and raving reached a fevered pitch. URLs dumped on TND
all the time; links to every related web-site. And anyone who talked
back to Bhagat (most of whom, admittedly, had stupid arguments
themselves) was scolded and chided. We were going to learn about
racism in Nepal, whether we wanted it or not. And Bhagat was going to
shove it down our gullet.
It wasn't long before Bhagat loomed up as though he were Nepal's
Martin Luther King, Jr. The high-class/caste Nepalis were collectively
portrayed as that Police Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama,
unleashing snarling dogs at Bhagat's cherished causes. TND was no more
just an e-zine: it became a battlefield between Bhagat and his mostly
imagined enemies. Blood was everywhere; and most readers, it's safe to
assume, threw up their hands and gave up reading TND -- which was
becoming more and more infrequent anyway.
Soon, Bhagat realized that enemies on TND were just that: imaginary
and uncooperative. So he mellowed a little, and changed the
tune. Drawing upon his interest in economics, he started tooting the
horns of free-market economics, and initiated a discussion on Nepal's
economic performance. The discussion turned out to be a flop, with
Bhagat exhorting readers to join him, with the readers typing the
other way, despite there being a number of fine, young Nepali
economists among us 1200-plus readers.
When discussions on economics went nowhere, Bhagat started to
personalize his contributions all the more. And that's when he lost me
totally: his bemused, often disagreeing, reader for the longest
time. Bhagat became grateful to his old high school in Nepal; boastful
of his elite connections of friendship; mindful of his mantra of
"network relentlessly"; and shamelessly confessional about personal
details, as though he were dating no other than Gywneth Paltrow.
>From self-appointed poster boy of "anti-racism", to the celebration
of trivial personal details, it's been quite a journey for Parmendra
Bhagat on TND.
CONCLUSION: Bhagat's tactics are mostly polemical -- and, Ashtosh
Tiwari, Pramod Mishra and others may agree with me, most Nepalis are
simply not good at or even interested in engaging in polemics, at
least not in public the way, say, they do on CNN's Crossfire. This may
be one reason why Bhagat may be widely ignored (based on an
unscintific and informal poll I took among my circles before typing
all these here). So polemical tactics do make Bhagat an odd man out,
regardless of his ethnic background.
It's obvious that Bhagat has a first-rate mind and is a fluent writer:
but it's also clear that he craves the same stamp of elitism that he
oh-so-disdainfully decries in others: Reading his postings, it's clear
that he is simulatneously repelled by and attracted to elitism
(howsoever defined), which in and of iteslf is not a bad thing. His
claims about racism certainly ring true, but then again, everyone
knows that he's no "madhisay" on a bike, peddling kauli-bhanta to
middle-class homes in Kathmandu. That is why, his shoulder-rubbing
with that "mashisay" on the bike at times seems too calculated to
serve his own purpose, and rings sort of hollow.
My sense is that Bhagat will pull out his Budhanilkantha and Berea
credentials when those suit him well,and his tarai connections when
those suit him well. Viewed in this light, his mantra of "network
relentlessly" sounds like a metaphor for opportunism for
self-advancement and self-advancement alone, which, again, in and of
itself is not a bad thing.
Bhagat seems to want everything: he wants to remain proud of his
fatherland India while being equal in the eyes of all in Nepal. It is
this dualism -- a case of what many perceive to be misplaced
nationaism/patriotism -- that drives his opponents wild -- a fact he
seems to relish. After alientaing most readers with this dualism, he
wants their understanding, their support, their acknowledegments that,
yes, racism does occur in Nepal. Funny, though everyone agrees that
racism is prevalent in Nepal, not a single Rai, Gurung, Tharu, Magar
or others have come FORWARD to lend support to Bhagat's central claim.
The reason is: despite his professed political aims, Bhagat is NOT
interested in building up coalitions and networks. He exists to
trumpet himself, and his own causes. Even some tarai-basi Nepalis
have railed against Bhagat's tactics: Surely, it is not the case
that Bhagat is the only one who's been right ALL THESE TIMES!
All said and done. if Bhagat's goals were to initiate a dialogue on
race and racism in Nepal, it's safe to say that he has failed. The
whole debate has pretty much been Bhagat and Bhagat and Bhagat, and I
have learnt nothing new since his first couple of postings.
So, laurels to Bhagat for raising the issue of racismin the beginning;
and darts and darts to for everthing that followed after.
Of course, Bhagat, being Bhagat, will hit back at me: but that's fine.
Sincerely,
Bhupendra Rawat
bhupe...@hotmail.com
****************************************************************
ashutos...@my-deja.com
I want the world to know that I really enjoyed writing the following.
Those who haven't had a chance to read this before, please sit back,
relax and enjoy the piece, and be sure to thank Rajesh for posting
it here. Notice the langure here: No F-words, no personally offensive
attacks -- but arguments from evidence and logically consistent
thoughts.
Parmendra Bhagat, whom I consider a friend -- though not the one
I always agree with -- knows that Bhupendra Rawat = Ashutosh Tiwari,
an equation I was more than happy to take credit for in this forum.
oohi
ashu
--------------------------
In article <7vah0u$7gc$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu>,
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
ashu...@post.harvard.edu
by posting this too. Enjoy!!
This is from the Nepal Digest of July 15. Eknath Belbase lives and works
in New York.
If readers want, I can also post other postings from other people
that echo Rawat's views. Again, many thanks to Rajesh Babu Shrestha
for his commitment to provide good publicity on my behalf.
oohi
ashu
---------------
From: "Eknath Belbase" <mailto:ekn...@ad-co.com>
To: "'The Nepal Digest'" <mailto:NE...@cs.niu.edu>
Subject: Exhibitionism
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 18:15:19 -0400
I agree completely with Bhupendra Rawat's post. Though Bhagat was right
to
bring up the issues he originally did, it has become clear from most
recent
postings that he suffers from
serious exhibitionism and extreme electronic narcissism. I would like to
add
a couple of further flames - I am quite sure he has not asked the people
he
mentions about telling 1200 people who they are, where they live, and
what
they do. Their privacy should be respected.
The reciting of names and elite institutions is decidely tasteless. But
the
worst impact of all this is that the quality of TND writing and the
number
of other contributors has fallen to the point where the cost of scrolling
through all manner of electronic exhibitionism is no longer worth the
trouble of reading a few scattered posts.
While the extreme idealistic freedom of expression taken by TND in the
past
is commendable (I suspect that it is not so much idealism as much as the
time it would take to EDIT!), it is almost at the point of making the
medium
itself irrelevant, as people leave or delete TND issues without reading
them. I would request TND to add some subject content criteria and
privacy
rights issues to the list of criteria (along with obscenity) by which
posts
may be rejected. While I do not think editing each article is possible or
neccesary, I do think that rejecting articles in whole or accepting them
in
whole is time-feasable, and may motivate writers to keep their posts
within
certain very broad and very flexible perimeters.
Finally, I would like to add that selecting content for relevance to the
readership is something every journal or magazine does, whether print or
electronic, and in no way constitutes censorship. Just as "Discover"
would
not take articles intended for "Time" and "Newsweek" would not take
articles
intended for "Scientific American", TND should not take articles intended
for www.bhagat.com or the "Paramendra Fan Club (read every trivial
thought
I have ever had)" club.
I encourage you to consider subject content as a criteria before the only
person reading
TND is Bhagat himself.
regards
Eknath Belbase
ashutos...@my-deja.com
at Berea College. Pramod Mishra is a scholar of English literature at
Duke University.
Again, please sit back, relax and enjoy.
oohi
ashu
---------------
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 18:11:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Pramod K. Mishra" <mailto:p...@duke.edu>
To: The Nepal digest Editor <mailto:nepal-...@cs.niu.edu>
Subject: Don't Dump the Personal, Please!
Dear Paramendra,
=09Let me, first of all, say that I have been impressed by the energy
and enthusiasm with which you have articulated your views on matters of
public concern in TND. One may agree or disagree, hate or like what and
how you say, but they have helped clarify the anger, hurt, and the
consequent dangers that lurk in the unresolved issues of the Tarai, an
area which needs more serious analysis from scholars and better attention
from Nepal's main political parties. One may not like the way you have
been voicing your concerns, but one must understand that your voice is
only the tip of the iceberg of anger and sense of injustice, and
wholesale
irrational pride in the cultures (including dowry, arranged marriage,
casteism, and fierce male chauvinism, etc., etc.) of the neighboring=20
states of India, that lies buried like a keg of explosives in the soil
of=
=20
the Tarai. And today or tomorrow, a monster is bound to rise out of the=
20
explosion of this keg if the mainstream parties and the dominant groups=
20
in Nepal continue to offer lip-service and demonstrate intransigence and=
20
arrogance adamantly. And then Nepal will join the community of
Pakistan,=
=20
India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Yugoslavia, Rwanda
and=
=20
many other nation- states with multi-ethnic, multi-lingual complex=20
populace and blind imitation of eighteen- and nineteenth-century
European=
=20
idea and history of nationalism and nation-state, which was partly an=20
inheritance of colonialism. One may hate your views, and the=20
schizophrenic way in which they at times come out, but they reflect what=
20
many in the Tarai think in their hearts but for various reasons choose=20
not to express. So in this respect, I must thank you for taking the
time=
=20
and making your views public. As TND editor, I want more of your views,=
20
better argued, better articulated, more well-reasoned and persuasive.=20
=09I have, however, been disappointed lately by the waste of TND
space for the irrelevant materials you have been sending to TND,
materials
that do not relate to Nepal in any significant way nor make any point.=20
There is no relevance I can see, for example, posting about your New York
visit or all the disconnected nonesense about America, free market
system,
and general platitudes about racism. Besides violating the confidence of
the folks who hosted you and who may not want to see their names dragged
in this way in public, there is no point, no public relevance of such a
posting. It does not belong to TND. Who cares what you do or did or
will
do in your private life, how you spend your leisure, where you go during
vacation, who you meet and so on? They may be of importance to you,
like=
=20
the album of private memories, but as mere pieces of information, they
are
useless, worthless, and irrelevant for others. Because you are not a=20
star of some sort or a public person so people could be curious about=20
your personal habits and quirks, they are not worthy of even the=20
mudslinging tabloids. In scattered bits and pieces they don't make any=20
sense; they only lower your credibility as a writer and reduce whatever=
20
persuasive power you as a writer possess even for those who are=20
sympathetic to your cause and want to see your arguments effectively=20
made. You, however, could have written a travel account of your visit
to=
=20
New York and given us some knowledge of what it means for a person like=
20
you to go to New York, meet the Nepalis of various linguistic and=20
cultural backgrounds in the metropolis, and how was it different from=20
your meeting them in Nepal. In what ways your visit affected your=20
established ideas about the Tarai, India, the hills, and within these=20
various ethnic, linguistic, and class groups.=20
=09I must say, however, that your narration of your experience in
Budhanilakantha school sounds interesting, as I had told in private
e-mail, and whatever you have written about would be of even more
interest
if you take the time and tell us the story of your years through the
school. I would definitely like to know more. The more honest, the more
concrete, the more unforgiving, the more detailed; the better. It will
enlighten and inform people, if not entertain. We want to know what
happened that your performance plummeted. What was the nature, sequence,
detail of your conflict with the administration that caused this? Give
us
the details with disguised names that you think might expose some or
paint
them in bad light. It is the duty and responsibility of any writer,
journalist, intellectual to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, no
matter how unpleasant, bitter, and damaging to the school or any=20
institution that contains flaws. This is the democratic process.=20
Institutions and society won't improve and transform themselves if
people=
=20
like you who have been through them won't tell the public what happens=20
within these societies and institutions. The trouble with countries
like=
=20
Nepal is that those people who are honest and concerned keep their mouth=
20
shut even after witnessing wrongdoing and injustice and corruption for=20
either fear or social comaraderie. Those who see wrongdoings but remain=
20
silent for friendship, caste, kinship, and any other reasons are as=20
equally to blame as those who indulge in them. Such easy=20
harmony seekers are not going to do anything, no matter the political=20
system. You, therefore, owe this detailed account of your school=20
experience to the public, to yourself, to Nepal, and indeed to humanity=
20
itself. If you want examples of this kind of writing, read, if you=20
haven't done already, Richard Wright's "Black Boy", Maxim Gorky's three=
20
volumes "Childhood," "My Youth" and "My Universities," or Jean
Jeanette's=
=20
"The Diary of a Thief." If you want more books of this kind that talk=20
about the writers' schooling, let me know, I'll send you a list. Some=20
other well-known examples in which writers critique their schools (these=
20
are all English) read Rushdie, E.M. Forster, or Orwell's account of=20
their schooling in England.=20
=09Of course, the personal is important. What Rajpalji meant by the
personal that is not important is the kind of personal that does not make
any point, has no public significance, and is expressed merely to indulge
in braggadocio, narcissism, and even exhibitionism. In this respect, I
mus=
t=20
point a general failing in Third World journalism: its sheer lack of the=
20
personal story. There is hardly any human story in much of Third World=20
journalism about the lives of common folks who live far away from the=20
limelight; instead we are given only data, statistics--Three Dead in=20
Drowning. Bus Mishap Killed Forty. A Woman with a Child Jumped=20
in front of a Running Train. Five Unmarried Women Hanged Themselves=20
for lack of Dowry. A Man Bludgeoned to Death his Handicapped Son and
then=
=20
Hanged Himself. A Woman Jumped into the Well. These and many=20
such pieces of news become data, facts, statistics run=20
hidden in the back pages of newspapers like obituary notices. No follow
up=
=20
stories and human drama and the details of life as it was lived and=20
lost.
What are the human stories behind them? Nobody knows nor cares=20
to find out. What lapse of human dignity, what untold, unspeakable=20
miseries and suffering and injustice and play of emotions drove people to
d=
o=20
what they did or what brought the accidents, nobody wants to tell,=20
because those lives are not important. Common human life in the Third=20
World is cheap except when it belongs to some Maharaja. Who cares about=
20
the servants, widows, crowded bastis and hovels and their day-to-day=20
goings on. Some European has to come down as an anthropologist to write=
20
about them for their disciplinary studies or some writer has to come
down=
=20
and write the City of Joy or serve as Mother Terasa. Who cares about=20
dowryless briddes's plights, or urchins and prostituties milling about=20
the streets! Not very often even their parents, particularly the=20
dowryless brides' parents. As long as my door is locked and secure, the=
20
world and my neighbors may go to hell.
The Third World sees itself not only with the West's eyes but with its=20
own regal eyes--as statistics and ants. The third world is=20
used to being statistics, however--first in the hands of the cololinial=
20
officials and evangelical missionaries, and then the development
workers,=
=20
our present-day NGOs, and, all along the Western academics and many of=20
their disciplines. All these have their structural and institutional=20
limitations, and despite many structural flaws, one has to give some=20
credit to anthropologists for at least recording the lives of the common=
20
people in the Third World. But the full stories also need to be told. =
20
Too much academization of the Third World is something that has to=20
change; the lives of the people there have to be recognized and told not=
20
just to find some patterns and systems to yield some sociological and=20
anthropological meaning but the hard-hitting effect of the existential=20
details as well. As long as the common people in the Third World remain=
20
statisitics for the planners, developers, and vote getters, that world
is=
=20
not going to change.=20
=09When I read interviews in the newspapers published from Delhi,
Kathmandu and other places, they read as though both the person
interviewing and the one interviewed were robots or machines, spouting
questions and ideas and programs; life, hearts, human drama and story=20
that made those ideas possible are missing from them. Very little=20
relevant human detail is given to make the interviews interesting and go=
20
with the ideas and facts. And when the details are given, they occur=20
only in cheap tabloids with sleazy materials and malicious intent. The=
20
other extreme, of course, has begun to surface in the
West. Monica Lewinsky and Princess Diana affairs are only two of the
recent examples. What's so much fuss, for example, about Princess Diana?
I
don't understand this cannibalism. The newspapers, magazines, and
televisi=
on
have begun to make her to be some goddess, which is the excess of the
postmodern age that survives on ratings and sales figures. So go ahead
and tell us all about your Budhanilkantha school experience in all its
details. Pull no punches. And in the process you must be ready
to expose yourself and go through the cathartic experience of painful,
humorous, rageful telling. I am sure it will open many people's eyes.=20
=09But the broader question is, Why do you write? What are the
objectives you want to achieve in making your thoughts public in written
form? And what tools you have acquired in your college education in the=
20
US and outside to achieve those goals? One of the reasons I have been
whole-heartedly supportive of Rajpalji's efforts with TND is that I want
young Nepalis (those who are post-1990 generation and have been fortunate
enough to go to school and college) to get used to expressing their ideas
in public differently from the way ideas were expressed under the culture
of the Panchayat system. I want Nepal to be busily talking about itself
and with itself and within itself and break away with the elders' habit
of
voicing only slogans and flatteries or, alternatively, maintaining the
silence typical of the feudal culture. As the clich=E9 goes, it is not
jus=
t
the soldiers who defend a nation or a community but the long-term
security
and conscience of a community and nation lies with the number and quality
o=
f=20
its poets, writers, philosophers, and artists.=20
=09Those of us who take the pains to write, troubled and inspired
initially by whatever reason and source, need to ask the following
questions: What does our writing do to ourselves and what does it do to
those who read it? Does it shock them out of their complacency and
settled ideas (if one thinks that they are complacent and possess such
ideas), inspire them to rise above their stations in life, above their
petty day-to-day rigmarole, interests, and selfishness; bring them to
tears and purge their emotions and cleanse their hearts; arouse them to
action, touch them so much so that they empty their tears, purses,
spleens
for public interest; inform them about the past, reveal the present and
highlight the possibilities and pitfalls of the future? And, as one of
the other goals of writing, indeed any art, does it amuse and entertain
readers while achieving one or other of its many goals?=20
=09George Orwell, and, in imitating him, Joan Didion have raised some
of the issues about writing in their essays called "Why I write." Joan
Didion, the American writer that she is, makes a water-tight distinction
between writing and thinking. And indeed in the West, a general
distinction has existed between creative writing and scholarly writing,
particularly since the nineteenth century with the rise in academization
of intellectual pursuits; and people who practice these two kinds of
writing are generally supposed to be two kinds of people with two kinds
of
tools and audiences. As a person coming from the ravaged, plundered, and
humiliated non-Western world, I can't afford to buy this distinction. I
must speak at once, if I can, to a worker, a farmer, an undergraduate,
and
a serious scholar, and whoever is willing to listen. In short, I
disagree
with Didion that writing of her kind needs to be separate from thinking.=
20
I believe that one writes because one feels like writing, finds oneself
writing, bursts at the seams with ideas and impressions to write.=20
=09But I do agree with her that one of the reasons why one writes is
to impose one's "sensibility on the reader's most private space." In
other words, by making one's ideas public in written form, one imposes
oneself on others, saying, "listen to me, see it my way, change your
mind." These are Didion's words, but George Orwell articulates the goals
in a similar but more elaborate fashion. Orwell, born in the Bengal
province of India of English parents (his father was in the Indian Civil
Service), was a queer personality. An English man schooled in the
infamous English public school system in England (actually they are
private schools where generally English upperclass and Indian=20
Maharajas, including Nehru and Rushdie's fathers, used to send their=20
children for education and "breeding"), he naturally joined, after Eton,
th=
e=20
Indian Imperial Police in the twenties and went to Burma in British=20
India. But disgusted by the cruelties and invidiousness of imperialism,=
20
which dehumanized not only its victims but also the victimizers, he=20
resigned only after five years. Many of these experiences he describes=
20
in his novel "The Burmese Days." But before he wrote his book about=20
Burma, he shunned the English gentleman's life and voluntarily went=20
underground. He chose to live as a pauper in London and Paris,
washing dishes and living in seedy corners. Out this experience was born
his remarkable book "Down and Out in Paris and London." Fired by the
idealism of the times, he, like many of his generation, went in 1936 to
fight Franco's fascism in Spain but was soon disillusioned when
Stalin compromised with the fascists and refused to help the
international
volunteers who were fighting with the workers for socialism. "Homage to
Catalonia" captures his participation in the Spanish Civil War and its
complexities. But he was equally scathing of the lies and deceptions of
the Tory-dominated British press, who never wanted the British people to
know what was really going on in Spain. Of course, he has his failings
both as a writer and as a thinker, but Orwell's ideas about writing are
wel=
l
worth knowing.=20
=09Although mainly known for his famous critiques of totalitarianism
in "Animal Farm" and "1984," Orwell's essays ( particularly "Politics and
t=
he
English Language" and "Why I write" about writing) have fascinated me for
as long as I have known them. In "Why I Write," Orwell sets out four
motives for any kind of writing. If you haven't read it, I highly
recommend this relatively unknown essay. Besides the need to make a
living, these are, for Orwell, as follows: SHEER EGOISM ("Desire to seem
clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own
back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc. etc." And so on.),
AESTHETIC ENTHUSIASM (Perception of beauty in the external world, in
words, their arrangements, their sounds and effect on each other; and the
desire to share this perception of beauty with others), HISTORICAL
IMPULSE
("Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them
up for the use of posterity"), and POLITICAL PURPOSE ("Desire to push the
world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of
society that they should strive after."). And, depending on the times,
the circumstances of the writer's background, and other such factors,
emphasis on any one or more of these motives could be more or less.
About
his own writing, Orwell says in the conclusion of his essay, "And looking
back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a
political [the word in italics] purpose that I wrote lifeless books and
was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative
adjective and humbug generally."=20
=09Now, what is the function of a writer who grew up in South Asia,
particularly in Nepal, and finds himself or herself in an industrialized
country like the United States. More particularly, what objectives and
motivations one could have in this cyberage, in which audiences are
spread
over five continents but limited to the English language and the
availability to Computer hardware and internet access? I can't get into
the business of Third World intellectuals in the First world here, but I
can say this that the function remains many of the same as outlined by
Orwell. To ask what kind of world we ourselves want to live in and
make for posterity. I don't say that every word one writes one has to
breathe in peace and harmony (such easy peace and harmony seekers are
either saints or fools or cowards and so useless for this complex and
brutal world), but one must strive to express one's outrage in whatever
way one can, sometimes to grab the world's attention, more often to
persuade for transformation.=20
=09And of course everyone learns as one writes from kindergarten to a
stage when one seriously thinks as a writer. One can't emphasize more
thi=
s
learning process, a process whose dearth in the educational
infrastructure
in Nepal (which blindly both condemns and copies India) is conspicuous. =
20
And because of this lack of opportunity, countless "mute inglorious=20
Miltons" roam the landscape without sharing their talent with their=20
countrymen. This is where nothing sort of a revolution is needed to get=
20
Nepal out of the vicious clutches of Indian influence, which nobody
talks=
=20
about, taking most often easy recourse to cheap nationalism which is but=
20
another form of ethnocentric fascism.=20
=09So it is damaging for any writer to be self-complacent, but=20
unforgivable for an Third World undergraduate with First World=20
opportunities and of such energy and enthusiasm to waste=20
both his or her time and energy in posting material that has no
relevance=
=20
whatsoever. But that is not to say that your New York visit can't be=20
turned into a piece of interesting writing, worthy of any audience. It=
20
all depends on what you make of your material. Nobody is a born a=20
writer; one only learns through experience, observation, and=20
imagination. While talent may not be acquired, one can certainly learn=
20
and enhance one's abilities. If you have already not done so, I would=20
suggest that you take a few more courses in advanced composition and=20
non-fiction writing before you graduate, besides writing for whatever=20
other courses you choose. I'm sure you will benefit from them, and I=20
have no doubt that you will be a good writer given your energy and=20
curiosity. In the meantime, keep on posting essays in TND that you will=
20
be writing with thoughtfulness, judgement, and energy. I am sure you=20
have already been learning and will continue to do so through trial and=
20
error. I hope that I have not been condescending to you, because what I=
20
have said to you equally applies to me as well as to anyone who wants to=
20
be a writer that I would like to read and care about. Best wishes.=20
gaa...@my-deja.com
material, that too, for the sake of "proving" that you're a really nice
and well-liked person is very humorous indeed. That, to me, is a
satire in itself that you don't even need to write.
Whatever your image on SCN, anyone coming to Boston (and talking to a
few people; any people) will find out soon enough what kind of a person
you are (and I'm not implying a positive image here!).
RK
In article <7vatog$qkf$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
ashu...@post.harvard.edu wrote:
> I thought I would make Rajesh Babu Shrestha's task a little easier
> by posting this too. Enjoy!!