Nepal Revisited: True Value

"Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value." -Arthur Miller

What is the worth of a man, or a woman for that matter?  Are we valued by what we do, or how we contribute to society as a whole?  Are some people worth more than others?   What happens if you have no skills to contribute?  These are the very questions facing many girls in Nepal.  Human trafficking of girls in Nepal is happening daily at a staggering rate.  Some are lured away from their families by promises of jobs and money; but others are sold by their own families as a way to obtain money.  In some villages, there are no girls left except the very young.  One cannot talk about Nepal without talking about this issue.  It permeates every aspect of life.  While the country has found some stability in recent years, and persecution of Christians has decreased, this issue remains.  It is my hope that the Christians in Nepal will continue to take a stand on this issue, and not only save their sisters from a life of horror, but be an example of treasuring young women and recognizing their true worth. For we know that our value is not determined by what we can or cannot do, and that God has a plan for each of us, made complete in His timing.  
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Nepal

Basic Info: Nepal, known as the “Land of the Deities,” is a land locked nation slightly larger than Arkansas, with a strategic position between India and China. It contains 8 of the 10 highest peaks in the world, including Mt Everest. Despite being one of the most picturesque places in the world, Nepal is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world with nearly 1/3 of the population living below poverty. The nation experiences severe thunderstorms, flooding, landslides, and drought and famine depending on the timing, intensity, and duration of the summer monsoons. All of these effect economical development, along with civil strife and labor unrest. The main focus of the economy is agricultural for the 29,852,682 population.

Government: Nepal was ruled by a monarchy until 1951 when the monarch established a cabinet system of government. In the 1990’s a constitutional monarchy was set up with a multiparty democracy. In 1996 a civil war started that would last 10 years between government forces and Maoist extremists (communist forces). The cabinet and parliament were dissolved and the king retook absolute control in 2002. In 2006 weeks of mass protests were followed by many months of peace negotiations and ended in a peace accord and an interim constitution (a new constitution was supposed to be established by May 2010, but was extended for another year to give them more time). After a nation wide election in 2008, Nepal was declared to be a federal democratic republic and the monarchy was abolished. The Constituent Assembly (CA) elected the country's first president that July. The Maoists, who received a plurality of votes in the Constituent Assembly election, formed a coalition government in August 2008, but resigned in May 2009 after the president overruled a decision to fire the chief of the army staff. On June 30th, 2010, the prime minister resigned under intense pressure from the Maoists in order to end a year long stand off with the Maoists. Between 2008 and 2011 there were four different coalition governments, led twice by the United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, which received a plurality of votes in the 2008 CA election, and twice by the Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist-Leninist (UML). After the CA failed to draft a constitution by the May 2012 deadline set by the Supreme Court, then Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai dissolved the CA. Months of negotiations ensued until March 2013 when the major political parties agreed to create an interim government headed by then Chief Justice Khil Raj Regmi with a mandate to hold elections for a new CA. Elections were held in November 2013, in which and the Nepali Congress won the largest share of the seats in the CA and in February 2014 formed a coalition government with the second place UML and with Nepali Congress President Sushil Koirala as prime minister.   In the November 2013 election, 120 political parties participated and 30 parties were elected to serve in the Constituent Assembly.

Economy:  Nepal is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world, with about 46% of the people unemployed. Nepal is heavily dependent on remittances, which amount to as much as 22-25% of GDP. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, providing a livelihood for more than 70% of the population and accounting for a little over one-third of GDP. Industrial activity mainly involves the processing of agricultural products, including pulses, jute, sugarcane, tobacco, and grain. Nepal has considerable scope for exploiting its potential in hydropower, with an estimated 42,000 MW of commercially feasible capacity, but political uncertainty and a difficult business climate have hampered foreign investment. Additional challenges to Nepal's growth include its landlocked geographic location, persistent power shortages, underdeveloped transportation infrastructure, civil strife and labor unrest, and its susceptibility to natural disaster. The lack of political consensus in the past several years has delayed national budgets and prevented much-needed economic reform, although the government passed a full budget in 2013.

Religion: Hindu 80.6%, Buddhist 10.7%, Muslim 4.2%, Kirant 3.6%, other 0.9% (2001)
Nepal was previously the world’s only Hindu nation. Because of the civil unrest in 1990, the government now allows the freedom to profess and practice any religion, but not to evangelize. Proselytizing has a jail sentence of three years. The first church in Nepal was formed in 1952 with 29 Christians.  When persecution was at its worst in 1990, there were 200,000 believers.  In 2010, there were as many as 850,000 Christ followers in nearly 10,000 groups.  This was achieved because of a willingness to suffer for the Gospel, profound prayerfulness, and a Nepali-driven long term commitment to evangelism and church planting.  There is a church planted in every one of the 75 districts of Nepal, and there are at least some believers in almost every people and caste group.  There is also great unity among the Christian community.  The Nepal Christian Society was formed in 1996 as a coordinating fellowship for Evangelicals, the National Council of Churches of Nepal was formed in 1999 for social and national development, and the Christian Efforts for Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation was formed in 2003.  The CEPJAR later joined a multi-faith peacebuilding process with representatives of other faiths.  Christianity is still viewed in Nepal as a foreign, mostly Western intrusion that undermines traditional culture and society and appeals only to lower castes.  Persecution of Christians still continues, especially for those who evangelize to Hindus. Those who convert to any religion other than Hinduism face social rejection and possibly violence; some are even forced from their homes. If someone is convicted of converting others, he will face fines or imprisonment, and foreigners can be barred from the country. Not only do the communist Maoists attack the Christians, but militant Hindus with supporters in India as well. Both want to purge the country of all Christianity. In 2009, an extremist group called the Nepal Defense Army claimed credit for the brutal murder of a Catholic priest. This group seeks to restore Nepal as a Hindu nation and targets Christians and other non-Hindus; they follow the philosophy of Hindutva. They also bombed a Catholic church in 2009, killing two women and one teenager while wounding dozens of others.  Despite all of this, Nepal's Christians are defending their rights and building a fully Nepali, Christian identity. While persecution remains, it is not as severe as it has been in the past.  Nepal is not listed as one of the top 50 countries experiencing persecution.  The Bible translation into Nepali was completed in 1915. The Old Testament is now available in 7 languages, and the New Testament is available in 11 more. Christian literature can now be freely printed and distributed without censorship. Christian broadcasts are little known, but the JESUS film is being widely used. 

Human Trafficking: Trafficking claims so many girls in Nepal that in one area, several villages are left without any teenage girls. Spiritual, relational, and economic poverty drive families to sell their daughters into slavery in their own cities or across borders to India and throughout Asia.  The organization "She Is Safe", works to prevent, rescue and restore Nepal’s girls from trafficking with holistic interventions. Through their anti-trafficking work in Nepal, they free girls at border crossings, restoring them through spiritual nurture and job training in a safe location. Girls are returning home bearing the good news of God’s love, equipped to strengthen their villages against traffickers in the future. To prevent the sale of girls, their local anti-trafficking partners in unreached areas convince families that girls can gain skills to bless their villages, and provide income-generating opportunities.  In just one example, when their border co-worker met Malati, she was drugged and dressed in a veil. Her trafficker had threatened her and demanded that she act like a Muslim woman to disguise the fact that she was being trafficked from a Hindu village. A quick interview revealed that she was headed for India’s sex trade. Her trafficker was handed over to local authorities, and Malati is now in a She Is Safe-funded safe house, where she is learning her worth in Christ, and gaining the skills she needs to build a new life of freedom.



Information compiled from Operation World Nepal, CIAWorldFactBook Nepal, World Watch List, She Is Safe Nepal
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Nepal: Christians 'On Top of the World' Facing Persecution (Jan 2013) 

Sex Trafficking in Nepal: Overview from Habiba Nosheen

 Nepal: Human Trafficking by Indians


 Human Trafficking: Nepal 

 

 The Nepal Documentary 

India Revisited: Hindutva

 “There is no rationality in the Nazi hatred: it is hate that is not in us, it is outside of man... We cannot understand it, but we must understand from where it springs, and we must be on our guard. If understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative, because what happened could happen again. Consciences can be seduced and obscured again - even our consciences. For this reason, it is everyone duty to reflect on what happened. Everybody must know, or remember, that when Hitler and Mussolini spoke in public, they were believed, applauded, admired, adored like gods. They were "charismatic leaders" ; they possessed a secret power of seduction that did not proceed from the soundness of things they said but from the suggestive way in which they said them, from their eloquence, from their histrionic art, perhaps instinctive, perhaps patiently learned and practised. The ideas they proclaimed were not always the same and were, in general, aberrant or silly or cruel. And yet they were acclaimed with hosannas and followed to the death by millions of the faithful.”-Primo Levi

Since February of 2009 when we first studied India, Voice of the Martyrs Canada has documented 80 articles on the persecution of Christians in India.  These stories include everything from burning orphanages and bombing churches to attacking and killing pastors and their families.  These attacks occur all throughout the country, but the one recurring factor is Hindu "extremists" and their philosophy of Hindutva.  To understand the persecution that is happening in India, one has to understand Hindutva and how it is changing the very fabric of India.  As we pray for India, let us remember to pray that the truth would shine brightly in the darkness, and that men would search for that truth, instead of blindly following the passions of their heart.  

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Hindutva literally translates to mean Hinduness or Hinduhood.  It is an ideology that advocates Hindu nationalism. It seeks to establish India as a Hindu Nation, and rejects the idea of a Hindu identity that is a composite of different cultures and faiths. It has often been called an ideology of Hindu pride, Hindu patriotism, Hindu fundamentalism, Hindu revivalism, Hindu chauvinism, Hindu fascism or Hindutva, depending on who is referring to it. What is clear is that it is exclusionary and discriminatory.  It also has tried to rewrite history in favor of Hindus.  Hindutva has claimed that the Taj Mahal was a Hindu temple and that Hindus used flying machines 7000 years ago in an effort to feel pride in their old civilization and to create a Hindu state to restore this “old glory”. These claims have had such an affect that communal riots where thousands of people clashed and died have happened between Hindus and other religious minorities in India, most notably the Muslims, because the false sense of history has stirred up hatred for the religious minorities whom they perceive as having had destroyed the Indian civilizations of old. 

Hindutva is the ideology of a group known as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, or the ‘Sangh,’).  The group was started in 1925 for ‘propagating Hindu culture.’ As an organization, the RSS is elusive and shadowy, probably due to the fact that in 1948 it was banned after one of its members assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, who had emphasized Hindu-Muslim unity.  It is only open to Hindu males (primarily upper caste); it maintains no membership records; it has resisted being registered with the Government of India as a public/charitable trust; it has no bank accounts and pays no income tax. The RSS claims to be inclusive of all those who are racially and culturally Hindu and places on the outside all those who adhere to and identify with a different faith or ethos, thus establishing the idea of a Hindu state as an exclusive one where minorities are, at best, second class citizens. 

The RSS is an umbrella organization that has many arms. The RSS has created and propagated organizations in every facet of socio-political life in India—from political parties to children’s centers, trade unions and militias. These groups are together known as the Sangh Parivar or the Sangh Family of organizations. In recent years, the Sangh Parivar has also expanded its operations outside India and made significant efforts to reach the ‘Hindu’ diaspora, especially in the US, the UK and the Caribbean.

The spread of the Hindutva ideology in India is carried out at the grassroots level through an army of volunteers deployed by the Sangh Parivar. The recruitment and ideological orientation' towards Hindutva is done on many levels and fronts: at the grade school level, or earlier, with Hinduised education, including such 'educational' activities as the holding of Ramayan and Mahabharat competitions for school children in tribal areas—largely with the goal of supplanting tribal culture and traditions; with the 'celebration' of Hindu festivals on a grand scale in areas with large non-Hindu populations; and simultaneously, with the distribution of anti-minority pamphlets and literature and the sporadic creation of anti-minority programs such as the grabbing of minority land or buildings or the promotion of riots and murder. For these purposes, the Sangh has set up hundreds of smaller organizations all over the country, all supervised by volunteers and centrally coordinated, even though each claims to be independent of the Sangh.

While the RSS itself cannot currently accept monetary contributions for its activities from abroad, each of the Sangh-affiliated organizations has been designated a 'charity' and the Sangh actively solicits foreign funding for these organizations. In other words, given that the RSS has no corporate form and ensures an ambiguity around its specific location and form, it would be quite correct to argue that this myriad of smaller organizations together is what precisely constitutes the RSS. The most visible and active organizations of the Sangh Parivar are: its parliamentary wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, Indian Peoples Party),its cultural/political mobilization wing, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP – World Hindu Council),its paramilitary wing, the Bajrang Dal, and its service wing, the Seva Vibhag.

Violence is a central strategy in the Sangh’s rise to political power. Often the Sangh presents its use of violence as “self-defense” against armed minority gangs. While large numbers of Hindus living all across India would shun violence just as many others of different faiths do, Hindutva has, from its inception, been very clear on the necessity of violence.  Some of the earliest proponents of Hindutva said: Golwalkar, the second Supreme Leader of the RSS, celebrated Nazi Germany and “her purging the country of the Semitic races — the Jews.” For Golwalkar, the “purging” of an entire people was entirely justifiable as it was an expression of “national pride at its highest…”.   Just as Golwalkar celebrated Nazi Germany, so did B. S. Moonje, one of the earliest proponents of Hindutva and the mentor of Hegdewar (the founder of the RSS). Moonje traveled to Italy to meet with Mussolini and study the methods of Italian fascism. Reflecting on what he saw in Italy and seeking a reproduction of Italian fascist organization in India he wrote: “This training is meant for qualifying and fitting our boys for the game of killing masses of men with the ambition of winning victory... “.

There is plenty of evidence that shows violence and Hindutva are inexplicably linked.  Numerous government reports have clearly shown that Sangh has incited and organized communal violence with the goal of obtaining greater power.  Each riot that occurs further polarizes the majority Hindu community from minority communities and strives to further separate each religious community into its own ghetto.  More recently with the ascension of the BJP to State power, and the growth of the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, communal riots have now transformed into an organized method, where minority populations, residences, businesses and institutions are targeted with precision. 

Two examples can be seen in persecution against Christians and Muslims. When the BJP party came into power in 1998, violence against Christian minorities in India significantly escalated. Between January 1998 and February 1999 alone, there were 116 attacks against the Christian community in India, specifically targeting Christian missionaries, priests, nuns, schools and churches as observed by the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center. 

The Gujarat Genocide of 2002 included the massacre of more than 2000 Muslims, the rape, mutilation and murder of Muslim women, the specific targeting of Muslim businesses for burning and arson, and the destruction of Muslim homes leaving in excess of 150,000 Muslims homeless

The Sangh also have The Black List posted online where they put “to trial” certain people for “crimes” ranging from secularism to expressing free speech, they hand out sentences ranging from a thousand lashes, criminal vandalism to the death penalty, it says that all actions possible should be taken to deal with them.

While the Sangh is popular among upper caste groups, the party continues to be looked upon with suspicion by lower caste Indians, India’s 140 million Muslims, and non-Hindi-speaking Hindus in southern India, who together comprise a majority of India’s voters. The BJP’s minimizing of “Hindutva” as a campaign slogan angered the RSS, which clung to the concept to unify the Sangh Parivar. There is a sharp distinction between Hinduism the religion and Hindutva the political philosophy of the Sangh parivar. The founder of modern India and its first Prime Minster, Jawaharlal Nehru, identified the Sangh Parivar as communalist and fascist.  The national government, led by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), continued to implement an inclusive and secular platform that included respect for the right to religious freedom. Despite the national government's rejection of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism), a few state and local governments continued to be influenced by Hindutva. The law generally provided remedy for violations of religious freedom, however, due to a lack of sufficient trained police and corruption, the law was not always enforced rigorously or effectively in some cases pertaining to religiously oriented violence. However, "Hindutva"-based policies could not be implemented without passing court review to determine whether they were consistent with the principles enshrined in the country's secular constitution. 

Info compiled from www.outlookindia.com, hinduextremism.wordpress.com 

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