On Citizenship

We were students in the kerosene stoves days. Pumping up these stoves, we would whirr up a flame,  cook our rice and daal, fry up some potatoes enhanced by extra bits of chillies. The darn stoves used to clog up at the kerosene outlet. So we had "pin' handy in our rented rooms (dera). There was no survival without the "pin" which was a small flat aluminum sheet with a thin wire jutting out at the end. On our knees, we bent over, and with precision of a watchmaker, we put the thin wire into the outlet  clearing up the clog to allow the kerosene flow.  A clearer whir after we lit the match assured us of the success. We gobbled down the food, dominated by huge portions of rice, and headed our way to the school.

I must have been thirteen at the time. After spending the school vacation at home in the village I was heading back to Kathmandu's dera. I must have had my bags stuffed with vegetables, dried food, perhaps even a heavy sack of rice from the village; I do not recall. But I do recall that my family had given me a cheque to cash out at a town nearly 6 hours walk from my village. I was to cash out that cheque and take a bus to Kathmandu, the money would fund my next month's stove enterprise. 

It was a Friday and the business would close mid-day. I rushed to Nepal Bank Limited, the only bank in town at the time, as instructed by my parents. I presented my cheque. The guy at the counter pushed back the cheque and declared that I won't get the money. My heart pounded, I started sweating, I turned red like a beet. I was doomed, it was 6 hours walk back home and my school would start on Sunday. What was the reason? I had not endorsed the cheque. "Oh I could do that now!" No! he said. You have to sign in front of who wrote the cheque. How would we know if you just found the signed cheque? I stood there devastated. He might have a point but the result was that I was doomed. He scolded me for not knowing the procedure and asked me to go back and come with a cheque endorsed in front of the person writing the check. But I pleaded if something could be done. After some more harassment. He finally said, just because I know your father I will cash it out. I felt grateful that it was finally done. But my palpitations took a while to settle down. 

After adding many more years to that young boy, traveling, studying and working in many different systems, as I look back at that event, I now find something viscerally wrong about how I was treated at that time. It was my money that he stored in his bank, that funded his opulence and livelihood. But there he was, exerting his power using language that I did not understand, fooling me with seemingly logical sounding arguments, and dismissing my potential hardships from the action. He had no right to give me that sense of doom. 

After being away from the country for several years, I returned back to Nepal for over 2 years of stay. I have deliberately tried endorsing cheques at bank counters and nobody dismissed me this time. But it was Kathmandu, they were private banks competing for customers, and I was a neatly clothed confident man. I don't know what still goes on in Dumre with that young man, nervous about something going wrong, clothes soaked in sweat from 6 hours' walk from village.  

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Perhaps some options have expanded. Especially because, the state power is now more fragmented than before. You are likelier to have access to people in power just based on plain mathematics, movement outside the country has somewhat expanded, private enterprises have expanded. So if you happen to have access to people in power, you are agile enough to navigate the strictures in moving out, or you have enough money to buy out services, you are better off. But if you are an ordinary, poor citizen of this country without access to people in power, this remains a viciously callous power structure ever ready to relish on your helplessness to attest its power. They will cite you rules (and they are very good at that), they will sometimes throw in kindness (that's how it is stabilized) and keep you enslaved. 

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How do you relate to such a birthplace?

Perhaps most of us don't even think of our society as having such grave problems. This indifference, or complacence, seems to be rampant among the better off amongst us; especially those in power. Perhaps we have no choice and we accept it as what it is. We depend on the sporadic kindness that come along the way, we placate the power and play by their rules so that mercy would be granted upon us. Poor and powerless amongst us seem to go by it. And it is a stable sentiment, not a martyrdom. More in line with how Coetzee would characterize innocence (In From the Heart of the Country):

The innocent victim can only know evil in the form of suffering. That which is not felt by the criminal is his crime. That which is not felt by the innocent victim is his own innocence.

Or Amartya Sen on hopelessly deprived people (In Idea of Justice):

...typically adjust their desires and expectations to what little they see as feasible. They train themselves to take pleasure in small mercies. 

Perhaps we, who are fortunate enough to be able to detach ourselves from the daily grinding of this society, in places abroad or secluded abodes of comfort at home, create our fantasy land of the nation of certain culture, of natural beauty, of certain religious or family traditions, of certain physical infrastructure and technological developments, and all variations imaginable. We then have a sentimental relationship of our own variation. A nostalgia that blossoms in isolated conversations, social media posts, hobbies that always have the protection of choice. 

But how do I relate to this nation of mine? I had no strong and spontaneous sentimentality that I could cling to. Rather, a certain sense of distaste to some of the commonly used propaganda mantras of nationalism. The sense of problems in the society had magnified after seeing other more advanced systems. Was there a moral duty to your nation?

I had no certain answer. And that uncertainty was one of the reasons I had decided to pack my bags after completing my training abroad to spend time in the country. After over 2 years of stay, the question of national identity has found its own share of experiences. 

I am clearer about one thing: our power structure is dominated by cold viciousness. And it is an important distinction to make. Not for playing the blame game but for finding solutions. Our people are still powerless. They are still ruled by a few powerful people. Their freedom is still narrow. As a collective society, our ordinary people still don't have any rights assured, unless they use violent means. Reasoning is still not an accepted way of finding a solution. We remain a poor, backward society. We are fragmented at all levels: along haves and have nots, along religions, along cultures, along regional divisions, and along all terminologies experimented by our politicians and thought leaders in the country. We have no unifying national identity that we can relate to. 

As a citizen, my personal experience was that the inner question of citizenship surfaced primarily during the interaction with larger society; public places and public services. And,  naturally, it was a very unsettling experience. But what kept me afloat was the idea that were certainly more powerless and unfortunate persons than myself, who would undergo much more hardship than me. In addition, the acquaintance of a rare few who have lived in the fringes, bearing all the insults coming their way, striving for a better society, amidst a desperately disconsolate society was pacifying. 

As I move away from the country, to a new phase in life, I miss the camaraderie of the few with whom I shared the struggle in desperation (even if it was for a short while) and the feeling that they will have one less person on their long journey of relatively isolated strives. I also miss the powerless patients and persons who appreciated my concerns. 

Perhaps that longing for my colleagues and powerless people amongst us is my national identity.