Letters»
Distorting historical facts
JAN 06 - There are a few Bon monasteries in Dolpa and Mustang districts, and the adherents of the religion could perhaps be a few thousands. This religion was prevalent in Tibet and many areas of northern Nepal before the advent of Buddhism. However, D B Gurung’s review contains distortion of historical facts. (A book review written by Gurung on a book “Bon in the Himalayas”, The Kathmandu Post, 4/1/04).
Gurung talks about “genocidal suppression of religious and cultures in multiethnic nation may impair bio-diversity in the long run.” With no exception Nepal currently goes hard with such gnawing crisis owing to the subversive policies imposed upon the indigenous religions and cultures of ethnic minorities inherited from centuries of elitist military rule based on Hindu caste hierarchy”.
Let us first talk about genocide. In his attempt to demonise Hindu religion in Nepal, Gurung forgot that a genocide of six million Jews in Christian Europe was conducted by Hitler in the twentieth century. Another genocide of two million people, almost all were Buddhists, was conducted by Khmer Rouge in Cambodia thirty years ago. Hindus in the Kashmir valley under the control of a secular government in India were forced to migrate to other parts of India by Islamic militants in the 1990s as part of ethnic cleansing of infidels. Such ethnic cleansing has not happened in Nepal.
Gurung says in his review that Gurkha conquest in 1769 provided Nepal with a single name. Perhaps he does not know that the name Nepal existed before Gurkha conquest. He blames Gurkha conquest and the advent of hordes of Indo-Aryan immigrants “along with their powerful theological machinery (Hinduism) that corroded the cultures, religions, languages, and the lifestyle of the indigenous nationalities”. Actually, Hinduism in Nepal is older than 1769. The oldest written inscription at Changunarayan in Kathmandu valley dating back to 5th century and the statue of Garada demonstrate that Hinduism was already prevalent in the valley and was not brought by the hordes Gurung talks about. Actually, King Drabya Shah had already become King of Gorkha in the sixteenth century about the same time the Sherpas had migrated to Nepal from Tibet, according to renowned ethnologist Haimendorf. Sherpas were designated as “indigenous people” whereas Thakuris were not, as they were Hindus and they, as Gurung has indicated, were part of horde of Indo-Aryan immigrants.
Prakash A Raj,
KathmanduPosted on: 2004-01-06 02:31
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