When people plan to visit Nepal they think about the natural beauty of Nepal, the friendly people here (what Google describes us as), the tasty mouth-watering foods, the different culture and literally every other thing that the people have heard or read about Nepal. BUT what about those rapes cases that are increasing day by day? What about the poverty of the people? What about the double standard for women? What about the gender discrimination between men and women/boys and girls/sons and daughters? What about the patriarchal society of our country? What about the traditional/old thinking of our society? There are so many questions lingering in my mind even though I just started thinking about these things. During this coronavirus pandemic I started questioning myself about all of these. I know the answers to these questions yet I myself feel like I don’t know the answers.
You might notice that there are so many ‘WHAT’ or ‘BUT’ words in this article, it’s because the society, the books that we study, the teachers are teaching us those things that can hardly be seen in our society in our country.
As a student I’ve been taught to voice out my opinions confidently and fearlessly towards those things/points that we are dissatisfied with BUT when I tried to voice out my opinions towards those people who teaches us, are our elders then I am speaking NoNsEnse or my points are invalid…
People who teach us doesn’t only mean it’s just the teachers, it means it’s pointing out those people who teach us directly or indirectly in our day to day life like our parents, family, relatives and even some strangers…
I also noticed that we all learn that there is an UNBREAKABLE UNITY IN OUR COUNTRY and that EVERYONE RESPECTS EACH OTHERS CULTURE AND TRADITIONS but from what I remember the people over here tend to compare each other’s traditions and rituals directly or indirectly and sometimes even openly discriminate it. For example; during my online classes one of my teachers pointed out that we Gurung, Magars use alcohol during our rituals which is not good AND we should stop doing that, then after that class I started thinking about what that teacher said earlier. At first I felt like he/she was right but when I gave it a second thought I became furious as he/she stated that it was a bad cultural to do and continuing it was really a bad custom in an indirect way.
After thinking about how I can give him/her a response the next time he/she states those kind of things, I knew I was gonna say this the next time he/she talks about it, ‘Sir/Mam if we using alcohol is a bad custom/tradition then I think that you should also stop using cow’s urine as a sacred liquid cause when I 1st learnt that people use cow’s urine as a sacred liquid I was utterly shocked and kinda disgusted.’
We (Gurungs) think of alcohol as a pure/sacred liquid that comes out of the plants organically while they might think of cow’s urine as a sacred liquid in some kind of way. Why point out a thing that we don’t have a full knowledge about? As a teacher I think he/she should wisely think what he/she is saying about the different kinds of culture as the points/things they are stating can make a big difference in how we students view it. Since we students are in the developing age right now giving us this kind of false information about our culture is really inappropriate .
So it plays a negative role in our life as we are going to give our new generation the false fact about our culture as we are also given false knowledge about it. Then, who is going to take the responsibility of it? Doesn’t this seem like a good response? This was just a small example on how I feel when people talk about something in which they aren’t fully knowledgeable about.
I know I am just in 7th grade and I am still learning about a lot of things however I still feel like there are a lot of things that needs to be truthfully and clearly recognized in our country.
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