Articles
‘Many Roads One Destination’ Part-1
(N. B. Giri)
It is difficult to believe that men can be so spiritually or mentally dead as to have no love for their native country that had cradled and nestled them to be the real sons and daughters. It is equally insulting to realize that we even do not picture our martyrs in our gray matter who had succumbed to the security bullets and gave their today for our tomorrow. Dwelling in a foreign soil with basic infrastructure for sustenance made available by UNHCR, Government of Nepal and other donor agencies and now resettled in third countries we have failed upon our prime task for which we have been made country-less, homeless, jobless and helpless refugees by the mono-ethnic centered government of not so distant moon-yul land (BHUTAN). We have distorted our image by unproductive work as lethargy has gripped our enthusiasm to undertake meaningful approach to restore our lost heritage and national identity. Un-patriotism has set in with every victims of Bhutanese reprisal and if such trend dominates our existence then we will find that we would never inspire people to celebrate us in their death-less songs. Such casual attitude for nationalism will not help us to win fame during our life time and when we die, we will die in a double sense. (If we tend to forget our identity and mingle our life’s mission with the eats and dance, dollars and yen, cars and finances and even in lustful life style none will be applauded for such achievements by world.) Our body will return to the dust whence it came, and our name will be forgotten. None will weep for us, none will honor us and no patriotic society will keep our name alive in their immortal poetry.
Runnels of tears roll down our wrinkled faces to realize the unholy act of that holy land which had mercilessly butchered the people on grounds of fabricated treason. Remuneration packages in the form of deprivation of our nationality and the nationhood amidst chants of ONE NATION ONE PEOPLE started with the severity of involvement of the people against Tsa-Wa-Sum (The King, The Kingdom and The Government) – the three elements of Bhutan. The package also included corporal and capital punishment. The initiative, drive and proven track record of our people were met with heavy volume of fire where many martyrs advocating for a clean administrative system with radical changes succumbed to the Bhutanese security might. Their immoral soul wandering in the wilderness of the blue firmament for want of justice might be cursing us as cowards. They pronounced Democracy and Human Rights in Bhutan with their blood. Before breathing last before leaving dark room of the prison they wrote with their blood that “We still have a mission to accomplish.” Every drop of their blood then, invigorating us to rise and meet the call of the land irrespective of the consequences thereafter has been a total failure. The same feeling for nationality over the years has evaporated from our minds and the time is not far away when we would forget to spell BHUTAN.
Mother and motherland are the greatest assets of mankind that stand as a precious gift from above. These two gems give us inspiration to struggle for our basic rights to survive as human beings. The absence of these two gems from our vocabulary curtails our means to survive and in the long run the world will place us as extras or perpetual nuisance. Most of us are not clear with these concepts and we tend to corner our thoughts for a momentary pleasure instead of utilizing our utility for the benefit of our motherland. The inculcation of such baseless thoughts and the reflection of our inefficiency will make the outsiders laugh at us. In such a scenario misery will dominate our morose existence. The robustness and the guts to cope up with the issue of challenges and the wishes of our martyrs and for our own wishes are desirable. The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go away before I sleep, and miles to go away before I sleep—- is the cornerstone for us to awake to define our nationality and human existence.
Our minds are polluted with a wrong conception as we tend to believe that the responsibility of our safe unconditional repatriation with Human Rights lies with the learned and high rankling people of Bhutan in exile. We have failed to realize that they too are like us-the victims without national identity. While in exile, we are all equal partners with equal provision and respect if any. Kings are not born kings, bureaucrats are not self made bureaucrats and the poor people are not born poor, it is the destiny which makes them to be the one. We should therefore, ponder over this aspect and initiate wholeheartedly to the task for which we are equal participants. We require about 6 x 2 feet land to rest comfortably when we bid adieu to this world and hence it must be our endeavor to acquire that much of land in our motherland before we perish. Nobility of birth and exalted rank of which we so proudly boast are mere illusions and quickly pass away. We cannot protect our proud possessors from the common fate of all mankind – death. Even kings, like the meanest of their subjects, must die, and in the grave the poor peasant is equal with the haughty monarch. Grave in fact is the better than a refugee camp where insult torment us at every nook and corner of our survival.
We are branded refugees, easy to pronounce hard to experience and it hits hard where it hurts most to us to realize that our well fortified serene existence back at home in the country of our domicile had been snatched from us by an act of espionage, sabotage and subversion. We have utterly failed to realize the implication of being branded as refugees and some of us even share the opinion that we are the guest of Government of Nepal and UNHCR. We have even gone to the extent of demanding provisions without realizing that beggars can hardly be choosers. Our precious time is spent on idle tittle-tattle discussing politics without knowing ABC of it. We tend to project our vigor and strength in a wrong way to create an atmosphere of insecurity and hostility amongst our own people by rowdy-ism and hooliganism. Our energy, talent and skill must be utilized for constructive purpose to the interest of the country.
Material greed and jealously – the root cause of any trouble have started to set in within us. We have all become short-sighted, and very often see but one-side of the matter, our views are not extended to all that has a connection with it. We see but in part, and we know but in part, and therefore, it is no wonder we conclude not right from our partial views. Perseverance, not lack of ability in us, is the cause of our sad failures. It is because we do not persevere in overcoming our difficulties at a time and hence fail. Instead of sticking to one aim until it is realized, we hesitate, get discouraged at every small rebuff, changed from one aim to another and so create for ourselves such a series of difficulties as can never be tackled by human power. Even a stream will carve out for itself a deep and wide channel simple by constantly flowing. All the architectural monuments at which we look with praise and wonder are instances of resist-less force of perseverance, it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united by camels. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of a pick-axe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion, yet those petty operations incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled, and oceans bounded, by the slander force of human beings. These governances must be our in-built quality to up-hail our relentless cause for identity and to identify with Bhutan.
We have a role to save-guard the interest of our motherland and we have to act as an intellectual warrior, as a manager, a bureaucrat, a specialist technician and a well-informed citizen; an officer who obeys and yet thinks before he acts, who is young yet matured and who is both an idealist and a realist. We must be a man of decision and action rather than of theory. Victory is the pay off, and therefore, the confirmation to correct decision. There is no other alternative expect realistic approach where judgments are tested in abrupt decisions and answered in the servitude of the defeated, where the acknowledged authority is the leader who has won or who instills confidence that he will win. A dynamic and innovative approach is needed if we are to maximize our capability to retain our identity and explain to the world that hereditary kings or authoritarian systems of government never respect human rights nor it is democratic, it is inhumane and barbaric to other people of the same country. Above everything else, we must have the feeling of unity for a united cause.
We have been blinded by a sense of inferiority complex. We tend to undertake wrong designs in our conception knowing it to be wholly or partially out of order. We are struggling for today and as such we have no future as long as we remain under-privileged. How many of us have ever tried to analyze the future of our dependents particularly the children? We are in a fit of premonition to realize the future perspective of our young ones. Their poverty clad faces with morose stature of the spouse along with the deteriorating health condition is a constant reminder to us of our misery and poverty overridden existence by fatigue, stress and strain. We must have a firm determination to channelize a way for a meaningful education of our children so that in the days to come, they should be able to withstand the odyssey of life by the theoretical and practical wisdom gained from education. We must be conscious of the fact that by courage, determination, concrete aim and direction, we should be able to erase the word refugee by nationality but it entails total devotion to commit ourselves.
[We are being privileged to be resettled in others’ country our temporary halt to the journey we are walking, but, we know resettlement do not bring us victory in our lifetime and we will never be cleanly national people of that country for all generations. We can force to erase this synonymous by our long time stay but, you will deceive yourselves for that. We needed a place to protect our children to make our children able and worthy to campaign for the just cause we have started. We must remember that we are not made refugees due to natural calamities and other probable reasons but, we are uniquely made refugees, we are evicted from Bhutan with the challenge to redefine our rights in Bhutanese soil. We will still be graded as cowards and cowards have no place even in that resettled country as you know your reputation will always be begged account amongst others.]
We talk of our martyrs just to co-relate with them and to hoodwink the outside world as to have belonged to those categories of great minds who laid down their moment of happiness for our cause. In the right earnest, the martyrs would have deemed it an act of betrayal of their deeds had they been present amongst us. They had shown us the way to live boldly and a way to die a heroic death. If we fail to understand their sacrifices, it would be better that we forgo our false association with them. For only fitting tribute is to follow reverently in the path they showed us and to do our duty in life and in death. Though 1990 is no-longer with us, more than 22 years have past; the impact on the lives of thousands of Bhutanese refugees can not be easily worn off. The year 1990 played a very significant role in distorting the image of Bhutanese people and Bhutan. Events take place and are forgotten but their effects remain in peoples mind. The Bhutanese destitute are denied definite destiny but only time will tell us as to how many of us are the real sons and daughters of Druk-Soil.
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