Mr. Truth,

Reasoning is cumbersome. Agreed. However, that’s the only thing we have in order to get to the heart of the matter.

That said, I agree that we should be reasonable enough to see how we all, both the rulers and the subjects, have been victims of history (you used the word “co-incidence”).

When we judge history, we should judge based on the value prevailing at the time, not based on the value evolved at present time (not “ex post facto”).

For this reason, there is no point convicting the rulers of pre-democracy era (say Jung Bahadur or Prithvi Narayan). I was not talking about them when I talked about the paradise. I was taking about the post-democracy era (post B.S. 2007 in general, post B.S. 2047 specifically) where liberty and equity were supposed to be the prevailing values.

This should be open for judgment.

You brought up an interesting issue of citizenship distribution. There is no doubt that Nepal now has the most liberal citizenship policy perhaps in the entire world. Anybody residing in Nepal in 1990 or before can get Nepali citizenship. No kidding.

It’s true that this rather extremely liberal policy was brought by SPA leaders in a hurry or rather in panic due to Madhesi agitation in Terai. But I am proud rather than scared of it.

And if anybody is in impression that only the people living in Terai (very recent migrants from India included) benefited from this policy, here is the data to show it otherwise. Out of two lakhs citizenship distributed since the policy came out, only 46% were distributed in Terai and the rest were distributed in Pahad.

Total citizenship distributed:        2,250,869

Citizenship distributed in Terai:   1,055,869 (46%)

Citizenship distributed in Pahad:  1,19,5000  (54%)

In fact some Madhesi take this as a deception to them. Here is one such theory.

http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2008/others/guestcolumn/jan/guest_columns_08.php

To make things short, there indeed are a lot of unreasonable skepticism, cynicism and even “foreign activism” in Terai. However, we must not deny that it’s making of the continued exclusion of Madhesis in the state in the post-democracy era as unexpected.

Jana Andola II and the reforms thereafter including Madhesi movement and reforms quickened thereafter have changed all that. However, our leaders have not been able to present those cases as strongly as they deserve to Madhesi people. Here I blame them.

Nepe