Sitting idly in Baluwataar gully with friends and waiting to tease girls was our weekend activity back home. Occasionally we would get the pleasure of harassing local “madhise” and robbing him of his fruits and stuffs. We didn’t care much for them, their pleas would go unheard not just through ours but any of the passerby’s ears too. We had a Mahato friend at school we used to call, you guessed it, “dhoti.” I don’t think we treated him that badly but it was clear he wasn’t one of us either.

Things have changed. I now realized how wrong I was. It never occurred that they share the same citizen rights that we did, they were merely from a different part of the country and spoke in funny hindi accent. “Madhise” became madhesi and “dhoti” became Mahato ji.

This awareness was one of the biggest accomplishment, at least for me, from the recent “people revolution.”  I have learnt to respect the diversity that we have in our small country. Through another Madhesi activist, Mr. Bhagat, I have learnt that terai is responsible for the biggest share of the nation’s GDP yet it gets no reciprocal attention from the state.

We now understand and are ready to apologize for all the mistreats and welcome the fellow citizens. Is it too much to ask that they do the same? “One madhes state” is nothing more than a ploy to divide the country, much like the Kirat state or any other state formed merely from ethnic point of view. We certainly don’t want another Bosnia, we simply cannot afford it in a small country like ours. So I ask, why are the Madhesi parties hell bent on getting this demand accepted? almost to a point that it has become not just a bargaining tool but a ransom money holding the country in hostage. I think it is upto the Madhesi brothers now to tell their leaders not to divide the country like this. You know they will flow in the direction of the masses.  Say no to “one Madhes state.”