NEPAL: Religious Leaders Want to Be Peacemakers

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Jan 17 2006 (IPS) - Mother Teresa’s successor has urged the warring sides in Nepal’s conflict to trade their guns for love just as religious leaders are pushing to play a peace-making role in the land where the Buddha was born. Sister Mary Nirmala, head of the Kolkata-based Missionaries of Charity, and Nepal-born herself, believes that love and compassion can help bring peace to this land, torn by a decade of civil war.

“Leave the guns, and put your arms around your brothers and sisters. Love one another and serve the poor in villages and mountains. Remember, only unconditional love will bring peace in our hearts and in this country,” she told told journalists on Monday.

Sister Mary Nirmala, who converted to Christianity while in college in neighbouring India, was named to her post just before the death of Mother Teresa in 1997. Two years after she last visited home, Maoist rebels launched their uprising from the neglected, impoverished hills of the mid-west.

Today, the insurgents are said to control up to 80 percent of the countryside, where the vast majority of Nepalis live.

Asked by journalists if she could play a role in ending the conflict, which has left 12,000 people dead, most of them innocent villagers, Sister Mary Nirmala promptly answered, “My role is to serve and love and pray.”

One Christian leader in this officially “Hindu kingdom” says he has been pushing his peers to move beyond religious responses to the social and political issues facing one of South Asia’s poorest nations, particularly the Maoist uprising.

“We need to act, we need to respond, we need to do something because as Christians we call ourselves peacemakers,” says KB Rokaya, general secretary of the National Council of Churches Nepal.

In July 2003, Rokaya spearheaded the first ever meeting of Nepal’s churches to discuss a non-religious issue, the conflict. From it was born the organisation, Christian Efforts for Peace, Justice and Reconciliation (CEPJAR).

That was followed in August 2004 by the creation of the Inter-Religious Peace Committee (IRPC) which represents Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Bahais and followers of Kirant (animist) practices in this nation of 25 million people. About 81 percent of Nepal’s people are Hindus, 11 percent Buddhists, four percent Muslims and the remainder Kirant, Christian and others.

“Personally, I was interested in contributing something to my country, which was going along a destructive path,” says Buddhist monk Bhikku Ananda, one vice-president – Rokaya is the other -of the IRPC. ”Also, as a monk I depend on my people, my devotees, so I must help them.”

That help is urgently needed now as the Feb. 8 municipal elections approach and the Maoists intensify a campaign they restarted after ending their ceasefire, Jan. 3. On Saturday, they launched a brazen series of attacks in the Kathmandu Valley, the capital and most secure spot in the country.

Dozens of well-armed rebels overwhelmed a police post at Thankot, the main road entrance into the Valley, just as the shift was being changed and minutes after the lights went out for scheduled “load shedding”. The Maoists killed 10 police officers there and murdered one more across the valley at another police station in Bhaktapur. The same evening they bombed government offices around Kathmandu.

The rebels, said by Nepal’s army to number 6,000-7,000 hardcore fighters, 20,000-25,000 militia and about 100,000 sympathisers, launched attacks in west Nepal hours after their unilateral ceasefire ended Jan. 3. But until Saturday, Kathmandu, in central Nepal, and the eastern part of the country were spared violence.

On Monday, the government of King Gyanendra, who seized power in a bloodless coup Feb. 1, 2005, imposed an 11 p.m.-4 a.m. curfew and banned rallies in all major cities. For weeks the opposition alliance of seven political parties has been planning a Jan. 20 demonstration in the capital that they say will be the largest pro-democracy protest since Feb. 1.

Ananda says an important part of Buddhist teaching is how to be happy. “To live your life happily, your environment should be peaceful but you can’t do any religious performance with a peaceful mind when the country is in turmoil.”

“If the religious groups go forward as a peace-seeking force in this country they could be the most powerful, democratic and fair entity,” added the monk, who helped bring together Maoist and government leaders for a third round of peace talks, which ended in August 2003.

“If it’s a fair, independent and unbiased voice, I’m sure the government and Maoists will listen to us,” said Ananda.

“People will lose faith in religion if you don’t address the immediate burning issues in their lives. It will seem irrelevant,” adds Rokaya. Tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of villagers have fled their homes because of the fighting. Many of them now live in makeshift houses and their children have stopped attending school. Hundreds of people have been “disappeared” by both armies.

But Rokaya says the religious leaders have been largely ignored by the combatants and by the United Nations and other international organisations and donor nations working in Nepal.

However, he has made trips overseas to lobby governments, including the United States and Britain, to help restore peace.

“They’re all playing reactive roles now. If given a chance we would tell them: ‘be creative, don’t just wait for the government to act’. There is no sincerity or honesty in that…there must be something they can do to create a conducive environment behind the scenes.”

For example, “there’s no crime in saying ‘we will not give (Nepal) aid unless there’s democracy, there’s a peace process’,” suggested Rokaya.