bodies
were taken around the city in a macabre celebration of "people
power". Even as this happened, in broad daylight, Kathmandu residents by
the thousands chose to watch and not intervene. In 1992, this writer had asked,
"What is it that allows people to be murdered in such a way? Why is it
that such violence was tolerated by the same people who had only recently
brought an end to a supposedly ruthless system? ....Do these killings
constitute an aberration or are they evidence of deeply embedded violent tendencies
in our
society?" From today`s vantage point, it is easy to see that those
killings were not an aberration.
If
Kathmandu`s residents were capable of such violence in 1990, we have become
even more violent due to the particular history of the intervening decade.
Anyone who cared to notice that the rioters in Kathmandu were overwhelmingly
young and male would have to ask whether being young and male are significant
for an understanding of violence in Nepal today. They are. High levels of
unemployment amongst semi-educated youth, easy circulation of pessimism in
college campuses, and the macho ways in which personal and societal problems
are solved in the universe of Nepali and Hindi films, have given birth to a
highly violent masculine imagination among this segment of the population.
The rioters in Kathmandu were living that imagination. Ghetto violence of the urban underclass in