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14/09/2017
Bhimsen’s folly - Oped - The Kathmandu Post
(http: / / www.gioneenepal. com/)
/ / election, ekantipur. com / ?lng=eng)
OPED (/CATEGORY/OPED)
Bhimsen’s folly
The tower should be reconstructed with scientific plans, not with nationalistic fervour
- ABHISUBEDI (/author/abhi+subedi), Kathmandu
27 f *
SHARES
Feb 21, 2016-The post-quake Nepali state occasionally gives signals of waking up, as though with a splash of consciousness to restore the lost morale of the
Nepali people, who are still reeling under the weight of difficulties of high magnitude. The human cost of last year’s massive earthquake is colossal. The time
span from that fatal day to the present has been the worst in the entire history of Nepal. Thousands of people lost their lives in that earthquake. Its impact on
politics was huge. Parties that were adamant reduced their intransigence and agreed to create and promulgate a constitution. But the Madhesi parties did not
accept it. With a long and harsh blockade of supplies from India, the agitation and mysticism surrounding geo-religious and political interests made the
situation worse. Although the sufferings of the earthquake victims were approached from a minimalist position, making the constitution acceptable to all
appeared to receive broader attention.
f http: / / www. nicasiabank. com /)
(A)pathetic state
However, the state’s indifference to the sufferings of the victims of the calamities and those of the common people of Madhes and hills looked almost
unbelievable. The ordeal invited chaos. A strange sense of seeking order in chaos and accepting that as the order of the day became a dominant force in Nepali
politico-ethical psyche. Oil became the synecdoche of a bizarre political consciousness, of identity politics and of the Nepal-India legendary and close ties.
http://kathmandupost.ekantipur.com/news/2016-02-21/bhimsens-folly.html
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14/09/2017
Bhimsen’s folly - Oped - The Kathmandu Post
According to poets and political analysts, the nation lived by selling petrol in the black market. After India released the supply, ironically, the black marketeers
who are there in all political parties, governments and small businesses, appear to operate even more comfortably. Despite India’s easy supply of oil, the
sadistic profiteers are perpetuating the warlike situation. Petrol jerkins and gas cylinders are carried about in the open.
A number of earthquake victims have died from cold. Others have bravely declared that they would not wait for any help from the government. The irony is
that the major bulk of the aid has come, or stands promised, from the generous world. Something is wrong (eulogised form) in the state of Denmark, goes the
opening sentence in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Something is wrong in the state of Nepal, too. Bridges struck by the quake remain broken. The ancient heritage
sites remain in rubble. Many precious monuments, icons and wooden structures were dumped with the rubble. The nation started debating about its
priorities.
The most natural psyche at such moments is to emerge out of the rubble. Nations that have suffered from calamities and hit by human-made catastrophes rise
like a phoenix from the ashes. But nations that rise from the rubble have one thing in common—strong human bonding and a sense of renouncement of
selfishness. Calamities should make people honest. But seeing the course of events and trends in Nepal, we began to suspect that honesty and human bonding
received the least priority in these hard times. But something is emerging! We should listen and wait. A strong sense of nationalism is being epitomised in the
Dharahara (the Bhimsen tower) metaphor. Suddenly, almost overnight, we have heard that the nation has decided to erect the Bhimsen tower. The
government and leaders will donate their precious one-month salary for the symbolic act of erecting Dharahara. They will make it possible by galvanising
energy through such generous acts. I remember the expression ‘the iconic structure’ for Dharahara used by the Society of Nepalese Architects. Senior architect
Sudarsan Raj Tiwari in his essay “Two Nepalese Monuments†calls Dharahara—hara being the evocation of Shiva—the monumental structure that was built to
make up for the humiliation Nepal suffered in the Sugauli Treaty of 1816. He indicates that Queen Lalit Tripurasundari, who gave Mukhtiar Bhimsen Thapa
the permission to build it, was sensitive enough to realise that it was needed to alleviate the pain of humiliation. Dharahara was built in 1826 but was ripped by
the big earthquake of 1933. It was restored with the same spirit again.
Misplaced priorities
Architect Tiwari says that Hector Oldfield, a British surgeon at the Kathmandu Residency from 1850-1873, was ‘astonished’ by the feats of its architecture in
his remarkable memoirs published in his illustrated book Sketches from Nepal, but he called it ‘Bhimsen’s folly’. Such ambivalence of the colonial time
expressions are productively analysed by an Indian-born theorist Homi K Bhabha, which is not a subject of discussion here. Whether or not the monument
erected in the nondescript corner of the Kathmandu polis awed the Britishers in India, its emotional value for the natives was, and as can be seen, massive. I
commented earlier, “I have certain caveats about priorities. The reconstruction of Bhimsen Tower is essential but this monument should be treated a little
differently...I would like to put the construction of Bhimsen Tower under a different scheme than those of the other heritage sites in terms of the intangible
value of culture†(‘Dreams to rebuild’, August 23, Page 7).
Building Dharahara by evoking passionate fervour is a nationalist project, and this idea is tinged with an unannounced longing of the people in power to go
down in history as the makers of this monument. That is an absurd psyche if anybody is acting with that today. The colossal tragedy suffered by the earthquake
victims is not addressed; the centuries-old renowned cultural sites that tell a history of people, culture, politics, power and aesthetics still lie in rubble; the
economy is ridiculously and without resistance being run by black marketeers; the responsible people and political leaders, cartels and syndicates are hatching
schemes to make money at the cost of the people. Rebuilding Dharahara by shifting attention away from all the above is an unbelievable absurdity. The tower
should be reconstructed with scientific plans, not with nationalistic fervour. Any other act will be a folly. There is no alternative to acting with priorities in any
task of cultural restoration.
Published: 21-02-2016 08:31
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