Nepalese in the eyes of Indians

 

In Indian media, it’s rare to get good news about Nepal. If anything about Nepal is given then it might be about accident or something that’s not good. During a month long India tour I have not seen even a single piece of good news about Nepal.

During our tour ‘Indian Maoists trained by Nepali Maoists’ was the headline news in many Indian newspapers. Though UCPN (Maoist) and The Government of Nepal called it baseless and they condemned it. Indian media gave wide coverage to it. For a week, it remained as a hot topic for discussion.

Many Indians suspect Nepalese people as ‘terrorists’ having links with Indian Maoists, ISI (Inter service Intelligence) of Pakistan and Lasker-Ae-Toiba (a terrorist organization active in Pakistan and India blames it for attacking hotel Taj and Indian Parliament few years ago). Indians believe that fake Indian currency is transported to India through Nepal from Pakistan with the help of ISI and Lashker-Ae-Toiba. They were very conscious in taking Indian currency(IC) Rs. 5000 and 1000 notes from us. They checked the money given by us twice before accepting it. In Ahamadabad I had to give my all personal information and contact number for IC Rs 1000 to be accepted.

Many hotels and lodges refused to give us room only for being Nepalese. We had to face a critical time in Mumbai when American president Barrack Obama was on India tour. In many hotels said that no rooms are available for those from Pakistan, Kashmir and Nepal. On hearing these words we felt very sad. We were helpless and could not do anything against it. In many places we had to hide our identity of being Nepalese citizen.

Decade of conflict in Nepal have made her neighbors to change their views towards Nepalese people. Will it remain the same forever? Are our leaders able to erase all the misconcepts about Nepalese people in our neighbors? When will that time come that we could say proudly, ‘WE ARE NEPALESE’.