Literally, the peepal tree has lost its charms to attract onlookers. There are few news stands that display a variety of reading materials in Nepali, Hindi and English, from newspapers to fashion and erotic magazines. The sellers look tired of waiting for the potential buyers. Often, the pedestrians make a halt around the stalls to scan the news contents but do not buy them. The pavement, the base of these newsstands, is habitually peopled with impenetrable and suffocating crowds. To the west, the professional shoe makers wait for the clients. If you waddle around them, they will first look down at your feet to inspect whether you have your shoes on and if they need polishing. Over the raised platform inside the news stalls are few small dabali like structures with the images and idols of Buddha, Narayana and Taleju Bhawani. These votive shrines, mostly Buddhists, probably date back to a time when an old Newari bahal or community courtyard occupied the area. There must have been a temple but must have collapsed in the devastating earthquake of 1934. You can yarn these guesses. But these little deities are, apparently, taken for granted. The scarce sprinkled rice grains, offerings of flowers and vermilion powder tell you that these deities are failing to please many devotees. In the past, the platform would be used for Newari feasts. Participants squatted in order under the tree oblivious of the crowd passing by. Worshippers came to make offerings or pray fighting their ways through the crowds. But now few unemployed youths may be sitting under the peepal tree and making idle gossip or some distressed citizens scanning the newspapers under the thinning shade.
But this peepal tree is a bearer of historical memory. In the past, it used to be the main meeting point of Kathmanduties. Intellectuals and poets often met there, at times surreptitiously, and talked of overthrowing the regime. In fact, it was the venue for the dissenting intellectuals of the 1970s who were described by the Panchayat regime as “a band of economically castrated and socially limping angels beating the drums of their respective fads” (Malla1979: 204). From the 1970s to the end of the 1980s, these socially limping angels gathered around peepal tree and recited their poems, often written allegorically so as not to attract the attention of the regime, and shared their emotional agitation against the system with each other.
This peepal tree at New Road, Kathmandu, is a bearer of historical memory. In the past, it used to be the main meeting point of Kathmanduites. Intellectuals and poets often met there, at times surreptitiously, and talked of overthrowing the regime.
The boot polish demonstration, probably the first of its kind in this country, took place around that tree. Writers and editors in 1974 gathered under the peepal tree and these intellectuals cleaned the shoes of the passersby for a week. Their aim was to demonstrate the feeling that educated Nepalis had no avenues of gainful employment and no views that were worthy of notice. This demonstration was a response to Panchayat government’s “Back to the Village National Campaign” the goal of which was to strengthen and develop the feeling of nationalism and national unity and to explain the importance of partyless Panchayat democracy which admitted of no alternative. They rose against the censorship clampdown which banned almost all non-registered newspapers and magazines and deregistered many others. Through these demonstrations, the writers and intellectuals of that time were defying the discourse of Panchayat nationalism and trying to create their own version of nationalism by going against the very system.
Prominent literary figures like Ashesh Malla, Govinda Giri and Bimal Nibha are said to have launched and participated in street poetry movement of 1979 around peepal tree. Writer Jagadish Ghimire reminisces the memory of people in his well-acclaimed Antarmanko Yatra. “Every evening, most of the emerging, struggling, setting, rising, popular, unpopular writers, editors and spies would gather there. Some would go to meet friends, some to hunt out liquor sponsors” (53, my translation). The progressive writers of the time, Bhupi Sherchan and Ishwar Ballav, for example, grew up in the shade of that tree. All these developments partly contributed to forcing the regime to democratize Panchayat polity. As a result, National Referendum was declared in 1980.
Peepal tree has lived almost half a century of its life witnessing many political upheavals. In Nepali political history, many other avenues are as good a witness to oppression and the political movements as peepal bot; Gongabu and Kalanki during the April uprising of 2006, Ratna Park, Asan, Bagbazaar, and Bhotahity during 1990 and post-1990 political protests. They will one day go into oblivion like life. The most one can do to them is to search their historiography in the books and archives. Or document them through pictures, photography, documentary, and writing or make their references in the media time and again so as not to let them be blighted off the popular memory soon. The last time I stood in front of the peepal tree, I felt strongly drawn toward its revolutionary past. I felt that it is calling the Kathmandu intellectuals of Republic Nepal once again to fight for law and order, to plot against the power hungry political establishments, and to launch a movement for a just government.
mbpoudyal@yahoo.com
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