– Kingsley Amis
To live with the imagination that you have been read across the country, that you have contributed to preventing the state from collapse, that you have awakened the public, that you have impressed your readers with your ideas and you have raised a topic for debate is a feeling that a newspaper writer can afford to relish. To be a newspaper writer (read journalists, columnists and editors), is indeed to amaze some who do not write. Trust me: I have been asked by people with sound academic and intellectual standing how one can get one’s pieces published in the newspapers, whether one has to have hobnob with the publishers and editors or whether one has to pay to the publication house for that. Despite all of media revolutions, Nepal still remains a country with minimum media literacy.
Those luxuries notwithstanding, a writer lives with crises too. One of them being crisis of identity. His identity shifts and changes more than the Nepali government and sometimes as much as the British weather. I have been pleasantly mistaken by my readers. I have been understood as a student of history when I write on history, I have been perceived of as an educationist sometimes and as a student of political science. I am sure many other contributors share this instability of recognition with me. Another predicament of the writer is that he allows his readers to understand that he has the freedom to choose to write. In fact, this freedom is rare.
Firstly, what a writer writes is largely restricted by the interest of the media, media industrialists and the political interests that media is serving. Ideas and propositions that go contrary to the media objectives are less likely to be entertained. Therefore, there is a discernible difference between the opinions published in the state-run publications like Gorkhapatra and The Rising Nepal and in private media such as Republica and Kantipur. And it is not typical of Nepal only. I think this applies to all the print media in the world. These conditions may be fundamentally necessary for the survival of media but, for the writer, they are encroachment in his freedom. Then there is the question of institutional loyalty and ethics. So you try hard to expose your loyalty for your organizations and hide your dissatisfactions with your employer in your writing (clever readers detect this anyway and clever writers express it through tone, symbols and metaphors). Could we call such writing free? Unless a writer can unleash all of his emotional anxieties, the waywardness of his mind, suffocated impulses and anarchy of his thought into words and have them published for the public he is still in chains.
A writer is largely restricted by the interest of the media, media industrialists and the political interests that media is serving. Ideas and propositions that go contrary to the media objectives are less likely to be entertained.
Granted that this impossibility is challenged, a writer is never free from the blame of being biased. Of late, I have been recognized by some as a Maoist supporter ever since I argued Baburam Bhattarai should be prime minister (Republica July 18). Friends and acquaintances called and sent me messages asking “so since when did you join the Maoist party?” “Hello comrade,” others teased. One reader called me a Kathmandu elite (this provoked some silent laughter in me, I who still struggle to come to terms with the complication of this cruel city was promoted to elitehood of Kathmandu!). Other accused me of being biased. Yet the other had the opinion that I was doing double-talk. So I became from a contributor to an elite, and a Maoist supporter and a biased political thinker. My argument on behalf of Madhesi people “Don’t Call me Bhaiya I am Nepali” (Republica May 8) earned me reputation of a racist. Why are writers perceived this way? Most readers read the newspaper opinions only literally. They do not, it would be too condescending to say cannot, care to understand suggestions, tones, and implications inherent in writing. I have seen many of the renowned columnists being misunderstood in this fashion.
Can a writer be impartial? Can he be an apolitical being? Can he hide his political self? These are too big questions to attempt explanation here. But it is very difficult to satisfy the readers’ sense of judgment. Impartiality for one will be utter biasness for other. If you praise a political leader or a political party, for all good reasons, you will be labeled as the supporter of that particular party and others start disowning you. But such ideals change with time. During the 1950s and 60s to stand by the spirit of the age, to write against the regime and thus to be progressive would earn writers notoriety of being Nepali Congress supporters. These days, to openly argue for republic, federalism, secularism, and inclusiveness might put a writer in the category of being a Maoist ally.
A writer often finds him at the crossroad between taking side and staying neutral. This very position hides his political conviction too. But you cannot always veil your political self and act innocence when the time demands that you make it public. You must argue, at this juncture of time, for a national unity government. You must advocate that Maoist combatants should be rehabilitated and integrated, and that republic, democracy, and secularism should be institutionalized come what may. You must act free, no matter how little free you may be. Of course, you will anger some when you do so. But annoying readers, as Kinsley Amis says, is one of the essentials of writing.
mbpoudyal@yahoo.com
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