It’s May 20, 2022, and you’re reading Off the Record, the weekly newsletter from The Record. We are an independent, ad-free, digital news publication out of Kathmandu, Nepal.
I’m Pranaya Rana, editor of The Record, and in this newsletter, we’ll stop, take a deep breath, and dive into one singular issue that defined the past week.
You can read Off the Record for free by visiting this link or subscribe on our website to receive this newsletter in your inbox every Friday.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening from Kathmandu just coming off of an election high. Welcome back. We have a plethora of issues to discuss in this newsletter but I will not have enough space to touch on all of them. The deep dive is an especially important issue that needs to be discussed in full so if you do skim through, make sure to read that. But before we get there, a quick round-up of the elections.
As voting wrapped up for the local elections last Friday, many voters were hopeful of change. And as the results began to trickle in over the past week, that hope turned into something akin to elation. In Kathmandu, possibly the most important local election in the country, independent candidate Balen Shah took an early lead, leaving the CPN-UML’s Keshav Sthapit and the Nepali Congress’ Sirjana Singh in the dust. Many had believed that his lead would be whittled down once counting moved to the core city areas that are Newa-dominated. But that has not yet come to pass.
As of writing, just 40 percent (76,490) votes have been counted in the capital city and Shah has maintained a very significant lead of more than 13,600 votes. If this trend continues — and it looks very likely to — Kathmandu’s new mayor will be a 30-something rapper-engineer.
Shah’s stellar performance in the election has sent shockwaves across the political parties. Both the UML and the Congress were confident that they had Kathmandu in the bag. Keshav Sthapit, a former mayor who’s been accused of sexual harassment, was perhaps most self-assured. As a Newa, he believed he could count on the community vote and for everyone else, his track record as former mayor should have sufficed. As for Sirjana Singh of the Congress, she too was counting on the Newa vote as a member of the illustrious Ganesh Man Singh family. She possibly believed that the lackluster performance of the last mayor, Bidya Sundar Shakya of the UML, would work against the UML party and she could sweep up votes with the Congress machinery behind her.
But it was not to be. Balen Shah played spoilsport to both Sthapit and Singh. His candidacy had been all but dismissed by most political analysts and party faithful but it is now clear that Shah’s appeal has gone way past young people. His lead (and possible win) is a clear indication that Kathmandu voters at least are tired of party politics and would rather put their faith in a new, young outsider, even if he might be untested.
Let me admit right here that I too didn’t believe that Shah would perform so exceedingly well. I believed that his candidacy would go the way of Ranju Darshana in 2017, where she came in third behind the UML and Congress. But in the five years since Darshana’s candidacy, much has happened in Kathmandu. For one, it received a mayor so unbelievably incompetent that it is difficult to find a single resident who’ll speak well of him. Second, Kathmandu has gone from bad to worse in the last five years. While neighboring cities like Lalitpur and Bhaktapur have flourished under their local leaderships, Kathmandu remained a cesspool of filth and unplanned urbanization. That might sound like hyperbole but it really is not. Parts of Kathmandu are currently ankle-deep in rotting, festering garbage that has been left uncollected for over a week now. When it rains heavily, like on Wednesday, streets turn into open sewers and filthy brackish water gets knee-deep in places. Houses, hotels, and malls continue to mushroom around the city even as parks, open spaces, and pedestrian footpaths shrink by the day. Air pollution has skyrocketed and the Bagmati continues to stink up the city in the summer. Let’s face it, Kathmandu is no longer beautiful, it is no longer walkable, and it will soon be unlivable if things continue in the same way.
So there’s a lot of hope riding on Balen Shah, should he ultimately win. If he does, Kathmandu will not only have a young mayor but also an equally young deputy mayor. Sunita Dangol, who ran alongside Sthapit for the UML, has dominated the deputy mayor race, outshining even Shah’s lead. Dangol, a communications professional and Newa script activist, has the deputy mayor position locked in with over 26,500 votes to the second-place 8,500 votes or so. While Dangol has rubbed many the wrong way by partnering with someone accused of harassment and then neatly side-stepping the issue whenever she was asked about it, clearly the voting public didn’t think she had done anything wrong. It’s just a little surprising to see that the UML’s deputy candidate is leading handily while its mayoral candidate is lagging far behind.
All said, it will be exciting to have a young, dynamic duo leading the country’s capital city.
Elections results from around the country are still trickling in and are likely to do so well into next week, as Nepal uses an archaic and extremely slow method for vote counting. In the Valley, Lalitpur looks set to reelect the Congress’ Chiri Babu Maharjan for a second term and Bhaktapur too has given Sunil Prajapati of the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party a second term, as if that was any surprise.
But there are patches of optimism from elsewhere in the country. In Jumla’s remote Kanakasundari Municipality’s Ward 8, an independent panel of Dalits won four out of five seats, handily defeating the Congress and UML. The ward, which consists of eight villages, three of which have majority Dalit populations, will now be led by Dalits. Independents are also leading the mayoral race in Dhangadi (Gopal Hamal), Dharan (Harkaraj Rai), and Janakpur (Manojkumar Sah Sudi) as voters reject largely party politics, especially the gathabandhan politics of the ruling alliance.
In Bharatpur, perhaps the second most-watched election after Kathmandu, Renu Dahal of the Maoists continues to maintain an effective lead over the UML’s Vijay Subedi. The baagi candidate from the Nepali Congress, Jagannath Poudel, is currently third. Bharatpur is important primarily because Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal had left no stone unturned getting his daughter the nomination and basically threatening a “catastrophe” should she lose. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, too, had lobbied extensively on Renu Dahal’s behalf, rejecting Poudel’s ticket. Poudel went on to contest the election as a ‘baagi’ or rebel candidate. So far, it’s a close race but it appears that Renu might pull off a win, which is good news for the Maoists. Pushpa Kamal Dahal will be contesting the federal elections from the same area and he will be counting on his daughter’s support.
In the grand scheme of things, the parties still maintain their grip over the electorate. A few independents winning here and there are not likely to affect national politics. The Nepali Congress has roundly trounced the UML, winning 298 mayoral and municipality chief positions to the UML’s 185, as of writing. But I hope that the rising challenge from independents will at least prompt some real introspection within the parties. Perhaps they will field more young candidates in the next elections. Perhaps they will change the work they work, focusing more on tangible changes and real local issues than propping up political cronies and family members. Wishful thinking, I know.
So the elections are over and the vote count will likely be completed by next week. New local leaderships will take office and hopefully, herald some kind of change in the way things are done. There’s always that optimism after an election, but just as we all were riding high on the election results, something so horrendous appeared on our social media feeds that we despaired, yet again. And that is what we shall talk about in this week’s deep dive.
The deep dive: A reckoning with rape
A protest was held on Friday demanding justice for the survivor and a repeal of the one-year statute of limitations on rape. (Photo: Nishi Rungta)
On Wednesday, a series of posts on TikTok by a young 25-year-old woman began to send shockwaves on social media. The videos, uploaded in over 20 parts, detailed how the woman had always dreamt of being a model ever since she was a child. When she was 16, she got an opportunity to enter a beauty pageant, Miss Global International 2014. She contested and eventually won first runner-up. She was then invited to a celebration party at The Everest Hotel by the pageant organizer, but when she arrived, there was no one else there except for the organizer. He told her that she’d come too early so she just needed to wait a while. A waiter brought her a glass of lemonade to drink while she waited and that is when things went badly awry.
After drinking the lemonade, she began to feel woozy. She asked to leave saying she wasn’t feeling too good but the organizer reprimanded her, saying that it wouldn’t look good for one of the winners to miss the party. He advised her to go rest in a room that he’d rented at the hotel just in case something like this happened.
You can probably tell where this story goes from here.
She fell into a deep sleep in the room, only waking up intermittently to the organizer raping her. When she finally awoke at around 4 or 5 in the morning, she was naked in bed, as was the man. There was blood in the bed.
When she began to cry and wail, the man curtly told her that he had placed Rs 20,000 in her bag and that he had only had sex with her because she had asked him to. When she continued to cry, he told her that he had taken nude photos and videos of her and that he would go public with them (with the help of a photojournalist friend) if she ever told anyone about what had happened.
Over the next six months, the man repeatedly raped her, using the photographs to blackmail her. He forced her to engage in degrading sexual acts, even bringing in a friend to rape her in front of him.
Eventually, the woman, with the support of her then boyfriend, decided to confront the perpetrator. She went to his office and told his staff about what he’d done. She showed them his voice messages and text messages. Her boyfriend even beat him up.
But some things don’t stay in the past. Her boyfriend began to use the experience she went through to humiliate and harass her. They broke up and she dated someone else, choosing to tell him everything that had happened up front, but he too used her experience against her. A number of her subsequent boyfriends would do the same, seeing her as easy prey. And as if that wasn’t enough, she was sexually assaulted once again while working as a content writer for SB Consultancy.
Amidst all of this, her mental health began to fail and she resorted to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain. She even attempted suicide. She started seeing a psychiatrist and it was on their advice not to keep things bottled up inside her that after eight years, she decided to speak out publicly.
She named her rapist as Manoj Pandey, who runs Model Global Visas Consultancy.
She also called out a number of influential celebrities, including Malvika Subba, who is very active regarding issues of sexual harassment and LGBTIQ+ issues. The woman alleged that she had called Subba before going to confront the rapist at his office, telling her everything about what he’d done. Subba reportedly dismissed her and responded that it wasn’t her problem. She also called Miss Global International 2014 winner Nisha Pathak and second runner-up Archana Panthi but only one of them showed up. Both went on to work with Pandey, despite knowing what he had done to the survivor.
Social media was understandably very upset. As the most famous person named, Malvika Subba began to bear the brunt of social media’s anger. Much was written about her rebuffing the survivor and not supporting her when Subba occupies space in the public eye as a feminist and an outspoken opponent of sexual harassment and gender-based violence. Subba subsequently apologized privately to the survivor and in public on her Instagram.
Spurred to action by the videos, over a hundred women and men held a protest at Baluwatar chowk on Friday, demanding justice for the survivor and an end to the one-year statute of limitations (Read our coverage here). Later in the day, Gagan Thapa, a Member of Parliament, spoke out strongly before the federal Parliament, demanding that the House Speaker direct the executive to take action and for the legislative to reconsider the statute of limitations. Subsequently, House Speaker Agni Sapkota ordered the police to duly investigate the matter.
Activist and advocate Mohna Ansari and journalist Subina Shrestha are also working to collect more testimonies at survivorsnepal2022@gmail.com with the intent of compiling them to reappeal the statute of limitations.
With the involvement of prominent politicians combined with the public outcry, the Nepal Police will now likely take up the case. In the past, they’ve been reluctant to take up cases of rape or sexual abuse until and unless a police complaint has been filed. However, the Supreme Court had previously ruled in June 2016 that the police should not require a formal complaint to investigate such cases and should proceed on the basis of the survivor’s testimony and any other evidence available. But despite the House Speaker’s directive, the legal basis for the case might be rickety, given that there is a one-year statute of limitations on rape cases.
There are numerous facets to this case, the primary being that a minor was drugged and raped, not once but multiple times over the course of six months. It is telling that the man in question, Manoj Pandey, felt little to no fear of prosecution. It speaks to the prevailing rape culture in Nepal that survivors are afraid to speak out or are compelled into silence through blackmail. The survivor in this case was unable to speak out for so long because Pandey threatened to publicly release her nude photos. The societal shame that this would bring was enough to buy the survivor’s silence, and that is yet another depressing facet here.
What must also be talked about more is the prevalence of such cases within the Nepali entertainment industry. Two years ago, actor Samragyee Shah took to social media to relate her own experiences with sexual harassment in the film industry. Although she did not name the perpetrator, many identified Bhuwan KC, a prominent veteran actor. KC in turn filed a defamation suit against Shah. Again, earlier this year, actor Paul Shah was accused of statutory rape of a minor. Although the survivor and her family have been compelled to change their testimonies, Shah remains in police custody.
It is no secret that the entertainment industry — film, television, media, and modeling — is rife with such issues. Young women, often minors, are routinely groomed, harassed, and taken advantage of by older men holding powerful positions within the industry. Exposing such crimes was the aim of the MeToo movement and while some stories emerged in Nepal, the movement itself died down with no real outcomes. Behind the failure of the movement was not the lack of testimony but rather, the support of others in the industry, not for the survivors but for the perpetrators. Many actors had come out in support of Paul Shah and many are now rallying behind Malvika Subba. The same kind of support does not seem to be given to the actual survivors.
Then, there’s also the elephant in the room — beauty pageants. Personally, I abhor beauty pageants. They disgust me with their parading of women around on stage in front of largely older male judges. These women are objectified, turned into numbers on scorecards, and given a stupid little crown as if it’s supposed to mean something. Former winners and organizers claim that beauty pageants don’t just value physical beauty but also other skills, like talent, poise, confidence, etc. What a load of bullshit. There’s one talent round and a plethora of other rounds where the women saunter around in high heels while dressed up in evening wear and national dresses and bikinis.
Just take a look at the eligibility criteria for Miss Nepal:
What discerning person with a working brain can look at a beauty pageant and not see it for what it is — a vile, disgusting remnant of a bygone era where the worth of a woman lied largely in the shape of her body.
What’s even worse is that there are dozens of such beauty pageants, some of them even specifically targeted at young girls, like Miss Teen. Even the survivor in the present case was a minor when she took part in the beauty pageant. Does it not seem acutely problematic to put young teenage girls up for judging in front of hundreds of people like a piece of meat? And let’s not even forget that these pageants are ripe for grooming and for sexual abuse, given the vast difference in power dynamics between the contestants and the organizers and judges.
But in the end, what this case is about is the survivor. She lived with her trauma for eight long years, suffering from mental health issues and even attempting suicide. Most of us can’t imagine what that must have been like. It took a lot of courage for her to finally speak out and the least we can do is listen to her. There are many who will fight for a change to laws and policies, and that momentum must be preserved. Movements like these tend to fizzle out after a few days, leaving long-time advocates and dedicated organizations to keep the fight going. That’s okay, not everyone can dedicate their lives to protest. The important thing is to not forget.
There is a much larger movement brewing. Women (and men and non-binary individuals) have had it with impunity. Whether it is Maina Sunuwar, Sita Rai, Nirmala Panta, Urmila Tharu, or this makeup artist, women continue to suffer the worst in all spheres, and the most despicable weapon employed against them remains rape. Women have protested, on social media and on the streets, time and again. Articles and reports have been written. INGOs have given out empowerment grants in the millions. But little has changed.
This can’t go on indefinitely. And it won’t. A reckoning is coming.
On The Record this past week:
Seira Tamang on why more women aren’t chosen as electoral candidates
Shuvam Rizal on insights from Tilotamma Municipality on environmental governance
Bikram Rana on five misconceptions about Rana Tharus
Nishi Rungta on Friday’s protests over rape and rape laws
Happenings this week:
Sunday - Satyamohan, the biography of cultural icon Satyamohan Joshi by journalist Girish Giri, won this year’s Uttam-Shanti Puraskar. The prize, named after writer Uttam Kunwar and his wife Shanti, is awarded every year to a non-fiction book. Giri, the biographer, contested the mayorship of Birgunj but has so far only received about 1,400 votes, coming in third.
Monday - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Lumbini on the occasion of Buddha Purnima. He was received by Prime Minister Deuba and offered prayers at Maya Devi Temple. During his fifth visit to Nepal since becoming prime minister, Modi signed a number of MoUs, particularly one on developing the Arun-IV hydropower project in Sankhuwasabha.
Tuesday - India’s Ministry of External Affairs formally announced the appointment of Naveen Srivastava as the new Indian ambassador to Nepal. Srivastave was heading the East Asia desk at the ministry and is known to be a seasoned China hand, which is not surprising, given the increased engagements of Chinese ambassador Hou Yanqi.
Wednesday - A series of TikTok videos by a 25-year-old makeup artist detailing her rape as a minor at the hands of a beauty pageant organizer took social media by storm, prompting a massive outcry and a protest on Friday.
Thursday - Twenty-one-year-old Basishta Kumar Gupta became the youngest chief of a rural municipality after pulling off a narrow victory of just 117 votes. Gupta, who ran on a ticket from the Janata Samajbadi Party, is now chief of Kalikamai Rural Municipality in Parsa district.
Friday - United States Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights Uzra Zeya arrived in Kathmandu after meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala. Zeya, who is also special coordinator for Tibetan affairs, will meet with Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, and reportedly a number of Tibetan refugee leaders.
Article of the week:
‘The Chinese who are learning Nepali’ — Aneka R Rajbhandari and Suniva Chitrakar explore how and why more Chinese people are now learning the Nepali language.
That’s all for this week. Off the Record will be back in your inboxes next Friday. I shall see you then, in your emails, for the next edition of Off the Record.
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