Share commonalities

LETTERS

Everyone has his own personal identity composed of thousands of influences that no one else shares. Each has different parents, education, religion, color, language, birthplace, hometown,

heritage, etc., all of which make one unique. Also, everyone shares commonalities with everyone else, such as being citizens of a common country, having to pay taxes, living

under the same laws, wanting their children to be healthy, etc. A wonderful book is On

Identity, by Amin Maalouf, whose country, Lebanon, suffered greatly during its civil war, caused by using religion as the sole identity divide. Many other countries have identity divides. I recently left Kenya where being a member of a certain tribe was used as the reason to vote for the tribal candidate, no matter his other qualities. And that divide was the cause of 2000 violent deaths after the 2008 elections. Amin Mallouf is seasoned by many years as a journalist. He left Lebanon in 1976 as the 15 year so destructive civil war began. According to him, when

religion or ethnicity is used as the sole basis for identity, when in reality religion or ethnicity is but one of the thousands of factors that make up a person’s identity, it is easily used as a deadly political tool and can incite long-term hatreds. Each individual is different, but each must recognize their commonalitiesDon Clarke, via e-mail

Weapon?

Bandh has become a nice weapon to show the demands and existence of concerned groups. But we should not think it is the ultimate solution for getting rights. Every nation is guided by existing knowledge and ideas. In this regard, our nation has developed Bandh culture to show identity. On the one hand, our nation is known as a least developed country and on the other hand we do not initiate any new industry and production company, in the meantime, we are

organizing varieties of Bandh programs in the nations, and we say it is for our national

development, then guess how can the nation grow? How will it be beneficial to our nation by fragmenting Bramhins, Kshetris, Madhesis, Janajatis and so on. After analyzing the different Bandhs, what I found is unity in doing bad and negative practices. But no one is ready to organize different social revolutionary actions in the name of agricultural revolution, industrial

revolution, educational revolution for the sustainable development of the nation. Our main need is to develop our personality through good education, then after we should seek better opportunity to serve our own nation rather than going to foreign countries. In the manifesto of all political parties, there is mentioned a vision to change the nation drastically within ten years, but they also like Bandhs and so on and show indifferent nature. My only one question to all the political parties and all types of groups is, can any party and group lead the Nepalese society for industrial and educational revolution in Nepal thrugh a creative movement?

If so, we would like to request them to organize such movements, in this case, we are ready to support their action. We are searching for the positive revolutions and creative movements in the nation rather than destruction and vandalism. Dronacharya Parajuli, T.U., Kirtipur