Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, May 1:

Leaders of different indigenous communities, addressing a talk programme in the capital today, said that the present movement has failed to include the voices and aspirations of the marginalised people.

Stating that problems of the indigenous people have been kept in the dark for the last 234 years, sociologist Dr Krishna Bahdur Bhattachan said that leaders

taking part in the present movement, most of whom are Brahmins, have failed to include the ethnic people.

Human rights activist Malla K Sunder said that only cadres of different parties have been taking part in the present movement. Local people, who took part in the movement of the 1990, are taking the movement as some sort of a festival, he said.

"Present leaders have only displaced local leaders like Ganesh Man Singh, Mangala Devi and Padma Ratna Tuladhar," he said.

Political analyst CK Lal said that people can control the King and the Maoists through the formation of a constituent assembly. He asked all to understand the situation thoroughly and act wisely.

Dr Chunda Bajracharya, founder, Federation of Nepali Indigenous Women, noted that the parties aim to revive the constitution they had burnt a decade ago.

Dr Om Gurung, general-secretary of the Nepali Federation of Nationalities, said that the indigenous people should take part in the agitation by putting their specific demands to the fore.