The crowds celebrating Buddha Jayanti - their message

I went to Swayumbhu to pay my obeisance to the Buddha, a great being who many Nepalis like to proudly claim was born in Nepal. But these same people don’t like to read any of his teachings and they don’t even respect the Buddha. All these are mostly people who belong either to the extreme right or the left of Nepalese politics. This is not surprising since the Buddha advocated the ‘middle path’. If at least these extremists tried to became little moderate, without comprising on their core principles - e.g. equality, Nepal would be much more peaceful and safer place to live. What is alarming though is that the moderate voices are increasingly being drowned out by these extremists.

In Nepal, if the extreme left gets a stranglehold, the extremely right will take up arms, and if opposite happens, the extreme left with take up arms. The only solution is the center, or the ‘middle path’ the Buddha taught.

So thinking of this turmoil I went to Swayumbhu to wash my mind of all the politics and insecurity that surrounds us. From about a kilometer away, the police had blocked traffic. Too much crowd.

I parked my bike and walked. The Buddhists activity around their shrine is more about accumulating good karma and letting your mind become peaceful than in the Hindu temple, where the devotees are pleasing the Gods to ask for a favor. You could say wanting a good karma is also similar to pleasing the Gods to ask for a favor. Anyway, the activities vary slightly. You don’t see a crowd in large number circumambulating in a Hindu shrine. In Swayumbhu, huge crowd was going round at the bottom of the hill and at the main stupa. When I was there, maybe 20 or 30 thousand people, all enthusiastic turning the prayers wheels and chanting mantras were walking. During the whole day, more than 10 laks devotees could have walked doing the same.

As I watched, I couldn’t stop my mind recollecting what Prachanda had said during the 6 day strike. He’d declared that the Nepali people are here in the street in millions and whole Kathmandu will come out to greet us.

I saw this procession of devotees, all peaceful, all happy – and thought the Maoists should come to see this.

Off course, they’ll say religion is the opium of the people. That it blinds people and maintains hierarchal system, and only the class struggle will shatter this.

I say to them – it’s their obsession for a class struggle that’s the more dangerous opium of the two, filling them with hatred and revenge and turning humans into animals.

The people in Swayumbhu were all happy and cheerful. They wanted to live in a Nepal that was peaceful and prosperous, and one without hatred and violence. The procession in fact was silently but resolutely answering the Maoists back.