After abandoning the books and wandering around in YouTube, Instagram, and such, I have recently restarted picking up books again. ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell had been in my to-do list for far too long. Normally, I prefer non-fiction over non-fiction – mostly because I believe I don’t know enough about the world to wonder fantasy. Recommended by a friend who I admire, I picked up “Animal Fram’ and finished in two sittings. This is NOT a book review by any means – I feel like I haven’t read enough books to ‘review’ them. But this book took me back to the childhood and teenage years, living in the country that was going through a political revolution and transitioned from a monarchy to a republic.
Nepal initially got it’s first democratic government back in the 1950s – when racial segregation was legal in the United States and European countries still had many colonies. Nepal had one of the most progressive constitutions. The system was never the issue, it was the execution. Going back and forth between democracy and autocratic monarch a few times, Nepal was practically still in the same socio-economic state 50 years later when I was growing up. Just like in the book, horses were still grinding, sheep were still working and hens were giving up on their off-springs – only things that changed was who got the benefit.
Reading ‘Animal Fram’ was a nostalgia – and not in a good way. It was a flashback of all the struggles, promises, and hopes that never came true.
The bigger disappointment is that this cycle repeated so many times without people realizing the pattern. The politicians kept finding different words to describe democracy because the same word wouldn’t fuel them anymore. The most catchy phrase in the book ‘Two legs good, Four legs bad’ was a masterpiece by the pigs. I could see the exact same phenomena in a decade long civil war in Nepal – People chasing the dreams only no never get it. Decade long civil war and more than 15,000 death later – the country is in no better place than when it started for an average citizen. Overthrowing a king, only to get a king-like ruler draws so many parallel from the book.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for democracy. Multi-party democracy is objectively better than an autocratic ruler and a republic – where a common man or woman can become a president is objectively better than having a king. I am proud that Nepal was one of the first countries in the world the issued a citizenship certificate with ‘third’ as gender option besides male or female. I am still proud to say that my birthplace now has a female president. But at the end of the day, I hardly knew a single LGBTQ friend growing up. The occupation for over 50% of women is always ‘housewife’ in any form I have seen. For so long, we fought for a better constitution, a better law and rights, but most of them are limited to the law. We had a platform for so much more, and we have achieved so little. Reading ‘Animal Fram’ was a nostalgia – and not in a good way. It was a flashback of all the struggles, promises, and hopes that never came to be true.