Our Chains

The poster hangs up high on the wall; the hammer and sickle logo branded against a red background. Marx. Engels. Lenin. Stalin. Mao. Sketched with bright paint strokes. Plastered in the central meeting room in the People's Liberation Army Camp.

Makes one wonder…Did this prolific poster come free with a year-membership to the Communist Party, and the offer has not changed since 1945?

The rise of the Maoists in Nepal came at a time when the fear of Communist uprisings had been buried under the rubble of the Berlin Wall. A world where, let's face it, without the Soviet Union, Communism no longer really mean anything anymore. The Ches, the Fidels, the Hos, the Ceacescus were nationalists and anti-colonial revolutionaries with their own agendas, but it is within the context of the Cold War's Soviet "sphere of influence" that there were at all related under the umbrella of Communism. Of course, this is not to discount that they all did spout the same doctrine, rallied people under the concept of a truly egalitarian society, and enforced state control on everything from education to media. But it is in retrospect that in many cases, the ideology was easily compromised, usually for a grander plan for the good of the elite Communist leaders or for the almighty Dollar.

The umbrella of Communism during the Cold War gave a false sense of global solidarity; it convinced people that the movement was certainly global and that, one day, the proletariats of the world will unite and lose their chains. The Sino-Soviet split, the reluctant support from the Soviet Union and China for Vietnam during the War, North Korea's disdain for Maoism proves otherwise.

And still, the poster hangs seemingly uniting people here in Nepal, over 50 years later, under this false ideal, under these leaders whose visions were too self-benefiting to remember the people and the cause. It triggers a deep disdain, melancholy, agitation from people who have lived in former Communist regimes. It makes the United States viscerally revert back to the déjà vu Cold War mindset. It makes the non-Maoists, the NC, the UML, the MJF suspicious of a totalitarian takeover. It fails to entice China in any closer relationship with Nepal.

Communism means nothing.

And yet the Nepali people fighting for equality are double-yoked by the chains of the oppression from the conservative discriminatory caste system and by the chains of the Communist legacy. Like their condition in every aspect of life, they were given no other option than to hang this antiquated poster rather than to make their own. Redefine their own revolution. Their own struggle for equality.