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Maoists fighting Nepalese royalty are now on the path of cultural purification in the Himalayan Kingdom.
Hindu priests who fled Nepal and hiding in Uttaranchal said that the Maoists have issued a new diktat in the western parts of Nepal banning them from offering puja in temples. Some pandits even claimed that their heads were tonsured by the Maoists.
“They (Maoists) tonsured my choti and compelled me to take off my rings,” said a Birbhan Purohit, who fled from Baitari town of western Nepal. Birbhan is now in Pithorararh area of Uttaranchal.
“We cannot sacrifice animals at the altars of our deities,” said Ramchand Tikka, another priest from Nepal. Although, both Birbhan and Tikka are no sure about as to how many priest have actually fled from Nepal, police sources said nearly half a dozen priests are hiding in Uttaranchal ever since the new diktat was enforced in western Nepal.
Intelligence reports said women are becoming the new targets of Maoists. The leftist rebels have asked women not to wear bindi and sindoor, the traditional symbols of their marriage. This is part of a new strategy adopted by them to test waters in all those areas where they had been consolidating particularly in areas like Baitari, Julaghat and Darchula districts, the sources said.
Under the garb of removing superstition, Maoists are giving vent to Chinese-style of revolution that led to establishment of Communist rule in China 55 years ago.
Even the Nepal security personnel
are not feeling safe. Some of them scurry for shelter during nights into
the Indian side of the Indo-Nepal border. “You can understand their plight.
They are virtually caught between the devil and the deep sea,” commented
a police officer.
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