Nepali Times

Two things are clear in Matrika Poudel’s article. First, he is annoyed by criticism of the new Constitution, and harbours inexplicable ill will towards those who question it.  Second, his enthusiastic endorsement of misogyny. The rest of the article is just a meaningless jumble of gibberish. 

The most frightening part is the writer’s malevolent attempt to render women invisible and attempt to deprive them of their rights. His piece is about women’s choices, and yet he doesn’t care to use the names of those he is trying to slander. Is a woman’s identity still confined to that of being someone’s daughter and someone’s wife? Can’t we as women have our own identity? How could the current Press Advisor to the Ministry of Information and Communications neglect this? When Nepali society has already accepted its daughters’ capability to make their own decisions, who gave Paudel the right to completely erase their identity and replace it with the identity of the sons-in-law? 

Additionally, do women still not have the right to choose their own life partners? Do they become traitors if they choose a foreigner? Do women need permission from the Foreign Ministry, or even from Poudel himself? Is a woman’s identity only defined by her uterus? And should the state monitor who a Nepali woman is in a relationship with, and forbid it in the case it does not agree? How is Poudel going to get this common sense? And what is the meaning then of publishing a writer’s malicious blabbering when he doesn’t even understand these basic issues?

When the new Constitution was promulgated, Nepali politicians relegated women to mere uteruses by saying that the child of a foreign father and a Nepali mother is not a Nepali citizen.

Some of them even advised Nepali women against marrying a foreigner. The state’s discriminatory and prejudiced policy has left hundreds of thousands of Nepali women’s children deprived of citizenship. Consequently, women are humiliated and their dignity is trampled upon. They are subjected to allegations. The fact that this still happens shows how the Nepali state views the status of women. On the other hand, let us investigate who these government hakims (honchos) are, who have deprived mothers and their children from their inalienable right to citizenship while selling citizenship to others for large sums of money. Are they these foreign sons-in-law?

Have such objectionable statements ever been published when sons bring home foreign daughters-in-law? You accuse them of treason. But what about those who are involved in illegal activities behind the veil of party politics? Are they foreign sons-in-law or our own sons? Are you able to call out your own sons and write about their activities? It’s clear that this foreign ‘son-in-law’ is a bogey the writer has maliciously invented to try to deprive women of their rights.

This article has no objective other than to control and subjugate women, and such    embittered whimpering is hard to stomach when it is published in a newspaper.