It had been just a week since the Maoists declared the launch of their ‘People’s War’ in February 1996. In the capital of Rukum district, teacher Narjit Basnet had gone to a neighbouring village to help replace a relative’s thatch roof. Little did the popular teacher know that he would be one of the first victims of the war.
At dusk, as he reached Pipal VDC seven Maoist cadre attacked him with khukuris, hacked off his left hand, sliced his face and back, threw him 50m off the road down to a river and left him for dead. His family started looking for him when he did not return and found Narjit an hour later unconscious and bleeding profusely by the river.
They took him to the district hospital in Salle and saved his life. “If we hadn’t found him and the hospital wasn’t able to stop the bleeding, Narjit would have died,” said a relative, Deuchan Basnet. The next day he was airlifted to the Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu.
PICS: DHANBIR DAHAL
BRAVE TEACHER: Narjit Basnet teaching his class at the Saraswati School in Rukum in 1996, after his left hand was hacked off below the elbow. Sixteen years later, he still teaches in the same classroom, where the only change is that the blackboard has been replaced with a whiteboard. A prosthetic arm could make it easier for him to teach, but Basnet can’t afford it.
“I hadn’t done anyone any harm, I had no idea they would attack me,” Basnet recalls 16 years later, although he suspects he was targeted because he supported the Nepali Congress and hadn’t given in to Maoist extortion. The news of the brutality of the attack spread quickly, which is exactly what the Maoists wanted in order to instill fear into other teachers in the district. The plan went awry because Narjit Basnet did not die, but lived on with one hand: a walking proof of the terror of war.
Sixteen years later, Narjit Sir still teaches students in the same Saraswati Secondary School where he used to teach in 1996. He cradles books on the stump of his left hand, cut below the elbow, and still has scars from the deep gash on his face and left hand. He is still too scared to go back to his home village. He finds it difficult and painful to stand up and teach, and his eyes tear up easily if he reads.
The country has gone from monarchy to republic, from war to peace, his classroom now has a white board instead of a blackboard, there are more girls in his class than before, but otherwise Narjit Basnet is exactly where he was 16 years ago.
He could get back the use of his limb with a prosthetic arm, but he can’t afford it on a meagre teacher’s salary. While in Kathmandu, the state is trying to pass a TRC Bill that pardons perpetrators of war crimes, Basnet hasn’t received the handicap compensation that conflict wounded are entitled to even though the NC’s Ram Chandra Poudel became a Peace Minister in the interim government.
Saraswati School principal Chandra Nepali says: “Narjit Sir is a great teacher, he hasn’t let his injuries affect his teaching, in fact he teaches even more passionately.”
As one of the first victims of a 10 year war that claimed nearly 17,000 lives, Narjit Basnet hopes that no one else has to suffer what he went through and adds: “I just wish they would finish writing the constitution and ensure peace. It would also be good if there was some support so I can overcome my handicap.”