Assamese music teacher Meera Thapa was singing at a concert in Kathmandu last week when, in the middle of an old song by Tara Debi, she burst into tears. 
Meera Thapa is a third-generation Nepali, born in Digboi, educated in Shillong and mentored by diaspora poet-musician Hari Bhakta Katuwal. Her Bengali is more fluent than her Nepali and she seldom comes to Nepal.
Yet, while singing at Paleti on Friday, when she got to the part where the lyrics go 'if there is a heaven on earth, it is my motherland...', Meera Thapa could not control the emotions that welled up in her soul.
Wherever we may be, however much removed by time and distance from the land of our ancestors, there is a Nepali-ness that binds us. It is an emotional bond that is perhaps best expressed in poetry or song. Much more than a sense of shared history, more than the language, religion and festivals, beyond the artificial icons of nationhood, Mt Everest, Lumbini and the danfe, or even the now-defunct monarchy, a togetherness unites the Nepali world.
Meera Thapa's tears signified a pure and intense emotional attachment to the land of her forebears. What was remarkable was that this sense of belonging hadn't diminished with separation, nor with the passage of generations. Five Nepali migrant workers-a Madhesi, a Janajati, a Chhetri, a Bahun and a Dalit-have jointly set up a literary society in the UAE. They meet regularly for gazal readings. The message in their poetry and song is always: why, if the rest of the world sees us as just Nepalis, do we look for differences among us?
It is the tragedy of our times that the post-2006 identity politics is over-correcting past injustices and taking us down the path of ethno-chauvinism. While compensating for historic exclusion, we want to enforce even worse intolerance.
We have to pull ourselves out of the quagmire. Today's prolonged political paralysis does not help. It is bringing out all kinds of demons in us. There is a danger the Madhes-Pahad gap will widen if the political tug-o-war in Kathmandu tempts the Maoists to project themselves as the protectors of the Pahad against those espousing a united Madhes.
The Madhes needs autonomy, but not at the expense of other Tarai dwellers. Its ethno-separatist slogans threaten our infant republic because it would set a precedence for every other grouping for an unviable 'homeland'.
Let's not get into who came here first. Learn from countries in our region which have suffered decades of civil war when they opened that can of worms. Except for the Tarai aborigines, we all came from somewhere else.
We all share a Nepali identity and Nepali space. If someone like Meera Thapa, who doesn't even live here, feels she belongs, why don't we?
