Thirty-five years ago, the plateau now occupied by Baglung Bazar was a quiet plain of rice fields with a dozen or so two story mud brick houses, a brand new college campus and a tiny hospital. Twenty-five years ago, a formal water infrastructure was introduced by an International NGO. Fifteen years ago, the Bazar had slowly begun to urbanize. The northern neighborhood of Uppalachaur, an area about half the size of the Bazar plateau, was still only occupied by 10 households and fields. Today, the plateau is a built-out grid of paved streets, lined with three-five story buildings of concrete-pillar construction, filled with the hustle-bustle of tractor-freight, jeep-taxis, motorcycles, food carts, and pedestrians. And Uppalachaur is a riot of carpentry shops, brick manufacturing and construction sites, with several hundred concrete + brick homes already completed along a new grid – intended for pavement one day.
The Urbanist in me couldn’t help but wonder: what event triggered this population growth and induced rapid urbanization? The answer: a political insurgency. According to Dr. Tarun Paudel, Baglung Bazar was still a quaint town when he took up residency at the hospital 14 years ago. In that same year, the Maoist insurgency that began in 1996 picked up pace, and the Maoists gained control of the rural towns in the district and greater region. Baglung Bazar as both a District and Zonal center with an existing Army base, remaining a strong hold of the Nepali Army throughout the insurgency. In the Maoist-controlled country side, individuals who failed to display loyalty to the Maoist regime were assumed to support the Nepal Army, and thus current government. They were frequently accused of being spies, made to pay bribes and threatened with physical assault. Over nearly a decade of civil unrest, many rural residents fled their village homes to find sanctuary in the closest government strong-hold – in this case, Baglung Bazar.
One of the deadliest Maoist attacks during this period occurred just an hour upriver from Baglung Bazar, in the district headquarters to the north: Beni Bazar. Beni sits at the junction of two river canyons, almost level with the water. Around 10:30 PM one evening in March of 2004, several thousand Maoists fighters stormed the city’s army base, swooping down from the steep surrounding hillsides. Estimations I found greatly varied, but somewhere between 50 and 200 were killed, and another 200 or so injured – mostly members of the Nepal army and Police force, but also many civilians.
I asked my host-brother (who is now 22 years old) what he remembers from this period. He said he felt safe living in Baglung Bazar but that there were pretty strict rules, such as a 6pm curfew. Army men would patrol the streets and hassle anyone who had lights on past the curfew. I assume this was meant to prevent potential late-night gatherings of Maoist supporters within the stronghold. To my knowledge, a few minor clashes occurred here, but nothing compared to the clash in Beni.
Now, several years after the close of the civil war, population growth rates for Baglung Bazar remain high (mostly likely due to rural-urban migration inertia), as do the number of political protests. Despite the civil war’s official ending, Nepali politics remain tumultuous and the country somehow continues to function without a constitution. Don’t worry – the country is considered politically stable (or PC wouldn’t be here!). But the controversy does mean that a lot of political demonstrations occur. One type of demonstration is called a “bandha”, which is a nation-wide vehicular strike. (“Bandha” loosely translates to “closed”). That’s right – a couple times each month, one of the political parties (usually the Communist Party of Nepal – the Maoists) declares a “bandha” and on those days practically zero vehicles travel in Nepal – freight pauses, schools take holiday, shops don’t open, and people take a break. As a district and zonal HQ, Baglung Bazar is fairly active on demonstration days: frequently there are parades of 60+ motorcycles all sporting red Maoist flags on their tails; a dozen or so cars with giant loudspeakers blare political messages in loops while similarly driving circles around town; and often the central two blocks of the main street will be closed for a political rally (they usually build a stage, provide seats and hang banners). As chaotic as this all may sound, I’ve found the demonstration days to be remarkable peaceful. That said, I was quite surprised to learn that the Baglung Election office was broken into and severely vandalized by a troupe of Maoists supporters in late March. The District CPN-Maoist Secretary Dev Gurung warned that his party “would not allow Constituent Assembly elections to be held at any cost.”
But the civil war caused more than rural-to-urban migration: it sparked rampant out-migration as well. Thousands of young people fled the country seeking political stability and economic opportunity. And so Nepal’s culture of remittances – foreign salaries regularly sent home to family members who remain in the earner’s home country – got a boost, leading to their continued prevalence today.
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