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PANCHTHAR, Nepal — On a remote stretch of highway in eastern Nepal, three figures stand in front of a minibus. Two were young men, the third a policeman with a pistol resting on his hip. The driver turned off the engine. The two young men approached the window and looked at the 15 passengers pressed knee to knee in the bowels of the vehicle.
“Why are you traveling?” a boy asked dryly. It is a band. Today no one can use this road.
The passengers were silent, nervous. After a tense discussion with some passengers explaining that they were going to the hospital, the guy photographed the truck’s license plate number and let them pass.
“I’m letting you pass because you have other people on board in poor health who need medical attention,” he said despite everything. “But this is your first and last warning. I do not wish to see you on those roads. ” Again. She gestured to the second man, who showed the driver the photographs he had taken. “We now have touch data on him. If we see him driving again, we will burn his vehicle.
Four days before this scene occurred, in the early hours of May 13, 2024, the sound of chainsaws echoed in the hills of Nepal’s Taplejung district. Under the watch of armed police, contract workers were cutting down thousands of trees in the surrounding forest. one of the most respected sacred sites in eastern Nepal, known as Mukkumlung by the indigenous Yakthung (or Limbu) community.
Less than 48 hours later, indigenous organizers took to roads and paralyzed vehicle traffic in the district to protest the destruction of their sacred forest.
This hillside, also respected by Hindus as Pathibhara, has been earmarked for the structure of a 2. 74-kilometer (1. 7 mi) cable car that ends at the Pathibhara Devi temple, a popular pilgrimage destination. The government presents the allotment as a boon for devout Hindu tourism, but limbus members largely oppose it because the site is respected in their Mundhum, a harsh ritual culture that emphasizes the sanctity of nature. Installation of the cable car requires significant deforestation, which many worry will weaken the spiritual strength of the site.
Pathibhara Darshan Cable Car Pvt. Ltd. , the company leading the project, is funded by hard-core business tycoon Chandra Prasad Dhakal. The Mukkumlung Cable Car is part of a recent wave of cable car structures in Nepal that can generate tourist profits from natural products. it looks like spots. Dhakal has also planned cable cars in areas, adding the Annapurna Conservation Area, which critics say violates the country’s forest law. Although the Nepalese government approved Mukkumlung’s proposal in 2018, protests by indigenous organizers had so far blocked its structure.
But as Dhakal invested 3 billion rupees ($22 million) in the company through his advertising conglomerate, IME Group, the task went ahead despite local objections.
On May 13, as crews were cutting down trees in the middle of the night, the warring cable car sides, who had set up a permanent camp at the site, soon retaliated. The locals chased away the staff, but not before destroying 12,000 trees, many of which were species of rhododendron, Nepal’s national flower.
While maintaining their status among the remains of their sacred forest, local protest coalitions – made up of Limbu and other indigenous ethnic groups of all ages, genders and races – are calling for one thing: the general closure of transport and services.
The gang began two days later and basically affected the citizens of Phungling, the capital of Taplejung district, a city of 29,000 inhabitants, where roads, restaurants and businesses were completely closed.
This form of direct action has a long history in Nepal, and took place during the country’s most recent Maoist uprising. Controversially, local enforcement of those measures is enforced by threats of violence by the organizing group, and previous gangs have been marred by vandalism, arson. and riots. Although the gangs are violent, resources told Mongabay that this recent case did not involve any violent incidents against other people who were not involved in the cable car structure.
Despite this, tensions continued due to the blockade and clashes occurred on the Mechi artery of eastern Nepal, the only major highway in the region. The cost of booking a jeep to travel a main stretch of 94 kilometers (58 miles) from Phidim to Taplejung increased to 10,000 rupees ($75), from the usual 700 rupees ($5), to take into account the risks of violence which are incurred. through residents. driver, a value that goes far beyond the possibilities of the maximum number of travelers.
Even those who could only pay were not guaranteed safe passage. Mongabay spoke to a driver who had two newlyweds as passengers who urgently wanted to return to their hometown for the last leg of the classic ceremony. The driver had received written permission from the police, but he remained hesitant. He turned the signed paper in his hands in fear and wondered aloud if the band’s agents would respect it. In the end, he made the decision not to make the trip.
“If my vehicle is vandalized [by protesters], I will only lose my livelihood, I will lose everything,” he said.
For most of the indigenous peoples of eastern Nepal, whether they are banda or not, the cable car is the latest in a long line of dispossession that stretches for centuries. After Gorkha forces, who unified modern Nepal, conquered the territory of Limbu in the 18th century, the invaders signed a treaty promising to protect the standard form of land tenure for residents, known as kipat, from the state’s land tenure. But this commitment was gradually undermined and, until 1951, less than a third of the land in eastern Nepal remained under kipat, representing one of the largest transfers of indigenous-owned land to outside owners in Nepal’s history.
Kailash Rai, a researcher at Martin Chautari, a Kathmandu-based think tank that deals with social issues, said the Mukkumlung cable car’s task is simply “a continuation of those ancient discriminations in a modern form. “Shortly after the widespread protests of 2023, when the easternmost region of Nepal changed the name of the number one province to Koshi province. This is a rejection of a long-standing crusade to recognize it as Kirat-Limbuwan province, named in part for the indigenous faith. inhabitants.
“This band came out of nowhere,” Rai said.
In the weeks following the May deforestation, gang organizers introduced a crusade to replant 20,000 saplings. Protecting the Mundhum from their ancestral lands and showing solidarity, they said, are their ultimate goals.
“Their dream is that in the long term generations [of the Limbu people] will face the same discrimination as us,” Rai said.
However, the Taplejung district is ethnically mixed, and not everyone is opposed to the cable car. A key voice in favor of this measure comes from local businessmen. In April, a demonstration was held in Taplejung to call for the final touch to the task. to give life to tourism. Others present the cable car as a symbol of bikas, a popular term in Nepalese political discourse that can be translated as “development,” although in practice it almost means “infrastructure. “
Environmentalists and progressive organizations have criticized Nepal’s massive infrastructure allocations for poor execution and high environmental costs. Between 2018 and 2019 alone, primary infrastructure and strength allocations resulted in the felling of nearly 151,000 trees, according to the Kathmandu Post. This figure includes 10,000 trees cut down for the Pathibhara cable car task in Taplejung before the deforestation on May 13. Protesters say that, unlike hydroelectric power plants, the cable car will be of little use to locals, aligning the structure with a developing trend of bika allocations in Nepal that seems to gain advantages for investors, the locals.
By May 17, the closure had been extended to the town of Phidim, about one hundred kilometers (60 miles) south of the epicenter of Banda. Under the scorching midday sun, the Phidim jeep station was packed with passengers jostling to secure a position. in the few cars whose drivers were fit to travel. As they rushed to complete their planned adventure before the road was completely closed, the locals, many of whom were Limbu, expressed mixed emotions.
“Of course I’m the band, but I have an urgent family problem that forces me to travel,” said a man from Phalelung, a small township near the Nepal-India border, who asked to remain anonymous. “It is not an easy decision [to break the strike]. Everyone here is incredibly angry about the destruction of the forest.
Refuting the argument that the cable car would stimulate tourism, the traveler highlighted the appeal of rhododendrons to domestic tourists: “There will be wonderful implications for tourism if the domain’s plant appeal disappears. “
He cited the case of Barne, in southeastern Nepal, which recently went viral as a “TikTok spot” for its bustling hall of Indian siris (Albizia lebbeck). “The only charm in Barne are those flowers, and the greatest charm of this doleading is the rhododendrons. The ministers believe that the cable car will harm tourism, but it will also harm it,” said the traveler.
For the community, the long term of Mukkumlung depends on the permanence and resilience of the organizers, who constantly patrol the forest. Although government ministers and gang leaders reached a transitional agreement on May 19, allowing vehicular traffic to resume, the final results of their discussions were not agreed in writing, raising fears of further deforestation. in the long term. Shankar Limbu, an indigenous lawyer, filed a complaint opposing the allocation of Mukkumlung before the Supreme Court of Nepal, raising alleged misuse of forest law.
But Rai said Nepal’s government has managed to exhaust dissenting voices by resorting to delays and bureaucracy. The chance of the cable car being completed, he said, is “50:50. “Legal challenge, if successful, could be the most productive possibility for protesters to permanently block the project.
Rai adds, however, that one thing is certain: “As soon as the indigenous people retire or get tired, the cable car will be built immediately. They probably won’t have to wait a day.
Header image: Protest in Phungling, a city of 29,000, where roads, restaurants and businesses have been completely closed. Image via Prabin Seling “Sendow. ”
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