I’m not a pro-Nepali.

Yes.

I am not a pro-Nepali.

Now before I get bashed with “त धोती”, hear me out. I’m not pro-Nepali, because, frankly speaking, there is nothing we’ve done that we should be proud of.

There are a lot of things in this country that are just plain wrong. Firstly, there’s the dispute of Buddha being born in Nepal. Now let me get the facts straight. Siddhartha Gautam was born in Nepal. His spiritual self, called Buddha, was born in India, Bodh Gaya to be precise. Yes, he was born here. But Buddha wasn’t his real name. Buddha was born in India. Siddhartha Gautam was born in Nepal. Yes, they’re the same person, but what the Indians are saying isn’t completely false. So instead of shouting anti-Indian slogans Nepalese people need to think. We need to settle this matter like adults.

It’s what this generation lacks the most. Everyone is so obsessed with being anti-Indian that they forget why they even are against them. And when opinions like mine are voiced to the public, no one has any answer except “ट धोती को चाक चाट्न जा”. We are human beings. Human beings are different from animals because we can reason. If all you have against my point of view is those kind of slogans, you are not more than an animal. At least I’m making a valid point.

As a matter of fact, why should we even be proud about the fact that Siddhartha Gautam was born here?

Nature just gave him to us. We didn’t do anything that resulted in his birth, and even after his death, we barely gave him any importance. If this was so important, why isn’t Nepal a Buddhist country? Why are majority of the people Hindus? Are we doing justice to Buddha? Are we actually against non-violence? We’ve had a civil war. We sparred with the British. We’ve fought with Tibet. Is that non-violence? Yes, I know we had to defend ourselves, but the whole point of non-violence is resisting the urge to fight when we are provoked. We did the right thing, yes. But it was not through non-violence that we decided to resist the invasions.

Face it people, we didn’t do anything before Buddha was born, we didn’t do anything to strengthen him, and we didn’t do anything to uphold his legacy. It was a gift, Siddarth being born here, but we wasted it. I know Lumbini is now refurbished and it’s well maintained, but only recently have we been able to realize its importance. But what bugs me the most is that one of the focal points of Lumbini is The Ashoka Pillar, which was built by…

Guess who.

An Indian.

We should be ashamed of ourselves. Ashamed of the fact that we’re blessed with so many gifts, but we’ve wasted every single one of them. We’ve been blessed with 8 of the top 10 mountains in the world. But we’ve done nothing to make them stand out in the world. Majority of the people in the world barely even know our country even though we have 8 OUT OF 10 HIGHEST MOUNTAIN PEAKS IN THE WHOLE FRIKKIN WORLD! Is it nature’s mistake that we aren’t popular? Who is to blame?

No one but ourselves. Not the Indians, not the Chinese. It’s us. We’re the problem. And instead of realizing that we ourselves did this to our country, we blame other people for everything.

We’re not going to fix everything by playing the blame game. It’s time for us to do something. It’s time.

I’m ready to fix my country.

Are you?