things have definitely changed people fearlessly stand against monarchy in Khulla Manch!!

As a Bedouin saying goes, “youth is the first victim of war; the first fruit of peace”, it is certainly refreshing to see/hear youth taking initiative to remind leaders of their task ahead and willingness to take part in country’s future while holding accountable those who intend to forever mortgage their future in the name of illusory contentment.

[Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.

Derek Walcott
1930-, Poet and Playwright, born in West Indies]

seeing as it’s finals week, i have to embarssingly admit that i didn’t finish hearing the whole speech of gagan dai, but…… i just wanted to say it is more than refreshing, that is neccessary to see a new face in a leadership role at home in nepal. my thoughts and prayers lie with the youth in nepal, now equipped to be responsible for the nation! best wishes to you all!

jai nepal!

gagan (and arzu deuba) on npr

Thank you for posting these audio feeds. It’s really great to hear even if I am not fluent enough to understand so much. What is the date of the speech?

the audio link’s dead!!

no, just the first 5 seconds is silent

got it.

definately charged! and here are the few highlights from the speech!

Oie Mr. Gyanendra kasle maryo Birendra?

Bhadrakali Jasle Raja ko agadi sir (head) jhukaucha (refering to netas), dhad jhukaucha, tyo ni gayo gayo!

Hami Gadatranta laune hideko janta haru Police ko Danda dhkera bhakchau?

reminds me of my younger days when I heard Monmohan Adhikari speak who challenged, Mahendra in to race with him. haha good speech.

It would be nice if multimedia were posted in Open Source standards like .ogg. .swf is a proprietary format — and not so easy to use, either.

let’s just keep in mind that shouting slogans and running rallys are not the same skills necessary to effectively run a government.

Gagan is the 1st nepalese to talk against the king

i have a great support to Mr. Thapa

“Gagan is the 1st nepalese to talk against the king”

What have been Moabadi’s fighting for, for last 10 years? Or are they not Nepali?

“Gagan is the 1st nepalese to talk against the king”

Moabadi always talk against king but they have weapons………..they are just like another king……

nabin,
your point is about citizenship. Even King is a Nepali. Gagan is a great guy but he isnt the first to publicy go against the king. Even before they were involved in poeple’s revolution, that is without weapons, they went agsint king and the rastriya song. hoina?

Very nice speech by Mr. Gagan Thapa. I like it very much. Thanks to him.
The king has to undertake in the HELL.

Nice speech Gagan, we ought to move ahead to liberate Nepal.

“Popular student leader”: popular among who? Did not sound so popular to me, at least not against the other speakers whose audio recordings are posted, among the crowd.

“..spoke for the first time”…? Not clear. Gagan did not speak for the first time. Not even since the royal takeover of 2005 February. So the reference here has to be to something more specific.

With apologies for being a pain in the butt (please do not censor me here). But let’s keep the record straight.

please read our flaming policy carefully being unreasonably paranoid about censhorship.

this is the first time gagan spoke at an uncensored, “legal” khula manch in general, since most of his other speeches have been at protests and not an openly organized mass program held in a public space such as this.

Sarhana, thank for this clarification. You appreciate I was mystified by the introduction. The explanation you give is partial. Why did samudaya.org describe Gagan Thapa as a “popular student leader”? Popular among who? This bit is not clear to me.

Second, I do not know about uncensored legal khula manch from the text in the introduction.

But I am still not sure how uncensored and legal the khula manch was, given that one of the speakers was Yubaraj Chaulagain, CPN (Maoist)/ANNFSU (R).

The Maoists were still terrorists, there was no ceasefire in place, and, the TADO is still in place. That is what you call the troubling bits within what you call “legal”.

Then at the programme was an army of mandales. Not so uncensored, it seems.

Sorry for pushing the point, and if you think it is paranoia, then so be it, with my apologies.

And since you requested me in another posting not to take up space relating to Maoists, ceasefire, etc. with talk of freedom of expression, which can be left to more closed discussion with samudaya team members, I request you to please consider opening an open space where issues of freedom of expression, what constitutes censorship, and so on, can be discussed.

No moron should be able to ban me, pardon the infelicitious expression.

there already is an open space for whatever you want to discuss (on the top nav, it’s called Community): http://samudaya.org/bb/

and that is what we keep referring to as the message board. there you are required to register, and you can say whatever in the world you please, and please feel free to post all complaints/suggestions in the feedback section.

pick a handful of student leader names, and ask the general public which one sounds familiar. my bet is, “gagan thapa” will be one such name, even though it says nothing about whether he’s liked or disliked, and so on.

though i did not write that intro, it sounds clear enough to me that he spoke for the first time at a khula manch (what does “khula manch” mean to you? wasn’t this the first khula manch he spoke at since gagan started making speeches? he did not speak at the civil society protests, for example)

also, i did not say you were being paranoid about setting the record straight. i said you were being paranoid about getting censored. two very different things.

Well if you think students in Nepal will say “Gagan Thapa”, you need to think again. Maybe it is English speaking Nepali students in the west with whom he is an extraordinary hit.

Second, I said that this “khula manch” was no more or less legal or khula than any other protest in Kathmandu before this date, especially during the crackdown. All protests of a peaceful nature, are by definition legal and khula. It is stupid states that try and ban them, create restricted entry areas, and generally behave in an illegal manner. Gagan has been part of a guerrilla style lightening speech at the height of repression after Feb. 2005. That was a khula manch too as far as I am concerned, or we give the state too much credit for its illegal activities.

thanks gagan….

good job… keep it up….

hey recorder,

you know it very well and understand it totally when the intro says ‘popular’ student leader to gagan.

You’re clearly a mandale who’s naturally extremely irritated by gagan’s breathtaking poularity among nepali youths.

Emotionally charged sea of the masses in the streets manifests that the liberation forever from the feudal classification, which has been betraying all Nepalese, is the earnest and deep aspiration of the Nepalese people. It is appealed to all to be united under a single political slogan of institutionalizing democratic proletarian republic of the working masses, the great synthesis of positive and negative experiences of history, by means of unconditional one track way to make the initiative of the masses of all class, level and strata in the streets reach to a success. Assuring the preparedness to develop the third qualitative understanding at the earliest so as to make this great mass movement attain its goal of equality and progress, it is appealed to take concrete initiative for this.

LAL SALAAM!

I don’t see any audio/video links. Could it be that the audio/video section is just a referral to the event having taken place?

where is the actual speech??

Hi I am Sachindra Dahal from Birgunj.

I like Gagan Thapa so much.

Can you give the actual speech like Sita says?

will dig up the file and post the speech soon. thanks.

i heard he is getting married to some grl that goes to harvard. is that true if it is then i think its gr8! cuz she would go back to nepal too and provide her input

He can give u lectures on any problem for hours. In talking ideology he is perfect. That’s how he is a leader. Articulation and hollow ideology are two things that are keeping him in politics. Or else he would have been dumped to dustbin by now.

The real character of people as articulate as Gagan, as elusive as him, as corrupt and ideal (at the same time, though nobody sees his corruption ) as him can be judged only when they reach power from where they cannot hide their character by loud speeches and hollow ideals. Don’t you agree? He would not have been a leader if he had not possessed these ‘talents’ to make everybody fool.
The money he gobbled up while he was a student union president at Tri-Chandra college, the money he gets in kickbacks from businessmen, the mafia style of his politics. teh money he gets from diplomatic missio0ns for being their agent are only some aspects of his real character, though no media has explored these issues so far. Why would they do it? After all he knows how to silence them — talk loudly, talk ideals, and ocassionally stage drama like donating wedding party costs to a hospital. A perfect leader!!!!!!!!!

And there is a whole lot of hypocrites and media to make him hero. Why would he not do it?