Hisila Yami - Hisila: From Revolutionary to First Lady

HISILA YAMI

HISILA

FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO FIRST LADY

Contents

PENGUIN BOOKS

HISILA

HISILA YAMI is a Nepali politician and an architect. Born into a well-known Newar family in Kathmandu in 1959, she started her revolutionary life as a student activist in 1978. During the 1990 uprising against the Panchayat regime in Nepal, Yami was one of the most prominent women leaders. She has been arrested many times for her anti-monarchy stance. She graduated from the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi, India, in 1982 and completed her masters from Newcastle University, UK, in 1995. The same year, she became the president of the All Nepal Womens Association (Revolutionary). She also taught at the Institute of Engineering in Pulchowk, Kathmandu, for thirteen years.

Yami went underground in 1996 during the Peoples War (PW) in Nepal. She went on to become a politburo member of the CPN (Maoist), headed the Womens Department, was a member of the International Department and the secretary of the Peoples Power Consolidation Department in Rolpa during the PW.

In April 2007, she joined the interim government of Nepal as the minister of physical planning and works. She won the Constituent Assembly elections in March 2008 from Kathmandus Constituency 7 and took over as the minister of tourism and civil aviation in April 2008 and the minister of land reform and management in August 2011.

She is married to a fellow architect and politician, Baburam Bhattarai, who went on to become the prime minister of Nepal (from August 2011 to March 2013). In 2015, Yami, Bhattarai and some other leaders abandoned the CPN (Maoist) to start the Naya Shakti Party, which later evolved into the Janata Samajwadi Party, Nepal.

Yami is a regular contributor to several publications in Nepal. She is also the author of Peoples War and Womens Liberation in Nepal .

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

A bold woman from an ethnic minority reflects on half a century of experiences. Yamis journey from an urban, apolitical upbringing to one at the forefront of Nepals revolutionary politics, and at the centre of a rebellion whose violence claimed the lives of 17,000 Nepalisa moment that decisively changed the course of politics, including the overthrowing the monarchyis candid and rareMallika Shakya, senior assistant professor, department of sociology, South Asian University

Hisilas story is an absorbing narrative of a strong-willed woman breaking glass ceilings in not only a feudal, traditional Nepali society but also in the radical, communist organization of the Maoists in Nepal. The narrative is sprinkled with fascinating insights into the rise and transformation of the Maoists in the countryinto their leadership characters, power and ideological struggles and their performance in democratic governance. A must-read for analysts, policymakers and discerning observersS.D. Muni, professor emeritus, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Combining the personal and political with remarkable candour and deep insights, Hisila Yami brings alive the story of Nepals Maoist movement and its subsequent transformation into open politics. She weaves together the ethnic, class, caste, gender and regional dimensions of Nepals underdevelopment to illustrate a society that was ready for change but also had to navigate older, entrenched structures of power. As an insider who participated in the movement, yet an outsider who came from a distinct background, Hisila Yamis life and book is both the story of political principles and its collusion with empirical realities. As a revolutionary leader and then a former minister in her own right, whose husband was a senior party figure who later became the prime minister, she is uniquely positioned to tell Nepals story of war and peace. This is a must-read for all those interested in the fate of not just Nepal and South Asia but also the themes of oppression, political movements, power, gender, post-conflict transitions, politics of violence and inclusive democracyPrashant Jha, editor (views), Hindustan Times , and author of Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal and How the BJP Wins: Inside Indias Greatest Election Machine

I have known Hisila Yami since the late-1980s, when she was multitasking as a teacher of architecture, an honorary official of the Nepal Engineers Association, an energetic womens rights activist and an erudite canvasser of progressive politics. By the late-1990s, she had accepted a somewhat less prominent role than her Maoist ideologue partner, Baburam Bhattarai. The travails of a playful girl, from being a trendy college-goer in New Delhi, a dedicated rights activist in western Nepal and a fugitive insurgent to becoming the first lady at Baluwatar, make for an engaging readC.K. Lal, journalist and commentator

This is an interesting and important autobiography, particularly because of the many roles the author has played and reflected uponnot only as a Maoist activist, minister and the wife of a prime minister but also as the youngest daughter of an elite Newar family, a feminist and a mother. The book deserves to be read by anyone with an interest in contemporary Nepal or in revolutionary movementsJohn Whelpton, historian and the author of A History of Nepal

Hisila Yami has played a critical role in shaping Nepali history for over four decades. This book offers a compelling personal account of her struggles and illuminates aspects of events and personalities that have so far escaped observers on the outsideAditya Adhikari, author of The Bullet and the Ballot Box: The Story of Nepals Maoist Revolution

Preface

On the afternoon of 25 April 2015, a massive earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale struck Nepal. Another earthquake of 7.3 magnitude occurred a fortnight later, on 12 May, around the same time. It razed to the ground my late father Dharma Ratna Yamis five-storeyed house in Bhurankhel, Kathmandu, where I was born. It was by no means an ordinary house. It was where great personalities such as B.R. Ambedkar and Rahul Sankrityayan had visited my father who was an anti-Rana crusader, a poet, a social reformer, a writer and a deputy minister of forest (1951).

Looking at my late fathers crumbling house and going through his old manuscripts, most of which were destroyed in the earthquake, I remembered the fate of the draft of my own book. One that I had been writing since December 2014. I did not want to take any chances, so I hurriedly emailed the first draft to my daughter, Manushi. At that time, she was studying in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, India.

Writing this book was a journey in itself. Through this book I will tell the story of the Maoist Peoples War (PW) in Nepal, as the country transformed its feudal socio-economic structure to a capitalist one through a rich history of struggle. This narrative is one in which two accounts are intertwined, both public and personal, and the political and social.

I decided to write this book when I realized that I could share personal insights into the Maoist PW, which others did not have access to. I have also had the privilege of watching from close quarters the evolution of the strategy and the tactics of the PW, and the relations among the top leaders of the revolutionary movement. What compelled me further to write was the sudden demise of Comrade Diwakar (Post Bahadur Bogati), the general secretary of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)UCPN (Maoist)in 2014. He was only sixty-two. By all standards, he looked quite healthy and fit, but he died of a cerebral stroke. I learnt from his wife that he had started collecting material for writing his memoir, and that was when the urgency of writing mine hit home. Baburam Bhattarai (BRB), a senior ideologue leader of the UCPN (Maoist), who also happens to be my husband, is now past sixty-six. And I am past sixty-one myself. I thought that I should not leave anything to chance. I apprehended that BRB, who is by nature an introvert, would probably never write an autobiography. He has been a significant part of more than forty years of my political journey.