Christians in Nepal Demand Right to Bury Their Dead
ICC Note:
Christians in Nepal have a dilemma. They have nowhere to bury their dead. Most Hindu’s cremate their dead, and Christians are only allowed to bury their dead on designated burial grounds. Except that the government has not designated enough to even begin meeting the need, leaving Christians with a dilemma when it comes to honoring their loved ones with a Christian burial. “Either the government should say that Nepali Christians aren’t Nepali citizens, or it should give them their rights.”- Laxmi Pariyar, Christian member of Nepal’s dissolved Constituent Assembly
By Lochana Sharma
08/29/2012 Nepal (Global Press Institute)- After boxer Raju Budhamagar fell to the ring floor on Jan. 1, 2011, after his competitor, Nabin Limbu, knocked him out at the Inter-Metropolitan Boxing Tournament, he never got up.
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But by 3 a.m., he was dead.
“We were very sad to lose our family member,” says Deepak Budhamagar, his brother, with tearful eyes. “But even sadder and painful was when we couldn’t do his last rites according to our [Christian] culture.”
Because the boxer was Christian, his family couldn’t bury him in Kathmandu, where he lived, because of the lack of public space to do so.
“Some locals said he would haunt the place,” his brother says. “Others told it would have an effect on the environment or deforestation. So it was on the fifth day that we took his body at our aunt’s place in Dhading and performed the last rites.”
The memory of not finding a place to bury his brother’s decaying body still haunts him.
“This is just an example of the pain that Christians, who are in minority [in the country], have to face,” says the deceased’s eldest brother, Upendra Budhamagar. “There are many instances where Christians have not found a place to bury the dead even after the body starts smelling.”
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Despite Nepal’s 2006 proclamation to become a secular state rather than a Hindu kingdom, Christians say they are still unable to bury their dead because of a lack of designated burial grounds. Religious leaders say that burying the dead is essential to Christianity as well as a basic human right. But the act of burial has also provoked environmental concerns. Pressure from Christians on the government led to an agreement last year, which the lone Christian member of the dissolved Constituent Assembly is working to carry out.
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Gahatraj called Christians’ inability to carry out the final rites according to their religion worse than some other forms of human rights violations.
He says the situation has improved after the government announced the country as a secular state in Nepal’s Interim Constitution of 2007, which granted all citizens, regardless of religion, equal rights.
But he says Christians are still barred from burial at the Pashupatinath area in eastern Kathmandu, a strictly Hindu place of worship. Christians have also requested land for burial at Sleshmantak Forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it is currently reserved for only Hindu cremation and the few Hindu sects that bury their dead.
“Death rites also fall under basic rights,” Gahatraj says. “Why shouldn’t we Christians be allowed to do that?”
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In order to pressure the government, the Christian community organized a relay prayer session and a relay hunger strike in 2011. It ended after a month with another three-point agreement with the government.
The agreement entailed the end of the hunger strike, the immediate arrangement for a temporary burial ground, and the formation within three days of a committee comprising various representatives of the political parties, the ministries of Home Affairs, Forests and Soil Conservation, and Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation as well as three Christian representatives.
Laxmi Pariyar, the only Christian member of Nepal’s now dissolved Constituent Assembly, which disbanded in May 2012 after failing to draft a new constitution, says she is leading efforts within the government to secure for Christians the right to bury their dead.
“It’s a human right – the right to perform final rites according to one’s belief,” she says. “It’s not a good thing for the nation that the government is showing little interest in this issue.”
Pariyar says she has met with Gopal Kirati, current minister of culture, along with a delegation to talk about the issue.
“I have also raised the issue in the House sessions,” she says. “I will keep working on this issue until the government does something about it.”
She says that the issue is crucial to extending full citizenship status to Christians.
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