Chairperson of All Nepal Women's Association
Minister of Defense
Born in 1961 in Bhojpur district
A few people had heard of Bidhya Bhandari before she married Madan Bhandari, a prominent leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) who died in a car accident in 1993. Some people criticized her for being a 'widow politician', common in South Asian countries, when she contested in the parliamentary election of 1994 by succeeding her husband and won. She proved herself to be a 'real successful politician' in the eighth general convention of the CPN (UML), held in March 2009, by being elected vice president of her party.
She was born in June 1961 in Ambote village of Bhojpur district in eastern Nepal to a well-to-do farmer's family of Brahmins. She was a lucky girl in Nepali society who had seldom experienced gender discrimination in her childhood. Her father Ram Bahadur Pandey was headmaster at a local high school. Her grandfather Tilak Bahadur Pandey was a social worker as well as a Pradhan Pancha, a powerful post in the village during the Panchayati period.
She first joined Behereshwar Primary School and later shifted to Bidhyodaya Vocational High School in the district headquarters, from where she completed her SLC (School Leaving Certificate) in 1979. Bhandari was the first person to complete matriculation in her family. In her generation girls seldom had a chance to go to school, but her grandfather insisted she attend . "I happened to be a role model for the women in my village and it prom pted other parents to send their daughters to school," she said.
Bhand ari learned about politics w hen she was in seventh grade. She listened to regular discussions on politics in her family between her grandfather and uncles who had worked as student activists in the Nepal Student's Union and the ANNFSU. Nepal was then under the party-less Panchayat system and in Jhapa district a radical communist group raised weapons against landlords under the influence of the Naxallites of Eastern India. In the village she was told this Jhapa movement was launched by 'beheaders' who took away all unmarried girls. In such, g irls were allowed to go to the jungle to collect fodder only after wearing 'pote and chura', traditional ornaments worn by married wom en. But at home she heard that communists had raised arms in Jhapa to fight against all sorts of inequality .
Her family had no real financial problems but Bhand ari was sensitive enough to worry about the poor people in her villages. "I felt very bad when I saw some people begging for money, medicine or some old dresses to wear. I wondered why they we re so poor and what was the cause of this inequality," she said.
Bhandari heard her relative Khagendra Pandey praising China's Cultural Revolution . He said that every person would have food to eat, places to shelter and jobs for wage in communist society. The communis t philosophy attracted her.
When she was in eighth grade Bhand ari learned about the Coordination Committee, the communist organization that was founded in 1975 by those activists who participated in the Jhapa movement and later turned into the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist) in 1978. She began to participate in activities distributing pamphlets in villages to warn the local landlords. "My grandfather was known as a feudal lord in the village. And I was on the frontline to distribute pamphlets against the feudalists. But he had never scolded me for my activities. He was radical enough to support me," she said, adding that her grandfather rather inspired her to move ahead with her political slogans.
"My grandfather used to say that all his grandsons were following the old track, but that I would do something for the country as I was taking a new track. It became a great inspiration for me throughout my life."
In 1978 Bhandari joined Bhojpur Campus and took a course in humanities. In the same year, the student movement erupted in Kathmandu and spread all over the country. She and her colleagues collected money to send several students to the capital to show solidarity in the movement as members of the All Nepal National Free Student Union (ANNFSU). That was the beginning of her involvement in politics.
Bhand ari was very active as a student leader in her campus during the Panchayat period. Her group would go to remote villages to hold meetings with local activists. While she was doing her B achelor's degree in Mahendra Morang Campus in Biratnagar she was elected treasurer of the ANNFSU. Bhandari slowly became involved in party politics through its women's wing, the All Nepal Women's Association (ANWA), and developed associations with the Biratnagar City Committee of the CPN (ML).
In 1982 Bhandari married Madan Bhandari through the intermediacy of her party. Before marriage the pair had met twice, once in 1979 and again in 1980 in Bhojpur, during party programs. She was among the participants Madan Bhandari gave political training to. She was very impressed with his personality, his political ideology and his leadership ability.
"It was not a love-at-first-sight kind of thing. I was nervous to be in front of him. His sharpness and his ability to present various issues with depth touched me. I was sure that he was a man with a difference but I did not know that he would one day acquire the position of general secretary of the CPN (UML)," she said.
Their marriage was inter-caste as Bidhaya belong ed to a Brahmin family and Madan to a Chhetri . Every arrangement of their marriage which took a year to finalize was handled by the party, without family support. When she told her mother about their marriage she neither took the news positively nor opposed it.
After their marriage, the two were both busy with their own party work and neither had time to take care of their family. They didn't even have time to think about whether their marriage was the right decision or not. "Even now I feel that it was an extremely difficult time and I wonder how we came to this stage," she said.
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Bhandari kept a low profile after her marriage while her husband made many landmark contributions for his party as well as the country. She said she kept a low profile by choice . She explain ed, "I saw a kind of unexpressed agony in many wives of political leaders. They feel that they had to sacrifice their abilities and possibilities for their husband's sake, which I don't like. Instead of working neck and neck with my husband, I preferred to let him move ahead by himself. I never took advantage of his personality and his position in the party, neither had I ever thought of competing with him. I was free from these two extremes. But I was careful of not putting him in any controversy because of me."
Bhand ari became more active in politics after Madan Bhadari died in a controversial car accident in 1993. In the mid-term election of 1994, her party gave her a ticket to contest in a constituency in Kathmandu where her husband was elected as an MP, by defeating veteran politician of the Nepali Congress, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai. She won and became M ember of Parliament.
She has been engaged with AWNA since its establishment in 1980. She became a president of chapters in Biratnagar, Morang district, and Koshi zone before she was elected a central president in 1998. She did not have the feeling that women were discriminated against before she was engaged in activities with ANWA. After becoming a member of ANWA, she went among women in search of more information on women's issues. She came to see that women are deprived of the same rights men enjoy , and that women face various other problems within their family and also society.
Bhandari finds a difference between the modality of women's movements before 1990's political change compared with the way it has been since . ANWA's main political target before 1990 was to organize women to end the party-less Panchayat system. In those days, their movement was more political and they expected nothing but liberation for women while o n the streets.
However, after politics opened up in 1990 new kinds of women activists wearing clean dresses from middle-class or rich families came to the stage and tried to raise women's issues under the guidance of donors. Bhand ari is quite critical of those 'new-comers' in the fields of women's issues. She said, "We political activists spent our life for women's issues on dusty roads, with children on our backs, but activists of mushrooming NGOs took benefit from our issues." She is proud to admit she has never run after donors nor compromised with them.
In 1997 she was appointed Minister for Population and Environment for seven months in the coalition government. "I was happy with my portfolio but I found very difficult to work in the environment where I could hardly find anybody to support me in the Ministry. I have to say, I faced lots of problem being a woman minister," she said.
Bhandari tabled the controversial 'property bill' in Parliament in 2006 with the support of several women MPs if the Nepali Congress after a long wait . It was easily approved. "Through this bill, women for the first time in the Nepali history got a right to succeed their parental property and a right to issue a child's citizenship with the name of a mother," she said.
After working as a central committee member of the CPN (UML) since 1998, she was elected one of three party vice presidents. "In fact, during the convention many male leaders tried to prevent me from contesting for a seat of vice president but there was some dramatic change and I was elected unexpectedly. I was glad to win but feel I have more responsibility now." Bhand ari sometimes becomes sentimental when she look s at the chaotic situation of her party over the past few years , but she is willing to lead the party by herself should the time come .
Written by Razen Manandhar and Subhechha Bindu Tuladhar
http://web.archive.org/web/20141010125333/http://www.wwj.org.np:80/mahila/profile_bidhya_bhandari.html
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