Pampha Bhusal
Politburo Member of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
Member of the Constituent Assembly
Former Minister of Public Administration
Born in 1962 in Arghakhanchi district
Pampha Bhusal was born in July 1962 in Kimdada VDC of Arghakhanchi district. She was the family's fourth daughter during a patriarchal time, and it was considered extremely important to bear boy children in such a rural setting. Giving birth to another daughter was a great pain for her mother Indrakala Bhusal. She was born after her grandfather fell from a haystack, so there was nobody to take care of her mother. So began Bhusal's life of discrimination. Image
Bhusal belonged to a rich and influential feudal family in the village. Her grandfather was a local merchant who loaned money to poor villagers with high interest. Her father Govinda Bhusal was educated and knew sons and daughters should have equal status. But he was helpless. Obviously, her grandparents wanted a grandson and to have more possessions. "Being born a daughter was terrible," she remembered her childhood.
Amid criticism and satire, Bhusal's parents enrolled her in a local primary school and she became the first girl to study in a village school. Her mother wanted her daughters to be educated to the same extent as boy children were. "In this context, my mother was great mother of the age," she said.
Priests told Bhusal's grandparents that her mother would give birth to a son if a virgin girl who had not yet reached puberty was given in 'kanyadhan' (literally, donation of a girl). This meant having the child marry. So her elder sister was married at the age of nine. When the day of marriage came, all preparations were taken and all as it should be. But when the groom's family arrived, seven-year-old Bhusal began shouting from the terrace that her sister was too young to be married. She said, "I was crying so loud I was hurled in a stack of rice grain and the radio was turned to full volume. It was my first struggle against gender inequality and it guided me throughout my life."
In the village doing something great was known as 'doing like a boy'. Bhusal could not tolerate it and raised questions about why a girl could not do as boys did. She scored the highest marks in her school for many years and established a new notion in the village that girls could indeed do anything given the chance. However, her parents asked her to quit school when she completed the third grade due to growing criticism in the community.
Despite all the criticism, Bhusal convinced her parents to send her to high school. As the high school was far away, she was sent to her maternal uncle's house near a high school in Gulmi district. She did not feel the same freedom she had enjoyed in her own house and returned home to be enrolled in Janajyoti High School, which was located at a two hour walk from her house. Boys and girls were not allowed to talk to one another in her school, but Bhusal broke tradition, bringing about a new era in the school's history. She was smart at general knowledge and especially sharp when it came to women's issues. She was just 12 when she realized discrimination against women in the law and raised her voice against it. "You could say I was a feminist in today's terminology," she said.
Bhusal attended a school promoted by communists. Senior activist Tanka Bhusal, who was killed later during the Panchayat period, first introduced her to leftist ideology. She soon became a member of leftist student organization the All Nepal Free Student Union in 1976 in a program held in secret during night time.
When Bhusal passed the School Leaving Certificate exams in 1978, all suggested she take a 'girl-like' discipline like Education or Nursing. But she decided to study Agriculture and came to Kathmandu to join Pulchowk Engineering Campus. She completed the course of Overseers in 1982. Though she had an opportunity to go to Russia for further study she decided not to for the sake of politics. She joined Shankar Dev Campus to study Management. She did her Bachelor in Education and finally her Masters in Sociology. Whatever she studied, her main purpose was to work towards strengthening the student union.
Her family was not happy with her involvement in politics at a time political activities were prohibited by the Panchayat government. But they knew she would never give up. When she was underground police went to her home to look for her, a big headache for such a prestigious family. "But none of my family members had directly told me to stay away from politics," she said.
During the Panchayat period, and even after the political change of 1990, Bhusal was arrested many times, almost every year. Her family suffered as a result but nothing could stop her from focusing on her target to bring about change in the country. In 1980 she was arrested when she went to Mangalbazaar in Lalitpur to participate in a protest program against the regime. She was again arrested in 1981 and put in detention for four months. "I had been arrested by various governments, including that of Marichman Singh, Girija Prasad Koirala, and Manmohan Adhikari," she said proudly.
Later she joined the Small Hydro-electricity Development Project as an overseer, but was fired due to her political orientation. In 1985 when she was working for the Public Works Division in Arghakhanchi as an overseer she was again arrested in connection with a bomb blast in the capital.
Bhusal was ready to dedicate her whole life to the Communist party. But the perpetual clashes, disputes and splits among communist leaders left her frustrated. Her energy was renewed when she saw unification among the confronting factions and came to understand that such clashes in fact strengthened the party.
After restoration of multi-party democracy in April 1990, the Communist Party of Nepal (Mashal) led by Prachanda and the CPN (Fourth Convention) merged to form the CPN (Unity Center), which was later joined by the CPN (Masal) led by Baburam Bhattarai. The first convention of the CPN (Unity Center) was held in 1991 in Chitwan district, in which Prachanda presented a political paper on the need to launch a long-term People's War. In the same year, the United People's Front Nepal (UPFN), the front line party of the underground CPN (Unity Center) with Bhusal as its central secretary, took part in the general elections and became the third largest party in Parliament.
Preparations for armed struggles started. Bhusal was involved both in the underground planning for armed struggle and constitutional practice. She became chairperson of the UPFN from February to June 1995. "I was the first woman chairperson of a political party in Nepal," she claimed. In March 1995, a faction of the CPN (Unity Center) led by Prachanda, and a faction of the UPFN led by Baburam Bhattarai, formally changed their party's names to the CPN (Maoist) to launch the People's War.
On 6 February 1996, Baburam Bhattarai and Pampha Bhusal went to Singha Durbar to submit a memorandum of 40 demands under the UPFN name to then Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, in which it was written that if the government didn't fulfill their demands by 17 February they would be compelled to start a movement against it. This was actually a declaration that the UPFN would launch the People's War. But without waiting for the date they gave, the Maoists started their armed struggle on 13 February 1996, carrying out simultaneous attacks on police stations in Rolpa, Rukum and Sindhuli districts. Image
Three days after Bhusal had shifted to her newly-constructed house she was forced to leave to go back underground. After hiding in shelters in the capital she went to Seti-Mahakali region in far western Nepal to help strengthen the party organization there. To avoid being arrested she disguised herself as a Madhesi woman when she went to India.
In far western Nepal, party organization was very weak and it was difficult to even trace the party's presence. She was party in-charge of the whole region. It was easy for her to survive in one sense as few people knew her. But forming an organization from scratch was extremely difficult. People did not know about Maoists and refused to help when they heard of their mission. But Bhusal slowly developed a group of fulltime workers ready to dedicate their lives to the party. A platoon-level armed force was formed in 2001, and they carried out the first raid on a police station in daytime at Lapunji close to the Indian border.
She was known as Comrade 'Bijuli (electricity)' in those days. Though she herself was not physically involved in military actions she played the role of planner. She has seen many of her comrades hanging between life and death. "I have seen deaths of comrades. Sometime I wondered how anybody could be happy to be dead and bid farewell to friends in the name of the People's War. Chhapamars (guerrillas) never got discouraged by seeing their dying friends. Such incidents instead made them more committed to the struggle," she said.
In November 2006 the Maoists signed the Comprehensive Peace Process and won the first Constituent Assembly (CA) elections held in April 2008, becoming the Assembly's largest political party, contrary to expectation. She said, "The source of power is the people. We started the People's War with a handful of people and you can measure our height with the total votes we received during the Constituent Assembly elections. We were not helped by any international forces; they were instead all united to prove us as failures."
When the Maoists joined the coalition government in December 2007 she was appointed Minister for Women, Children and Social Welfare in December 2007. Her tenure as minister was "as successful as it could be", in her own words. She never discriminated against any government staff according to their political orientation and brought all civil servant organizations under a strict routine of commitment.
In the CA election, Bhusal was elected from Lalitpur-3 constituency. She was made Minister for Public Administration in the Maoist-led government in August 2008. However, her tenure ended in political turmoil. She resigned from her post, along with Maoist Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda) on 4 May 2009. But she said that whether she is in power or not, she is always amid the people and their problems.
Bhusal progressed within the party, becoming a Central Committee member in 1993 and one of two women Politburo members in 2004. Her life full of struggle did not lend itself to marriage. "I feel better being unmarried," she said shortly. She has never worn dresses or makeup. Instead, Bhusal has adopted a more neutral identity, keeping her hair short, wearing eyeglasses, shirts and pants, whether at war or at the ministry. Her lifestyle has not changed, nor has her dedication to the People's War and total change of the country.
Written by Razen Manandhar
http://web.archive.org/web/20140627133210/http://www.wwj.org.np:80/mahila/profile_pampha_bhusal.html
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