Women of Nepal

Jayapuri Gharti Magar

President of All Nepal Women's Association (Revolutionary)
Elected Member of the Constituent Assembly from the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

Born in 1973 in Rangsi VDC, Rolpa District

Jayapuri Gharti was born the ninth of eleven children (nine daughters and two sons) to a Magar family living in a mountainous village of northern Rolpa, an area which would later became the center of the Maoist insurgency. Her father Krishna Bahadur was a Mukhiya who had the right to collect land tax from villagers, while his younger brother, Maru Bahadur, served as a Pradhan Pancha, chief of the village, of Rangsi for twenty-five years during the Panchayat period. Despite having a father and an uncle with local power, Jayapuri's family financial position was poor as her father was not eager to earn money using his authority as a Mukhiya. Unfortunately her father was also a gambler, further driving the family into poverty, selling most of his property to pay his debts. However, Jayapuri said poverty was common in her village. She remembers -

In Rolpa, the majority of people are poor. 'Rich' means 'self-sufficient' in our village. Those who can support themselves with what they get from their own fields are 'rich'. My family could support ourselves for only several months a year, and had to buy food by working for others. We had to share two manas rice among six to seven members of a family. I was always hungry. I remember during my childhood, my only wish was to eat to the full.

Among eleven children, only Jayapuri, one of her elder sisters, her younger sister and her younger brother were able to attend school. When Jayapuri was a student, she supported herself to pay her school fees, and buy stationery and clothes by carrying loads of around 60kg for a sahuji (shopkeeper) in her village. It took nine days for her to trek to Ghorahi bazaar in neighboring Dang District and walk back to her village with the loads. She earned around Rs 150 each trip. Her mother also contributed by working in other families' fields.

Jayapuri's living conditions improved after her elder sister, incidentally the first female student in her village, began working as a school teacher. Although Jayapuri had to work hard to maintain her education, she was among just a few lucky girls in her community allowed to go to school during a time most parents didn't wish to send their daughters off to study. She described how women (daughters) were discriminated against by men in her community -

Parents used to make their daughters marry in their early ages, between twelve and fifteen years old. Most of my elder sisters married in that way. Women could not freely speak up in front of men. I remember I always had to bow my head in front of my uncle, who was a Pradhan Pancha of the village. He had five wives. Polygamy was common in our village. People used to believe a man with many wives was more powerful. Furthermore, society does not accept women who don't bear a son. My mother had to bear twelve children (of them, a son and a daughter died) just to have more sons. Because of this feudalistic culture, women had to suffer a lot in Nepal.

Jayapuri took a different path to the other Magar women, joining a student organization of the CPN (Mashal) whose general secretary was present chairman of the CPN (Maoist), Prachanda, when she was in ninth grade. It was just after the political change of 1990. A multi-party system was restored after the successful 50 day Jana Andolan (People's Movement), and political parties began their activities openly. In Rolpa, just as in other districts, various political parties entered the villages following the political change of 1990. Jayapuri said she had no idea about 'communism' before 1990. She didn't even know there were political parties in Nepal.

She came to know the ideology of communism through various school teachers who taught that communism can bring equality to women. It was Pasang aka Nanda Kishor Pun, now a chief commander of the Maoist Army, who became her first 'communist teacher' in the village school. She was later politically affected by Kirishna Bahadur Mahara, who was then a high school teacher in Libang, the seat of Rolpa district headquarters. Mahara is now a central secretariat member of the CPN (Maoist). Jayapuri soon became a member of the district committee of the All Nepal Women's Association (Revolutionary) affiliated with the CPN (Mashal), and a central committee member of the same organization two years later. Jayapuri was also actively involved in Mahara's election campaign, who stood for the 1991 general election in Rolpa constituency for the United People's Front Nepal, a new party formed in the beginning of 1991, as a member of a cultural group in her high school. Her party won in both constituencies in Rolpa, which later enabled the Maoists to establish the district as their base for the insurgency.

Jayapuri's party changed its name to CPN (Maoist) in 1995 and launched the armed struggle known as the 'People's War' on 13 February 1996. She was actively involved in the insurgency in their base area since the very beginning. In April 1998, she married Vivek K.C., a Maoist from Rukum District, at the age of 26, a relatively late marriage in Rolpa where the majority of girls are married by the age of 18 or 19 years old. It was an inter-caste marriage, which is not uncommon among Maoist cadres. The next year, she gave birth to a baby girl. After staying in a shelter during her one month maternity leave, Jayapuri returned to work in the field with her small daughter for almost two years, often having to hide in the jungle in order to escape the security forces looking for her. When her daughter reached two years of age, Jayapuri handed her over to her mother. Since then Jayapuri has seldom lived with her daughter.

Jayapuri risked her life as one of the few female Maoist leaders who worked in the field. She participated in several major armed actions as a responsible party leader, including those on Holeri police station (Rolpa, July 2001), on Ghorahi district headquarters (Dang, November 2001), and on Satbariya base camp of the Armed Police Force (Dang, April 2002). At the time of the Ghorahi attack, Jayapuri played an important role backing up her party's armed forces as a Dang district party-in-charge, then led the armed forces as a commissar in the time of the Satbariya attack. In the women's front Jayapuri was elected president of the ANWA (Revolutionary) in June 2003. Six months afterwards, her husband who was then a battalion commissar of the People's Liberation Army, was killed in Rolpa during battle with the forces of the Royal Nepal Army.

The ten year Maoist armed struggle definitely changed Nepali society more, to some extent, in rural areas. Furthermore, women came to have more power than ever before. Many women took guns as men did and fought bravely in the battle fields. Yet the situation for women is still a long way from being 'real equality'. Jayapuri admitted even in her party women's representation in terms of leadership is much less than that of men. She said, "Women have to work harder than men to get a higher position, even in our party."

Jayapuri came forward as a candidate of the CPN (Maoist) in a constituency of Rolpa District for the country's first Constituent Assembly election in April 2008. During a month-long electoral campaign period she visited all 25 VDCs in the mountainous district, along with around 35 Maoists, including a cultural group. Her constituency was one of the strongest held by the Maoists at the center of the insurgency until two years ago; however, Jayapuri's situation was not perfectly secure. Towards the end of March, two local members of her party were murdered by an unknown group in her constituency; but she didn't stop her campaign. Several days after the incident, in a gathering held in Jaimakasara VDC where one of victims was killed, she advised the mass of around 1,000 villagers that the Maoists had fought the People's War in order to liberate the people of Rolpa, whose lives had always been filled with hardship.

Jayapuri was one of the women candidates in her party who could not cast her vote in this election as her name was not on a voters' list. She has no idea of the reason behind this, as she had participated in the general election before 1996. She blamed the administration's ignorance and discrimination over women voters. She won the CA election by obtaining 69% of all votes in her constituency, defeating ten male candidates. After visiting more than twenty VDCs during the electoral campaign, she saw that the political consciousness held by the people of Rolpa had risen, but their physical conditions, including their standard of living, remained unchanged. Jayapuri spoke of her district and the people there -

People in the central power used to consider Rolpa to be one of the most backward districts, and used to hate and discriminate against us. In Rolpa, government and police officers who were sent by the administration in Kathmandu were considered to be supreme and we had to follow them. This situation, in fact, created anti-state feelings among the people in Rolpa and many people joined the Maoists. As a member of the Constituent Assembly, I will fight until the unequal behaviors of the state towards Rolpa end. I want to change my home district by bringing development work within ten years.

As a Magar, as a woman activist, and as a local from Rolpa, Jayapuri's struggle continues as a member the Constituent Assembly to this day.

Written by Kiyoko Ogura