Karl Marx

Speaking to KARL MARX from Kathmandu

Karl Marx! wherever you are, come to Kathmandu and see for yourself that only your old bearded picture hangs on the walls of our political parties as if you have always been old and never young, but what about your young portrait? May be socialists, communists and revolutionaries assume that your younger face is immature for your ideas. Karl Marx, your illustrious bread confuses us to believe without careful consideration that it is still possible to envision an impossible situation where all of us human beings are free, same, together and equal.

Karl Marx, just as you appear in your old breaded portrait, you are like our dead father, and as your children we cherry pick your ideas according our comfort and self interest, and contentedly ignore those that contradict our position. After all, socialist and communist in Nepal have all agreed that capitalism is a highway for achieving their socialist dreams and they are ready to agree more with each other if the capitalism they want is preferably more corrupt and crony.

Karl Marx, your beard has become a symbol of imitation, and for our political leaders and their followers growing facial hair also signifies assimilation of your ideas. Even the new one has decided to remain unshaved, without a beard none of us appear as committed and sincere enough.

Karl Marx, even for dogmatic followers your dreams is too dangerous to achieve. Hence, they have converted your thoughts into something like opium with narcotic effects to help us two legged mammals get so high that we forget we don’t have wings.

Karl Marx, you are the prophet of this ill-fated land and it’s blasphemous to think contrary to your thoughts, therefore from old to new, all the Nepalese political parties want to reframe you as their own. Everybody wants you on their side so that they can distribute everything for free to everybody. And, the political commentator who concludes that each and every unresolved social or political problem is a government failing and frames a particular class of people as its root stands on the left side of Karl Marx.

Karl Marx, it’s so easy to win elections by becoming left, by reminding voters that they have been left out, by exposing all negatives of what is happening right and by false promises of radical transformation, without acknowledging what we have achieved so far and how far we can move ahead with what we have

Karl Marx, you proclaimed that after the triumph of communist revolution we would all be equal regardless of our caste, creed, ethnicity, gender, economic class and other social divisions, but Karl Marx what about that those blood wasted in the torturous process of cutting and hitting by hammer and sickle to bring all of us into same shape and size, for the redistribution of wealth

Karl Marx, your ideas can transformation each of us as oppressed, discriminated, mistreated and marginalized, see in the proportional representation system of Nepal, how many of us have been left out

Karl Marx, you complained that philosophers before had only contemplated and you wanted to change the ways of the world and turn things up, down and around. But, Marx, what happens to your revolutionary ideas, when all the dialectics of history (thesis-antithesis and synthesis) fall apart and join again together for yet another continuity of the past.

Gaurav Ojha

Karl Marx, your ideas have become a standard criteria to divide us into the categories of center, center-left, far-right, reactionaries, revolutionaries, socialists and conservatives, strangely in Kathmandu even when left is so left from the right/ right is so wrong from the left, both left, right and center can come together to serve each other’s self interest. They get your message right; you called for all the working human beings to unite

Karl Marx, you are a romantic poet disguised as an enlightenment thinker, you were rational about human beings, but the human beings we know is different from what you thought, we are contrarians, creative, impulsive, partially evolved, dominating, selfish and more importantly we don’t want to lose our chains

Karl Marx, the most referenced thinker, you have brainwashed us with your ideas to demand for something impossible, you are still the reason for hippies, theorists, revolutionaries, poets and activists to think that it is possible to live without private ownership, to explore different approaches and methods for either overcoming social and political barriers that divide and discriminate us, to dream of those days when we shall all be free and equal and to assume that we the greedy, impulsive, shortsighted, selfish genes can become sustainable and unite together for a greater and virtuous cause beyond our individual self interests.

Karl Marx, whatever shall be our fate in this planet earth as long as human mind survives, we the wretched, discriminated and oppressed shall never let go of your dream, we will hang you on the walls and think with your thoughts, till the Great Dissolution Karl Marx irrespective of whether your ideas become thick or thin, you will be remembered

Gaurav Ojha is a faculty of communication; critical thinking and marketing research at different educational institutions. He can be reached at ojhagaurav84@gmail.com