[While there are no estimates of how many Sherpas have left mountain-climbing jobs, census numbers show that the Sherpa population in Nepal has declined from 154,622 in 2001 to 112,946 in 2011. Those figures are disputed by Sherpas who say census officials did not reach all the villages and previously counted Sherpas as other ethnic groups.]
By Binaj Gurubacharya
 |
| "We are Sherpa" reads a banner in Kathmandu. |
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) —
Cheddar Sherpa has scaled Mount Everest seven times while guiding Western
climbers to the top of the world. He has narrowly escaped three avalanches and
seen a dozen of his friends perish on the icy Himalayan slopes.
But an avalanche in April
that swept 16 Sherpas to their deaths — the deadliest climbing accident on
Everest — has shaken him. He's decided that the dangers of his job outweigh the
financial benefits.
"I am 48 years old
now and I thought I had least another five years of climbing left in me,"
Cheddar said. "But after the avalanche, I don't think I want to ever go
back." He is not sure what he will do for a living now.
The April 18 disaster on
the treacherous Khumbu Icefall, where a group of Sherpas were carrying clients'
equipment up the mountain before the peak climbing season, has accelerated an
exodus of Sherpas from the mountain-climbing business. The younger generation
has become more educated and many are moving away to less grueling jobs in the
capital Kathmandu or outside Nepal. Thousands have migrated to the United
States and Europe.
"It used to be that
almost every family had at least a few members who worked for mountaineering
teams in the past but now things have changed. There are less numbers of Sherpa
who are continuing the mountaineering tradition," said Ang Tshering, of
the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
Since the April tragedy,
which briefly led to a boycott by Sherpa guides, many have told Tshering they
want to quit because of pressure from families worried about their safety.
But even before the
accident, Sherpas — an ethnic group that many also use as a last name — have
been drifting away from mountain work. Cheddar, for example, forbade his four
sons from becoming guides and instead insisted they go to college. One is now
an engineer.
"These people do not
want their children to face the hardship they faced in mountaineering and hope
to get them into better professions which are easier and safer," Tshering
said.
Once yak herders and
potato farmers in remote Himalayan villages, Sherpas began helping foreign
climbers scale Nepal's peaks since the country opened up to Westerners in 1950.
One of the big draws of
the job is its relatively good pay. In a country where the average annual
income is just $700, a high-altitude Sherpa guide can make $7,000 during the
three-month climbing season. Foreign climbers can pay $100,000 for a chance to
summit Mount Everest.
Sherpas face enormous
dangers to facilitate these high-paying visitors. They are first up the
mountain. They break the snow, lay the ropes used by the climbers and carry the
heaviest loads.
Beyond the brutal cold
and lack of oxygen at higher elevations, they face the risk of avalanches and
altitude sickness.
As their incomes have
risen, many Sherpa families have left their rural homes, hoping for a more
comfortable lifestyle in the city or abroad.
"I never wanted to
become a mountaineer. I would probably die from altitude sickness if I even
tried," said Karma Gyalzen, a 26-year-old Sherpa who works at a
supermarket in Katmandu's tourist district.
While there are no
estimates of how many Sherpas have left mountain-climbing jobs, census numbers
show that the Sherpa population in Nepal has declined from 154,622 in 2001 to
112,946 in 2011. Those figures are disputed by Sherpas who say census officials
did not reach all the villages and previously counted Sherpas as other ethnic
groups.
Wealthier families have
sent their children to foreign universities. In New York City alone, some 4,000
Sherpas work in restaurants, offices and driving taxis, according to Ang
Chhiring of the New York-based United Sherpa Association.
"The number of
Sherpas migrating to foreign countries has swollen in the recent years,"
said Bal Bahadur K.C., a lawmaker from Solukhumbu, a district where many
Sherpas live.
The dwindling number
involved in mountain-climbing has opened the way for other ethnic groups such
as the Tamangs and Gurungs, many of them very poor, to take jobs as high
altitude guides. Three of those killed in the April avalanche were not Sherpas.
Yet because of the trust
and name recognition that Sherpas have earned over the decades, some members of
other ethnic groups describe their jobs as "sherpas."
"For decades it was
only the Sherpas who worked on the mountains," said Bishnu Gurung, 46, who
has scaled Everest twice. "It has been only a few years since some of us
from other ethnic groups have been able get a chance to guide mountaineers
because there are not enough Sherpas now to meet the demand."
Civil servants
instructed to use Hindi on social media, prompting concern in regions where
Hindi is not the main language
By Maseeh Rahman
Narendra Modi's landslide victory in the Indian general election last
month marked a turning point in the country's politics – but it has also
resulted in a radical change in the country's language of power.
India's home
ministry has instructed civil servants in Delhi to use Hindi rather than
English in all their communications on Facebook, Twitter and other social
media, it emerged this week. Hindi is to also get priority on all government
websites.
But the move has caused concern in regions where Hindi is
not the main language, such as the southern state of Tamil Nadu, which was the
setting for violent anti-Hindi protests in the mid-1960s.
Jayalalithaa
Jayaram, the state's powerful chief minister – whose party is the third largest in the national
parliament – wrote to Modi on Friday asking him to make English the official
language.
Another prominent Tamil leader, M Karunanidhi, said:
"The attempt to accord priority to Hindi, instead of treating equally all
languages … will amount to treating non-Hindi speaking people as secondary
citizens."
Unlike his predecessor Manmohan Singh, Modi – a
self-described Hindu nationalist – took his oath of office in Hindi, and not in
India's other official language, English. And even though he can speak English,
the leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) insisted on
using Hindi during one-on-one meetings with visiting South Asian leaders.
Though Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif could understand him, Sri Lanka's Mahinda
Rajapakse needed an interpreter. The prime minister also gave his maiden speech
in parliament in Hindi, a language he stuck to during his first meeting with
the nation's top civil servants.Modi's ministers were quick to pick up the cue.
So when China's foreign minister came calling, though India's new minister of
external affairs Sushma Swaraj is proficient in English, she insisted on only
using Hindi. (Much as the Chinese dignitary, also well-versed in English, stuck
to Mandarin.)
Language was one of the trickiest challenges faced by
Indian leaders after the departure of the British in 1947. It was not possible
to give only one language priority in a multilingual polity. So a compromise
was struck – English was given joint official language status with Hindi to
assuage the fears of non-Hindi speakers. Twenty-two other Indian languages,
including Tamil, were also recognised by the constitution, and are used as
official languages in provincial administrations.
The expectation was that Hindi would gradually take over
as the lingua franca of government, but English has remained well-entrenched in
the corridors of power.
Modi's rise to power threatens to change all that. His
Bharatiya Janata party has always been a strong proponent of Hindi. And many
Hindu nationalists also harbour a visceral hatred of English, identified with
India's colonial past. In fact, the country's English-speaking elite are often
derisively called "Macaulay's Children", after the British
administrator who introduced English-language education in India in 1835.
But the hasty manner in which the new government has
sought to promote Hindi has got even proponents of the language worried.
"India's plurality is based on the plurality of
languages and religions," said Hindi poet Ashok Vajpayi, a retired civil
servant. "Language is an emotional issue. The cause of Hindi cannot be
divorced from the cause of other Indian languages – all should be promoted.
Hindi cannot possibly flourish at the cost of other languages."
