Mao power blocks Miss Nepal pageant

Published on Saturday 13 September 2008 19:36

IN SOME countries, feminists stage impassioned but impotent protests outside beauty pageants. In Nepal, the women of the new Maoist regime had a more effective solution: shut down the city where it was going to be held.

Incensed that their brave new world was being debased by something as tawdry and bourgeois as the Miss Nepal competition, they simply made it impossible for the organisers to press ahead with plans to stage the show in Katmandu.

Extreme it may have been, but it should hardly have come as a surprise to those involved to discover that the Maoists meant business. The country's king had already learned the hard way that life in the Himalayan country was changing, when he was turfed out of his palace.

From the moment the Maoists secured a surprise victory in April's elections, the organisers of the competition were in trouble, with their traditional venue being used as a temporary home for the country's new parliament.

Now they are desperately searching for somewhere else to hold the contest, after being forced to postpone the show for a second time in the face of a concerted campaign against them. The contestants, who were hoping to compete for the honour of representing their country at the Miss World finals in Ukraine on October 4, are distraught.

Nineteen-year-old undergraduate Pranayna KC is one of hundreds of girls who applied to take part. "There's nothing un-Nepalese about the contest," she said yesterday "We are very much aware about our culture and heritage and the contest in no way demeans that."

Like the other contestants vying for the top prize of 100,000 Nepalese rupees (775) plus a scooter and the chance to appear in other competitions, Pranayna had spent weeks preparing for the event.

The contestants, Pranayna said, had been working with aid agencies on social projects, including combating people trafficking – a major problem in Nepal.

"We have been doing so with a clean heart," she said. "We never did it for publicity. But now I think our work should get more exposure so that people come to know the kind of work we are doing."

But the Communist Party of Nepal disagrees. The competition was socially unacceptable and a tool to exploit the contesting women for commercial gain. The Maoists have warned other venues not to consider offering the contest a new home.

"Beauty contests are not good – they are against our culture," said spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara. "The way they are depicting beauty is something that our country is not used to. They should change the format and we should always remember that any cultural transformation can take place gradually, it can't be sudden. So, they should respect the culture and sensitivities of people of Nepal."