Photo courtesy: Shutterstock

Analysis of Beggars in Modern Nepal Abstract This paper attempts to classify the beggars of modern Nepal according to their professionalism and their art of begging. By observing their principles of begging, we have classified them into 6 categories and each category has been explained in brief. Keywords: Beggers, Nepal, Honest Beggers, Religious Beggers, Educational Beggers, Political Beggers, Skilled Beggers, Seasonal Beggers Introduction Everyone knows or believes they know what it means by the word ‘Beggar’. They are one of the types of people in the society, who have got a distinct way of living with their art of begging. They are found everywhere, from the religious sites to the sites of cultural heritage, from the crowded places to even deep inside the suburbs. Some beggars even provide us with the service of home delivery by coming to beg directly in our homes. Some beggars visit our home once in a blue moon. So each of them has their own way of living. This is the general conception of beggars we have in our mind. Most of the people view the term ‘beggar’ as a collective noun to represent all the humans involved in the begging. But an abstract question arises, “If all the beggars are same, then why their art of begging differs from one to another?” and immediately it becomes clear to us that the question is not so easy, as it appeared to us on our first sight. Since most of the beggars are independent of each other in their profession, we encounter difficulty to judge their begging manifesto or their philosophy of begging. Through this paper, we have tried to classify the beggars of current day Nepal into six categories, on the basis of their deep-rooted virtues of begging, and how this art of begging convinces us neurologically, that, we the general people are forced to offer them donation from our side as much and at most we can. 1. Honest Beggars: These types of beggars are classical in their nature and often adopt the classical way of begging. They are the ones who are forced by nature or are cheated by their very own fate, and with the cycles of time, their economic status deteriorated more and more, ultimately leading them to the state of begging. The victims of natural calamities, who loosed everything to nature, are one of the true examples of it. Similarly, the people with physical disabilities, who have no any other options but to beg, to sustain their living also falls under this same category. These are believed to be the most original of all the beggars and morally sound of all. 2. Religious Beggars “Beggars in the name of Religion! Is this possible?” This is the general argument hold by the people who have confined themselves within the boundary of religion. Each day a high amount of money is donated at the temples and every other religious site in the name of Lord. And the fellow disciples of lord commonly known as priests or religious leaders divide the money on the basis of their shares percentage predetermined by them. Similarly, prophets and other persons claiming superstitiously powerful too claim the money from their clients either directly or indirectly in the name of the god and religion, which too labels them as a beggar according to its most thought classical definition. These religious leaders can be even famed as spiritual beggars who provoke our spirits to offer them a donation in the name of religion or god, and their art of begging is too one of the most respected professions in our society. 3. Educational Beggars These type of beggars too are one of the respected beggars in our society. It is evident to us that the number of institutions related to the sector of education is increasing day by day. Different consultancies are mushrooming in the market with the purpose of providing assistance to the students in their study. But it’s a matter a fact, that all these institutions do nothing but, collect a good amount of money from the students to ease a few workload of students and take an indigestible amount of profit from them. The literate students too don’t have any options rather than to pay them as per their demand. Similarly, colleges too have their distinct way of begging by adding the fake and unnecessary to the bills of students and collect an extra sum of money. The student’s union in the colleges are too the union of educational beggars. Hence, educational beggars not only beg in the name of education but even fool the students as well as the general public. 4. Political Beggars Politics is widely considered all over the world as a dirty game played by the crooked ones. But in the inner core of politics, there lies the supreme art of begging. In fact, politicians are the most psychologically active beggars who can reshape or remodify their philosophy of begging, in an accord with the running time, and even received applause from the people. They beg for a vote before the election, then the aftermath of the election, they beg for the respect from the people. The entire budget of the country lies in their hand, so they can easily fraud any sum of money by the means of power. They can even hide their crook deeds behind the smokescreen and appear as honest and loyal to their fellow citizen, still begging sympathy and honor from them. Hence they can even be framed as high-profile beggars. 5. Skilled Beggars Obviously, the name itself predicts the nature of these beggars and indubitably they are the most masterminds of all beggars. These types of beggars include illusionists, magician, gamblers and all of the people within their same rank. These beggars fake illusion to the eyes of people and earn a considerable amount of money. Has anyone ever heard of a casino that went on loss due to the victory of a gambler? So these beggars are the most genius of all who uses both of their brain and hand, mastered skill and tactics in such a way that no one ever guesses that they are begging. 6. Seasonal Beggars As the name suggests these types of beggars appear among the public with their personally scheduled seasons or routines. For examples, during festival season, lots of beggars are seen hovering around. Few of them even play a sharp bad music to irritate the people inside the houses. So the house owners are forced to donate some offerings to those beggars to get rid of their acts. Similar, on the occasion of different nationally celebrated days, many beggars even from the categories as discussed above are active with their own schemes and plans of begging. Except for the honest beggars, every other branch of beggars is also a type of seasonal beggars, as they become opportunist when their season favors them. Conclusion: The word “Beggar” if taken in a broad sense would comprise every human on the earth because no one is self-sufficient and everyone needs the help of others. But the question we have is “How to separate the beggars from the general public”? The answer lies in our virtues with which we live our daily lives. These people who have sold their heart and soul for the profit of themselves are the ones who are to be labeled as beggars, even if they have a high profile or good economic status. Except for the honest beggars, every other category of beggars consists of crooked and evil spirits hidden behind the mask of innocence. It may be safely stated that the Beggers are active, and are involved in every profession and sectors of our society. The religious sites are the places where the poor beg outside and the rich begs inside. The educational sector and the political sector, as we have already mentioned above are the sectors which possess a high number of beggars of their respective profession, and they are fooling us like once German philosopher Nietzsche said,"One should only steal where one cannot rob." Thus the Beggers have violated the terms what it is an essence to be a "Good Human". Furthermore, the beggers have polluted their free spirit, as a result of which they are unable to think properly for even themselves. They only believe in their absolute philosophy of beggar-ness which has stamped a stigma on the classical concept of morality. So, humanity will only be at it's the chastest form when the beggers are replaced by the noble persons, and our society becomes free of polluted heads and crooked spirits. References 1. Nietzsche, F.W. (2006). Thus spoke Zarathustra: a book for all and none. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2. Nietzsche, F. W., & Faber, M. (1998). Beyond good and evil: Prelude to a philosophy of the future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3. Parajuli, N. and Dahal, A. Polluting the Brain, DWIT News, http://dwitnews.com/polluting-the-brain/ Last accessed on 8th Oct 2017 4. Parajuli, N. and Dahal, A. A Glimpse of Student's Union in Nepal, DWIT News, http://dwitnews.com/a-glimpse-of-student-unions-in-nepal/ Last accessed on 8th Oct 2017 Authors: Arjun Dahal Tribhuvan University, Nepal, [email protected] Nikita Parajuli Tribhuvan University, Nepal, [email protected]