Swastika marks the spot! Sorry . . . anyway, this is a ballot, and the rubber stamp used to mark it happens to be in the design of a swastika rather than an X or checkmark. The swastika as a symbol, as you probably know, predates the Nazi Party in Germany by several thousand years, and in some part of Nepal it was a symbol for a school.

Now that that matter is taken care of . . . well, it was the day of Nepal's first nationwide general election ever. Since most of the population of Nepal is illiterate, canditates were identified by the symbol of their political party; for example, the tree identified the Congress party (based on the Indian Congress Party of Mahatma Gandhi), the plow stood for the Labor party. A voter would stamp a swastika next to the hammer and sickle to vote for the Communist candidate, or just to confuse a Western tourist observer.

By the way, this election, which took place a few days before the American general election in which Newt Gingrich and the Republicans swept both houses of congress in America, resulted in the Communists sweeping the Nepali parliament! There's nothing history is better at producing than irony. . . .

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All images ©2002-2003 by Dietrich Neuman