Chulo, Choli ra Banduk ‘A Stove, a Blouse and a Gun’

A girl married at the age of 13 gets exploited by her husband and in-laws. She wants to be free from all the hardship. Maoists promises of freedom, liberty and indoctrinated policies appeal her. She leaves her family and joins the militia.

A girl belongs to so called lower class family who owns nothing. They have to work tirelessly to make meal for evening or morning. In the midst of extreme poverty and hardship, Maoist's ideology brings rays of hope. She leaves her family and joins them.

A girl while studying at college gets attracted by Maoist's ideologies and promises. She joins them and works to build strong student's base of party.

These are the some glimpses of female Maoists from the camera of Subina Shrestha. Her 22 minutes long documentary tries to explore reasons why many women joined the party and their experiences as cadre. It also tries to review the 10 year old people's war from women's perspective.

Our male dominant social structure has always way around discriminated the females and denied them their rights and liberties. So when the conflict began Maoists gave promises of equality, freedom and liberty to women and they too joined Maoists. Now there are around 40% women constituting Maoist's People's Army. Many joined liking their ideologies but it's not the case with all. "A stove, A blouse and A gun" also tries to show how many girls were abducted and recruited without their consent. An ex-Maoist cadre shown in shadow says:
We were taken to Maoist's program saying we would be freed soon. They made us walk at night. Later when we wanted to come back, they told us that our names have already been reached to comrade Prachanda (Maoist Supremo) and we cannot go back. Even if we go back to home we would be shot by army. We couldn't do anything as we didn't know way back to home.

This is just a single case. Director Subina expressed that she couldn't find any who were willing to share their stories.

Now the conflict is in state of being managed, the Maoist's female cadre are actively anticipating the outcome of their sacrifices. But their dream seems to be in bleak situation as the party which gave them dreams and promises also acted same way as other parties. Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has only 2 women member in its Central Committee and it didn't include any woman in it's Peace Negotiating Team.

This documentary has shown the retrospectives of people's war and women's active participation. Now the Nepal is being re-structured. It's yet to see whether women's voices would be heard or not.