{"id":7422,"date":"2009-01-28T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-28T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/01\/28\/nepal-s-terai-region-with-half-the-country-s-population-wants-sovereign-status\/"},"modified":"2009-01-28T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-28T12:00:00","slug":"nepal-s-terai-region-with-half-the-country-s-population-wants-sovereign-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/01\/28\/nepal-s-terai-region-with-half-the-country-s-population-wants-sovereign-status\/","title":{"rendered":"Nepal&#8217;s Terai Region &#8212; With Half the Country&#8217;s Population &#8212; Wants &#8220;Sovereign Status&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.ddinews.gov.in\/International\/International+-+Headlines\/SD.htm\">www.ddinews.gov.in<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">NEPAL, January 28, 2009: An armed group, which has stepped up pressure on the government to declare Nepal&#8217;s Terai plains a sovereign state, on Tuesday demanded that the country be rechristened as &#8220;Union of Himalayan States.&#8221; Smyukta Janatantrik Terai Mukti Morcha (SJTMM), which is currently engaged in a dialogue with the Maoist-led government, demanded that Nepal be converted into &#8216;Union of Himalayan States&#8217; as the Madhesis living in the plains feel the word Nepal does not represent them. Terai should be declared a sovereign state, adopting a federal system like that of Switzerland, and the country&#8217;s name be changed to Union of Himalayan States, said Kautalya Sharma, coordinator of SJTMM. Nepal&#8217;s Terai lowlands are home to about half of the country&#8217;s 27 million people, and the residents of the region, known as Mahadhesis, have long complained of discrimination by the Himalayan nation&#8217;s hill communities.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.ddinews.gov.in NEPAL, January 28, 2009: An armed group, which has stepped up pressure on the government to declare Nepal&#8217;s Terai,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}