PM Oli wants westerners/foreigners to call rhinos ‘gaindas’

  • August 21, 2019

Nepalese PM Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli addressing the 56th Director Generals of Civil Aviation conference in Kathmandu re-visited an old argument. Speaking to around 400 delegates from over 40 countries, he looked straight at them and said:

“Do you know what gaida is? You people call them rhinos. But rhinos are not rhinos, they are gaidas’. Continuing his statement, he expresses surprise that people call ‘gaindas’ ‘rhinos’ – even nations who do not have a rhino/gaida population.”

PM Oli earlier had made similar remarks in 2015 – in a video which went viral he says ‘Gaindas are not born in Europe, America, or Australia. One has to come to Nepal to see gaindas’.  He goes on to proclaim that ‘what have you seen in life, if you haven’t seen a gainda?’

His statement become the butt of social media jokes, this time is no different.

On Twitter, one user Phalano has an advice for PM Oli.


Coming back to the statement, PM Oli also insisted that Mt. Everest should be called Sagarmatha, just like in our local dialect. However, a much older and lesser know name of Mt. Everest is Chomolunga – one which was coined by the original residents of the region.

PM Oli’s obsession with rhinos/gaindas is perplexing to many – however, the word like many other
English words has Greek roots.

Also, rhinos/gaindas are native to the jungles of South Asia and Africa, Nepal one of the nations which has a significant population of the animal.