Something about the man
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Questions that challenge me the most in modern Nepal are: Who was Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala, alias BP? What was the exact shape of his political vision? Was he a writer who in some impelling moment of literary consciousness gravitated towards the turf of politics? Most important of all, why does he keep reverberating in the consciousness of politicians who would have been his arch rivals if he were still living, most importantly the Maoists of Nepal who rose from a small organisation to immense heights and changed the entire political landscape and political psychology of power and engineered the downfall of the institution of monarchy, the old historical House of Gorkha, and have been architecting political changes by working in tandem with other established political parties?
Nepali history records this party as a new political force that waged full-fledged war against the state machinery, signed peace deals with all the seven parliamentary parties and entered the politics of poll, dialogue and reconciliation. Even the disgruntled factions within the Maoists, the so-called hardliners, have not formally and practically renounced that path. So everything, consent or dissent, shows that Nepali politics has assumed a new avatar whose main goals are change and forward mobility. But Maoist leader Prachanda — once very powerful and unchallenged within his party and now criticised for his politics of reconciliation by a faction within his own party led by senior leaders, his long-time comrades — has been heard evoking memories of BP Koirala at different modes of his political career.
Prachanda’s detractors have said that he does this for politics, not out of a deep-seated “bhakti” for the late founder of the Nepali Congress BP Koirala. But when his controversial speech given to his combatants in Shaktikhor camp in the first week of May 2009 became public — and some Nepali visual media showed it with all earnestness adding apocalyptic comments — that was the end of Maoist politics, and certainly the end of this particular leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal.
One reference struck me quietly, though its effect was stormy in my mind. Even in a speech delivered to placate his combatants to wait perhaps for an uncertain final day, Prachanda was citing the example of BP Koirala before them. His interpretation of BP’s politics rests on two themes: “He left the armed revolution incomplete for us to complete and we, the Maoists, took up the arms he had laid to rest. Second, ‘conspiring forces’ toppled BP.” At a programme organised on Dec 30 by the Nepali Congress at the BP Museum in Sundarijal to mark National Reconciliation Day and commemorate BP Koirala’s return to Nepal 35 years ago, Prachanda repeated the citation one more time. He likened himself to BP Koirala and said, “He will always remain the source of my inspiration.”
I always see great significance in Nepali politicians of diverse thoughts and generations evoking the memory of BP Koirala. One word his own party, and, sadly, those who supported the institution of monarchy, used to repeat and still do when it comes to interpreting history, is politics of reconciliation only in the context of working with the king to find a peaceful way forward. But I see full significance of BP’s politics of reconciliation only when revolutionaries, leaders of the “people’s war” like Prachanda, youths holding different political views, entrepreneurs, academics and media people evoke the politics of memory by placing BP Koirala at the centre.
BP’s politics of reconciliation was not dual politics of fantasy — one of burying the past and the other of forgetting or entirely cooling down the politics of violence. His dual perceptions to a great extent rested on reinterpreting history and pacifying king Mahendra’s politics of coercion, though it had taken the lives of many prominent politicians of the NC and others. He did so to begin some urgently needed work to change Nepal from the medieval age to modern times. His most precious time was wasted in that prison where Sushil Koirala, president of the NC, was speaking with emotion and calling on Prachanda to go ahead with the mission of peace which would receive his full support.
That was indeed a very telling event in the present complex context of politics where agreements are made and broken, where the negative middle and upper middle class intelligentsia is never tired of churning out litanies against any constructive process and the main architects of the politics of reconciliation, and where politics is taking psycho-socio turns over and above the politics of identity and class.
One way BP’s politics of reconciliation could have been outdated or anachronistic would be the victory of the fantasy of violence over that of pacification. The ground was appropriate in Nepal for that after a 10-year war, loss of over 13,000 lives and untold misery of the people. But the interesting part of modern Nepali politics is that it reverted to the exigency of the politics of reconciliation where, among those involved in that process, is the Nepali Congress itself that is playing a very crucial role.
Prachanda’s reiteration of BP’s name, therefore, is both realistic as well as metonymic because BP evokes many associations in the Nepali modern consciousness including a culture of the mind, a need to understand the problems of society at large, and the agonies and joys of individual characters who have lived at different modes of Nepali history. I believe we should turn to BP Koirala and his literary writing to understand that.
After returning from exile by calling for the politics of reconciliation 35 years ago, BP was not invited to participate in political discussions by king Birendra. Instead, he was taken to a special court for a trial. The text that he produced there in his defence still remains the most powerful document of liberty and the Nepali people’s democratic rights. So, if leaders of different political parties gathering at the space where BP, sadly, spent difficult but creative years understand the spirit of the defence made by this leader, they would understand the practical and academic meaning of the politics of reconciliation. The distance between Sundarijal and the court was very short.
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