Editorial»
Roadmap romance
JAN 15 - The disciple asked, “What was God doing before He created the universe?” St. Augustine replied: “He was making hell for those who would ask such questions.” This witty dialogue in a joke form has been often quoted in philosophical discussions. Not because St. Augustine’s answer is an answer to the question. But because the rhetoric of the dialogue confuses the validity of the question itself and hints at the nature of language that is more capable to confuse meanings than to convey them. Nepali politicians have understood such potential of language. That is why they have borrowed the western “roadmap” strategy (for the Middle-East) and tried to indigenize it into the Nepali soil to confuse us once again. This way they can hide their incompetence to find an answer to this crisis of politics.
Some modern Western philosophers have argued that due to its inherent nature, language does not have an absolute power to convey meanings without distortion. As a result, language is more capable to distort and confuse meanings than to deliver them to a targeted audience. Nepal’s political discourses and directions have been an ideal battleground for the interplay of distorted meanings. In our case, it is often the word that reverberates for long while the meaning the word is supposed to bear is long lost in the way. It is interesting to note that the leaders of the CPN-UML, NC and others have already started disputing over the meaning of the word roadmap rather than discussing on what should the roadmap be like. When the UML leaders mention the word roadmap, they feel so very exalted to have the opportunity to use the word as if their position has been elevated to that of George Bush who will now break the Israel-Palestine deadlock with his roadmap.
Before the verbal diarrhea of the roadmap, the Maoists made a word particularly popular: agragaman (a forward-looking move). Whenever they have talked about any political solution, they do not at all fail to mention that it has to be an agragami (forward moving) move. (By the way, who is here arguing that we should move backward?) Following this, all the other party leaders, including the Nepali Congress ones, make it a point not to miss to utter this forward-looking word when they talk about ridding the nation of the crisis. Although the political complexities might be worsening further, we have been agragami in using the words that seem to bear a promise for our future.
Another interesting phrase that we have dearly borrowed from the Westerners is action-plan. A number of government ministries and departments have their own action plans prepared for years to come. Beginning with the much talked about (and now less thought about) national human rights action plan, we have action plans for education, women, Dalits and what not. As if these were not enough, Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa claims that the agenda the King gave to the party leaders few days ago was already there in the government’s action plan. When such words are exported to Nepal from the West, they lose all their original meanings and bear new ones. For instance, action plan in Nepal virtually means a plan that you do not have to put into action.
It is often the uncivil civil society that imports and disseminates such popular words to the politicians. After all, one of the prime responsibilities of the NGO workers is to travel across countries and be a messenger of news about such popular words/phrases. However, the UML this time seems to be impressed to borrow the roadmap concept from a domestic source, which is the students’ protest on the roads of the capital. Each day, the five-party students have been mapping the roads in such a way that the roads now belong either to the security personnel or to the agitating students. So much so that the UML boss is unable to take control of his own party-affiliate student leader.
In a country which has so few roads nationally, a roadmap is not an unwelcome move. However, we cannot forget that Nepal’s roads, however few in number they are, are either full of difficult turns or are damaged beyond maintenance. The literal road-mapping is a difficult task for Nepal due to its geographic situations. On similar lines, the road-mapping for a forward-moving solution to the political crisis is tough due to the same geographic realities again. For instance, the Maoists have not been able to (negatively of course) perform anything better in the past few months. But despite that, we cannot say that things have a rosy color. The Maoists have their own roadmaps in the villages, the students have their own in the cities. In such a tricky mapping context, what good would the other parties’ roadmap be? Moreover, are the King’s agenda, government’s action plan and UML’s roadmap going to have any common ground where the rebel groups too can find a face-saving return to the mainstream?
Interestingly, although the war is still on, the Maoists seem to have already won the war on an ideological level. Because political parties (except for the NM Bijukchhe’s!) seem to be willing to incorporate the issue of republic on their political agenda. They are more or less convinced that this is time we need a new constitution, accompanied by massively new socio-economic policies. Despite this common agreement to the Maoist demand, the war still goes on because war has its own ideology which has transcended humanism.Posted on: 2004-01-16 03:42
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