Oped»
Diagnosis and cure
- CROSSROADS
AUG 10 -
The political situation in Nepal has gotten into a series of knots one after another ever since 2006 when the Maoists and the seven-party alliance signed the 12-point agreement. To be sure, successful CA elections; signing of the CPA; declaration of a republic; successful elections of the president, vice-president, chair of the CA; and, not least, the acceptance of federal structure as part of state restructuring in the aftermath of the Madhes uprising were historic achievements. The Maoists who had subjected the country to bloodletting in the past decade in the pursuit of their dreams of a proletarian Shangri-la and taken on the agenda of ethnic justice along the way followed by the Royal Nepal Army’s legitimate counter-insurgency measures and many illegitimate ways to contain the insurgency came to a productive end facilitated by India’s political and bureaucratic class. The hardcore royalists may have been unhappy but most royalists supported the republican state that conferred Nepalis the status of citizens from subjects for the first time in Nepal’s history. These were no mean achievements for a country that had been closed to the world until 1950 and had hobbled along the way in democratic experimentation since.
But what has gone wrong since the failure of the Dahal government to integrate and rehabilitate their PLA combatants into the republican set up followed by the equally unsuccessful Madhav Nepal government? Extension of the CA became such a stressful event that members of the civil society and intellectuals had to issue warnings about dire consequences to the political parties if they failed to extend the CA. And female and many UML lawmakers had to resort to rebellion and sloganeering.
Are Maoists alone to blame for many of these political logjams and ills? Are the non-Maoist parties, too, as intransigent as the Maoists in their pursuit of pure liberal democratic dreams and avoidance of Maoist totalitarian nightmare? Is India to blame for every failure and logjam in Nepali politics? Or, going a bit further, is the very character of hill high caste men, forged as it has been in the foundry of high caste feudalism and courtier culture of intrigue to advance oneself by any means, conspiracy to bring down one’s rivals, suspicion all around and relentless ill-will toward each other to blame for these persistent logjams? Common Nepalis are fed up with the lack of transparency and goodwill among Nepal’s top leaders. On the contrary, look at President Rambaran Yadav and CA Chair Subhas Nembang. These two figures seem to be the voice of sanity and hope for Nepal’s democratic future with their cool and measured approach to things.
India is right to be concerned about what happens in Nepal. Seized within by the Red Corridor and threatened
from without by Islamic Jihadists, the open border poses a threat to India’s internal security and its steady rise to self-sufficiency and global prominence. The Indo-Nepal open border becomes a conduit for infiltration of rogues into India via Nepal. But independent of Pakistan and Jihadists or the Indian Maoists, Indo-Nepal relation is too complicated for reasons of geography, culture, economics and politics to allow India to remain indifferent to the happenings in Nepal even if we discount general international concern at the deteriorating political condition and instability in any member country in the world community. India is often blamed when it remains indifferent but it also gets blamed when it gets involved.
But the way Nepali leaders have replaced Narayanhiti Durbar with Delhi Durbar is nothing short of shameful and demoralising to the Nepali psyche. Why do Nepali leaders of all ilk have to be guided, advised, mentored and patted by Delhi on even insignificant matters? Delhi, too, doesn’t know how to make subtle diplomatic moves in Nepal. Its political and bureaucratic class, reflecting the ignorance and arrogance of many of its people toward Nepal, adopt crude methods to bend Nepali rulers to its will. Such crude tactics may behoove India’s praiseworthy rise as a global player but it doesn’t endear it and help win trust and respect in Nepal.
From the MRP debacle to the alleged threat to CA member Ram Kumar Sharma, India’s diplomatic core has shown that it is either incorrigibly arrogant or not well-trained enough in neighbourhood diplomacy to get things subtly right in its favour. True, there has been a contingency of Nepalis, especially many leftists of hill high caste origin and some among the indigenous hill folks, who have been anti-India for a variety of complex conscious or unconscious reasons. And the Nepali ruling class, especially the palace led by Mahendra-badis, has always exhibited anti-India façade while carrying on clandestine links with India’s establishment for its own autocratic and ethnic supremacy. But India’s crude diplomatic moves to handle Nepal and Nepali politics almost always backfire. The MRP fiasco and Sharma’s case are examples for everyone to see.
Furthermore, it seems that the Indian establishment thinks that the Madhesis and the Madhesi parties are in their pockets to manipulate, arm-twist, use and abuse, take for granted and ignore when their use is no longer deemed important. True, Madhesis have soft corners for India for a variety of reasons—culture, familial and linguistic links, long history of discrimination and disenfranchisement by the Nepali state—but Madhesis are not playthings in
the hands of the Indian establishment. India is certainly their friend but not master; India cannot take them for granted. Therefore, India needs to be more subtle and respectful in its diplomatic moves toward Nepal and Nepalis of all hues but at the same time be candid about its concerns.
The Maoists have every right to form a government for a variety of reasons: their largest number in the CA; their crucial role in bringing Nepal to the crossroads of ethnic and class justice, republicanism; but the Maoists, at least some of their leaders, seem to have forgotten the ground reality of CA elections in which they didn’t get a majority. They have forgotten that Nepalis gave them the benefit of the doubt by giving them largest number of seats and punished UML and Congress for their murky politics since 1990. But Nepalis never authorised them to go after the realisation of all their dreams in their pure form. While holding on to their agenda of class and ethnic justice and fundamental transformation of the Nepali state, they must see that the future Nepal would basically be a Nepal of mixed values as well as pluralism and multiculturalism in which hundred flowers would bloom.
Finally, we must reflect on the Nepali character and Nepali mind, especially the dominant character and mind, which is another way of saying the high caste Nepali mind and character. While it would be wrong to generalise the Nepali high caste mind and character as a homogenous entity, the display of egoism and inflexibility of the top party leaders (all Bahuns) suggests that there may be something the matter with
the dominant Nepali mind finding it hard to adjust to the fluidity, pluralism, multiplicity, flexibility, multi-directionality of emerging Nepali future. There definitely seems to be a disjuncture between the jaded, stuck-up, aged mindset of the parties’ leadership and the emerging hopes and aspirations of the common Nepali people.
The challenge now is how to transform the parties’ leadership to be responsive to the emerging milieu,
how to bring in line the man, the moment and the milieu for a new Nepal. If the disjuncture persists for long, banality and pathology may very well take over. And that is the danger against which Nepali media, civil society, and the international community need to warn Nepal’s political players—and if need be help replace the old set, through democratic means, with a new set of more attuned leaders.
Posted on: 2010-08-11 07:49
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