Oped»
The Mao metaphor
- WORDS & ECHOES
AUG 17 -
A huge portrait of Mao Zedong in oil placed high outside the Forbidden City of Beijing draws my attention on a hot day of Aug. 2. The portrait occupies the central position in the visual path of Tiananmen Square. But to several young people with me, the portrait has only a metaphorical meaning. The huge space and the buildings around are their visual fêtes. To me the entire square resonates with the portrait of the chairman and the political events of the China in the second half of the 20th century. I feel I am struggling with a cumulative force created in my mind by a sudden combination of the epistemology associated with the Chinese communist history, the halo created around the space, the world-shaking events that emanated from this political location and my own romantic dreams of revolution and change as a youth from an eastern village of Nepal.
An intelligent guide who is speaking with great élan about the historicity of the place does not dwell so much on the portrait of Mao or his dominating charisma as on the festivity of the place. He does not narrate the hair-raising events that happened at different times in this square of modern China. I was waiting to hear him say more about the physical and psychological power of Mao that was circulated around the world especially in 1966 when he started the Cultural Revolution. A college student, I was surprised to read a report published in People’s Daily on July 26, 1966 how Mao had made a triumphal swim in the Yangtze River at his old age. That sensational physical presence of Mao has become a subject of history in modern China, a new economic power.
The frame of the portrait looks dusty and fading under the weather. But Mao’s image is preserved at the mausoleum and in portraits and banknotes. I recall how the Rs. 100 banknotes in India bear the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. It is interesting to remember how these bills bearing their portraits bolster the economic structures that both these leaders in different ways would have rather wanted to see function differently. Mao may have already become a metaphor. In Nepal, the largest party in the Constituent Assembly, the UCPN (Maoist), is named after him; but I guess they too use Mao’s name only as metaphor. I wonder if Mao’s name is articulated relatively more in Nepal than in China today.
The guide says, on Independence Day, a huge portrait of Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the nationalist movement
who fought against the warlords for the unification of China with his Kuomintang party is brought here. He emphasises that the portrait is many times larger than that of Mao that you see there. I tap my random knowledge of Chinese history here. The nascent Communist Party of China had participated in the May Fourth Movement against warlords led by Sun Yat-sen in 1922. This story reminds me of two short pieces published in the Far Eastern Survey magazine in 1953. A few interesting historical insights and parallels are worth recalling.
H. Arthur Steiner in the January issue of the magazine examines the communist alliance with Sun Yat-sen as
fatal because, in his words, this alliance gave the communists in China a prestige “which they otherwise could not have gained”. But anyone who reads the history of that time knows that Steiner’s argument is wrong, because the continued alliance with the Kuomintang even after Sun Yat-sen’s death had proved fatal for the communists.
This question of giving prestige to a party by alliance resonates in contemporary political discourse in Nepal. A section of the thinkers and some political parties believe that the late Girija Prasad Koirala gave the Maoists prestige by making it possible to sign a comprehensive peace agreement with them on
Nov. 21, 2006. This very misconception is at the very core of the present
political impasse. Girija Prasad Koirala through that agreement had recognised that nothing but consensual politics could work in Nepal at the present stage.
He had even gone as far as far as
calling all the parties to forge a 10-year consensual alliance. Sarita Giri in an
op-ed piece (“Wish he were here,”
Aug. 13, Page 6) has highlighted some of that historicity.
The same issue of the Far Eastern Survey interestingly carries an article written by Werner Levi about Nepali politics titled Political Rivalries in Nepal. What he says of the political situation in 1953 curiously speaks about the present political situation in Nepal. It says, “But the unity of the political groups during their struggle against the Ranas broke down after the achievement of victory. Factionalism and civil unrest disturbed the country. Some 35 political groups vied for position and power. Disunity prevailed even within the major parties, particularly the Nepali Congress, the two most prominent leaders of which, the half-brothers M.P. and B.P. Koirala, could not cooperate.” There are other interesting parallels in that essay.
This early political history of Nepal highlighted by observers shows that this had already become a subject of concern even outside Nepal. But the most important historical lesson that we have to draw here is that following the “35 groups” fighting and “disunity within major parties” that prevailed in the following years led to the seizure of power by king Mahendra in 1960 and the weakening of the state and dictatorial rule in the country. The cost of the present political impasse will be even higher. We have already seen one very important loss. Nepal’s political parties have nearly lost the prestige they had gained after the political change of 2006 in terms of presenting a political model of consensus to the world, involving a Maoist guerrilla party, commitment to a politics of the polls and, above all, politics of consensus as a pragmatic approach. Now they are blaming Indian envoys for bringing ruptures within their own parties and their dear hearts, over-reading Chinese interest and cultivating a politics of rivalry and bitterness.
The absurd scene of the contest for the premiership will be repeated once again this afternoon. The media will highlight the pathetic scene of the CA members sitting quietly once again. The CA members’ silence is not prophetic; it is conspiratorial. We find it difficult to trust their good intentions because they have not honestly fulfilled their responsibilities before this time also.
Before leaving Tiananmen Square, I look at Mao’s solitary portrait hung outside the forbidden imperial city for the last time. Mao has already been vying with the “bigger” portraits of Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping in China. Though an important man who has made history, Mao Zedong may have already become a metaphor of power and armed revolution. To those parties like the Nepali Maoists who have entered the politics of the polls and market economy, free capital investment and multiparty system, Mao has
clearly become a metaphor. The Nepali Maoists’ political partners and their Indian interpreters may have been spending more time interpreting the metaphor than their political pragmatism, which is at the root of the Nepali political problem including the formation of a consensual government.
Abhi Subedi
abhi@mail.com.np
Posted on: 2010-08-18 08:12
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