Oped»
Congress rising?
- Crossroads
AUG 24 -
Nepali Congress has been trying to shore up its rapid decline by holding elections for its delegates from the grassroots to the district, region and centre levels. It is definitely a step in the right direction. Fostering democratic values within can infuse fresh life into the flag-bearers of democracy. Such a process, done well, will strengthen participatory democracy. This will also address the sudden absence of a patriarch of the Koirala clan, figures like BP and GP who often symbolised the party itself, both running it highhandedly and gathering votes in droves. These figures in the clan-dominated political culture of South Asia very often held the party together, charmed the voters, and gave it ideological and political direction. But the question the Congress rank-and-file as well as the leaders confront is this: Can this internal democratic exercise from the bottom up transform the party and help it reincarnate into a party of vigour, vibrancy and values? Or will it just be an exercise to put old wine in a new bottle?
These questions have assumed value not only for the Congress but for the entire country because both are in the hole. The Congress has more or less lost its Madhesi base since the 1990s but especially after the Madhes uprising. Its base among hill indigenous ethnicities has been severely eroded by the rise of ethnic consciousness, on the one hand, and the Maoist popularity, on the other. In this respect, the recent death of the Congress veteran Bal Bahadur Rai was a symbolic event. What is left in its trough still are the members of the traditional non-royalist landed gentry and their descendents, the hill priestly class and a scattering of Madhesis, including the Tarai indigenous groups, and hill indigenous ethnicities.
When I was growing up among the Rajbanshis (those were the early Panchayat days), I associated the Congress with zamindars. Indeed, the unruly sons of the zamindars were the only members of the Congress left in my area. These men were totally devoted to it. They and their patriarchs had been recruited by the more prominent Congress leaders before and after 1950 to oppose the Ranas. But with the advent of the Panchayat system, the village level Congress workers had turned themselves into nothing more than mere sympathisers and become passive. The murderous fierceness of the Maithili-speaking Congress activists in the Janakpur belt didn’t exist there. And then I was sent across the border to an Indian village high school for studies.
In a place called Bhutaha across the border from Sikti lived a Nepali-speaking man in Laxman Mandal’s house. I came to know about him from Mandal’s son who became my classmate. Whenever I walked by my classmate’s cluster of houses by the dirt road, I would see him sitting by the roadside, doing something or the other. My friend said that the man lived by himself and that he was probably Newar (“Do you know what that means?” he said.) And, surprise, surprise, he made bombs and kept a pistol, I was told. When I asked my friend if anyone came to see him, my friend said that on rare occasions Congress leaders did. Otherwise, the man lived by himself, never crossing the border into Nepal. The bomb, the pistol, the isolation from his linguistic and cultural community made him a romantic figure to my pubescent mind, at once fascinating and awe-inspiring. How did he live by himself in a remote Indian village as a dependent in somebody’s house, always speaking an alien language? The image of Congress that had come to associate in my mind with the unruly sons of zamindars dissipated. The cause for which people sacrificed their family, culture and language and lived in exile must be a worthy cause, I thought. But even then I couldn’t reconcile the two images—the zamindar’s profligate, arrogant sons and the devoted, rather ascetic exile.
Then I went to college on the banks of the Ganges. Indira Gandhi’s emergency came, and with it came Fanishwarnath Renu, the vernacular Hindi writer, to make a speech against the emergency. The vice chancellor of the university was Devendra Prasad Singh. I heard rumours that both Renu and Singh were associated with BP and the Nepali Congress. I didn’t know much about Singh but I had high regard for Renu who was committed to village life and socialist ideals. The image of Congress rose in my estimation.
But I still couldn’t reconcile between these figures and the unruly sons of zamindars in Nepal. How could they belong to the same formation? So, in the referendum of 1979, despite walking the villages and giving speeches in favour of multiparty system, I refused to join the Congress.
Then I became a college teacher in Biratnagar. The student politics on campus was quite a show. While there was no trace of Panchayat followers
on college campus, outside they ruled the roost. On campus, however, the student wings of the communists made fiery speeches and broke up into factions. But the real power to break the college furniture, intimidate the college officials and demonstrate real potential for violence belonged to the student wing of the Congress.
The image of Congress once again received a beating in my mind despite the fact that my mother and father would become its supporters. In time, I would come to know the deeper malaise from which the Congress suffered. And foremost among them
was its outdated, ineffectual leadership that failed to articulate a clear and suitable vision for the future other than opposing autocracy.
So, this election from the bottom up should do some good to the Congress only if it helps in replacing the top, deadwood leadership. The Congress rank and file, especially its young convention delegates, should ask why they want to elect either Sher Bahadur Deuba or Sushil
Koirala? What have been their achievements? Based on what they have done, what will they do to lead the party to a new future? Who in the party possess ideas, energy, creativity, leadership qualities, and intellectual and emotional capacity to energise it for the 21st century? If they answer these questions honestly and critically and follow to their logical conclusion, they will help the rebirth of a more invigorated party of the future. If they act like the clients of one faction leader or another, as they have done so far, and follow them blindly, the Grand Old Party of Nepal will have little to show for its bottom-up electoral exercise.
Posted on: 2010-08-25 08:15
Headlines
Advertisements
