Poverty of the mind
Until he was dethroned a couple of years ago, it was not very uncommon to find very well educated people from Darjeeling speak in awed tones about the-then strongman from the hills, Subhas Ghising. Even when it was clear that he was going bonkers, the argument went that anything Ghising did was for the eventual attainment of the state of Gorkhaland, and that it was beyond ordinary mortals like us to comprehend what was going on in that head of his.
If it was a hapless Darjeeling population that conferred on Ghising the power of extraordinary insight, our politicians seem to believe on their own right that they, too, have been blessed with visionary clairvoyance. Just look at the record. In recent months our leaders have increasingly begun to behave as if every decision of theirs is correct and not to be subjected to any kind of public discussion.
Take the spat over the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The Office was first established in Nepal in April 2005, at the height of the royal takeover, and it came about with a fair amount of arm-twisting by the international community and some intense lobbying by the human rights lobby in Nepal.
All was well in the initial years since OHCHR served as a valuable ally against the king’s rule, particularly during the April 2006 People’s Movement II. A few years later began the rumblings against it, from the non-Maoist parties and the same Nepali human rights groups that had striven so hard to bring it here.
That was then. Now, it turns out, it is the Maoists who want OHCHR out while the Nepali Congress and the UML are opposed to the idea. And nowhere in this rather confusing narrative, has it been let on when, how and why this role reversal happened.
Unless you are a keen analyst with your ear permanently glued to the inner workings of Nepali politics, you would be perfectly justified to feel indignant at being left out of a discussion that only a select few seem privy to. Given that we expect political parties to be answerable to the people, at least some public airing of their position, one way or another, would have been more in keeping with a democratic polity.
It certainly is true, to paraphrase Lord Palmerston, that parties have no eternal allies nor do they have any perpetual enemies; only their interests are eternal and perpetual. Otherwise, how does one explain a convergence of the Maoists and the Nepali Congress in proposing blanket amnesty for everyone involved in the worst excesses during the decade-long Maoist conflict? The UML could not resist swiftly clambering on to the high ground by opposing the amnesty idea (although it is likely to come down just as quickly). But, again, none of the parties thought it worth their while to reach out to the people to explain their respective positions on an issue of such national importance.
At the same time, the constantly shifting stances on any number of issues have succeeded in confusing everyone. No longer can we be sure of what values any party stands for. Take the recent Nepali Congress banda. Just as there was mounting public anger against shutdowns, a party with a long and glorious history comes along and displays an utter lack of imagination to endorse bandas as a legitimate form of public action. It beats reason why the party leadership even bothered to call for restraint among its workers while enforcing the banda, but it is indicative of the intellectual poverty of the leadership that it felt “compelled” to bless the public mayhem that resulted.
A side-show to the Nepali Congress banda is that it should have put the European Union in a bit of a fix. Having so boldly proclaimed the denial of visas to those responsible for organising bandas, it will either have to eat its words, or find a way to tell the likes of Sher Bahadur Deuba and Ram Chandra Poudel that they are not welcome to that part of the world. (And, if media reports are to be believed, it was pathetic that the prime minister tried to use the EU visa as an argument to convince the Nepali Congress leadership to call off the banda.)
The reason for the banda was equally instructive. With the “martyrdom” of Shiva Poudel in the course of a long-running violent turf battle between the youth wings of the Nepali Congress and the UML, it has become clear (once again) that thuggery is not the preserve of any one party.
Perhaps the long-reviled YCL (or whatever name it currently goes under) is having the last laugh.
Poverty of the mind also became very evident in the fracas over Bal Krishna Dhungel, the CA member convicted of murder and who is still at large. Having used up all his arguments to no avail, Prime Minister Bhattarai could do no better than throw the “dollar-monger” epithet at those who challenged his proposed plan to pardon Dhungel.
All through the “people’s war” years, human rights defenders risked their lives to put the government on alert about its international obligations to respect human rights, including that of the Maoists. And each successive government—whether of the Nepali Congress (with or without the support of the UML) or the king—could only impotently point to the foreign funding of those who led the human rights cry, while doing nothing to actually improve its own record. Baburam Bhattarai the prime minister seems to have forgotten that it was as Baburam Bhattarai the revolutionary that he insisted on human rights workers such as Padma Ratna Tuladhar and Daman Nath Dhungana to ensure his own safe passage when he came for negotiations in 2003.
Such a conflation of parties and personalities brings to mind the conclusion of the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell. The pigs led by Napoleon, who has usurped leadership of the animals, are seen by the other animals in the farmhouse cavorting with Mr Pilkin-gton, the hated owner against whom they had collectively revolted (not unlike Prachanda sharing honours alongside ex-crown prince Paras in the top ranks of the rather mysterious Asia Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation). As the “lesser” animals turn back forlorn, they hear a commotion in the farmhouse whence they return to spy through the window. The shouting, it turns out, was because both Napoleon and Mr Pilkington had played an ace of spades at the same time. And then: “Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
It has indeed become impossible for us to say who is who either, here, in today’s Nepal.
The one group that would claim to be unsullied thus far by Nepali politics is Mohan Baidya and his coterie within the Maoists. But then Orwell wrote Animal Farm as an allegory of Stalinist Russia. Since the Georgian dictator belongs to the pantheon of communist deities that the Maoist hardliners draw inspiration from, there is little to hope from that group either.
Posted on: 2011-12-22 08:45
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