That person of impeccable integrity had been instrumental in the overthrow of Ranas and the restoration of Shah monarchy. In an act of ingratitude characteristic of hereditary rulers, Mahendra had no qualms in incarcerating BP when he found that the people’s representative was more popular at home and was held in higher esteem abroad than the supposed incarnation of Lord Vishnu.
The interim verdict of history is unmistakable. Shahs are history; Lord Vishnu would now have to appear in the form of a commoner if the deity wanted to have a say in the affairs of multi-religious and multi-cultural Nepal. But what was it that made the combined force of religious traditions and military might of hereditary rulers tremble in front of the will of the people? Maoists may like to delude themselves that their armed revolt threw away the yoke of the Shahs. In reality, it was the longing for social justice among common Nepalis that first ended the Rana rule in 1951 and then dispensed with the Shah reign in May 2008.
The reason Maoists have failed to find favor among the populace is the same: The silent majority of this country does not believe that the armed insurrectionists are capable of delivering social justice. The tragedy is that the Nepali Congress, the party B P founded to institutionalize democracy, has also been found wanting. Other political parties, including the one leading the present ruling coalition, are merely convenient fronts created for a share in the spoils of office.
LOST LEGACY
The first generation of NC leaders were innovators who lived the life of their values. Struggling against impossible odds, they believed that their sufferings were reason enough for their supporters to line up for the cause. That could have been the reason NC never felt the need to state its political commitments in clear terms. Like Mahatma Gandhi, they probably believed that their lives were their collective messages. However, even the venerable Mahatma had verbalized the aim of Indian independence as Swaraj or sovereignty of every individual, especially that of the last, the least and the lost person of the republic.
In a country with highest disparity index in Asia, it’s the search of social justice that should triumph over narcissistic obsession with pursuits of consumerist happiness.
The French Revolution had chosen Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité as standards of the republican spirit. The US Declaration of Independence sought to institutionalize equality through the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When it came to choosing a tagline for their movement, NC leaders of first generation opted for nationality, democracy and socialism.
Nationality is the sine qua non of politics of sovereignty. Even the vanguard of The Internationale in the Soviet Union after Stalin realized that socialism needed to be secured within national boundaries before it could be exported abroad. Cultural nationalism of ‘wherever we may live, but my heart is Nepali’ kind is a borderless concept. However, the very notion of nationality is tied with the idea of a state and its politics. The nationalism of NC throughout the twentieth century was thus merely a slogan of necessity: It needed to state the obvious repeatedly in order to escape from the unsubstantiated charges of being carriers of anti-monarchist ‘Indian’ values of politics.
Commitment to nationality does not differentiate a political party from any other. Unless proven otherwise, all political forces within a country are expected to be equally committed to the preservation of national identity and the promotion of principles of nationality.
No political party can openly claim that it’s not committed to democracy. Communist and fascist dictators love to qualify it with ‘people’s’, ‘grassroots’ or ‘real’ prefixes, but even they swear by the term democracy. Despite a sterling record of over six decades of struggles for democracy, the NC can’t claim propriety rights over the term. That leaves the last word of the original NC manifesto—socialism. The party began to lose its political identity from the day it decided to dump its distinctive ideal and embrace the zeitgeist of neo-liberalism in the 1990s.
Once the legacy of the past had been dispensed with, there was little to differentiate NC from the party of former Panchas. The stalwarts of Rastriya Prajatantra Party may have been latecomers into the democratic camp, but they had a clear lead in raising slogans of nationalism while pursuing the path of neo-liberalism. Since Nepali voters found the politics of RPP abhorrent, they turned toward the only political force that promised to ‘liberate’ the political economy of the country from the clutches of neo-liberalism—the Maoist. The rest is a troubling history of armed revolt that nearly destroyed the spirit of common Nepalis.
TEMPLES OF CAPITALISM
The most conspicuous achievements of post-1990 economy are the private medical schools that charge an arm, a leg and then some in capitation fees to produce doctors for the poorest country of Asia. The other indicators of capitalism’s progress are flourishing airlines industry, soaring import of cars and petroleum products and dwindling forest cover in the ecologically most fragile region of the world. However, nothing marks the success of neo-liberalism as distinctively as the culture of consumerism that had dug deep roots in urban society. The piles of refuse on Kathmandu streets testify that consumption pattern has irrevocably changed in the capital city: There is more of leftover food and plastic packets to dispose than ever before.
Shopping malls and extravagant Hindu ceremonies are modern temples and current rituals of the new society. The juxtaposition of symbols is most visible at Kamalpokhari junction in Kathmandu where a generator-powered air-conditioned shopping mall, a decaying police post, a decrepit cultural centre and the spanking headquarters of Poverty Alleviation Fund vie for attention with the imposing Jain Temple, alluring cinema complex and the putrefying pond nearby as hapless pedestrians struggle to find walking space with humongous SUVs honking their way out of the mêlée. That’s a long sentence, but so are the sufferings of innocent bystanders.
Claimants to the mantle of NC leadership should spend a day near the tree at Kamalpokhari to reflect over the future of urban Nepal. And then they should visit villages that have been denuded of their best and brightest bodies and minds. The Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali states the frustrations in most eloquent terms, “At a certain point I lost track of you. They make a desolation and call it peace”.
The NC troika is yet to realize that the slogan of ‘nationality’ was merely rhetoric of necessity. The war cry of democracy too has lost some of its potency. They have already abandoned their commitment to socialism. The leadership of NC may find it uncomfortable to accept, but they too have become a clone of UML in practicing ‘politics without principles’, something that Mahatma Gandhi termed one of seven deadly sins.
Perhaps there is still some hope. With a proud legacy of 60 years of struggle behind it, NC is the most suitable platform to pursue the politics of social justice. In a country with highest disparity index in Asia, it’s the search of social justice that should triumph over narcissistic obsession with pursuits of consumerist happiness.
cklal@hotmail.com
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