The tradition of taking oaths is a mockery of the intellectual progress made by human civilizations so far.
In this part of the world, which has been intellectually “colonized” by the West since centuries, some people may have superficial answers to this question: “No, no. Even they do it in the US and Europe, so we should not have questions like this.” Such a group of people obviously represent those who do not even have the potential for any intellectual liberation and are far from even the minimum capacity of free thinking. These types of people expect every new intellectual thing to emanate from the “civilized” Western world. But let us ignore such people here and proceed with the real business of this column.
I do not know when, where and how oaths started in the history of human civilizations and in the history of statecraft. I am not interested in this. The real question is: Why? Does it serve any purpose? Isn’t it childish to organize a function where everything is pre-determined and someone dictates someone else to utter a few words? Once those words are uttered, this second person suddenly becomes trustworthy for a particular responsibility! At best, this is like a “Shraddha”, an annual ritual performed by the Hindu males in honor of their late parent(s). At worst, this is a practice which our philosophers and political scientists worldwide have failed terribly to refine with the progress of time.
The tradition of oath-taking has significant elements that are primitive in nature. Just recall any one of the many oath-taking ceremonies you have watched on television and analyze them. There is a piece of paper, there is someone higher on hierarchy to conduct the ceremony, and there is a person taking up a new responsibility uttering those words as read out by the person belonging to the higher authority. And this is done. According to my understanding, to believe in such ceremonies and to assume that performing such ceremonies makes an individual trustworthy nothing but the height of intellectual bankruptcy. Just get the person to sign on a piece of paper if any sort of guarantee is required for the concerned responsibility. Have a translator if a certain language is not understood by all. That should be all. How do you get the guarantee by making a person read something out? It’s even more baffling to see the communists, who believe that power comes from the barrel of a gun, quietly succumbing to this practice. Is it simply because Karl Marx has not told them anything specific about this?
Dear prime minister, you have better things to do at the moment than to engage in consultations to find out what to do about VP Parmananda Jha’s oath. Will such an oath, or the language in which it is taken, bring relief to the people of Jajarkot? Just think about it as a Jajarkoti. Does it make any sense to argue in favor of and against the language of the oath when you have to die for lack of basic medicines and treatment?
I have never been excited about the new constitution that is in the process of being written. It is unlikely that it will be an ideal democratic constitution, with no controversial provisions on the federal structure of new Nepal, among other things. The various committees of the Constituent Assembly have already finished taking suggestions from the people for the constitution. Still, if it is not too late yet, I have this humble suggestion: Please do not make any provisions for oath-taking while taking charge of any public position. This may be the only new concept in a constitution that bears the promise of restructuring a new Nepal. And this will offer something new to the outside world to learn from Nepal, including to the political science theorists who have just accepted this useless idea of oath-taking.
As for VP Jha, people are not worried about the content of the oath, nor about whether or not he has been loyal to the oath. This scribe is very aware of the sensitiveness attached with the linguistic issue in a country currently being driven by identity politics. However, I am adamant to believe that the issue has been dealt in a most superficial way. This is time to be creatively bold. The need of the hour is bold imaginativeness. So just leave the oath behind and move ahead. If this sounds like an intellectual luxury to some, they have a problem within. Is it possible to have the elusive new Nepal without introducing anything new about it in a really imaginative way?
bishnu.sapkota@gmail.com
Related story
Understanding Could Safeguard Kids On Social Media
