In any civilized society, the ability to raise a sensitive issue without fear or fervor would have been considered the mark of a courageous politician. After all, self-examination is the beginning of contemplating course correction. However, knee-jerk nationalism has turned the longtime Pahadi representative from Madhes into an object of vilification in national politics. Matters came to such a pass that the hapless minister had to be censured by his own chairperson even though broadening the base of Nepali nationality to cover externalized communities into its ambit is the very raison d´être of all Madhesbadi parties including of the faction of MJF to which Bhandari belongs.
The fear of foreigners in Nepali society has deep roots. The dominant section of Nepali population—Bahun and Chhetris—considered principalities in the hills and mountains of Mahabharat ranges safe havens for coreligionists that were perceived to be under prosecution in neighboring Muglan. The warrior chieftain of Gorkha tried to pander to this group by declaring that the kingdom he had founded was the ‘asali hindoostana’—the true land of Hindus. The slogan was politically expedient too, as it attracted priests in the service of other perpetually feuding feudal lords to the Gorkhali side. Expansionist drives of Gorkhali Empire owes almost as much to priests and preceptors as to tribal fighters and warlords that came on board for the promised loot in subjugated territories. Prithvi recognizes the debt he owed to them in his divine counsel—the Dibyopdesh.
The paranoid nationalism that drives even otherwise sensible Nepalis into paroxysms of patriotism has been nurtured by the political economy of patronage. In the system of benefactor and beneficiaries, the only kind of bourgeoisie that can emerge is that of comprador. The comprador shouts hoarsely about nationalism precisely because its very existence is tied to serving foreign interests. The Nepali middle-class created over decades of subservience can be called the ‘lumpenbourgeoisie’, a category that Czech philosopher of democratic socialism Karel Kosík succinctly described as "a militant, openly anti-democratic enclave within a functioning, however half-hearted and thus helpless democracy".
The lumpenbourgeoisie get its philosophical ballast from “revolutionary psycho-dramas” of what self-described social humanist E P Thompson called the “bourgeois lumpen-intelligentsia” who adopt “ferocious verbal postures” to protect and promote traditional elitism. The demagoguery and populism partly explains the convergence in catchphrases being coined by rightwing and leftwing hardliners.
Remnants of vassalage
National sovereignty is like virginity: It can be lost only once. Circumstances of deflowering, however, vary. Sometimes integrity is willingly surrendered. The Sikkimese of Nepali origin overwhelmingly supported integration of the Protectorate of Sikkim into its protector country through a referendum in 1975, the results of which was endorsed by the United Nations. A confrontation can also lead to curtailment of sovereign rights. Pakistan disintegrated when its military government failed to manage internal contradictions and Indian interventions finally created conditions for the birth of Bangladesh.
Compulsions of situation can also sometimes be blamed for difficult choices. Inability to resist the hegemonizing influence of the Chinese Empire forced many Tibetans into abandoning the land of their ancestors. Tibetans do have a government-in-exile, but its influence in the mother country continues to diminish as the establishment in Beijing waits patiently for the day when the Dalai Lama will no longer be around as the moral motor that maintains the heartbeats of a lost nation.
Sikkim, Pakistan and even Tibet to a certain extent have learnt to live with their predicaments. Sikkim has actually prospered and changed beyond recognition for the better. Pakistan and Bangladesh have come to terms with their separation and are friends in the community of nations, standing together at several international forums including the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Many Tibetans have decided to build a future wherever they happen to be. Humans cope and can adapt to changes in their surroundings with remarkable felicity.
Nepal is somewhat unique among its South Asian neighbors because it had to compromise its national integrity not just once or twice, but multiple times to safeguard its survival as a state. There is nothing dishonorable in that: From the edicts of ancient scriptures to the much-misused ‘doctrine of necessity’ in modern law, all political philosophies sanction give and take as an acceptable means of ensuring existence. The problem arises when such arrangements begin to be couched in belligerency of meek defiance. It is important to revisit some of the provisions that the Court of Kathmandu had to agree under duress to make sense of the confusion over nationalism that keeps erupting with unpredictable regularity.
Since sovereignty is indivisible by definition, perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that Nepal has remained a semi-colonial state—nominally independent but actually under foreign domination—ever since the signing of Treaty of Sugauli in 1815 with British East India Company. Under the provisions of the treaty, Kathmandu had to accept a Resident—an agent of a trading company in form but almost an overlord for all practical purposes. The formally independent kingdom had to allow foreigners hire mercenaries for expansionary drives abroad.
The "treaty of perpetual peace and friendship" of 1923 did upgrade the British resident into a full-fledged envoy, but it merely reaffirmed that Nepal was a tributary state of the Empire. The Indo-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950 was a renewal of colonial traditions. Much water has flown from Koshi and Mahakali into the Ganges since then, but the fundamental limits to Nepal’s sovereignty still remains the same: All roads to the sea of trade freedom passes through the Indian territory.
The history of unequal treaties is long, but perhaps King Mahendra inflicted lasting damage to the integrity of the country through the arrangements made with New Delhi in 1965 that turned Nepal into a vassalage. It gave complete freedom to the monarch to do as he pleased inside the kingdom as long as he remained within the boundaries of good conduct set by the Indian ‘security interests’. However, it would be erroneous to blame King Mahendra alone for the difficult choices he had to make under the scalding heat of Cold War in Asia of the sixties and seventies.
Vassalage by definition inhibits the growth of national bourgeoisie and strengthens the hold of comprador in society. This group repeatedly thwarts all attempts of fashioning the social democracy of survival of which imagining an inclusive nationality is an important component. The economy of foreign aid has further strengthened the hold of comprador over Nepali society and polity.
Fearful Elite
In listing three important components for the success of a business, it is almost a cliché to repeat the same term thrice: Location, location and location. Theoretically, it is possible to run a world-class software company from say Ulan Bator in Mongolia. However, the service industry found more traction in the salubrious climes of Bangalore that sits atop the greenery of a well-drained plateau where enormous investments had been made in scientific education over at least three generations.
Just as in the case of an independent business or a city, compulsions of location can also determine the economic trajectory of a country. Encircled by three imperial powers of Europe, Switzerland had to remain neutral and excel in service industry. Emerging as safe-haven for capital flight from two of the most populous and controlled economies of Asia, Singapore had to run a clean and competent government to foster trade and tourism. Wedged between civilizations, Afghanistan has been doomed to be the Graveyard of Empires. Since at least the reign of Malla kings in the Kathmandu valley, prosperity of valleys on Indo-Tibet trade routes depended upon their ability to produce by design and barter in good faith. Choices that Ranas and Shahs made destroyed that tradition as new rulers tried to cultivate Nepal itself as a consumption centre.
The trading class patronized by the court in Kathmandu realized early on that its prosperity was transitory and depended upon the whims of rulers. It resulted in the tradition of massive capital flights. Since over 150 years, Nepal has remained a place where money is to be made in shortest possible time and stashed away elsewhere. There is no bigger nationalists than these intermediaries who fear that they would lose their monopoly over an important resource—the idea of nationality—if the concept were to be made truly democratic. Its recent aggressiveness is perhaps the last gasps of a dying order. Nepalis would chart a new course through a new constitution for which the ‘four-point’ agreement has the potential of becoming a foundation stone. The sooner ‘national parties’ recognized its significance, the better for them and the future of the country.
Related story
Desperate search for missing girls as nearly 80 dead in Texas f...
-1200x560-1779450784.webp)
