My argument is to know your neighbors. India, for instance, should be an elaborate case study for Nepali progress instead of defining Nepali nationalism based on how much we dislike our neighbor. On the other hand, Nepali political attitude toward China is less defined and hence less tense. Even in such a condition, Nepali intelligentsia does not have scopes to comprehend China as an elaborate case study.
We have no intellectual grounding to understand India and China. We do not know them except what the Panchayat nationalism tried to propagate and what the present party politics tries to drag us into.
My point is that we have no intellectual grounding to understand India and China. We do not know them except what the Panchayat nationalism tried to propagate and what the present party politics tries to drag us into.
Let me give you a very bizarre example of Nepali knowledge to negotiate with India. Since I merely heard about it, I cannot name the people and the company which went to India some decades ago.
It was the heyday of Panchayat time. Two high-ranking Nepali officers were sent to an Indian city to make a deal on some mineral issue. They reached the city. The next day they sat with some Indian officials and discussed exports and imports. After the whole day’s discussion, the Nepali team had to write a proposal and sign the contract. They returned to the hotel and started panting and puffing. They realized one big problem. How to write the proposal in English! They spent some hours thinking about how to end their misery. Suddenly an Indian private contractor knocked at the door. They heaved a sigh of relief when they saw a familiar face, a businessman who frequented their department in Kathmandu. They asked him about his English language skills.
What followed was a political farce. The officers dictated governmental plans and the businessman wrote. It is said that he included those details which were advantageous to him as a contractor. The officers were not in a position to read the details both linguistically and ‘spiritually’ (read spirit-ually). The next day, both the official parties signed the treaty. They returned and after a month or two when a responsible government secretary went through the contents, he was furious and summoned the officers in his office. There obviously was no explanation, and still the smarter officer replied, “Hamilai Jhukkaidiyo” (they bluffed us). I do not remember any strong action being taken against those officers.
This is a brilliant example of indefinite demonstrative pronoun in grammatical terms. Who are ‘they’? This is the process of othering to hide one’s own weaknesses. The anecdote reveals our inaction, our failures to come to terms with knowledge of the other, and our own farcical knowledge-position.
We have failed in treaties, in negotiations, in dealings, and to be honest as self-analysts, we have been incapable politicians and diplomats intellectually. Such traditions of the Panchayat times still follow in different forms and contents. We have not progressed as a nation of locating other spaces of knowledge: India as a location of knowledge or China as a space of knowledge. We are always ready to blame the others. We cannot hate ourselves. The renowned leftist thinker Theodore Adorno once wrote: “One must have tradition in oneself, to hate it properly.”
To love your tradition, your culture, you have to hate it, but properly. This is a rubric of self-analysis. We hate the others and we cannot hate ourselves: We are not proper in both.
Until we have knowledge of the other, we cannot be true to ourselves. We all know how Western colonialism was consistent on many grounds while ruling the others. One of the most significant consistencies was their range of knowledge of the other. Arthur James Balfour declared in early twentieth British parliamentary debate that Britain must continue ruling Egypt because, he declared: “We know about Egyptians better . . .”
I am obviously not suggesting that Nepal should rule over India or China. My point is the dynamism of knowing others for self-stability and self-knowledge. I consider it a farcical street rhetoric when some party procession crack slogans like: “Samrajyabad Murdabad” (Down with Imperialism!). Colonialism contained knowledge of the other, of India, of China, of African continent. How much do we know them to write them back? Those officers I mentioned above are miserable representatives of how less we know about others and about ourselves.
The Panchayat tradition has not left us psychologically; it cannot so easily despite rigorous political changes. Every morning they had hours of national songs, which filled Nepali collective psyche with self-praise. We are the psychological children of those sentiments that barred us from self-knowing our failures and weaknesses.
pallabi@pallabi.wlink.com.np
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