Though they may be unfamiliar with Fanon’s book, most of the people still harp on the old superstitious dictum such as this is ‘a satiko sarap pareko desh (a country cursed by the sati. The disheartening thing about it is that they reiterate this even in the 21st century. Such evocation of sati is really shocking in the age of flourishing feminism but present alarming side is the increasing number of suicide in this country. In the year 2010, alone about four thousands people committed suicide, including a devoted United Marxist Leninist (UML) Party old cadre Digendra Rajbansi who killed himself by hanging himself from a tree outside the party headquarter in Balkhu, frustrated by failing to get a job for his son. This comes as an ironical incident when his party men are reportedly amassing massive wealth and control finance, security, trade and banking even up to this time. And after four months his son Shambhu too, whose unemployment depression compelled Digendra to kill himself, chose the path taken by his father. Devi Prasad Regmee, a former CPN-UML cadre, caused a stir on Jan 20, 2011 when he slapped party Chairman Jhalanath Khanal at a public function in Itahari. Who are to be blamed for our wretchedness? Devi Prasad has answered after he slapped Khanal, the leaders are to be charged of it. May it spark in the mind of the leaders to rethink with open spirit and ability about our wretched politics as public dared to slap and speak against the deep-rooted wretchedness.
Nepal Tourism Year (NTY) and the New Year 2011 have offered no glimpse of hope as yet. The split of the Tarai Madhes Democratic Party (TMDP), the sixth-largest political party of the country, in December last year offered a remarkable space for gossiping for those who wish to prove us and our country wretched of the earth. The split of the Madhesi party TMDP occurred following the footsteps of Madhesi People’s Rights Forum (MPRF), which is the name of the splinter faction led by Bijaya Kumar Gachchhadar in 2009 for supporting the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led government leaving Upendra Yadav and the mother party weak and helpless. The most noticeable thing is that the UML is being accused of splitting the Madhesi parties though the Balkhu headquarters of the UML has now denied the charges formally.
To say that the non-Madhesi parties and non-Madhesi people split the Madhesi parties is too futile a charge. In reality, these very Madhesi parties or their leaders who are demanding autonomy of the total Madhesh area with the controversial slogan samagra madhes ek pradesh have failed to unify parties of Madheshis led by their few founders. How could one believe that they can save the Terai, their land and people from turning wretched as Terai has turned as a magnet of insecurity?
Some people are even heard saying Madhesi parties are upstarts. They have remained upstarts. They could not be safe from the charges of opportunism. Their argument is that upstarts are not practical lots. Whatever truth, may be in it, the Madhesi parties and their leaders have not taken the right direction to alleviate the wretchedness of the people of Terai. Same is the case of the Pahadi upper class and upper caste leaders at the centre. The Madhesi parties alone cannot be blamed for splitting. The communist party in Nepal has been divided more than one hundred and fifty times in its short history of six decades. The Nepali Congress (NC) and the CPN-UML divided and reintegrated but the cracks are still rampant in their party structures. The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is undergoing similar process of division-oriented crisis
While the king ruled, all the political leaders blamed the monarchy as a source of all the problems. But now that the monarchy has been abolished, it is still alive in the psyche of many people including the political leaders. Then the feudal monarch was their so-called enemy and now they have many enemies within themselves and their groups or subgroups. It sounds as if they are saying, ‘I divide therefore I am’. The popular social scientist Dor Bahadur Bista rightly argued in his book Fatalism and Development that the Nepali society’s main enemy is fatalism sustained by a policy of break and rule. And when someone feels weak he or she feels servile. And the weak ones search for a strong power to follow to feel secure.
Politics is a mechanism that opens up opportunities for transforming one’s dream into reality. For that, one also needs power for making construction and reconstruction of one’s own dreams in a meaningful manner. Now there is a majority of the Marxists, leftists or semi-communists in the Constituent Assembly. Moreover, non-communist parties too are claiming themselves to be socialists including the NC. This constitutional space of socialist democracy can be a good mechanism to forge consensus for productive engagement before the Nepali political scenario turns into the crudest form of terrorism. The present state of chaos is not only the space of terrorism, but also a space of greater creative potentialities if it is used rationally. Enough gossiping, fighting and disasters have taken place here already. Now it is time to vow to take forward strides saying collectively, ‘we see a great future for the New Nepal, and we are no longer Fanon’s wretched of the earth’.
shresthatara@gmail.com
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