It is too early to speculate about the future of a political entity yet to be born. However, predilections of professionals are often toward unabashed self-interest. The risk that rational considerations may push the party of the twitterati into the open arms of what The Economist has called the Bollygarchs—the dollar-billionaires that mix Bollywood ostentation with patriotic pretences without displaying any signs of suffering from pangs of conscience in one of the poorest democracies of the world—are quite high. Anti-corruption campaign would then lose its moral edge and the party of professionals would become a tool of maligning opponents of free-market fundamentalism. [break]
Kollygarchs [the rupee billionaires of Nepal] that directly and indirectly control Balkhu Palace—headquarters of the quintessential NGO-party of Nepal—have refined the technique of naming and shaming their likely challengers through street and media activism into an art form. The prosecution then becomes a pretence, and establishment of the guilt of the accused a foregone conclusion. The Nepali Congress has unnecessarily disgraced itself by criticising the judiciary in Khum Bahadur Khadka case. After all, courts too are part and parcel of society and its judgments usually reflects beliefs and values of the dominant public. The highest court in the land had displayed its convictions quite clearly in the controversy over extension of Constituent Assembly’s term. Incidentally, the NC had then applauded the wisdom of judges with uninhibited glee and unrestrained gusto.
The moral framework
It is possible to argue that Messrs Chiranjivi Wagle, Jayprakash Prasad Gupta, Govinda Raj Joshi and Khum Bahadur Khadka are indeed some of the most corrupt politicos of post-1990 period. It is also possible to posit that transportation syndicates, commercial cartels, privilege-based NGO enterprises, strong-arm units of trade unions, and other various student and youth forces as well as propagandists affiliated with the party of self-proclaimed Marxists and Leninists are all squeaky clean in their dealings with plutocrats of Panchayat era. However, when only and the only politicos to be brought to book are those with ‘populist beliefs’ of using instruments of the state to keep market anarchism in check, suspicion does arise that perhaps there is more to the whole anti-corruption affair than what meets the eye. To modify an Ian Fleming maxim: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action but there must be much deeper conspiracy behind the fourth repetition.
Sanctimonious assertions notwithstanding, if the yardsticks established to measure corruptibility in recent days have to be strictly applied, premises of Singh Durbar wouldn’t be enough to accommodate disgraced public servants. Corruption, however, would continue to flourish; as agents that promote sleaze would still be busy, distributing briefcases to whosoever would take the place of ousted politicos and bureaucrats. If the observed trend were anything to go by, the Permanent Establishment would soon begin to bay for the blood of ‘corrupt’ Maoists and Madheshbadis. After all, grease in some of their hands have begun to darken even bloodstains of insurgency years.
Nobody in his right mind would oppose anti-corruption campaigns—be they of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev in India or front organizations of Kollygarchs of Nepal—but additions to instrumental solutions have to be devised. Only those living in the fool’s paradise would buy the argument that sentencing of Messrs Wagle, Gupta, Joshi and Khadka is likely to deter future public officers from surreptitiously dipping their hands in the till. In all probability, their successors in Singh Durbar would probably learn from UML bosses and be a little more circumspect in their transactions. Institutions to counter corruption are necessary. But other ways of fighting the vice that invariably afflicts all societies at early stages of commercialisation too have to be debated and devised.
A moral framework to fight corruption is difficult to design, complex to build and almost impossible to make functional. In a value system where privileges in this world are considered to be rewards of good deeds done in previous life, allusions to sinfulness of greasy dealings seldom work. The hands of a Brahmin that sanctifies are beyond worldly reproach. Traditions that admit religious violence, idleness in the name of intellectualism, social hierarchy, submissiveness in familial relations and adventurism of the brave are not easily susceptible to reformation through moral movements alone. Some form of religious sanction for anti-graft campaigns would be required to supplement institutional fights against the ills of political economy more effective.
Religious Secularity
The word Dharma sends shivers down the spine of religious minorities, and with good reasons. Dharma in the sense of righteous path may indeed be different from prescriptions contained in holy books or edicts of prophets enshrined in organised religions. It is said that the Japanese defined the western concept of religion as shukyo meaning ‘teachings of a sect’. But such distinctions no longer matter. Contemporary Dharmas—militant Hinduism of India and Nepal or defiant Buddhism as practiced in countries like Burma and Sri Lanka—are not much different from crusading Christianity or Jihadist Islam. The life, property and dignity of religious minorities remain under constant threat in all ‘religious’ societies.
India is not a theocracy. Nevertheless, the lot of Muslims in the largest democracy of the world leaves a lot to be desired with the condition in the province of Gandhi’s birth being most deplorable. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was an earnest secularist. That has not saved Ahmadia Muslims, Hindus and Christians of Quaid-e-Azam’s countries from Islamic bigotry. Rights activists allege that Burmese icon of democracy Aung San Suu Kyi maintains a meaningful silence over the plight of Rohingya Muslims of her country.
Lest Hindu zealots in Nepal give a sly smile of superiority, let it be reminded that every premier since the installation of Pushpa Kamal Dahal at Baluwatar has been equally ardent in demonising and deporting Tibetan Buddhists in the name of ‘One China’ policy. The mosque-burning riots of September 2004 occurred under the military-monarchist regime fronted by NC(D)-UML alliance under Premier Sher Bahadur Deuba. When a church was bombed in May 2009, Madhav Kumar Nepal was at the helms of government. Incidentally, the same church has been getting similar threats recently and few in the media have dared to express their concern for a minority religion under imminent danger. The much-hyped religious harmony of Nepali society has merely been a cover of offering legitimacy to Hindu hegemony.
Secularism may have its deficiencies, but it still offers best guarantees against religious discrimination. However, the idea of secularism is too state-centric to be of much use in a flailing state on the verge of collapse. In absence of moral principles grounded in religious beliefs, a flailing state is often too weak to protect its citizens from corruption and violence. Only the dread of God can inhibit the criminally minded individuals that are adept at manipulating government machinery but still harbor some fear for afterlife or next birth in their hearts. Formation and activation of multi-faith forums can perhaps help allay justifiable fears of minorities when religious activism against societal ills becomes mainstream.
To a quasi-secularist—the kind that sacrifices animals to placate evil spirits and worships the communist Panch Devata pantheon consisting of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao with equal fervor—religiosity and secularity are contradictory terms. It was not so for Mahatma Gandhi, the much-acclaimed practitioner of people’s politics in the twentieth century and a revered Hindu who declared without a trace of secularist pretence, “Indeed religion should pervade every one of our actions. Here, the religion does not mean sectarianism. It means a belief in ordered moral government of the universe. This religion transcends Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity etc. It does not supersede them. It harmonizes them and gives them reality.”
For peace and amity to prevail, there will always be some role for religion in most societies. The announcement of Death of God was not only slightly premature but also overly simplistic. The unborn do not die. They—multiplicity intentional—live in the conscience of believers of all faiths. Jurgen Habermas points out the importance of “the right of every creature to be respected as an ‘image of God’”; its denial creates complications that few temporal authorities in history have been able to confront comfortably. Religious secularity may sound oxymoronic, but it’s better to deal with complexities of the concept than deny its existence altogether.
Martin Luther King Jr was an adherent of Gandhian beliefs. Perhaps he would not have minded if someone had slightly paraphrased him to assert that sincere ignorance of the blindly religious and conscientious stupidity of militantly secular were equally dangerous for the world.
Lal contributes to The Week with his biweekly column Reflections. He is one of the widely read political analysts in Nepal.
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