Even many senior Nepali Congress (NC) leaders have complained to me that the media has tried to elevate GPK to a god of sorts posthumously, forgetting all his weaknesses and wickedness.
GPK’s popularity plummeted within his own party during the last months of his life, thanks to his shameless anointment of his daughter to the post of deputy prime minister. His hunger for power, and its abuse, and his autocratic handling of the party and brute sidelining of his peers and opponents, had alienated many long ago. For so long, he remained a polarizing figure in his own party and to some extent in the larger polity.
But that’s just one side of GPK.
If he drew all out abhorrence from some for his weaknesses, he also commanded hysterical support and respect from others for who he was. It’s important to understand this paradox to make an objective assessment of his life, work, achievements and failures.
Last week, I was in his hometown Biratnagar and went to Koirala niwas to meet people who have lived with the Koiralas for more than three decades like family members. Their personal stories of how GPK touched their lives provide a window on the humane side of GPK. It’s in this extra human sensitivity that GPK displayed toward common people, especially the needy, that we must try to understand why so many people, across the country, blindly adored him.
Pana Urab, a 50-year-old woman from a disadvantaged ethnic group, has lived with the Koiralas for the last 35 years. She recalled how GPK never ate his meals alone and made sure that the dining table on the ground floor of Koirala niwas, which accommodates about a dozen people, was always full before he took the last chair. “Normally the chairs would be full, but if they weren’t, we had to go out in the street and invite strangers for the meal.” She also told us that no one who came to Koirala niwas ever returned hungry.
The Koiralas also treated people with dignity and made everyone feel equal. “In this family, no one uses the word nokar (servant) even in indirect references, and the driver is always referred to as guruji.”
That was the norm set by Krishna Prasad Koirala, GPK’s father and the progenitor of this rebellious and maverick family. Whenever GPK was in Biratnangar, every evening, he would summon all (it literally meant everyone) after the meal and talked with them about politics or social issues or simple events. It’s no surprise that Pana talked to us like a well-versed politician.
As the youngest of five brothers, each of them talented in his own right, it wasn’t easy for GPK to find a role for himself in the family, in society and politics. He had the most modest education among the Koirala brothers; was least attractive in appearance, and was terribly short of words for dialogue and argument.
But GPK quickly figured out what he was good at: Social mobilization. His extraordinary ability to remain active for longer hours (or his inability to remain idle even for a brief moment) and to connect with common people made him a natural organizer. If BP Koirala, his brother and mentor, was a political philosopher and a dreamer for the NC, it was GPK who worked on the ground day and night to build the party base. In the formative days of the NC, he used to leave home early in the morning on a bicycle, travel miles meeting cadres and organizing party activities, and come home only in the evening.
Annoyed by his excessive restlessness in exile in India, BP once reportedly chided his younger brother: “Girija, what do you hope to achieve from shuttling between Farbisgunj and Patna and Banaras restlessly?” Well, history will judge what his hyper-active political life and never-say-no attitude meant to the country and to democracy in Nepal.
Though BP seemed to have genuine doubts about GPK’s abilities, it was the latter who successfully negotiated with the king for BP’s release from prison and did all the groundwork in India for the armed struggle against the Panchayat system. GPK was, in a real sense, the commander of the armed struggle that didn’t quite take off since all the arms and resources were diverted toward Bangladesh during its independence movement in 1970.
After BP’s death in 1982, it was again GPK who took on the mantle of saving his party from the Panchayat’s offensive. Though BP had left the responsibility of taking the NC forward on the shoulders of the troika, comprising the late Ganesh Man Singh, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and GPK, the former two mostly stayed in Kathmandu while GPK traveled from one corner of the country to another, boosting the morale of NC cadres humiliated by the defeat in the national referendum and ‘orphaned’ by BP’s death.
GPK braved indignation at the hands of Panchayat goons, including a series of physical attacks and an attempt on his life in Surajpura, Rupandehi. During these extensive travels, GPK established personal connections with the NC cadres and he came to know hundreds and thousands of them by their first names and also remembered their family backgrounds. “This wasn’t just because of his extraordinary memory,” wrote NC ideologue Pradip Giri who opposed Koirala for most of his political career. “His ability to deeply connect with his cadres and with commoners played a greater role.”
Riding on his absolute hold in the party rank and file, GPK began to sideline his contemporaries and to cultivate a coterie of cronies after 1990. As it happens with leaders, with rare exceptions, GPK’s weaknesses also begin to surface once in power. He was often lampooned for corruption and abuse of power and not for no reason.
Nepal’s post-1990 generation, to which my reporter also belongs, grew up seeing this phase of GPK. It’s, therefore, no wonder that he commands so little respect among the younger generation.
Isn’t it such a paradox, and a tragedy, that the man who fought for so long and tirelessly for democracy functioned like an incorrigible autocrat, and the man who didn’t even own a house for himself, let alone other property, condoned, if not encouraged, corruption under his nose?
Honestly speaking, GPK deserves to be condemned for many of the post-1990 ills, especially for his failure to institutionalize democracy and take on corruption.
But it will also be an injustice to this man and history if we forget that out of the 60 years of his active political life, he was in power just for about seven-and-a-half years and for the remaining 52 years, he tirelessly fought to give this country a democratic polity. Many of us can only imagine the hardship and humiliation he went through all those years.
In 2005, after the royal takeover, if he had said that he had had enough of struggle in his life and given up his fight against Gyanendra when the others seemed resigned to their fate, Nepal would still have been an autocratic monarchy, still in a war. Each of us who rejoice in a plural society and want to see competitive politics take root in this country, owes more to this man than to any individual.
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