Changed context

The discourse of how we should identify ourselves as Nepali first and forget our ethnicity sounds good. Indeed, it is a good discourse, very patriotic. The only problem is that historically this glorious rhetoric has been delivered simultaneously with the ill-intention of suppressing ethnic groups. That is why, sometimes such a patriotic slogan sounds like a prelude for bad things to come.



Ethnic groups have had to deal with this “Mukh ma Ram Ram, Bagali ma Churi” strategy for a long time now. Many politicians and intellectuals still have faith in this age old technique. But ground realities have changed a lot in the last couple of decades. There are good reasons to believe that such a technique might not work, not this time around.






The literacy rate of Nepal in these recent decades has increased from 33 percent in 1991 to 49 percent in 2001. Assuming that literacy has grown at the same pace since 2001, we can predict that the current literacy rate has reached 66.25 percent.



It is not just that literacy has doubled. Nepalis are more politically suave than a couple of decades ago. Nepalis now have access to information like never before. They read local newspapers, listen to FM radios, watch cable television and listen to opinions across a wide political spectrum.



Globalization is also on the side of the common man belonging to an ethnic minority. Traveling abroad and to big cities is no longer limited to the elites of Kathmandu. A lot more Nepalis are traveling overseas. A lot more villagers are traveling to the cities. Exposure to other cities and countries has given these men and women a new perspective to examine what they had taken as their fate. A common man can now better see the state-sponsored injustice and upper caste-sponsored discrimination that they have been facing for so long.



Nepalis have also become better in the art of democracy than they were a couple of decades ago. They are much more apt at reading between the lines and sharper at distinguishing between leaders who will and who will not fight for their interests.



Unfortunately, many of us still overlook how drastically Nepali society has changed. Those advocating for a unitary state, those advocating for legal provisions that forces one to take oath in Nepali, those advocating for a strong center with weak power to the provinces, those decrying federalism based along ethnic or lingual lines and those decrying power devolution to the villages all belong to this camp.



Unless we purposefully halt the education of our children, it is realistic to assume the literacy rate of Nepal will be 99 percent in less than 15 years. Unless we purposefully halt free speech, media is going to penetrate more deeply into our society. Unless we adopt the Bhutanese model of governance, global influence will only increase. Chances are that Nepalis will only get more politically aware and increasingly less tolerant of institutions that fail to deliver justice.



The best way to put off the anger of ethnic suppression is to have provinces demarcated along ethnic/linguistic lines. To use rhetoric that demarcation along ethnic lines will disintegrate the country is to implicitly suggest that ethnic groups cannot be trusted. It is like saying, “Mr Limbu and Ms Yadav, you both should be proud to be a Nepali but we won’t trust you!” It is hard to see how that helps.



And by the way, academic research based on a number of countries actually suggests that whenever there is a demand for an autonomous state based on ethnicity, demarcation of provinces along ethnic lines actually helps in preserving territorial integrity. In contrast, opinion writers have flooded Nepali newspapers with examples of how Timbaktu and Rambaktu disintegrated because they had federalism based on ethnicity.



Using not-so-familiar examples to make generalizations hasn’t been convincing. Especially, when one sees the consequence of Pakistan failing to respect the lingual and cultural aspirations of the then East Pakistanis, of Sinhalese denying a separate province for Tamils and of Nehru’s genuine respect for the language and culture of the southern states of India.



Let us hope that those in leadership positions and those shaping policies take the changed context seriously and reevaluate their deeply-held belief.



(Writer is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Finance at Texas A&M International University in Texas, US.)



680anand@gmail.com

Related story

PM instructs officials to discharge their duty in changed conte...