In the penultimate chapter of the book, details of “Free Kamaiya Movement” are outlined. Somewhat hesitantly, the learned author concludes about its lessons: “The story points to the absence of unencumbered freedom, the necessity of being subjected to forms of discourses and disciplines in order to obtain agency, but also to contingencies, possibilities of social change and the existence and availability of moments of freedom.”
Bhaswor Ojha
The contingency – unpredictable forces, unexpected conditions and unintended consequences – are sometimes as important as the agency. Many factors had worked in favour of Free Kamaiya Movement. A democratic government was at the helms and it immediately realised the anachronism of a practice that appeared like a form of slavery. The international community had begun to show an interest in an area emerging as hotbed of Maoist insurgency. Some INGOs and NGOs saw fundraising possibilities of an agenda that appeared to require relatively small effort. These things cannot be planned.
Recently, when some of the freed kamalaris (former women bonded labour) broke into the prohibited area around Singh Durbar, the police mercilessly beat them up. No conclusions can be drawn in the immediate aftermath of an event. However, it is possible to argue that protesting against a non-representative government is a high-risk activity. Unless the intention was merely to draw attention, the brave kamalaris seem to have been misled into a believing that it was the right time to march towards the seat of government to air their grievances.
Violent insurgencies have handbooks to build strategies, refine tactics, and guide actions. Trotsky, Mao, Che Guevara, and Carlos Marighella have proffered prescriptions that can ensure the success of an armed revolution. The US Special Forces offers an equally dispassionate counterinsurgency manual. Peaceful protests invariably involve some innovation. Perhaps that could be the reason discourses get pride of place in the title of Prof Fujikura’s book. Discourses, as opposed to debates, are ways of understanding rather than promotion or defence of positions.
Talk shop
Marxist thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci and Pierre Bourdieu have proposed that discourse is one of the techniques of legitimising the status quo through creation of a “common sense” within the bounds of permissible critique. However, short of armed revolution, which transforms fundamental beliefs by force, discourse is perhaps the most legitimate way of questioning the “common sense” too. That is what Martin Chautari (Full disclosure: I was Chautari Fellow of Public Life and Public Knowledge in 2010) has been doing for nearly two decades. Now that the Chautari has grown to become an academic behemoth of the NGO sector, it sounds almost unbelievable that in the mid-nineties, one of its main activities was giving an outlet for suppressed emotions, providing a platform to unheard of voices and raising questions that were not considered “proper” in politically correct conversations.
Up to the late-nineties, Chautari was probably the only place in Kathmandu where the Madheshi word could be pronounced without fear of condemnation. Those were the days when even Sadbhavana Party, let alone Nepali Congress or UML, talked about rights and welfare of Taraibasi, an expression rhyming with sukumbasi (homeless) aprabasi (immigrants) and plain-old basi (stale or out-of-date). Janjati activists on the margins had discovered that it was possible to argue their point of view with passion but without malice towards anyone else. Dalit activists were some of the regulars at Chautari talks every Tuesday.
Initially confined to a few districts, the fire of Maoist insurgency had begun to spread by late-nineties. It was fashionable among the social elite of Kathmandu to deride “corrupt and inept” parliamentary parties and sing praises of “principled” Maoists even though their violent ways had begun to terrorize the countryside. The popular phrase used to be that the parties had brought it upon themselves. Journalists had begun to go on conducted tours of Maoist “base area” and produce adventure-filled reports of mass support for the insurgents. It was not easy to speak against lawless insurgents that declared its critics “foes of revolution” and passed orders for “physical action” against “class enemies.”
When Girija Prasad Koirala became the Prime Minister for the third time in 2000, he was already being portrayed as the main villain. Baburam Bhattarai was the new hero and Pushpa Kamal Dahal was being projected as the possible saviour. The voluble elite of academia, media and civil society had lapsed into meaningful silence. Generalizations are loose by definition. However, it’s not very difficult to identify socialites that supported Maoists in their “war” against parliamentary democracy: Once the insurgents came into peaceful politics, their ardent admires became sworn adversaries. In the tense days of intense armed conflict, Chautari was probably the only place where the Maoists could vehemently be criticized and enthusiastically supported often during the same meeting.
When Premier Sher Bahadur Deuba clamped emergency and almost handed over the administration to the military, attendance thinned for a while at weekly talks. However, that was temporary. Even in the days of rightwing resurgence, the Chautari was again the only place outside the salons of PEON stalwarts where Dirgha Raj Parsai could have a blast and Basant Thapa would defend the right of the past apparatchik of Panchayat to be obnoxious. In the afternoon, an informal and impromptu gathering would draft and sign a petition for the immediate release of Krishna Sen, editor of Maoist mouthpiece Jandisha – he would later be killed in custody – and the same cohort would severely lambaste his brand of imbedded journalism in the evening.
Result fixation
Stagnant organizations become stale and lose their bearing. The Chautari had to grow even in order to maintain its existence. However, there is probably a threshold beyond which growth begins to bring its own compulsions. Extended activities require more space. Consequently, rents go up. Expertise is necessary to run specialised programmes. That adds to the wage bill. After a while, volunteerism begins to lose its charm and careerism takes over. Managing a diversified workforce is a complex task requiring skills, time and resources. It is difficult to pinpoint the event that started the gentrification of Chautari, but the impact of policy entrepreneurship is impossible to miss.
Unlike BORING (Bottoms-up, Right-based, NGOs) organizations, Chautari is still not in the business of delivering services. Its library is media-specific and the reading room caters mostly to the curiosity of young researchers that continue to congregate to its informal setting. However, somewhere along the line, Chautari probably thought that policy entrepreneurship was an admissible activity if the organization was to remain viable and relevant in the post-republican environment of unbridled openness in society.
Policy prescriptions and “don’t just show problems, but suggest solutions” are activities that Chautari had to learn to keep itself afloat in a competitive environment where donors insist upon SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) objectives and at least visible, if not spectacular, impact. Such activities drain out intellectual energy. Dr. Pratyoush Onta and Dr. Seira Tamang – the front wheels of Chautari attached to the steering – perhaps realize that the vigour of the organization is being wasted upon activities that merely make shelves of donor agencies sag with unread reports. But once one has climbed onto “input-process-output” treadmill, exit implies possible flight into obscurity.
It’s not easy to run a place where freedom to be obnoxious is taken seriously and expressions against conventional wisdom are not only tolerated and accepted but also celebrated! That could be the reason no place has yet emerged that attempts to do what Chautari did in the mid-nineties. Talk shops at Chautari continue, but its emphasis has shifted towards academic exercises where truth is a rock that stands against all elements. For policy entrepreneurs, facts are sacred and truth is the god that ultimately prevails over falsehood. Dissident, deviants, poets, artistes, anarchists, activists and idlers of all kinds clutch to their truths like people drowning in the lake of “common sense”. For them, truth is merely a strand of straw.
Sherlock Holmes exclaims somewhere, “Data, Watson; I must have data! I can’t make bricks without straw!” That was then. In a world drowning in data, narratives from the margins are truths that would help tie knots around myths and pretences. The speechwriters of John F. Kennedy had it right: “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest; but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” When the next avatar of militarist adventurism or Maoists madness emerges, where would the nonconformists find their hangout?
Lal contributes to The Week with his biweekly column Reflections. He is one of the widely read poliitical analysts in Nepal.
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