The Himalayas are young and still growing. The Mahabharata Ranges are chronically unstable. The Shivaliks, also called the Chure Ranges, are protrusion of gravel and soil that barely hold together. The silt of the lower plains is loosely packed. It is difficult to imagine a terrain as difficult as that of Nepal to host permanent settlements that can thrive in peace for few centuries.
The topography is equally challenging. Ascending from about 1,000 ft above mean sea level to more than 20,000 ft within a distance of less than 100 miles, the land is on such an incline that flat area can only be found either along slim river beds or atop narrow hilltops, both equally dangerous and attractive at the same time for human habitation. Little wonder, farmers carved terraces along milder slopes to grow whatever the topsoil of few inches would support without yielding to the elements of nature and built houses on the sunny side of relatively gentler ridges.The climate is equally extreme. Himalayas form the third pole of ice and snow. The Tarai-Madhesh steams during summer and shivers in winter. Mountains tremble in fear of landslides during the wet season. And to compound the misery of everyone, when it rains, it invariably pours with three-fourth of annual rainfall in about one-fourth of the year of monsoon months.
Most rivers of Nepal don't flow—they rush down as if in a hurry to join the Ganges downstream. Since river banks are usually weak, they hit wherever they wish. Landslides are endemic in the hills and mountains and floods are regular events downstream. Whenever it's dry, which is most of the year, risks of forest fires go up. In the Tarai-Madhesh, with its straw and bamboo huts, fire hazards are substantially higher in rural areas.
Living in the 'heaven on earth'—fit only for almighty gods and goddesses, sagely saints and enlightened souls as also reckless outlaws and inventive fugitives—isn't easy for ordinary mortals. In order to survive in such a spectacularly inhabitable environ, people have to be hardy and adaptable, humble and proud, rash and calculative, simple and crafty, brave and calculative and ignorant and wise all at the same time.
The socio-political elite has to regularly reinvent itself to retain control over such a complex population. Normally the learned tend to look upon conspiracy theories with disdain; nothing else can explain peculiarities of Nepali politics where exceptions are the norm and the vice versa.
Confused responses
Complexity of human behavior confounds the curious everywhere; but the unpredictability of responses of Nepalis to situations they have to confront is truly bewildering. The population accepted the rise of the Hindu warlord of Gorkha with docility, accepted the defeat at the hands of East India Company with dignity, and surrendered to excesses of Rana oligarchy in an abject manner for over a century.
Nepalis since the 1950s have rebelled quite often, but mostly halfheartedly, which means that no revolution ever reached its logical conclusion. The anti-Rana movement ended up rehabilitating the Rana and restoring the power of their Shah cousins. The Nepali Congress after 1990s made peace with the Shah regime to launch a fight to the finish against it barely a dozen or so years later. The Maoists—the term gained its menace in around 2001 only to become an annoyance by 2007—turned from harbingers of hope to butt of ridicule even faster.
The Madhesh Uprising lost its steam with the first presidential election of the newly announced republic as both primary contenders for the post were born Madheshis. Promises remain unfulfilled, but the population of Madhesh has already turned its fury against itself. Self-doubts are necessary to envision course correction, but self-pity transforms the energy of enquiry into helplessness and passivity. The release is then found in various forms of extremism.
The Janjati as a political category was largely a creation of Panchayat to preempt the evolution of genuine socialist solidarity. However, any political mobilization has a way of charting its own course. When Janjati activists realized that restoration of community honor was not only necessary but also an important precondition of true empowerment, they broke the shackles of false safety with which the HANSA (Hindu, Aryan, and Male Nepali Speakers) elite had chained them with the PEON (Permanent Establishment of the Nation) hegemony. Habits, however, are stronger than desires. Janjati awakening has failed to have perceptible political impact so far.
The Dalits—Pahadis as well as Madheshis—continue to be even more confused. Theoretically, leftwing politics are supposed to be the natural habitat of the marginalized population. In Nepal, most communist parties are essentially managed and led by Hindu communalists that offer only token space to the downtrodden. The hostility towards minority religions is common across the political spectrum—chauvinism is the common feature of the left, right and center of Nepali
politics.
Designed inactivity
The Gorkha Earthquake—the moniker sounds so apt due to its viciousness in the Janjati heartland of mid-mountains—has once again exposed that the best response of a government facing a crisis of acceptability is either no or very low response to save its existence.
Juddha tried reconstruction after the quakes of 1934, but only after making sure that it did no damage to the existing power relations where the military was the most dominant institution. Mahendra did one better: After every cycle of flood and draught in Tarai-Madhesh, he consolidated his hold and quietly transferred some more population there from hills and mountains.
After the earthquake of 1985, Panchayat began gasping for breath because it had begun to assume that it had acquired the power to act. Prime Minister Marich Man Singh was soon seen shouting slogans in the street against a government of which he was supposed to be the head. At least Premier Sushil Koirala has refused to follow in the footsteps of the predecessor he resembles most in matters of rhetorical vainglory, vacuous nationalism and meaningless charades.
Passivity, however, isn't always the best response when the whole world is watching. Had it been draught in Tarai-Madhesh or famine in Far West, the world would have hardly bothered about the plight of common Nepalis. The Gorkha earthquake and its aftershocks have hit what they love most in the strategically located region: Scenic mountain trails, beautiful monuments of the Kathmandu Valley and passes that lead to Tibet, all within the vicinity of the only international airport of the country. The Chinooks may have been forced to fly back from Chandigarh; its reverberations will probably continue to be felt for quite a while.
Politicization of crisis can occur due to internal causes or external intervention, which doesn't have to be in the form of instigation. Sometimes mere reporting is enough to expose vulnerabilities of a regime and empower the aggrieved. Madheshi politicos have been silenced into submission by the severity of the calamity in the mountains, but to assume that Janjatis will accept their lot as easily as Dalits have done will probably be a mistake. Lack of leadership doesn't mean that the crisis has been resolved. The risk is high that unchanged energy may erupt in completely unpredictable ways.