Participants of the 13th General Convention of the Grand Old Party (GOP) of the country of Mount Everest, Lord Buddha, one-horned rhino, brave Gurkhas, courageous Sherpas and queerest imaginable coalition of political opportunists in government have succeeded in painting the town red for almost a week. With Tweedledum and Tweedledee in the race for the presidency, the election of party officials makes almost no difference to the course of national politics. However, Shashank Koirala, a contestant for the largely clerical post of General Secretary, succeeded in raising some hackles with his spirited remark that republicanism, secularism and federalism weren’t sacrosanct issues and needed reappraisal.
Constitutionally speaking, the cub Koirala stands on unshakable political grounds. According to the amendment provision of the controversial constitution—rammed through the “fast track” with the brute majority of 90 percent of assembly members last year—only “self-rule of Nepal, sovereignty, territorial integrity and sovereignty vested in people” features are beyond the reach of procedural modifications. Everything else, including the restoration of monarchy, reversal to theocratic Hindu state and rescission of federalism are politically legitimate positions to take for any demagogue in the opposition. Ethics and morality have never been strong points of Nepali politics anyway.
Even ideologically, Shashank has succeeded in raising issues that are dear to the heart of many older members of the Nepali GOP that emerged in opposition to the tradition of Ranarchy rather than the institution of Hindu monarchy as such. Late BP Koirala, the chief ideologue and the paramount leader of the party, had that strange characteristic of most renaissance persons: Socially progressive and economically egalitarian, he was more than a tad conservative in his cultural outlook. Despite BP’s loud proclamations that he was anarchic in his literary creations, undercurrents of conservatism can easily be detected by any careful reader in most of his works. Perhaps the characteristic came with the choice of language.
Whether written or oral, languages are primary carriers of culture in any society. Dominant values, prevalent norms and popular beliefs of society seep into the language and then ooze through it during use without its practitioner ever realizing it. There is a reason most French-speaking countries often fall for the presidential system of government. Michel Foucault once called for cutting off the head of the king from political theory.
English comes with its own political baggage of parliamentary forces defeating and then subjugating the monarch, the mercantile bourgeoisie making peace with the feudal elite to control the proletariat through subtle pacification rather than blatant oppression, and literary tradition singing virtues of gradual reform rather than the revolution. Perhaps therein lay the roots of differences between republican and democratic mindset.
Religiosity and authoritarianism come with the language of politics that has martial pedigree. The Urdu—lingua franca of the Mughal military camps—could perhaps be an example that has yet to establish its egalitarian credentials despite Faiz Ahmed Faiz. First the Khas Kura, then the Gorkhali dialect and ultimately the Nepali language acquired its primacy through uses during military expeditions. Brahmin priests formalised it through religious rituals. Monarchism—a combination of religiosity and militarism—continues to run through the veins of Nepali language.
Regressive politics
The Nepali Congress need not be apologetic about belonging to the conservative mainstream. In fact, the duplicity of faux-progressivism in sloganeering and regressive policies in practice will probably do more harm in the long run than the frank admission that it has now become a right-of-the-centre neoliberal party subscribing openly to the agenda of Washington Consensus in political economy.
From Chanakya of antiquity to Edmund Burke in philosophy and Teddy Roosevelt in politics, there are various examples of conservatives having served the cause of human progress more than many self-declared progressives. Even Mahatma Gandhi, to a certain extent, was more of a conservative than a progressive. It’s just that his heart was in the right place—at the left of the body and mind.
There is only one problem with the NC’s choice—the Nepali political sphere is already chock-a-block with right-wingers of various shades. The yellow monarchists still survive in various formations of Rastriya Prajatantra Parties. Loud proclamations of progressivism notwithstanding, the concoction of Marxist certainty, Leninist militancy, Stalinist chicanery and natural affinity for market manipulation tactic has transformed the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) into a communal, chauvinistic and casteist party of rabid reactionaries. The NC honchos need to accept that the political space further to the right is already occupied by rank regressives of RPPs, rabid reactionaries of UML and various opportunists that go by the name of peasants, workers or proletarian parties. Almost all of them are casteist and communal to their very bones.
Once upon a time—such a long ago that few remember it any more—when Chairman PK Dahal of UCPN (Maoist) was still the fiery General-Secretary Comrade Prachanda, giving interviews from safe hideouts in unknown locations, the putative Great Helmsman of the-then CPN (Maoist) had thundered to reporter Li Onesto of the Revolutionary Worker newspaper, “The revisionist parties and revisionist leaders always teach the people the question of reform, reform, reform. And reform is reformism, is revisionism. But the question of making leaps is revolutionary.”
A leap gone wrong often turns out to be counter-revolutionary. It’s hard to find a bigger revisionist than Chairman Dahal in contemporary politics. Former Maoists are now ardent neocons. The drift rightwards of almost all Marxist, Leninist and Maoist parties differs only in speed; in direction, they are all headed down south.
Despite apparent disparities, most rightwing politicos draw their sustenance from chauvinism, for they have little else to offer to the populace. Contrary to popular perception, Samuel Johnson isn’t severe enough in his criticism of patriotism—it’s neither first nor the last but the only refuge of all reactionaries. All that anyone with an iota of doubt about the quip needs to do is give a cursory look at the performance record of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India or his soulmate in realpolitik Premier Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli in Nepal.
Patriotic patriarchy
It’s not just the Pahadi parties that are all rightists. The case of Madheshi formations is no better. Mahanth Thakur is yet to free himself from the tentacles of free-market fundamentalism. It seems all that he wants to build is a Madheshi version of Pahadi-dominated Nepali Congress. Similar are aspirations of Upendra Yadav who is often seen to be merely responding to the communal politics of UML, where he cut his teeth in politics, with counter slogans disguised as assertion of dignity.
For anti-federal Kamal Thapa, there is Rajendra Mahato; and Matrika Yadav is a fitting response to the communalization of his former comrades in Maoist ranks. One Anil Jha is more of a match for congenitally anti-Madheshi triumvirate of Chitra Bahadur KC, CP Mainali and Narayan Man Bijukchhe!
Capitalists and communists are equally inimical to gender justice. Conservatives, on the other hand, not only tolerate but even venerate women that they consider to be men in everything other than the biology. That’s how Margaret Thatcher changed the course of British history. Some of them nominally socialist, from Golda Meir and Sirimavo Bandaranaike to Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto, each one claimed to be patriots first, a “manly” assertion.
Unfortunately, the word patriot owes its origin to Greek patriotes, meaning “fellow countrymen” which comes from pater or father. Exceptions apart, patriotism and patriarchy are inextricably intertwined concepts. Naturally, NC has failed to produce even a beneficiary of tokenism such as President Bidya Bhandari.
Perhaps women will have to take the lead themselves to transform Nepali polity and turn vacuous patriotism towards meaningful discourse of dignity in a manner that the Nandini Sathpathys, Mayavatis, Jaylalithas, and Mamata Banerjees have done to the grassroots in India.
Perhaps it’s now time for the Dalit, the Janjati and the Madheshi women of patriarchal parties to break ranks and make history than slowly become a sad part of it.
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