Fear psychosis has been the defining feature of Nepali nationalism. Built from expansionist campaigns of an impoverished ruler, the soldiery of the chieftaincy were recruited on the promise of shares in the loot of conquered territories. In order to forge allegiance between frail nobility, King Prithvi’s Divyopadesh (Divine Council) emphasized the fragility of the cobbled-up state.
The Anglo-Gorkha (1814-1816) wars inflicted dishonor upon the court in Kathmandu. People in Kumaon-Garhwal, Sikkim-Darjeeling hills and most of Tarai-Madhesh were so fed up with excesses of occupation forces that they had openly supported East India Company. In folklores of Kumaon-Garhwal, Gorkhali soldiers are depicted as sadists who amused themselves by tying firecrackers to the tail of stray dogs and setting them afire. Soon after their defeat, bravest of Gorkhali mercenaries switched sides and joined Nasiri battalions of their former enemies. [break]
Court historians have obliterated inconvenient facts, but mercenaries from mountains had served chieftains of Ganga plains from time immemorial. The Muglanes—hardy soldiers from hills serving Mughal rulers—became a matter of shame once Hinduization gained steam. However, the Lahure culture was a continuation of Muglane tradition. The Sugauli Treaty, ratified in 1816, added the fear of merger in the psyche of Gorkhali nobility.
Jang Bahadur was born in the times of disgrace—in the aftermath of Sugauli Treaty—and grew up in years of confusion in Kathmandu. He wiped out a decadent nobility to establish himself as the most dependable loyalist of the imperial overlords in Calcutta. He added one more fear to the list of Gorkhali grievances: The dread of economic submergence.
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By the time of Chandra Shamsher, the realization had sunk in that Nepal had little to export except “short men with stout legs and sharp knives.” The wily old ruler streamlined import businesses so that its profits would keep his ever-expanding clan in reasonable comfort. The opium of mindless consumption created businesses that feared competition from better-connected Indian traders. The commercial elite in Kathmandu was co-opted to hawk fears of Indian incursions on their turf.
Past is past, but an understanding of history is necessary to cope with challenges of the times and prepare oneself for uncertainties of the future. Inherited insecurities continue to persist in the collective psyche of Nepalis. Liberation from Ranarchy should have spelt an end to paranoia, but contestations over spheres of influence during Cold War decades helped the ruling class of Nepal rekindle embers of fear and fan fires of dread-filled hate against ‘expansionist’ Indians.
Demagogic dangers
The Treaty of Peace and Friendship between India and Nepal (1950) has been derided so often in the public discourse that propaganda has completely obscured the obvious: With Sardar Ballavbhai Patel waving instruments of accession all over the Indian subcontinent, Mohan Shamsher and his courtiers couldn’t have got a better deal. Out of all neighboring countries with which Jawaharlal Nehru signed treaties to assert India’s role as the rightful successor of the British Empire in the 1950s, Nepal perhaps received the most honorable settlement. However, the fear of strangulation of supply lines that helped mercantilist and monarchist mint money was instilled into hapless Nepalis.
During the post-liberation decade, India was dragged into political contestations of the kingdom simply because nascent political parties of the day had little else to talk about. After the first general elections, BP Koirala tried to raise the visibility of the country in the international arena. Among other things, he fell to the machinations of Cold War strategists and shortsighted tacticians in New Delhi that decided that Nepal had gone too far into the Western camp. The PEON discovered that ant-India rhetoric was the time-tested plank of maintaining its hegemony over the kingdom.
King Mahendra possessed the raw cunning of archetypal oriental despot and instinctively recognized the limits of anti-Indian postures. Born and bred in royal comforts and educated in the settled societies of the West and the East, King Birendra had little time for niceties of diplomacy or compulsions of realpolitik. His “Zone of Peace” proposal merely helped heighten fears of security establishment in New Delhi that still considers Nepal to be “a naked Khukuri resting on the Indian heartland”.
Miffed by the Indian slight, palace propagandists manufactured fears of Sikkimikaran—knowing fully well that any comparison between annexation of a protectorate and that of a full-fledged member of the UN System was self-defeating and humiliating—to cover its failings on all fronts. After the return of BP Koirala to the country in 1976, the unholy MaLe-Mandale (Stalinists and Fascists) axis began to hawk fears of Sikkimization to defame the Nepali Congress. The neologism found willing takers in the newly emerging middleclass that looked towards the West for salvation.
Compared to Sikkimikaran, Fijikaran had a short shelf life. Once it was pointed out that Gorkhali invaders had treated Janajati homelands and Madheshi heartland worse than former bonded labors in Fiji could ever imagine, proto-fascists toned down their rhetoric. Schizophrenia over Sikkimization persists because most Nepalis realize that their collective fate is inextricably linked with future of democratic politics in India.
Nepal is so utterly dependent on Indian goodwill that emergence of a dictator in New Delhi—politically insecure Indira Gandhi had annexed Sikkim during authoritarian interregnum of internal Emergency—can easily spell trouble if its ‘patriots’ continued to harp incessantly about impending Sikkimization. Beyond a point, such rhetoric carries the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Defense mechanism
Unlike the nuclear-armed defense forces of Pakistan, the self-sacrificial Buddhist clergy in Sri Lanka, and the sizable presence of internationals in the NGO-Republic of Bangladesh, Nepal has no effective deterrent against Indian incursions upon its sovereignty save the determination of its people. Hollow slogans of Sikkimization or unfounded fears of Fijikaran weaken the national resolve.
Redefinition of Nepali nationality to encompass its inherent diversity would help forge a confident solidarity. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, authors of Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, have reasserted what has been known for years: Building inclusive institutions to replace extractive instruments of the state ensures prosperity and continuity.
Less dependence on foreign aid fosters self-reliance. In any case, as Jonathan Katz writes about relationship between Haiti and the so-called Beltway Bandits of the US where a check “is far more likely to make the half-mile walk from Treasury to the headquarters of Chemonics International,” foreign aid seldom reaches its declared beneficiaries.
Lowering of expectations is yet another dose of realism Nepal badly needs. It is a people-rich but resource-poor country. Even if oil were to be found tomorrow in Limbuwan, Magarat or Khasan, it would merely lead to conflicts similar to what is happening for bauxites between the mining lobby and the government on the one side and tribals on the other in Chhatisgarh. If history is any guide, profiteers always win because greed is a more devious and brutal force than the immediacy of human needs.
Cultivation of confidence is perhaps the most important agenda of national survival. Fear mongers in White Shirts perhaps wish secretly for Sikkimization so that they can draw higher salaries, buy cheaper cars, or be a part of a bigger market for their goods, talent or services. Subsistence farmer may not know much about national independence, but they instinctively realize the potentials of being members of a relatively small independent country: They got kings on their doorsteps in the past and a prime minister spent nights with them recently. The intangible benefits of independence are too obvious to need the continuation of a humiliating rhetoric.
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