The extra-constitutional arrangement of forming a non-political Interim Council (IC) was agreed upon ostensibly to conduct Constituent Assembly (CA) elections at the earliest possible opportunity. The first self-set deadline for the polls was June. All that the IC government has succeeded in doing within this period is announcing the date.[break]
If everything goes on schedule, polls for CA would take place on the World Toilet Day. In a country where sanitation is an important concern of public health, perhaps second only to availability of safe drinking water, the coincidence is fortuitous. Poll campaigns can simultaneously be used to raise awareness about the importance of toilets. Highways can wait. Level of a civilization is measured by the sophistication of its waste disposal system and not by modes of transportation.
Nepal’s political parties are notorious for ignoring real issues such as water, sanitation, food, clothing, housing, mother-care, childcare, care for the physically challenged, concern for the elderly, basic education, primary healthcare and employment. The race to the bottom of demagogy is over vacuous slogans of fragile independence, shaky sovereignty, alluring prosperity, effective meritocracy, sustainable development, hydra hydro dreams and turning the country into at least Singapore, if not Switzerland.
Republica
The Shah monarchy sold illusions of prosperity. King Mahendra enunciated the fundamental promise of authoritarian Panchayat regime in a grandiose manner: Nepal will do in decades what developed countries had taken centuries to achieve. Such nebulous pledges always come with strings attached. Shah monarchs wanted a free hand—no democracy within the country and no interference from abroad—to run their fiefdom. Failure was written in the script of the plan. Hence, ideologues of Panchayat had a scapegoat ready: Blame ‘antinational’ elements fomenting trouble in the country from the Indian soil.
Some communists considered bourgeois parties to be their bigger enemies than authoritarian governments. That was the reason communist parties in India sided with the British to oppose popular politics. The chaos of democracy frightens hardcore communists. Dictatorship is something comrades understand better. After all, dictatorship of the proletariat is their ultimate goal. Ideologues of Panchayat saw through pretensions of the aspiring vanguard. These Marxist-Leninist (MaLe) youths of 1960s and 1970s were co-opted with ‘nationalist’ slogans.
The regime kept MaLe apparatchiks and the Mandale shock troops constantly supplied with inanely fiery slogans: Indian interference, dangers of Sikkimization, risks of Bhutanization, impending Fizikaran, and the hobgoblin of border encroachment. The generation after 1960s has been fed so much of these MaLe-Mandale acids of animosity that it is difficult to find anybody who can think calmly and talk rationally about inviolability as well as limits of Nepal’s sovereignty.
Late BP Koirala recognized the Panchayat deceit and chose to endure the humiliation of being branded an Indian lackey rather than fall for self-defeating India-baiting jingles. Despite his exasperation with the intransigence of the Establishment in New Delhi, GP Koirala refused to join the royalist chorus of blaming Indians for every ill. Even when he had irrevocable information that Maoists had been lured away from monarchist impregnators and were being sheltered by Indian spooks for strategic purposes, GP tried to engage New Delhi rather than denounce them.
The NC Chairman Sushil Koirala considers himself to be the inheritor of Koirala legacy. But he seems to have little appreciation for foreign policy compulsions and its implications upon politics of Nepal. His recent utterances—some public, many private—have proven that he has fallen for MaLe-Mandale rhetoric of anti-Indian ‘nationalism’, hook, line and sinker. “Nepal’s independence and sovereignty have never been as weak as in recent times,” he is reported to have rued with his confidants. He must have been reading different history books than his predecessors in the leadership of the party.
Sovereign State
Any self-governing state is sovereign. Definition of independence is somewhat tricky; among other things, it implies freedom from obligations and the authority of the state to do whatever it wants within its territory without outside interference. Even under the best of circumstances, such an unrestrained freedom is almost impossible to achieve in an increasingly interconnected world.
Powerful countries intervene in affairs of other states almost at will. Tibetization is not as frequently bandied about as Sikkimization and Bangladesh is a less popular emblem than Tamil Elam in the PEON parlors of Kathmandu. Few admit that barring exceptions, home, finance and foreign ministries have traditionally been led by Indian, World Bank-IMF, and Western nominees respectively since the 1960s, irrespective of the regime or party in Singh Durbar.
Connections between correlation and causation are impossible to establish, so relationships between Brian Hodgson and his successors at the British Residency and their Rana protégés are best left to the yellowing pages of history. However, King Tribhuvan being made to take shelter in the embassy of independent India is a part of the living memory.
Sir Chandeshwar Prasad Narayan Singh—caustically called ‘former district board chairman’ by BP in his memoirs—not only sat but sometimes dictated decisions of transitional council of ministers in 1950s. Later, another Indian ambassador, perhaps Sriman Narayan, would be granted direct access to the pooja rooms of the palace even when monarchists kept spouting anti-Indian slogans in public. Earlier, when Subarna Shamsher sent his foreign minister to Seattle to beg for budgetary support and general elections, the US interlocutors made sure that an Indian diplomat was in attendance to report everything back to New Delhi.
Foreign policy is an instrument of national security. South Block mandarins consider countries in their neighborhood as flash points—‘fragile states functioning as rings of fire’—to be calmed rather than areas of constructive engagement. Without Indian ‘interventions’—vehicles, ballot boxes, patrolling of borders, use of its access and influence among political parties, administration and defense forces—it is almost impossible to conduct free and fair polls on schedule. If Sher Bahadur Deuba’s sojourns help in making polls possible, there is no reason for the Koirala coterie to be afraid of meetings that took place in New Delhi.
Koirala legacy
The eldest of Koirala brothers—‘General’ Matrika Prasad—knew his place and maintained a subordinate role. BP considered himself to be the equal of Jawaharlal Nehru. However, Nehru took BP to be an intelligent but imperious leader of a small and emerging country. The clash of perceptions was partly responsible for the short life of parliamentary democracy. With Indira Gandhi, BP’s relationship bordered on animosity due to his proximity to Indian socialist leaders including Jayprakash Narayan. The Panchayat nomenclatura played upon these differences even while ratcheting up slogans against ‘treacherous’ and ‘anti-national’ champions of multiparty democracy.
When he inherited the mantle, the third Koirala tried to find the balance between MP’s accommodating policies and BP’s assertive stances. Despite the differences in their styles, all three Koirala brothers had the confidence and connections to go beyond normal diplomatic channels. It is something that the marginal Koirala at the helms in Sanepa sorely lacks. Pushpa Kamal Dahal has handlers. The PEON speaks for Madhav Nepal or Jhalanath Khanal. The problem with Sushil Koirala is that he has nothing except his party.
Non-political governments work like doses of opium in calming the nerves of raucous middleclass. India’s ‘intervention’ is necessary to conduct polls and prevent an addiction to the politics of having clean, competent, neutral and non-partisan government.
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