The sudden spurt in tea-party parleys—the UCPN (Maoist) and the Office of the Vice-President are hosting bonhomie bashes today, tomorrow it will be the turn of the Prime Minister to receive the chattering classes of Kathmandu at Baluwatar—may ultimately turn out to be full of sound and fury signifying nothing. But for now, cheer is clearly in the air of Kathmandu valley.
Signals emanating from the main signatories of the 12-point New Delhi Understanding and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement—the Nepali Congress (NC) and Maoists, other parties had merely committed themselves to these political deals as reluctant supporters and possible partners in the execution of the common will of the people—suggest that the deadlock over integration and rehabilitation of encamped combatants has been broken. A breakthrough over draft constitution is still awaited, but given the paradigm shift in the political ideology of former insurgents, hopefully it should not take too much time to devise an acceptable model of governance.
It is slightly more difficult to fashion out the form of federalisms, but even on that sensitive issue, Maoists and Madeshbadis have shown surprising flexibility. Maoists have learnt that ‘pure’ ethnic provinces would undermine their egalitarian politics and promote populism of the Mayawati and Mamata Banerjee variety experienced in the neighboring states of India. Madeshbadis have realized that the claim of “One Madesh, One Pradesh” had turned out to be counterproductive: Every time the slogan is chanted, it sparks anti-federalism outbursts from multiple quarters of Nepali society in a synchronized manner.
The NC will finally agree to any reasonable proposal, but only after it has been dragged to the negotiating table all kicking and screaming. Some NC-stalwarts genuinely believe in the illusion that conservatives and reactionaries of the country trust the degenerate socialists and are fearful of annoying their supposed supporters. Once the leadership is given a political offer on federalism that it can’t refuse, there will be a rush to claim its ownership. It happened with neo-liberalism in early-1990s, militarism in late-1990s and republicanism in mid-2000s. All those ideologies had once been anathema to the NC. There is no reason for recent history not repeating itself. The party probably knows that there is no other way of making inroads into Janjati heartlands in hills and mountains and winning back Madesh.
There are some fringe elements in the NC that would like to revive the constitution of 1990. Doubters are aplenty in every society and their reservations should be acknowledged without rancor. The regressive elements of Nepal have lost their main constituency—the Religious Right in India—and their ability to create havoc is perhaps limited.
By all indications, the peace and constitution project finally seems to be back on track for the first time after it was derailed during the controversy over restoration of the dismissed army chief through presidential missives issued close to midnight. However, the journey forward would be far from smooth if the CPN (UML) opted to be spoilsport. The official party of the lumpen-bourgeoisie has enough money, propaganda machinary and sheer street muscle to thwart a political settlement if its patrons decided that the outcome was going to be unfriendly to their interests.
No matter what the political arrangement, the self-declared “Marxist-Leninists” would have to fight it out at the electoral arena with those that call themselves “Maoists”. Debasement of these terms is a different matter altogether, but essentially they represent the same constituency. Such a contest was on display during CA elections and ground beneath the UML feet has since moved further away. Aspirations of commoners create alarm in the hearts of the comprador. The NC and Maoist leadership may have to repent if they failed to address the fears of UML in a credible way.
Mahendra’s Legacy
In what was perhaps one of the last outposts of oriental despotism, the Panchayat Regime was fashioned out to be an experiment in dynamic conservatism. If mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, the oriental despot in Nepal paid his dues to Karl Marx by modeling the regime upon the Marxist-Leninist concepts. Panchayat was a proto-communist state where “dictatorship of the proletariat” existed in its idealized form. The only difference was that the king styled himself as embodiment of the people’s will: A ‘proletariat-incarnate’ as it were.
In the name of “partyless” system, politics was organized around the party of the state. Handpicked vanguards were required to lead the masses toward a golden future. The Panchayat edifice had its own politburo, its own little red-book called the “Go Back to the Village Campaign” and its own rogue youth brigade in the form of Nationalist Independent Students’ Corps.
The ideology of Panchayat, despite the vacuity of its “soil, water and air” rhetoric, was ‘scientifically’ conservative. Perhaps that was the reason it attracted Marxists-Leninists to its fold in droves. Its economic agenda, at least during early phases, was surprisingly progressive. It sought to introduce, even though half-heartedly, land reforms. Huge infrastructure projects were designed to create sinecures for the vanguard and jobs for the poor. Forests were cleared at unprecedented scales to resettle possible loyalists. In a spraying campaign that sociologist-activist Krishna Bhattachan often interprets as Deadly Dose to Tharus (DDT), clearing in Tarai was made safe for settlers from hills and mountains.
The cultural agenda of the regime was quite straightforward. Since Hinduism and Hindu monarchy were intertwined, sanctity of both had to be saved at all costs. The ‘nation’ was in ‘danger’ and a permanent state of war against unseen enemies warranted that rules had to be followed even if they were arbitrary. Rule-making was the responsibility of the vanguard. Proletariats would break it at their own peril. Any similarity with Jucche Regime of North Korea is purely coincidental.
The social agenda was even less complicated. “Conservatives are unified, and united in their rage,” wrote Alan Wolf in The New Republic recently, “Their most passionate hate is directed at those they believe were assigned by God or nature to second-class status but still insist on their full rights as human beings.” The pre-ordained second-class status was for Madeshis, those that spoke languages other than Nepali or were declared to be deviant by the establishment for their political beliefs.
It is easy to decry such traits as regressive, but almost two generation of Nepalis have grown up imbibing such values from their textbooks, social relations and cultural practices. The post-1990 transformations in politics shook the roots of these noxious weeds. The Rhododendron Revolution in 2006 uprooted dogmas that are more poisonous, the concept of a religious state for example. The Madesh Uprising established the importance of socio-cultural plurality. But despite all these changes, there is a very large constituency intact that still swears by the tenets of Mahendrism. This is the social stratum that Balkhu Palace is trying to monopolize by refashioning itself as Underwriters of Mahendra’s Legacy (UML).
Gyanendra’s way
Geopolitical circumstances, principled stand of Girija Prasad Koirala, opportunism of Pushpa Kamal Dahal, ineptness of Sher Bahadur Deuba, the utter lack of fighting spirit in the-then Royal Nepal Army leadership and his own obduracy were some of the reasons behind the failure of King Gyanendra’s phased coup that had begun in October 2002. Thereafter, he unstoppably blundered his way into the political wilderness. However, the one force over which he had a complete grip in Nepali politics was the UML’s cadre-base. His advisors had assessed correctly that whenever given a choice between dialectic and materialism, most Marxist-Leninists take a very practical decision. They opt for material rewards.
The UML joined Gyanendra’s “half-corrected” regression with pleasure and alacrity. The lumpen-bourgeoisie writhes like fish out of water when kept out of the circle of influence from where it can simultaneously feed and fest upon the permanent establishment of the government.
For the Maoists, there are risks associated with the cooptation of UML cadres into its fold. It takes only a drop to poison an entire vessel. Sharing cabinet berths could be a relatively safer option. To be sure, it may enrage some Madeshi activists and alienate a few Janjati campaigners. But that is a small price to pay for the completion of the peace process and promulgation of a new constitution.
The continuity of the CA would henceforth be in the hands of the Supreme Court, which endorsed the extension of its term last time citing the nebulous “Doctrine of Necessity” rather than upon the principles of stability inherent in the spirit of the interim constitution. It would be a grievous mistake to underestimate the influence of Underwriters of Mahendra’s Legacy.
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