When the Maoists emerged as the largest party in the dissolved Constituent Assembly, its Supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal probably summarized that he had won the last battle of his ‘People’s War’ and deserved to be considered as the final arbiter of the future of the country. According to those in the know, when he wrote a letter—perhaps an informal one seeking the support of his Indian counterpart for the new government—he referred to himself as Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of Nepal. The letter set multiple alarm bells ringing in the Indian capital.[break]
It is said that Dahal could never again regain the confidence of the Indian establishment after that fateful missive. Hardliners in New Delhi almost certainly concluded, and with good reasons, that when the leader of a party without a majority in the legislature had the temerity to rename a “Federal Democratic” country as the “People’s Republic,” such a politico was unworthy of their trust. That note, if it really existed, probably sealed the fate of the Constituent Assembly where the Maoists could be cornered with great efforts—the desperate coalition between Nepali Congress, Madheshis, and the UML couldn’t have happened without some strong chaperon shepherding these antagonistic groups into one place—but they couldn’t be ignored, much less wished away.
Bhaswor Ojha/Republica
Dahal failed to read meanings in the political correctness of Indian diplomats. He wanted to visit Beijing first as the prime minister of a Maoist-led coalition government. When informed of his decision, he was probably told that as the head of government of a sovereign country, he was free to set his own priorities as long as he kept the specialty of Indo-Nepal relations in mind. The former guerilla leader failed to read veiled warnings and went ahead with his planned trip. With his successive decisions based on the new-fangled doctrine of equidistance—even a cursory reading of the map without considering compulsions of geopolitics would have shown him that Beijing is much farther from Kathmandu than New Delhi—Dahal began to fall into the trap of his own making. The drama of his engineered showdown with the office of the President over the dismissal of the army chief appears so theatrical that it is difficult to accept the whole affair as natural. Ultimately, he had to vacate Baluwatar. The disgraceful Old Nepal tradition of an elected leader being humbled by the military establishment was given continuity under the New Republican regime.
The diminution of Dahal, however, has not benefited the NC, the UML or even the Madheshis. When a political leader of Dahal’s stature falls off the pedestal in such a manner, the standing of every other politico diminishes almost in proportion. Girija Prasad Koirala probably knew that Dahal was being targeted, but the entire political class that has facilitated his rehabilitation in mainstream politics was being kept under watch. Until his last moment, Koirala struggled to save Dahal not out of love for the Maoists but because he realized that for a functioning democracy, towering leaders opposed to one’s views were as important, if not more, as committed followers. This sounds elementary in democratic politics. Messrs Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhalnath Khanal, however, came from Marxist schooling background where collaborators are friends and competitors are enemies.
In Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (MaLeMa) lexicon—the grammar of politics that binds Messrs Dahal, Nepal and Khanal together—enmification (such a term actually exists in social psychology) is an important component of being. To take liberty with the Rene Descartes maxim: I have enemies, therefore I am. All statements of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist leaders are undergirded with the assumption that successes are all their own while every failure can conveniently be assigned to the designs of enemies. The plural term is perhaps a misnomer. In the vocabulary of Nepal’s ‘nationalist and leftist’ forces, the enemy word is spelled with an ‘I’ instead of ‘e’ and is invariably mentioned in singular.
Tone and tenorOn a bright sunny afternoon, an immigration officer at the JFK Airport in New York is in a cheery and expansive mood. He quizzes a patiently waiting visitor holding a Nepalese passport, “Do you speak English?” The answer is in the negative. The respondent has never set foot on the English soil. The next question sounds more logical, “Do you speak American”? The answer is again in the negative. The officer is immensely pleased by the answer and wonders about the language in which the conversation has been taking place. The visitor thinks that it is perhaps an exchange between ‘Indianese’ and American. He is firmly rebuked, “There is no such language. What you are speaking is definitely not American, but there is no harm in calling it English.”
“No harm” is perhaps the operative phrase in the statement of an immigration officer who seemed to know more about Adam Smith, Ricardo and Keynes than politics of a poor country lost somewhere on the map of Asia. Despite centuries of standardization, no two person—let alone two countries—speak exactly the same language. Languages are carriers of meaning, and only the speaker knows what she wants to convey. The listener is then free to find messages that meet his understanding. Perhaps that is the reason the speaker has to be careful about what is being uttered. As a popular saying in Nepali goes, a bullet fired and a term pronounced cannot be withdrawn.
The problem with the vocabularies of Nepal’s ‘leftist-nationalist’ parties is that they were never told by their mentors of the Panchayat regime that when fringe forces come into the mainstream, their words begin to be scrutinized for intentions and meanings. Dahal’s ‘foreign master’ phrase, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai’s unguarded comments about ‘keys’ being elsewhere, or Sushil Koirala’s purported statements about games being played by spooks demeaned their standing without in any way harming the interests of the powerful force that they intended to malign.
The logical corollary of Charles De Gaulle’s diplomacy dictum—nations have no friends, only interests—could only be that countries have no enemies, either. Enmification is then as much a linguistic construct as an ideological one. Ideologies are remarkably pertinacious. The fall of the Soviet Union dispirited some of the people for some of the time, but the lure of Marxist-Leninist convictions in Nepal has not weakened much. It has been quite a while since the empire Mao built embraced corporatism, but Mohan Baidya and his ilk continue to be blissfully unaware of its repercussions upon communist beliefs. Dogmas are called so precisely because they fall beyond the pale of logic. Language, however, is surprisingly amenable to correction.
Media matters
Politicos would always be what they are. They pursue power with single-mindedness and tend to ignore likely repercussions of their offhand comments. Perhaps this is where the role of the media becomes important. Sensationalizing is easy and scoops sell, but it is possible to inform without being malicious. The inevitability of “Indian Interests” is an inescapable part of Nepal’s political existence—it took an economic blockade in late-1980s to make the then King Birendra realize its centrality—but persistent enmification vitiates the atmosphere of understanding and coexistence. However, the national discourse cannot change without change in the attitude of media persons. “I am not an Indian” is a negative identity.
The immigration officer holding a strange-looking passport in his hands is unlikely to be impressed by statements of distinction and differences such as “The country of Mount Everest” or “Where Buddha was born.” The Cold War ended long ago. Americans now realize that India may be poor and flailing but its sheer size makes it the preeminent power of South Asia. Nepalis would have to learn to change their vocabulary to suit the changed realities of geopolitics. Probably Dahal will get to hear such inanities once again during his nth trip to Beijing.
Lal contributes to the week with his biweekly column Reflections. He is one of the widely read poliitical analysts in Nepal.
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