This write-up proposes that it is time to introspect those civilizational fault lines. These fault lines are about the intellectual renaissance that Nepal has never gone through. This is about the rationalization of the Nepali mind that has not happened collectively. This is why the intellectually imported concept of democracy – whose civilizational foundations are elsewhere – has not performed well here. This will not simply suffice to blame a few political parties and politicians for what they have not been able to deliver. This is the society on the whole that is hollow in terms of intellectual foundations.
Ordinarily, countries with relatively sound intellectual history progressed to be developed nations. Nepal has not. Because it lacked the fundamental development infrastructure: intellectual foundations. What do we have as intellectual traditions in the last hundred and last few hundred years, other than what we have been able to incompletely borrow from the broad “Indian” intellectual traditions? What a pity that the oldest South Asian nation has less than a century of intellectual history of its own, if any!
What is the makeup of the Nepali mind? Is this simply an offshoot of the broad Indian civilization and nothing else?
Just compare this with some other parts of the world: we have had some of our “best” poets only about six decades ago. Nepali original philosophers? This scribe is not aware of any who has an international standing. The Nepali “intellectual” mind has traditionally derived most from the mythological stories like Mahabharata and Ramayana. We have not yet seen a vibrant intellectual generation that has dissected the hollowness of Gita. This is most ironic that the outdated wisdom of Gita is still taken as the making of a ‘modern’ mind in this part of the world. The Nepali intellectual mind, if there is any, is a heritage of a few Nepalis who went to Benaras to study half a century ago, for instance, and came back with answers to all intellectual, existential and spiritual questions. We have never got rid of this Benaras-centric generation’s influence which is pre-modern in almost every sense.
Nepal, because it lacks other substantive foundations required for the collective idea of a nationhood, has had to depend on certain historic unifying icons, which a “modern” Nepali mind would not be able to rationalize. Remember, every nation has their own icons like ours ( such as Buddha, Sita, Bhrikuti, Sagarmatha) but how they relate to the idea of the particular nation is different. Rulers had to invent such icons to unify their people so that they stand as one collective race to defend the certain geographic territory over which the rulers could rule. Only substantive intellectual discourses provide the bedrock for a substantive nationhood and not the self-serving historic icons invented by rulers in different times.
This is not to argue here that every nation should write a history that describes the idea behind the creation of that nation like Jawaharlal Nehru did through his masterpiece Discovery of India. The contention here is: what is the makeup of the Nepali mind? Is this simply (and only) an offshoot of the broad Indian civilization and nothing else? Should anyone write the story of the Nepali mind/its intellectual history or not? Why do our university departments, which teach the intellectual history of the Western world, never think about defining the Nepali intellectual mind? Is Nepal only a comfortable laboratory for the Western sociologists, anthropologists and linguists to apply and experiment their research hypotheses?
A collective rationalization of the Nepali mind should be an ideal beginning for most of the ills this country is suffering from. This is a mistake to depend on the political front alone for solutions for the transformation of the country. As long as our politicians are also people who belong to the same society as ours, isn’t it naïve to expect so much from them? But who would begin this long project of modernity and rationality in Nepal?
The revolutionary students’ action, a few weeks ago, of painting a university vice chancellor black could be one humble beginning towards that end. That event reads Nepal’s intellectual history in the most succinct possible way. This reflects the status of knowledge in the country and representation of knowledge by the institution of universities and how the recipients of knowledge relate themselves to the giver. I again find it farcical to blame a political group or group of individuals on this. This is a larger societal problem. Unless the society on the whole is capable to produce vibrant ideas and establish the idea behind the notion of this nation as a nation, we will continue to be carried away by foreigners’ telling us that our peace process was “unique”, so we should be proud.
Not that we can now travel back in time and rebuild our civilizational foundations beginning from centuries ago. But it may well be a good time to start talking about the Nepali mind, beginning with its journey in history – whatever little history it has. Otherwise, the nation’s mental energy will be perpetually consumed by the political melodrama.
bishnu.sapkota@gmail.com
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