Dear Dr Bhattarai,
Some years ago, while the country was mired in violence and innocent people were being made victims by both the far right and the far left, I wrote you an open letter to forsake violence and choose a non-violent path to achieve your goals. Your party’s stated goal was to mend the country’s ills by rebelling against the then prevailing unjust social, political and economic framework. In the letter, I had predicted and promised ample support from all of us, the common men and women of this country, if you decided to change your means for achieving the end. Your party eventually realized the significance of the message contained therein. You changed course and received that promised support from every possible quarter including the open defiance, on the Maharajgunj street in front of the Institute of Medicine, of the daytime curfew imposed by the then Royal Nepalese Army. The non-violent movement proved to be death knell of the despotic regime of the day. The entire nation sought a regime change and achieved it within a short span of 19 days!
Seven years hence, Dr Bhattarai, the ills suffered then by the common men and women at the hands of the old regimes continued under your reign as well. You might retort that it is still early days for you to show a substantial progress. But many wise people tell us that the morning shows the day. This morning for new Nepal, however, has not been very promising. The emergent political class too is engaged in full blown corruption and collusion with vested business interests, hobnobbing with foreign powers for fulfilling their self-interest, staking national interests for the sole purpose of holding on to the purse and power, and exclusion of popular representatives from crucial decision-making process, just as it happened under absolute monarchy, and the Koirala and UML regimes of the Nineties!
Republica
Dwarfing of the parliament by the executive became the norm in the ‘90s and most regrettably the first elected Constituent Assembly turned out to be more of a dwarf than earlier parliaments. Here and now, we see the annihilation of the basic tenets of progressivism in governance with the judiciary under a sham executive. The real executive, the so-called High Level Political Mechanism (HLPM), sits on the fence, well outside the perimeter of accountability, pulls the strings to control the puppets and presses the buttons to move their robotic arms! Observers, who keep their eyes and mind open, have not seen or felt the change. If they have, it has been for the worse. Hence, once again, I try to needle your ‘progressive mind’ to be receptive to the true voices.
Let me begin by dwelling on the ‘progressive mind’. It has to do with the idea of progress, which is to carry the society forward from the status quo to just social conditions based on equal opportunities for all in every sphere of human life. We may not all be born equal but progressivism, at its heart, endeavors to defy this state of inequality, no matter where it comes from. In high political circles like yours, the progressive mind is like an unpleasant guest at a dinner party who refuses to leave even after the host’s explicit displeasure. Conscious of his social responsibility, he does not give a hoot about the humiliation he receives from others busy in merrymaking. He does not budge but continually attempts to raise the many issues associated with deceptive politics and political corruption, unlimited greed and the misuse of natural resources, economic hardships and the widening gap between the haves and have-nots, low wages and poor working conditions, child labor and unsafe consumer products, denigration of the minorities and the weak and their exclusion, exploitation of the laborers and peasants and their lack of collective bargaining power.
A progressive mind thinks and expresses. Human thoughts and their expression get limited by social stereotyping in a communist state, which is what you promise your followers. Progress actually demands that such limitations be erased and new frontiers and avenues of fresh thinking and fresh approaches to human life be opened. In short, progress demands an open mind and an open platform on which the thinking mind can operate and express. A progressive mind does not allow the thoughts to congeal into dogma or ideology. Instead, it seeks to create a base or a canvas on which others can paint and build images and structures. A mind that seeks progress has to be able to reject social orthodoxy or a party line.
It rather seeks to expand the horizon of human thinking and behavior and to challenge the social prescriptions. At the same time, while creating and expanding, a progressive mind is always aware of the danger of establishing a new cult behavior that tends to disparage and minimize those outside the cult. My complaint is: you did not even allow free expression to the 601 CA members, but chose to promote and impose stark oligarchy of a few on them and the people of Nepal! You took your cues from non-Nepali forces and ignored the national voices. Is that not a fair reason to lament your regime?
A progressive mind in Nepal would generate thoughts and a legal order responsive for liberty and equality for people, manifesting as a total release from oppressive forces listed above. It should lead to national actions that create and provide opportunities for all by curbing excessive individualism, so dear to the many business houses and their political associates in the country.
You and your UCPN (Maoist) have charted and prescribed activities so clearly inimical to social progress and yet you claim to be progressive. Such a claim is utterly misplaced. Please abandon it here and now. The only conceivable reason for this wholly undeserved claim: to sway the unsuspecting minds in your favor with the sole aim of grabbing political power. Progress is not your aim, Dr. Bhattarai. The only aim seems to be satisfaction of your unlimited greed for political power, and perhaps the purse that comes with it.
Your party, alongside some Madhesi leaders with feudalistic base, is promoting ethnicity-based federalism. This has to be an advocacy for incongruous cults. Ethnic federalism is just another form of cult culture, but a sure recipe for division. Religions and cults tend to divide rather than unite humanity. They invite conflicts and wars, the greatest barrier to human progress. If ethnicity-based federalism is not a division into several fragments of the Nepali nation state, what is? Nepal is already a secular state. Why not leave it at that? Here, I wish to remember Krishnamurthi’s famous statement: “A man of religion can never be a religious man”. You are a man of religion, Dr. Bhattarai, an ideologue, but not a religious man with a concern for comprehensive human progress! If you think otherwise, please explain.
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