Political evolution in the world has come around almost a full circle. Tribes formed ethnic groups through marriage, conquest and assimilation. All sections of society embraced nationalism and united to fight colonialism. Once colonialism gone, capitalists and communists divided the world into two blocs based on ideological internationalism. As communism collapsed, the West claimed victory of its universal values until developing countries began to assert their own identity. Now identify politics is taking some countries like Nepal back toward tribalism.
Writing in the 1990s, Samuel Huntington, the late Harvard professor, had predicted in his book The Clash of Civilizations that ideologically motivated Cold War will be replaced by conflict between civilizations, particularly Sinic and Islamic civilizations opposing the Western civilization. While countries might go to war with each other within the same civilization, they would unite, he suggested, when they are challenged by countries from a different civilization. Several authors, including Benazir Bhutto, criticized Huntington for his thesis, but the evidence has proved him right to a great extent.
For instance, inter-civilizational fault lines have divided many countries and caused conflict in others. The split of India and Pakistan, Indonesia and East Timor, Sudan and South Sudan, Ethiopia and Eretria, Serbia and Bosnia, Russia and Central Asian Muslim republics etc, was motivated mainly by religious differences. Russians and other Eastern European countries supported Serbia in its conflict with Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia. Western countries supported largely Christian East Timor and South Sudan seeking independence from Muslim countries. Muslim states have been supporting Islamic rebels in Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao, etc.
However, the post-Cold War world has witnessed not only such macro-conflicts between civilizations but also many micro-conflicts within the same civilization. Once the overarching ideological threat was gone, long subdued micro differences in race, language, region etc. resurfaced aggravating tensions and conflicts. These differences have destabilized even the most advanced countries like Canada, Belgium and Britain. Linguistic differences have riled Belgium and Canada and sectarianism within the same religion has vexed Britain.
Nepal’s tension and conflict has been mostly at the micro-level. Three major civilizations – Hindu, Islamic and Sinic – have coexisted in Nepal largely peacefully because partly the number of Muslims and Chinese is small and partly these population segments have been largely peaceful. Hindus and Buddhists – Huntington identifies Buddhism as part of Hindu civilization – constitute 90 percent of the population and have peacefully coexisted so far. The strongest fault line in Nepal’s identity politics, therefore, has been regional and largely within Hindu civilization.
Identity politics has evolved in Nepal in distinct three phases. In the first phase during the brief flirtation with democracy from 1951-60, it was rather confined to the Tarai where the Terai Congress Party was established by Bedanand Jha and others demanding equality and equal opportunities for the people of the plains. But that phase died out after King Mahendra strangled democracy, introduced the party-less Panchayat system and co-opted the leaders of the Terai Congress into the new system.
The second phase started with the restoration of democracy in 1990 and lasted until 2005. In this phase, Gajendra Narayan Singh established the Sadbhavana Party and fought successive elections securing a few seats in the parliament and in local bodies. However, the party could not mobilize the masses behind it and could not assert the role and significance the Tarai’s strategic location and economic prowess could have bestowed on it. Intra-party conflict decimated the party after Singh died.
In the third phase, identity politics made bigger and wider strides. Begun with the Maoist insurgency, it blossomed, particularly with the success of the People’s Movement II in 2006 that led to the monarchy’s abolition. The Maoists promised the right to self-determination to minorities to garner support to dismantle the state hoping that once in power they would suppress the minorities into submission, as the Bolsheviks and Chinese communists had done earlier. They have been able to retain firm control over the minority outfits in the hills, even though minority intellectuals have not been comfortable with the arrangement.
However, the Tarai outfits spun out of Maoist control quickly due to internal and external factors. Internally, as soon as the Maoist leader, Upendra Yadav, converted his human rights organization, Madheshi Janadhikar Forum, into a political party, several other leaders also formed new regional political grouping, some even threatening the Tarai’s separation from the country. This introduced competition among various regional parties to win the people to their sides and forced Yadav to distance himself from the Maoists in public. Externally, India began to use these parties as a lever to promote its own interests in Nepal.
With these developments, politics of Nepal has actually come around a full circle. Starting its journey from tribalism of pre-unification days, it graduated to ethnicism during the unification period, nationalism in the post-unification period, and the non-aligned status in the phase of internationalism. As the winds of universalism swept the world after the Soviet Union collapsed, Nepal joined the bandwagon in trying to benefit from the unprecedented flows of peoples and goods across frontiers, and educated Nepalis headed for the greener pastures.
Suddenly the arrival of identity politics has taken Nepal back to ethnicism. Everything said and done assumes ethnic meaning and connotation now. Indeed, several minority groups had been left out and left behind, and there was a need to ensure that all groups had equitable access to state resources and services. But Nepal seems to have turned back to tribalism which could turn out to be a path to fragmentation rather than a road to inclusive society.
For instance, the barriers across racial and ethnic divides that were gradually breaking down have re-emerged. Inter-caste marriages and mixed communities that were bringing different groups closer have gone out of favor. Divisions within minority groups – Rais, Limbus, Gurungs, Magars, Sherpas, Yadavs, Tharus, Rajbanshis – have resurfaced. This process is likely to continue until people say enough is enough or some visionary political leaders reverse the course largely based on falsehood and pursued for parochial political gains.
Let me cite two of the several fallacies here. The first is that the Khas Hindus – the hill Brahmins and Chhetris – came to the present-day Nepal last and colonized the territory. That is false. According to Francis Hamilton, Hindus have been living in Nepal since the time of Bhim Sen, which was around 1300 BC, which is about the time the Kirants came to Nepal from northeast India and Burma. It was around the same time when the Kirants also arrived. When the Hindus and Kirant moved to Nepal, only the nomadic tribes like the Rautes, Prajajatis and Bankarias were living here in isolation.
The number of Khas swelled in Nepal due to three waves of immigrants. The first wave came when Alexander invaded western India in 326 BC and the Khas fled to Nepal; the second when Qutb-ud-din conquered western India in 1206; and third when the Mughal dynasty defeated western Indian principalities around 1300s.
Secondly, we are now told that Hindu dominant groups from the Hills and Tarai – the Brahmins, Chhetris/Rajputs, Yadavs, etc – are from different ethnic groups. This is also false. Both these groups belong to the same Aryan stock, came from the Indus valley, settled first in western India, practice the same religion and ritual, observe the same caste hierarchy and share the same features and surnames. It is beyond logic to say that the Tripathis, Shuklas, Tiwaris, Pandes, Mishras, etc from the Hills and Tarai belong to different ethnic groups. Similarly, the Chhetris from the Hills and the Rajputs and Yadavs from the Tarai belong to the same race. The climate worked some visible differences between these two groups.
Max Weber is worth mentioning here. He says ethnicity is based on common political experience rather than on common descent. Thomas Eriksen also describes ethnic differences as imputed cultural differences or races. This means ethnic differences are more artificial than real, more political than substantive, and more concocted than spontaneous. But this very artificial construct has taken the center stage of identity politics in Nepal. Policies and perceptions based on fallacies do not produce optimal results.
That brings me to the issue of federalism. If handled right, federalism can be a potent tool to ensure empowerment of all and equitable access to opportunities and state resources, and special measures to bring the disadvantaged forward, for all to create a vibrant, inclusive and progressive society. If handled wrongly, it could throw Nepal back to tribalism and fragmentation from which the country had emerged some 240 years ago.
To be right, federalism must meet four mutually complementary criteria. First, it should be inclusive. A look at India will be instructive here. In India, only a few backward states such as Nagaland and Mizoram are exclusively ethnic; the rest are inclusive geographical provinces. Should Nepal follow the model of Nagaland and Mizoram? Second, federalism should devolve political power to the lowest rung of government – the local level – so local people can be in-charge of local affairs, not the state or federal capital. If this is done, people will have no incentive or reason to ask for breaking the states further to reflect their specific identity. Third, states must be economically viable, and too many states cannot be so, for administrative cost will leave too little, if at all, for development activities. Fourth, federalism should facilitate the optimal and complementary use of resources so there will be no perennial fight between states over them.
Political parties must consider these matters when they discuss the proposals on federalism of the Nepali Congress (7 provinces), UML (11) Maoists (13) and other parties. Otherwise, Nepal may end up going back to tribalism once again.
The writer is former ambassador to the United Nations & the United Kingdom
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