However, the personal orientation of this scribe often led him to be skeptical about the idea of establishing one grand truth as absolute, and that there is truth per se that is true to one and all. At around the same time when I was thinking on this line, I got a chance to come across the chairperson of Peru’s Truth Commission (Salomon Lerner), whose specialization was the German philosopher Martin Heidegger.
Heidegger being a primary influence on existentialism (which viewed human existence as something thrust upon the individual who has no specific purpose to be on earth) and on deconstruction (which exposes truth as merely a linguistic construct and nothing serious as we usually tend to believe), it was quite interesting to discover that a Heideggerian professor had chaired the commission whose sole responsibility was to establish one finite truth.
“So, professor, how is it working out? Why did Peru choose you for the job and why did you accept it? How could you – a Heideggerian or a deconstructionist by extension – who has critiqued the very nature of truth as a variable and not as a constant, take this job?” A zero hour during our session in Lima allowed this scribe to put these questions to the Peruvian scholar. His response: “Perhaps that is why I was qualified.” Apparently, the Peruvians had realized the need of a person with a capacity to look at truth critically. Let me again get back to Nepal.
Nepal is a better playground for an idea like New Historicism, which argues that no history interpreted by a human author can be absolute.
In the first place, the idea of a Truth Commission entered Nepal through international recommendations. A recommendation may not necessarily be a bad thing though. The bad thing is that our political actors seem to have significantly different understandings of this recommendation that has been already embraced in principle. Another bad thing is that the political actors, the human rights groups and individuals and the victims have not had frank and honest discussions to reach a common understanding about this commission. The human rights community and the political parties have serious differences over the issue of the amnesty provision in the proposed commission. If both these political and human rights communities are co-owners of the peace process, like many others including people in general, should they not have a frank dialogue first?
Let me now go back to the opening question of this article: Is “truth” Nepal’s need now? Well, the Maoists put off violence, a Constituent Assembly has been elected and the country has become a republic. But what next? What has been agreed upon for our future as common principles and a vision? Perhaps nothing. Because this peace process on all fronts started strategically, not philosophically in the political sense. There was a common enemy to fight. So, a process that has always been strategic is not going to yield a fruitful result. There was an artificial beginning.
In this context, whose truth are we talking about? OK, the commission can find out what was the reality behind all actions during the violent conflict so that the country has one standard national text of history. Such a history, if endorsed by all as a common history, has its benefits. But Nepal is a better playground for an idea like New Historicism, which argues that every history is just one of the histories and that no history interpreted by a human author can be absolute. Then, should we rather have two truth commissions simultaneously? One could be revolutionary and the other its convenient opposite?
When we talk about Nepal’s peace process, we find it convenient to comment that it was a process without any process. Some politicians across party lines have now started talking about the need to review all the past agreements in order to move ahead from the present state where people are confused as to what is the genuine peace agenda of the day. Maybe the idea of a review is a good one. But it should be done through a mandated inclusive body.
Since no one is talking about the Truth Commission at the moment, one can infer that it was neither fully internally owned by the political parties nor heartily backed by the human rights community. Given the strained relations between the Maoists and the other parties, it is not practically possible to start working on this.
However, the new CPN-UML-led government has the opportunity to immediately form the Peace Commission, which can review the past agreements, monitor the implementation of the peace process and prepare the background for the formation of the Truth Commission. Otherwise, the newly emerging issues of peace process will continue to deconstruct not only the nature of truth with regard to the violent past that we have just left behind but also the very idea of the formation of a Truth Commission.
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