Though I don’t understand legal matters, I think I can judge things that make sense. And this verdict makes sense as much for the simple reason that the vice president of Nepal is expected to take oath of office in Nepali as for the millions of sentiments hurt by the vice president’s doing so in Hindi a year ago. I was more dismayed by Jha’s response to the verdict than his act of taking oath in Hindi, which this humble person took as a genuine attempt to seek publicity like the Bollywood stars routinely do especially before the release of their films.
After hearing his comments on television and reading them on newspapers, I feel our VP should be reminded of some basic facts that he may have forgotten after assuming such a high-profile duty. The most important of them all is to be aware that the country that has made him a vice president is Nepal and not Hindustan, which he may have started to believe after his brush with the geopolitical reality following his appointment.
Talking about the Indian influence, when the most powerful Indian (Italian-born Sonia Gandhi) can go to such length to learn and speak Hindi despite having a very valid premise for speaking English, another official language in India, why can’t Jha take the oath of office in Nepali—the language everybody knows he has been speaking all these years.
Coming from the same Madhesi community, President Ram Baran Yadav saw no harm in speaking Nepali. Then why should the VP demean Nepali and take his oath of office in Hindi—which despite being a language for communication in the Tarai is not an official language and not even his mother tongue, which happens to be Maithili. Jha can cry foul over this verdict as much as he pleases but it was him who made language an issue in the first place. And common people like me are glad that the constitution of the land has found a way to put the person, who demeaned Nepali, in his place.
Having found loopholes in the law, big enough to release a criminal in his capacity as a judge in his previous avatar, the VP has the required credential to call himself an expert of the law. But despite his genuine attempts to dampen people’s faith regarding the judiciary during his stint as a justice, I still have enough faith in the judiciary to believe that Chief Justice Min Bahadur Rayamajhee and Justice Balaram KC are competent enough to know the law and the context of Nepal.
And Jha’s argument in seeing conflict of interest in Chief Justice Rayamajhee’s handling of this case just because Rayamajhee was a member of the Judicial Council that formed a committee to probe a controversial order passed by Jha in 2006 is laughable at best. If a former justice starts to question the integrity of the chief justice just because the chief justice happened to punish the former for wrongdoing in the past, that doesn’t speak much about the integrity of the former justice who was found guilty of wrongdoing.
Jha has played a communal card by saying “The verdict proves that the Supreme Court has been the court of a limited number of people and of a certain community.” But that doesn’t hold much water either. He has conveniently forgotten that he is questioning the communal tolerance of a country that has Madhesis as her president and vice president.
I agree that the Madhesis were not fairly treated in the past but the issue has already been addressed by the amendment of the Citizenship Act and will further be addressed by the new constitution. But Jha should be the last person to talk about the discriminations of the past having served his tenure as a justice in the previous establishment.
The most annoying of the vice president’s response to the verdict is his claim “Politically speaking, I do not understand Nepali. No one can compel me to take oath in Nepali.” Everybody knows that the VP can speak Nepali and has been doing so all through out his tenure in the judiciary. So, what should we make of this statement? Is a person allowed to speak a blatant lie in the name of ‘politically speaking’? VP’s argument may explain why the politicians are speaking blatant lies but it doesn’t right the wrong.
After this recent development, there is no question of him retaking the oath of office in Nepali having been such mean to the language. The least we can expect is his resignation, which may show his magnanimity in accepting the verdict of the court despite having reservations about it. And he can add himself to the illustrious list of a few Nepali politicians, like comrade Pushpa Kamal Dahal, to have relinquished power for the sake of one’s moral stance.
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