Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba has indeed amended the slur, but in a surprisingly creative way. Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli hasn’t reversed the direction of his bodily incline, according to Deuba. He is now prostrating simultaneously in both directions.
If that imagery has left your head spinning or feet wobbling, consider the way Oli has been using the train and ship metaphors in his recent pronouncements vis-à-vis Nepal’s position between China and India. Our prime minister is least bothered how his words sound as long as he thinks the image they conjure is alluring enough.
Not exactly known for certitude, Deuba insists the Chinese train will never cross the border. Considering how long the mandarins up north have been dangling that carrot – dating back to when it wasn’t even thought technically feasible – it becomes easier to take Deuba at his word.
What Deuba didn’t – but probably wanted to – say may also be closer to the truth: Indian trains could be chugging in here first, and far sooner than anyone thought. Oli should probably stick with ships, you might say.
Still, Deuba’s portrayal of two-directional prostration merits closer perusal. And here, former communist firebrand turned royalist turned independent Radha Krishna Mainali has stepped in to sharpen our view of Oli’s compulsions.
What Mainali, who has burned bridges with the left and right through his independence, said the other day makes some sense amid the general silliness around us.
Oli the man has a profound inferiority complex, according to Mainali, wherein he considers any criticism a personal attack on his abilities. The premier’s public pronouncements seem to suggest someone so sure of himself that he reflexively laughs everyone/everything off. From the way Mainali sees it, Oli uses breeziness and banter to show that he is in control. Of course, packing his cabinet and party committees with loyalists and keeping straight-shooters at bay helps.
Mainali sees Oli’s mindset meshing with the political psychology of a new party whose two principal constituents rushed headlong into unity resolving to iron out their differences later. An assortment of Maoist factions morphed into a formidable party vowing and waging a ‘people’s war’. The Unified Marxist-Leninists emerged from a more generational baseline wherein the older Marxists allowed themselves to be taken over by the more youthful Marxist-Leninists under the fig-leaf of people’s multiparty democracy.
Just as the Maoists are now struggling to wage peace, the Marxist-Leninists have never figured out whether ‘people’s multiparty democracy’ was more of a contradiction or redundancy. That’s probably how we got a new party which has its abbreviation tagged as a full and formal part of its name.
Oli’s problem is that he jointly heads a party of two equals who can’t agree on who’s more equal. Mainali thinks factionalism will worsen in the weeks and months ahead as Pushpa Kamal Dahal becomes a more prominent standard-bearer of the pro-Western faction.
As nominal Oli allies like Madhav Kumar Nepal, Bam Dev Gautam and Subhas Nemwang weigh their prospects, our prime minister would be impelled to fortify himself. Alone, neither the Indians nor the Chinese are likely to ‘patronize’ an Oli faction. Together, they just might – if they happen to see Oli as their best bet vis-à-vis India-China bilateralism on Nepal.
Call it courtship or capitulation, simultaneously facing opposite poles is no easy task for Oli, who probably considers a circus contortionist more comfortably placed. But, then, you do catch Deuba’s drift.
