Saturday, August 08, 2020

Maybe The Almighty Has Spoken To Oli

He’s not letting this one go.
Weeks after insisting that Lord Ram was born in Nepal, and not India, Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli has now directed the elected leaders of Madi municipality to build a Ram temple there.
During a meeting with those leaders, Oli said the government would change the name of Madi municipality to Ayodhyapuri. He also instructed them to prepare a grand fair on Ram Navami, the deity’s birthday.
The obvious question here is as clichéd as it is relevant. What has prompted our officially atheist premier to espouse such a profoundly religious cause and at such political risk? Oli’s July 13 accusation of Indian cultural encroachment vis-à-vis the birthplace of Lord Ram came close on the heels of his effort to remedy India’s cartographic aggression through a constitutional amendment enshrining Nepal’s new territorial map.
No amount of rage or ridicule from India and within Nepal seems to have deterred Oli. One reason may be the resoluteness with which Nepali scholars have been making the same assertion for so long. The prime minister’s comments during Bhanu Jayanti observances last month unleashed a torrent of analyses, interviews and commentaries that provided even the most diehard skeptics room to pause.
But, then, Oli could easily have left the issue to play out in public. In ramping up the rhetoric, is he somehow demonstrating an intention to extract the most from the prevailing momentum? After all, only days ago Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation for the Ram temple in Ayodhya in a culmination of a decades-long battle.
Could Oli be thinking of a tradeoff of sorts between Ram’s precise birthplace and Nepali territories India currently controls? You’d think any prime minister willing to barter God in such a way was out of his mind. But, then, Oli heads a party that has officially renounced religion. Who says he sees no use of God? If religion could help him bring back lost territories, wouldn’t he risk deploying it politically?
Admittedly, there is that imperative of tying India down tightly enough to prevent it from flashing the Tibet card as an aging Dalai Lama portends a bitter succession struggle. Oli knows he needs to camouflage any such maneuver with a national narrative.
Could Oli be playing a shrewd game here? An India exhausted by Nepali antics on multiple fronts might be amenable to returning those lands and redefining the bilateral relationship on a more equal footing. Even if there is the slightest chance of that happening, Oli does have the temptation and temperament to pursue it.
If, on the other hand, Oli is resigned to a full display of Indian displeasure at its erosion of influence in South Asia and Nepal’s particular vulnerabilities therein, why not make the most of the situation? By drawing in the Chinese closer to save his government, Oli might even be hastening a Sino-Indian condominium for the next stage of our political evolution.
Should a political ‘accident’ occur here, Oli could evade blame for the entire post-2006 political establishment. Has God spoken to him?