Dilemmas Of Hindu Statehood

At least one reluctant ally turned outright critic has openly speculated that Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli might be on the verge of declaring Nepal a Hindu state later this week.
Now, we can all wonder why Surendra Pandey would wade into something that could actually shore up the prime minister’s constituency. Directly accusing Oli of conspiring to restore the monarchy might not have fared any better, considering the palpable national mood. At least, the Pushpa Kamal Dahal-Madhav Kumar Nepal faction would not be accused of being willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike.
For now, Pandey’s remark at a sit-in organized by the anti-Oli faction of the Nepal Communist Party has given the republican variant of Hindu statehood the most potent shot in the arm since the Universal Peace Federation-sponsored Asia-Pacific Summit in December 2018, known to us pejoratively as the ‘holy wine’ conference.
Not that Oli has been an innocuous onlooker in all this. Days after visiting Pashupatinath to perform a ‘special worship’, the prime minister announced the government was expediting the construction of a temple to Lord Ram in land he declared last year was the deity’s real birthplace.
Leaders close to Oli, too, have been claiming that he would deliver some extraordinary remarks during a mass gathering being organized by the Oli-led faction on February 5. The venue, moreover, is the road in front of Narayanhity, the former royal palace. The prime minister’s defense at the Supreme Court in the House dissolution case is being waged by a bevy of lawyers with overt royalist sympathies. And Water Supply and Sanitation Minister Mani Thapa inexplicably referred to ‘His Majesty’s Government’ during a speech, which his subsequent apology only helped fuel the frenzy.
Two years ago, ostensibly buoyed by the public’s revulsion at the government’s overt support of a controversial Christian organization’s initiative, Nepali Congress general secretary Shashank Koirala urged the nation to address the issue of restoring Nepal’s Hindu identify through a referendum. Tiptoeing around the monarchy may have made some sense then.
Although his comment was not new, it prompted Rastriya Prajatantra Party president Kamal Thapa to propose joint action with the Nepali Congress. A fortnight later, on the eve of the Nepali Congress’ crucial mahasamiti conference, the BJP lost key state elections seen as a bellwether for the 2019 national elections. Almost on cue, Koirala stepped in to clarify that he had never suggested that Nepal be declared a Hindu state again. In the changed atmosphere, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s much-hyped trip to Janakpur became just another religious visit.
For his part, Thapa hasn’t quite budged from his announcement that the RPP would launch a decisive campaign for the restoration of Hindu statehood. To be sure, he finds himself in the perfect place. In power, the RPP was too inconsequential to make a difference. In opposition, it is too insignificant to heat up the streets. Thapa has acknowledged that the RPP blew the chance Nepali voters gave the party in the 2013 constituent assembly elections. In that sense, its debacle in the parliamentary elections 2019 was deserved. With other organizations taking to the streets with more specific slogans and programs, Thapa may be running out of time.
Still, keeping the Hindu statehood agenda alive helps Thapa keep his party alive. His advocacy of restoring the monarchy remains tepid, which gives Pashupati Shamsher Rana and his Rastriya Prajatantra Party faction solid points for political scrupulousness. Rana wants to redesignate Nepal as a Hindu state because an overwhelming part of the population professes the faith but retain the country’s republican character. Rana has since begun advocating a return to the monarchy but still believes someone other than ex-king Gyanendra would sit on the throne.
The Nepali Congress, however, has a more arduous job. Having helped to legitimize the Unified Marxist Leninists as well as the Maoists during the post-2006 years, the party was late in realizing that the communists no longer needed democratic crutches. Democratic socialism need not necessarily be incompatible with the overt espousal of Hinduism, as the Christian Socialists in Europe attest to.
Still, religion puts the Nepali Congress in risky territory. When the party remained wedded to constitutional monarchy, its link with Hinduism was ancillary. For a party that had to resort to the creative ambiguity of a comma in the 1990 Constitution on religion and statehood, a full-blown embrace of Hinduism would be, well, a giant leap of faith.
And we haven’t even started addressing the more elementary issues often recounted in this space. Can the mere fact that most Nepalis happened to be born Hindus be extrapolated to mean that the state’s character should be designated as such? Sure, most Nepalis are Hindus. But didn’t they vote resoundingly three times for parties explicit in their secular affirmation and orientation? And don’t officially atheist organizations today hold the largest number of elected seats?
Then, there’s the inevitable question of the monarchy. Granted, not every Hindu is a monarchist. (Nor can every secularist be deemed a republican.) But when you talk about the restoration of Hindu statehood, consider the individual/institution needed to officiate such a state. True, our presidents have presided over Dasain and other religious observances with admirable gusto. (Lately, the president and prime minister seem to have been carried away by their zeal.) But the president is doing so under a secular dispensation. A Hindu state would have very little room for either institutional tentativeness or the vagaries of an individual’s temperament.
By definition, a Hindu republic won’t have a king, who has traditionally solemnized Hindu statehood. We also would lack a bada gurujyu and mool purohit. We do have the mool bhatta at Pashupati, but, then, we already want someone more indigenous there, don’t we? A return to the 1990 constitution would solve those problems, but the Hindu republic votaries believe they have a catchy slogan that only needs a credible storyline.
 
This is an updated version of a post that originally appeared on Saturday, December 15, 2018.

Ambiguous, Yes – But For Whom?

For all the toxicity it has injected into our post-2006 political travail, one mystery persists around the 12-Point Understanding. Why did the two principal Nepali signatories, embarking as they were on an epochal exercise of national re-engineering, desist from issuing a single signed document in November 2005?
Now, the Maoists and elements of the erstwhile Seven Party Alliance have subsequently claimed that the ambiguity inherent in the substance and its dissemination was deliberate. It gave the rebels and the mainstream opposition parties enough flexibility to achieve the impossible: abolishing the monarchy.
Yeah, but that doesn’t quite cut it. The Indians, who had begun facilitating direct links between the two anti-palace forces long before the royal takeover, let the myth of an intrinsically Nepali-driven enterprise to persist. Only in January 2009 did Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee take ownership of the accord.
The Indian military, we now understand, was against mainstreaming the Nepali Maoists at the monarchy’s expense. The External Affairs Ministry, which had been taking a relatively hard line against the palace, had come under the soft-spoken Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after the hawkish Natwar Singh was forced to resign in early November 2005.
As a former external affairs minister hailing from the Marxist-dominated West Bengal, Mukherjee was responsible for steering the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal (123 Agreement) through parliament. The Manmohan Singh government, already dependent on the Marxists for survival, needed ratification support. Was the empowerment of a consolidated left in Nepal the basic minimum price the Indian National Congress needed to pay for its budding strategic alliance with the United States?
Because of his influence and experience, it would be fair to say that Mukherjee was also de facto foreign minister at the time of the 12-Point Understanding and subsequent Karan Singh-Shyam Saran shenanigans. The anti-monarchy sentiments of Saran, another firm advocate of the civilian nuclear deal, were known long before he had left Kathmandu to become foreign secretary.
During those two tumultuous days in April, Prime Minister Singh’s absence on foreign visit allowed Mukherjee and Saran to employ the 12-Point Understanding’s ambiguity to pull Nepal back from its traditional twin-pillar policy on Nepal. No less significantly, it gave the Indian premier plausible deniability at a highly critical time.
By the time Mukherjee returned as foreign minister in October 2006, the Chinese had already stunned the Indians by their intention and ability to snuggle deeper into what was to become the federal and secular republic of Nepal, overtaking the terms of the 12-Point Understanding. Since the 123 Agreement had to be ratified, India needed its left alliance to continue scripting the show.
Prime Minister Singh’s broader administration couldn’t afford to take its gaze off the neighborhood’s long- term scenario. Might Mukherjee have gone on Al Jazeera television in January 2009 – months into Maoist Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s overt efforts to ingratiate himself to the Chinese – to take ownership of at least the idea of the 2005 understanding? In other words, was Mukherjee under pressure from the home team to ensure the Nepali signatories did not veer dangerously off track?
Consider this. Mukherjee’s interview was broadcast days before he took additional charge of the finance ministry. He would continue as foreign minister until May. However, the 123 deal had already been ratified through a legislative sleight of hand: the Singh government had won a confidence vote in July 2008 that was equated with legislative endorsement of the deal.
In the 2009 elections, the Indian National Congress won enough seats with ideologically more pliable allies to abandon the left, which had been trounced in the polls, anyway. Had it let Nepal drift within pragmatic limits too long to be able to fully control the departure? In any case, the dilemma of 2005-2006 had not entirely disappeared, as demonstrated by the reception King Gyanendra continued to receive in official New Delhi during ostensibly private visits.
Suffice to say that the Narendra Modi government inherited a Nepal policy it disliked but could do little about, given its own wider struggles with the intricacies of India’s much-vaunted strategic autonomy. Despite sustained political and punitive pressure, India couldn’t get a Nepali constitution it could live with. Over time, the headache called Nepal, at least for the more verbose Indian analysts and commentators, was worsening just as India was being forced to crane its neck in all directions.
To cut a long story short: maybe the ambiguity of the 12-Point Understanding was intended more for India’s benefit. Now that it is hurting them, are they looking for an escape route? If so, was the counsel by one S. Ramesh that it “might be smart for India to revisit its earlier doctrine of constitutional monarchy and multiparty democracy and support the restoration of the 1990 Constitution” the first decibels of an impending din? Maybe the principal architect is now intent on holding our ruling class responsible for exceeding Delhi Compromise II’s brief? That would help explain the current antics of Nepali leaders.
And speaking of ambiguities, the author is identified as a former additional secretary with the Indian Cabinet Secretariat. Yet he seems to be so close to the 2005-2006 story in a way that only the S. Jairam of the Indian Embassy who won the fattest golfer title in the Soaltee Crowne Plaza Crazy Golf Tournament in early 2005 could have been. If it is indeed the same person, isn’t it odd that a reputable Indian daily would omit the writer’s obviously germane stint in Kathmandu?

All Together Now – In Amusement And Affliction

With the nation’s political discourse now resembling a kindergarten brawl, Nepalis may feel shoved toward reconciling with an ever-expanding abyss of oblivion. This degeneration could prove to be a turning point.
That Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ have tugged their respective factions along on a race to the bottom of invectives demonstrates that this has never been a battle of ideas. The main opposition Nepali Congress, already on an interminable search for relevance, remains unsurprisingly divided on the House of Representatives’ dissolution. The smaller constituents of the post-2006 political establishment, drinking from the same trough, could not have escaped the general malaise.
The Supreme Court has the difficult task of ruling on the constitutionality of what is a purely political issue: the inexorable conclusion of the extended experiment spawned by the 12-Point Understanding. Arguments in favor or against the prime minister’s dissolution order are masquerading as constitutional ones. But they cannot address the reality that the current dispensation is collapsing under its own contradictions. Regardless of how it rules, the judiciary is simply incapable of preventing the dénouement.
Our dominant political forces continued to invest too heavily in the 12-point enterprise far too long after its principal architect began reappraising its viability and value. The internal and external power alignments of 2005-2006 could not have continued long enough to permit an open-ended transition where Nepali actors could pretend to be in control.
Nor were their external patrons really in charge. Domestic actors may have made themselves available to new permutations and combinations, but a decade and a half was more than enough to exhaust sponsors working at cross-purposes. The Chinese couldn’t keep intact the communist party they helped unify. The Americans couldn’t get their MCC compact endorsed by the legislature. The Indians couldn’t prevent the incorporation of a new Nepali political map into the country’s constitution. (How did we get the Soviets, American/British and Indians to build the East-West Highway, while disinviting the Chinese without upsetting them too much?)
To be sure, there is a danger inherent in today’s deepening popular apathy amid a palpable aimlessness. Nepalis recognize that every system of governance has been tried and tested. They also know that the principal national forces still have not mustered the will or wherewithal to join hands. Nepalis may not have acquired the audacity of attempting to lead their leaders. However, they are intent on ensuring those leaders act as Nepalis first.
Clearly, the dissolution of parliament was an inevitability. Its judicial reinstatement cannot restore the status quo ante. Nor can new elections address the systemic ailment. Dangerous as the unknown may be, enduring it may have become our only option. The internal and external churning processes are so intertwined that even a semblance of steadiness may be years away.
In retrospect, the political class did make a shrewd bet. Since the Nepali people went along with each compromise made to uphold the main – albeit tenuous – 12-point compact, they, too, were deemed stakeholders. When that turned out to be a faulty premise, the political class became anxious to hasten what it considered an inescapable breakdown. Since no one is prepared to take the fall individually, they seem intent on collective responsibility.
Political jabs and jokes can perhaps make life more bearable for the people in the interim, provided we’re not too fixated with afflictions and amusement.

Can Nepalis Coexist With Nepal?

A snarky question, even bordering on the seditious? Perhaps. But it’s one that cannot be evaded.
When Ram Kumari Jhankri, a ruling party lawmaker in the dissolved parliament, said Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli was emulating King Mahendra, much of the country probably wished she was complimenting him.
However, Jhankri, speaking at a public function in Bardghat as a constituent of the Pushpa Kamal Dahal-Madhav Kumar Nepal faction of the Nepal Communist Party, served to exemplify our collective ambivalence.
The penchant to see King Mahendra as Nepal’s most egregious villain does much more than ignore his matchless contributions to strengthening Nepali nationhood. It encapsulates our inability to identify ourselves as well as our place in the world.
In a perfect world, the elected government of Prime Minister B.P. Koirala might have continued in office with the foreign policy King Mahendra subsequently pursued. Despite their deep differences over domestic politics, both leaders shared broadly identical visions regarding Nepal and the world.
We can argue ad infinitum over whether B.P.’s government – and the polity in general – could have survived the time’s geopolitical pressures or whether the Panchayat system was the sole inevitable outcome. But that is what happened.
Our view of how reality should have unfolded need not define how we view ourselves as Nepalis. Even amid its isolation, Nepal marched to the drum of the times. Our baise-chaubise states were locked in a struggle to come out of feudal societies based on tradition to the modern state system approximating the raison d’état of Cardinal Richelieu. Except, it’s safe to assume, our petty potentates had no clue about the Thirty Years’ War.
Prithvi Narayan Shah and his immediate successors waged a campaign to establish a nation-state defined by common language and culture, much in the way the wars of the French Revolution had. But the Treaty of Westphalia or the Congress of Vienna were not common terms in the bhardari sabha.
The Rana rulers might have been familiar with some of the triggers that eventually disintegrated the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, but they felt the geopolitical ripples from the north and the south far more uncomfortably. And in an irony of ironies, Nepal, never a colony, had to face more than half a decade of Soviet vetoes in its quest for United Nations membership. India, still under the British Raj in 1945, is ranked as a founding member of the world organization.
Continuing to debate how much Nepal is a nation and how much a state may reflect the vibrancy and candor of our democratic discourse. How productive would that be today, when cities, cyberspace and common citizens continue to challenge the nation-state as the principal unit of world order? The post-Cold War world’s contours still remained largely obscure when the international system moved on to the equally abstruse ‘post-post-Cold War’ era.
In that sense, the demand to restore the monarchy to save the country becomes no more backward-looking than the communist/socialist vision still largely drawn from a German’s musings at a British library a century and a half ago.
Today, we are a nation entrapped between one open and pluralistic civilizational state that sees our independence as a threat to its national security; another regimented civilizational state that is committed to a fully and functionally independent Nepal; and a diminished but determined superpower intent on seeing an independent but pliable Nepal between the two rising Asian behemoths.
Our inability to accept who we have been has only been deepening fissures over who we want to be. Nepalis need to reconcile with Nepal.

Tightening Tibet Tangle

Long before outgoing US President Donald J. Trump signed into law the Tibetan Policy and Support Act (TPSA) 2020 in late December, Nepal knew it had to brace itself for the impending Dalai Lama succession fallout. The problem is that we don’t seem to know how.
The political system – as practiced – cannot confront the challenge. The Nepali psyche seems far more confounded. Politically, an independent, sovereign and democratic Tibet would appeal to Nepal. Geopolitically, it would mean we would lose our border with China, intensifying our innate sense of vulnerability. Democracy or the nation? That distasteful choice is looming larger.
With the Indians itching for a fight with China on the back of a gung-ho United States, the battle lines are clear enough. On the opposing side is a China buoyed by its success in overcoming the coronavirus pandemic at the end of the Hundred Year Marathon. Sure, many still speak of Beijing’s entrenched vulnerabilities. But, then, these are some same people who think an Indo-American alliance against China may have come too late.
However else he may try to distinguish himself from his predecessor, President-elect Joseph Biden can’t afford to go soft on China. No style change can unstiffen the substance of – to put it crudely – a life-and-death struggle over who will control the world. Trigger-happy constituents in the Washington policy establishment who passed for neoconservatives under Republicans are now with centrist Democrats.
In New Delhi, ‘hyperrealists’ need to contend with traditional realists before moving ahead to liberate Tibet and extend India’s strategic space. The wily Chinese have been trying to woo and warn average Indians well before they firmly hitch onto the American bandwagon.
Nepal needs to make allowances for anything between maintenance of the status quo and the emergence of a free Tibet, without losing its focus on the Dalai Lama’s succession struggle. Ordinarily, a process stretching over years, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, in his inimitably amiable style, has sought changes. His successor need not be a male and could be born outside traditional Tibetan territory.
His Holiness seems to have left so much wiggle room that the TPSA only categorically states that interference of the People’s Republic of China in decisions regarding the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation would amount to a violation of the fundamental religious freedoms of Tibetan Buddhists and the Tibetan people.
That stand contrasts with China’s contention that reincarnation is not a personal decision of the Dalai Lama. From Beijing’s standpoint, the process follows certain religious traditions and rituals and must be approved by the Chinese central government in a tradition dating back to the patron-priest system of the Qing Dynasty.
Significantly, Beijing considers issues related to Tibet intrinsic to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. It believes it has weaned away enough traditional American allies on Tibet. China also seems to count on traditional divisions among Tibetan sects, which have only subsided amid the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s charisma. After all, they’ve dealt with parallel Dalai Lamas in the past. Heck, Beijing discovered one had been dead for years as advisers were counseling that he had gone into deep meditation. The Chinese believe tradition as a tool can be buttressed by Tibet’s modernization.
While Nepalis can’t fathom how the succession process might unfold, we do recognize that it will not be controversy-free. For all his ingenuity, Tenzin Gyatso probably won’t be fast-tracking the selection of his successor. A drawn-out contest can convulse Nepal for years on top of the broader geopolitical dynamics.
The bad news is that the Chinese don’t seem so happy about Nepal on this matter. True, they invaded us in retaliation for our invasion of Tibet in 1792 and turned us into a tributary. They may not have fulfilled their Betravati Treaty commitments, but they did tolerate the anomaly of the Dalai Lama paying tribute to Nepal even as Kathmandu sent quinquennial missions to Beijing. Communist China granted us the privilege of maintaining Lhasa’s only foreign consulate.
Beijing has run out of patience for excuses such as weak Nepali state capacity. In Chinese eyes, a country that could play a constructive if not entirely satisfactory role in the aftermath of the 1904 Younghusband Expedition and the 1913 return of the Thirteen Dalai Lama from exile could certainly do more to ward off anti-China tendencies today if it really wanted to.
The last high-level Chinese delegation was packed with ‘wolf warriors’ who refused Nepali security. Almost overnight, our discourse has shifted from Sikkimization-Bhutanization-Fijization to outright Koreanization. Now, that’s called a fast track.

How Do We Get Back To Where We Belong?

Just as the ‘how’ of the monarchy-restoration campaign was hobbling the organizers, Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) chairman Kamal Thapa stepped in to help.
Addressing a protest rally in Kathmandu last week, Thapa raised the possibility of restoring the monarchy from the streets. Stressing that the restoration of Hindu nation and the monarchy was no longer solely the RPP agenda, he warned the political parties that the situation could get out of control if they failed to act responsibly on time.
The RPP has been demanding the restoration of monarchy and Hindu state through an all-party conference. Although it won over a dozen seats in the second constituent assembly elections held in 2013, the party was soon perceived as having relegated the monarchy behind Hindu statehood in terms of priority. The party’s eagerness to join successive governments under a republican, secular and federal constitution further eroded public confidence.
Thapa personally came in for much opprobrium from peers and the people at large. When the notoriously schismatic RPP factions united in 2017 taking its contingent in the house to 37, it could barely survive a year. Thapa confidantes blamed Nirmal Niwas for engineering the split, heightening speculation of the monarch’s dissatisfaction with the Thapa’s campaign to restore the monarchy.
By the time the streets began erupting in leaderless protests demanding the return of the monarchy late last year, the disparate organizers were united in denying Thapa and his party any place.
That precipitated much-needed candor from Thapa in a television interview a couple of weeks ago. Confirming that elements close to Nirmal Niwas had conspired against his party in the past, Thapa also had some advice for its principal occupant. The ex-king should exhibit more high-mindedness in reaching out to the political leaders to build an atmosphere conducive to the return of the monarchy in the national interest.
Throughout the interview, Thapa’s dignified language did not conceal his exasperation over what he perceived to be an organized marginalization campaign. As home minister under King Gyanendra’s direct rule, Thapa was responsible for unleashing the state's coercive force against the burgeoning protests, resulting in some two dozen deaths.
Thapa could easily have taken the easy route of some of his ministerial colleagues and blamed the king for not listening to him. Instead, he turned his Rastriya Prajatantra Party Nepal into the only pro-monarchy organization. With the death of the flamboyant Rabindra Nath Sharma, Thapa became the public face of a campaign considered nothing short of sacrilegious at the time.
During his recent interview, Thapa defended his decision to join K.P. Oli government but said it had been a mistake to join the Pushpa Kamal Dahal administration. Given the public support the Oli government continues to enjoy for its steadfast response to the Indian blockade and initiatives to expand ties with China, Thapa might seem cynical to make that distinction. Still, you have to admit that Thapa rose to the occasion given the prevailing circumstances.
The RPP’s decision to join the Dahal government was not necessarily a mistake. By the same logic of Thapa’s critics, it can be said that the RPP exposed the Maoists’ eagerness to join hands with royalists in a bid to gain power. Still, if the boss admits it was a mistake, the point becomes moot.
What’s not moot is Thapa’s larger but unspoken point. Sure, he made mistakes here and there, which have been illuminated in hindsight. But can you deny that the RPP kept the agenda against republicanism, secularism and federalism alive long enough for the rest of the country to catch on?
Pettiness is perhaps not Thapa’s style – at least not in public. So he eases the pressure on the disparate monarchists flustered by their inability to agree on a road to restoration. King Gyanendra has made it clear that he doesn’t consider it his responsibility to provide a roadmap.
So a referendum, restoration of the 1990 Constitution and amendments to the current one are among alternatives that have muddied the waters. Thapa, a supporter of the third option, has now suggested a fourth as the streets. Intended to bolster his original position, this new one is treacherously ambiguous enough in its application to turn a lot more heads.