Staking claims

It was gratifying to read Kanak Mani Dixit’s article Nepal, India and South Asia in the June 21 edition of this paper. I use the word gratifying intentionally to express the sense of urgency that the article presented, especially in light of Trailokya Raj Aryal’s article Colonised academically published on June 18. Dixit makes a number of arguments—the importance of ‘sovereign societies’ to not allow the involvement of foreign powers in internal matters, the need for India to reconsider its involvement in Nepal, the importance of respecting the nation-state in the context of the prospect of South Asian regionalism—all of which are valid but not unheard of arguments. Yet, from Dixit and Baral’s pieces emerge a more specified plea directed not at the plethora of noisemakers in Nepal’s polity but to the hitherto meretricious Kathmandu civil society. The plea is not one of reconsideration; it is rather direct: Wake up! Don’t be blown away by foreign intelligentsia—especially when it comes to your nation and your society. Don’t let assertions about Nepali society go unquestioned. It is a call to the penholders on our side to question the penholders on other side.

It is perhaps testament to the impotence of the political class that the discourse of resistance has shifted from them to civil society. The audience of the conversation is now a member of a sovereign society, not leaders of the sovereign state. And it is better this way. The political class is bound by compulsions when it comes to international pressure but the intelligentsia has no such obvious compulsions nor the flexibility to fashion it as valid excuse. The space for discussion, argument and counter-argument is not yet dead in Nepal.

I was sitting in the audience at the Indian Council of World Affairs in New Delhi when Prachanda declared his newfound love for India, the change in Maoist attitude and Nepal’s continued need for Indian magnanimity during a recent visit. The kowtowing was embarrassing from a former prime minister of a sovereign state.

Yet, let this much needed exercise in critical evaluation of the self not be an imprimatur for tedious anti-Indian or xenophobic sentiment. The exercise is meant to dig up our own narratives, our own histories, our own truths; an attempt to reclaim the power of knowledge creation.

The battle of discourse

Since the birth of ‘new Nepal,’ much of the struggle has been over the idea of Nepal: how do we define our Nepali-ness? How do we govern ourselves; what is the role of religion in our society; how will we include previously marginalised voices? The struggle has been over ideas. And in ideational struggles, civil society, especially the intelligentsia, cannot stay lazy. Thomas Szasz puts it well, “in the human kingdom define or be defined”. Thus far, we have been at the receiving end.

The need to define ourselves necessitates investigation of our past. In regards to this, I find it highly annoying, among other things, that the Nepali cultural and religious ethos gets sub-categorised in academia as being ‘under’ India. The constant interchangeability of the word ‘Hindu’ with the word Indian (ancient Hindu or Buddhist texts to Indian text, Hindu tradition to Indian tradition) is a manifestation of the lack of agency on our part to provide caveats for the present synoptic. Yet where is criticism from the pundits of Nepal? Which India is this? When the nation-state of India itself is a recent concept, what does ancient India mean? How can one squeeze the achievements of a civilisation into a territorially defined nation-state? And what does this mean for a holistic understanding of the subcontinent’s history? Should this attempt to monopolise history not be problematised?

Looking forward

Nepal was/is seen through a prism of exotic adventurism whereby our own human agency is made unimportant. Perceived as being stuck in some dark epoch of time, our daily

rituals have become a tourist attraction. This sense of the exotic has been internalised. We look at the mirror and find ourselves different; we find our customs alien, even incomprehensible. Except for a select few, most of our traditions have been packaged into small, neat bits made easy for the foreign and urban market to consume.

A resistance by the intelligentsia would mean holding up a mirror to much of what we’ve been accustomed to. For the longest time, the most clichéd statements about Nepal—its exotic mysteriousness, the timelessness of its costumes, the hills, the mountains, its kinship and its simplicity—has been a matter of pride and joy. This is most true in diasporas, who when away from the home country continue to dream of Nepal as a utopia—a dream that was never reality. But the intellectual must rise up and dare to say, “This is not it! This is not enough! There is more, and we’ll tell the story”.

If Nepal indeed is losing its sovereignty, a case that has been made time and again, then what is to be done? Living and thriving among giants requires a great deal of compromise but it also requires asserting ourselves and taking a stand when we must. Else, we’ll have no say on how the region is governed and slowly but surely, will lose even a say on the way our own nation is governed. A culture of questioning and self assertion can only come when our intellectuals and opinion makers are willing to provide leadership—since this is a virtue the political class is unwilling and unable to provide.

A version of this article featured in Kathmandu Post.