Daniel Lak - Lose the yam: Nepal's nationalist elite would do well to reflect on the true meaning of sovereignty // Interview: ‘We Did the Right Thing by Leaving Prachanda’: Hisila Yami
Ah Nepal. Proud,
sovereign, never conquered. Landlocked yet a feisty yam despite two
massive grinding boulders, China to the north, India in all other
directions. A good Nepali looks around him with distrust. He knows that
since British times – even Mughal times – others have coveted his territory and
his natural resources. Hell, he is even taught that his forebears fought
the British East Company and won in the early nineteenth century. He – and
it is almost always a “he” – is ready to fight and fulminate at the merest
questioning of Nepali sovereignty and independence.
Britain’s successors,
who run today’s Indian state, are – he believes – even more rapacious. Why, I
was once told by a Nepali writer who should have known better, India has even
developed ways to drain Himalayan rivers, some nefarious downstream technology
that magically sucks up water as it approaches the border.
I encountered this
anti-India mindset very early in my time as BBC Nepal correspondent. As a
reporter of some experience in South Asia, I was asked to host a call-in
program about Nepal-India relations that postulated several
scenarios. These ranged from an avowedly multi-lateral Nepal that ignored
its neighbor’s concerns and made its own way in the world to capitulating and
seeking to join the Indian union. Between those extremes were several
options, all of them reasonable variations on current
arrangements. Admittedly, most assumed much better Nepali diplomacy and
statecraft than actually existed. As a Canadian, I knew only too well the
challenges and opportunities of having a large, pushy, overweening neighboring
state; in our case, the USA. Nepal, I believed would see the discussion in
this spirit.
I was
wrong. Before the show, I awoke one morning to frantic phone calls about demonstrations,
riots, burnings of effigies marked “BBC.” My guests for the program, save one,
the respected editor of an English-language newspaper, fled to the
hills. Apparently, I read in newspapers, the BBC was urging Nepal to join
India. Shock, horror, outrage. Some suggested that my employer in London
had lost sight of that ignominious defeat that Nepal inflicted on Britain in
the Anglo-Gorkha War of 1814–1816. You know, the one that led to the loss
of a third of this country’s territory, a lasting and often-interfering British
presence in Kathmandu and ceding the best military manpower to the Gurkha
regiments to this day.
“Never forget BBC,”
wrote a now-prominent journalist who shall remain nameless, “we beat you
(Britain) once and we’ll beat you again.”
Oh dear, I
thought. What is going on?
More measured
responses came from friends who assured me it was a typical Royal Palace-led,
right-wing orchestrated anti-Indian rhetoric that flared from time to time
– usually serving some nefarious agenda such as covering up the latest failures
and dysfunctions. I was just the poor chump who served as an excuse, a
mere catalyst. Indeed, it all blew over after a week with no hard
feelings, although the odd nutty newspaper did ruminate whether or not I was an
Indian spy; strange as it might seem to represent both London as a provocateur
and forgetter of history, and covetous New Delhi with its giant water-sucking
technologies on the border.
So sad then to see it
all happening yet again in the new Nepal, a republic, federal, proudly
democratic, ostensibly secular. You’d think with hard won new ideas, the
culmination of a peace process, a new – if not generally welcomed –
constitution, that the elite of Kathmandu would at the very least find a new
bugbear, something else to fire up the masses and distract them from the dirty
business of failed politics. But no. It’s all anti-India, all the
time.
I don’t mean to make
light of this. For when Nepal's manipulators of public opinion – be they
Maoist, monarch or democrat – play this card, they inevitably and deliberately
unleash ugly forces of racism against Madhesis, the long suffering people of
the border regions. Second-class citizens with second-tier citizenship, the
Madhesis are regarded in their own country as Delhi’s fifth columnists, using
the revenge of the cradle and the wedding to push India’s land-grabbing
agenda. You see this dangerous attitude reflected in the new constitution,
unique in the world for its denial of rights to women and others born on the
“wrong” side of current prejudice.
Let's be honest here
for once. All of this anti-India business is cynical and dangerous
eyewash. If Nepal’s politicians and patriots really cared about losing
sovereignty or land to India, if they really valued independence, would there
be an open border? Would they be sanguine about Nepalis going to India for
jobs or even ration cards, let alone spouses? Would the local currency be
indelibly pegged to the Indian rupee at a rate that hasn’t changed for
decades?
A nation that doesn’t
control its economic, monetary or labor policy, that outsources these vital
tools to a neighboring state, is not independent. It is yoked to a
democratic reality next door where politicians must live and die by their
economic decisions, in marked contrast to their Nepali
counterparts. Indian governments that don’t create jobs and prosperity
don’t get re-elected.
So why do successive
administrations in Nepal maintain the status quo with India? It’s simple.
They don’t want to make policy on their own. They don’t want to work hard or
even govern. Across that open border, India will always provide the jobs and
economic opportunity for Nepalis that they themselves will not create through
policy and political action. Put more plainly, they are “whole-timers,”
paid by their parties – usually with black money – to be layabouts and
troublemakers awaiting their share of the loot, their turn in the “chair.”
Yet they persist in both condemning India when it suits them, when they
are not racing to New Delhi seeking support for some lame-brained scheme to
rescue them from their own self-inflicted political disasters.
Alas, this behavior,
while familiar, has been effective beyond the political class. Kathmandu’s
self-appointed patriots and nationalists know who they are, and why they ignore
the realities of their country's deliberately restricted independence. That’s
for them and their own consciences. I'll say this though. To those
who boldly tweeted #backoffIndia in the most recent round of Delhi bashing,
please reflect on the meaning of sovereignty. If it means so much to you,
please urge your leaders to behave as they say they believe. Exercise real
independence and make your own economic and other domestic policy decisions.
Abroad, manage relations with giant neighbors and other important countries
well. Appoint a proper, non-political diplomatic corps. Base bilateral
ties with all countries on respect and mutual self-interest.
More importantly, have
the confidence to be inclusive and democratic. Don't celebrate the
near-failed state of today that always disappoints its own citizens and the
rest of the world. Work towards a constitution that entrenches equality and
freedom from state overreach. Invest in the future through education, job
creation and health care. Treat public finances with respect. Respond
to challenges – including disasters – with speed and compassion. Governments
should live and die politically on their policies and actions, not through back
room deals to share power and black money.
Finally, lose the yam
and boulder analogy. It’s more of a choice than a geopolitical reality.
Who knows? The next national mindset may finally evolve into something
useful, something to be proud of. Jai Nepal.
With the formal launch
of Nepal’s youngest political party Naya Shakti drawing closer, Hisila Yami has
been busy around-the-clock, getting the organisation in place. Yami, along with
her husband, former Nepali prime minister Baburam Bhattarai, walked out of the United
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), or UCPN-M, in September 2015, less
than a week after the promulgation of the country’s new constitution. Both of
them had been key architects of the constitution, along with UCPN-M chairman
Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, the erstwhile leader of the
ten-year-long Maoist insurgency. While they maintained their uneasy
alliance over the years, the Maoist support for the Nepali
constitution,which led to protests in the Madhesi plains, caused the final
breach.
Yami, who was in Delhi
recently to invite senior Indian politicians from various parties to the
inauguration function in Kathmandu on June 12, spoke at length to The
Wire. She said that recent ‘flip-flops’ by Dahal further
justified her decision to walk out from the party. A former minister,
57-year-old Yami also said that she usually felt “sorry” for India and claimed
that Nepalese citizens are still puzzled about what exactly New Delhi wants. In
a follow-up phone conversation, Yami spoke about how she and
Bhattarai plan to build a political party structure from scratch and how
it will also give space to ‘oppressed’ groups, including transgender
people... read interview:
