December 13, 2014
By Vishnu Sharma
It takes centuries to build a national identity
and less than few months to lose it completely. This is a lesson
that the people of Nepal are to learn very soon. Nepal, because of
its geo-political location, has been always a place of political
and diplomatic maneuverings for the regional powers but never
before was it done so openly and brazenly as it is being done now.
Under Narendra Modi India has become dangerously
assertive in Nepal. Since he took over as the prime minister of
India he had made it clear that India would actively involve
itself in the affairs of South Asia. The method would vary
country-wise. In Nepal, he is trying to launch a powerful assault
on the Nepali identity by evoking the Hindu identity.
Interestingly, there is a complete lack of concern among the
Nepali politicians and academia who, until recently, would jump
the gun over anything they perceived as a threat to Nepal’s
sovereignty and nationality.
While he talks Gandhi and secularism to his
Western audience, his regular conjuration of the Hindu identity in
Nepal has become a matter of serious deliberation among the
concerned Nepal watchers. Post 2002 Gujarat communal carnage, Mr
Modi projected himself as the man of development in India and
abroad, but for Nepali people, he has become a religious zealot, a
crusader who felt it his duty to make them conscious of their
religion.
Mr Modi has betrayed his obsession with Nepal
quite often in the last few months. His fixation with Nepal is
hardly a secret now. In his first visit to Bhutan he mistakenly
referred the Bhutanese parliamentarians as the Nepali law makers.
Later he praised Nepal in his maiden Independence Day speech to
the nation.
In between these two references he toured Nepal
and offered prayers in the Pashupatinath temple. The photograph
where his forehead is smeared in the temple’s holy ash created a
sensation in the country. Even the hardcore nationalists saw it as
a signal from India to have a good relationship. When he spoke in
the Nepal’s Constitution Assembly, the first head of any state
to do it in recent memories, he repeatedly evoked shared Hindu
identity by the people of the two countries.
Taking the step further, he planned a road trip
to Nepal in November this year to attend the 18th SAARC
Summit. Thankfully it didn’t happen. Mr Modi’s itinerary
included Janakpur, a town considered to be the birth place of
Ramayan’s Sita, Muktinath and Lumbani. He had plans to address
the people in all the three places.
Nepal and Identity:
Birth of Nepal as a nation-state coincided with
the expansion of the British Raj in India. In the south of Nepal,
the two powers constantly disputed over trade and border issues in
the last and the first decades of the 18th and 19th
centuries. Finally, in 1814 the more than two-decade-long tension
culminated in a fully fledged war. The Anglo Nepalese War of
1814-16 in which Nepal suffered a humiliating defeat sealed the
fate of Nepal for more than a century and a half. That defeat also
made Nepal extremely conscious of its existence. Over the years
Nepal’s foreign policy and relationship were moulded with a
specific aim of protecting its existence. That was the reason,
many believe, Nepal whole heartedly supported all British moves in
Asia and the world.
During the first war of Independence in India in
1857, Nepal played a very crucial role in reestablishing English
supremacy in the region. Then Prime Minister of Nepal Jung Bahadur
Rana, who established the Rana autocracy or Ranacracy in Nepal,
personally led the Gurkha army to crush the armed uprising in
Lucknow and other parts of Northern India. Karl Marx called Jung
Bahadur Rana ‘the English dog-man’. Even after the rebellion
was thoroughly crushed, the Rana regime continued to aid the
British establishment in India. Thereafter, the Ranas would not
allow any anti-British activities from Nepal. In the following
years Nepal was the source of a large number of Gurkha recruits
and slaves for the English rulers. The successive Rana rulers
continued to aid the British with Gurkha soldiers in the missions
in Burma, Afghanistan, China, Malta, Cyprus, Malaya and Tibet. In
the two world wars more than 2 lakh Gurkha soldiers fought along
the British lines. During World War II there were 112000 Gurkha
soldiers in the British Army, the highest ever.
Post British rule in Asia, precisely after India
got freedom, when India’s new rulers set the task of
assimilating as many independent states as possible into India’s
fold, Nepal had to wake up to the new political reality. The
hastily concluded Peace and Friendship Treat of 1950 with the new
Indian government has signs of a desperate attempt by the then
Nepali rulers to switch loyalty. Although the Rana rule ended soon
after the treaty was signed, the treaty remained in effect. It
still is. Since then this treaty is the core around which Nepali
politics moves. The political trend in Nepal is that every
political party would criticize the treaty when she is in
opposition or leading an armed movement and go mum as soon as it
would come to power or become part of the system.
The suspicion on India grew after Sikkim became
the 22nd state of India in 1975. Many in Nepal saw it
as a forceful annexation. This event added a new word in the
Nepali political lexis, Sikkimikaran or Sikkimization.
The merger made Nepali people more attached to their Nepali
identity.
In the coming years, this attachment to identity
first developed into cynicism and then transformed into socialism.
The socialists in Nepal become the flag bearer of sovereignty and
Nepali identity. This transformation happened due to the
recognition and support Nepal got from the socialist China. China
offered Nepal an olive branch to stand on its own, for itself
against its mighty southern neighbor which, for many Nepalese, had
followed the British legacy of expansionism and assertion.
Since 1950, there have been many attempts,
deliberate or unintentional, to dilute the Nepali identity by the
Hindu fundamentalists from the both sides of the border. Like
today many Indian leaders had tried to influence Nepali masses by
evoking common religious belief in the past too. However, Nepal
for long remained unmoved from these assaults. In the last 60
years, Nepal has successful defied the Hindutva agenda of blending
Nepali identity with the larger Hindu identity. Nepali people had
always challenged the hegemonic rhetoric of its southern neighbor.
Also, whenever they felt that the leaders or the kings couldn’t
be trusted in safeguarding the sovereignty of the country they had
come out to protest. Often these protests have led to big
political changes.
On the other hand, the kings too found it
necessary for their own survival to keep the Nepali identity
separate from the broader Hindu identity. Often they fuelled
nationalistic sentiments to check growing Indian interventions in
the country’s sovereign affairs. The first king of Nepal Prithvi
Narayan Shah warned his subjects from crossing the border and
mixing with the Indian population. Later, the Rana rulers
consciously chose not to be seen as an extension of India.
However, from the second half of the 20th century, the
idea of state-sponsored Nepali nationalism was challenged by the
new and more inclusive form of nationalism i.e. socialist
nationalism.
Nationalism(s) in Nepal
From 1950, there emerged contesting views of
nationalism in Nepal. One view reflected the state sponsored
top-down nationalism based on national pride centered on the Shah
Monarchy and Hindu (not Hindutva) ideals while other view
advocated bottom-up nationalism based on class unity of the
marginalized and toiling masses. The former was intrinsically
anti-woman, anti-dalit, anti-religious minorities and also against
the people of Tarai (plains) known generally as the Madheshi. The
latter view defined nationalism in Nepal’s context as the unity
of all the exploited people and demanded restructuring of Nepal
based on the principles of socialism and democracy.
After a prolonged struggle the people of Nepal
succeeded in uprooting the monarchy in 2008. The first Constituent
Assembly saw the largest number of representation of hitherto
suppressed minorities, nationalities, gender and castes. It looked
as if Nepal was on the threshold of resolving the contradictions
it had been in since the emergence of modern Nepal. However the
first Constitutional Assembly failed to write a constitution in
the stipulated time and had to be dissolved. The second
Constitutional Assembly, which came into existence in November
last year, is not as representative as the first. The number of
women, dalits, Madheshis and other marginalized communities and
minorities has come down to one third of the previous number.
Nevertheless, the people still hoped for a better Constitution
than they had previously.
However, things have been changing fast in Nepal
since the Baratiya Janta Party came to power in India. This has
also coincided with the weakening of the nationalist consciousness
among the Nepali people. Nationalistic feeling subsided because
people feel cheated by the nationalist leaders. There is a feeling
that the leaders cultivate nationalistic sentiments to further
their self interests. It is not long ago when the Maoists were
seen as the watchdog of national sovereignty. But they too proved
to be the same old wine with a new label. It was during the
premiership of the Maoist leader Dr Baburam Bhattarai that Nepal
signed the worst bilateral trade agreement, the Bilateral
Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA), with India.
Several studies
have already proved that these agreements have always harmed
the interests of the weaker economies. Besides, the Maoists have
shown reluctance to speak on India’s growing intervention in
Nepal. In the name of pragmatism, they dared not offend India’s
goodwill.
Not long ago the Maoists would stop Indian motor
vehicles from crossing to Nepal calling it the right of sovereign
people. There were nationalists who burnt posters of Indian film
stars and politicians they thought had hurt the Nepali sentiments.
These leaders are now completely silent over the most ill-timed
intervention by the head of India. The passivity is bound to cost
Nepal very much.
The question of nationality is still relevant for
the neo-colonized countries and nationalities. Although, it is
considered an obsolete idea to emphasize on nationality and
identity at the cost of the larger class question nevertheless the
weakening of socialist movements across the world and rising
assault of capitalist imperialism has made it inevitable to fall
back to the Marxist line which, along with the class question,
addresses the question of nationalism in the newly colonized or
neo-colonized countries of the world. For these nationalities, as
Lenin would see in various forms of struggles, the nationalist or
identity struggle is a process of crystallizing the class
struggle. In the last decades of the last century, the socialists
in many countries of the world creatively blended the Marxist
class line with the issue of nationalism and were not only able to
win over the large masses of people but also sustain their power
for a longer period.
The Maoists in Nepal must remember Lenin’s
warning when he said, “The bourgeoisie ‘want’ to curtail the
class struggle, to distort and narrow the conception and blunt its
sharp edge.” Narendra Modi seems to be doing exactly this.
He is trying to blunt the edges of the volatile class struggle in
India and Nepal with a narrow nationalistic sentiment based on
Hindu supremacy. The nationalists in Nepal, including the Maoists,
must remember that nationalism is ultimately an idea. It cannot be
saved, by stopping foreign goods and vehicles from crossing the
border, shutting cinema halls playing foreign movies and other
such rituals, useless the idea itself is saved.
- See more at:
http://sanhati.com/articles/12327/#sthash.lLeTDlme.dpuf
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