The other side of the coin

Krishna Hachhethu’s latest work attempts to present people as the vanguard of Nepal’s political changes

Abhinawa Devkota /  March 19: The popular imagination generally perceives history in a polarised manner. It is seen either as a result of the handiwork of powers outside the territory where it unfolds, or it results from the needs, decisions and aspirations of the people and communities residing in it. And although this binary division of events and incidents that mark the ebb and flow of time does not neatly fit into the kaleidoscopic nature of interaction between different forms of powers and various interest groups that are responsible for making history in the first place, it does provide the public with a stable ground to form their interpretation on.

In other words, this logic of dichotomy that people follow while analysing political changes is more a result of the limitation of our own ability to see it as anything else than that of the nature of the event itself. One might say that the Renaissance was the result of Europe’s quest to resurrect its past glory, while others might attribute the movement to things as varied as the burning of the Library of Constantinople or the Mongol invasion of eastern Europe. All this despite the fact that the truth is in the amalgam of these seemingly disparate incidents.

The Nepali people, too, are not immune from this disease of polarisation. And given the kind of political jockeying that our neighbours and foreign powers have participated in at the cusp of different political changes (especially those after 1950), they seem to lend more credence to conspiracy and collusion of foreign powers and native elites over the voices and concerns of people demanding a meaningful and progressive change in the country.

But that does not mean that the other way of looking at political changes, ie, as a result of people’s aspirations, is out of order. And Krishna Hachhethu does just that in his most recent book, Trajectory of Democracy in Nepal.

Hachhethu’s book primarily deals with the upheavals the country has seen since 1990 and tries to render them as an outcome of popular longing for a meaningful political change. He locates the democratic movement of 1990 in the desire of the middle-class, educated, city-dwelling population to break away from the old mores of the partyless Panchayat system. Swept away by the tide of democratic reforms that was surging through the whole world after the fall of the Soviet Union and dissolution of dictatorships and proletariat governments, they demanded the establishment of multiparty democracy in the country.

Although Nepalis did achieve democracy, the institution did not fulfil their expectations. Rather than addressing the need of the people, political parties became the self-serving centres of political power play while their leaders became bywords for greed and corruption. And like the Panchas before, they too promoted the vested interests of a handful of hill Bahun-Chhetri elites.

This then, according to the author, became the reason for the mass disillusionment with the system that ultimately led to the birth of the Maoist rebellion in Nepal. But this toxic political game play and corrupt Bahun-Chettri nexus post-1990 did something more. It ended up bringing to the forefront issues of ethnicism and federalism in a country that was, until recently, marked by absolute reverence for the king and portrayed as a homogenous, predominantly Hindu entity.

Hachhethu’s sympathetic portrayal of the rude awakening that the Nepali people have had vis-à-vis political institutions governing the country is compelling. And the way he uses facts and data to put forward his arguments lends more credibility to them. But despite all his attempts to do away with the foreign powers that have often had a pivotal role in momentous political changes in the country, there is a lingering sense of incompleteness that pervades the chapters.

For those who have witnessed the recent tantrums of our southern neighbour, and read about its involvement in moulding the future political actors of the country for more than a half century now, Hachhethu’s arguments sound a bit bland and deficient.

But if writers like Sudhir Sharma and Prashant Jha occupy the part of the spectrum that portrays the country as a battleground of foreign emissaries, spies and interests, Hachhethu helms the other end where people’s interests dictate political changes. Together they provide a holistic and more realistic picture of the current Nepali politics.

The book, as stated by the author himself, is a compendium of 10 papers written by him on various occasions between 1990 and 2005 and published in different journals and books. Barring the last two chapters of the book, which deal with civic society in Nepal and the local government of Bhaktapur municipality, the essays form a neat analytical trajectory that begins from the democratic reforms of 1990 to the fall of monarchy and the institutionalisation of republicanism.

A few words on the editing of the book. The lethargic editing of the book that otherwise is a worthy read does much disservice to the writer. Apart from the wrong use of punctuation marks and articles throughout the book, misspelt words are bound to turn the readers off. Hope the writer and the publisher take note of it. Source: The Kathmandu Post