Estranged politics and class interest

Yuba Nath Lamsal

Nepal’s politics is said to be estranged in the sense that politicians and parties are slowly being alienated from the people. The relationship between the people and politicians is marked by skepticism and mistrust. Politicians are the least trusted breed in the eyes of common people. Parties and leaders are slowly losing credibility. In a democracy, there should be a lively link, strong relationship and trust between the people and politicians.  And this makes democratic polity vibrant and functional. Devoid of such a trust and goodwill on the part of the political parties and their leaders, it only serves to vested interest groups that ultimately paves the way to the rise of dictatorship, no matter however best and democratic system it may be in paper and principle.

So far as Nepal is concerned, there is little cohesion in the development of Nepali politics. Every time when political change takes place, it has marked a systemic break and departure. We have come a long way from feudalism, oligarchic rule, monarchical absolute regime, guided democracy, one-party Panchayat rule, monarchical democracy to the present federal republican democracy. These are experiments but all experiments have not yielded positive results to the best satisfaction of the people. Despite systemic change, power has remained in the hands of similar breed of people, who constitute a handful of feudal and upper class elites, that have given continuity to the old system of functioning. Thus, there has not been visible change in the governance. The system changed but the rule of the game has remained unchanged which has not brought about any tangible change in the life of the ordinary people.

Our political journey has been long, arduous and tumultuous. But the Nepalese people are docile, obedient and law abiding. As law abiding citizens, they trust and obey the rulers and the rulers have always deceived the people and have taken advantage of the docile nature of the Nepali people. When people start to distrust, they would come out to the street in a decisive manner, which marks the end of one political era and heralds a new chapter in Nepali politics. People trusted the kings, Ranas, Congress, UML and others. But they miserably failed to live up to popular expectations and trust.

To trace Nepal’s modern history, it goes back to the period of unification through which Nepal was created as a nation state out of many tiny principalities. Prithivi Narayan Shah took the leading role in the unification and the people from different walks of life extended their helping hands to make the unification campaign a success.  Thus, the Shah king was not alone in accomplishing this huge national task. Credit of Nepal’s unification should also go to the brave Nepali warrior of different ranks and file and general people, who took active and spontaneous part in the unification campaign. However, the rulers that came to power after him often got bogged down in petty power politics with the royal court propping one group against the other to have control over political and military power of that time. As the court conspiracy worsened, different groups emerged at different intervals of history, only to vanish in the trash bins of history.

The nature of the state was military, and one who controlled the army also controlled the political power, which was the rule of the game until the time when monarchy was formally abolished. Nepal’s political history was always marked by conspiracy, betrayal and bloodshed. In this dirty power politics, many honest, dedicated and patriotic nobles and knights lost their lives. As a result, many honest and brave sons and daughters of Nepal lost their lives due to intrigue in the royal court of Nepal.

The Nepalese people extended their support to the monarch during the unification and also in the process of consolidating the established country. Unfortunately, the monarch or their henchmen often turned against the people and resorted to exploiting them once they were able to consolidate their hold on power. Their chosen modus operandi to grab and retain power was either with military strength or by conspiracy.

Out of the conspiracy, Jung Bahadur Rana rose to power by eliminating all his enemies and rivals and introduced an oligarchic system in which only the Rana clan benefitted. This system continued for over a century and came to an end only in 1951. The popular revolution that was at its height was suddenly aborted by the conspiracy of the external forces and ended up in a tripartite deal, which the Nepalese people still consider as a blot on Nepal’s political history.

This deal served the interest of the monarchy, the feudal elites and landlords. The majority of the people that had taken part in the revolution benefited the least. The tripartite accord transferred the state power from the Ranas to the Shah dynasty. People who participated in the revolution with the hope of becoming masters of their destiny were once again made subjects only to serve other masters.

Although the 1951 political change was insignificant from the perspective of popular rights, it did make contributions to raising the level of people’s political consciousness. From Nepal’s foreign policy perspective, the 1951 marked a turning point as Nepal departed from the old policy of isolation and began to diversify its international relations. From the standpoint of clan rule, it was a rupture. But it was a continuity of the old system in terms of class perspective. Although it marked the end of the rule of the Ranas and restored the Shah dynasty’s power, the same feudal class had an upper hand on the state power. Earlier, the Ranas represented and patronised the feudal class.

After 1951, the Shah monarchy emerged as the messiah of the feudal elites. The monarchy enjoyed absolute power and ruled in the name of the partyless Panchayat system for almost 30 years. The fundamental interest of the monarchy was to protect the interest of the feudal class.

Another rupture was seen in 1990 when the country saw a transformation from an absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy with limited democratic rights of the people. With the weakening of the monarchy, the foundation of feudalism was shaken, but it was still alive.

With the political change of 1990, feudalism patronised by the monarchy entered into an alliance with domestic and international capitalism mainly against the emerging communist force in Nepal. This alliance, too, failed to counter the emerging wave of communist forces that came to the fore in the form of an armed insurgency. The real rupture in politics was felt only in 2006 when the old feudal monarchy was abolished, and Nepal was declared a federal democratic republic.

On the political surface, there has definitely been a rupture, but from the class perspective, feudalism is still alive and kicking despite the abolition of its patron - the monarchy. Feudals and landlords have again formed an alliance with domestic and international capitalists in order to check and marginalise the radical and revolutionary force.

Now there is a friction between these two classes and forces, and they are trying to outdo one another. The deadlock in the constitution-making process is the result of this. Had any of the forces dominated the others, the constitution would have been written and promulgated long ago.

The Maoists represent the radical force and champion the cause of the poor and proletariat. They want radical change and institutionalise their agenda of ‘people’s federal republican democracy’. The Nepali Congress represents the capitalist class and ‘liberal’ democratic force and advocates capitalist parliamentary democracy. The other parties are not significant in the present class-based politics of Nepal except in the head counting parliamentary politics.

In the first place, there is no space for national consensus in class politics. Different parties represent different classes and advocate the interest of their own class. In such a scenario, national consensus has no place. The present scenario is the product of this clash of class interest, which is not likely to change in the immediate future. Either there has to be class transformation of the leaders and parties or one force should be vanished from the scene. But this is very unlikely.