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“If things remain the same, the country will be forced to crawl again in the same manner for decades to come. And, especially, it will be the youths, who have already suffered for decades, who will be forced to suffer again. Let’s not assume that the country is not in crisis. There are countries in the world which have descended into deadly conflict and violence and whose existence has been threatened within a short span of time.”

With this opening appeal worded carefully to create a specter, Rabindra Mishra, the President of Bibeksheel Sajha Party, has floated a document for ‘discussion and debate’. This document bases most of its arguments on this specter and a nostalgic appreciation of the Panchayat era and monarchy, and suggests the dissolution of federalism and a referendum on secularism. Surprisingly, it also openly conveys sympathy for the monarchy. This created a hue and cry, both in support and against, across social media within hours of the announcement. 

The background to this is interesting. Mishra jumped into the bandwagon of alternative politics after a long career in journalism. While working as a journalist for the BBC Nepali Service, he had successfully run charity campaigns and projects through his Help Nepal Network and gained popularity.

A rigorous build-up of his ‘celebrityhood’ finally led to the next step, as he started looking for opportunities to enter politics. Having failed to incorporate leaders like Baburam Bhattarai, the disgruntled Maoist ideologue, or Gagan Thapa, the young star of Nepali Congress, into his plan, he started his own political party. 

The Sajha Party that he founded later merged with the Bibeksheel Nepali Dal, founded through youth activism of late Ujwal Thapa. But the merged party soon split over differences in working styles and other clashes. Then, yet again, they reunited, and Mishra currently leads the outfit that is widely considered ‘the alternative party’.

The need for an alternative party was an idea that gathered steam after the disgraceful failure of the first constituent assembly. After fierce conflicts between various interest groups in and outside the CA, the assembly couldn’t come to a consensus on many important issues and the house was dissolved after two extensions.

Bhattarai, having been sidelined by Maoist Supremo Prachanda time and again, initiated the Naya Shakti Party, literally meaning a new force, with the goal of establishing a political force to rival the traditional congress, communist, rightwing monarchist, and regional parties. But when people didn’t respond to his grand design, Bhattarai changed course and merged his party with regional forces.

The Mishra-led Sajha Party and the youth-based Bibeksheel Nepali Dal were now the two remaining contenders in the alternative political arena, and with the merger they came across as the only alternative force. Presently, the party has three representatives in the Bagmati Province legislative assembly.

In this scenario, as the party president, Mishra has floated this document suggesting a change of course. He is being widely criticized for two valid reasons: first, the course he is suggesting is completely against the intent of the document signed for the unification of the two parties the second time, and second, as the sitting party president, rather than presenting his ideas for discussion in internal party committees, he has published them to sway opinions.

Party sources confirm that Mishra isn’t confident that either of the party’s current 25-member secretariat or the 130-member central committee will adopt his new line. Members from the previous Sajha Party, considered Mishra’s own side, have also openly spoken against the idea of basing alternative politics on religious sentiments. Thus this step by Mishra is being seen as a treachery for the cause of alternative politics. Recently, when the youth wing of the party passed its constitution endorsing the ‘directly elected presidential’ system as its main political line, Mishra wrote a harshly worded letter to them, calling his own party a group lacking discipline and capacity.

I have closely observed the alternative political movement in Nepal with sympathy for two reasons: one, a new political force is a must to break the politico-criminal nexus that has turned the state into a kleptocracy and two, in the existing political set up, the established parties have a hardwired hierarchical feudal structure that does not allow young and capable leaders to rise to power. 

There is a clear difference in the way the Sajha Party was founded and the way the Bibeksheel movement evolved, with the latter being a youth-led movement based on liberal values and institutional democratic decision-making. But Mishra’s style of leadership and his rule-via-coterie are antithetical to that, for at the core of its structure is Mishra’s popularity. 

This difference in culture was the main reason for the past split. And now, with an unnecessary right turn, Mishra has once again proved that at the center of his endeavor is a regressive thought process and a populist political acumen. This line of thought may garner mass support for obvious reasons, but whether this clever political maneuvering is in the interest of the nation and its people remains to be seen. 

At its worst, such politics create unnecessary social rifts by exploiting deep fault-lines, and the idea of alternative politics was born to do the exact opposite at a time these conflicts had been paralyzing the country for decades. Therefore, with this new display of preference for a specter-raising right wing politics, Mishra has lost the moral authority to lead the alternative political movement.

Nepal’s constitution offers a flawed concept of democracy. The current constitutional crisis is, in part, an exhibition of those flaws.

In this five-part series, I explore the elements that make our constitution inherently frail and call on civilians to build a truly apolitical (or non-political) movement to save the constitution.

Part IV: Discrediting parliament 

The gavel has fallen. The Supreme Court has spoken. In a decision that will reverberate through the ages, it instructed the President to reinstate Parliament and appoint Sher Bahadur Deuba as the prime minister.

UML and CPN (Maoists Centre) had jointly won a commanding majority in parliament. They were expected to govern smoothly for the full term as a unified party. Instead, they have now had an acrimonious divorce. The UML itself looks headed for a vertical split.

All this instability, political bickering, and grandstanding have come in the middle of a global pandemic that has scorched Nepal just as much. Nepalis have always accepted a base level of political instability given the incessant squabbling for power. Even by that standard, the recent turmoil has been extraordinary.

The Supreme Court ruling will be weighed and debated for a long time. But outside, to the people of Nepal, the impact of the recent political chaos had already left a lasting imprint, long before the court’s decision.

The political chaos—its proceedings in particular—has helped discredit Nepal’s parliamentary system in public opinion, undermining our faith in the system. It would be hard to find a person in Nepal, other than those affiliated to political parties, who now believes that either the judiciary, the executive or the legislature—the entire government of Nepal—can really yield lasting political stability for the country’s progress and development.

The system may not have been at fault. The absence of leadership, the narrow self-interest of politicians, the transactional nature of political relationships, and the lack of diversity in ideology among political parties may all haven been responsible. But none of that really matters.

The view from the street is simple. We blame politicians and political parties, but in one form or another, we end up concluding that this system is hopeless. What we need, we say wistfully, is stronger leadership. That wistfulness often borders on a melancholic longing for the monarchy, or worse, an outright desire for a benevolent dictator.

That is exactly where our constitution begins to fray. Around the world, a constitution’s strength comes from its legitimacy. The majority must believe that the constitution is still the best instrument for delivering results most beneficial to the country. That belief grants the constitution its legitimacy.

A constitution fundamentally lacking in legitimacy becomes no more than a treatise. It could be backed by military power, which makes it a soft military dictatorship. It could even contain elections, which would make it no more than an election-only democracy. Without legitimacy, the constitution lacks its core strength and will remain inherently unstable. One little spark could ignite a revolution and force the constitution to be rewritten.    

This is the current state of Nepal’s constitution. It already lacks legitimacy. As public disenchantment grows with our political system—the failures of our parliament, the courts, the president, and the military—that legitimacy is further eroded.

This erosion of legitimacy of Nepal’s political system is not accidental. It isn’t instigated from abroad. The Chinese or the Indians, who are often held responsible for all our political failings, are not instigating this from their capitals.

There is a systematic and intentional campaign to discredit Nepal’s parliamentary democracy. The easiest way to accomplish this is by pitting one political leader against another. It is hard to establish, for example, what the recent political crisis was about, except that key leaders within UML and Maoist Center were unhappy with each other. As there was no ideological tussle, to the public the political squabbling and resulting chaos is only about control of power. This view leads to public disenchantment, disillusionment, and erosion of legitimacy.

Whether the discrediting campaign is being directed by someone or has now snowballed to take a course of its own is hard to tell. As citizens, our concern could focus on the erosion of legitimacy—our wistful longing for a better system of governance. This is where we must fight back.

Nepal urgently, desperately needs a citizen’s movement to save our constitution. 

[email protected]; Views are personal

My friend Asmita Pradhan and I run a room on Clubhouse called “Official Pandheri Guff” where we choose different topics and give the floor to the audience to put up their opinions. In one session, the topic was: “How far will you go for your friends?” In the discussion, a member of the audience reversed the question and said “I wish to share a story about how far my friends have gone for me. I was never a believer in friends forever, but after one incident, I feel I am blessed to have a couple of real good friends who stood by me through my most difficult time.” After that the entire conversation was about how grateful we all are to have great friends.

Everyone knows the basic principle of good friendship is being there for each other. Helping and supporting during tough times. Being partners in crime. We all have done stupid and unbelievable things for our friends. Having stated the basic principle of friendship, I wish to draw no lines on who can be a friend. It could be your sibling who you grow up with and share most of your time with, it could be Peter Parker next door who looks after Mary Jane as a friend, or it could be your mentor who listens and believes in you when you give up on yourself and start self-doubting and pitying.

I called up a friend early in the morning and asked him to define friendship for me as I was writing something along those lines. And he very simply gave me a one- liner, “Friendship is a strong ship made by friends to sail together in the course of life.”

It takes time to build any relationship. Friendship also takes its sweet time to mature and strengthen. When we meet someone, the person is only an idea. And it happens to be a great one-dimensional idea. But we need to understand that people are not two-, three-, or four- but multidimensional and some dimensions may not be desirable. The different sides could be their flaws and imperfections. Sometimes due to the imperfections the idea might lose its value, but other times people accept those imperfections and move ahead together.

There are a lot of discussions about how friendship works differently with people of different genders. For men, friendship might be defined differently to how women define it and vice-versa. In spite of that, friendship can grow beautifully and platonically between two different genders. Personally for me, friendship is never binary. I have friends from different shades of the spectrum.

In the process of appreciating and showing gratitude towards the presence of a true friend, most of the time, the attribute everyone points out is the patience to listen. That might entail venting about your toxic relationship, a controlling boss, or not-so-understanding parents—we all need that one friend or set of friends who will listen to the entire thing without passing any judgement. In my opinion, we all want someone to listen to our stories. Stories of achievement, failures, heartbreaks; gossip, backbiting and everything that goes in our lives. 

Sometimes we seek validation for some decisions we make. If you know your friend/s closely, you might not get the answer you seek. But you still know they will give the answers which will be the truth or the right thing to do. If you look around, your true friend will be brutally honest, tell you the truth and will take care of you after you get hurt by their words.

Friendship might be differently handled and built over the years. A friend should understand and know how to support unconditionally even if it means being there just to hear you for hours without saying anything or being the partner they need to sort out things. 

If you have one friend you are lucky, if you have a set of friends you are blessed. As for me, to say I am blessed would be an understatement: the four decades of my life have earned me a beautiful set of good friends. I consider them a family that I chose. I have practiced the art of saying “No” for things that go against my nature. Despite that, for a few of my friends, I might not murder anyone, but I will surely get the shovel to dig the hole. 

At this point, it is hard to be surprised when stolen objects from Nepal are found in museums in the West. Art historians and academics have altered us about the theft for decades now. And yet this past year has been different. Stories of repatriation to Nepal have only been outpaced by stories of web-savvy Nepalis locating yet more stolen objects in collections abroad.

More objects being found, sustained media focus, decent government responsiveness, and museums willing to at least acknowledge the problem. So what’s different? Why is there such a sense of indignation when activists find one more object in a foreign museum? And what might the current focus tell us about building and sustaining a movement to keep pressure on museums and the Nepali government to ensure Nepal's heritage is returned to its people?

The murder of George Floyd reignited the conversation on race relations. The Black Lives Matter protests brought home the frustrations against the enduring legacy of white supremacy. It is to this movement that the renewed conversation of repatriation of Nepal’s stolen objects owes a partial debt. The movement towards racial justice in the West opened the space to critically examine the role of museums in feeding a culture that fetishizes other people and their faith.

At first, a surge in finding so much of our heritage looted and displayed abroad is horrifying, yet ultimately this is a necessary and welcome step. At a time when there is little Nepalis agree on, it's almost exhilarating to find an issue about which we are on the same page. As in any healthy public sphere, we might disagree on the details—Who should lead the charge? How do we secure the idols from going missing again? What objects should we prioritize? But by and large the janta now speaks with one voice: We want our heritage back!

There is, however, the occasional troll who will argue that these objects are safer in the West and therefore should remain in foreign lands. But such self-deprecating arguments can be safely ignored. It would be like allowing bankers to rob people and invest the money because they are better money managers.

In situ picture of the Uma Maheshwara, taken from Lain Singh Bangdel's ‘Stolen Images of Nepal’

Besides tapping into this specific socio-cultural moment in the West there are more obvious and inward-looking reasons that have allowed for a surge in finding our heritage abroad. 

The groundwork for current efforts was put in place by giants like Lain Singh Bangdel, Jürgen Schick and Ulrich Von Schroeder. They collected and published photographic evidence of objects in situ, in their original place, which is essential to any claim for repatriation. This is a huge asset when asserting Nepal’s claims. Building on this foundation, digitization efforts like the Global Nepali Museum, the Huntington Archive, and the Remembering the Lost projects have democratized this data. This in turn has allowed researchers, professionals, and amateurs alike to dig into provenance history and compare museum photos with in situ objects.   

Nepali social media can be a vicious space. Abuse galore. But ever so often Nepali Twitter bands together to amplify issues that encourage a national sense of self. And this is an important reason why the groundbreaking research done by Twitter handles like the Lost Art of Nepal are able to reach thousands of people across the globe, especially when English and Nepali journalists pick up the story.

It is also encouraging that the state—the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Archeology, local governments, and concerned embassies—have been fairly responsive and make official inquiries as follow-ups to news of objects' rediscovery. The recent announcement by the DoA that they have completed the paperwork required to begin the repatriation process for 26 objects in the UK and France is highly encouraging. We hope to see this being expanded to include objects discovered in the MET, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Denver Art Museum. 

This moment of global reckoning with colonial history has emphasized the need to question the arrogant concepts of “encyclopedic” and “universal” museums. Collections filled with objects stolen from other communities don’t make for very inclusive educational institutions.

Across the globe formally colonized people are asking for what is rightfully theirs. Nepal is no exception. The aphorism “Nepal was never colonized” is a double-edged sword. It reasserts an important part of history while simultaneously distorting it. Nepal cannot shy away from articulating its assertions in terms of the larger narrative around decolonization because  “we weren’t colonized”. True, but that’s a gross misunderstanding of how cultural imperialism works. And it is simply a bad strategy.

Nepal and Nepalis should absolutely engage in and interpret socio-cultural moments in the West that allow it to act on its own interests. We ought to reassert ourselves as a shaper of the global conversation on this issue, rather than being mere recipients of it.

Having navigated the age of imperialism in relative isolation, Nepal entered the age of decolonization unsure of its role and place. Compared even to our neighborhood, we were poorer and far-worse educated, and with less interaction with the outside world. When it did open its borders in the 1950s people and ideas—of “progress”, “civility”, and development”—rushed in. In this new world, indigenous episteme—a system of understanding—was challenged and dismantled, from those outsides and those within. It has taken us a few decades to come to grips with it.

Nepal in 2021 is different. Compared to any other time in our history, Nepalis are more literate, more tech-savvy and there are simply more of us around—at home and abroad. That access to knowledge is leading more Nepali to ask questions about their history. Why were objects of reverence so discourteously taken away and housed in museums? How did we get here? And who allowed it? This questioning of the past is welcome.

Nepalis, when empowered with the right tools, are able and willing to fight to have their heritage returned to them. But success will depend on how we organize and articulate our sense of loss and assertions.

The Portland, Oregon-based author is co-founder of the Nepal Pride Project