The Telegraph, 20 November 2013
Nepal’s Hindu undercurrent
ASHIS CHAKRABARTI
Kathmandu, Nov. 19: Nirmala Thapa had to decide what to do first — cast her vote or have her darshan of the Kumari Devi, the legendary girl goddess.
Her polling booth was next door at Hanumandhoka, the old royal palace and the site of the most infamous assassinations in Nepal’s blood-soaked royal history — in 1846. Eventually, she voted before entering the Kumari Ghar (the house of the Kumari).
“The vote is only for today, but I come to see the Devi every other day,” she said. By the time she had had her darshan, a group of Chinese Buddhist tourists had arrived, clicking their cameras and devoutly greeting, from the courtyard below, the six-year-old girl who briefly appeared at a first-floor window of her sacred home.
Outside the front gate, a woman took her position at the feet of a stone lion, starting her day’s sales of the Kumari’s pictures — at 20 (Nepali) rupees each.
Just round the corner was the kastha mandap (wooden pavilion), several centuries old, housing the temple of Gorakhnath, where men from the Nepal Army and the Nepal police queued up to cast their votes.
In a big Buddhist temple compound down a lane from Hanumandhoka, voters waited their turn. Nobody thought there was anything odd about religion and politics sharing the same locations — even during elections.
But today’s elections to Nepal’s second Constituent Assembly (CA), which saw an unprecedented turnout of over 70 per cent despite the poll boycott call by a Maoist faction, were somewhat different.
While the big issues of the future of a federal Nepal and its chosen form of government dominated the political discourse, a strong undercurrent ran around the future of Hinduism in what was the world’s only Hindu rashtra until a 10-year Maoist armed insurrection, followed by a popular democratic uprising, ended the country’s 240-year-old monarchy and turned it into a secular republic.
“Ek vote dai lai, ek vote gai lai (one vote for the elder brother — the candidate — and one vote for the cow),” was one of the most popular slogans that caught the people’s imagination in the poll campaign this time.
Each voter casts two votes, one for the candidate for the directly elected seat and another for a party that offers its list of candidates for proportional representation. The slogan was coined by the Rashtriya Prajatantra Party (Nepal), led by Kamal Thapa, the charismatic leader and an unabashed royalist, who would like to upturn the first Constituent Assembly’s first resolution abolishing the monarchy and declaring Nepal a secular state.
“It isn’t the people who abolished the monarchy and declared Nepal a secular state,” argued 79-year-old Tejeswar Babu Gongah, well-known columnist and cultural activist, sitting in the drawing room of his home at Bhaktapur, one of the old capitals of Nepal, about half an hour’s drive from here.
He had known King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya, who came to his home as guests to his son’s wedding in April 2001 — two months before the royal massacre at Narayanhiti Palace. “They sat there,” he pointed to a sofa in his first-floor drawing room.
A picture of the slain King and Queen adorned the wall above the sofa. “What the Maoists think are settled can be unsettled,” Gongah said, citing the Cromwellian revolution in England and the subsequent Restoration.
Some others argue that the first CA’s resolution for abolishing the monarchy was “procedurally and legally wrong”.
The Maoists, who began the end of the monarchy as well as of the Hindu rashtra, fumed and fretted. But other major parties — the Nepali Congress (NC) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), and even the parties of the indigenous people of the Terai plains — saw a strategic use for the “Save Hinduism” campaign.
In many places, the NC gave its own electoral twist to it. “Ek vote gachhi lai, ek vote bachhi lai (one vote for the tree — the NC symbol — one vote for the calf),” its campaigners urged the voters.
Luvkumar Srestha, a retired employee of the auditor-general’s office of the Nepal government, had cast his vote and basked in the sun in front of the Hanumandhoka booth.
“Kamal Thapa’s talk of restoring the monarchy if his party wins is all bunkum. He just wants to exploit the people’s sentiments and get votes. But this issue of saving Hinduism has its appeal,” he said.
The Maoists had reason to crib about the religious twist to an election which was mainly about getting a new Constitution written, which the first CA failed to accomplish. And, they saw its link to the question of the RPP(N)’s talk of reviving the constitutional monarchy.
As deposed monarchs go, Nepal’s last king — Gyanendra — has been very different from, say, Pu Yi, the last emperor of China. Dethroned by Sun Yat-sen’s republican revolution of 1911, Pu Yi squandered his fortunes trying to regain the lost throne and collaborated with the Japanese who set him up as a puppet emperor in occupied Manchuria.
Handed over by the Russians to the new communist regime in China, he was “remoulded” in a prison for nine years before completing his transformation “From Emperor to Citizen”, as the title of his autobiography puts it.
Gyanendra, by contrast, has been an almost invisible ex-king, if not exactly living like a citizen. He lay low since losing his throne in 2008 until he started visiting famous, old temples.
He blessed the people who came to see him and raised slogans like “Raja ao desh bachao (Come back, king, and save the country).”
The Maoists in the government, including the then Prime Minister, Baburam Bhattarai, saw red and warned the ex-king against using religion to try and re-enter politics.
“It’s only the King’s Party of Kamal Thapa which talks of restoring some form of monarchy and the Hindu rashtra. He wants to use the people’s sentiments about Hindu religion to indirectly bring back the monarchy. Even in India, you’ve parties like the BJP using religion for politics,” Lokraj Baral, Nepal’s former ambassador to India and a political scientist, says.
He predicts the results might be similar to those in the 2008 polls, with the Maoists emerging as the biggest party, even if their tally is somewhat reduced. Even Baral, though, conceded that Thapa’s party may do much better this time than in the first CA polls of 2008, when it won only four seats. That assumption is quite widespread here across political parties, analysts and common people.
“The RPP(N) may emerge as the fourth largest party this time — after the Maoists, the NC and the CPN(UML). If it gets a good number, it may hold the key to power in a more fractured CA,” said Guna Raj Luitel, the chief editor of Annapurna Post, a leading Nepali daily.
Most analysts agree that the Madhesi parties of the indigenous people of the Terai, which did well last time winning 82 seats, will lose heavily — mainly because of the many splits and factions among them.
Whether the RPP(N) fares better or not, this election campaign seems to have instigated — and exploited — the fear that post-monarchy Nepal was losing its traditional identity and culture, both predominantly Hindu.
Three arguments are given to justify this sentiment. First, the political parties have failed to give stability and security to the country and the people, thereby threatening the Nepali identity.
Second, Christianity has been making slow but steady inroads, thanks to the Maoists who, it is alleged, talked of secularism but secretly aided the spread of Christianity.
The most important argument is that “foreign hands” are working deeper and longer in Nepal’s politics and society.
“Whether it was the peace process or the elections — in 2008 and now — there are far too many foreign players meddling in Nepal’s affairs,” complained a leading political commentator who did not want to be quoted.
Pradip Nepal, a central committee member of the CPN(UML), called the international watch on the country’s elections “terrible”.
“Last time the Carter Centre gave a clean chit to the polls, although it was later found that in many places the votes polled numbered more than the registered voters. It was mostly the Maoists who benefited from such polling.”
But today’s polling left little doubt that there was less violence and intimidation, if not less use of cash, than in 2008.
“It shows that the voters of Nepal have matured. It brings more hope for the future of Nepal’s democracy,” Baral, the academic-turned-diplomat, concluded.
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