Obama Fad and the Madness of Crowds

Aspiring presidential candidate Barak Obama and his messianic call for ‘change’ have grappled America. In recently fought American primaries, Senator Obama, in ways more than one, gave his opponent a good run for her money. While the registered Democrats had reasons to vote for the candidate they did, this unregistered, underpaid and underrepresented ‘Brown-with-a-frown’ wonders if mainstream American popularity necessarily translates into better representation for the neo-immigrant class, more precisely, us ‘Brownies’. More (30)»

Requiem for a rain

Are clouds up there—in the sky, reflection, knotted ball of emotional concoction ready to burst into rain on us—our soul, effect of which is usually seen through the crystal lenses that generate tiny droplets in our eyes? More (5)»

‘Nepali’ Maoism: Realistic idealism or idealistic realism?

In one of his infamous open letters post 2001 assassination of King Birendra Bikram Shah and horrific massacre of rest of his immediate family, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai accused the alliance of Indian secret agency, RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) and its American counterpart of meddling in the affairs and conspiring against a sovereign nation's inherent right to determine its own destiny. In it, Baburam went further to allege that Indian expansionist approach and American imperial ambition in the South-Asian region had been primarily responsible for most of the political and social upheavals that had taken place in Nepal for innumerous years. In addition, he claimed that if India and its growing need to assert its regional super-power status compelled it to appropriate Nepal as one of its territories, the US and its counter-balance approach vis-a-viz China obliged it to form a natural alliance with India. The complexity of South-Asian geo-politics and the roles of foreign governments in contemporary Nepali politics never seemed so obvious yet improbable to an average man.

Five years later, followed by President Bush's visit to India, the Maoists of Nepal released a second memorandum of understanding with the agitating parties, with unabashed meetings taking place in the Indian capital. Further, the recent visit by Chinese state councilor who urged Nepal to 'seek reconciliation among the constitutional forces' only ended up adding more ambiguity and complexity to the pre-existent foreign power dynamics in Nepal. Baburam's self-fulfilling prophecy could not have sounded any more equitable. Was it the most ironic series of events, or simply the sign of times to come—the world getting more and more interdependent that it becomes progressively difficult to look away from roles bigger governments play in shaping and 'guiding' smaller ones towards a certain end, sometimes not in the benefits of the larger population; while at others, for the greater ideological and strategic benefits of bigger powers involved.

While Maoists have recently been successful in attracting attention from foreign media as well as major international political players; it has not been equally successful in gaining confidence when it comes to majority of Nepali population, its home base. The recent agreement between the seven parties and Maoists, while seen by many Nepal-intellectuals as functional in providing relational workings in resisting and possibly ousting the growing encroachment and despotism of the state, is equally viewed by others as a key misstep by the parties in 'falling in the trap of Maoists' and consequently setting itself up for the opening of Pandora's box, unleashing the slew of possibilities that could result in severe fragmentation of once cohesively held social structure, quite possibly spinning the country into a full-fledged civil war.

It is far beyond my intellectual scope and capacity to define many of the things that serve as undercurrents to the contemporary Maoist movement in Nepal. Those are better left for people like Siddhartha Varadrajan who recently interviewed Prachanda, and Pratyush Chandra, who finds uncanny similarities between Nepali Maoists movement and the Bolivarian revolutionary struggle in Venezuela. While some contend on Marxist definition of class and economic struggle, and 'the peoples war' in Nepal as modern manifestation of years old socially embedded prejudices; others try to look at issues from a slightly different angle and attempt to provide a more 'human' definition: the failure of previous political systems in valuing and acknowledging the once vast 'social capital' that has now gone wry. Whatever the correct way of comprehending the movement may be, chief interest to me from a philosophical point is that the modern Nepali revolutionary movement can be thought as a constant struggle in an attempt to find a local solution to the universal problem, one that results in the idea of realistic idealism—a doctrine that is based on pragmatism; while attempting to lay foundation of an ideological platform for a global renaissance of idealistic realism—a doctrine that has been ignored and shoved into the dusty books ever since Plato's discourses were recorded in the Republic.

Nepal stands on the crossroads—locally, regionally and globally. From the time since Rana regime exchanged Nepali peasants for colonial luxuries, to the present mass exodus of migrant laborers to India, South East Asia and the Middle East, Nepalis have been continually finding themselves as subservient citizens of the world—attending ever religiously to the needs of their masters. Only the participants have changed—from ruling Brahmins and aristocrats to tyrannical Ranas, from white Sahibs to modern day oil-rich Sheiks, the fate an average Nepali now prescribes to have been limited to doing whatever to take the cheapest flight out of Nepal to the slave pits of consumer worlds.

Perhaps what Maoists envision from the 'roof of the world' for Nepal and subsequent similar states provide greater ideological clarity in the world that is progressively becoming vague and stratified between the growing rise in fundamentalism—ideological superiority, and, countervailing force of acute realism—that national or regional interests are best served by intervening in critical places where there is a strategic necessity. Caught in the crossfire are your usual suspects—third world countries with first-world aspirations. If Nepal is to find a national and foreign policy in the ever changing world dynamics, if it is to find and portray itself as more than second-class laborers at third-world rates, perhaps it is time to put away our communist dogma and seriously look into what the Maoists have to offer, not only in political and social context, but also in regards to shaping and re-formig the collective and individual character of Nepali people.

Prachanda and Baburam have been quite brazen in putting across the idea of 'competitive democracy' as a necessary solution to the problem of feudal and class driven Nepali society. In the least, the duos claim that such proposal to the agitating parties and the people are not a tactical ploy but an ideological necessity of the times, resulting out of greater intra-party introspection, and taking into account the interdependence of greater political, social and economic forces that shape the world today. As representative democracy of Nepal in one way or the other failed to provide a firm foundation to the newly acquired democratic structure, the Maoists ideologues claim that such failure has been primarily due to the structural deficiencies of representative democracy in penetrating through the semi-feudal and class based society and reaching into the lower strata population.

While the Maoists' end goal remain a full-fledged communist state, their open yet standard rhetoric of transforming a feudal society like Nepal to an ideal communist state apparently involve the process of passing through multiple stages of capitalism and socialism—an idea that comes right out of Marx's historical materialism theory. One can only begin to wonder and speculate if the reluctantly crammed cracks within Maoist rank and file have grown big enough that top leadership feel it tactically necessary to find a compromising ground with the parties to save themselves from internal mutiny, or is it that they are simply willing and confident to put their 10 years of struggle on line for a mere political theory that in the past have frankly disappointed even the vanguards of proletariat struggle. Then again, I find it difficult to accept that Nepali revolutionaries have not churned the Marxian dialectic to their own benefit to arrive at the conclusion of making amends with the same democratic and representative forces who are otherwise their ideological class enemies.

Economic reconstruction in post-conflict Nepal

Let us go back to the basics. Demographically, Nepal is a country of approximately 28 million people, spread among its three main regions. Nepal has no maritime claims; it is a landlocked country. Geographically, it comprises of flat river plains of the Ganges south, central hill region and rugged Himalaya in the north bordering China. More (47)»