End the NC bickering

The endless bickering going on inside the ruling Nepali Congress (NC) party is bound to affect governance. This struggle for leadership within the party comes at a time when the government has been unable to focus on the core issues confronting the nation.

It began from the time former Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai was forced to give way to the ambition of the present Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala. Younger leaders of the party like former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba have sought to take over from PM Koirala. This has led to nowhere but politicization of all major issues of the country. The failure of the Girija government to resolve the Maoist insurgency problem has been well exploited by the Deuba camp for political mileage. Apart from this, there hasn’t been much the Deuba camp has been able to do. This notwithstanding, there is a point in the NC rival camp’s demand that Koirala has to relinquish either the post of the party president or prime minister. Besides this issue being one which Koirala himself had raised some year back, it must also be borne in mind that concentration of power in a single person will definitely set in an unhealthy trend. Moreover, a single person will have difficulty managing the affairs of the country on the one hand and at the same time look after the party leadership.

The NC is the oldest party in the country. It was no doubt been, at the forefront in the fight against the Rana autocracy. The party has made important contributions towards the restoration of democracy. But now, these leaders of the past continue to hold sway over the party and also the government. The younger generation does have a point in their quest for party leadership. It is unreasonable that the septuagenarian leaders should continue to decide the fate of the country and keep the more dynamic young blood waiting in the wings. For this will not allow infusion of dynamism in the party. Another senior NC leader, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai has also requested PM Koirala to relinquish the party leadership. It is now up to the PM to decide whether he wants to continue his dual position or give in to the demand of the day.

The country cannot afford to be held hostage to the tussle within the ruling party while poverty, mismanagement and corruption are rampant. The expectations of the people cannot be fulfilled if the government and its leaders lose their focus on development issues. The rising strength of Maoists is an indicator that this is a time when the people’s unfulfilled aspirations are being misled into extremist ideologies and violence. The NC party has to understand this and end the power struggle within it. Only then can it fulfil its promises to the people. Whether unity in the NC will be maintained will depend on Koirala’s decision. It is now entirely up to him whether he sacrifices the greater interest of the country at the altar of personal ambition.

Gurkha recruitment must stop

By Madan Regmi

The recruitment of Nepalese Gurkhas in the British army, which in the real sense started only in 1826 was given a bold break by none other than Jung Bahadur, the first Rana Prime Minister. He did so because the British were launching a massive recruiting drive illegally in 1858. Jang Bahadur adopted stringent regulations to stop it. He promulgated that "no subject of the four classes and thirty-six castes of our country shall go to India for recruitment without prior approval." He warned, any Nepali who disobeyed, "shall have his houses and lands confiscated. He shall not be entitled to punish his wife’s lover if she has one. He shall be liable to capital punishment if he kills his wife’s lover if she has one. Jung Bahadur even ordered for the arrest of recruiting agents who penetrated into the hills. Its impact was so effective that the British government itself ordered the shelving of recruitment in 1868. But, Jung Bahadur Rana’s successors succumbed to British pressure and recruitment started again. King Mahendra on April 17, 1958, renewed the agreement on Gurkha recruitment for ten years rather than the previous five year period". Successive governments of the Nepali Congress and the Communists established after 1990 have been giving clean chit to India and Britain to open recruiting centres anywhere in Nepal. There is no restriction on them to recruit as many people as they want.

This amply demonstrates that Jung Bahadur was far more a nationalist than the absolute monarchs and the present party leaders. It is not less humiliating that former Nepalese Monarch King Mahendra was a Honorary General of the British and Indian army. The present Monarch King Birendra has not put on that mantle which the Indian and British have furnished him to humble Nepal and facilitate the recruitment of Nepalese Gurkhas in their army. However with the colonies gone, the number Gurkhas in the British Army has dwindled to three thousand. According to reliable reports, every year, London recruits between two hundred fifty to three hundred Gurkhas. The attraction to be recruited in the British army has largely receded. But the promise of affluent life still allures some boys. If Diana’s betrothal with Dody Fayad son of a Muslim billionaire and J F Kennedy’s widow Jacqueline’s marriage with fatherly Onassis, was a subject to be admired and adored in the West, the attraction of some of the Nepalese youngsters to become a British soldier cannot be a factor that undermines their human value. So, the charge that Nepalese blood is "cheap" is unreasonable. Hundreds of British Gurkha families are hanging on in Nepal and working for their livelihood. The Nepalese have never charged that British are cheap. Indians are everywhere in Nepal working as labourers, dish washers, beggars and bankers.

The number of Nepalese Gurkhas in the Indian Army is presumed to be less than fifty thousand. Indian military capability in terms of both defence and offence depends on these Gurkhas who are the spine of their army. Indians cannot fight without the Gurkhas leading them in the front. The practice among India and Britain of recruiting Gurkhas in their army is most inhumane. They hook most of these would be recruits right from their mother’s womb by threatening parents that if their children are not enrolled in their army, they will lose pension. In the schools opened by these two imperial powers in the Nepalese hills in the name of welfare of the children of their former recruits, they motivate them to join their army. They brainwash them to believe that to be in their army is an honour and matter of prestige.

This recruitment of Nepalese by these two foreign powers has contravened the UN Charter, International Law and Vienna convention and has also inflicted heavy damage on Nepal’s character and identity. Thanks to our northern neighbour China a which has observed this recruitment in muted silence even when India used Nepalese Gurkhas during it’s aggression on them, the recruitment continues.

Though the actual number of Gurkhas who participated in the First and Second World Wars is not available, as the British recruited most of them illegally, the figure provided by British Army Officers and western writers gives some idea. Lt Colonel G Betham, in "Nepal", journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, XXXV (January 1948, P 20) writes that "well over two hundred thousand" served in British Army units during the war primarily in the Burmese, Middle Eastern and Northern African fronts, where they again proved their magnificent fighting qualities at a heavy cost of life. Other Western accounts reflect a different dimension. This helps unravel the multiple despair Nepal has to bear in the post World War saga. In his book Nepal, Strategy For Survival, Leo E Rose an eminent American scholar writes that "the Durbar faced the problem of rehabilitating perhaps two hundred thousand veterans of the war whom the British demobilized quickly and with minimal assistance". The version of Lt Colonel Betham and Leo E Rose put together may help to deduce the approximate figure. But that too cannot be considered authentic.

Anyway, in World War II, according to Lt Colonel G Betham, the casualty of Gurkhas was very high, presumably not thousands but hundreds of thousand. This part probably will never be unfolded but it is equally stunning that the British deprived Nepal of prestige as well as financial share the Gurkhas had the right to receive. The British did not pay a single penny to thousand of Gurkhas who returned alive from world wars physically and mentally handicapped to bear the agony of post traumatic stress disorder to the end of life. Their legs, arms, amputated; eyes lost, tongues cut, thousands of these war veterans awaited their death in the remote hills of Nepal. However, whenever the so called VIPs and VVIPs of Britain and India pay a visit to Nepal, these world war veterans just capable of standing on their feeble legs, are paraded like clowns in the circus.

The injustice perpetrated by these two foreign powers on the Nepalese are myriad. Nation dismembered, history distorted and identity almost over run, none of the western historians have ever given an account of Nepal's direct participation in the world war. Actually, many thousands of Nepalese troops also joined World War II. Since the British put them under their own command and gave them the look of British Gurkhas, Nepal was exempted from being honoured as a partner of the War Allies. Besides, Britain’s racist policy on the ex-Gurkhas goes unabated. It is high time British and India stopped recruitment and gave up their imperialist bearings.

Double take

By S Pandey

She was a celebrity, but missing was the jewellery, the hang-ups and the put-ons of the big models. She was petite and had pretty eyes that danced with mischievous innocence, and an olive complexion that was the envy of the other girls on the set. With oodles of expensive foreign cologne dabbed liberally all over my person and a shirt with two buttons open, I sat in the deck chair waiting for my call, nonchalant and the epitome of a filmy macho.

She came closer. She waved a breezy "Hi" and my heart flipped. At close quarters, she seemed remote and ethereal. Should I give her a peck on the cheeks like they do in the movies? As I went near her, she spotted her mother who had escorted her and shyly withdrew, making me wonder about the persuasive power of my cologne.

Later, during the break, I put in my two bit "I say, old thing," I started, "couldn’t you put in a trifle more excitement when you say ‘I love you...’" The producer a more direct, no-nonsense man put his arm around her, and cooed something into her tiny shell-like ear. She burst out giggling and immediately covered her mouth. It was like little bells pealing in delight.

"Okay. That was good," announced the producer "But let’s do it once more. Ready everyone? Lights! Camera!" As the camera rolled. I looked around and found that the mother was looking at me, with a smile. For some reason I felt like a boy caught with his hand inside a cookie jar. Just then the other ‘mother’ in the film upset things on a table by gulping down two goblets containing bright coloured liquid that was as unreal as anything. The cleaning up took some time. I had to change from the top-of the market white trousers to the lowly faded jeans that I came to the set in. Somehow the wranglers seemed to be out of place there.

We were back to the scene where the guy puts his arm around the girl. Draws her to him, looks into her eyes, smiles, and she looks down, examines a shirt button, sighs and looks up at him. "Okay. You got that?" asked the producer. "Fine. Let’s have lots of emotion. Remember this is a close-up. Okay. Lights! Camera!!"

Three takes later, it must have been the Wranglers or the inconsistent soft light that made the producer yell "Cut!" and take a second look at the story board. After muttering to no one in particular, he came back to me, "Yaar", he said, "Do you mind if I knock out this clinch and just have you at the door returning home after a hard day at the office and the wife greets you at the door and this girl is on the staircase?"

My sinking heart heard no more and I let go off the girl. I said, "you got it!" So, now, on the screen you’ll see her saving up all the hugs and the line ‘I told you’ not for me but for the product. What can you say about a five-year old girl who ditches you for a soft drink?

State of the state

By M R Josse

Sampling the goodies of cocktail/dinner/wedding parties, one might say, virtually comes with the rugged territory of political journalism as it does, no doubt, for suave members of the corps diplomatique and unsinkable political types, among others.

Confession time: Truth to tell, for yours truly, the past week was a hectic one from that particular perspective. But, quite apart from the jollities and joshing associated with such charming festivities and rituals, what was illuminating was the stunning frequency with which one and sundry openly expressed their outrage or frustration on what might be called "the state of the state" today.

For example, at a national day function a member of the Upper House, answering a pro forma query from this scribe, shot back: Is there a government at all functioning today? Then, a member of the Army brass, at another diplomatic to-do, sarcastically declared that the government today exists only in the broadcasts of Radio Nepal and NTV!

At a wedding, a former HMG secretary/ambassador loudly bemoaned why nothing was being done about cleaning out the Augean Stable that this country has degenerated into. A former ambassador and academic, also encountered at a recent diplomatic shindig, commented favourably on the use of the expression "kleptocracy" in last week’s piece in this very space.

While an editor of an English weekly readily endorsed the academic’s viewpoint, the latter went on to add that a former US Congressman had several years ago used the same ugly but expressive word to describe the Philippines. We all, of course, know that in that land the chief executive is facing impeachment charges on grounds of financial impropriety.

To continue the mournful tale, a chorus was heard at another social gathering about the urgency for the King to make an intervention — not, mind you, to snatch political power for himself, but to deliver badly needed therapeutic shock treatment to a visibly failing body politic.

If some then pitched in by suggesting that the King is probably enormously enjoying the spectacle of multi-party politicians stewing in their own juices, others wondered whether, in view of the Maoists’ threat, the monarch could truly afford to adopt such a myopic attitude — if that, indeed, was the case.

Also, at a diplomatic bash, an irreverent journalist asked whether, in the context of the Maoists’ success in closing down most schools in the country and the government’s advertised impotence to do anything about it, the prime minister had the right to lecture the nation on this and that, instead of doing the only proper thing: quitting.

Revealingly, these days, even the most loyal supporters of the government and its geriatric captain don’t bother to defend their Caudillo or Il Duce—take your pick—from such scathing criticism or comments, as they would in all certainty have not too many moons ago.

Now, either they simply scamper away, like frightened rabbits on hearing the crack of rifle, or sit around with sour or embarrassed expressions on their faces.

Gridlock: Apart from all the complaints and griping referred to above, let me hasten to add that I did hear one astute or incisive comment relative to today’s murky political situation.

Simply put, it was that the country is currently in a political gridlock: The King cannot, or will not, act; the Prime Minister, who is obsessively concerned about winning another term as party president, will not quit even though he has lost all credibility; Army "garsabibs" while hot under their collars at being ordered about by CDOs, don’t have the gumption to do anything about it; and the Maoists, despite their recent successes, probably don’t have enough firepower to actually take over the reigns of state.

To that simmering cauldron, let me add that one more complicating element has been thrown in: The complex, emotive issue of amending the Constitution. Notably, if the UML are still going big guns blaring for amendment, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has now, significantly, climbed down from the Olympian Heights ruling out any amendment, for any purpose whatsoever.

That, Koirala has done by agreeing to form a Joint Working Group between the ruling Nepali Congress and the main Opposition party, the UML, to discuss and reach an understanding on the UML’s demand for Constitutional amendment.

Why exactly the chief helmsman of the Nepali Congress has chosen to make such a U-turn, one doesn’t know. But, exercising one’s imagination a bit and keeping in mind that there is a burgeoning, belated perception among sections of the intelligentsia that merely tinkering with the Constitution will not do, it could jolly well be that the change-of-heart is designed precisely to pre-empt a move demanding a wholesale review of the Constitution.

It could perhaps even be triggered by a desire to kill any future movement for elections to a Constituent Assembly to elect representatives for the express purpose of drafting a new Constitution that is truly reflective of the desires and aspirations of the Nepalese people, as a replacement.

Clue to riddle: A clue to the riddle of Koirala’s about-turn on that issue is possibly also to be had in that Maoist leaders in recent articles have suggested not merely "radical" changes in the Constitution but even the need for convening a Constituent Assembly, via elections, to forge a brand new Basic Law.

That both the UML and the NC the two main architects of the 1990 Constitution, have denounced the Maoists’ suggestion is more than merely notable: It reeks of an attempt to establish a political duopoly, in the name of multi-party democracy!

Readers are invited to mull over such delicious questions, even as they ponder over "the state of the state" amidst the backdrop of schools’ closure, re-introduction of load shedding, campus’ strike, crisis in the hotel industry, threatened strikes in hospitals — and the summoning of the prime minister by the Public Affairs Committee of parliament over the controversial RNAC-Lauda Airlease deal.