Remembering Panchayat

This is with reference to the article "Remembering Panchayat" by Pratyoush Onta (TKP
April 6, 2001). I find it interesting that more than 10 years after the demise of the much-maligned system, it still remains a major reference point for our political debate. I am too young to remember whether the Nepalese chattering class used to use Rana rule to gauge the performance of the pre-Panchayat multiparty governments. Nevertheless, I sometimes try to imagine what the tea shop conversations were like in, say, around, 1957.

Although I found Mr Onta’s quotes from the book "Some aspects of the Panchayat system" highly selective, they do provide a glimpse into relentless effort the system made to justify itself throughout its 30-year existence.

As someone who has read Mr Onta’s writings for some time - I recall the days when he used to be a regular contributor to the Letters to the Editor column of The Rising Nepal - I am encouraged by the way he has established himself as a prominent commentator in the "free press" of the restored multiparty order. At the same time, I am aware that the nature of Mr Onta’s activities - thinking, writing, moderating and making recommendations on the political, social, cultural malaise of today - almost by definition presupposes virulent antipathy to a system that severely restricted commentaries on such basic matters as the potholes that pockmarked Kathmandu’s streets and the legendary delays in the postal system.

Today’s vast pool of US-educated thinkers and experts tend to measure freedom of expression in Nepal on the basis of the core values of the First Amendment and the Freedom of Information Act. I appreciate the nobleness of their hopes of transplanting genuine openness in Nepal as a means of bringing all-round (to use a popular Panchayat-era term) transformation. What I see happening instead is a proliferation of issues and ideas in the midst of a political elite that has virtually enshrined its "right to ignore" as the fifth unchangeable feature of the current constitution.

As a person who lived under those so-called ‘dark days’, I have to put on record my personal view that the Panchayati restrictions did manage to breed a sense of order that I as a member of society miss today. I feel sorry for those of my college friends who were imprisoned for their political activities. Today when I see many of them in parliament and in local elected bodies, I cannot relate to them. Had I accompanied them to the Nakkhus and Bhadragols of the Panchayat years, I often wonder, would I have been entitled to the same hefty return on the investment those years of imprisonment turned out to be for them?

As someone who, in the words of Onta, has not forgotten the Panchayat system - but certainly not in the sense he means, which must be obvious from the preceding paragraphs - I look forward to reading the essay on the "discursive exercises through which Mohsin and Rana established Panchayat as a ‘true democracy’" Onta has promised us. At some point, I hope Onta can deal with something that has bothered me for a while: how have people like Dr Mohammed Mohsin and Pashupati Sumshere J B Rana managed to maintain their relevance to and play a direct role in today’s open and competitive politics without ever having felt the need to revise - much less renounce - their original beliefs?

Durgesh Nandan Jha
Dilli Bazar, Kathmandu