NATIONAL

Political culture and Political Development in Nepal

-Prof.Dr.Ram Kumar Dahal, CEDA,TU,Kirtipur

Introduction:
 As the political culture of a nation-state is composed of dozens of factors such as attitudes, values, beliefs, norms and emotions of a society relating to the existing political system, political and other current related issues, its study becomes an important aspect in analysing the level of political knowledge of the people. Individual orientation to politics and political objects would thus be directly associated with it.

This paper is divided into three parts. The first part addresses the notion/concept of political culture in general. The second part deals with the existing political culture in Nepal and the final part mainly concentrates on the problems or challenges Nepal is facing in this direction, particularly after the mass uprising of 1990.

Political culture: Concept and notion:
Political culture in the contemporary world has become a quite fashionable term which is generally regarded as "the pattern of individual attitudes and orientation towards politics among the members of the political system". It is also regarded as a "subjective realm which underlies and gives meaning to political action".(Almond and Powell ). Political culture refers not to what is happening in the world of politics but to what people believe about these happenings. It is considered as the "set of attitudes, beliefs and sentiments that give order and meaning to a political process and that provides the underlying assumptions and the rules that govern behaviour in the political system.(Pye:1965).

It also assumes that each individual must learn and incorporate into his own personality the knowledge and feelings about the politics of his people and his community. Certain aspects of general culture of a society, as Beer and Ullam opine, are specially concerned with how government ought to be conducted and what it shall try to do. This sectorof culture is popularly known as political culture.(Beer and Ullam:1962). It is composed of attitudes, beliefs, emotions and values of society that relates to the political system and to political issues.(Ball:;;1971) As the attitudes, values, norms and beliefs and orientation of an individual are psychological factors towards politics, they are very difficult to examine.

As almost no research has been done on the political culture of Nepal, this paper faces the problems of adequate materials. Attempts have, thus been made here to draw a short outline about it. Since the beginning of the tradition of recorded history, a hereditary monarch has always ruled Nepal. With the unification of Nepal by the end of 1775 by King Prithvi Narayan of Gorkha, a small principality in the western hill district, monarchy in Nepal was consolidated and the tradition of democratic culture became almost an ideal to be realised. With the KOT massacre in 1846, Jung Bahadur Rana emerged as a powerful political leader and later became Prime Minister from the Rana family that continued for nearly 104 years. During this period, the people were ruled brutally and the concept of democracy, fundamental rights and the concepts of the rule of law and good governance were never realised. The feudalistic family culture was imposed and the people, not as citizens but as obedient subjects, had no role, whatsoever, in it.

Nepal started adopting western liberal democratic values only after the introduction multi-party democrac in 1951. The revolution of 1950-51 unleashed complex and multifaceted force in the new political power structure. Since 1951, Nepal was suddenly exposed to all forms and idioms of contemporary world politics. "Political and bureaucratic institutions, shaken from their traditional moorings with insufficient time or opportunity to adjust to the new situation, were necessarily subjected to a long period of experimentation which has yet not come to an end. To both the active participants and the society as a whole, the politics of this transitional period has often seemed to be little more than an exercise in frustration as experiment has succeeded experiment after what seemed to be only a nominal trial (Joshi and Rose:1966). During the period of multi-party democracy in Nepal, 1951-1960- Nepal could not develop a well defined democratic political culture due to a number of factors, including the selfish attitude and apolitical behaviour of political parties, irresponsible behaviour of political leaders in power and clash of interests between the King and the political leaders.

As the first democratically elected government of Nepal could not operate for a long period, only eighteen months, and was forcefully dissolved in December 1960, Nepal's attempt to inculcate a democratic culture ended in a total failure. In December 1960, the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, 1959 was suspended, both Houses of the Parliament were dissolved, the democratic rights of the people were suspended, political parties were banned and political leaders of various political taste were arrested and non party Panchayat system was introduced. As political parties were not permitted to operate legally, the inculcation of democratic culture in the minds of the people became almost impossible.

During the multi-party period, 1951-1960, the political parties, pressure and interest groups of various political tastes and colours tried to provide political training to the people and made various attempts to inculcate civic culture in the minds of the people though they could not do that within a short period of nearly a decade. As Nepal was ruled by a single hereditary monarchy, blind obedience to authority was a common culture among the subjects who were loyal to their rulers, as the son becomes loyal to his father. The low literacy rate, the non-inclusion of citizens in the politics of the nation, the existing socio-economic milieu and lack of adequate transportation and communication networks and a number of factors were responsible for the non-inculcation of democratic culture in Nepal. The Parliamentary system in Nepal in true sense was not experimented and virtually King, during 1951-60 in one way or the other exercised full sovereign authority over the people, except 1959-60 periods. It never provided the opportunity to flourish democratic culture within the nation. During the Panchayat period, 1961-1989, the political parties and political institutions of such nature were banned and the Panchayat authorities tried to inculcate a new Panchayati political culture through various levels of Panchayats, village, town, district and Rastriya Panchayat at the national level; class and professional organisations (of youth, women, peasant, labour, ex-military men) and other non-party institutions of similar nature. Because the political parties and their supporters and sympathisers did not actively participate in this new political set-up, the support of the political system became virtually weak. It also weakened the political culture. But the political parties with their sister organisations secretly mobilised people in favour of the multi-party democracy and other liberal democratic values- human rights, sovereign parliament, free elections, good governance and so on. Though secretly, they tried to develop civic political culture among the people. However, the students played an important role in this field. Their movement helped the state to introduce far-reaching political democratic norms through Third Amendment in the constitution. It some how introduced some initial norms for the growth of democratic culture based on individual-cum-group politics. They continued to fight for the complete introduction of parliamentary system. However, political change of 1980 was a historical political development in Nepal. So, the differences between the traditional and modern forces, between the non-party Panchayatists and the liberal democratic forces and between the oppressor and the oppressed political groups led to the historic mass uprising of the 1990.

The attitudes, values, beliefs, norms and thinking of people towards politics underwent considerable change in the post 1990 days and it also affected the political culture of the people. The people, now treated as sovereign citizens under Article 3 of the constitution of Nepal, 1990 developed knowledge about the multi-party democracy, general and local elections, and responsible government. The pattern of political training/ education to the people by the political parties differed greatly. The Leftists political parties with their sister organisations advocated strongly about Marxism, Leninism and Maoists' thoughts, and so on.

Some of the Maoist parties strongly believe in Republican form of government and establishment of communist regime on Chinese line and try to inculcate such culture accordingly among the minds of the people. The Nepali Congress, NC and the Rashtriya Prajatantra Party, RPP, and other parties on liberal democratic line advocate the universal democratic values like democratisation, liberalisation, human rights, independent judiciary, free and fair elections and so on. They have tried to inculcate such ideas among their supporters and sympathisers. The CPN-UML has also modified its political ideology and proved itself as liberal democratic party.

The failure of the political parties to inculcate a fresh democratic culture in Nepal has led adverse affect on the performances of Nepalese democracy. As the political leaders are short sighted, inefficient and corrupt, their manner of inculcating a democratic culture remained wrongly handled. The frequent changes in governments in Nepal since 1994, also adversely affected the political culture of Nepal. Since the popular mass uprising of 1990, Nepal's political culture is facing a number of challenges and problems. The political orientation being carried out by various political parties is different. The orientation of the people by the Leftists parties' is directed towards republican form of the government, dictatorship of the proletariat and so on. The Maoists' parties' orientation is revolutionary in many respects. The liberal democratic parties advocate different liberal democratic values.

As the leaders themselves are corrupt, selfish and short-sighted, they have not been in a position to change the parochial and subject culture to a participant one. Similarly, the low literacy rate, the weak economic condition of the people, the complex geographical position, traditional orientation to political values and a number of such other factors complicate further the effective orientation of the people towards political objects and values.