Views of a Nepali Economist

The following opinion piece was published in Republica on May 13, 2018. The direct link is here.

Renewed Opportunity

Nepal has more than 100 ethnic groups and more than a dozen officially recognized languages. This ethnic and linguistic diversity makes the Nepali society one of the most diverse in the world. However, this staggering amount of diversity also means ethnic confrontations and grievances are bound to occur periodically.

Many Nepalis today believe that ethnic conflicts are a more recent phenomenon in Nepal, and that we faced no such conflicts in the past. It is true that the Maoist conflict and other recent ethnic conflicts have put ethnic issues and rights in the forefront of our public and constitutional discourse. However, ethnic conflicts and grievances are not recent phenomena. The only difference is ethnic issues today are debated in the mainstream and the parliament. In the past, such issues were swept under the rug and movements were efficiently suppressed.

The Sugauli Treaty—signed two hundred years ago between the Nepali government and the British East India Company after the Anglo-Nepal war—has a request from the British asking that Nepal’s Tarai inhabitants not be punished for their support of the British during that war. This is the moment when the general distrust and marginalization of the Tarai by Nepali governments started. Nepal’s rulers took Tarai’s support of the British as a “betrayal.” As a result, Madhesis were no longer recruited in the Nepali Army and were slapped with visa requirements to even visit Kathmandu.

The hill and mountain communities did not fare any better after the war. Subsequent Nepali governments moved to enforce Aryan Hindu laws and culture on all Nepalis. This had the effect of hill minorities leaving Nepal in droves and settling in Sikkim and Darjeeling, where the ruling classes were more understanding. This exodus of hill minorities, especially from revenue generating Eastern hills, appears to have caught Jung Bahadur Rana by surprise. This is clear from his June 1850 letter to Colonel Krishnadhwaj Kunwar enquiring why Eastern hill minorities were leaving Nepal and settling in neighboring countries. It is unclear if Jung Bahadur was provided the reason for the exodus because he went ahead and codified the Aryan Hindu laws and customs through the Muluki Ain.

A hundred years later, King Mahendra’s monocultural nationalism policies hurt the minorities further, especially the Madhesis. The Citizenship Act of 1963 deprived many Madhesis of Nepali citizenship certificates. State-sponsored programs between 1955 and 1964 encouraged hill people to move into the Tarai. As a result, hill population in Tarai increased five-fold in the 1950-2000 fifty-year period. It went from six percent in 1951 to 33 percent in 2001. Not content with Nepal’s hill people flooding into the Tarai, Mahendra’s policies also encouraged Nepali-speaking hill groups from Assam, Bhutan, Burma and Sikkim to move to Nepal’s Tarai. Scholars have debated the merits and demerits of this policy in details over the years. However, what is not debatable is the fact that Mahendra’s nationalism policies resulted in Pahade-ization of Nepal’s Tarai.

This is also the period when ethnic conflicts in Nepal started taking shapes. It is only natural that two centuries of state-sponsored policies by and for the benefits of the ruling hill castes would one day boil over.

Much of the pushback to Nepal’s nationalism policies have come in the form of struggles for linguistic rights. In the late 1950s, Newars in Kathmandu had started lobbying for the use of Newari as an official language in the Kathmandu Valley. At the same time, BedanandJha’s Nepal Tarai Congress party was engaged in the “Save Hindi Campaign,” lobbying to use Hindi as Tarai’s official language. In 1979, Padma Ratna Tuladhar founded Manka Khala to fight Mahendra’s Panchayat regime for linguistic rights. The linguistic right struggle continued even in the post-Panchayat regimes. Gajendra Narayan Singh founded the Nepal Sadhbhawana Parishad in 1990 to fight the Nepali language monopoly. In 2008, Paramananda Jha the then vice president of Nepal took his oath of office in Hindi. He was widely ridiculed for this.

While linguistic pushback to nationalism policies has a long history, ethnic pushback is a more recent development. The Maoist insurgency is credited for an “enlightened” ethnic population, which resulted in several subsequent ethnic conflicts. These ethnic and identity conflicts have been very regional. The advantage of this regionalization has been that strong movements have achieved some level of success. For example, we now have a Madhes province. The disadvantage is that most causes have been lost causes. For example, Limbuwan, Khumbuwan, Tharuhat, Tamsaling, Tamuwan, Newa, Magarat, and Kochila have fizzled out.

Madhes movement was the only regional conflict that was able to create a “national” discourse, and its success reflects that. The other movements failed to nationalize their issues, and suffered as a result. This failure could also be attributed to the fact that several of these movements went up against each other, instead of jointly going up against the Khas-dominated Kathmandu-based polity. 

The new federal-provincial structure grants these failed ethnic and identity movements a renewed opportunity to set provincial policies, which does feed into the national policymaking. The crossroads we find ourselves currently is the result of last two centuries of ill-fated nationalism and our attempts to come out of it. It is quite clear that our national discourse and policy will continue to be Khas-dominated, but federalism provides us an opportunity to unshackle ourselves from that slowly. As with most things, it will take time. But we are on the right path, and we will get there—eventually.

Labels: Jung Bahadur, madhes, Mahendra, Sugauli treaty

Labels: catalonia, federalism, madhes, trade

The following opinion piece was published in Republica on September 21, 2015. The direct link to Rpublica is here.

Here is an indisputable fact we have to live with: The new constitution has been brought into force. Some have lauded it as an accomplishment that every Nepali should be proud of and hence something to be celebrated. On the other hand, some have called it an example of a "brute majority." However, we are a democracy, and a democracy works through brute majority. We needed two-thirds of elected representatives to vote for the constitution to pass. But over 85 percent of our Constituent Assembly members voted for it. That is democracy at work.

Here is another indisputable fact: Not everyone is happy with the new constitution. However, unhappiness is part of the democratic process. Some segments of Nepali society—and our neighbor to the south—wanted a constitution based on absolute consensus. But 100 percent consensus is impossible in a democratic system. Somebody always disagrees. There are claims that 40 percent of Nepal—the Madhesh—was not represented in new Constitution. That is false. Many CA members who voted to pass the new constitution represent their constituents in Madhesh. Their votes may not have pleased all of their constituents. Again, a democratic system does not please everybody. Every member of the public did not vote for the constitution. They voted for their CA representatives, who then voted for the constitution.

So, as things stand, a section of the country is celebrating while another section burns. There should be no doubt that there are legitimate Madheshi, Tharu, and indigenous grievances. However, their agendas have failed to capture popular imagination. Madheshi leaders bear much responsibility for that failure. Part of the failure lies in how key issues were defined. For example, who is a Madheshi? When I was a kid, I remember my grandfather telling me that even my great-great-grandfather did not know where our "Pahad" was. Our guess is that one of our ancestors several generations ago left Jiwanpur VDC in Dhading to go live in Sunsari. But we're not sure. All I know is I am as much a Madheshi as my Sah and Yadav classmates I went to school with. The leaders need to ask themselves if people like us were left out of the Madheshi discourse.

There should also be no doubt that there has been a systematic exclusion of many groups—some by the age-old caste system, some by the state, and others by systemic designs of the rich and powerful elites. I have witnessed this growing up in the Tarai. For example, I have not seen the economic and social status of Tharus in Sunsari improve during my lifetime. They definitely do not have access to the same level of opportunities as I do. Yet, we lived together, side by side. This is certainly the case with Tharus in the Mid-west and Far-west, too. And this is certainly the case with dozens of other minority groups in Nepal. Something is seriously wrong with the way our society functioned so far. It needs an overhaul.

Many in the Tarai were hoping that the new constitution would be cure-all of the centuries-old societal ills and deficiencies. While I do not claim to understand how the disgruntled groups in Nepal feel, as a rational person, I can understand their disappointment. First, state restructuring—and seven proposed states—continues to marginalize the minorities. Second, there is no doubt that the constitution relegates women as second-class citizens. For a constitution written in the twenty-first century, these are inexcusable offenses.

However, there is a hope. The constitution is not a final document. It is a guide. It can be amended—as many times as needed. For example, seven provinces are not final. A Tharuhat province can still be realized. Kailai and Kanchanpur can merge with Bardiya, Banke and Dang to form a new province. This eighth province can materialize if the parliaments in province numbers 5 and 7 vote and approve that idea.

That is not wishful thinking. This kind of restructuring happens all the time in federal republics. When India became a republic after the British left, it had around half-a-dozen states. Today, India has 29 states, and there are ongoing movements in many Indian states for even more states. For example, Bihar split and became two states in 2000—Bihar and Jharkhand. But there are groups fighting to split Bihar further into three states—new Bihar, Bhojpura, and Mithila. Similar movements are afoot in Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Maharastra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, and West Bengal. The point is: groups who feel left out of state restructuring need not worry. The design can always be changed.

The same is true on issues of citizenship and inclusion. It will be easier to resolve those under a federal republic because states can use their economic might, public's voice, and the parliament's vote to put pressure on national governments for change. The states with majority Tarai districts will have stronger economies and larger populations. They can use that economic and demographic might to put pressure on both provincial and federal governments for progressive laws on citizenship and inclusion. The current law on citizenship is a disgrace, and states will need to play a role to push for greater equality.

Labels: constitution, ethnic federalism, madhes

The following opinion piece was published in Republica on September 15, 2015. The direct link to Republica is here.


There are signs that once again—as happened during previous Madhesh uprisings—grievance against the state in the Tarai is starting to turn into communal conflict. The current conflict is between dissatisfied Madheshi groups and state security apparatus. However, there are signs that dissatisfied Madheshi groups will soon be locked in confrontation with the group they view as bourgeois—the hill people living in the plains.

Of course, the Tarai-based leaderships refuse to acknowledge this. I have met people and heard their stories about how they suffered when the first Madhesh Uprising morphed into communal violence against hill people in the Tarai, most notably in Janakpur and surrounding areas. However, Madheshi leaders spearheading current demonstrations argue that as during the Maoist conflict—when grievances of mostly hill Janajatis (although the Maoist movement had significant support of Tarai-based groups, too) were brought to the fore—the current crisis in Tarai owes to a situation of Madheshis demanding that the state address their grievances.

However, the comparison is not accurate. The Maoists did not claim to be organizing peaceful demonstrations. They explicitly said theirs was an armed rebellion. Madheshi leadership in the Tarai today claim the current movement is peaceful, while the reality is different. Madheshi leaders need to understand that there is a difference between lawlessness and lawful disobedience. They are not the same.

Maoist insurgents had showdowns with state security forces, and both sides knew the other was armed. On the other hand, Madheshi leaders, to make their 'peaceful' demonstrations successful, got on the stage and asked their cadres to come armed with javelins, swords, and guns. Armed crowds attacked unarmed policemen trying to restore order. Unarmed policemen have been maimed and killed. After calling on their cadres to bring weapons and attack the police, Madheshi leaders have no moral right to say they did not anticipate killings of police personnel—as well as the subsequent police response. They are responsible for this mess. It is time for the Madheshi leadership to decide what it wants. Does it want a peaceful demonstration or an armed rebellion?

The answer to that question is critical because it allows the state to prepare and respond accordingly. Right now, the state has been preparing for peaceful demonstrations (taking Madheshi leaders at their word), but it is facing armed rebellion instead. If you are going to make it a fight, make it a fair fight.

Attacking unarmed off-duty policemen (as in Tikapur), dragging and killing unarmed and injured policemen from inside ambulances (as in Jaleshwor), and pouring petrol over unarmed policemen stationed in custom checkpoints with an intent to burn them alive (as in Biratnagar) are not signs of peaceful demonstrations. Ordering entire communities to send family members armed with weapons (as in Kailali) to a supposedly "peaceful rally" is not what legitimate political leaders do. Mobilizing and paying school children (as in Morang and Sunsari) to enforce shutdowns and instigating them to clash with the police are unbecoming of democratically elected leaders.

Ordering entire communities to not rent rooms to police and army personnel is the kind of thing you hear a Taliban leader do in Afghanistan. Asking people to go fight the police, become a martyr, and collect Rs 50 lakh is something that ISIS and Al Qaeda leaders ask of their suicide bombers. Is there no difference between a Madheshi political leader and an ISIS or an Al Qaeda or a Taliban leader? In the face of these developments, why is the Madheshi leadership surprised that the state has started to respond in kind, with bullets?

Our national leaders in government refuse to use the term "terrorism" to define what is happening in Tarai. Sushil Koirala and the current lot of old, white-haired political leaders in Nepali Congress and CPN-UML were called terrorists by Panchayat governments. The Maoist Party was labeled a terrorist organization by none other than the United States. That weight on their shoulders does not allow them to label current activities in Tarai as "terrorism." However, their inability to call a spade a spade does not mean it is not a spade. What has happened in the Tarai these past couple of weeks is terrorism, plain and simple.

Other groups—frustrated with the long general shutdown—have started to rise against the agitators in some places, like Mills Area in Biratnagar. This is sure to result in a clash of egos between those enforcing the shutdowns and those opposing it. If similar opposition catches fire everywhere, we are looking at many more dead bodies in our streets.

Many Madheshi leaders guiding the current uprising in Tarai were sore losers in the last CA election. Their losses reflected the constituents' loss of faith. However, their current role in inciting an armed aggression against the state and against other community members is a desperate attempt to hang on to past glories and stay relevant. This is not to say Madheshi demands are not valid. But the path of violence that their leaders have decided to take does not lead to redemption. It leads to a predictably sad end for everyone involved.

Labels: communal conflict, madhes, terrorism

The following opinion piece was published in Republica on August 6, 2015. The direct link to Republica is here.

Prithvi Narayan is not much appreciated these days. It wasn't long ago that it was not the case. Large scale of the public was staunchly pro-monarchist and worshipped the Shah Kings as avatars of Lord Vishnu. The Maoists built propaganda against that image, and succeeded to change enough mindsets to overthrow the monarchy. The mystery surrounding the Royal Massacre and King Gyanendra's (and his son's) unpopularity played their part as well. Many statues of Prithvi Narayan around the country were brought down from their pedestals. Many were happy that the centuries-long Shah oppression had finally ended.

However, it is erroneous to believe that Shah Dynasty continuously ruled Nepal since 1769. The Shah Kings directly ruled Nepal for a total of 107 years, in installments—77 years between 1769 and 1846, 29 years between 1961 and 1990, and a year between 2005 and 2006. They were ceremonial heads for 27 years—10 years between 1951 and 1961, 15 years between 1990 and 2005, and two years between 2006 and 2008. For the first 77 years of Shah Rule, Nepal was a unified country in name only, mainly for international purposes. Internally, we no longer had kings in every town, but we also did not have solid administrative structures. The country was administered and governed loosely. After the unification, the ex-kingdoms were now municipalities, still ruled by local elites with substantial local autonomy.

Exploitation of the country's people and its riches truly took place during the continuous 105-year Rana regime between 1846 and 1951. While the Shah Kings of the past had been glad to relinquish their control over most of their citizens and allow significant autonomy for local rule for the sake of national unity, the Ranas craved for absolute control. The Ranas changed how the country was ruled and administered, mostly for greater benefits to Rana rulers. They designed and perfected the art of exploitation. The Shah Kings felt that they owned the country, the people were their subjects, and it was the duty of the kings to care how their subjects fared. On the other hand, the Ranas knew that their control over the country was temporary—they did not own the country, the Shah Kings did—and this meant they had to exploit and enrich themselves as quickly as possible. There is no question who destroyed Nepal more. The Ranas were running that race against themselves, and won.

No other Shah King receives more negative press than Mahendra. Like all Shah Kings, Mahendra felt that the country was his, he owned it, and he had to protect it. In 1951, he had seen China annex Tibet, then an independent country. Post-independence India had been eyeing to annex Nepal, and historians have written about Mahendra's confrontations with India's leaders on the issue. Disbanding the democratic government, forming the Panchayat System, and pursuing a neutral policy between India and China were his attempts to ensure Nepal's long-term survival. In 1975, India annexed Sikkim, then an independent country. The United Nations and the world's superpowers had failed to defend both Tibet and Sikkim's sovereignty. Some see this as proof that Mahendra's worries about Indian intentions were spot on.

National survival and sovereignty is contingent on a degree of integration. And, integration of a society as diverse as ours could not have been accomplished without force. Prithvi Narayan accomplished that first by creating one single country instead of dozens of fragmented mini-nations, and established the modern Shah monarchy. The Ranas could have easily ended the monarchy when they were in charge. However, the monarchy was the glue that held this country together. The Ranas recognized this, and kept the monarchy alive. Even after the Rana-rule ended, the monarchy was the glue that kept the country together.

Mahendra introduced policies to further integrate the country. Very few Nepalis lived in Tarai because it was swampy and malaria-infested. Mahendra encouraged people in the hills to go and settle there. There were two clear advantages of that policy. First, Tarai had productive land that was not being put to use. People moving from the hills to Tarai would increase agricultural output and create new economic zones. Second, a thriving population in Tarai would ensure territorial defense against Indian encroachment. Remnants of this latter reasoning can still be found in far-western border villages. Mahendra gave free land there to poor people from the hills and also gave them guns to defend the border in case of Indian aggression. Households in those villages still have the guns that Mahendra gave them.

However, Mahendra is portrayed today as the occupier of Madhesh. His promotion of Nepali language as the national language is criticized as a policy of "Khas dominance." Some Nepali academics have argued that the Nepali language is imperialistic and it dominates every other language in Nepal. A language cannot be imperialistic. Also, it is wrong to attribute Khas language dominance to Mahendra's policies because the dominance predates Mahendra.

Claims by Janajati and Madheshi leaders that there is a grand design and centuries-long plan by the Khas population to dominate others is wrong. Nobody makes centuries-long plans. If the Newari Kings in the Valley had the vision of unification and acted on it, we would all be speaking Newari today. However, that did not happen. The Khas speaking king from Gorkha united us all, and we ended up taking Gorkhali language as the national language. The same has happened in the history of every single country in the world. You have to look it up.

It is always good to look back and see how we became the people we are today. We had no say in how our history was written, but we are responsible for writing our future. Being cognizant of our history—without the jingoism—to understand how we arrived here is always a good start and can show a way for the future.

Labels: ethnic federalism, federalism, Khas, madhes, Mahendra, monarchy, Prithvi Narayan, Rana

Labels: ambassadors, CK Raut, european, madhes, sedition