We are living in interesting times. Kathmandu is abuzz with new sound bites on the streets and social media platforms.
The anti-regime demonstrations in Kathmandu last week led by Durga Prasai should be viewed in this context. Around 9,000-odd protesters (as per police estimates) descended in Balkhu and Tinkune on November 23-24. The protestors were a diverse mix and included people who had travelled to the Capital from various corners — the Terai, mid-hill valleys, and many were from Kathmandu valley, Nepal’s biggest urban settlement by a country mile. To them, it didn’t seem to matter that Prasai, a controversial figure who has a history of switching political allegiances, was leading the open call (mostly through social media) for protests. Once with the Maoist party, Prasai later joined the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), and now advocates for the restoration of Nepal as a Hindu state and monarchy.
Prasai’s ‘Rastra, Rastriyata, Dharma, Sanskriti ra Nagarik Bhachau’ (‘Save the Nation, Nationalism, Religion, Culture and Citizen’) campaign is so broad in its banner that it can fit in just about anyone who is unhappy about anything. Some are demanding that the banks waive off their loans (many have borrowed through microfinancing schemes). Prasai himself must be a worried man. He owes hefty unpaid interests on his bank loans, which run into billions of rupees, most of it went toward establishing and running B&C Medical College and Teaching and Research Center in the eastern Nepal Terai district of Jhapa, which also happens to be home of Khadga Prasad Oli, a former prime minister and a communist leader, the chairman of CPN-UML.
After his fallout (it’s still a mystery why it happened) with Oli and current prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, also the Maoist party chairman in recent times, Messrs. Oli and Dahal have become prime targets of Prasai’s no-holds-barred tirades. To the political class, the problem is that Prasai is widely followed in social media, including the recently banned TikTok.
The government, with traditional political parties in tow, banned TikTok earlier this month for “instigating social disharmony.” Many view the ban as an attempt to curb the popularity of Prasai’s ever-trending posts that took swipes at Oli and Prachanda, among other traditional party leaders. The sloganeering at public demonstrations in Kathmandu last week by Prasai supporters was stridently pro-monarchist, pro-Hindu, but also anti-federalist and anti-party.
Like much else, this move has deeply polarised the public opinion. Granted, social media platforms are flooded with hate speech and lurid posts, but questions are also being asked about why aren’t Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and a host of other social media platforms subject to a similar level of scrutiny.
Several writ petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court against the ban, arguing that the government move doesn’t hold enough legal ground, stifles freedom of expression, and could as arbitrarily extend to other social media platforms.
Still, it's odd that all the poor and the voiceless subaltern (those who demand that their loans be waived off) that Prasai claims to be fighting for would also want to see the monarchy and Hindu Rastra restored. But such is the level of disillusionment with the parties that he continues to draw disparate constituencies: the royalists, Hindu revivalists, the old elites who feel marginalised after the downfall of the monarchy on the one hand; and the angry mass who believe that the political parties are clueless, corrupt and the new crony capitalist class, on the other.
You may well ask, is the country witnessing a counter-revolution? Is it the beginning of a restorative revolution? Clearly, the grand revolution — the promised socio-economic transformation of the Nepali state — has come undone. An increasing number of people feel that the fall of the monarchy and the subsequent instatement of a democratic republic secular state didn’t change much but the rulers at the top. Ossified corrupt party leaders and their cronies replaced a deeply feudal medieval monarchy and its sycophantic courtiers. Nepalis are disillusioned.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way.
After the 1990 Jana Andolan 1, the absolutist king was reined in with the advent of the constitutional monarchy. The Jana Andolan 2 in 2006 led to the demise of the monarchy altogether, which turned Nepal into a federal democratic republic and a secular state. Many of us believed it was a rightful expression of a hugely diverse population and geography that felt excluded in the unitary state, where certain ethnic and caste groups held sway. Nepal, after all, is a country of minorities.
The high caste groups in the Hindu totem pole — Chettri and Hill-Brahmin — together make up less than 30% of the population. Other groups, Magar, Tharu, Tamang, Newar, Kami, Rai, Gurung, and Muslims and many more, constitute a vast ‘silent majority.’ The deposed Shah kings, the Thakuris, are a tiny sliver — a little over 1% of the population. Clearly, it was an unrepresentative state.
If the 1990 mass movement was largely a political groundswell against an autocratic hereditary ruler, the 2006 mass movement led by the parliamentary parties, then-underground Maoists and a vibrant civil society held out a far stronger promise of socio-economic transformation. The new Constitution in 2015 and two subsequent election cycles — in 2017 and 2022 — were supposed to take the country forward, both in terms of social transformation and economic growth.
The story, instead, has been one of gloom.
The lives of the people have remained largely the same. Nepal ranks among the top ten countries that are heavily reliant on remittances. Even by South Asian standards, the country remains desperately poor. In the first quarter of 2023, India’s economy, next door, grew by 7.8% year on year; Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Maldives have all galloped in the last decade or so. According to the Henley Passport Index, which ranks passports according to how many countries allow the passport-holder to visit without a visa, Nepal is above only Afghanistan and Pakistan among its South Asian peers.
This slide is not lost on the Nepalis. Here’s the irony. Other than the remittance-earning mostly blue-collar population, Nepal now consistently ranks high in the list of countries which send a very high percentage of students abroad for studies. Nepal is the 12th leading place of origin for international students heading to the United States in 2021/2022, according to US government data. In Australia, Nepali students rank only behind India and China in numbers. When you travel across Nepal, you can see that nearly every second household has at least one person studying or working abroad.
It’s difficult to find a historical parallel to what is happening in Nepal now. It’s a society in a frenetic transition. The political class is viewed not only as corrupt but also seriously out of sync with the aspirations of the young and educated (Nepal’s median age is 24.4). Never in Nepal’s modern history has there been such a mass exodus as now, with its people seeking employment and economic opportunities overseas. Once famous among noted anthropologists for their close-knit communities, villagers now lament that they don’t have helping hands to carry the dead to cremation sites.
Akhilesh Upadhyay is a senior fellow at IIDS, a Kathmandu-based think tank, and former Editor-in-Chief of The Kathmandu Post. The views expressed are personal
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