Nepalis' Perennial Struggles For Aspiring Society

The impacts of modernity, democracy and human rights have spurred the aspiration of Nepali society for justice and intrepid fight against fate and blind determinism. Individuals’ imperative of progress is closely tied with the dawn of self-consciousness about the condition of living and attain the capacity of free will to wriggle out from it. Self-consciousness defined as inner wakefulness enables them to introspect as rational persons and escape from being a cog of machine politics. Cultivation of individuals’ alertness is vital for their ability to think, feel, act and experience life and smoothly adapt their vocations to changing conditions. In this context, Nepali political leaders must be able to educate people about the vital links of their lives with various spheres and enable them to settle problems. 

It is crucial to underscore the rationality of peaceful coexistence in the society, nation and global community. When atrophy breaks out, it dampens the life of both individuals and community and their aspirations for lofty goals.  Nepali leaders can improve their credibility by improving performance, reducing private ambition and gaining socialisation in the spirit of youth bulge.  It enables them to shape public opinion and balance between human nature and constitutionalism, treat diverse people as sovereign without limping to patronage and handle foreign policy on the basis of enlightened national interests. National consciousness reconciles people’s aspiration for freedom, livelihood and dignity and the state's capacity to keep security, order and peace.

Fading livelihood prospects

When fading livelihood prospects in the nation compel an individual’s clientlisation to the global labour market for survival, society loses its vitality, capacity and integrity to hold them together. The path opened to the dynamic youth population for post-national mobility does not make its society, polity and economy effervescent in generating opportunities for the people to keep national memory vivid. This memory is important for their search for creative and orderly participation in the attainment of public good, realisation of constitutional and human rights, improved stake in the future of the nation and secure diversity mediated by moral laws. Ordinary Nepalis now face a situation of feeble supporting structures of the state and polity. They require capacity building to meet this challenge. 

Capabilities enhancement is also essential to bring positive social change and control growing social and political anomie acting as barriers to an aspiring society. Timely change furnishes the cognitive habits of Nepalis to innovate and adapt. Living consciousness heartens them to struggle for dignity, identity, justice, progress and peace and absolves them from the herd mentality of conformity. Claim of international justice by the nation is inherently tied to the condition of internal justice, a requisite of an aspiring society. The classical Nepali treatises define the goal of education: to create awakened persons able to exercise inner vigilance, build character, occupy position in society and duly discharge social duties with feeling, care and love which the scientific intelligence alone cannot preprogram.  

Awakened persons are seen in the context of their ability to know themselves, engage in public affairs of the nation and care for other weaker species and people. Consciousness beyond self helps to detribalise Nepalis. Reflection on the context and integration of the wisdom of classical treatises into their habits, behaviour and mores can make the statecraft accountable. In a pre-modern condition self-preservation is confined to the tribe’s biological survival, modernity brought people to cultural sense while the postmodern condition exposed them to the planetary scale and enabled them to rediscover ancient wisdom of locating human existence in the web of life.

Nepali society’s progress largely rests on what Buddha calls self-transformation attuned to the interconnection of the system of life-world whose survival demands an urgency of controlling the overheating of global temperature, protecting environment, reducing the growing animosities among nations and people, war-induced migration and mutual ruin through arms race. Self-preservation of people and nations is couched in alternative courses of action in the sphere of ecology, technology, economy, society, politics and international relations which is based on cooperation and reciprocity, not denial and domination. The self-consciousness enables us to see the world in a scale of interdependence, not conflict of interests and ideologies and opening up to a positive future which takes into account the health and wealth of ecology and future generations. 

The growing incongruity between ecology and politics, economy and society and political democracy and economic globalisation spawns a newer scale of consciousness for the coherence of individuals, society, states and global order. The political education of Nepalis, in this sense, is vital to know the changing conditions of life, liberty and identity underway at various scales of social, economic and political life. Nepalis awareness of history and philosophy is related to rationalist claims to national identity, dignity and sovereignty. The feeling of tradition, culture and spirituality has incubated civic patriotism where national leaders had in the past mobilised symbols, culture, values and historical achievement to hoist national self-confidence. New consciousness of Nepalis to modernity, democracy and human rights is a critical need now to settle the boundary condition under which national identity of citizenship does not contest with the global identity of humanity.  

Nepal’s great poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota proclaimed, “We are citizens of the world.” Nepalis are neither distastefully recoiled with tribal conformity nor sensitivity averse to cosmopolitan cultures and values. Its ideals of nirvana, need for social progress and protection of culture of peace have built an edifice of tolerance to social pluralism and shelter to outsiders. They reflect its civilisation ethos, not chauvinism and parochialism rooted in instrumental art of possibility, crass materialism and money-oriented politics. The surge of instrumental politics of extreme party-mindedness, populism and radicalism has hollowed out the self-reflective aspect of its normatively ingrained dharma (ethical conduct). 

An aspiring society is not only achievement oriented but also empathetic and considerate. The self-reflexive attitude of leaders and intellectuals with sublime consciousness of their own social origins, their policy-relevant lore and actions, articulation of pluralist voices and duty to the nation can motivate them for fair distribution of social goods, the condition of an aspiring society. It can uplift the standards of living of people.  Modern, urban civil society has emerged as a critique of the role of state and fused their mission often in regime change while those engaged in project works are addressing some vital needs of people. The former are less interested in building civic culture and educating peasants and workers for their general wellbeing. The market-driven mainstream media too seems not very much different in political culture as they create walls between them and others and fight for patrons and clients. 

This has led many Nepalis to believe that the vacuum of critical awareness they have left is filled by social media where each conscious individual can represent, express and project their views about public affairs and pass critical remarks about the performance of authorities. The gist of the query is: can they imbibe self-accountability? Now Nepalis are exposed to crisis socialisation arising out of leaders’ lack of essential performance in job creation and corresponding weakening of the state and polity they have shaped for the wellbeing of people. As the crisis visibly manifests political parties seem to oscillate between unresponsiveness of their ideological straitjacket and mutual accusation and between the loss of their utopia of the super-structural change, bureaucratic inertia and corporate monopolies they are powerless to deal with.  

Old solutions of Nepal’s new problems do not work for the new times. As a result, each Nepali outside the frame of party politics now senses the doubt of the nation’s future and preoccupied by their existential concern even if consciousness is radicalised by media, populist and new parties and social movements thus veering politics to anomic direction. Economic downhill and perpetual political transition signifies the underinvestment of the polity in public good. Consciousness about the transcendental basis of sustainable progress and matching policies, strategies, resources and institutions can reconcile the panorama of Nepali political life with rational human nature and eradicate the flaws of superstition lingering from generation to generations without perfecting peoples’ lives and fulfilling the dawn of an aspiring society. 

Nepalis' metabolic struggle with nature provides cognitive ground for the suitable journey of the nation to survival and progress without any recourse to positivism or cultural relativism. In this sense, it is important for Nepali scholars to bring together diffused historical knowledge to modern thinking and address the changing social stratification introduced by science and technology, new economy, participatory politics and geopolitical mode of international relations. Nepali leaders' increasing alienation from their cultural roots following super structural change except during the electoral moment has rendered their functional roles in society problematic yet it is exhilarating for shifting coalition politics without capturing the middle ground which is vital to create political stability.

Unlawful temptations of leaders

Only by retaining politics in the middle and cultivating the integrity of institutional culture can set a tab on the unlawful temptations of leaders to veer around the index of greed, dogma and grievance and promote constitutional conduct. It can also seal illegitimate opportunities for powerful elites to privatise the public sphere, thieves of state to loot public resources through its personalisation and smaller radical parties to spoil democratic processes without any sense of accountability for the life-world of people.  It is also exhilarating to check leaders’ lure to transform their personal life of drudgery into flamboyant style and nourish their lust for power life-long while the condition of ordinary Nepalis reel from wretched order. 

It is a condition antithetical to Nepalis' fight for an aspiring society whose virtues are rooted in freedom, equality, inclusion, dignity and recognition of their constitutional and universal human rights.  Progress can be conceptualized in terms of the capabilities of people to control the condition of their life enough to nourish their mind, heart and soul. These are the basic requirements for Nepalis to create the bases of free will, justice and order they have esteemed and bear responsibility for them. 

(Former Reader at the Department of Political Science, TU, Dahal writes on political and social issues.)