Dr. Tulasi Acharya

Many people in Nepal support a party or its ideology not because they have a good grasp of it, but because of the impact from a culture of indoctrination that bolsters their unwillingness to alter their long-cherished beliefs in a party. This is how many people are motivated whether to support the party they have been supporting for a long time. A few like-minded Nepali people believe that associating oneself with a particular party is identifying one’s moral obligation in the line of their predecessors.

Motivating factors
Regarding why one becomes a strong believer of a particular party is not always obvious. However, the believer’s motivations are usually shaped by two factors: their sense of duty to the party and the ideology the party carries and a sort of fear to alter the party allegiance even after the ideology the party fails to carry. Many believers don’t want to alter the status quo, the habit of supporting one party for a long time. This habit defines one’s perception regarding the compliance or defiance with the party. One can observe this, not only in the context of a developing country like Nepal but also in the context of developed nation like the United States.

For example, the American Democratic Party was for over a hundred years the party of the poor White Southern man and the present Republican Party began life as an antislavery party. It was not until the 1960s that the Democratic Party lost favour in the southern United States because of its support of pro minority policies and the ideology of the Republican Party shifted towards a more White Anglo Saxon Protestant stance. Even when people disagree with party leadership, they often commit themselves to the party come hell or high water, and often seem to vote against their own interests for the sake of party. Parties capitalise on blind adherence by counting on certain sections of the populace to cast a vote for them as they have done for generations.

Ideology is a system of definite views, ideas, conceptions, and notions adhered to by some class or political party. A closer inspection of political ideologies reveals that they dominantly influence the perceptions of the commoners who mostly believe in a political party or the ideology it carries.

Mostly affected by the ideologies are the marginalised, the poor, the disabled, women, Dalits, untouchables, and those who do not have their own voices except for believing in the party ideology. The party ideologies are hegemonic, meaning they are coercive and overbearing in the minds of the marginalised.

Half of the Nepali population lives below the poverty line the majority being women. According to the 2021 census, about seven to eight per cent of the population has an assortment of disabilities, mostly situated in the “lower caste” population. Most of the politicians representing such demographics in parliament and bureaucracy are rich, male, “abled,” and upper caste, even those including the politicians who represent the marginalised and the group of subalterns who, according to Gayatri Spivak, do not have their own narratives and voices.

This scenario creates a fissure between the politicians’ perceptions of the marginalised and the marginalised people’s perceptions of themselves. When politicians’ ideology fails to address the perceptions of the marginalised, the agendas, policy designs, and constitution making process cannot reflect, address, and ameliorate their conditions, to be specific.

However, we continue to believe in those ideologies that we have been indoctrinated with in the hope that one day our conditions will be better. Even these days, the marginalised and disadvantaged populations are living in politicians’ narratives believing in their ideology and obeying orders to go out in the street holding placards without any questions, without any knowledge of being the politicians’ useful tools to garner their own interests but thinking that one day their lives would be improved.

Narratives
Thus, many of the adherents and believers of a party have been living through the narratives of politicians who can hardly represent the marginalised, but instead continue to mete out false ideologies to woo and canvas the poor for their own political gain. In their article “The role of ideology in politics and society,” Kevin Harrison and Tony Boyd write that ideological assumptions thus affect all aspects of society: family, political parties and pressure groups, local and national politics, and international politics. One should know the ideologies closely to better understand how they are addressing the conditions of the marginalised.

Many people are enmeshed in such a political culture, and perhaps, due to lack of education that one holds fast to old beliefs even in the light of new thinking that demonstrates the errors of our way. They are unable to think outside of the box to realise how they view themselves and how political ideologies restrain or set them free.

It is time to rethink whether politicians are really executing public will, while bringing up their ideologies that, they say, are for ameliorating the conditions of the marginalised. It is vital to peruse whether we are merely the adherents of parties because our predecessors supported them. If we still cannot break our blind faith in particular parties and party ideologies that are outdated, we will never find our conditions improved, let alone the conditions of the marginalised.

(The writer is a founding member and director of Social Science Department of Nexus Institute for Research and Innovation.)