The Rise of Ethnic Politics in Nepal

Democracy in the Margins

Susan I. Hangen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781032522104
• eBook ISBN: 9781135181598
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The relationship between ethnic politics and democracy presents a paradox for scholars and policy makers: ethnic politics frequently emerge in new democracies, and yet are often presumed to threaten these new democracies. As ethnic politics is becoming increasingly central to Nepali politics, this book argues it has the potential to strengthen rather than destabilize democracy.

Drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork, Susan Hangen focuses on the ethnic political party Mongol National Organization (MNO), which consists of multiple ethnic groups and has been mobilizing support in rural east Nepal. By investigating the party's discourse and its struggles to gain support and operate within a village government, the book provides a window onto the processes of democratization in rural Nepal in the 1990s. This work presents a more nuanced understanding of how ethnic parties operate on the ground, arguing that ethnic parties overlap considerably with social movements, and that the boundary between parties and movements should be reconceptualised. The analysis demonstrates that ethnic parties are not antithetical to democracy and that democratization can proceed in diverse and unexpected ways.

Providing an in-depth discussion of the indigenous nationalities movement, one of Nepal's most significant social movements, this work will be of great interest to scholars and students of Asian Politics, South Asian Studies, and Political Anthropology.

1
Democratization, ethnic diversity and inequality in Nepal

This chapter situates the emergence of the indigenous nationalities movement within the historical and political context of Nepal. In order to illuminate the significance of the 1990 political system for marginalized groups like the indigenous nationalities, I briefly review the major changes in political rule in the modern Nepali state. To contextualize the meanings of the identities that the indigenous nationalities movement has constructed, this chapter explains the complexity of ethnic diversity and ethnic categories in Nepal. Finally, this chapter explores the contours of ethnic inequality and the dominant construction of a Nepali nationalist identity that privileges high-caste Hindus. This background is essential for understanding how the indigenous nationalities movement has defined its issues and demands.

Political rule and democratization in Nepal

Authoritarian political systems have been in place for most of Nepal’s history. From the late eighteenth century, when the Shah kings first consolidated the state, through the Rana family’s 100 years of rule, which stretched into the mid-twentieth century, there was no popular participation in governance, as was true for South Asia in general. There were widespread restrictions on political activity during the Rana era. Thus, mobilization against the Rana regime during the first half of the twentieth century was instigated by Nepali elites, who were based in India and influenced by the nationalist movement there (Uprety 1992). Only after the Ranas were ousted from power in 1951 did people begin to formally participate in the political arena. Although the Shah monarchy returned to power, political parties were allowed to operate for the first time and the first general elections were held in 1959. Nepal’s first democratically-elected government was formed by the Congress Party, which began to institute widespread changes such as land reform.

This brief period of relative political freedom ended in December 1960, when King Mahendra, who ascended to the throne in 1955, announced that Nepal was not ready for multi-party democracy. In 1962, the king unveiled the Panchayat constitution, which he claimed would provide Nepal with a unique and appropriate form of ‘guided’ democracy. This constitution remained in effect, with some minor amendments, until 1990. While the Panchayat system paid lip service to the idea of democracy, it operated as an authoritarian government, in which the king held supreme power, political parties were constitutionally outlawed and opposition to the system was highly controlled.

The system allowed for popular representation through committees, or Panchayats, modeled after an older South Asian system by the same name in which a group of village elders made decisions for the community. Elections were held to these Panchayats, which were formed at the village or town, district and national levels. Only the village and town Panchayats were directly elected. District Panchayat and most National Panchayat representatives were elected by, and drawn from, the members of the Panchayat in the level below them. Some members of the national Panchayat were nominated directly by the king, and 15 members were selected from among five ‘class organizations’. These class organizations, representing peasants, youth, women, workers and ex-servicemen, were meant to replace political parties and ostensibly provided a vehicle for representing societal interests within the governance structure (Borgstrom 1980: 13–21; Rose and Fisher 1970; Shaha 1975; Whelpton 2005:101).

Although the constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and expression, in practice such freedom was severely restricted by Panchayat era laws such as the Treason Act of 1961, which made it illegal to publicly criticize the king (Burghart 1996c). Writers who critiqued the Panchayat system were jailed, and their newspapers shut down. People voiced their opposition to the system only in hushed tones or in a veiled manner. In recalling the political culture of the Panchayat years, many Nepalis speak of their fear of repression and the lack of freedom of expression.

By 1979, dissatisfaction with the Panchayat system had grown to the point where the king decided to hold a referendum to determine whether people wanted to continue the system, with minor reforms, or establish a multi-party democracy. This was a moment of relative political freedom during the Panchayat era. Leading up to the referendum, political parties had the opportunity to operate openly for the time since the brief window between the fall of the Rana regime and the beginning of the Panchayat era. Many ethnic organizations engaged in activism during this time, as I discuss in Chapter 2. The results of the 1980 referendum showed that the majority of people, especially in the rural areas, wanted to continue the Panchayat system. The promised reforms to the system entailed an amendment to the 1962 Constitution, expanding the National Panchayat and allowing for 112 members to be directly elected, with the king still appointing 28 members. Questions remain concerning the transparency of the voting process in the referendum and there is evidence that the government used its power and resources to persuade people to vote in favor of the Panchayat system. However, the high rates of participation in the referendum and the considerable support for instituting a multi-party system suggested that further demands for political reform would not be long in coming (Whelpton 2005:109).

Ten years later, the people’s movement of 1990 brought about the restoration of a multi-party democracy, after 30 years of the autocratic Panchayat system. The movement was launched by the Nepali Congress Party and a coalition of seven leftist parties called the United Leftist Front. They worked together to charter the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, which sought the reinstitution of a multi-party system and the dismantling of the Panchayat form of government (Whelpton 2005). There was extensive popular participation in the movement in the Kathmandu Valley, as students, human rights organizations and professional organizations staged protests (Adams 1998). Newars, in particular, played a key role in public demonstrations in the cities of Kirtipur and Bhaktapur (Gellner 1997).

The multi-party system established in the constitution of 1990 was a constitutional monarchy, in which the king’s power was greatly reduced. The 1990 constitution formally granted people the right to freely form political and social organizations and the right to the freedom of expression. With this unprecedented level of political freedom, political parties and social organizations, including non-governmental organizations, proliferated. Whereas the media was monopolized by the government during the Panchayat era, there was a ‘media boom’ in the years after 1990, as newspapers and FM radio stations multiplied, offering perspectives from across the political spectrum (Onta 2002).

However, in many ways the transformations that were the goal of the 1990 people’s movement never occurred. Perhaps the largest roadblock to democratization was that the country never gained political stability. Between 1990 and 2006, three parliamentary elections and two local elections were held, and 12 governments were formed, largely due to disputes within and between the major parties. The Prime Minister’s seat was occupied by a series of familiar faces from the high-caste Hindu political elite. The violence stemming from the Maoist insurgency that began in 1996 was the most serious challenge to political stability during this period. The Maoist People’s Liberation Army eventually ousted government representatives from large parts of the countryside and established its own parallel state structures in several districts in western Nepal. In 2001, the infamous palace massacre of King Birendra and his immediate family by the Crown Prince Dipendra threw the country into further uncertainty.¹ King Gyanendra, the deceased king’s brother, ascended to the throne. Claiming to seek to establish peace, King Gyanendra dissolved the parliament in 2002 and took complete control of the country in 2005. This act effectively suspended democratic politics until the 2006 people’s movement reinstalled the parliament and curbed the king’s power.

Second, the civil liberties granted in the 1990 constitution were not upheld. With the declaration of a state of emergency in 2001, in response to the intensification of the Maoist insurrection, the state severely curtailed civil liberties and the freedom of the press, and human rights abuses were widespread. During the People’s War, people who were merely suspected of being Maoists were arrested and many people in state custody disappeared.

Democratic ideals of participation and accountability were also not achieved. State representatives, including elected officials and civil servants, were not accountable to the people. Many elected politicians sought autonomy from their voters (Pfaff-Czarnecka 2004:173). They were not responsive to the demands and interests of their constituents and thus people were not able to influence the government.

In assessing these problems prior to 2006, some political scientists concluded that democratization in Nepal failed (Carothers 2002; Ganguly and Shoup 2005). Due to the many limitations of its political system, Carothers (2002) categorized Nepal as falling into a ‘gray zone’, somewhere between authoritarianism and democracy, along with many other countries that initiated democratic reforms in the 1990s (p. 9). Carothers characterized Nepal’s political pattern as ‘feckless pluralism’, one of the main syndromes found in gray-zone countries. Such countries have ‘significant amounts of political freedom, regular elections, and alternation of power between genuinely different political groupings’ (p. 10). However, ‘the whole class of political elites are profoundly cut off from the citizenry, rendering political life an ultimately hollow, unproductive exercise’ (p. 11).

While democratization in Nepal was not without challenges, it would be inaccurate to characterize Nepali political life as hollow and unproductive. Like many studies of politics in Nepal, these works are state-centered, focusing on politics in the capital city and the activities of dominant political actors. Most significantly, these authors overlooked a crucial dimension of Nepali society that is relevant to democratization: the numerous social movements that have created substantial and positive political changes since 1990, including the Dalit, indigenous nationalities and women’s movements. These movements laid the groundwork for the 2006 popular uprising and the wave of political reforms that took place in its wake.

Social movements like the indigenous nationalities movement were made possible by the granting of civil liberties in the post-1990 political system, the freedom of expression and of organization. This newfound freedom of expression was extremely significant to people, many who described the political changes of 1990 with the phrase, ‘finally, we can speak’. Part of what people meant by this is that during the Panchayat era they feared that they would be thrown in jail for voicing any oppositional ideas. Yet some people did speak in oppositional terms then. With regards to ethnic politics, people were forming organizations and working to secure cultural and political rights from 1951, the end of the Rana era, onwards, as I discuss later. Yet if people could speak in the old political system, it was in muted tones, rather than publicly, and their voices could easily be ignored (Burghart 1996c; Kunreuther 2004). In the post-1990 period, their voices became more effective: people could now speak in public, and also gained the right to be heard. Social movements played important roles in defining the issues that were the center of public debates.

After 1990, marginalized groups were given the political space to organize and publicly articulate their views, but they did not gain formal representation within the state and remained excluded from other influential spheres, such as the mainstream media. Inspired by the discourse of democracy, which emphasized the expansion of popular political participation, but lacking access to formal politics, marginalized groups forged social movements as an alternative way to participate in politics and to articulate their demands.

Ethnic political activists, including those in the MNO, began speaking about the shape of the new political system, testing the new democracy by pushing at the places where it was least open. They talked about their expectations for how democracy should operate and what it should mean to live in a democracy. Ethnic political organizations like the MNO sought not just to secure rights and representation for a marginalized segment of the population, but also to transform the whole political system. For example, the MNO cited the government’s refusal to grant it registration as an illustration of the limitations of the post-1990 system. Overall, the changes that activists in this movement have sought and created are necessary for the further democratization of Nepal: a redistribution and wider sharing of political power, and the right to the freedom of expression of political and cultural diversity. While Chapter 2 will explore the origins of...

Table of contents

• Routledge contemporary South Asia series
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Nepali transliteration
• Introduction
• 1 Democratization, ethnic diversity and inequality in Nepal
• 2 The indigenous nationalities movement in post-1990 Nepal
• 3 Between political party and social movement
• 4 Democratization and local politics
• 5 ‘Our own heartbeats’
• 6 Becoming not-Hindu
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index