Nepal : Staggering out of the Incense Curtain

Some pieces of news make for extremely sad reading. Like for instance the one about Nepalese Prime Minister, an atheistic Prime Minister of a state that was once the world’s only official Hindu State and is now slowly evolving in leaps and jerks into a secular state. Koirala, described by the Indian Express as a senile, aging leader who refused to perform religious rituals at his parents’ deaths now wants to sit on the throne on which the kings sat and have the priests recite the “Saraswati Mantra”.

When the priests who ceremonially perform the rites, the head priest and the deputy head priest did not turn up, they were suspended. The irony of the situation was that these worthies did not turn up because in one of the gyrations of Nepal becoming a secular state from a Hindu one, the priests had already been suspended and had not been receiving their salaries. Unfazed by the irony though, the bureaucrats surrounding Koirala suspended the priests all over again lest the Prime Minister be angry.

B.P.Koirala could be ageing and senile but he is only mirroring the identity crisis that his country has and is going through eroding centuries of stability. In the days of the king- despot or not, things were clear. The King was regarded, by the common people at least, if by no one else as the living incarnation of Vishnu and maintained that appearance by residing in the Narayanhiti palace named after the deity and presiding over all key religious rituals of state. The astute King Birendra managed the balancing act between statesman and spiritual head well but his successor obviously hasn’t dome so well and egged on by the Maoists, the country has proceeded to throw away the baby as well as the bath water and is now throwing away not only the monarchy but the identity of the state itself without adequately under girding itself.

Of course a secular state itself is not a bad thing. Ideally, a secular state with separation of religion and government is preferable in most circumstances; a theocratic state can be either obscurantist or fundamentalist and both of these are menaces best avoided; theocracy in government has only one purpose – to manacle and shackle its people. And so while the resolve to start upon the journey to create a secular state is a good one, without adequate preparation, Nepal’s situation will not be very different from that of it Prime Minister- confused and unprepared to face reality and hiding behind centuries of tradition.

In a nation’s history, the journey is as important as the destination and the process has to be incubated and allowed to evolve. India’s own 60 year old journey is a good example Through Nehru’s rationalism, then soft Hindutva , hard Hindutva, debates on Raj Dharma and all that, we have arrived at an Indian road to secularism… and no the process is still not finished ….. political evolution of a State is forever a work in progress.

Its is to be hoped that the Maoists in Nepal will not be in so much of a hurry to abolish religion. May be they should do away with the seedier aspects of religion but leave alone the only roots that people cling to that give them solace. The sight of an ageing Prime Minister calling for religious Pundits despite his avowed atheistic beliefs is an indication that behind the senile exterior of the Head of government, lies a Nation’s yearning.

Urdu Poetry at a Funeral

“Isliye rah sangharsh ki ham chune/Zindagi ansuon me nahae nahin/Shaam sehmi na ho, raat ho na dari/Bhor ki ankh phir dabdabai na ho”

(We must choose the path of struggle, so life shouldn’t get drowned in tears. The evening shouldn’t get enveloped by awe and night shouldn’t be fearful. And the dawn shouldn’t crack with tears welled up in its eyes)

I like revolutionary poets for some reason; especially the Urdu ones. The Urdu revolutionary poets were giants – Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and all the rest. I don’t know what it was in that generation that produced so many giants in progressive poetry; but their sheer power, beauty and idealism is itself awe inspiring, even if some of their Persian rich vocabulary is a bit difficult for those of us for whom Hindustani is not the first language.

I do not know who out of these eminences composed these verses that activists sang at the state funeral of Baba Amte the other day. The Indian Express does not report this, but I am amused and also touched that activists and the State who rarely sleep on the same bed ever, got together at the funeral of the giant that Baba Amte was. If I am correct, it was the first State funeral of a private citizen in a long time – perhaps the first after Mother Teresa. And while the Baba looked grand wrapped in the Tricolor, it is a bit ironic that no one thought in the establishment seems to be have thought of honoring him with the Bharat Ratna while they were squabbling abut other octogenarians who were in the race.

“Haath lage nirman me, nahi marane, nahi mangane (let’s use our hands to create, not beg or beat)”

I don’t know who wrote that piece either. I read those lines about not using our hands to beg or to beat with supreme irony. While Baba Amte’s body was being lowered into a pit in Anandwan in Maharashtra, in the state’s capital of Mumbai; North Indians who had come to work in the city because they did not want to beg were being beaten into submission and occasionally into death and destruction.

Aggression is every where and those Urdu poets had it all wrong. They wrote poetry to inspire revolutions and willed struggle for themselves, so that there would be no tears for the others to drown in. but we have turned the phrases all upside down. We are in more and more moving towards a society where the others struggle and it is our design increasingly that if it is possible at all to live a life that is free of tears , than that life should be ours.

It is ironic that the last movement that Baba Amte was involved in was called the Bharat Jodo or the Knit India movement. Pity that he was too old by then for the movement to benefit much from his leadership and there isn’t any one it seems who will effectively take over that piece of the Baba’s work. For in the midst of a Bharat todo movement, a Bharat jodo movement is much more needed than ever. As discordant voices and slogans rend the air and people talk of distributing sticks and swords, Baba Amte must be turning over in his grave. Very literally.