All those years ago

The Kathmandu Post
Feb 24 - In January 2008, I was in Narsingh VDC in Sunsari district, a predominantly Madhesi area, on a reporting assignment. I was forced into an argument with a group of locals about the mistreatment of Madhesis by the state. As the discussion progressed, a teacher raised a point about my job that forced me to think. She said that the fact that a Pahade had come to report from Madhes was evidence in itself of the continuing domination of Madhesis by others. Was I guilty?

That encounter shook me up a bit; but the incident also revealed the level of animosity between the two communities and its misdirection. I managed to convince them that I as an individual could not account for their suffering though I condemn any mistreatment, and that only the state could answer their charges; and that as a journalist, I was doing something to get their views across. Though legitimate, their grievances and anger were clearly misaimed.

Does the fact that the ruling elite had been dominated by Pahades/Chhetris/ Brahmins — which nevertheless also included the elite from other communities including Madhesis — in the last 30 years justify painting all Pahades with the same brush? Of course, any sensible person will disapprove of it. But like any other society passing through a phase of half-boiled revolution and transformation, a sense of historical right and wrong is among the preoccupations of certain sections in Nepal. And in times of crisis, expediency, not factualness, drives these considerations. Like all re-readings of history, one can’t escape from the inherent flaws associated with the process for it takes place entirely to justify or condemn the larger political process.

Prithvi Narayan Shah and his conquests have been a subject of much debate in the last few years. Many have condemned him and his acts, while others still see him as one of the few visionaries modern Nepal ever had. It is not surprising that Shah’s inadequacies are glossed over in the history books. All history is embellished or distorted, and no historical figure can withstand critical scrutiny for that matter.

Friedrich Nietzsche, writing in his essay “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life”, said that an excess of history was harmful, and that it prevents a man, nation or culture from acting “unhistorically” — meaning without the past in the mind. Such an acute sense of history shackles a nation and does not make it free. He identifies three types of history: monumental, antiquarian and critical.

The monumental approach is preferred by the powerful and men of actions who see no peers in contemporary society and instead look back to the past for comfort and guidance. Even the past suffers at the hands of monumental historians. Sections of the past are wilfully forgotten or ignored, whereas a few selective facts and individuals “rise out like islands”. The antiquarian approach reveres and strives to preserve the past; it looks more at the past and its glory than towards the future. The critical approach judges and condemns the injustice and the cruelty of the past, but also upholds what is right. It is not a sweeping condemnation.

Nietzsche argued that each of these approaches may be appropriate depending on the “soil and climate”. But he cautioned that excess indulgence or lack of clarity of purpose was always dangerous, “A critic without the need for the criticism, the antiquarian without the piety for the past, or the man who recognises the greatness of the past but himself cannot accomplish any greatness.”

It is easy to make sweeping statements (good or bad) about the past; it is still easier to condemn and crucify historical figures, but that doesn’t undo the past, nor does it make it right. We cannot force our modern sensibilities on the past. It is one thing to use history for a context and completely another to attempt to rewrite it. I think it is tempting to disown the past entirely and rewrite it according to the mood of the time. But how does that make us any different from the historians of the past who wrote the history to suit the winners of the time? A critical reading of history is desirable as long as it is not motivated by vengeance. A wholesale rejection of our “monumental” history suffers from the same folly as wholesale acceptance.

People who indulge too much in the past without the need are merely trying to find an excuse for their present failures. These are not ordinary people who have to slog day in and day out for mere sustenance, but rather demagogues, moral and ethnic entrepreneurs who lack solutions and instead create problems. Many of our “revolutionaries” who tried to strip the country of its past in a zeal of corrective vengeance by demolishing many statues around the country should hear this piece of admonishment from the original republicans and revolutionaries in the modern sense.

During the French Revolution, a tide of popular iconoclasm had swept the country that led to the destruction of works of art that were associated with the monarchy. In his address to the revolution’s foot soldiers and vandals, Abbe Gregoire, a prominent member of the revolution’s Committee of Public Instruction, made his case clear in a rhetorical question: “Because the pyramids of Egypt had been built by tyranny and for tyranny, ought these monuments of antiquity be demolished?”

Should we let the tyranny of Nepal’s past make its present equally tyrannical? Or should we learn from the past’s tyranny to not repeat it? Whether we choose to use history in the right vein or abuse it for short-term political expediency will determine how the present is judged by the future, and more importantly whether we remain shackled to the past or move forward into the future. Prof. Mahendra Lawoti, in his article (“It ain’t so,” Feb. 19, Page 6) suggested that an apology would begin the “healing process”. But I wonder who it should come from.

john.parajuli@gmail.com