Book Review Pages
The Kathmandu Post Review of Books
Vol. 3, No. 1
Issue Coordinator: Pratyoush Onta
Martin Chautari for
CSRD and The Kathmandu Post
Return to KPRB Main Page
Return to CSRD Main Page
Return to SINHAS Home Page
Essay
Reviews
- Law Lawyers and Judges (H.R. Bhardwaj)
- Transition und demokratische Konsolidierung im hinduistischen Königreich Nepal (Shawn B. Perekrestenko)
- Neparu-jin no kurashi to seiji [Life and Politics of the Nepalis Through the World of Satirical Comedy] (Mayumi Yamamoto)
Beyond Mahila-Chetana
Anil Bhattarai
I recently had a chance to attend a meeting in an eastern tarai location on problems associated with dowry. There were about twenty-five men and only three women present at the meeting. They discussed the origin of dowry, the process through which it got established in our society and the concomitant problems it has brought into people's lives. They also discussed how dowry has made women's lives more difficult. All day they - mostly men - discussed various aspects of the problem. At the end of the meeting, the men came up with various plans to address this issue. One of them was awareness raising (chetena badhaune) of women regarding dowry as a problem.
The three women present thought it was a bit awkward on the part of the men to say that women are the ones who are in need of awareness regarding this issue. It is men who demand dowry, bargain for more and go on killing or harassing women, they said. Women know and have experienced the burden of this problem, they added. Women have to face harassment at home, in public spaces, and at places of work due to it despite being the ones who take care of the homes and children by toiling eighteen hours a day. And here were men telling them that they needed awareness.
One woman rose from her seat and pointedly asked the men present, "How many hours do you work ?" The men in the meeting had not expected such a question. She followed it up with, "How many hours in a day do the female members in your homes work? Who cooks and looks after your homes?" As soon as she was done, another woman rose from her seat and said, "It is men, if at all, who need awareness. What awareness would you like to raise in women when women are the ones who know what it means to be beaten up, harassed, or do back-breaking work?"
This encounter helps us to think critically about much that is being said in the name of mahila-chetena (women's consciousness) in our country. As a man modestly trying to theoretically understand and practically change unequal relationships between women and men in our society, I find many limitations in the current thinking on Nepali women's consciousness, or more precisely, the so-called lack of it.
Listening to radio programs, watching tv serials, reading newspapers, rummaging through the thick reports of bikas institutions, hearing the tea-shop gossips or bawdy jokes in public places, talking to people in the streets, reading the pamphlets, posters and manifestos of the political parties or listening to the speeches of the leaders, one gets to hear, read or see a particular picture of Nepali women played out again and again in our social landscape - the helpless, meek, chained Nepali woman is out there in need of consciousness raising. At this moment, the image of the Nepali women as illiterate, living under darkness, uneducated, ignorant and lacking in development has been firmly established as accepted social truth within the world of bikas. This imagery, in turn, provides the basis for devising and implementing various mahila-chetana (women's awareness) programs. The implicit assumption behind sweeping remarks produced about women in Nepal from the development institutions is that either Nepali women lack consciousness or they have a false one. Women in Nepal, in this mode of thinking, are either incarcerated within feudal structures or are said to be lacking in modernity.
This image propels many forms of interventions in women's lives in Nepal in the name of consciousness raising. Development indices categorize women as needing a particular intervention program such as literacy, income generation, health education, skills development, kitchen gardening training. The historical and social structural constraints (within which women live their lives) that determine their position in society are seldom included in the analysis. Moreover, the ways in which women have evidenced their consciousness and asserted their agency - sometimes overtly, at other times covertly - are never seriously taken into account.
Anyone who has seen women dance or sing during the festival of teej in public will know that women in Nepal are neither submerged under the darkness of ignorance as claimed by the bikaswallahs, nor incarcerated within the feudal structures as ardently believed by the political parties. A number of feminist researches in South Asia (notable among them is one done by the Indian scholar Bina Agrawal) have made it clear that women do not lack consciousness about their situation, nor do they passively accept the oppressive reality they live in. Quite the contrary, they have been resisting oppression within their homes and communities in a multiplicity of ways, both overt and covert. These researches have convincingly shown that what we need at this moment is not consciousness-raising programs as designed within bikas institutions. Instead what we need is the collective process of continuous inquiry and action in identifying and transforming structures that perpetuate current unequal relations - within our homes, organizations, social movement spaces and the larger society.
Although it is the case that individual or group actions have their own limitations in changing the existing patriarchal relations, the insights produced by these studies are crucial for the women's movement(s) in Nepal today. There are thousands of literacy classes, innumerable savings and credit groups, many other bikas interventions targeted for women in Nepal today. They are barely trying to touch the structures of patriarchy and contribute little toward enhancing the agency of women and men in changing them. These programs isolate women into discrete groups rather than engage them as beings living lives embedded in particular places and social classes, mediated by multiplicity of relationships at home, in the community and with the state. In other words, these programs are themselves incarcerated within the consciousness-raising paradigm, one that will not serve the cause of the women's movement(s) in Nepal.
To call for going beyond chetana politics is not to argue against the need of literacy or other such programs. Current problem with these interventions is that they are not geared towards the transformation of hierarchical relations between the sexes. However, creating these very programs as forums for interaction among women and between women and men with their specific histories, experiences, knowledges and wisdom is imminently possible. There are already thousands of women's and men's groups involved in these programs such as adult literacy classes, legal literacy classes, savings and credit groups, community forestry users' groups. Besides them, there are also several women's groups involved in anti-liquor movements all across Nepal. The challenge for women's movement in Nepal now is to go beyond packaged "consciousness delivery kits" and use these thousands of forums and available participants to integrate the analysis of gender relations in specific locations and histories of these groups and movements. Analyzing three movements for land rights in India, scholar Agrawal has shown that conscious presence of women with feminist perspectives within any movement is crucial for transforming hierarchical gender relations while fighting for equality in many other fronts.
Hence, instead of devising isolated short term projects for consciousness-raising of women, organizations and individuals genuinely concerned about the need of changing current gender relations in our society should focus on creating forums where women and men continuously act and reflect on the current unequal state of affairs. The above mentioned encounter about dowry demands as much.
(Bhattarai is an organizer of Martin Chautari)
Return to Contents of this Issue
Return to KPRB Main Page
Return to SINHAS Home Page
Law Lawyers and Judges
Author: H.R. Bhardwaj
Publisher: Konark Publishers, Delhi, 1997
A Ministerial Legal Memoir
Jogendra Keshari Ghimire
If you expect to have an in depth understanding of any of the subjects discussed in this book, like judicial activism, uniform civil code, appointment of judges and functioning of the judiciary, and the legal profession, then H R Bhardwaj's Law, Lawyers and Judges will disappoint you. Despite having been penned by a man who was a political insider, as lawyer and law minister for the Gandhis (Indira and Rajiv) in India during the crucial years in the 1970s and 1980s - which saw the reshaping of the Indian judiciary in the form of a more assertive institution - and therefore, responsible for the reforms and deterioration alike in India's judicial branch, Bhardwaj's book says too little on each of the subjects he has discussed.
Take judicial activism, for example, a hotly debated subject of jurisprudence which is reshaping and redefining the role of judiciary in matters of public policy and affecting the daily lives of the citizens in the entire sub-continent. The author supports the phenomenon of judicial activism for reasons that are by and large well known - the failure of the executive and the legislature to meet the expectations of the people, the desirability of creatively interpreting the law according to the changed social context, the need to have a social purpose and economic mission in the process of interpretation and, above all, the supremacy of law and the court's status as its ultimate arbiter. He also cautions, using the example of Chief Justice P N Bhagwati, credited by many as the first activist judge, that even great judges (and by extension judicial activism) become controversial if they seek unwarranted publicity.
What is expected of an insider like Bhardwaj - and he does not deliver - is an analysis of the process of transformation of the Supreme Court of India from a more docile and suppressed court during the early days of Indira Gandhi's tenure to an extremely upright and assertive judiciary of the present. It was during Mrs Gandhi's premiership that the Indian Union saw some of the most blatant misuse of executive authority which developed the strain in the relationship between the executive and the judiciary. It was more so especially after the court usurped some of legislative authority to amend the constitution by pronouncing, in the early 1970s, what is now referred to as "the basic principles (of the Constitution) doctrine," something not provided for in the Indian Constitution as in ours. The result was that the executive superseded the seniormost judges of the court, who were a party to the "basic principles doctrine," on two occasions at the time of appointment of the Chief Justice. Mrs Gandhi's tenure also saw a number of constitutional amendments aimed purely at nullifying the effects of the some of the court's pronouncements on issues of great constitutional significance. How was it that the Indian Supreme Court, amidst such a discouraging background, began asserting itself all out in the mid-1980s under P N Bhagwati to become the "most activist" institution of today is something which could have been explained by Bhardwaj with a lot of authority and insight.
Perhaps in light of the same background supersession of judges, the Supreme Court heard and decided two cases dealing with the appointment of the judges in the superior courts, finally (in 1993) making the Chief Justice of India "the determining factor" in appointments in the Supreme Court. While the facts have been recorded of this aspect of recent judicial innovations in India, the author fails here also when it comes to analysis. What could be the implications of the decision to make the Chief Justice the determining factor in appointments in the judiciary? Could it breed dictatorial and monopolistic tendencies among the judges who in the absence of any executive check whatsoever--and a near impossible process of impeachment--enjoy the most secured tenure in office? Bhardwaj appears to support the "primacy of the Chief Justice" principle while merely recording that during his tenure as law minister there was no confrontation as such between the executive and the judiciary in the process of appointments. A more lasting appointment mechanism is perhaps yet to evolve. Provisions in regard to the subject of judicial appointments in the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal could be a useful reference to Indian jurists.
Bhardwaj's reflections on such topics as the uniform civil code, judicial reforms and the legal profession make interesting reading. They deal with the reasons behind the falling standard of the profession and the rising backlog in courts. The author also suggests what could be done to correct the malaise. The chapter on the uniform civil code, otherwise analytically insightful, contains a jarring note in the form of 20 plus pages devoted to the refutations of issues on the subject raised by journalist Arun Shourie. The book's main problem perhaps is that while there are some analyses, the pages are full of "initiatives and activities" undertaken during the author's days at the law ministry, making the book more of a memoir of a law minister than a collection of essays on judicial issues of general interest.
(Ghimire, a staff reporter of The Kathmandu Post, is interested in legal issues)
Return to Contents of this Issue
Return to KPRB Main Page
Return to SINHAS Home Page
Transition und demokratische Konsolidierung im hinduistischen Königreich Nepal
Author: Shawn B. Perekrestenko
Publisher: Laufersweiler Verlag, Wettenberg, Germany, 1997
On Political Transition
Karl-Heinz Krämer
At the time when Nepal's young democracy is facing its most serious challenges Perekrestenko has published this book on political transition and consolidation of democracy. It is in fact his first degree thesis in political science at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University. The book provides a successful combination of the theories on political transformation and their application to the process of democratization in Nepal.
In the first part of his study the author discusses Nepal's transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one from the macro- as well as the micro-theoretical perspective. In Nepal with her hierarchically structured pre-modern society, politics took a highly personalised form. In the same way Nepal's economy with an agrarian dependency of 90 percent of her population must be regarded as pre-capitalist. Under these conditions macro-theories on transition, which are mainly based upon empirical studies of western nations, can only be applied in a limited manner. But Perekrestenko proves that they nevertheless can help to explain the time and reasons for political transition in Nepal.
From the micro-theoretical perspective one can establish proof of the characteristic phases of transition: There was a phase of relative liberalization after the national referendum of 1980, which helped the democratic forces to undermine the system. The post-revolutionary time until the first general elections can be identified as the period of democratization. This was also the time when the consolidation of democracy started. But since the political activists sometimes acted under constraints,the mere application of micro-theories proved insufficient to analyse the process of democratic consolidation, which is the theme of the second part of the study.
The author defines Nepal's constitution as democratic, but not as extremely democratic. It must be understood as a compromise between the Nepali Congress and the traditional elites; in this process the interests of the communist parties have been more or less marginalized. The people were not integrated into the constitution-building process, and so the constitution of 1990 lacks formal legitimacy. This must not necessarily have negative consequences, but in the case of Nepal the continuation of the Hindu state and the centralized organization of the state have led to exclusive favour-granting to the traditionally privileged high Hindu castes in the institutional arrangement of the state. The antagonizing concept of Hindu monarchy has been successfully re-arranged in the form of constitutional monarchy. So far, King Birendra has justified this new role.
On the representative level the party system has been formed by the transition conflict, the social cleavages and the election system. Even though such indicators as the degree of fragmentation, the presence of anti-system parties and the volatility seemed to promote democratic consolidation, internal party factionalism, which is typical for Nepal's parliamentary process, has prevented this consolidation. As in most post-authoritarian states, the union system has hardly developed in Nepal and so cannot relieve the party system in its function of interest representation.
On the micro-political level the author tries to evaluate the consolidation of the protagonists' behaviour. So far, the military and the big landowners have shown little efforts to push through their interest outside the democratic order, especially, since they have no reason to do so. Different is the behaviour of the radical left groups, whose interests have not been taken into consideration by the constitution. So they more and more turn to extra-legal measures. The political elite not only failed to make the demands of the people's movement the basis of its politics, but in many cases it even put its interests outside the rules. This makes clear that Nepal still does not have a democratic political culture.
The new political institutions receive little specific public support, because for many Nepalis the economic situation has deteriorated. The confidence in the new democratic order has considerably diminished after 1991, because of the bad performance of the political parties. So, Nepal today has an unstable and unconsolidated form of democracy. The main reason is the exclusive character of her constitution. As long as these shortcomings are not removed, there will always be the danger of relapse to an authoritarian system.
Nepal as a Third World country can hardly be compared with western democracies because of her economic and ethnic conditions. A dialogue with functioning democracies in other Third World countries is necessary. Ethnic diversities, for example, can be better managed on the regional level. So, the strengthening of the local government could be a first step to the solution of Nepal's current political crisis.
(Krämer is the author of several books, in German, on Nepal)
Return to Contents of this Issue
Return to KPRB Main Page
Return to SINHAS Home Page
Neparu-jin no kurashi to seiji [Life and Politics of the Nepalis Through the World of Satirical Comedy]
Author: Mayumi Yamamoto
Publisher: Chuko-shinsho, Japan, 1993
Nepali Political Satire: Lessons for Japan!
Tatsuro Fujikura
It was by chance, writes Mayumi Yamamoto, that she first came to know about Madan Krishna and Hari Bansha. In 1988, while in Butwal on the way back from Pokhara, the driver of the car proposed that they go see "the most popular comedians" in Nepal who happened to be giving a show at a local cinema hall that night. Although Yamamoto had been in Nepal for only a month, she could at least understand that the comedy involved intense political satire. The driver explained to her that the comedy shown that day, titled "London Airport," was making reference to a scandal involving a Sports Council officer and drug smuggling. Yamamoto writes that she was surprised at the high level at which the audience and the actors seemed to share detailed knowledge about political characters and events that provided the subtext for the comical play.
Political satire, writes Yamamoto, is a highly sophisticated form of comedy that requires high levels of political consciousness, both on the part of the actors and the audience. She sharply contrasts the situation in Nepal to that of Japan where political satire lost its popularity in the course of post-war economic growth and the rise of 'new middle class consciousness', leaving the society with only trivial and servile forms of laughter and pseudo-humour.
Yamamoto was in Nepal from 1988 to 1989, as a graduate student conducting research on politics in Nepal. Political satire of Madan Krishna and Hari Bansha (hereafter MaHa) seemed to be an excellent lens through which to gain insight into what the Panchayat Regime meant for ordinary Nepalis. The comic theater consisted of dialogue between the actor and the audience, where they jointly forged their views and criticisms on the political present. However, Yamamoto writes that she hesitated before deciding on popular comedy as her research topic, since as a foreigner, she did not possess the linguistic, social, and cultural knowledge that Nepali audiences did. However, her research was made feasible with the help of many people, including her collaborators who transcribed tape-recordings of the highspeed dialogues, and the MaHa duo themselves who went over the transcripts and explained to her the hidden subtexts.
In Life and Politics of the Nepalis: Through the World of 'Satirical Comedy', Yamamoto provides many excerpts from MaHa's plays produced between 1981 and 1989, and explains how they referred to political events and issues in Nepal. Those 'referents' include suppression of the anti-Panchayat movement of 1979 under the prime-ministership of Surya Bahadur Thapa, political scandals of 1987 involving attempted assassination of the guest editor of the Bimarsha Weekly, politics of Nepali Congress during the 1980s, issues of language and ethnicity, relations with India, rampant corruption, and perversions of foreign aid.
In the postscript, Yamamoto states that she began to write this book to introduce the general Japanese audience to a little known aspect of Nepali life - i.e., the political life. Academic and popular representations of Nepal in Japan habitually presented Nepal as remote pre-modern kingdom, either as place of pristine and exotic peoples and scenery (and hence an object of consumption for tourists, mountain climbers and ethnographers) or as prototypical Least Developed Country (and hence an object of benign intervention by Japanese aid). While describing political life in Nepal, Yamamoto says her interest began to shift more towards the relation between Nepal and Japan, or more precisely, between the conditions of life and politics of the Nepalis and those of the Japanese. Towards the end of the book she describes the lifestyles of Japanese residents in Kathmandu, some of whom, like the 'white people', have more than ten Nepalis working in his or her mansion. Hearing polite statements from Nepalis many Japanese simplistically believe that Nepalis hold 'pro-Japanese sentiments'. Yamamoto captures the arrogance, coupled with utter insensitivity and ignorance, of the Japanese towards Nepalis, engendered by the same global political economy that elevated Japanese into 'honorary whites' in the apartheid South Africa.
This sociological condition is consonant with the practices of Japanese foreign aid that have been undoubtedly serving more the interests of the Japanese businesses and the oppressive leaders of Nepal, than the people they are ostensibly aimed at (As stated in a MaHa play, as miraculously as the water in a river flowing back to its source, foreign aid returns to foreign banks). Yamamoto recounts how easy it was for her to meet 'big persons' in Nepal. Such privilege derived, she writes, from nothing other than the fact that she was Japanese.
The book brings the readers back, then, to the initial comparison the author makes between the vibrant critical public attending and speaking through political satire in Nepal, on the one hand, and the deplorable state of political consciousness among the Japanese masses, on the other. The want of political and moral engagement of the Japanese masses with their nation's relation with others, Yamamoto argues, is complicit in creating and sustaining the oppressive situation that is the target of MaHa's satirical attack. And within that complicit Japanese, Yamamoto includes herself.
The 'necessary action' that the book suggests, is something of the opposite of what some development donors recommend these days as cure for the problems of Nepal: It is not the donor funded programs for raising the 'awareness' and the building of 'civil society' in Nepal. What is needed, rather is the awakening of political and moral consciousness in places like Japan, and the courage to engage critically with issues of public concern, something Yamamoto says she learned through her research in Nepal and from people like MaHa!
(Fujikura,an anthropologist, is researching the world of bikas in Nepal)
Return to Contents of this Issue
Return to KPRB Main Page
Return to SINHAS Home Page
The SINHAS Web Pages © Copyright 1996, the Nepal Studies Group, Centre for Social Research and Development. The KPRB reviews and essays may not be redistributed without permission of The Kathmandu Post. The SINHAS Web Pages are authored and maintained by Mary Des Chene.
Last changed: 98/09/13