The Various Perversions of Nepali Nagarik Samaj

At least half the country today, if not more, believes that the ongoing finger-wagging campaign of the self-proclaimed “Nagarik Samaj” of Nepal against “Netaraj” is a sham movement launched solely to provide a cover for the business as usual. Why wouldn’t they? The Nagarik Samaj has done little more than offer platitudes to problems festering for a long time and shown very little concern until the situation seems to have spiraled out of government control.

Adept at displaying a bogus front as independent “Nagarik Aguwas,”the members of the Samaj have long served as the conscience of this corrupt system. Although the Samaj has long had a cheek-and-jowl relationship with the political parties and their leaders, it continues to brush off its responsibilities for the current situation while, once again, creating a smokescreen to deflect attention from its ideological overreach.

Mostly peopled by far-left radical champions of identity politics, this Samaj, which is still a long way away from being a truly representative body of Nepali civil society, not only seems aloof from the rest of the country but also has a hard time reckoning with its self-referential and patronizing culture. Most Nagarik Aguwas are thinly veiled cultural Marxists who are far more insidious than the Maoists for they have wreaked damage to the Nepali body politic that cannot be seen through the naked eye. If we are to hold the system accountable, we must also hold these Aguwas accountable for their ideological overreach over the last couple of decades.

Missing Language of Obligations:

In the last two decades, the Nagarik Samaj of Nepal, often facilitated by foreign aid dollars, has accomplished impressive feats in spreading the language of rights in the country. But in elevating the language of rights to a fever pitch, this Samaj has all but ignored the corresponding language of duties and obligations. Nepal is probably the only country where the language of rights isn’t accompanied by the corresponding language of civic obligations.

Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly states that an individual not only has rights but also has duties towards one’s community and country. “The corollary of rights is duties and the rights are not unlimited,” affirms the introduction to Article 29. “Otherwise, no social balance and harmony would be possible.” Too bad the donors don’t pay for speaking about obligations because they are not the ones who will face the consequences in their absence. An idea of citizenship based solely on drawing rights from the state would inevitably undermine the social and moral fabric of the country in the long run, which is what we are seeing today.

As societal harmony was being torn apart—whether in the form of cow slaughter in Dharan or the en masse religious conversion of Nepalis, often through subtle shenanigans—the Nagarik Samaj utterly failed to speak out against the unraveling of the Nepali social fabric. While rights-related issues ought to have primarily played out in the courts of law, where grievances are channeled through the country’s federal justice system, the public prosecution of these cases by the zealous advocates of identity politics looking to burnish their profiles as culture warriors, further riled up the majority that was already in cultural distress. The result you see in the streets today is a direct consequence of the fraying of societal norms under the weight of far-left agendas religiously pushed by the radical activists who staff the ranks of Nagarik Samaj. One would assume that the Nagarik Samaj, as the name suggests, would be a representative body of all ideological persuasions. However, what’s ironic is that you would be hard-pressed to find a single member within the ranks of this organization who doesn’t toe the far-left radical line—an abject failure for an organization that doesn’t tire itself of worrying about diversity.

Nepali Nagarik Samaj brings to mind a notorious 1964 case of one Kitty Genovese in the United States. The infamous case is now included in every psychology textbook as a case study of bystander apathy. Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old woman from New York, was assaulted and stabbed multiple times by a man while at least thirty-five people either saw or heard the woman get murdered. The incident shocked the nation because no one intervened or called the police—they all assumed that someone else was going to do the job. Although it was later revealed that some did try to call the police, the incident remains a textbook example of the bystander effect where people shirk responsibility because they expect others to pick up the slack. Members of the Nepali Nagarik Samaj, too, are afflicted with bystander apathy, each member eyeing the other to see if someone else will spring into action and speak out about the real problems that are tearing apart the lives of ordinary Nepalis. The Nagarik Samaj seems to have swallowed—hook, line, and sinker—the communist idea that a political order can be established without the underlying social and moral order.

The Balance between Truth and Order

In his book “Nexus,” the popular historian Yuval Noah Harrari writes that societal harmony is achieved only when there is a balance between truth and order. When either one is prioritized at the expense of the other, the equilibrium of society gets compromised, resulting in distrust and resentment. For example, when truth is prioritized over order the result is instability and breakdown of values and norms, which are in no small measure dependent on shared myths and beliefs. On the other hand, when order is prioritized at the expense of truth, the result can lead to abuse of power by those in authority, leading to illiberal practices to maintain conformity with the governing system.

With the advent of the republican order, a lot of bottled-up frustrations that had remained under the surface came oozing out into the open. Truth was given disproportionate priority while the need for social order didn’t even register in the minds of zealous activists. In fact, dismantling the social order was precisely the point in many instances. Secular Nepal in its varied perversions has primarily been focused on hurting the religious and cultural sentiments of the majority by egging on the minority, often as a show of fealty to the donors. In a competition to outbid each other, the intellectual class has engaged in a destruction of the social order far more insidious than the Maoists’ violent revolution. What the Maoists couldn’t do with guns and bombs is being done by the cultural Marxists operating under the cover of Nagarik Samaj: they are covertly upending the way of life of the majority. No political system can endure for long if the purpose of its existence is weaponized to perpetually inflict cultural distress on most people.

The disintegration of moral order today is in part a consequence of the indiscriminate attack on traditional values that formed the glue of Nepali society. The notion that Nepal is the most free and tolerant country in South Asia makes little sense if the nation is unraveling from the other end. I will be surprised if this political order withstands the weight of a majority stirred into action by cultural and religious grievances, regularly poked at by the elites looking down upon ordinary people.

Leftist Overreach

One interesting data point from the recent US Presidential election has been the movement of young men from the liberal camp to the conservative camp. Young men voted for Donald Trump in disproportionate numbers. There are several reasons for this wild electorate swing, not least of which is an impending sense of fear created by the cultural Leftists. From canceling speakers at college campuses to an obsession with pronouns and political correctness, the activist overreach grew so out of bounds that youths, especially young men, decided to come out in droves to support Trump. Even acclaimed liberals have now accepted the fact that Democrats have gone from being the party of the factory floor (meaning common people) to the party of the faculty lounge (meaning the elites) obsessed with abstract ideas. This movement of youths to the conservative camp has turned out to be a global phenomenon.

Thanks in large part to the foreign aid, being educated in Nepal has become synonymous with being a far-left activist. Generally, it is the political parties that moderate the activist’s impulse, but Nepali political parties are empty shells, having no independent think tanks, and are beholden to the activists and journalists—the majority of whom double as Nagarik Aguwas—and are not subject to political accountability. Democracy by definition means the rule of the majority where minority rights are protected, however, when minority rights have been weaponized to give an impending sense of assault in the way of life of the majority, the idea of democracy inevitably comes under threat. This is an untenable situation by any measure.

Whether it’s the disrespect shown towards the founder of the nation, Prithvi Narayan Shah, or the slaughtering of cows to stimulate the palates of rabid provocateurs, the Nepali republic was in no way going to withstand the pressure created by activist politics. It was only a matter of time before the majority would resort to their version of identity politics, which from all indications around the world— from France to Italy to the United States—is on an upward trend. Nepal alone cannot dodge this worldwide phenomenon—not as long as the educated elites are be holden to far-left agendas.

When the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to the United States in 1831, he was positively shocked by the level of independence exhibited by the American people. He believed that most people in the U.S. spoke like lawyers, fully aware of their rights and privileges. However, while he was impressed, he also issued a warning that has since become a significant communitarian critique of liberalism. When citizens are too occupied with pursuing their own goals, there is always a danger that they’ll lose sight of their obligations to the community and their country at large.

In distinguishing the French philosophes from their English and American counterparts, Tocqueville noted that the English and Americans consistently amended and modified their theories of governance based on the feedback from ordinary people, whereas the French philosophes were often dismissive of the common man and distrusted ordinary citizens. The eerie silence from the Nepali Nagarik Samaj following the brutal murder of Sabin Maharjan as he was walking away from the police testifies to the fact that they have taken the French approach: ordinary people’s lives matter, but only when they serve the far-left narratives. No finger will be raised against the atrocities of this corrupt regime cause the Nagarik Samaj is an integral part of it.