Rooting for a liberal Prachanda

As someone steeped in liberal values it certainly feels odd and slightly uneasy to defend a leader who carried—or perhaps still carries—a huge baggage of totalitarian ideology that is antithetical to my own political beliefs. Despite the deep-seated cognitive dissonance, however, I am making a pitch for a liberal Prachanda not because I condone his actions as a supremo of the armed uprising, but because I think his political survival is necessary for a progressive and forward-looking Nepal that is focused on the principles of individual rights and dignity. Despite his personal and political flaws, which he himself has openly acknowledged on several occasions—a rare instance among Nepali politicians or any politicians for that matter—I believe that Prachanda has been a force who has championed the liberal cause in Nepal. At a time when zealotry is rearing its head and the moderates are hobbled by their own incompetency and lack of leadership, Prachanda’s political survival has become indispensable to prevent the country from sliding backwards from its social and political gains.

Even as the country continues to wobble under the weight of egotistical power jockeying of a few politicians (including Prachanda), there has in fact been some significant progress in matters of individual rights, minority rights and their access to justice in the past few years. For all its destruction, any reasonable person who is not driven by personal agendas, will agree that the Maoist Revolution empowered the section of the population that had heretofore been relegated to live as second-class citizens. It is safe to say that the Maoist uprising threw away the yoke of arbitrary customs and traditions that had kept the minorities in positions of permanent subservience and has compelled the hitherto Kathmandu-centric governments to pay attention to broader Nepal, beyond the metropolis. To be sure, the Maoists opened the floodgates for both the good and the bad, and there is no doubt that Prachanda’s earlier misgivings toward the multiparty democratic system weakened both his political standing as well as people’s trust in the newly established system. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the progressive political achievements are now under attack as some political opportunists try to roll back the clock by undermining every liberal value—from secularism to constitutionalism to republicanism.