Kathmandu, between tradition and modernity

KATHMANDU
Thomas Bell
Random House India
463 pages; Rs 599

For people living along the international border on the Indian side, entering Nepal in the 1980s meant getting to drink Coke and Pepsi. Mind you, this was the time when these cola giants were still several years away from re-entering India. Nepal was also where one could get fancy jeans, Sony and Panasonic transistors, and tape recorders, cheap torches, very economical sandals and sports shoes, "Made in China" locks and garments, and perfumes of international brands.

Kathmandu (and the rest of Nepal) was then a sought-after destination even for those living on the other side of the border. It used to have a functional law enforcement machinery, well-maintained roads and 24/7 power supply. Getting Nepalese citizenship could ensure direct admission into Indian centres of excellence. It could also earn entry into top institutes of learning all around the world. Even then, however, there was a silent group of people sulking about the lack of democracy in the Himalayan Kingdom. People would resent one group's domination over the government machinery. The Pahadi-Madhesi divide existed then, too. But the country was nowhere close to the chaos it is in now. Or perhaps contrarian forces were working underground, waiting for an opportune moment to explode.

There were occasional protests against the monarchy, but the first major people's pro-democracy movement started in 1990. "The overthrow of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu in December 1989 had an inspirational effect in Kathmandu. Two years earlier he had visited the city as a guest of the king, and now his own people had toppled him. It became possible to imagine that the Nepali people could topple his host," writes Thomas Bell in Kathmandu. Nepal finally made the transition to multi-party democracy in the early 1990s. But "all that seemed to have happened was a renegotiation of the spoils, between a few courtier families (previously), to include newer and larger privileged networks associated with the political parties," writes the author.

The process of renegotiation for the spoils is still on. In between, there has been a palace massacre, regime change, the overthrow of the monarchy, the election of a Constituent Assembly, a Maoist upsurge and scores of mass movements. Nepal, as a result, has been in perpetual stagnation and its capital city, Kathmandu, hostage to various pulls and pressures. Kathmandu is a perfect example of what sociologists describe as a tradition-modernity continuum -while some cultural practices have survived the vagaries of time, new ones keep knocking at its doors, adding layers to an already multi-layered structure. To quote Mr Bell, Kathmandu is "like the puzzle an archaeologist would face who, after discovering an ancient burial, digs beneath it to uncover a beer bottle and a typewriter. Old things overlay what is new, or they are brought to the surface without a true record of their original depth".

But isn't it true for all ancient cities? In terms of multiplicity of layers, cities such as Delhi or Mumbai are no different. What is, however, unique about Kathmandu is its repeated failure in negotiating an orderly transition for the country to a modern nation-state. The arguments that the author offers to explain why this transition has not happened are too general - such as Nepal's power elite being corrupt, or the political class being devoid of a long-term vision, or that the spoils being limited and, therefore, not amenable to judicious distribution.

All these factors are very much part of almost all developing countries. Nepal is a less developed country that has a cocktail of all these problems. What has made Nepal's orderly transition that much more difficult perhaps is its inability to inculcate a national ethos among its citizens. Erstwhile monarchs had sought to force the spirit of nationalism by adopting an archaic dress code and a manufactured history. But that had had very limited success. What Nepal needs is a Nehruvian nation-in-making kind of idea, a unity-in-diversity kind of spirit to negotiate the endless years of chaotic existence.

The book is rich with interesting anecdotes and a brave, albeit limited, attempt to make sense of the chaos in Nepal. What it lacks is a coherent structure. While describing the chaos, it too becomes chaotic at times, forcing readers to flip pages. If the author, a British journalist now settled in Kathmandu, had presented a journalistic account of Nepal's recent years, the book would have come out better. All the same, the book does offer some insights into the developments of our neighbouring country.