The Implications of Nepal's Identity Politics

In the media, we find that different ethnic minorities are demanding their own territories/benefits in Nepal. However, the ways they use to formulate and disseminate such demands should make us critical. The prevalent myth is that the lowly ethnic minor individual trusts in and relies upon mainstream politicians to take his/her protests to the forefront of Nepal's priorities. But there should be other routes towards political significance outside of direct use of established politicians. In short, the politics of difference is not a bottom-up phenomena here, and that (ethnic) difference is becoming an agenda in Nepal should signal that a new, more powerful political class is emerging, a political class which does not just observe and represent Nepal's problems and struggles, but a class which actively makes new borders between the ethnic minorities, which interprets/imagines between people a friction, an antagonism. And rather than read this political intervention as a form of maturity, one can easily say that the politicians' myth-making will eventually lead to Nepal's dependency on established political parties and politicians because of their role in defining the characteristics of Nepali identities. This dependency on the political sphere may eventually result in a paternal, all-providing, authoritarian party which tells the people who they really are. 

In Nepal, no longer is it necessary to formulate a difference from the foreign national, or rather, making an observation of one's difference from the foreign national is no longer a politically lucrative venture. Politics has diverted away from such grand claims and research of the international context to become more aware of and fixate upon the immediate surroundings: in political rhetoric, replacing the foreign national pulling the strings is the immediate, Nepali neighbor controlling some aspect of one's life, and this neighbor is not some abstract concept, but a 'politician's object,' that is, an object to be modified by politicians. (Also, party cadres multiply in number as the demand for Nepal to be known more accurately and administered more effectively increases.) The stark borders between two nations, which held so much sway in political uprisings, has given way to 'invisible borders' that often do not even separate, 'but are supposed to,' according to the politician and his/her cadres. The fight is not between two starkly different identities, but between identities which have intermingled, which continue to intermingle, between which difference is very hard to create and sustain. It seems the politicians have managed to create differences between such intermingling identities, showing a level of sophistication in their capacity to imagine/interpret Nepali society which was not present to such a degree before. What politicians are doing is truly historical in significance: they are intervening into the social sphere to create permanent borders between identities which had previously more 'naturally' converged, diverged, converged again and diverged again and so on.  

Identity politics, in the way in which it is being practiced, is making the political class more powerful, and one way we see this is the immediacy and availability of the politician to the Nepali social sphere now. Power does not entail being aloof from the base population, but the powerful are even more present to the population, even more directly involved, the more powerful they get. Lastly, this strong and ever present political class speaks of an authoritarian tendency, for the politician who is ever present, ever involved, supporting one ethnic minority over the other with a fervor, energy and passion that politicians did not have before, may lead to the birth of a leader who wishes to be an absolute authority. (It is quite important to note that the formation of an authoritative figure depends more on domestic identity-based relations and conflicts than international ones. Therefore, it may be true that those political parties and personalities that accuse the international community of injustice may not have authoritarian tendencies.)