First the good news: Attempts of Hindutvawadi militants to further vitiate the strained peace and volatile harmony in Dharan has been foiled for now. Inert institutions of Nepal acted surprisingly fast this time, and an imminent confrontation between Hindutvawadis and secularists was averted in the nick of time. Even though still precarious, peace prevails in Koshi province and normalcy has more or less been restored in Morang and Sunsari districts. Several actors played their role in tandem to defuse an impending crisis.

Mainstream political parties spoke in unison to counter the religious bigotry. The National Human Rights Commission came out of its torpor and issued a customary statement. The prohibitory orders of the district administration stopped militants in their tracks. Perhaps Hindutvawadi honchos realised that a direct conflict with the secularists was unlikely to produce the intended results, and they reined in their foot soldiers at the last moment.

The bad news is far more worrisome. Even though once conceived as "Asli Hindustan", the syncretic Hinduism of Nepal accommodated Tantrik practices, Shaivite asceticism, avatars of Vaishnavism, Malangs of the Sufi sect in Islam and Buddhist rituals without prejudice. The Gorkhali warrior Prithvi Narayan’s hostility towards Christianity was probably a strategy of mobilising the neo-Hindus from among Khas, Thakuri, Magars and Gurungs of the Gandak region that formed the bulk of his soldiery, and reassuring the Brahminical elite of Nepal Valley of his noble intentions. It is equally likely that the tactic was born out of the political necessity of countering the growing influence of the East India Company in the Indo-Gangetic plains.

After his tour to Europe, Jang Bahadur did try to institutionalise Hindu hegemony and its caste hierarchy through the Muluki Ain of 1854, but its enforcers often looked the other way when the food and drink habits of the so-called enslavable Janjatis and Dalits appeared to violate the decree. King Mahendra’s attempt to modernise the code in 1963 did try to do away with some archaic practices such as untouchability, but the revised law succeeded in establishing the unquestioned supremacy of Hinduism.

The politics of Hindutva has since mutated into a far more dangerous "neo-Hindutva" variant. The contemporaneous strain is frighteningly pervasive as it “permeates into new spaces: organisational, territorial, conceptual, rhetorical” and “appears simultaneously brazen but concealed, nebulous and mainstreamed, militant yet normalised”. Blowing with the ill winds since 2014, the spectre of "neo-Hindutva" has begun to haunt Nepal.

Fortunately, the response of the excluded groups towards the Hindutva belligerency has been muted and guarded so far. While the slaughter of cows and bullocks is proscribed in Nepal, consumption of beef is an acceptable practice among a majority of Dalits, Muslims as well as Christians and almost half of the population of Janjatis. Together they constitute more than a third of the national population.

Though given a miss by the media, be it at the Eighth Tamang Knowledge Festival in Kathmandu or the National Muslim Council interaction in Bardibas last week, the urgency of shaking away the complacency of subaltern communities in response to the belligerency of the dominant majority appeared to be the underlying theme of all informal conversations. Resentment against Hindutva zealotry is brewing below the surface.

Democratic backsliding

Despite the rhetoric of hardline secularists, religion and democracy need not be completely incompatible. However, religious fanaticism breeds intolerance, which can then lead to the emergence of authoritarian despots or even fascist dictators. There must be a reason why the trillions of dollars the United States pumped into the war in Afghanistan failed to inculcate democratic values. For much of its history, Pakistan has remained in the iron grip of its armed forces.

Burma became free on the promise of institutionalising a federal and democratic republic, but has remained under the control of the defence forces for much of its independent history. Though nominally democratic, Sri Lanka turned into a Buddhist Sinhala ethnocratic state way back in the 1950s. Thailand never really managed to break itself free from the shackles of the military that has managed to keep the monarchy and the urban middle class on its side. Bangladesh was born out of a prolonged struggle to be an antithesis to its parent country Pakistan, and incorporate all its diversities in a functioning democracy. All such dreams died with the assassination of Bangbandhu, and democracy is repeatedly throttled on the assurance of delivering development.

India had remained a shining exception to the rule of democratic erosion followed by autocratic eruption in the region. The credit for institutionalising democracy, inclusion and federalism is justifiably given to the secular convictions of Jawaharlal Nehru and Bhim Rao Ambedkar. But without the ethical lighthouse in the form of Mahatma Gandhi—who was religious to the point of being fanatically moral—it is doubtful if the multi-national ship named India would have survived the deep sea of ethnic aspirations, majoritarian ambitions and consequent conflicts. With the exception of the Emergency (1975-77), the political class in India seldom dared to tinker with the constitutional framework established by its founding fathers.

In the rest of the region, the period of flirtation with democratic forms of governance has often proved to be short and tumultuous. The democratic backsliding has gained further momentum with the emergence of an "elected autocracy" in India where the regime openly undermines institutions, intimidates opposition, harasses the academia, curbs the media and unleashes its vigilantes upon religious minorities.

Looming uncertainties

Despair runs deep in Afghanistan where there is little hope of democracy, development or a dignified life on the horizon, and female suicide is on the rise. The excuse of inherent contradiction between two constitutional requirements—timely elections and delimitation after a census—may come in handy to delay parliamentary polls in Pakistan where the "deep state" shuffled the political pack and threw out its former protégé Imran Khan who finds himself in prison for now. The Establishment has always benefited from judicial activism in Pakistan.

Though Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is permanently in election mode—changing costumes several times a day, posing for petty pictures in public, ridiculing all opposition politicos, delivering prepared speeches and flashing fake smiles at the focused cameras of a subservient media—his party is likely to get more virulent towards the minorities to consolidate its majoritarian vote bank prior to the parliamentary elections next year.

Elections are due in Bangladesh where geopolitical forces are likely to up their ante in propping or dropping the longest serving prime minister in its relatively short history. The junta is taking Burma deeper down into the autocratic abyss. The Thai military has once again shown who is the boss by managing to have former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in jail even as it has allowed a coalition to form a government. The relative calm in the political economy of Sri Lanka can turn stormy if the Chinese decide to test the waters of the Indian Ocean more often.

Despite all its deficiencies—exploitative and ethnocratic state, majoritarian politics, corrupt government, reckless opposition, partisan press, profiteering businesses and a ruling elite crooked to its very core—Nepal has managed to maintain openness in the larger society. The fascistic virus of neo-Hindutva must be resisted to preserve the precarious peace in the multi-national state where the dominant majority worships cows while a significant minority relishes beef.