Among the three most populist parliamentarians of these times, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli is the sharpest as well as the seniormost. He was born in the interregnum between the fall of the Ranarchy in 1951 and the rise of the absolutist Shah regime in 1960, when the Gramscian prognosis of “a great variety of morbid symptoms” was apparent throughout the country.

Sharma Oli perhaps realised early on that the criteria for fitness for survival in the politics of Nepal differed from those of other newly decolonised countries. Freedom fighters of independence movements had to paint the picture of a brighter future to persuade the masses. Here, King Mahendra had convinced his loyal subjects that they should long for the greatness of the “unifier”, the creations of the “versifier”, and the valour of “mercenaries” instead.

Even though he is the unchallenged supremo of a supposedly Marxist-Leninist party, Sharma Oli prefers to talk about culture, religion and language rather than the plight of the poor and the downtrodden. A rhetorician par excellence, he can make his audience consume irrelevant claims about Ayodhya being in Thori and Yoga having originated in Nepal.

A relic of the print and audio era, Sharma Oli refuses to accept that historical fabrications and jingoistic stories look somewhat dubious on small screens of handheld devices. The sell-by date of Sharma Oli’s alt-right populism seems to be losing its mass appeal. It must be in desperation that he had to aim cheap and chauvinistic barbs at the fellow parliamentarian Sumana Shrestha.

Born in 1974, Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Rabi Lamichhane belongs to the Mahendramala Generation that grew up in the ideological hegemony of ethnonational chauvinism in the 1980s and 1990s. Setting a world record of sorts in 2013 with his single-themed and longest-running talk show, he is the political manipulator of the television age. Lamichhane succeeded in fanning popular discontent against established parties through his Sidha Kura Janata Sanga and then decided to electorally encash the adulation before the audience could know much about his dual passport, possible involvement in cooperative frauds or the vacuity of his political antics. He is no longer the poster boy for alternative politics.

Performative agitator

The chief whip of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), Gyanendra Bahadur Shahi, is the new kid on the jingoistic block. He is wrestling to create a space for himself in the post-2015 order where the ruling ideology is that there is no distinct ideology in the political economy. Born in 1992 and a child of restored constitutional monarchy, Shahi came of age in yet another Gramscian interregnum between 2006 and 2016 when ethnonational majoritarianism triumphed over the inclusionary dreams of participatory democracy.

Experiences of electoral democracies in Pakistan or Sri Lanka have shown that ethnonational majoritarianism inevitably brings authoritarian politics, nepotism, favouritism, crony capitalism and brazen corruption. In such polities, the risk of a rabble-rouser spouting rage against the ‘rotten elite’ is extremely high. Imran Khan rode the anti-establishment beast to get to the top, where the creature ate his political career raw. He is presently cooling his heels in jail.

The movement of India Against Corruption (IAC) catapulted Arvind Kejriwal to the chair of Chief Minister of New Delhi, where, ironically, he is in custody on corruption charges. Shahi tried to ride a similar escalator of anti-corruption vigilantism through his combative politics captured live on camera and beamed through social media. He became viral through his Hamro Nepal Hami Nepali Abhiyan (Our Nepal, We Nepalis Campaign) by participating in protests against the Nepal Compact of Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

It seems the adroit agitator has realised that his jingoistic image needs periodic polishing for him to thrive in the emotionally distressed republic. He recently joined the campaign for the social rehabilitation of Sandeep Lamichhane, a celebrity cricketer first convicted of raping a minor, sentenced to jail and then acquitted by a higher court.

The Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) had included the former captain in its T20 World Cup team. Once the USA denied him a visa, the CAN could have let the prospective player hone his spin-bowling skills at home. But it decided to solicit the help of the government to make the consular services of the US Embassy rethink. They did some serious rethinking and once again denied Lamichhane a visa. The unfortunate story should have ended there, but the anti-MCC campaigner made a grand entry, heading a procession against the US Embassy!

Shahi didn’t stop there: He later claimed in Parliament that the denial of a visa to Lamichhane was an affront to the entire country. Perhaps Shahi perceives that an anti-USA constituency still exists in the country that he can mobilise for his regressive politics. He may have been too young back then, but more prominent personalities of Nepal have been refused a visa in the past. No matter how high you are within the geography of one of the 50 poorest countries of the world with one of its lowest-ranking passports, resident diplomats of wealthier nations remain unimpressed with the “Buddha was born in Nepal” rhetoric.

Herd mentality

In his long public life, Abhi Subedi has worn many hats of different hues—discarding one for the other or donning one atop another depending upon his mood—with the ease of a bohemian. He is a professor, poet, playwright, critic, academic, commentator, researcher, creator, wanderer, writer, translator, bilingual columnist and voracious reader: An intellectual in one word.

Back in 2006, Subedi was brusquely denied a visa to visit New York at the invitation of American writers. He was reportedly told: “You seem to have visited so many places. How come? Are you retired? Will you return?” And then dismissed with a gratuitous advice: “Try again.” When Subedi wrote about the incident with a touch of sadness in his column “Visa and empire of indifference”, the then US Ambassador to Nepal James Francis Moriarty expressed regret at the treatment meted out to “long a cultural contact of our American Center” but refused to publicly apologise.

Khagendra Sangraula—a writer and translator so popular that he needs no introduction—with the British Embassy in 2005 had a no less disturbing experience. He was given a written note explaining that the visa denial was based on the possibility that he may not leave Britain after entering. Once again, Sangraula wrote about it in the form of a letter in one of his columns, but nothing was heard from the then British Ambassador Keith G Bloomfield.

Subedi and Sangraula were wise enough to realise that denial of visa is the prerogative of the issuing country. Shahi wants to capitalise on this to strengthen his capability of benefiting from the herd mentality of cynical and discontented youths who consume incendiary social media posts and are looking for an easy outlet to vent their rage.

Some populists can do good for their political benefit, but a rabble-rouser inevitably causes unmitigated disaster. Shahi isn’t just a person but a political model that can prove to be much more damaging than Sharma Oli’s ethnonational populism or Lamichhane’s downright demagoguery.