In most oligarchies of the world, power-sharing arrangements are negotiated behind the curtain and inked in darkness. The supremo of CPN-UML, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, is a habitual night owl—even a foreign spook, Samanta Goel, had to schedule a meeting with him late in the evening. Perhaps an astrologer suggested the leader of the largest party in Pratinidhi Sabha and the Chair of the Nepali Congress (NC), Sher Bahadur Deuba, to sign a pact with the supremo of the second-largest party in Parliament after midnight. The deal is finally sealed, and the foremost democratic force of the country will be collaborating with the dominant communist party to entrench an ethnocratic regime.

Maoist supremo Dahal has been jumping from the NC camp to the UML platform and the other way round with the regularity of a hawker and the dexterity of an acrobat. He had swiftly set up a meeting with Sharma Oli to placate his senior partner in the coalition and offered to quit in favour of the latter to maintain the status quo. The permanent establishment of Nepal (PEON) seems to have scuttled his plans.

The PEON has been vouching for a rapprochement between the NC and the UML for quite a while. Since the restoration of parliamentary democracy in 1990, these two parties have joined hands or taken turns ruling the country for much of the duration. They have much more at stake in maintaining the ethnonational oligarchy than the Maoists. When the influence of the two dominant parties was reduced in the Constituent Assembly elections of 2008, they had worked assiduously to have it dissolved through a judicial intervention.

No matter how hard Dahal tried to propitiate the high priests of Khas-Arya hegemony—ritualistically worship a buffalo, don the Daura-Suruwal ensemble or offer prescribed prayers at the temple of Mahakal in Ujjain—he failed to win their confidence. In the eyes of ethnonational zealots, Dahal had unleashed the forces of dignity politics—Dalit empowerment, Janjati awakening and Madheshi autonomy—that must be put back in their places through regressive changes in the electoral system.

The proponents of Dalit empowerment are still too weak to challenge the existing sociopolitical order. The fragmented and resigned Janjati groups lack the will to resist the hegemonic designs of Khas-Arya ethnonationalists. The only community that could have countered the resurgence of ethnonational majoritarianism was that of Madheshis. Sadly, a craving for the crumbs from the high table has turned most politicos of Madhesh-dependent parties from committed activists to devoted conformists.

Externalised Madheshis

It’s difficult to name a Madheshi politician who played an important role in the governance of Nepal in the pre-republican era. Ram Narayan Mishra, a cabinet minister in the short-lived BP Koirala government, stands out as an exception. Put behind bars after the royal-military coup, Mishra remained incarcerated and was freed only to die from a terminal disease. Justice Aniruddha Prasad Singh, Justice Bhagwati Prasad Singh and politician Chaturbhuj Prasad Singh—the ABC Singhs of Saptari—did rise to the highest posts, but they were merely royal loyalists at the beck and call of their master.

The restoration of parliamentary democracy brought a new set of political players that shared their ethnonational beliefs with those of the ousted regime. Mahendra Narayan Nidhi was perhaps the best Prime Minister this country never had because of ethnic prejudices among the NC ranks. Gajendra Narayan Singh tried hard to establish amity between Pahadis and Madheshis based on political equality and social dignity through his Sadbhavana platform. He was repeatedly booed in public.

Just as in the absolutist Shah era (1960-90), under the name of Panchayat, the highest ambition of an upwardly mobile Madheshi was to ape the dominant community in dress, language and mannerism, and become a mimic man of a “true Nepali”. The violent campaigns of Maoists and counter-violence of the state forces in the aughties were dreadful, but they did succeed in establishing the recognition of diversity in the manufactured uniformity of national unity. It’s the experience of the marginalised and externalised communities between 1990 and 2008 that makes the prospect of a political settlement between the NC and the UML terrifying.

Useful tools

When the UML emerged as a powerful force of the post-1990 order, its leaders found, to their chagrin, that their presence in Madhesh was limited to the Pahadi community. They wanted Madheshi youths to build their organisation in a region that the NC had traditionally dominated. Ambitious Madheshis also discovered that they had little chance to rise fast in the NC, which was a party in the tight grip of the old guard. In addition to being ambitious, Upendra Yadav also possesses a sharp mind. He was already a foot soldier of the communist radicals, and when they constituted themselves into a parliamentary party as the UML, he became its low-level apparatchik.

Yadav used his uncanny ability of sensing the direction of the wind and jumped on the Maoist bandwagon but remained carefully clear of direct armed confrontations. Contentions are often based on inferences, but the allegation that the non-party Madheshi Janadhikar Forum was constituted to counter the Madhesh Mukti Morcha of the Maoists with the covert support of the PEON doesn’t look too far-fetched.

Barely active in anti-monarchy protests before 2006, Yadav became the public face of the Madhesh Uprising 2007, which challenged and beat the Maoists at their own game of violent propaganda. He then lost little time in making peace with his former enemies of the Gaur Massacre and became the messiah of sorts in Madhesh after the formation of the first Constituent Assembly in Nepal's history.

In much of South Asia, people vote for their caste rather than casting their votes. Yadav prioritised caste solidarity over political affiliations and helped elect Ram Baran Yadav of the NC as the first President of the new republic. The PEON now had a new Yadav face to show in Madhesh and a pliant tool to control the polity and society.

The political perseverance and tenacity of Upendra Yadav are admirable, but he seems resigned to his marginalisation after the overt entry of CK Raut into the electoral arena. The masters like to change their horses not just for utility but also for fun. The Yadavs remain the dominant caste in the entire Tarai-Madhesh and are the single largest group with 15.2 percent of the population in Madhesh province. However, an assertion of non-Yadav solidarity between what are colloquially termed the other backward classes (OBCs) and the extremely backward classes (EBCs) castes had necessitated the nurturing of a sufficiently rebellious but conveniently compliant face from the group to counter the possible consolidation of Muslim-Yadav (MY) alliance in Madhesh.

Since its formation, the Loktantrik Samajbadi Party (LSP) has always been a loose coalition of predominantly upper-caste and primarily comfortable class of politicians in a patron-client relationship with their relatively reliable vote banks. They have little incentive to engage in combative politics.

Perhaps it will take a while for Madheshi politicos to realise that conformity breeds contempt, and confrontation with the majoritarian ethnonationalists for political equality, economic justice and social dignity is the only way of making a mark on history.