For over four decades, the MaHa duo of Madan Krishna Shrestha and Hari Bansha Acharya have tried to maintain a delicate balance between conventionality and contrariness. Having risen from modest backgrounds through dedication, tenacity and hard work combined with an inborn talent for showmanship and some luck, the MaHa duo perhaps realised early on in their career that moderation is the safest route to social acceptance and financial success. While conformity is the enemy of satire, radicalism runs the risk of antagonising the bourgeoisie that can pay for performing arts.

In a society where deprivation is widespread, the success of public figures—even in arts and literature—is measured by their worldly possessions and the company they keep. The MaHa duo maintained a blistering pace on their journey to the top through modal transformation from stage shows to music cassettes and from cinemas to telefilms. They have sung songs, lent their voice to commercial jingles and appeared in advertising clips selling everything from construction materials to public interest messages.

The hoopla over Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) notwithstanding, the profit sector in Nepal isn’t too keen on supporting arts, literature and communication unless one of their own kind is involved in the activity. In addition to having more pressing priorities, the government prefers performers who have little shame in selling their creativity for political patronage. That leaves a very narrow strip of the middle class willing to pay for socially conscious creativity. Artistes often find that there isn’t much relationship between the applause they get and the collection at the gates.

This is where the donors step in: They are willing to fund any activity as long as the proposal is so fine-tuned that it can be sold to their home office as a part of humanitarian assistance, development effort or promotion of geopolitical interests. Such activities are a win-win for all—donors acquire social validation in the host country, performers gain higher visibility coupled with an adequate honorarium, and the audience gets to experience better-produced performances.

Apart from being extremely talented, the MaHa duo are admirably adept at gauging the social wind, taking the public pulse, measuring the mood of the moment and maintaining political correctness with just the right dose of cultural contrariness. In support of the People’s Movement of 1990 and the April Uprising of 2006 for the restoration of democracy, they came out late but conferred higher visibility to the political campaigns. During the decade of armed conflict, they were measured in their criticism of violence, but joined the chorus for peace of the White Shirts quite vociferously.

In the post-2006 uncertainty, perhaps influential donors were interested in promoting peace, stability and prosperity rather than political empowerment, economic equity and social justice. After the 16-point conspiracy, the focus of the MaHa duo’s ‘performativism’—a neologism signifying activism through performance meant to signal virtue—seems to have shifted completely to socio-cultural messaging while they continue to be engaged in commercial endorsements. Their apparent apathy towards the regressive agenda of Hindutva politics at home and wet dreams of maniacal monarchists abroad seems to have angered a vacuous population on the asocial media.

The outrage of the chatterati against unfounded allegations heaped upon the MaHa duo appears to have been louder because one of their own has been drawn into the mess of their making. The duo has remained the epitome of mainstream consciousness of thought, behaviour and action for decades and if their name can be dragged into controversy, the reputation of none of them is safe. The Khas-Arya bourgeoisie receives the propaganda of a Dalit, a Janjati, a Madheshi and even one of their own woman or any LGBTQIA+ person being vilified with unsuppressed glee. Calumny against a Maoist sympathiser calls for calm hearing of PLUs—people like us—but an attack on an icon of mainstream performativism must be resisted with solidarity and creativity.

Alternative facts

The art of being economical with the truth is as old as politics. In the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, the ever-truthful Yudhisthir agrees to recite a half-truth loudly, “Ashwatthama is dead” and then murmur the blatant lie “know not whether man or elephant”. Such niceties are no longer needed. President Donald Trump lies, repeats the lie and then asserts that it has become truth because he said so several times. Elon Musk, the wrecker-in-chief of President Trump’s broligarchy, seems to think that he is free to reframe reality to suit his narrative and finds nothing wrong in mixing up Mozambique’s Gaza Province with the Gaza strip of Palestinian land.

The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi loves to throw acronyms and make promises that are then defended by his acolytes as mere jumla—wordplays—that are essential elements of electoral politics. But some half-truths can create mayhem, just as the propaganda about 144-year Mahakumbha recently did: Millions upon millions of believers travelled to have a holy dip at the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna rivers. Stampedes caused injury and death not just at the site but also at New Delhi railway station, which led firebrand West Bengal Chief Minister term it “Mrityu Kumbh”—the death pot.

The water of Ganga at the confluence has been determined to be unfit for taking a dip—up to 1,400 times more polluted than standards—but the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh insists that it’s pure. Even a professor of the Banaras Hindu University came up with an alternative fact to assert that Ganga water ‘Always remains Amrit’. During crises, people prefer to believe a populist or a charlatan for assurances rather than the competent authority—US epidemiologist Anthony S Fauci or the National Green Tribunal (NGT) of India—that offers a picture of nuanced realities.

Credulous masses

Experts assert that confirmation bias, emotional needs, social pressure and wishful thinking make most people accept disinformation and misinformation more easily than examine their context and question motives. Belief comes naturally to most people, while the ability to doubt and question the manufactured reality and alternative facts requires some cultivation. With the mainstream media also chasing virality, the art of questioning has degenerated into the craft of maligning individuals and sabotaging institutions.

The chase for virality as an escalator to political success helps spinmeisters paint an alarming picture of the present or future and then sell their clients as the only possible saviour. After all, everyone wants to know the risks—real or imagined—and follow a leader who can take them to the safety, stability, peace, prosperity and glory they deserve. The epidemic of elected autocracy owes its success to the attractiveness of “Lies, Damn Lies, and Viral Content”.

Let’s face it: USAID is not a charity organisation. It’s “A $42 billion soft-power glove … to go along with the Pentagon’s nearly $900 billion hard-power fist” to protect and promote geopolitical interests of the US. The American Kakistocracy, with President Trump as its mascot, has little interest in democracy or human rights and looks at the ideas of diversity, equity and inclusion with disdainful contempt. There is a reason the biggest beneficiaries of USAID’s largesse in the past—the monarchists and PLUs—have become its fiercest critics. Signals emanating from Washington have changed.