On June 2, 2025, UML Chairman and Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli launched what can only be described as a jhole campaign, an open call for unconditional loyalty to his words and actions. A poster featuring Oli against the backdrop of Nepal’s map and national flag proclaimed: “It is far more honourable to carry a bag for the country’s development and change than to be a slave of a feudal family.” Above it, a bold tagline declared: “I am jhole.”

The jhole culture, long present in the shadows, found public expression on that day. Its emergence coincided with the consolidation of Oli’s influence within his party and in national politics. Alongside his rise came a discernible erosion of democratic spirit. Oli displayed increasing intolerance towards dissent, preferring loyalty over dialogue. Even seemingly constructive disagreement often met with his displeasure, while public displays of allegiance, however irrational or opportunistic, were rewarded through patronage. Those who benefited from such proximity and submission became known—not without scorn—as jholes.

Faced with the growing backlash against this sycophantic culture, a prudent leader might have acknowledged its corrosive effects and sought to restore the space for reasoned debate, something central to loktantra (democracy). But Oli, a habitual rationaliser, with oratory dexterity, attempted instead to normalise and glorify it. His “I am jhole” slogan was not satire. It was a call to legitimise blind loyalty, celebrate conformity and shed the stigma of being a passive follower. If the Chairman is a jhole, the message implied, then no follower should feel ashamed to be one. In doing so, Oli sought to convert a pejorative into a badge of honour—reducing politics to a utilitarian, transactional exercise aimed at self-preservation for those at the top.

Within the UML, this culture is shielded by the doctrine of democratic centralism, a Leninist principle originally meant to ensure internal discipline after open deliberation, as in other left parties. In theory, decisions are made democratically. In practice, however, the Chairman’s preferences become party directives and final decisions. Any form of contestation—no matter how principled—is neither expected nor permitted. Democratic centralism, in such an environment, becomes a euphemism for authoritarianism cloaked in democratic procedure. The jhole campaign thus served not only to institutionalise obedience within the party but to normalise it across the broader political landscape.

Were Plato alive and rewriting The Republic today, he might well add a chapter on the ‘jhole turn’ of democracy. He would define the turn as a descent into sycophancy, where citizens’ moral compasses are surrendered to blind loyalty, lending force to his fear that democracies risk collapsing into tyranny when citizens exalt demagogues over principles. When personalities are placed above principles, Plato warned more than two millennia ago, the soul of the state begins to decay.

Nepal’s political predicament mirrors this very decline today. What once claimed to be a vibrant democracy is increasingly hollowed out by the rise of the jhole cult, particularly within the left, where ideological integrity has been replaced by cult-like obedience. This is not loyalty grounded in conviction. It is a calculated submission, where critical reasoning and moral agency are sacrificed for access, patronage and protection. In such a system, democratic ideals give way to ritualistic conformity, veneration replaces vision and justice descends into a theatre of flattery and fear.

The corrosion does not end with politics. It seeps into society’s moral consciousness, eroding the shared sense of responsibility and dulling the collective capacity for sympathy, empathy and solidarity with those in need. The latest example of this corrosion is evident in the transitional justice process, culminating in the formation of the third round of transitional justice commissions on May 14, 2025, following those in 2015 and 2020. From the selection of commissioners to the conduct of consultations, the process contradicted the foundational transitional justice principle of victim-centrism. Victims of the Maoist conflict, whose moral and legal claims should have been central, were, at best, tokenised and, at worst, deliberately marginalised.

The search committee, formed in October 2024 and reconstituted in March 2025 due to its failure to deliver on the task, was widely perceived as a political conduit. Victim groups have alleged that party leaders pre-approved the commissioner’s shortlist: Reportedly, four of the 10 appointees have ties to the UML, three to the Nepali Congress and three to the Maoists. This partisan allocation strips the process of its ethical grounding and instead represents a power-sharing exercise designed to placate political elites.

When a committee member from the National Human Rights Commission responded to victims’ concerns with the question, “Is it necessary to fail the government in every task?” (Kantipur, May 12), it betrayed the mindset that underpins the jhole culture. Criticism, particularly when voiced by those who have suffered rights violations, is not treated as a democratic right or moral imperative, but as an act of disloyalty. Even in matters as solemn as reckoning with war crimes and enforced disappearances, political loyalty is privileged over moral responsibility.

Justice is not merely procedural; at its heart, it is a moral constant. The concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, truth and accountability, pain and pleasure are civilisational contrasts that precede political ideas and institutions. A genuinely transformative transitional justice process must be rooted in these values. It must honour victims not merely through legal mechanisms but through an ethical commitment to truth, dignity and collective responsibility. Their yearning for justice should be treated as an entitlement, and their agency recognised as that of rights holders.

But when the jhole cult infiltrates even this domain, Nepal risks losing not only its democratic credibility, but its moral soul. The path forward requires more than institutional reform. It calls for a moral reckoning, a return to conscience over calculation, reason over blind allegiance and justice over loyalty.

As we neglect the civic virtue of collective sacrifice in service of the common good, we become complicit not only in the transactional commodification of human dignity but in the slow undoing of our moral conscience.