While comparing the omnipotent ruler of imperial France with the “Omnipotence of the Majority in the United States,” the early 19th-century French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville observed: “The French, under the old monarchy, held as a given that the king could do no wrong…” Americans, Tocqueville concluded, held the same opinion about the will of the majority—it could do no wrong.

If majoritarianism produces a government as powerful as an omnipotent sovereign, it stands to reason that it doesn’t take long for an ethnonational democracy to turn into a “tyranny of the majority”. The experience of Nepal has been no different after 2015, when a controversial constitution was steamrolled upon protesting Madheshis.

To mark 10 years since the victory of Khas-Arya ethnonationalists in the promulgation of Nepal’s constitution, the government has decreed that the nation must celebrate the day of majoritarian triumph in a special way. Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli has crowned himself chair of the main celebration committee. After all, who else could orchestrate such a spectacle of hollow pageantry—an elaborate self-congratulation disguised as a national festival?

Triumphal ceremony

The script appears frighteningly familiar. On September 20, 2015, amidst the boycott of almost all Madhesh-dependent parties, a document agreed upon by some backroom manoeuvrings and a midnight deal was submitted to the constituent assembly. The unicameral legislature passed the draft without even a pretence of clause-wise discussion. Hurriedly issued party whips of the three major parties dominated by Khas-Arya leadership helped smoothen the process. The then-President Ram Baran Yadav promulgated the fast-tracked statute.

The divisive new constitution tore the country apart. While the hills and mountains celebrated victory with the lighting of lamps, the Tarai-Madhesh plains remained in darkness, mourning their martyrs with a voluntary blackout. While time may heal all wounds, the scars of unjust prosecution linger for generations.

A decade later, the gap between the rhetoric of inclusion and the lived reality of Madheshis’ exclusion has only grown. Instead of introspection on the Constitution Day every year, there are grand celebrations and fireworks; instead of accountability, victorious ethnonationalists deliver self-congratulatory speeches. The constitution has devolved from a social contract into little more than a prop, wheeled out annually in late September for pomp and show at Tundikhel.

This year, the government promises an even grander farce: Three days of compulsory joy, from September 18 to 20, both inside Nepal and in embassies abroad. Diplomats will dutifully light candles, smile for photographs, and send dispatches home about Nepal’s “vibrant democracy”—a democracy where political cartels divvy up power while those at the margins still fight to be recognised as equal citizens.

And what a committee has been assembled for this spectacle! A catalogue of the state’s power elite: Deputy Prime Ministers, ministers, state ministers, the Chief Secretary, the Army Chief, assorted mandarins, and security bosses. It is less a celebration of the people’s constitution than a reunion of the very cabal—the signatories of the 16-point conspiracy and their accomplices—that drafted it, passed it, guarded it, and continues to derive maximum benefit from it.

So yes, the constitution will be feted with music concerts, lamps and speeches. The irony, of course, is that the more the state insists on celebrating its supposed success, the clearer it becomes what is being hidden: Not the strength of democracy, but its capture, so much so that members of parliament of the ruling coalition were recently made to sign upon blank pieces of paper!

Signatories of the blank page will probably be asked to verify their signatures when the document is used for whatever purpose. While the legality of such an act may be questionable, its morality in a democracy is undeniably suspect. In a republic dominated by a triumvirate of strongmen—Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, Sher Bahadur Deuba and Pushpa Kamal Dahal—it seems political morality has lost its meaning.

Ten years on, the constitution is less a foundation for the future than the velvet curtain behind which the same clique of three septuagenarian men continue their long-running monopoly over power. What is being celebrated is not democracy at all, but the perfection of ethnonational state capture, in the sense of “rulers favouring their own ethnic or regional groups rather than the nation as such…”

The Madheshis—an othered community, the “them” of Khas-Arya ethnonationalists “us”—are left with the classical three options: voice, loyalty and exit. With the co-optation of the palanquin press, the voice of the externalised communities has almost been muted. The Madheshis in Khas-Arya-dominated parties must prove their loyalty to the leadership for meagre rewards.

While personal exit remains an option for the frustrated, ambitious and willing individuals, their departure can lead to the erosion of community strength and a descent into more difficult circumstances for those left behind. The Madheshis are in a no-win situation under the present political dispensation.

Creeping capture

There is a Nepali fable about a cunning jackal who would cry out, ‘Be careful of the hawk up above!’ and then, while everyone was distracted looking at the empty sky, would run away with the hen. The permanent establishment of Nepal (PEON) used a similar strategy after 2006 by depicting state capture by the Maoists while it quietly went about consolidating its hold over instruments of power.

The former president Yadav’s post facto justification for reinstating Chief of Army Staff Rookmangud Katawal does not change the fact that his decision was a blatant violation of constitutional provisions. Thereafter, flouting the charter came to be normalised under the nebulous concept of ‘doctrine of necessity.’

The insidious nature of state capture makes it hard to identify and even harder to resist. The peace rallies of the White Shirts—largely the urban bourgeoisie of Kathmandu, unhappy with the composition of the Constituent Assembly—in May 2010 and May 2012 prepared the ground for the unchallengeable restoration of ABCD (Aryan, Bahun, Chhetri and Dashnami) domination in national life.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court had decided that the right of the Constituent Assembly to extend its term was unconstitutional. Irony committed suicide when the Chief Justice then went on to head a patently extra-constitutional government based on a political deal rather than the constitution. Foundation of an orchestrated election, fast-tracked constitution and restoration of an ethnonational regime were already in place when the second Constituent Assembly met in January 2014 under the chairmanship of Surya Bahadur Thapa.

The final phase of creeping capture began with the 16-point deal in June 2015, and it continues unabated to this day. Key positions in the judiciary, bureaucracy and constitutional bodies are divvied up and filled with loyalists of the ethnonational triumvirate of Sharma, Dahal and Deuba. Fixers make arrangements to sell wasteful projects to the government for a consideration. Interest groups influence legislation. In a reversal of its role, the media afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable.

The ethnonational capture of the state in the name of ‘peace and stability’ is so complete that people no longer even question the morality of the two biggest political parties of the country coming together for the benefit of each other. People, enjoy the ethnocratic spectacle!