Sher Bahadur Deuba is among the figures in Nepal’s democratic history whose political biography has always carried an uncomfortable contradiction. He fought against the Panchayat system, went to jail, struggled for democracy, travelled a long journey in the politics of the Nepali Congress, became prime minister five times and also served as party president. The contradiction is not that he remained in power for a long time; in democratic politics, power itself is no crime. The real irony lies in how a leader who struggled for democracy gradually began to appear, in his public presentation, close to the same political culture his generation had fought against. I would call this irony the ‘Panchayat-isation’ of Deuba.

This is not an accusation that Deuba has become a Panch. For the active workers of the Panchayat system, Panch was a political identity. In Deuba’s case, it is a political metaphor.

A recent Congress meeting has once again brought his irony to the fore. Deuba’s repeated assertion, “I am a Hindu”, is, in itself, not unusual. Religious faith is a personal right. The problem begins when private faith becomes linked to the language of the reorganisation of a political organisation, national identity and political mobilisation. Then it can no longer be viewed merely within the sphere of private faith. This is where the major contradiction in Deuba’s political journey comes to the surface.

A major feature of the Panchayat system was placing the individual above the institution. The king was not merely a symbol of the nation; he was the centre of the state’s legitimacy. The space for political debate was limited. Leadership mattered more than organisation, discipline more than ideas, and power more than the citizen.

Democracy had promised exactly the opposite. In a democracy, leaders are not institutions. They are temporary representatives of the institution. A party is not the extension of any one leader, but a structure of ideas, organisation and collective decision-making. The citizen is not merely a voter but also one who questions. Yet, changing the institutional framework of democracy does not always change political culture. Panchayat-isation begins sometimes in the name of nationalism, sometimes in the name of religion, and sometimes in the name of a leader’s popularity.

It means excessive reverence for leadership, discomfort with questions, the growing dominance of the individual over the organisation, the tendency to treat political succession as natural, and giving more importance to the convenience of power than to the citizen. In this sense, Panchayat-isation is not only Deuba’s story. Deuba has become an interesting symbol of it because he belongs to the generation of leaders who had opposed the Panchayat.

His political legacy also faces another question. Should the future of a democratic party remain bound to one personality from its past? The crisis of the Nepali Congress is not only Deuba, but he has certainly become a symbol of that crisis.

It is useful to recall BP Koirala’s Congress. BP did not regard democracy merely as the process of multi-party elections. At the centre of his socialism were citizen dignity, political freedom and social justice. There was space for dissent and debate. BP himself could be questioned. Therefore, merely taking BP’s name repeatedly does not keep his political tradition alive. Sometimes the opposite happens.

Today, within the Congress, there appears a danger of BP being used as a certificate of political legitimacy. BP’s name to prove the continuity of a leader, to sanctify a decision, to make a political turn historical. But what would be the most honest way of remembering him? Perhaps this: to preserve the freedom to question BP himself.

The question of religion in Deuba’s recent presentation is contextual here. It is necessary to repeat that a leader calling himself a Hindu is not anti-democratic. Believing or not believing in a religion is an individual’s freedom. But Nepal has already advanced on the constitutional journey of a republic, federalism and pluralism. That is why, when the top leader of an old democratic party links religious identity with the language of political restructuring and national identity, questions naturally arise. Even in the document that emerged from the meeting of Deuba’s faction in the Congress, there appears an urge to link the Sanatan Dharma and cultural tradition with national identity. The problem is not religion itself, but its potential to become a political instrument.

The Panchayat too had constructed an official cultural imagination of the nation. It allowed space for diversity, but it did not insist democratically on the political equality of diversity. The challenge of the republic is different. The nation’s cultural identity need not be one. Citizens must be equal. In Nepal’s cultural heritage, the place of Hindu tradition is undisputed. But the constitutional identity of the modern nation must be kept separate from the religious majority's cultural self-confidence.

Nepal is not the country of only one culture. Madheshis, Janajatis, Dalits, Muslims, Tharus and many other communities are citizens of this republic, each carrying their own identity, memory and aspirations. Democracy’s beauty is precisely that the state does not make any one identity the contractor of nationalism. Therefore, the question is not only of Deuba, but also of the Congress. Are we using the language of religion to embrace pluralism or to dissolve pluralism into a cultural majority?

Yesterday, there was the jai-jaikaar of the king. Today there can be the jai-jaikaar of the leader. Yesterday, being close to the palace was power. Today, being around the party leadership can become power. Yesterday, asking questions was uncomfortable. Today, dissent can be sidelined by labelling it as factionalism. The Panchayat has gone. But the Panchayati psychology has somewhere remained within us.

Perhaps this could be the greatest irony of Deuba’s political life; he had struggled against the Panchayat, but history is now placing him before another test. Can he rise above his own political legacy for the institutional transformation of a democratic party? A leader’s greatness is not decided only by how long they have led. Sometimes greatness lies in the capacity to leave the place they have created for others. In political life, there comes a time when a leader moves from the place of making history to the place of becoming history. When this transition cannot be accepted, even a democratic leader begins to create a small court around them. And it is from here that the question goes beyond Deuba.

We changed the constitution. But has political culture changed? We brought federalism, but did the centralised political mentality change? If the answers to these questions continue to remain negative, then the problem will not be only Deuba’s. Panchayat-isation of Deuba will no longer remain a satirical expression used for one person. It will become the name of that old shadow that is still alive within Nepal’s democracy. The Panchayat system has ended. But the end of the Panchayati mindset is perhaps still pending.