Opinion
City that is Kathmandu
Thomas Bell’s refreshing Kathmandu conducts a meticulous historical inquiry into the cityAtul K Thakur
The city of Kathmandu is often labeled a ‘misunderstood city’ by historians with a questionable stake in South Asia’s knowledge turf. While thinking through the state of historiography, it should be in collective consciousness, rather than individual accounts, where the flow of history matters. Kathmandu, thus, has been centre-ground for Nepal’s prolonged democratic transition, which effectively broke the monarchy and the old soft fabric of limited democracy. From 1990 onwards, the city has moved on a different trajectory—through relentless political overplay by its political classes, with less of a commitment to firm ground democracy and make it actually work.
Bell’s Kathmandu
The political churnings over the years have made scholars increasingly interested in Kathmandu—about its past, present, and future. Thomas Bell, a journalist with a personal connection to Kathmandu, has made an impressive effort in writing about his adopted city in the book, Kathmandu (Random House India). Bell, who initially spent years in Nepal reporting for The Daily Telegraph, The Economist, and other publications and now lives in Kathmandu, certainly appears well placed to write about this city with its complex past.
Bell calls Kathmandu the “greatest city of the Himalayas”, which he claims, is testament to the “unique survival of cultural practices” that died out in India long back. This is a hurried and untenable claim, since the diversity of Himalayan bastions need a thorough study, which the author lacks. Bell also knows Kathmandu for its “carnival of sexual license and hypocrisy, a jewel of art, a hotbed of communist revolution, a paradigm of failed democracy, a case study in bungled western intervention and an environmental catastrophe”. In doing so, he presents some truth but with limited insight, despite the thickness of the book. Bell also indulges in the seemingly popular trend of ‘English writing in Nepal’, ie, relying heavily on anecdotes.
This domineering style of expression from authors offers enough fodder to critics to make quick assessments. The ‘elitist overview’ of Nepal’s politics and culture is reaching dangerous levels in Nepal. This style, sadly, is being pursued more by those who have chosen to write in English, which is understandable. But sometimes, this keeps the writing from being grounded and the narrative tends to drift. Nepal, at times, can appear treated as a mere ‘subject’ by some of its representative writers.
Nevertheless, Thomas Bell’s Kathmandu is refreshing in the sense that it conducts a meticulous historical inquiry into the city and brings out some lesser known truths. The book’s core strength lies here. Having remained closed to the outside world until 1951, Kathmandu’s robustness started with the end of the Rana rulers in the country, bringing the Shah dynasty back at the helm of affairs and providing increasingly new ground to the idea of democracy. The march of democracy eventually lessened feudal influences among the masses and the regime at large as well, resulting in the recent republic.
With the democratisation drive and the strong impact of globalisation, traditional societies have undergone radical changes, finally coming about explicitly as a ‘modernisation of traditions’. Bell sees this, “The many layers of the city’s development are reflected in the successive generations of its gods and goddess, witches and ghosts, the comforts of caste, the ethos of aristocracy and kingship—and the lately destabilising spirits of consumer aspiration, individuality, egalitarianism, communism and democracy.”
An engaged chronicler
Kathmandu is Thomas Bell’s ‘labour of love’, which he attended to over a decade of his time in Nepal. As a reporter, he has keenly observed the shifting trends in national politics. Rarely documented facts come to the fore in this unique book about this unique city. This makes Kathmandu an important book for lay readers as well as scholars and enthusiasts wishing to learn more about Nepal and its hilly capital city.
Moving from culture, geography, religion, aid activities of multilateral orginisations to the difficult political scenario, Bell, at times, plays the role of an engaged chronicler with eloquence. Since 2001, Nepal has been on a rollercoaster—the ground for the abolition of the monarchy began with the royal massacre that year and the unusual experimentation with absolute rule by Gynanedra for a short while. The mainstreaming of the rebel Maoists and the newly-received influence of the Madhesi parties led to further changes and in the long run, sharply divided mainstream electoral politics along regional and ethnic lines.
Amidst all the changes of the last decade and a half, the voice for change in Nepali politics has been seemingly stifled, with the political players apparently already living in a ‘post-ideological’ time. No one is likely to be certain about Nepal’s present and future, as making issues contentious has become an essential characteristic of the political classes. Thus, in Nepal, a journalist’s work is now much more difficult to decipher than ever before. But this is also an exciting time to be in Kathmandu, as attested to by Thomas Bell’s Kathmandu. Nepal is a wonderful nation and its capital city deserves more wonderful accounts.
Thakur is a New Delhi-based journalist and writer ([email protected])