As soon as I posted yesterday, I read a news about IRA (Irish Republican Army). A statement from Gerry Adams was published urging all the volunteers of IRA to disarm. That prompted me to think about the armed revolution. I was ambivalent about peaceful movement and armed movement and recently I was leaning more towards an armed movement than a peaceful movement for a radical change, especially at the backdrop of what is happening in Nepal.

The king with all the backing from the top brass of RNA (Royal Nepalese Army) sacked the then prime minster, Sher Bahadur Deuba, and took reign in his own hand, proclaiming to improve the situation in country and bring it back on the track within three years. He dumped most of the political figures in Nepal in prison for quite a time, and only after a lot of pressure from within and without the country, he agreed to release most of them. Some are still being rearrested and released periodically, as if it is a game of hide-n-seek.

On the other hand, Maoist, self-proclaiming to be our savior, are fighthing almost an unwinnable war (or revolution or terrorism, depending upon which point of view you look from), at least without the active backing from the populace, which is lacking right now. In two of the recent statements, one yesterday and another a week ago, Prachanda urged the legal political parties to form a commonly agreed upon team so that dialogue for the future could be started. And today I read a newspiece on Kantipur-online about a dialogue between district level committes of the political parties and the Maoists. That is a very good progress.

Still, the question remains, is dialogue the way out? As long as the army remains under the monarch and his coterie of relatives, and as long as the powerful countries consider twin pillars, the Constitutional Monarchy and the Multiparty Democracy, as the only option available for Nepal, is the dialogue between political parties meaningful? I think it is. As open discussion between the rebels and the peoples progresses and as it matures with time, the countries that have stakes, either explicit or implicit, will be forced reconsider their current stance. Active participation from the populace on this dialogical process will force them to relent their backing, though implicit right now, from the monarch, and start supporting the citizens.

Monarchies, they are things of the past now - even the ceremonial ones. They no longer are relevant and have no place in the modern world. They are history and must only remain in the history books. Country can no longer stand to be jagir of selected few and live under their whims. But anachronistically, we have one in our own country, which refusing to be bounded within the constitution, took reign in its own hand and is now an abosolute one.

Some of our great-great-grandfathers and mothers accepted great-great-grandfather of current monarch as their savior, which was sad and we cannot do anything about that. But that doesn't mean we must also accept this monarch as our savior. Delegation of the control over my life to some king is not the thesis with which I, and I am sure many of us, don't live these days anymore. I like to believe that I am in control over my life, which sadly is not the case in this increasing global and interconnected world. Even then, when I don't devolve my right over my own life willfully to some selected few persons or some selected few organizations, I will have some reason to fight to bring the control back to myself that is being taken away from me.

Thomas Paine, in his masterpiece "Common Sense", made a very good point about monarchy and what is wrong with it. He wrote (a king when he was accepted as the king) "though himself might deserve some descent degree of honors of his contemporaries, yet his descendents might be far too unworthy to inherit them". Likewise, our forefathers had a good reason (I hope so) to accept Prithvi Narayan Shah as their king, I do not find even a shred of good reason to accept Gyanendra and after that his only successor Paras as my king.


Today I read a constitution for future Nepal, drafted by Paramendra Bhagat. It was circulating in the Internet for quite a long time now, but nobody, it seems, is taking it seriously, at least in public. May be many of us don't believe that there are enough people to dare to back such a constitution yet, or may it be that we believe it is the job of politicians to draft a constitution, and not that of a common citizen, or may it be that whoever read the draft, felt jealously condescending toward the writer to comment on it.