The bones of democracy

Indeed, Nepal’s current political climate often looks as if it will all fall apart. Yet with the liberalisation of Nepal’s restrictive press laws and the registration of several hundred new publications last year alone, public scrutiny and vigorous debate is at last beginning to affect the pace of change.

Behind the scenes, there are some remarkably unshakeable individuals patiently making their way through the issues that require resolution in advance of the securing of this nation’s full status as a democracy. Chairman of the Interim Constitutional Committee retired Nepalese Supreme Court judge, human rights activist and freedom fighter Laxman Prasard Aryal is one such person.

As one of Kathmandu’s interminable daily power cuts darkens the entire northern side of the city, I stand in this unassuming former judge’s freezing cold study, scanning his library with the light of my mobile phone. A fan balances on a pile of official looking papers. Stacked between well thumbed copies of Swami Mukertanda’s Play of Consciousness, and The Life and Sayings of Ram Krishna are battered leather bound copies of the Indian Penal Code.

Pathak’s Hindu Law and Constitutional Aspects, and a copy of The Glorious Quran jostle for space with numerous awards lining Laxman Aryal’s crowded study. The retired judge enters silently; barely visible in the gloom. He waits until I’m sitting comfortably and a candle is lit to write by.

As a commentator on Nepalese political affairs, Laxman Aryal has history on his side. A reserved man rarely known to make public statements, he’s nonetheless one of Nepal’s most trusted public intellectuals: his vision of parliamentary democracy for his beloved country is unwavering, in spite of the extraordinary experience of being at the drafting board of not one, but two democratic constitutions in the last 25 years.

There would be few legal professionals with Aryal’s advantaged pragmatic insight and a lifetime’s share of disappointments anywhere in the world. But the judge parses my initial question about whether he sees any irony in being in the same extraordinary situation for the second time in his professional life.

Our country is entering a new era. Obviously there are problems. It is easy to conceive of great ideals but much harder to achieve them. It’s always difficult to move from theory to practice, much depends on the practice. We’re at a stage of dynamic evolution and it is a unique situation for any country to be in.

The retired judge is passionate about South Asian legal history and an acute observer of modern Nepalese politics. He explains the May 2006 people’s movement in the context of the peace movement’s emergence in 1951 during organised resistance to the royal family’s autocratic rule.

It was during this initial period of civil unrest that Nepal finally adopted the British legal system replacing the Napoleonic French legal code which had been in existence for several centuries. Aryal sees this too as historic testimony to the Nepalese people’s continuing faith in the need for democracy in their country.

Although centuries of repressive Shah rule had finally been overthrown, the success of the people’s movement proved temporary. By 1991, the King regressed and the Nepalese people rebelled again, this time with more serious consequences. Aryal remembers those days clearly.

All the shops closed, people were afraid - democracy existed on paper but it could not be practiced.

He explains that in 1951, the “democratic” King Tribhuvan decreed that the constitution would be ruled by the constitutional assembly. But, although liberal at the beginning, Aryal believes he became “ungrateful to his people. Relationships broke down and he began to remember the glories of his ancestors. But he was mistaken. He’d forgotten he’d been freed by the people.”