When George W. Bush left office on January 20, 2009, a few comics affected mock sorrow at the exit of a character who had provided them with so much material for mirthful ridicule. As the subject of general lampoon, even our own ruler of the time, king Gyanendra, seems to have thought he was a joke. That perhaps explains why on February 1, 2005, just 12 days after a triumphant second inaugural during which Bush had declared that “it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture”, the king decided usurp power in a pointed disregard to the sentiments of the ‘leader of the free world’. But, the joke was on Gyanendra as some months later when he had hoped to straddle the world stage at the UN general assembly in New York he was given to understand that he would receive the most royal of snubs from the US president were he to attend. To boost his own standing perhaps, Gyanendra decided to embark on a pointless tour of some African countries instead.

In another sense, Bush’s departure was a sad day for budding democracies like ours since there has been no obvious figure (besides perhaps Italy’s Silvio Berloscuni) who embodies the notion that democracy is still an experiment that can result in less-than-desired outcomes. If after more than two centuries, a country that prides itself on being the world’s oldest democracy can elect someone like Bush, and two times at that, it was easy to believe that we still have hope with our own lot of politicians.

Thanks to Donald J. Trump, the presidential candidate hopeful in next year’s US presidential elections, we can start believing again. The billionaire business with the swagger characteristic of some wealthy 

men let loose some memorably misogynist lines last week but so far that does not seem to have affected his standing among a substantial number of the electorate. If in a country that saw the first women’s rights convention more than 150 years ago, a would-be president can get away with such statements, we are not that badly off.

The Comrade’s wife 

I am referring here to recent reports in the media that quoted the CPN-UML Vice-Chairperson Bidhya Bhandari, who was providing comments at a forum on how the draft constitution needs to be amended to assure women’s rights. Dwelling on the ‘and/or’ debate on the ability of women to pass on citizenship to their children and the differential rights foreign men and women married to Nepalis have, Comrade Bhandari was of the view that the increasing clamour for women’s rights ‘is a result of the influence of western culture’. She further illuminated the audience with: “Women have been assured all constitutional rights but that has failed to satisfy women activists... Whether we like it or not, in eastern tradition and culture women give up their all for their men. This may be discriminatory but this is how our society functions.”

Bhandari seems to be basically suggesting that sans their menfolk, women have no identity and, hence, no rights. As someone whose sole claim to prominence in public life has been her status as the widow of the charismatic and still well-regarded Madan Bhandari, one can sympathise with her line of reasoning. But, it also betrays a singular lack of understanding of what a long and uphill battle it has been for the still ongoing quest for total women’s emancipation. For instance, after years of struggle by suffragettes the first country to grant women the right to vote was Finland in 1906 while Switzerland did not extend that courtesy until 1971. Yet, Bhandari seems to believe that women have always enjoyed such rights in the West and anyone trying to argue along similar lines for Nepali women is just a westernised feminist. For someone who would ostensibly have been schooled in words such as these from the Communist Manifesto—‘[t]he bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production’—it is simply astounding she has completely missed the point of Marx’s trenchant criticism of the ruling class in the west.

Laughable propositions

Obviously, such sentiments cut across party lines. Last week, I happened to watch a TV discussion featuring a leader each from the Nepali Congress and the UCPN (Maoist). Both were males, with the first called Khatiwada and the second Pandey. Although I did not get their full names both are probably somewhat prominent personalities in their parties, with Pandey a Constituent Assembly member as well. Grilled by the anchor on their prevaricating positions on the citizenship issue, Khatiwada came up with a variation of Bidhya Bhandari’s argument, including implying that any woman marrying a foreigner does it for the Green Card, Permanent Resident Card, or some similar document. In the course of replying, it suddenly dawned on him that it is foreign men married to Nepali women who are disadvantaged and with unconcealed glee, he went on and on about how it is that they were actually discriminating against men and ergo he and his party were all for the rights of women. That is the depths to which our politicians can sink to.

The honourable Pandey was more circumspect in his defence but it basically revolved around some ‘scientific’ analysis (what else from a Maoist?) of the possible demographic invasion from across the northern and southern border along with a vague reference to ‘Fijification’. Clearly, the north was an add-on to balance the real opposition to the danger that many leftists perceive in the possibility of Indians swarming across the border to (perhaps forcibly) marry Nepali women, gain citizenship, and ultimately take over the country. A laughable proposition that may be but that is the kind of thinking that dominates Nepali politics at the highest levels.

Bad to worse 

Talking of comparisons with other countries, in August 2014, the American think tank, the Pew Research Centre, reported that there are a total of 27 countries in the world that do not allow women to pass on citizenship to their husbands and their children. Nepal was also included in the list because of the discrimination foreign men face compared to foreign women married to Nepali nationals, for all the administrative hoops that children of foreign fathers have to jump through to gain citizenship, and also for the outright refusal by government officials to grant such papers in contravention to our current law.

Of these 27 countries, there are 15 that do not allow the transmission of nationality from women to children. If the ‘mother and father’ provision is retained in 

the constitution, we would earn the dubious distinction of joining a group consisting of Brunei, Burundi, Jordan, Iran, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Swaziland, Syria, Togo and the United Arab Emirates, hardly any exemplars of a free and democratic society. That, I think, is a good enough reason to go for ‘mother or father’.