Kings are the vicars
of God on earth, James I of England had declared.
He was not a bad individual. He was a loving
father and a good person. Towards other human
beings, he was quite natural and sociable.
What he believed was his conviction. He believed
whatever power the Parliament had was the
grace and mercy of the Monarch. He would not
tolerate any move to enhance the power of
the parliament. He was of the view that king
could tax the people according to his will
and pleasure. If the parliament said that
the King should live of his own, he could
not tolerate it even as an argument. It seemed
illogical to him that a body of men could
have powers over the king over whom even God
had no powers. This was in fact the beginning
of the quarrel between kings and parliaments
in England.
In a parliamentary system, monarchy is anachronism.
Of course the people of England retains it
as tradition. If the king is there, or if
the queen is there, as an ornament, it is
just that and nothing more. In this circumstance
none wants to upset the apple cart. The argument
of King Magnus in Shaws Apple Cart is
this. He could return to power with more powers
by getting elected as President. If that is
the case, people would continue with a king
with little powers rather than with a President
with greater powers.
Nepal is our neighbour.
Nepal was continuing with democracy while
King Gyanendra upset the apple cart the
other way round; he dispensed with the parliament
and dismissed the legislature unceremoniously.
The cabinet under Koirala was expelled.
Political leaders were put in prison. All
powers were combined in the King. It was
in the 17Th century that Montesqueu had
written his Spirit Of The Laws. He initiated
the doctrine of he Separation of powers
in the book. He redefined law as the necessary
relation rising from the nature of things.
In essence, it meant that law is a relation
between human beings; its indirect meaning
was that it was not the dictate of the Bourbon
King. That is the greatness of political
philosophy. It always conveys a meaning.
Whether it is of Thomas More or of Rousseau,
political writings have an eternal implication.
In spite of the fact that Aristotle who
laid the foundations of political philosophy
had justified slavery as an essential institution,
Aristotle is relevant even today in the
sense that he justified the existence and
continuation of state, as it is essential
for the life and good life of the people
respectively.
So gradually the doctrine
and practice of popular sovereignty was
gaining ground. Much blood was shed from
the 17Th century onwards for this. Thomas
More was beheaded, a large number of roundheads
lost their lives for the establishment of
the principle of the supremacy of the parliament
over the king. Rights became a legally accepted
fact, not the rights of the monarch, but
the right of the people. Gradually rights
began to include economic rights, too and
it was being realized that the actual owners
of the wealth were not the real owners of
wealth. So politics got a touch of economics.
And now it is an established fact that politics
is primarily an economic fact. That is how
the term political economy was derived although
the good old Brahmin Kautilya had idea of
it.
Yet another definition of
the people was necessary, and this was done
in due course of time. People, however,
were deemed to consist of the third estate,
just as the lowest of the four classes,
the Shudras, in the case of India and allied
nations. The third estate led the French
Revolution. The third estate included the
wealthy capitalists who constituted the
mainstay of the class. The commonalty was
considered to have a leadership of the capitalists.
It was a revolt of the feudal days. Though
possessed of great quantum of wealth, the
capitalists had no power, i.e. political
power. The guild owners of the middle age
Europe nurtured this hidden passion for
political power for a very long period.
And justifiably, too. At last when they
got the power, they enacted to retain that
power for their economic interests. Laissez-faire
is one such law. They wanted to be let alone
with their money and things that could be
bought with that. A new heaven of liberty
had come in existence. A beggar could be
free and independent to sleep in a mansion
in the posh area of the city as also the
rich man could sleep on the bed of mud under
the Paris Bridge. One was not possible;
the other was impractical.
What is intended here is to show the intricacies
involved in political practices. The ideas
of socialism are the result of these intricacies.
The equitable distribution of wealth was
considered to be Utopian, an adjective derived
from the title of the great book by Thomas
More. It might be easy to confront Scyllas
or traverse the Charybdis, but it would
be impossible to find citizens ruled
by good and wholesome laws, that is an exceeding
rare and hard thing. Thomas More was
retelling what his own creation Raphael
Hythloday had told him. But as he
marked many fond and foolish laws in those
new found lands, so he rehearsed divers
acts and constitutions whereby these cities,
nations, countries, and kingdoms may take
example to amend their faults, enormities,
and errors. ( Utopia- Book I) . And
again from threes intricacies were born
the ideas of imperialism and of communism,
two diametrically opposed political and
economic outlooks and practices. Both have
been experimented, the latter having no
precedent, had to create its own working
norms; it made and failed in many countries.
But it continues to have great influence
in many a country and among vaster societies.
Nepalese society has a powerful communist
movement. The movement has an inherent faculty
of giving birth diverse ways of changing
the society from immediate revolution to
a leap-like change as and when things are
ripened. The Maoists normally deviate greatly
from the latter path. They try to forcibly
ripen the circumstances.
And now, to the point,
Nepal has a great scope for democracy as
all forces of democracy from the capitalist-oriented
factors to the Communists and Maoists want
it. They fight for democracy and establishment
for a parliamentary system. It was in this
circumstance that Gyanendra dissolved the
Parliament. Popular uprisings do not evolve
according to decided agenda. The struggle
decided for a specific period gradually
erupted into a great popular movement whereby
the king had no other recourse but to surrender.
Still he tried to play tricks on the people;
he said the seven parties could discuss
and form a govt. He was not still ready
to reinstate the Parliament he had dissolved.
Like the Eleven Years Tyranny of Charles
in England, the king was fostering the idea
of a rule without a parliament.
The seven parties categorically rejected
the offer. But they did not know what to
do as the king had already dissolved their
parliament. It was here that the leader
of the Indian Communists Sitaram yechury
came to the picture. He formulated that
the king first reinstate the cabinet he
had dismissed, then summon the parliament
had dissolved. Then things would have their
own course in the natural way. The Maoists
were talked with to put a stop to the present
pattern of struggle. The Nepalese political
parties accepted this proposal. The Govt.
of India that had accepted the earlier proposal
by the king was almost to cut a sorry figure
, had Sitaram Yechury proposal was not accepted
and then things took a course according
to it.
And now people of Nepal have regained
their political freedom. Their economic
emancipation is yet to be gained.
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