If Lord Krishna reincarnates in 2005 Nepal to harness his Mahabharata wisdom and experience to resolve our conflicts, would he not find himself in a state of quandary?
Lord Krishna is a legendary figure in Mahabharata epic for craftsmanship in war and peace. The Gita was the product of the Kurukshetra battlefield. He tried his best to clinch peace between two belligerent sides, the Pandavas and the Kauravas. He failed in his peace mission but he had no regret because he believed it was his duty to try but success was not under his control.
He would find in Nepal the triangular nature of our conflict the most intriguing part as he was an expert on bilateral dispute. It was easy for him to clarify the bilateral conflict between the Pandavas and Kauravas. He, therefore, made a fervent appeal to King Dhritarastra, the blind king during his peace mission to Hastinapur kingdom before the war was declared, to concede to his pleas for settlement of dispute by giving the Pandavas what was legitimately theirs. That was just a matter of five villages on which the five brothers of Pandavas had laid claim.
He could apply the formula to sort out the bilateral dispute between the Nepali king and the political parties. He can, in that case, ask the king to restore the parliament that the political parties claim as theirs. Lord Krishna would make a strong point in that they are not asking for the royal throne for making peace. But if a real war breaks out like in the Mahabharata, the king might lose not only his throne but also the whole family as King Dhritarashtra lost all his 100 sons in the Kurukshetra battlefield. But what about the Maoists?
Lord Krishna would have a hard time, as Nisha Pillai of BBC recently admitted, in comprehending the complex nature of Nepali conflicts. The political dispute between the king and the political parties does not actually compare with the Kurukshetra war that was fought with weaponry. The political parties are asking for their rightful share in power but not threatening to raise arms against the king as the Pandavas were ready to do in case peace could not be negotiated.
Does the Kurukshetra war compare with the Maoist insurgency that is going on with the use of modern weaponry for 10 years imponderably longer than the 18-day fight between the Pandavas and Kauravas? Supposing that there is some kind of resemblance between the two, there is no way Lord Krishna would ask them to cease fire and stop fighting. He in fact championed the path of war for a righteous cause and emboldened a depressed Arjuna to raise his weapon against his own kith and kin. He even justified the killing on the basis of pre-ordained divine drama. Could he give his judgment as to who is right and who is wrong? Are the rebels wrong in raising arms for a cause that they believe right? Is the state wrong in suppressing a rebellion irrespective of its right or wrong cause? It is not all that simple as was the conflict of property and clash of egos between cousins in Mahabharata.
Lord Krishna had actually an easy time in dealing with the single issue of autocracy during the Mahabharata times. Whether it is the Kauravas or Pandavas to rule in Hastinapur kingdom, that was unquestionably an absolute monarchy. But in 2005 Nepal, there are too many issues involved even to confuse a divine genius like Lord Krishna. How would he, who knew nothing but absolute monarchy, digest the multi-dimensional monarchy ranging from constructive monarchy to constitutional monarchy and further to ceremonial monarchy? An encounter with a new phenomenon of democracy in its variety like parliamentary democracy, presidential democracy, guided democracy, people's democracy, social democracy, multi-party democracy, partyless democracy etc. would be confounding even a divine brain, not to speak of small human brain we have been endowed with.
As if it is not enough to baffle Lord Krishna in his mediatory role in modern Nepal, there are shrill cries of republicanism from the sidelines of the political fray. Do they need to be heeded and, if so, how and how much? It is the burning and persistent question that is worrying not only the institution directly affected but also those who are in the periphery. Even if one chooses to forget them as a nonchalant force, how can a mediator of supreme knowledge ignore the foreign powers, which have greater say in Nepali war and peace than that of the internal actors? Lord Krishna, at least, can appreciate the international players following the behavioral pattern of the Kauravas and Pandavas, who, during the war times, used to fight from dawn to dusk but used to have a friendly chat after the dusk. He would find nothing wrong in following a dual policy of criticizing the establishment for suppressing democracy and assisting it militarily for countering the insurgents.
"If you can't help Hastinapur to bring about peace, you better help it to make war," was Lord Krishna's dictum that Nepal's international friends like Sir Jeffrey James and Christiana Rocca look like following in modern times. It is because they, like Lord Krishna, tried their utmost to understand and resolve Nepal's conflicts but failed to achieve peace.
