"Last Interview with Bhola Chatterjee" - B. P. Koirala (The Telegraph, July 23, 1982)
[The greatest Nepali of the twentieth century spoke his heart and mind out to his friend Bhola Chatterjee (BC) a little before the death he knew was coming.]
BC: Your Commitment to democratic Socialism is a fact of history. You have been a socialist since the early 1930s, what exactly is your conception of democratic socialism? Do you think that democratic socialism as an ideological movement has any future, particularly in Nepal?
BP: I made a speech in Sydney in February 1981 where I summarized our experiences of struggle and what lesson our experience has for the socialists of the world. I placed before the Asian Pacific Socialist Organization conference at Sydney the five points I have made out. One is about democracy, because without appropriate political institutions in which the people have vested interest, even economic development is not possible.
The rations of the King (Mahendra) in staging the coup in 1960 was the idea that economic development could be divorced from politics and the development could be accelerated under his authoritarian aegis. It did not happen. As a matter of fact, the rule of the King brought the economic situation to a point of collapse. We have become poorer since his takeover. In our experience development in our economic context, in the context of the third world means motivating the people for the task of development, involving them at every level of development, from the level of decision making to the level of implementation of the decisions so made. This is a political job. An authoritarian rule can only create a bureaucratic edifice with which the people cannot identify themselves. So a socialist must concern himself with the development of democratic institutions also.
Secondly, about foreign aid what our idea is about it. Foreign aids in our situation, instead of helping the process of development, only create a new class of people whose affluence is unrelated to the general economic condition of the nation as a whole. It exists solely on the basis of the manipulation of foreign aid through corruption, illegal trade etc.
Thirdly, for a poor country like ours the model of development cannot be provided by the developed societies of the West. It is too late in the day for us to start on the basis of that model. Import of high technology does not suit us. What we need is a technology that is only slightly superior to what we currently employ. That is, only slightly improved technology that can be handled by our own men. Where we have blindly initiated the western model of development we have brought about a situation in which the rich have become richer and the poor poorer; and which has created an affluent class without national roots, a class that has no genuine interest in the national economic regeneration.
Fourthly, the socialists can do no worse than be apathetic to the democratic struggle of the people all over the world. When I say democracy I mean liberal democracy. I emphasize this point because sometimes there is a tendency among some socialists to give this question secondary importance to that of economic development.
And, fifthly, we feel that socialism is the wave of the future. Socialism is the natural ally of the third world and the non-aligned. Without the anchorage of socialism the countries of the third world drift either to fascist militarism or to dictatorial communism or to obscurantist reactionary religious fundamentalism. We socialists, therefore, have a big challenge in the third world. The centre of gravity for socialism has shifted from Europe to the third world where socialism both as an inspirational ideal of the life and as a model and blueprint for development has become relevant. And if Nepal has a future, that is the only strategy for survival. Democracy at the political level and economic development that does justice to the masses these are the two major strands of socialism. Without these two aspects, economic, development for the eradication of poverty as also political liberty would be a myth. It is not only a question of idealism or putting faith in high values of life, it is a matter of survival.
BC: What kind of an economic system would you like to have in Nepal? How do you think Nepal could expedite its economic development?
BP: I will give you my idea of it. My idea is not very clearly defined but I see light in that direction, I am groping my way.
BC: Could I ask you to do a little loud thinking about it?
BP: You see, when I was Prime Minister I once went to the Planning Commission's office. There was a portrait of the King on the wall of the room where experts had assembled. I had to address them. I did not know what to tell those experts.
BC: They were all economic experts?
BP: Yes, quite a few of them were products of Harvard and Cambridge Universities. I told them there is a portrait of the King. It is a very appropriate thing to do, but there should be another picture that of a farmer lending over his plough. I also told them that whenever 'you have a project or a scheme of development or a plan; you have got to remember that man with the plough and his hut. And you should ask yourselves what benefit that man in the picture, and not the King, is going to derive out of your plans here.' It is not my original idea, it is Gandhi's idea. I am not an economic expert but I thought that any development which bypasses the villagers is not development at all. Any development that takes care of urban amenities and neglects the rural people is no development so far as I am concerned. Because Nepal lives in the villages; its property lies there. You cannot even begin to understand the problem of property unless you are aware of the existence of the villages and their inhabitants. The mistake of the planners stems from the idea that they derive from the developed nations with high and sophisticated technology. These nations are highly urbanized; even their villages are urban pockets. Their agriculture has adopted a highly developed technology. The Nepali planner's model of development is provided by these nations. Unless the mind of the planners is appropriately changed and there conception of development is altered, we cannot even start the process or development that is the point of departure. I will ask the planners to take sides with the villages and the villagers, think in their terms and introduce only such technology which is only slightly an improvement on what they are used to improvement of the plough, no big tractors, no big machines, no bulldozers, no jet engines, no big roads meant only for imported vehicles using imported fuel, run and, maintained by foreign trained technicians, no cement or iron for construction and less dependence on foreign imports. The planners must put all their emphasis on improving agricultural efficiency and on such industries as are agro based. You know, I was admitted to Jaslok Hospital about two years ago for my throat trouble. I used to discuss the public health problems with the doctors there. Some of them were very public-spirited. I asked them what I should do, if I were in the government, to improve the health condition of the people. They said that 'anything between 80 and 90 per cent of the diseases are water-borne. If you take care of water, if you provide the people with clear potable water you will have taken care of 80 per cent of the diseases. You don't have to have hospitals like Jaslok Hospital or foreign trained doctors. You start with water and you will be able to control the problem' so my suggestion is that we should at least make drinking water safe and available to the villagers. Motivate them to keep their village clean, provide them not with costly hospital, which we cannot afford in any case, but with basic hygienic needs. What I want to say is, let us not be moon-struck with the glamour of the developed countries and romanticize on the question of development. Let us start soiling our hands with the dirt of the villages which make up Nepal. Now, Bhola, you may say that this will result in a kind of rural civilization, rather rural culture.
BC: Quite so. What you suggest may even remind one of Pol Pot's brand of primitive communism.
BP: No, not Pol Pot. He took recourse to coercion. Pol Pot, as matter of fact drove away the urban population, large number of them from Pnom Penh and other cities and towns. That was absolutely undemocratic.
BC: I get the point, Your emphasis is no democracy, you want things to be done democratically, with the sanction of the people. And that is the most important point.
BP: The model that America has provided I call it the Henry Ford model and this model was taken over by Soviet Russian. When Lenin took over power this was his model. He always said that they could catch up with America in 10 or 20 years. And now the Russians measure their development in terms of the American development. Their model was essentially provided by America and the American model was provided by the Henry ford. Now, the American population is only 6 per cent of the world's total population in their present condition of affluence the Americans use up between 30 and 35 per cent of the world's resource. On the same model if china and India, between them they constitute 60 per cent of the world's population, try to plan their economy there will not be enough resources available for them. So that model is not relevant by the very logic of it. And that model is very, very inefficient. When I told an American audience, I had been invited to give a lecture at Columbia University, that the American economy was very inefficient, they were aghast. I said our agriculturists or Haryana or Punjab agriculturists are more efficient than the American agriculturists. After all, what is efficiency? It means that there must be a correlation between input and output. You invest a huge sum of money in one or two acres of land, but the production of wheat per acre is not higher than what the peasant in Haryana or Punjab produces with limited quantum of inputs. The Nepali cultivator with limited input produces more rice per acre of land than what you do. Then there is the problem of wastage of fuel. Your economy is dependent upon the consumption of fuel which is not unlimited. Unless you redesign your machine I see a collapse of your system by the turn of the century. In the process of redesigning your model I think the third world scientists and your scientists are at the same level. If you could harness solar energy, perhaps India would because more affluent than you, considering that more solar energy would be available in India.
BC: Do you have faith in dialectical materialism? For that matter, do you believe in the materialistic interpretation of history?
BP: To answer the last first, no. I reject it altogether, but I don't say there is absolutely no truth in that. Man is a multidimensional entity. The mistake that Marx made was that he created man as an economic being who is interested only in his economic life. I will not say that there is no truth in that, but that is a very inadequate portraiture. Man is an economic being but he is also something more. What is that something more? You might say, man is god's creation. I think yes, but still more the dimensions are many. Secondly, man is very motivated by the consideration of bread only; the stomach is not the sole instigator of his activities. There has never been any human movement on the slogan of bread. Even socialist revolution that took place in the 1917 Russia was not bread; it was for something higher, for equality. Man is only partially a product of history and party of factors which are beyond history. Before man came into existence nature had to provide all that he needed for survival, for instance, water, food, sun, everything. There is a misconception that man created society, but the fact is that it existed before the advent of man. It is only after man's appearance that history came into existence. So far as man is concerned, tome also starts from the day he came into existence.
BC: Could it be that you do not have faith in historical determinism, that everything is pre-determined?
BP: If you believe in historical determinism, then all our efforts are meaningless exercise. It is a very interesting thing, Marx gives the philosophy that man's mind is not free; it is pre-determined; it is conditioned by the social class to which he belongs. At the same time, the biggest pamphleteer was Marx If mind was not free, and then to whom was his appeal directed.
BC: Are you an atheist, or an agnostic?
BP: First of all, nobody has defined for men what he means by God. But that part of existence is which man starts composing poems, when he is filled with that oceanic feeling, when he sees the vastness of the universe, when he sees its beauty, the flower, that is the experience of God, of divinity. Man does not live by bread alone. There are other aspects of life which are important, perhaps more important. Those aspects are the unexplained mysteries of life. If you are not aware of the mysteries, not awed by them, you have not lived fully. You know, when I was the Prime Minister Ravishankar had once come to Kathmandu and gave a performance. I was very tired but I thought that it would be discourteous if I did not attend it; I sat through the entire performance which took about three or four hours. After it was over I went up to him and said that this was my nearest experience of God. When I listened to him playing the sitar I felt that I was very near God. Sometimes you get that feeling when you see a beautiful painting or listen to music like what Ravishankar played.
BC: Tell me, what do you feel when you get up early in the morning, go outside and take a look at nature, the flowers, the trees, the blue sky? Have you ever felt at such moment that you are in communion with something that reason alone cannot explain?
BP: Yes, I have had that kind of feeling many, many times. Sometimes what happens is that I become part of the whole thing. I feel that there is a living presence in all that, the whole universe is vibrant with life and I become one with it.
BC: At such moments do you feel that this universe and all that goes on within it and beyond is not man's creation alone, that there may be something else beyond man?
BP: No, not that kind of philosophy. What I feel is that I am part of everything, but I don't go over to philosophy. Or stray into the realm of thought.
BC: Do I brand you as an atheist or an agnostic?
BP: you could brand me as a spiritualist of sorts. I believe there are elements in nature which are not amenable to scientific explanation or scientific. You can read it as a whole but it cannot be understood in pieces. The problem of mind is that the understanding has to be in terms of framework of thought. But once you put it in the mould of thought the realization of truth escapes. Man's understanding will be inadequate if he depends only on his reasoning faculty.
BC: Have you ever felt tired of politics? Has the thought ever crossed your mind that you have enough of your life being spent in the almost interminable circuit of struggle, persecution, prison, exile and the whole thing over again, that you would not regret if you could call it quits?
BP: You see, I would not be what I am if I had not undergone what you call suffering or deprivation.
BC: But in your case your entire life seems to have been an account of that?
BP: That is the life I have known, I have not known any other life. Moreover, the kind of life people generally lead has no attraction for me. I would be bored to death if I were forced to lead that sort of life. I feel that even if I were given a new life to live, my new life would not be very much different from the one that I have lead. I think there are two aspects of your question. One is that as a politician I would certainly like to succeed. The kind of society I want to build or the kind of economic system I want to create, the thing that would affect other more than me, I worry about the lack of success on that score. So far as I am concerned, in personal terms, it is not success or failure that matters. If in your heart of hearts you feel that you have done your best, you have staked all that you are capable of, this gives you satisfaction and that is what I feel. I have not succeeded in the generally understood sense of the term, but when I see people achieving success rather cheap I don't think they get any spiritual satisfaction. You are spiritually more satisfied when you find yourself making efforts, even if you fail. I think this is what happened to me.
BC: Could you please let me have the details of the plan Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had made to rescue you from prison in 1962?
BP: Bhola, this is a very delicate question. It involves the government of India also, apart from my party. I would not like that to be published now.
BC: All right, I promise that I will not publish it until I get your clearance?
BP: There was a feeling among our comrades, who were residing in India and who were opposing the system from here, that if I could be amongst them perhaps the struggle could be conducted more efficiently. So they wanted to rescue me from prison. I did not have any idea about it, I was kept incommunicado in prison. I fasted for the usual facilities for political prisoners, one of which was that I should be permitted to see my relations and friends. Ultimately this was granted. A relative came to see me. On three or four occasions she saw me. On the first occasion she had gone to Jawaharlal Nehru to plead for me. When Lumumba was killed she thought that I might get the same kind of treatment. Jawaharlalji assured her that our rulers (Nepalese rulers) were not that barbarous as the rulers of Congo. Then she was in constant contact with Jawaharlaji. On the text occasion or thereafter she came and told me that she had contacted my colleagues in Calcutta and also met Jawaharlalji and that they wanted to rescue me. And she had come in military uniform, they would be our men who would come in military uniform, they would bring a uniform for me and I should not resist, I should cooperate with them. When I asked her as to my safety without India's guarantee, because in any case if I escaped I would have to go to India, she said that she had a talk with Jawaharlalji. As a matter of fact, Jawaharlalji had sent here to me. Then she went away. After a month or so she came again and said that the plan was risky. Because in the process of the rescue operation it was quite likely that there would be some shooting and I might get hit. And our leaders and perhaps Jawaharlalji also thought that it was not worth taking a risk which involved my life. So the idea was given up that happened toward the end of 1961 or early 1962.
BC: I have known you since 1949 and I have noticed that, on the face of it, relations between you and your wife are very loving and full of understanding. But tell me frankly, have you really loved your wife all along, have you been faithful to her always?
BP: If you ask me like this then I will say that appears to me even today as fresh as on the day I married her. Partly because I have lived away from her most of our married life I was in prison, on tours or in exile I did not have enough of her. So she retains the same attraction for me. She has been a great asset to me. There is a spiritual quality in her that sustains me. As a matter of fact, she has suffered more than I have. It is only when you look at things superficially you may not get the point. When I was arrested in December 1960, nobody knew where I had been detained. About my fate nobody was sure whether I was alive or not. When I met her after a year or so her hair was becoming grey and in the course of three years she became grey full of wrinkles on her face. She had suddenly aged not only because I was arrested but because she had to look after the children, all the small children. And she is a very brave lady. About the question of fidelity I don't know what fidelity is. If your question is the conventional question whether I had affair with some others, my experience is that there would be very few people who did not have affairs other than relations with their wives. I am a normal being from that point of view and I did have affairs also, but the permanent, abiding moorings of my life are there in her.
BC: How would you like to be remembered in history? For that matter, what would you like to be your epitaph?
BP: I have not thought about it. As a matter of fact, I don't think I have done much to be remembered by posterity. I told you in my previous interviews that the spiritual side of my Endeavour does not aspire that I should have any place in history. I have enjoyed life and I feel that I have fulfilled my duties that are enough. If I say that that I should be remembered by the people on a monument, I think I don't have that ambition, absolutely no ambition of that kind. If I say that I should be remembered as one who brought about democratic system in Nepal. That too would be a very vague kind of monument. So I am not very much worried about how I should be remembered by the country and the nation I am not interested in that.
BC: But then can you say that you have been true to yourself that you have tried your best to do what you had wanted to.
BP: Yes, I think I did my best except that I was not organized in that. If I were more organized perhaps my contribution would have been more permanent and enduring.
BC: And you have been true to yourself?
BP: Yes, I have been very true to myself. About that there is no doubt. In fact, I have been very honest to myself.
Citation: B. P. Koirala, "Last Interview with Bhola Chatterjee", (Interview) in Sushil Koirala (ed.), Democracy Indispensable for Development 108-120, (Varanasi: Sandaju Publications, 1982)
Back