Once, a Dalit scholar in India said that whenever he heard about an obese or a diabetic among fellow Dalits, he felt happy. The news implied that the person didn’t have to be engaged in exploitative labour—cleaning a sewer, mending shoes or carrying bricks on a construction site in the sweltering heat or shivering cold—to eat bellyful on a regular basis. Once freedom from hunger was assured, eating well would follow and the person would learn to be careful about preventable diseases. I discovered the uplifting aspect of negative news last week.

On March 7, 2025, a bold headline on the front page of this newspaper’s sister publication in Nepali—Kantipur Daily—caught my eye. Roughly translated, the header said: “A Madheshi woman was left out despite being senior in the appointment of Health Secretary”. It’s possible that an almost familial relationship with the person in the news—Dr Sangeeta Kaushal Mishra, Additional Health Secretary—is clouding my opinion, but I genuinely feel that she would have added dignity to a position riddled with controversies had she been given an opportunity to do so. Her sidelining, however, has delivered an unmistakable and perhaps intended message: Madheshis should be content with what they get and stop aspiring for more. The way Sangeeta handled her disappointment fills me with hope.

I wrote about her innovative initiatives in handling Covid-19 crisis as the medical superintendent of Koshi Hospital. Since then, she has earned wide accolades for her performance as the Director of Paropakar Maternity and Women’s Hospital, Spokesperson of the Ministry of Health and Population and several other crucial responsibilities. Yet, unlike many of her colleagues and well-wishers, news of the government sidelining her to promote a junior didn’t shock me. There was a very slim chance of an ethnonational regime doing the right thing.

The ethnonationalists like to call Nepal the land of “Never Ending Peace and Love” and sing occasionally “Yo man ta mero Nepali ho!” with jingoistic pride. Sometimes, a shout of collective narcissism, as in “This is Nepal, you better understand”, and sometimes a shrug of powerless resignation, “This is Nepal, what to do?” “Yo Nepal ho” is another expression that succeeds in justifying the dominance of the ethnonational majority and the subservience of externalised minorities simultaneously. Injustice is a routine for a woman, a competent and confident professional, a straightforward person and a Madheshi in a country that has institutionalised graded citizenship through a controversial constitution. Sangeeta embodies all these and happens to have been born in India, which riles up self-proclaimed defenders of nativist Nepali purity no end.

Even in her rejection, Sangeeta has set a record of shorts: She forced the palanquin press of Nepal to take notice of a patent injustice based on latent discrimination. Hitherto, a Madheshi appeared in the national news only when there was something to report about witchcraft, child marriage, dowry, crime, upper caste domination, backward caste militancy, Dalit exploitation, usury or inefficiency and corruption of politicos. A Madheshi woman making it to the headlines of national news for her defiance appears inspiring.

Imperilled purity

Even a cursory look at the composition of institutions of the state is enough to show that the pride of the dominant community on the ethnonational purity of the country isn’t misplaced. The entire lineup of every organ of governance is primarily made up of Bahun-Chhetris. From the president, the prime minister, the speaker of the Pratinidhi Sabha, the chairman of the Rashtriya Sabha, the chief justice, the leader of the opposition in the Parliament, the home minister, the finance minister, the foreign minister, the chief secretary, the home secretary, the governor of the Central Bank, the army chief, the police chief, the chief of the Armed Police, most of the chief district officers to every other important position one can think of is ethnically what the constitution has categorised with a neologism—the Khas-Arya.

Come to think of it, editors of almost all media outlets that I have been associated with for over three and a half decades have invariably been Bahun-Chhetris. However, the unassailable hegemony over culture, society, polity and economy can also be filled with fears of counterhegemony. The dread of a civilisational giant in the region generates what the Harvard anthropologist Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah (1929–2014) had identified as a “majority with a minority complex” because every minority of all South Asian countries has a sympathetic population in India that shares cultural ties with their externalised groups. Ever since Hindutva ethnocentrism became the ruling ideology of India, fears of its intentions in the neighbourhood have grown multifield.

Somewhat like the unhappy family in the opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, each externalised community under ethnonational regimes in South Asia suffers in its own way. The Hindus of Bangladesh, the Christians in Pakistan and the Muslims in India have to face the religious bigotry of the dominant community on an everyday basis. Discrimination against Tamils in Sri Lanka is based upon a mix of religious differences and historical inequalities. The Madheshis face the ire of the ethnocracy in Nepal for cross-border cultural similarities and familial ties.

Performative empathy

Political alliances are formed for electoral benefit; a coalition is a temporary alliance to implement a common agenda, but a fusion of political parties with a similar sociocultural base can form a formidable force of majoritarian authoritarianism. Though termed a coalition, the Nepali Congress and the CPN (UML) have constituted a fused government under the leadership of ethnonational chieftain Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli. The very personification of collective narcissism of the ABCD (Aryan, Bahun, Chhetri and Dashnami) Nepalis, Prime Minister Sharma Oli enjoys bipartisan support.

Perhaps it was the shared concern for the continuation of ethnic dominance over the country’s political economy that had brought the two dissimilar parties together. Whether it’s the question of trying to oust a star performer Kul Man Ghising for alleged poor performance or denying a deserved opportunity to Sangeeta, the underlying conviction is the same: In an ethnocracy, the ruling community gets to set the standards of eligibility, quality and suitability. That they have generated some sympathy in a section of the dominant community is fraught with its own risks.

Though faux empathy isn’t harmful per se and virtue signalling can indeed be virtuous sometimes, the guilt it generates in the beneficiary of the condescension offsets any attendant gain. Many recipients of underserved favours from ethnocratic elites turn into slavering apologists of the discriminatory order. Even when entirely dominated by Khas-Arya politicos, every so-called ‘mainstream party’ of Nepal has some prominent Madheshi conformists that they then regularly parade as exemplary nationalists.

In addition to exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural domination and violence that constitute five faces of oppression, externalisation of the ‘other’ in ethnocracies is often dressed up with supercilious generosity of nominal diversity and token inclusivity. In the hullaballoo over monarchical fantasies of neo-nationalists, perhaps it requires reckoning that celebrating diversities is the fundamental condition of strengthening republicanism. The risk of ouster lies within the hegemonic regime rather than the revisionist politicos.