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Shaking with rage, a BJP-affiliated TV anchor openly challenges the writ of the (non-BJP) government of his host state. Modi puts Jammu and Kashmir under a lockdown for over a year. But there is not a squeak about the plight of the Kashmiris in mainstream Indian media, even as Indian Muslims are being systematically persecuted. The number of daily Covid-19 deaths in India is now highest in the world, and yet misogynistic plots spun around the death three months ago of a popular Bollywood actor continue to dominate daily headlines.

In Nepal, the voice of Nepali Congress, the main opposition, is supposedly at its weakest in the country’s democratic history. By the same standards, the voice of its Indian counterpart, the Indian National Congress, is non-existent. This is partly because of the INC’s leadership crisis. Partly, it’s a result of the BJP controlling the mainstream Indian media and virtually shutting the INC out of it. 

Given its unmatched political sway across the country and steady silencing of opposition voices, perhaps it won’t be wrong to call India under Modi a one-party state. And just as Trump’s approval ratings remain unshakable among his hard-right supporters, Modi can do no wrong for his Hindu adherents. Whether or not Nepal returns to being a Hindu state, the nominally secular India is now all but one. 

I have warned in this space about the creeping dangers China poses to Nepal. But a supposedly democratic BJP-led India confronts us with similar challenges. What we have traditionally admired about India—its vibrant democracy supported by a raucously independent press, its long tradition of religious tolerance, its syncretic culture—are applicable no more. What we have instead in India is a pro-Hindu government intent on hanging to power by shutting out its political opposition, demonizing religious minorities, and displaying blatant jingoism. 

What moral right does New Delhi then have to ask Kathmandu to maintain a safe distance from Beijing? The way anti-China fervor in India has picked up after the emergence of disastrous economic numbers for the country has been intriguing. Initially, Modi did not want to pick a fight with a more powerful adversary. But then evidence began to emerge of the decimation of the Indian economy under Modi’s watch and his government’s abject failure to contain the Covid-19 crisis. Anti-China posturing then became the only tool to keep his public opinion intact—with the prolonged investigation into the death of Sushant Singh Rajput, much fanned by Modi-worshipping media houses, offering another useful distraction for the public.

Indians cannot expect such excesses of their government to go unnoticed in the neighborhood. There has been a steady slide of South Asian countries towards China—that authoritarian, one-party state that has become a scapegoat for most big dysfunctional democracies. But forget China for a bit. The problem is that India’s democratic neighbors no longer believe India under Modi believes in democracy, in or outside the country. (Nepalis certainly have not forgotten the inhumane 2015-16 blockade.) 

India’s secular fabric has been torn asunder. Its public debate has coarsened and picked up xenophobic overtones. It seems to have no clear strategy on Covid-control. Its economy has been hemorrhaging ever since the suicidal 2016 demonetization. It treats its neighbors with utter disdain. Seriously, what is there to like or emulate about Modi’s India?    

A few days ago, I was walking in my neighborhood when I saw an elderly woman I knew coming down the road. She was walking in an upright posture, without the help of a crutch or a stick. Her face was bright and she had a smile on her face. “You’re looking good!” I said to her. She smiled, obviously pleased.

About two years ago, I’d seen the same elderly lady, with one palm on the wall to support her frail gait. We’d gotten into a conversation. “Yestai ho, janay bela ma yestai huncha!” (‘When we’re about to die, we get frail’). I suggested she take mungrelo (nigella sativa) seeds, which help with joint health. She embraced my advice with enthusiasm. She told me she bought a bottle of the seeds, roasted them, and put them by her bedside. She popped them whenever she felt the urge to snack during the day, and ate them with her morning tea. Unlike my elderly relatives who will try an ayurvedic remedy for a few days before jumping to antibiotics and Big Pharma and surgery, this lady seemed to have no other option. Slowly I saw her get better as the months progressed. Then I saw her cured. 

This case pleases me a lot because it was the progression of Ayurvedic healing as it was meant to unfold, at its own slow time and pace. No need for joint replacements, surgeries that cost 12 lakhs, elderly people laid up in hospital with invasive surgical interventions. This old lady become fit and healthy through the simple remedy of some tiny seeds.

We have a healing tradition in South Asia that goes back thousands of years. Yet we have been taught to ignore, ridicule and dismiss it as a body of knowledge without value or scientific proof. On Twitter, the scorn against “Besarays”—people who advocate the theory that turmeric helps ward off the coronavirus—is vituperative. Where are the clinical trials, people will demand? They are seemingly blind to the evidence that the Besar Belt (including Asia and Africa) has very few coronavirus deaths. They also ignore existing scientific studies on healing properties of turmeric, including its anti-inflammatory and blood-thinning properties.

Anti-Besaray people then go on to demand Remdesivir, a drug made by a company known for its extraordinary inflated prices, including a liver drug that costs over $74,000 for a course. This is an extraordinary denial of healthcare to the masses by elites whose rip-off goes beyond ordinary fraud or swindle. We need new words to describe this kind of commercial transaction with genocidal intent, one that our current vocabulary lacks. Yet this is precisely the company the WHO is promoting, at the expense of local, easily available remedies that are already saving lives in the Third World.

I shared my mungrelo story with my great aunt. She, obviously, knows a lot more about Ayurveda than I do. She was born half a century before me. Like all modern people with pride in knowledge gleaned from the web, I assumed I was the only one to “discover” the healing properties of this seed. She demolished my ignorance in short order. “I raised my children with Ayurvedic remedies, but during my grandchildren’s time, we forgot about those. We went to the doctors and kept using antibiotics. They were constantly sick and we raised them with difficulty,” she said.

She’d used this remedy on her own children: the mother put a few jwano (ajwain) and mungrelo seeds in her mouth and chewed it, spit this mixture at the tip of the linen sari, filtered two drops of the juice, then mixed that in breastmilk and fed it to the two- month-old. Only a few of the powerful seeds are needed! The same ajwain and nigella sativa can be ground into paste, then applied to infant’s head to stop a cold. She’d put it on her nephew after a vaidya told her about it, and he’d been cured. Now imagine the money we could save from hospitalizing infants if this remedy was followed everywhere in the “poor” (but knowledge-rich) Third World. We wouldn’t need to spend lakhs on hospitalizing infants, pumping them full of antibiotics, and in general exposing a fragile infant to the possibility of an latrogenic death.

But for a modern doctor, this remedy will bring shivers because saliva contains bacteria, which must be instantly killed! Preferably with bleach. Never mind if the mother’s saliva is a key ingredient in introducing healing macrophages into the infant body. “Nowadays you can use a handkerchief,” my great aunt said. “I don’t know, maybe there was something healing about a mother’s sari.” I have no doubt there was something healing about a mother’s sari: her biome, the body, is teeming with a rich jungle of microflora and fauna which help an infant fight off disease, and what better way to introduce it into the infant than through her sari’s sapko!

Creating a microbe-free environment can be lethal, as no benefic bacteria can survive in the desert. High coronavirus death rates in the West may be caused by this overkill with hygiene.

We need to return to our roots—through the mouth and eating, through traditional food, and through the herbs we have always known and which have cured our ancestors and ensured our own existence.

How do you assess a country’s political situation between elections? It’s probably through the media, the social media included. Nepal at this time is in the perfect in-between-the-elections phase to study politics outside the elections.

The last set of elections was held almost three years ago. The context was interesting.

Nepal entered the elections after more than a decade of transition politics marred by non-democratic politicking, power struggles, and brinkmanship.

The conflict and the transition era did two fundamental damages to Nepali politics. It normalized a state of non-performance for the polity in the name of the delicate situation. It even made acceptable what should have been considered a mockery of common sense—the voting for the post of prime minister was conducted inconclusively 17 times.

Such a ridiculous disregard for the imminent social and political problems was normalized, and almost established as the only thing that politics was supposed to be engaged in.

One other thing this transition politics did that is detrimental to the basic concept of constitutionalism and democracy, was the hijacking of authority by the top leaders in the name of High Level Political Mechanism. This became a means of consolidating power at the top, undemocratically, in all the parties. The fundamental feudal character of Nepali political parties became indomitable.

This kind of an ad-hoc arrangement stopped all avenues of growth for second-rung leaders in all major parties. As a result, the leaders of the next generation like Gagan Thapa and Yogesh Bhattarai, who should by now have been among the ones leading their parties, are still being treated like kids.

With a tedious decade-long limbo named transition politics over, Nepal had entered the elections with this permanent damage to democracy.

But Nepal’s public has been both wise and patient in treating the politicians. The armed struggle had scared the established urban elites enough without directly impacting their lives. In Kathmandu, it was considered like something happening not just in a remote area, but also in a remote era. The Kathmandu urban elite knows and believes that most of Nepal still lives two centuries behind, and it’s the main secret of their privileges. They get disproportionate access to resources meant for the whole country because of this.

The blockade happened in their living rooms, however. And it had a more lasting impact than the decade-long Maoist armed struggle or the political anarchy of more than a decade that followed.

So, when Nepal went into the elections, Modi was the villain, and Oli was the savior. But political stability was the driving force that consolidated people’s choice.

An overwhelming majority of almost two-thirds is wasted. There is almost no scope of a miraculous face saving now, with more than half the tenure of this government gone by in cruel skullduggery and careless comical theatrics.

The covid crisis has exposed to the general public that accepting non-democratic, incompetent manipulators as the country’s leaders costs us jobs, wealth, and lives too.

But what do representative voices in the social media indicate? People have no hope from our politicians. And the politicians do not shy from putting the blame back on the people.

Will there be a fundamental shift in the nature of our mainstream political parties in three years before the next elections? There is nothing to suggest such a miracle is coming.

People have been wise, in general, in the elections. They know they can’t trust politicians to be truly honest and non-corrupt, but in the larger scheme of things, they have been running the affairs of the state even amid this chaos.

But it’s probably time to read between the lines and question the fundamentals of the system that our politics has evolved into. The nexus of the feudal power structure within the parties and the country’s criminal gangs has been exposed beyond doubt in front of the people.

Should they not look for an alternative now?

Everybody wants happiness. And often we pursue it. But in our wanting and pursuing, we lose it. The very fact that we want and pursue happiness makes it elusive.

There is a psychological reason behind this. Let’s see it through an example. Many people in the world are single, and are unhappy about it. They tend to think, ‘When I find the perfect partner, I’ll be happy’. Years and decades pass by looking for the perfect girl or guy. But the pursuit doesn't end, it becomes a habit. Even if we have a partner or spouse, we are not satisfied. Nobody can easily fit in our definition of 'perfect'. We cannot be happy with what we have, because we are in the constant mode of wanting somebody perfect to come and make us happy.

Another example: Suppose we are doing a certain job, and are unhappy about it. For many of us, the current job sucks. Either the boss is too demanding, or the colleagues are too nagging. Or maybe the organization is not the best place to be in. Or the job doesn't fall in the definition of our so-called passion. We start thinking, ‘I'll be happy when I find the perfect job’.

But what happens when we find that perfect partner or job? For a while, we think we are happy, but then the mind starts finding faults. After all, we have trained our minds not to be satisfied. The mind works based on how it has been conditioned. We become conditioned or habituated to what we do repeatedly. So when we have spent a lot of time being dissatisfied with our job or in wanting a perfect person, it has already become our habit. So we start wanting something else. This habit of dissatisfaction spills over, making us unhappy with every other thing coming into our experience, not only the partner or job.

We set many such conditions for happiness: ‘I will be happy when I have a certain amount of bank balance’. Or, ‘I will be happy when I complete my project’. Basically we make our happiness hostage to some other thing or person or situation, either having them or not having them. Sometimes we outsource our happiness to absurd things. ‘When the king is gone and a president is put in place, I will be happy’. ‘Free market sucks, if we have a controlled social and economic order, I will be happy’. ‘If I have a Labrador instead of this Bulldog, I will be happy’.

But wanting and pursuing happiness isn't bad, is it? Everybody wants to be happy. So, why not pursue it?

The answer to that question lies in knowing our reality. To know the reality, we need a scientific approach. If we look deep within ourselves objectively, without making any judgements, we can see that the source of happiness is within us. We can see that it is our reality, our fundamental nature. Then wanting and pursuing ends.

How can we pursue something that is already within us, that is already our own fundamental nature? Have you ever noticed a one-year-old child? Do they need a gold medal in swimming or a posh house to be happy? Not at all. If their stomach is full, they are naturally jubilant and playful. They have not gotten the happy state by wanting or pursuing. Nor have they taken any crash course on happiness. Once their survival is ensured, they are blissful just like that. We were like that when we were kids.

Let’s say we are already in Kathmandu. Not knowing, we want to reach Kathmandu and we set out for it. We may even take a flight to Kathmandu. We can reach anywhere but Kathmandu! It's like that with happiness. Happiness is IN us, we were all born with it. But as we grow up, we obscure our minds by wrong views and habits and forget about this fundamental quality. So we take a flight away from ourselves. No wonder we end up wanting and pursuing happiness, never finding it.