The much-discussed convergence of Balen Shah, Rabi Lamichhane, and Kulman Ghising is being celebrated as a bold new front\u2014an antidote to Nepal\u2019s exhausted political old guard of the Nepali Congress, UML, and Maoists. Read merely as a political game, the alignment is indeed intriguing. But viewed through a gendered lens, it reveals something deeply unsettling: not transformation, but the consolidation of patriarchy in a new, more muscular form.<\/p>\n
This is not a politics of change. It is men against men\u2014and only men.<\/p>\n
The visual itself tells the story. Three men. Decisive, assertive, confrontational. The unspoken message is familiar and dangerous: only men can lead, only men can decide, only men can rescue the nation from decay. Women, non-binary people, and gender minorities are once again rendered invisible\u2014spectators in a drama about power that refuses to imagine leadership beyond masculinity.<\/p>\n
Nepal has seen this movie before. The old parties were also built on strongmen culture, patronage networks, and hyper-masculine authority. What makes this new front troubling is not merely that it excludes women and other genders\u2014but that it reinforces the idea that exclusion is natural, efficient, even necessary in moments of \u201cnational crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
When politics becomes a stage for male saviors, ruthlessness is never far behind. Macho politics thrives on urgency, confrontation, and domination. It glorifies decisiveness over deliberation, authority over accountability, strength over care. History\u2014Nepal\u2019s and the world\u2019s\u2014shows us that such politics rarely democratize power. They centralize it.<\/p>\n
The defenders of this unity argue that gender can be addressed later\u2014that first the \u201csystem\u201d must be fixed. This argument is neither new nor innocent. Patriarchy has always postponed equality in the name of efficiency. \u201cNot now,\u201d it says. \u201cAfter the revolution.\u201d \u201cAfter stability.\u201d \u201cAfter we win.\u201d Women and marginalized genders are told to wait\u2014again.<\/p>\n
But the truth is uncomfortable: movements that do not challenge patriarchy at their inception rarely do so once they gain power.<\/p>\n
The deeper question, then, is not only why men refuse to see women and other genders as leaders\u2014but why so many women in Nepal have been structurally conditioned to wait for male endorsement before stepping forward. This is not a failure of ambition. It is the product of political parties, media ecosystems, donor cultures, and social norms that reward women for loyalty, silence, and support roles rather than leadership.<\/p>\n
Women are invited to clap, not to command. To legitimize, not to lead.<\/p>\n
And when women do assert authority independently, they are labeled divisive, emotional, or \u201cnot serious enough\u201d for hard politics\u2014the same hard politics that men monopolize and then claim is gender-neutral.
\nWhat is being sold as a \u201cnew politics\u201d today is, in fact, an old script with new actors. It challenges aging elites, yes\u2014but it leaves untouched the most enduring hierarchy of all: male dominance in public power.<\/p>\n
If Nepal truly seeks transformation, it must abandon the fantasy that men\u2014however competent, honest, or charismatic\u2014will rescue the nation alone. Democracy is not renewed by replacing old men with new men. It is renewed by redistributing power itself.<\/p>\n
Until women and gender-diverse people are not merely present but central to political leadership\u2014without waiting for male permission\u2014Nepal\u2019s so-called alternatives will remain exactly what they are: a reshuffling of patriarchy, not its undoing.<\/p>\n
This is not change.<\/p>\n
This is men fighting men\u2014while the rest are told, once again, to wait. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The much-discussed convergence of Balen Shah, Rabi Lamichhane, and Kulman Ghising is being celebrated as a bold new front\u2014an antidote to Nepal\u2019s exhausted political old guard of the Nepali Congress, UML, and Maoists. Read merely as a political game, the alignment is indeed intriguing. But viewed through a gendered lens, it reveals something deeply unsettling: not transformation, but the consolidation of patriarchy in a new, more muscular form.
\nThis is not a politics of change. It is men against men\u2014and only men.
\nThe visual itself tells the story. Three men. Decisive, assertive, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":14263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,621,492,490,3,2065],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-issue","category-news","category-opinion","category-slider","category-society","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14264,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14262\/revisions\/14264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}