Caged instigator

A silver-haired man beamed from a poster at the red-brick building housing the intensive care unit of Bir Hospital, Nepal’s largest, in Kathmandu. The hashtag #freekanak accompanied the smiling face. Inside the building, on a white board, scribbled among half a dozen names was Kanak Mani Dixit, 60/M, Bed 16.

A police officer sat on a bench scanning the day’s newspaper as his walkie talkie buzzed with calls from colleagues. He turned down all requests to see Dixit, the journalist and human rights activist who was admitted to the hospital following his arrest on April 22. The cop cited ‘ mathiko aadesh ’ or orders from above. Only family members and lawyers are allowed in, he said. After a night in decrepit, overcrowded police custody in the Gaushala neighbourhood, Dixit had been hospitalised after he showed symptoms of hypertension.

At the time of his arrest, Dixit was at a restaurant near the offices of Himal Southasian , a quarterly magazine of which he is founder editor. The orders came from the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), a constitutional anti-graft body with sweeping powers. In December last year, when Dixit was about to board a flight to New Delhi, an employee of the CIAA had handed him a summons to furnish property details. Dixit was accused of ‘amassing disproportionate wealth’ as chair of Sajha Yatayat, a public transport cooperative that operates buses in Kathmandu valley.

A law graduate from Delhi University, Dixit challenged the CIAA move at the Supreme Court, arguing that it was illegal for the body to seek property details without any accusations against him. The CIAA, in turn, claimed Dixit was not cooperating in the investigation, and hence the arrest.

On Monday, the Supreme Court of Nepal ordered that Dixit be released. On May 5, he was discharged from the hospital and headed home.

A decade ago, in 2005, Lok Man Singh Karki, the current chief commissioner of CIAA, was the cabinet secretary under King Gyanendra’s direct rule. Dixit and a handful of civil society activists had fought against the authoritarian rule, which eventually led to a joint struggle by the then insurgent Maoists and parliamentary parties, bringing the monarchy to an end in 2006.

Again, in 2013, the activists mounted protests against Karki’s appointment to the CIAA by an unelected government. They argued that Karki was unfit as he had been indicted by a commission for suppressing the popular protests of 2006.

Dixit is one of the few Nepali journalists with international exposure. A graduate of journalism from Columbia University, his arrest made news around the world: the first call for his release came from India. In Nepal, however, he’s seen as a polarising figure. Dixit presents himself as a peace-loving cosmopolitan liberal, who opposes all forms of violence. This puts him at odds with the Maoists, who had waged a decade-long armed insurgency against the Nepali state. The fact that a Maoist is at the helm of the Home Ministry, which controls the police, perhaps explains the restrictions at Dixit’s hospital-prison.

A rationalist, Dixit has championed human rights issues under the shadow of the insurgency. At Bir Hospital, Dixit found himself next to Ganga Maya Adhikari, a 55-year-old widow who is fighting for justice following the murder of her son by Maoists. Her husband, Nanda Prasad, died two years ago at the same hospital. Dixit had supported the couple’s campaign, visiting them in hospital and tweeting about their health. But not everyone had been supportive of Dixit’s activism. Pramod Mishra, a columnist for The Kathmandu Post , found his approach lacking nuance. “Condemning Maoist violence was fine but refusing to acknowledge Maoist contribution seemed to me one-sided and incomplete,” he said.

It’s not easy to define Dixit, who wears many hats. Besides his journalism and activism, he is also an author of children’s books, an amateur historian, a conservationist, head of NGOs and a translator. He set up Film South Asia, the only documentary festival covering the region. He also established a hospital to treat spinal injuries after he miraculously survived a fall during a 2001 trek in the Annapurna region of western Nepal.

Many of his former colleagues and friends interviewed for this article agreed that he is a quintessential South Asian public intellectual. Dixit comes from an elite Kathmandu family. “The kind of activism he did transcended Nepal,” said Hari Sharma, former chair of South Asia Trust, the publisher of Himal Southasian . “He has interests that range from music to public debate to culture to language.” Sharma recalled that Dixit once floated the idea of restoring the chautaro (resting platforms for travellers) that were rapidly disappearing from public spaces.

Sharma and Mishra agreed that the arrest was both a personal vendetta and an erosion of public institutions in Nepal. “But the latter has more serious consequences,” said Mishra, an associate professor at Lewish University in Illinois, US. “This is proof that Nepal society, which doesn’t appreciate critical thinking, is in decay and will decline further,” said Sharma, political advisor to the late prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala.

Questions to Dixit himself had to be passed through his elder brother Kunda Dixit, the editor and publisher of Nepali Times weekly. In emailed answers that his son Eelum Dixit, a filmmaker, forwarded, Dixit said: “My incarceration is symptomatic of the broader and deeper challenge facing Nepali society today… The lack of accountability for war crimes has left the conflict victims bereft, before which my little travails pale in comparison.” Denied access to phones or laptops, the veteran journalist turned to books during his arrest, devouring three, including Why Nations Fail . Perhaps the postcard one of his colleagues sent him sums him up best — Kanak Mani Dixit: Inspirer of people, Incubator of ideas, Instigator of action.

Deepak Adhikari is a freelance journalist based in Kathmandu

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