The unraveling of a rebel: How Harka Sampang lost his way
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| Image: ChatGPT/Concept: LB Thapa |
The unraveling of a rebel: How Harka Sampang lost his way
Not too long ago, if you mentioned Harka Sampang in Dharan, people’s faces would light up. Here was a man who came out of nowhere—an activist, a social worker, someone who actually seemed to care—and built the Shram Sanskriti Party from scratch. It wasn’t flashy. It was about labor rights, about culture, about ordinary people finally having a voice. And when he won the mayor’s seat in Dharan, it felt like a small miracle.
He became even more ambitious. He wanted to fight an election to become the voice of Dharane people. He was right. The people of Dharan extended their support and Harka Sampang’s Shram Sanskriti Party won a few seats in the present election. It is of course not a bad start at all. For a moment, now he became the face of a new kind of Nepali politics.
But somewhere along the way, something shifted. And honestly, it’s been painful to watch.
Instead of focusing on Dharan—its garbage problems, its broken roads, its struggling shopkeepers—Harka Sampang became obsessed with Kathmandu. More specifically, he became obsessed with Balen Shah, the young, wildly popular prime minister of Nepal. Day after day, his speeches, his social media posts, his interviews—all of it became about attacking Balen and his party, the Rastriya Swatantra Party. It was like he forgot he was supposed to be the voice of the people of Dharan. Instead, he went on settling his personal vendetta. He stopped talking about the people who elected him. Suddenly, his whole political identity was reduced to one thing: “I am against Balen Shah.” And the more he talked, the more the people of Dharan started feeling abandoned. You could almost hear them thinking, What about us, Harka? Weren’t we the reason you started this?
Now, here’s where it gets murky—and a little sad.
It’s hard to believe that Harka just woke up one day and decided to go after Balen with such intensity all by himself. In Nepali politics, nothing happens in a vacuum. There’s a very real possibility that the old political giants—the Nepali Congress and the Communist parties, including Prachanda—saw an opportunity. They’ve been terrified of Balen Shah and the RSP because these new faces threaten their decades-old grip on power. They needed someone to do the dirty work for them. Someone who looked independent, had a mandate, and could attack Balen without looking like a puppet. Who better than Harka Sampang?
You can almost imagine the backroom conversations. A cup of tea here, a quiet meeting there. A few powerful people patting him on the back, telling him he’s brave, telling him someone needs to stand up to Balen. And then, maybe, the sweetest whisper of all: Keep this up, and we’ll remember you. Keep creating problems for this government, and you will be the prime minister of the next coalition government.
To a man who had tasted power in Dharan and dreamed of something bigger, that promise must have felt like oxygen. Never mind that Nepal’s history is littered with people who were promised the moon and left with nothing.
In the past, this has happened many times in Nepali politics, but Harka Sampang is so naïve and so stupid that he could not see how he is being used by Nepali Congress and the Communist parties.
Frankly speaking, right now, Harka Sampang is being used. Plain and simple. The old parties are sitting back, relaxing, watching him burn his own credibility while they sip tea. He’s doing exactly what they wanted: distracting Balen, weakening the RSP, and shifting attention away from their own failures. Meanwhile, his own party is fading into irrelevance. The people of Dharan are losing faith. And that prime minister’s chair? It was never real. It was a carrot dangled in front of a hungry horse.
The saddest part is that Harka Sampang started with
something genuine. He had real support, real hope, a real chance to change
things from the ground up. But he got distracted by the bright lights of
national politics and the dangerous flattery of the very system he once fought
against. And now, instead of being remembered as one of the dedicated Members
of Parliament who worked for the development of Dharan, he risks being
remembered as the man who let himself become a tool—useful to others, but
empty-handed in the end.
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