NEPAL: MAOISTS TO REVISE ITS INDIA POLICY

With Shyam Saran-the former Indian Foreign Secretary, gone, the Indian establishment appears to have now shifted its sympathy from the Maoists to the unity in between Nepali Congress and United Marxist-Leninist, the UML-party. It was none less than the Indian Proxy Prime Minister Dr. Man Mohan Singh who “instructed” the visiting UML delegation led by Madhav Kumar Nepal to forge a sort of alliance with the Nepali Congress led by Girija Prasad Koirala. Now that the Indian PM has said so, the UML, as a good student of India since a decade or so, would go by the Indian instructions. Naturally, the news itself is a disturbing one for the Maoists.

Reacting to this fresh Indian political overture aimed at “cornering” the entire Maoists paraphernalia, Comrade Prachanda sees an Indian “design” in the instructions provided to Comrade Madhav Nepal the other day. “If this is so, then we are also free to frame an entirely different policy on India”, said a fuming Prachanda today. Prachanda made these declarations upon listening to the changed Indian stance in Butwal. Analysts say that the Indian politics in Nepal has ever remained “divide and rule” which they copied from their colonizers.

Now that the UML and the NC would certainly come closer as per the Indian sermons which mean that the Maoists will be left in the cold. An extension of this would mean that India wants now the unity among the SPA but not the EPA. The Maoists are not fools, any way. They know how to tame India. Kalapani, the continued land encroachment and the Susta issues are some, among others, which would be more handy for the Maoists to torture India in Nepal. The stage is thus set for Maoists-India face to face. No wonder one fine morning India could even declare that it has revived its “Three-Pillar Theory”.

Source: The Telegraph Nepal, June 6, 2007