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Wednesday, 1 August 2007

Nepal's Failed Unification?

Rishikesh Ram Bhandari
As different Nepal and Liberia are, there exist important commonalities in regime hegemonies, state structure and social exclusivity that are crucial in understanding Nepal's current transition. Both of these relatively new states are struggling to establish their identities and cast away historical legacies that have restricted multidimensional national expression. Comparing histories from the very outset to the current day, we find some compelling parallels.ParallelsIn order to extinguish the problems of slavery by repatriation to Africa, the United States established the American Colonisation Society (ACS). The freed slaves, called Americo Liberians, started a colony, defeating numerous little kingdoms and ultimately gaining independence from the United States in 1847. On the other side of the hemisphere, a few decades earlier, Prithvinarayan Shah waged his unification campaign to create a modern Nepal. His dream took shape once he captured the three kingdoms in the Kathmandu Valley. After independence, the ACS had to consolidate a deeply divided nation. Naming itself from the Latin liberare, Liberia was confined only to capital Monrovia, which was occupied by the Americo Liberians. The indigenous Liberians had not been absorbed into the national mainstream and did not identify with this imposed 'Liberia'. The Americo Liberians made use of existing tribal chieftaincies to extend their domain. As a result, the chieftains got a fused role, both as the customary lawgiver as the local clan chief and an administrative role of the new government in Monrovia.After Prithvinarayan Shah and the subsequent Shah Kings conquered the baise and chaubise rajyas, the subjugated kingdoms' rulers were still kept in place, only to be governed from Kathmandu. Thus, the rajas became administrative functionaries of the Shah Kings, and it is through the conduit of such minor kings that the capital was able to extend its control. In this way, the minor kings maintained equilibrium between the Shah King and the subjects.When ACS created its colony, it did not do so by taking over one nation, but numerous little ethnic entities. Similarly, Prithvinarayan Shah did not usurp only one national consciousness. There was no overarching identity space that Prithvinarayan Shah had filled with his cavalry. Because of this, it was hard, ideologically, for the kingdoms to unite in expulsing the aggressors. Furthermore, as the deposed kings were still in considerable power as they were given administrative functions under the new Nepal, they lacked enough incentive to revolt and were absorbed into the ruling class. As a result, a distinct two-layered rule was created - the ruling class and the ruled. This crafted state structure allowed Prithvinarayan Shah to wield force to maintain a politically unified (yet) divided nation.In both countries, the state existed as a vacuous shell, and the diverse ethnicities never became incorporated into the mainstream. It was necessary for the ruler to exercise absolute hegemony to keep the state intact. Liberians did this by making the True Whig Party the sole party and extending membership only to Americo Liberians, hence on social lines. Indigenous Liberians were even yet to be called citizens of the state. The Shahs and the Ranas employed the same strategy by keeping the monarchy and ultimately the oligarchy intact by limiting power within the thakuri kshetriyas. The feudal land structure reinforced the Rajas' hegemony down to the village and also became a tool to further suppress the marginalised. Prithvinarayan Shah's much touted chaar jaat chhattis barna ko fulbaari (garden of four castes and thirty six sub-castes) is reduced to mere propaganda (rhetorical ploy) when we see how social cohesion was based not on an egalitarian playing field for all castes but a distinct hierarchy that subjugated identities of every ethnicity outside the maharaja's aristocracy. The scramble for Africa internally buttressed the TWP as it had to ward off imperialistic forces. Americo Liberians even used indigenous Liberians as bonded labourers to encourage investment for plantations, later on drawing the attention of the League of Nations. On the other hand, the East India Company had been sending off aggressive signals which Prithvinarayan Shah tried to counter by hastening his unification campaign to forge a strong nation. Ultimately, the Ranas used the extractive framework to gain support from the East India Company by exporting people as mercenaries for the British army. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 and the two world wars are prime examples. The Gurkhas were allegedly welcomed into the British troops for their bravery and valiant behaviour, but we must realise that this was a form of slave trade grounded on foreign policy objectives, repression and economic destitution, and is a form of resource plunder.After more than 150 years of hegemonic rule, an indigenous Liberian, Samuel Doe toppled the Americo Liberians' regime promising a new Liberia. However, as the state ACS-TWP crafted state structure had been so embedded that he found it easier to operate in the system rather that to bring change. The same situation resulted in Nepal when the political parties gained power. The democracy they brought in was not inclusive and participatory. It was only with the sheer force of the April movement that the ethnic minorities started to really clamp down about their rights and identities. Since King Gyanendra had been symbolically vanquished, the ethnic minorities who had been subjugated to maintain the garden of Prithvinarayan Shah started to display the deep divisions that were never dealt with since the unification process started two centuries ago. Once a hegemonic structure is toppled, the repressed identities come to surface. The ethnic issues that are being raised are a result of the improper unification process based on imposing a coercive and extractive feudal structure. LessonsLiberia is well into post conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. Nepal needs to learn an important lesson about ethnicity from Liberia. There are important lessons that Nepal can learn from Liberia. Labelling ethnic tensions as mere political propaganda of the regressive royalists shall only serve to elude us about the suppressed ethnic tension. We need to realise that ethnic tensions could not have been played up if cleavages had not existed in the first place. Therefore, all effort must be taken to create a new and inclusive participatory democracy.
Source: The Rising Nepal, August 1, 2007

Monday, 30 July 2007

A War in the Heart of India

Ramachandra Guha
In the history of independent India, the most bloody conflicts have taken place in the most beautiful locations. Consider Kashmir, whose enchantments have been celebrated by countless poets down the ages, as well as by rulers from the Mughal Emperor Jahangir to the first prime minister of free India, Jawaharlal Nehru. Or Nagaland and Manipur, whose mist-filled hills and valleys have been rocked again and again by the sound of gunfire.
To this melancholy list of lovely places wracked by civil war must now be added Bastar, a hilly, densely forested part of central India largely inhabited by tribal people. In British times Bastar was an autonomous princely state, overseen with a gentle hand by its ruler, the representative on earth--so his subjects believed--of the goddess Durga. After independence, it came to form part of the state of Madhya Pradesh and, when that state was bifurcated in 1998, of Chattisgarh (a name that means "thirty-six forts," presumably a reference to structures once maintained by medieval rulers).
The forts that dot Chattisgarh now take the form of police camps run by the modern, and professedly democratic, Republic of India. For the state is at the epicenter of a war being waged between the government and Maoist guerrillas. And within Chattisgarh, the battle rages most fiercely in Bastar. The conflict in Bastar and its neighborhood get little play in the Indian press, which is both urban-centered and self-congratulatory, flying, as it were, from Delhi to Bangalore and back again--from the center of power and patronage to the center of India's booming software industry. To get to Bangalore from Delhi one must pass over Bastar, literally, for obscured from the airplane in the sky are the bloody battles taking place on the ground. Other sections of the Indian Establishment likewise ignore or underrate the Maoist challenge, although an exception must be made for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who recently identified it as the "biggest internal security threat" facing the nation.
In recent years the Maoists have mounted a series of bold attacks on symbols of the Indian state. In November 2005 they stormed the district town of Jehanabad in Bihar, firebombing offices and freeing several hundred prisoners from the jail. Then, this past March, they attacked a police camp in Chattisgarh, killing fifty-five policemen and making off with a huge cache of weapons. At other times, they have bombed and set fire to railway stations and transmission towers.

The Indian Maoists are referred to by friend and foe alike as Naxalites, after the village of Naxalbari in north Bengal, where their movement began in 1967. Through the 1970s and '80s, the Naxalites were episodically active in the Indian countryside. They were strongest in the states of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, where they organized low-caste sharecroppers and laborers to demand better terms from their upper-caste landlords. Naxalite activities were open, as when conducted through labor unions, or illegal, as when they assassinated a particularly recalcitrant landlord or made a daring seizure of arms from a police camp.
Until the 1990s the Naxalites were a marginal presence in Indian politics. But in that decade they began working more closely with the tribal communities of the Indian heartland. About 80 million Indians are officially recognized as "tribal"; of these, some 15 million live in the northeast, in regions untouched by Hindu influence. It is among the 65 million tribals of the heartland that the Maoists have found a most receptive audience.

Who, exactly, are the Indian tribals? There is a long-running dispute on this question. Some, like the great French anthropologist Marcel Mauss, merely saw them as "Hindus lost in the forest"; others, like the British ethnographer Verrier Elwin, insisted that they could not be so easily assimilated into the mainstream of the Indic civilization. While the arguments about their cultural distinctiveness (or lack thereof) continue, there is--or at any rate should be--a consensus on their economic and political status in independent India.
On the economic side, the tribals are the most deeply disadvantaged segment of Indian society. As few as 23 percent of them are literate; as many as 50 percent live under the poverty line. The state fails to provide them with adequate education, healthcare or sanitation; more actively, it works to dispossess them of their land and resources. For the tribals have the ill luck to live amid India's most verdant forests, alongside India's freest-flowing rivers and atop India's most valuable minerals. As these resources have gained in market value, the tribals have had to make way for commercial forestry, large and small dams, and mines. According to sociologist Walter Fernandes, 40 percent of those displaced by development projects are tribals, although they constitute less than 8 percent of the population. Put another way, a tribal is five times as likely as a nontribal to have his property seized by the state.
On the political side, the tribals are very poorly represented in the democratic process. In fact, compared with India's other subaltern groups, such as the Dalits (former Untouchables) and the Muslims, they are well nigh invisible. Dalits have their own, sometimes very successful, political parties; the Muslims have always constituted a crucial vote bank for the dominant Congress Party. In consequence, in every Indian Cabinet since independence, Dalits and Muslims have been assigned powerful portfolios such as Home, Education, External Affairs and Law. On the other hand, tribals are typically allotted inconsequential ministries such as Sports or Youth Affairs. Again, three Muslims and one Dalit have been chosen President of India, but no tribal. Three Muslims and one Dalit have served as Chief Justice of India, but no tribal.
This twin marginalization, economic and political, has opened a space for the Maoists to work in. Their most impressive gains have been in tribal districts, where they have shrewdly stoked discontent with the state to win people to their side. They have organized tribals to demand better wages from the forest department, killed or beaten up policemen alleged to have intimidated tribals and run law courts and irrigation schemes of their own.
The growing presence of Maoists in tribal India is also explained by geography. In these remote upland areas, the officials of the Indian state are unwilling to work hard, and are often unwilling to work at all. Doctors do not attend hospital; schoolteachers stay away from school; magistrates spend their time lobbying for a transfer back to the plains. On the other side, the Maoists are prepared to walk miles to hold a village meeting, and to pitch camp in the forest and live off its bounty. It is from the jungle that they emerge to preach to the tribals, and it is to the jungle that they return when a police party approaches.
Last summer I traveled with a group of colleagues through Bastar to study the impact of a new, state-sponsored initiative to combat Maoism. Known as Salwa Judum (a term that translates, ironically, as "peace campaign"), the scheme had armed hundreds of local villagers and given some the elevated title of Special Police Officer (SPO). While the state claimed Salwa Judum to be a success, other reports suggested that its activists were a law unto themselves, burning villages deemed insufficiently sympathetic to them and abusing their women.

The first thing I found I knew already from travelogues: that the landscape of Bastar is gorgeous. The winding roads we drove and walked on went up and down. Hills loomed in the distance. The vegetation was very lush: wild mango, jackfruit, sal and teak, among other indigenous species. The forest was broken up with patches of grassland. Even in late May the terrain was very green. The bird life was as rich and as native as the vegetation--warblers and wagtails on the ground, the brainfever bird and the Indian cuckoo calling overhead.
The scenery was hauntingly beautiful and utterly desolate. Evidence of the former lay before our eyes; evidence of the latter, in the testimonies of those we met and interviewed. As a means of saving Bastar from the Maoists, the Salwa Judum and the state administration have uprooted more than 40,000 villagers and placed them in camps along the road, recalling the failed "strategic hamlets" used by the US military in South Vietnam more than forty years ago. While some tribals came voluntarily, many others came out of fear of the administration and the goons commissioned to work with it. Whether refugee or displacee, they live in primitive conditions--in tents made of plastic sheets strung up on bamboo poles, open on three sides to the elements. Some permanent houses have been built, but these are inappropriate to the climate and context, being small and dark, with asbestos roofs. Worse, the residents of the camps have been given no means of livelihood. Once independent farmers, hunters and gatherers, they now had to make do with the pickings that came from coolie labor. In the camps we visited, the men wore sad, simple lungis and banyans; the women, crumpled and torn saris; the children, sometimes nothing at all.
Moving away from the camps into the villages off the road, we found evidence of depredations by vigilante groups. In one hamlet we photographed ten homes burned by a Salwa Judum mob. This village lay close to a hill where Maoists were said to sleep by day; the villagers were alleged to sometimes give them refuge at night. Among these tribals the feelings against the Salwa Judum ran very high. Before a clump of mahua trees with golden orioles calling in the background, a tribal woman demonstrated the humiliations she was subjected to. The men were equally bitter--wishing to live quietly in their homes, but forced to report to a nearby camp and spend the nights there.

On the other side, the Maoists had made a particular target of the freshly recruited SPOs. In one especially gruesome incident, the guerrillas kidnapped fifty villagers, some of them Salwa Judum members. They later set thirty-seven free, but killed the thirteen identified as SPOs. Maoists also attacked village headmen and village council representatives, whom they consider part of the bourgeois political system.
The armed officials of the state, we found, patrol only in the daytime and mostly along the roads. Bunkered in their stations, they are mainly interested in protecting themselves. Meanwhile, Salwa Judum has been given a free hand. A local journalist summed up the attitude of the police as follows: "Let the villagers fight it out among themselves while we stay safe."
According to the Asian Centre for Human Rights, close to 400 people were killed in the civil war in Bastar last year. Of these, about fifty were security personnel; about a hundred, Naxalites or alleged Naxalites; the rest, civilians caught in the cross-fire.

Bastar forms part of a contiguous forest belt that spills over from Chattisgarh into Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. In the Ramayana epic this region is known as Dandakaranya, a name the Maoists have integrated into their lexicon. They have a Special Zonal Committee for Dandakaranya, under which operate several divisional committees. These in turn have range committees reporting to them. The lowest level of organization is at the village, where committees known as sangams are formed.
We got a sharp insight into the Maoist mind in an extended interview with a Maoist senior leader. He met our team, by arrangement, in a small wayside cafe along the road that runs from the state capital, Raipur, to Jagdalpur, once the seat of the Maharaja of Bastar. There he told us of his party's strategies for Bastar, and for the country as a whole. Working under the pseudonym "Sanjeev," this revolutionary was slim, clean-shaven and soberly dressed in dark trousers and a bush shirt of neutral colors. Now 35, he had been in the movement for two decades, dropping out of college in Hyderabad to join it. He works in Abujmarh, a part of Bastar so isolated that it remains unsurveyed (apparently the only part of India that holds this distinction), and where no official dares venture for fear of being killed.
Speaking in quiet, controlled tones, Sanjeev showed himself to be deeply committed as well as highly sophisticated. The Naxalite village committees, he said, worked to protect people's rights in jal, jangal and zameen--water, forest and land. At the same time, they made targeted attacks on state officials, especially the police. Raids on police stations were intended to stop police from harassing ordinary folk. They were also necessary to augment the weaponry of the guerrilla army. Through popular mobilization and the intimidation of state officials, the Maoists hoped to expand their authority over Dandakaranya. Once the region was made a "liberated zone," it would be used as a launch pad for the capture of state power in India as a whole.

Sanjeev's belief in the efficacy of armed struggle was complete. When asked about two landmine blasts that had killed many innocent people--in one case members of a marriage party--he said that these had been mistakes, with the guerrillas believing that the police had hired private vehicles to escape detection. The Maoists, he said, would issue an apology and compensate the victims' families. However, when asked about other, scarcely less brutal killings, he said they were "deliberate incidents."
We asked Sanjeev what he thought of the Maoists in neighboring Nepal, who had laid down their arms and joined other parties in the framing of a republican Constitution. He was emphatic that in India they did not countenance this option. Here, they remained committed to the destruction of the state by means of armed struggle.

How many Maoists are there in India? Estimates vary widely. There are perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 full-time guerrillas, each armed with an AK-47, most of them conversant with the use of grenades, many with landmines, a few with rocket launchers. They maintain links with guerrilla movements in other parts of South Asia, exchanging information and technology with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and, at least before their recent conversion, the Nepali Maoists.
The Indian Maoists got a huge shot in the arm with the merger, in 2004, of two major factions. One, the People's War Group, was active in Andhra Pradesh; the other, the Maoist Co-ordination Committee, in Bihar. Both dissolved themselves into the new Communist Party of India (Maoist). Since the merger the party has spread rapidly, with former PWG cadres moving north into the tribal heartland from Andhra, and erstwhile MCC cadres coming south from Bihar.
The general secretary of the united party calls himself "Ganapathi," almost certainly a pseudonym. Statements carrying his name occasionally circulate on the Internet--one, issued in February, reported the successful completion of a party congress "held deep in the forests of one of the several Guerrilla Zones in the country." The congress "reaffirmed the general line of the new democratic revolution with agrarian revolution as its axis and protracted people's war as the path of the Indian revolution." The meeting "was completed amongst great euphoria with a Call to the world people: Rise up as a tide to smash imperialism and its running dogs! Advance the Revolutionary war throughout the world!!"
Ganapathi is the elephant-headed son of Shiva, a god widely revered in South India. The general secretary is most likely from Andhra Pradesh. What we know of the other leaders suggests that they come from a lower-middle-class background. Like Sanjeev, they usually have a smattering of education and were radicalized in college. Like other Communist movements, the Naxalite leadership is overwhelmingly male. No tribals are represented in the upper levels of the party hierarchy. How influential is the Maoist movement in India? Once more, the estimates vary widely. The Home Ministry claims that one-third of all districts in India, or about 150 in all, are recognized as "Naxalite affected." But this, as the Home Minister himself recently admitted, is a considerable exaggeration. State governments have a vested interest in declaring districts Naxalite-affected, for it allows them to claim a subsidy from the center. Thus, an armed robbery or two is sometimes enough for a district to be featured on the list.
My guess is that about forty districts, spread across ten states and containing perhaps 80 million Indians, live in a liminal zone where the Indian state exercises uncertain control by day and no control by night. Some of these districts are in the northeast, where the nighttime rulers are the Naga, Assamese and Manipuri rebels. The other districts are in the peninsula, where Naxalites have dug deep roots among low castes and tribals grievously shortchanged by the democratic system.

How, finally, might the Maoist insurgency be ended or at least contained? On the Maoist side this might take the shape of a compact with bourgeois democracy, by participating in and perhaps even winning elections. On the government side it might take the shape of a sensitively conceived and sincerely implemented plan to make tribals true partners in the development process: by assuring them the title on lands they cultivate, allowing them the right to manage forests sustainably, giving them a solid stake in industrial or mining projects that come up where they live and that often cost them their homes.
In truth, the one is as unlikely as the other. One cannot easily see the Maoists giving up on their commitment to armed struggle. Nor, given the way the Indian state actually functions, can one see it so radically reform itself as to put the interests of a vulnerable minority, the tribals, ahead of those with more money and power.

In the long run, perhaps, the Maoists might indeed make their peace with the Republic of India, and the Republic come to treat its tribal citizens with dignity and honor. Whether this denouement will happen in my lifetime, I am not sure. In the forest regions of central and eastern India, years of struggle and strife lie ahead. Here in the jungles and hills they once called their own, the tribals find themselves harassed on one side by the state and on the other by the insurgents. Speaking in Hindi, a tribal in Bastar told me, "Hummé dono taraf sé dabav hain, aur hum beech mé pis gayé hain." It sounds far tamer in English--"Pressed and pierced from both sides, here we are, squeezed in the middle."
Source: The Nation, July 16, 2007

Terai rebels meet in Bihar to plan strategy: report

Kathmandu : An armed group of former Nepal Maoists, who are waging a battle in the Terai plains for statehood, are meeting in India's neighbouring state of Bihar to plan their future strategy, a report said. The Janatantrik Terai Mukti Morcha, led by former top Maoist leader from the plains, Jay Krishna Goit, has started a meeting of its central committee in an undisclosed venue in Bihar from Friday, a Nepali daily said Sunday.

The Goit faction, that broke away from the Maoists, accusing the communist rebels of having exploited the Terai belt to come to power, has begun intensifying its movement in the plains for a separate state for Madhesis, people from the plains, mostly of Indian origin. Since its revolt against the Maoists, the Morcha has been split into three splinters. Besides Goit, the other two groups are headed by his former aides, Jwala Singh and Bisphot Singh, both of whom are waging separate battles in the Terai, demanding a separate Madhes state.

The Naya Patrika daily said the government has sent a letter to Goit Saturday, asking him to open parleys. Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala's deputy, Peace and Reconstruction Minister Ram Chandra Poudel, who is heading the three-member ministerial team entrusted with negotiating with the different dissenting factions, sent the official letter to the chief administrative officer of a frontier district to convey the message to Goit, the daily said.

Following in the footsteps of his former comrades, the Maoists, who during their decade-old armed revolt had demanded UN mediation to open talks with the government, the Goit group last week made a similar demand. Goit reportedly sent a letter to the UN Mission in Nepal, that is facilitating Nepal's peace process and monitoring the arms and combatants of the Maoists, asking for help to start talks with the government.

However, with the government having had publicly ruled out UN mediation for talks with the Goit group, the UN agency told the Goit group that it would not be able to act without the government's consent, the daily said. But in his letter Saturday, the minister has agreed for UN mediation, the report said. The daily, considered close to the Maoists, also said the Goit faction would wind up its meeting Sunday, after which they are likely to send their answer to the government.

Most of the armed groups in the Terai, including the three different Morcha factions, take advantage of the open border between India and Nepal and frequently cross over to India for safety and secrecy, just as the Maoists did in the past. There is growing suspicion in Nepal that Indian authorities are in touch with the Terai rebels and are helping the Madhes movement. During the Maoist insurgency, India had faced the same accusations but always denied them, saying it regarded the rebels as terrorists. However, after King Gyanendra seized power in 2005, various Indian agencies, including leaders of its political parties, were involved in bringing the Maoists and the opposition parties together, with meetings between the top brass of both held in India.
Source: IANS, July 29, 2007

Friday, 27 July 2007

Poll environment

There are only 117 days left for the Constituent Assembly (CA) elections slated for November 22. However, the election fever is conspicuously absent in the air. A period of four months is insufficient for the preparation of an election of such a great magnitude, which will not only form a new parliament but change the fate of this country as well. To our utter dismay, no party has pulled its socks up for the elections yet. Both UML and NC have initiated some sort of subtle poll campaigns. Neither the tea stalls are abuzz with election talks, nor are the political cadres anywhere close to their expected busy schedules. The forthcoming CA polls demand much more energy and enthusiasm because it is much more different and complicated than the general elections. In addition to electing one candidate from a constituency, this time, we will also be casting our vote for the party of our choice in the second ballot paper which will be dropped in a different ballot box. The second vote will ensure proportional representation.

The lack of enthusiasm for the forthcoming elections, it seems, is due to the fact that many are unconvinced that the CA polls will be held on schedule. Mainly, the slow pace of the Maoist transformation from gun culture to peace are making people worried about the future of the CA polls. Besides, they are apprehensive that the monarchists might poke the elections, and that the Madhesi trouble might swell into too hot an issue for the state to handle. That the Maoists might not fare well in the ballot is also a reason to be suspicious of the coming elections. People are asking, will they allow free and fair elections seeing the writing on the wall?

Now, the onus lies on the shoulder of political parties and the Maoists to win the confidence of the people. The political parties should swiftly spread their tentacles to the hinterland and the Maoists should expedite their transition to peace. The lull in YCL's behavior in recent days has shown some appreciable changes. On the part of the government, it has to maintain law and order, ensure peace and generate enthusiasm for holding free and fair elections. As Chief Election Commissioner Bhoj Raj Pokhrel has said, it is the duty of the political parties and the government to create an election-friendly environment for the upcoming CA polls. In addition, everyone should acknowledge the fact that it is a testing time for Nepal. All the Nepalis should join their hands to make the CA elections a big success, and prove the world that the Nepalis are always for democracy, justice, peace and the economic prosperity.

Source: The Kathmandu Post, July 27, 2007

Nepal: experiencing pangs of transition

S.D. Muni

The challenge to Nepal’s peace process comes from political vested interests, Maoist activities, and the gradually spreading turbulence in the Terai region.


Nepal’s peace process is passing through a delicate phase. The core objective of this process is to integrate the Maoists into an inclusive and fully democratic political order. This process of transiting a 238-year-old feudal state into a vibrant and responsive democratic order has been reasonably smooth and speedy so far. Since the success of the peoples’ movement in April 2006, led peacefully by the Maoists and the democratic forces, much progress has been a chieved. The Maoists have committed themselves to non-violent and democratic politics under a Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed with the government on November 2001. Following this, the Maoists have registered their arms and armed cadres under United Nations supervision. An interim Constitution, interim parliament, and interim coalition government of an eight-party alliance (of Maoists and seven mainstream political parties) have been put in place. The King has been stripped of all his powers raising the prospects of establishing a democratic Republic. The culmination of the peace process, and thereby the prospects of a stable and prosperous Nepal, now depends upon the sincere implementation of assurances and commitments by the Maoists and other political parties and the drafting of a Constitution by a Constituent Assembly scheduled to be elected in November 2007.

The challenge to the smooth advancement of the peace process and the holding of the Constituent Assembly elections comes from three sources: political vested interests, Maoist activities, and the gradually spreading violence in the Terai region. The royalists, both around the palace and within the political parties, have no interest in the elections as a Constituent Assembly in its very first sitting is expected to abolish monarchy and establish a Republic. There are sections of royalists who may settle for a ceremonial monarchy. However, King Gyanendra, unaware of the shift against him of the popular mood since 2005, has not accepted the option of ceremonial monarchy and continues to scheme to regain as much of his powers as possible. He wants to drive a wedge in the ruling coalition and disrupt the election process. His failed birthday bash on July 7, 2007, was a clear indication of this.


Some of the political parties too do not seem to be ready for elections, having lost political ground during the 10 years of Maoist insurgency. The Nepali Congress (NC) is awaiting the reunification of its breakaway group under Sher Bahadur Deuba. The royalists as well as smaller left parties are not too sure of their electoral prospects. There are assessments that even the Maoists may want to delay elections as they have lost much of their goodwill in the post-peoples’ movement (Jan Andolan) period, though their top leaders are of the view that the more the elections are delayed the more their political ground will be eroded. Uncertainty in the minds of these political stakeholders has seriously daunted their enthusiasm for elections. The Chief Election Commissioner has complained of the government’s delay in filling the vacancies in the poll panel.

All those who want to delay the elections are seeking shelter behind the prevailing violence and lawlessness in Nepal. The abductions, extortions, and use of force by the Youth Communist League (YCL) created by the Maoists from their erstwhile Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) cadres invite considerable flak from various sources, including the Prime Minister. The Maoists’ inability to return properties seized during the insurgency period are also cited as examples of their bad faith vis-À-vis joining the mainstream. The Maoists are partly using YCL strong-arm methods to pressure the other coalition partners but, on the other hand, there are differences in the Maoist leadership on this issue. There are clearly two lines on the degree and extent to which the group should integrate in the prevailing multi-party politics. Many in the Polit Bureau feel that they are walking in a trap to be gradually marginalised and eliminated, as their cadres are killed in the Terai and their image is tarnished in the rest of the country. Therefore, an organised YCL is required to deter their enemies, mobilise political support, and garner votes if and when elections take place. For them, YCL is their youth wing as in all other parties.

The Terai is in a state of virtual anarchy on account of the unrest in the Hindi-speaking Madheshi community. Long neglected and discriminated against, the Madheshis are demanding proper representation in the new Nepal. Royalists backed by Hindu extremists from across the borders in India fanned the initial sparks of violence, caused by Maoist blunders, to discredit the interim government. Initially, even some of the major political parties and sections of the international community tried to turn the Madheshis’ ire against the Maoists to erode the latter’s support base. The Madheshis have a genuine issue but in the absence of a credible leadership, a number of criminal, self-serving and narrow-based political groups are taking undue advantage of the situation. In the forefront of violence and disruption are three splinter Maoists factions of Jai Krishan Goit, Jwala Singh, and Bisfotak Singh, the Madheshi Janadhikar Forum of Upendra Yadav, the Sadbhawana Party, which is a part of the ruling alliance, and lastly, the Terai Cobra and the Terai Tigers led by unknown Robin Hoods. Some Terai political activists are still waiting to float new leadership platforms. The royalists continue to indirectly support and encourage some of these groups in the hope that a disordered Terai will mar the prospects of smooth elections. Slow and uncalibrated responses from the government as well as the eight-party alliance have worsened the situation. The Maoists’ proposal to raise an eight-party front to politically deal with the Terai violence has yet to take off. If the Terai situation has to be brought under control, the government must move fast to seriously engage with the genuine Madheshi groups.


Behind all this confusion and persisting conflict in Nepal is the fact that the old mindsets are finding it hard to come to terms with the new challenge thrown by the peoples’ movement. The political parties and the Maoists had perhaps forged only a tactical alliance to deal with the autocratic King. It is doubtful if this alliance is based on a shared grand strategic vision of building a new Nepal of popular aspirations. This is reflected in the divergence among the eight parties on the questions of the monarchy’s future status, inclusion of hitherto marginalised sections of Madheshis and ethnic minorities, restructuring of the Nepalese army, and of priorities of socio-economic transformation. Such divergences have worsened the trust deficit between not only the Maoists and the other political parties, but also among the non-Maoist parties in the ruling alliance. Maoists continue to grumble about being discriminated against, be it the question of ambassadorial appointments or allocation of funds for their registered cadres or resources for the ministries allocated to them. One wonders if India and the rest of the international community, which are deeply engaged with Nepal’s peace process, have also not been afflicted by the old mindset problem. The outspoken and outgoing American Ambassador, James F. Moriarty, made it amply clear in a number of his departing statements. All those who are engaged in restructuring a new Nepal need to understand clearly that the continuing alliance between the political parties and the Maoists, and election of a Constituent Assembly are the basic requirements for peace and stability in Nepal. There is no alternative except chaos and disorder.

After receiving the shock of popular disenchantment with King Gyanendra’s April 21, 2006, proclamation on the peoples’ movement, India has tried to push Nepal’s peace process in a positive direction, both through diplomatic persuasion and the allocation of generous financial resources. There are, however, elements in the Indian political and policy establishments that would still like to see a ceremonial monarchy and the marginalisation of the Maoists. They want India to be prepared to pick up the pieces and deal with the debris if Nepal were to fall apart due to the Madheshi issue and the ethnic tensions. One hopes Indian policy steers clear of such elements. While continuing to support the peace process, India must throw its weight behind a constructive engagement between Kathmandu and the Madheshi people. Many of the Madheshi groups have in the past thrived and prospered on Indian doles. They must be prevailed on by New Delhi to desist from the path of violence and seek a just but negotiated resolution of their grievances with Kathmandu. If the Terai violence is allowed to delay or disrupt the election process in Nepal and its peace process collapses, India will be the worst affected by its extensive negative spillover.


Source: The Hindu, July 27, 2007