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COVER STORY: NEPAL
Strategic Decision
The RPP, which fancies
itself as a Nepalese variant of the British Conservative Party-its stalwarts
includes Devyani's Oxbridge-educated father Pashupati Shamsher Rana-is
expected to uphold the principle that the king can do no wrong. Also throwing
its weight behind king and country is the ruling Nepali Congress. This
despite its known misgivings over Gyanendra's opposition to the 1990 movement
that brought multi-party democracy to Nepal. Patna-born Prime Minister
G.P. Koirala risked popular fury on June 4 to be among the first to genuflect
before the new king.
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| BURNING RAGE: Rumours of
conspiracy fanned passions inflamed by grief. Curfew was clamped on
Kathmandu as mobs took to the streets in anger at the murder of their
king. |
The prime minister was shrewd enough to gauge
that rallying behind the monarchy was the only way to prevent Nepal from
being overwhelmed by anarchy and the radicalism of the ultra-Left. It
was at his initiative that the new king announced an inquiry into the
palace massacre. The truth, however unpalatable he calculated, would establish
that the killings were the handiwork of the former crown prince. It would
also lend, Koirala reckoned, personal credibility to King Gyanendra. If
nothing it would minimise the rumours and puncture at least a few conspiracy
theories.
Not that all the theories are the handiwork
of keen imagination. Scepticism has an uncanny habit of being tailored
to a wider agenda. On June 6, the Nepali-language daily Kantipur published
an article by Baburam Bhattarai, a senior leader of the outlawed Maoist
guerrillas, that blamed the killings on a grand conspiracy involving raw
and the CIA (through the Delhi branch of the FBI). The idea, claimed this
fertile mind nurtured by Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, was to compromise
Nepal's sovereignty by killing King Birendra with whom the Maoists shared
"an unannounced unity in approach". The article concluded by
calling on the army "to support the patriotic people of Nepal instead
of following the colonialists in the palace". In short, to mutiny.
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PRESS THE CASE
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Maoist leader
Bhattarai (top) and Ghimire, who was arrested on charges of sedition
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The article prompted a dual response. First,
the Government arrested Kantipur editor Yubaraj Ghimire and publisher
Binod Raj Gyawali on charges of sedition. It was an intemperate move in
view of the large foreign media contingent that had descended on Kathmandu
in the aftermath of the killings. At the same time, however, the Government
decided that the information blackout on the killings was fuelling wild
speculation and instigating unrest. The Maoists too were riding piggyback
on disturbed Nepali nationalism by positing the "patriotic"
King Birendra against the "colonialist" usurper. Consequently,
eyewitnesses of the June 1 incident were encouraged to speak to the media.
Although the positive impact of the new openness
has been offset by the arrest of Ghimire and Gyawali, it constitutes a
beginning. Nepal's 10-year-old democracy has been marred by instability-five
prime ministers and nine governments in a decade-non-performance and corruption.
These may be teething troubles but more disturbing
is the failure of a democratic culture to take root. Nepal lacks an independent
media and many of its politicians straddle the thin line between constitutional
politics and insurgency. This state of flux makes the country a happy
hunting ground for adventurism. The disturbances in December 2000 over
something Hrithik Roshan never said proved how easy it is to instigate
mobs.
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| ANGRY YOUNG MEN: Prince
Dipendra (left) with his cousin Paras at a function |
The monarchy could have played a leading role
in establishing a bridge between traditional ties and modern affiliations.
In some ways King Birendra did attempt to be the great consensus figure.
But good intentions have inevitably come unstuck in the face of the monarchy's
aloofness. What contributed to the confusion on June 1 was the zero knowledge
among the political class about what transpires inside the Narayanhity
palace. It took three hours for Prime Minister Koirala to be informed
of the shootings.
With the Maoists running a parallel regime in
the surrounding countryside, a paralysed monarchy is the last thing Nepal
needs to complement a crippled Government. King Gyanendra has successfully
reinvented himself on many occasions. Now, in the face of Nepal's most
serious crisis, he needs to be a chameleon yet again.
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