| |
NEIGHBOURS: NEPAL
Tough Task Ahead
|
|
|
|
|
CLASS STRUGGLE: Army personnel mop up at the scene of a Maoist
carnage
|
The question is:
how liberal can the new prime minister be with the demands of the Maoists
which, apart from antagonising the country's largest trading partner,
India, strike at Nepal's two fundamental national sentiments—Hinduism
and the institution of monarchy (see box). Deuba's two predecessors, Koirala
and K.P. Bhattarai, who bore the brunt of extremist onslaughts since 1996,
tried to bring them back into the political system in their own ways but
they had to give up.
Unlike the Indian examples of Bihar and Andhra
Pradesh, the authority of the Nepal Maoists does not originate from their
involvement in localised caste wars and battles over land. Since they
launched a "people's war" on the state in 1996, the insurgents
have acquired a sizeable presence in all but two of the country's 75 districts,
and have fully "liberated" nine districts, comprising 2,500
villages, where they run their own administration, complete with a postal
system, village courts and schools. The police administration in most
parts of Nepal has fallen to pieces in the face of Maoist attacks. Early
in July, the guerrillas killed 41 policemen in Lumjung and Nuwakot in
a single night's mayhem. In April, 40 police personnel lost their lives
in a nightlong orgy of violence in Rukum and Dolakha. The Nepali Congress,
and other parliamentary parties, keep talking about saving the national
institutions, but the blood-letting continues, making the writ of Kathmandu's
Singha Durbar, the secretariat, uncertain by the day.
|
THE MAOISTS' DEMANDS
|
|
|
END MONARCHY: The royal family's
prerogatives must be scrapped.
SECULAR: Nepal must be declared
a secular country.
INDO-NEPAL TREATY: All "unequal"
treaties must be revoked, including the 1950 Indo-Nepal treaty.
NO OPEN BORDER: The border with
India must be controlled.
SWADESHI NUMBER: Ban must be imposed
on vehicles with Indian number plates plying in Nepal.
WORK PERMIT: Preference to local
workers. Indian workers must come under provision of work permit.
NEW CONSTITUTION: A new constitution
must be drafted by a new set of representatives for establishing
of a
people's republic.
|
|
The armed movement is powered by peasants trained
in guerrilla warfare, but its leadership is drawn from the educated urban
classes, like the Naxalite movement of Bengal in the 1960s. Prachanda,
whose real name is Pushp Kamal Dahal, is an agricultural scientist. Baburam
Bhattarai, the general secretary of the party, is a trained architect
with a PHD from Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. They entered Nepal's
politics in the thick of the pro-democracy movement, formed the United
People's Front (UPF), and won nine seats in the first general elections
of 1991. As they consolidated their hold in the poverty-stricken mid-west
districts, known as the Rapti zone, their MPs clashed with the local bureaucracy
and, in copybook Maoist fashion, discarded Parliament after finding it
to be a "pigsty". Their 1996 People's War manifesto reads: "Move
ahead in the path of armed struggle to establish a new democracy by destroying
the reactionary state mechanism." By then the CPN (Maoist) had forged
links with the Revolutionary International Movement (RIM), a London-based
umbrella organisation that guides many armed communist movements across
the world, including Peru's Shining Path and, to an extent, India's People's
War Group. They are also a member of the Coordination Committee of the
Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia (CCCMPOSA) which controls
and guides Maoist outfits in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Deuba is arguably a shrewd politician who has
correctly gauged the magnitude of the Maoist problem. So had the late
King Birendra, who deputed an emissary to talk to Prachanda weeks before
his tragic death. Deuba's friendly overtures, and the Maoist response
to it, may be ephemeral as the latter may overturn the peace table when
they wish, using the pause in battle to consolidate their hold. But Nepal's
embattled ruling elite had little choice, and Deuba was its best available
peacenik.
|
|
METRO TODAY
Web
Exclusives
