Nepali Netbook

Dr. Bhattarai And Our Strategy For Survival

2012-01-22T14:10:00.000-08:00

Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai is getting grief from across the spectrum for having suggested that Nepal risked being merged into either China or India if it failed to redefine its geo-strategic self-interest.
Some have attributed pure diplomatic immaturity to the premier’s assertion. Others see a pronounced albeit misguided boldness in his attempt to contend with both powerful neighbors at the same time. Others still see a sense of insecurity transformed into a ploy to prolong his tenure in power.
Regardless of the motive(s), Maila Baje feels Dr. Bhattarai has made a positive and much-needed contribution to the national discourse. If such forthrightness had not come from the man on the top, it might not have left us scratching our heads with the intensity we are today.
Ever since Nepal – in the eminent historian Father Ludwig Stiller’s words – “passed definitely from the status of an insignificant state to that of a power in the Indian subcontinent”, stopping the juggernaut entailed utmost urgency for Qing China and British India. And this consisted of more than military means. As Nepal festered in domestic turmoil after its military defeats by China and British India, the two empires perpetuated their respective narratives in which Nepal was part of their historical inheritance. Manchu emperors, Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong all claimed Nepal as part of territories China lost to western imperialism.
To be sure, Nepal’s treaties with the People’s Republic of China have abrogated all past claims of Nepali vassalage to the Middle Kingdom and precluded the possibility of any resurrection of irredentist claims. But the historical and cultural legacies that feed the narrative are still very much alive among the Chinese, whose memory is legendary for its length in time.
Indians with a penchant for history have similarly been puzzled by the fact that Nepal managed to remain out of the formal British empire despite the East India Company’s decisive victory in the war. Indeed, if the Chinese shadow had not loomed so large on Governor-General Francis Rawdon-Hastings’ considerations before and after the Sugauli Treaty, the notion of a “limited war” would not have not existed. But for the Indians dominating the political security establishment in New Delhi, it is nonetheless intriguing that states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra and Karnataka – so distant from their version of Indianness – should be part of India but not Nepal.
As Nepalis continued to bicker, irrespective of the political system in place, this contested realm of overlapping orbits deepened among the Chinese and Indians. During times of peace, the fallout for us seems to have been calmer. During periods of tensions, greater convulsions have occurred. Sometimes, events have moved so fast that their impact on us has become quite inexplicable. The July 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship New Delhi signed with the Rana regime, for instance, was made utterly redundant merely by October that year, when Chinese communist troops moved into Tibet. A little over six months after Mohan Shamsher Rana thought his regime had attained some security vis-à-vis independent India, the Rana regime receded firmly in the dustbin of history. Not without the incongruity of the same Mohan Shamsher having become the first prime minister of democratic Nepal.
At other times, regional events have proceeded with greater placidity. With the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile in India in March 1959, Nepali democracy had virtually run its course – even before Nepal’s staggered first national elections had been completed.
For thirty years, the opacity and closed nature of the partyless system provided our two neighbors the kind of equilibrium they needed to calibrate their relationship. Whether Nepalis themselves would have volunteered to choose between full-fledged democracy and a sense of nationhood in the international community is debatable. That King Mahendra pushed us toward the latter course out of any consideration other than reinforcing his rule continues to be hotly debated. So is King Birendra’s Zone of Peace Proposal, which was prefaced by his 1973 interview with Newsweek that Nepal, consisting of three districts appertaining beyond the Himalayas, was not technically a subcontinental nation. King Gyanendra’s emphasis on developing Nepal into a transit hub between the two Asian giants continues to stir jeers of derision. Yet the Zone of Peace proposal has been gaining new interest, while the post-monarchy leadership has been touting the transit-hub model. If you really look for it, there is even a grudging admiration for King Mahendra’s notion of nationhood among his fiercest critics.
Put differently, Nepalis seem to like the way the country has survived in the international community with a distinct identity. Would the same have been achieved through the path of unshackled democracy and development? Probably. But the Cold War history of Asia, Africa and Latin America leaves us less sanguine. Other developing countries may have been liberated following the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Cold War that really matters to us has never really receded.
Our unrelenting march towards national newness has been marred by a lack of clarity on things that really matter. Manifestations of this contested realm of overlapping orbits, Maila Baje, feels will become more apparent in the period ahead from both our neighbors. By illuminating our geo-strategic vulnerability in so stark terms, Dr. Bhattarai has permitted Nepalis of all ideological persuasions to ponder a new – to borrow a worn but still worthy phrase – strategy for survival. It is only with life, after all, that liberty and the pursuit of happiness can follow.

China Plays The Nepal Card

2012-01-16T13:52:00.000-08:00

One striking aspect of Premier Wen Jiabao’s abbreviated visit to Nepal was his professed expectation that Nepal’s relations with India would continue to grow in the days ahead.
To be sure, the assertion was revealed to the public indirectly. But since it has not been contradicted, the sentiment can be assumed to be one both Beijing and Kathmandu want disseminated in the aftermath.
At one level, you could argue that such a candid expression of goodwill on Wen’s part would be conducive to boosting the kind of stability that has eluded Nepal for a long time. Moreover, no country would question another’s sovereign right to conduct relations with a third nation as it wished.
And have not we heard countless Indian leaders go on the record that they were entirely satisfied with Nepal’s growing relations with China?
The Chinese have been particularly adept in transforming this accepted practice of international behavior into a tool of foreign policy. It is not hard to see how the longer the Indians and others are preoccupied with deciphering the motives and intentions of the Chinese in Nepal, the better it is for the mandarins up north.
You do not have to be an incorrigible cynic to see the depravity inherent in Beijing advising a government led by a party that has so strenuously flaunted its northern tilt with abandoned while spewing anti-Indianism for several years now to pursue greater ties with India. One can only imagine the heartburn among the hardest liners among the Mohan Baidya camp.
The circumstances and schedule of Wen’s visit amply underscore that it was one the visitor was anxious to make. That he was intent on doing so to send a message to audiences beyond Nepal was equally clear. Normally, visiting Chinese dignitaries have included Nepal in a wider regional itinerary or in terms of countries with which they believe they share civilization or traditional ties. From Beijing’s perspective, it suffices that the visit took place at all.
The pledges of Chinese assistance that made international headlines may be of limited purposes here. Foreign assistance that comes with no strings attached – touted as the singular tenet of Chinese benevolence – tends to cuts both ways. The donor can delay projects or disbursements or quietly pull out altogether on grounds that may not be anticipated or often explicable to the recipient.
What Nepalis and others should perhaps focus on is the basis for pursuing bilateral relations that Wen’s visit has provided to the next generation of China’s leadership, which is to begin ascending power at the party congress later this year.
Many key factions – including the ‘princelings’ (scions of former PRC leaders and officials) and the ‘neo-comms’ – are likely to bring a neo-Maoist approach to the helm over the ensuing years as they continue to dominate the levers of power. The Communist Youth League led by President Hu Jintao is unlikely to be able to challenge any broadening of such an alliance. The voice the People’s Liberation Army has acquired in China’s policies concerning its periphery has been ringing a disproportionate echo on matters concerning Nepal.
Those dwelling on – and denigrating – Nepal’s brazen flaunting of the so-called China card always sought to deny the fact that any game by definition requires a full-fledged partner willing to play on the established terms. Today those critics find themselves forced to contend with the meaning and motives of China’s Nepal card.

A Fraternity’s Fervor In Self-Defense Flippancy

2012-01-08T15:31:00.000-08:00

Leaders of the Big Three were always capable of charming us with their small chatter. The chunks Maila Baje could collect over one 48-hour period last week were truly splendid.
Nepali Congress president Sushil Koirala asserted that his party had done nothing to hurt the country. The CPN-UML’s K.P. Sharma Oli claimed that the current crop of leaders was keeping Nepalis in the dark in the name of fostering change. The Maoists’ C.P. Gajurel, who is becoming increasingly acerbic in some of his public pronouncements, called his party chairman, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a traitor.
Sushil Koirala’s comment came against the backdrop of the autocracy allegation leveled against him by party dissident-in-chief Sher Bahadur Deuba. For someone who feels he stood up rather heroically to Girija Prasad Koirala, Deuba certainly cannot afford to let Sushil get the better of him. The party president is entirely justified in explaining his side of the story.
But Sushil took things a bit too far. Forget the specifics. A party that claims to have led three valiant campaigns to bring democracy was unable to preserve it twice and may be on the verge of failing a third time. How much longer can the nation put up with mere intentions, putting aside actual performance?
In including himself among the ranks of politicians who have failed the country, Oli is probably projecting himself as a worthy successor to Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai. Given the beating Dr. Bhattarai’s personal image has taken during his tenure at the helm, any politician can expect to bask in the soft idolatry of lowered expectations. But Oli could have at least tried to shed more light on the kind of darkness he believes his tribe has cast on the country. He has, after all, been at the center of some of the most opaque deals sullying the Nepali political firmament.
Gajurel’s labeling of Dahal as a traitor is reminiscent, at least superficially, of the travails of another Comrade Pushpa a generation ago. Yet the accusers of Pushpa Lal Shrestha themselves could not ward off the same allegation from other comrades. Gajurel, who ostensibly wants to see Ram Bahadur Thapa Badal in Dr. Bhattarai’s seat, has too much of his skin in the game not to recognize how subjective the T word can be.
In grappling with the mechanics and machinations of the parliamentary system they once condemned as despicable as the monarchy, Badal or, for that matter, Mohan Baidya have diluted their rhetoric of a full Maoist takeover of the Nepali state. Granted, they have offered boisterous protests against perceived pernicious compromises Dahal and Bhattarai have made in the name of peace. Still, there may be some in their ranks who would be equally prone to accuse the hardest of the Maoist hardliners of having abandoning the cause.
In reality, our politicians have taken the easy way out. They are caught in a dance the real choreographers are directing on the fly. By demonizing their collective fraternity, they manage to keep the people as well as the puppeteers at bay. We’re all having fun in our own ways. Just don’t lose your penchant for springing up compromises when it comes to the crunch.

Holding On To Our Fragmenting Selves

2012-01-01T16:23:00.000-08:00

Here we are welcoming the new year once again arguing over whose sense of injustice among us is more legitimate and why.
The Supreme Court order staying the proposed recruitment of Madhesi youths in the Nepal Army has fueled a familiar but infinite debate. The president (who is also the supreme commander of the national army), vice-president, deputy prime minister (who is also defense minister) are madhesis, yet some in that community still can’t quit complaining of how they are the victims of internal colonization. The other side is left wondering who quantifies how much must they must cede to prove their bona fides.
In this emotive atmosphere, it’s perhaps useless to keep harping on what really constitutes being a madhesi or a pahadi. The larger issue is looming ominously. The ever-expanding space available for articulating our grievances has unleashed ceaseless cries of marginalization. We did not need bahuns and chhettris rallying for their rights to recognize that we have always been a nation of minorities. As such, we cannot escape consensual existence.
Since the unity-in-diversity credo has been discredited as a legacy of an oppressive past, the search is on for an alternative model that fosters a genuine sense of commonality. Unfortunately, none seems available – at least one that can satisfy all aspects of our continually fragmenting selves. An alliance of several groups can project a majority for a while but the fault lines have been running too deep to make it sustainable. It becomes easier for everyone instead to define and decry that as a brazen display of political opportunism.
In our quest to remake the future as far removed from the past, our sense of victimhood is also becoming pernicious. Class, religion, ethnicity, caste, region and sexual orientation – not to speak of political ideology – have provided fertile ground not only for the magnification of gripes but also for their outright manufacture.
This intensifying sense of injury tends to rationalize every move. In global terms, we have a legislature that is far too bloated relative to our population, but we put up with it because we wanted to be inclusive.
As long as the money keeps pouring in from abroad, we have no problem subjecting ourselves to all manner of experimentation. But that has not stopped creating new contexts of perceived marginalization. When every death in the public square acquires a political content and is deemed worthy of declaration of martyrdom, politicians cannot resist pandering to the people.
Maybe this whole business of endlessly extending the constituent assembly is what keeps alive the myth called the peace process. The political establishment was mystified by the Supreme Court’s refusal to register its petition seeking a review of the justices’ verdict on the tenure of the constituent assembly. It was easy for us to dismiss the temerity of the politicians. Yet what we may really have to fear is the day the assembly actually has to produce a constitution that some of the drafters will likely find unacceptable right away.
It’s hardly a thought relishing for a year already known for its dire predictions, but maybe Nepalis haven’t fought our internal battles honestly enough to energize any genuine quest for peace.

Maybe Communism Has Defamed Dr. Bhattarai

2011-12-25T19:19:00.000-08:00

CPN-UML chairman Jhal Nath Khanal has accused Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai of defaming Nepal’s communist movement by, among other things, forming the largest cabinet in the country’s history and packing it with sleazebags.
Addressing a gathering of the party activists in Dharan last week, the former prime minister also accused the Maoist-led government of deviating from its major assignments, such as sending home those Maoist combatants who opted for voluntary discharge. All this, in Khanal’s view, has raised questions about the Maoists’ sincerity in concluding the peace and promulgating the new constitution.
At one level, Maila Baje feels sorry for Khanal, for the kind of inanities he has been reduced to uttering. Communism has been so thoroughly discredited universally that there is little one man – even of Dr. Bhattarai’s caliber – could add. But, then, you have to empathize with the UML chief. In the last test of popular strength, after all, communists in Nepal won nearly two-thirds of the votes cast.
The only way of understanding the contradiction is by recognizing that our heavily splintered communist movement survives in the debris of the ideology’s progressive decay, deepening agony and irrelevance to the human condition. Where it seems to be thriving, it is because of its external label, which is devoid of its internal substance.
In our own context, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the CPN-UML had to repackage itself into a deceptive People’s Multiparty Democracy. It retained a left-of-centre personality that helped all the second- and third-tier besieged commies in Eastern Europe to reinvent themselves as social democrats. The CPN-UML’s first chairman, Manmohan Adhikary, conceded as prime minister that “communism” merely provided a label.
The Maoists had to pander to ethnic, linguistic, regional and other forces to muster collective grievances and magnify them several fold. Sure, the “People’s War” was modeled after the Great Helmsman’s strategy and tactics. But the principal external drivers did not have as their objective the creation of a one-party workers and peasants’ paradise. In the end, the Maoists could not prevail in their principal quest – the abolition of the monarchy – without following the parliamentary parties they had once opposed with equal vigor.
Mao Zedong was too much of a territorially defined mortal to canonize his life and times into any form of a universal ism. In Nepal, Maoism merely became a convenient tool for a motley demolition crew. To remain in power, our Maoists today have had to embody such diverse tendencies as corporatism, Christianity and homosexuality and fuse them into big-tent tolerance while at the same time peddling promises of that ultimate utopia.
True, there are statists today even in the land of the free and the home of the brave who have not given up. In their view, the comrades of yore simply did not do things right. Through several layers of analyses, the drivers of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the czars of Obamaville seek to lure shlubs and sophisticates alike by proffering a sense of direction and moral justification.
The media spinmeisters sanitize what is happening with the ChiComs, almost glorifying the system as a paragon of efficiency in contrast to the gridlock those dead white men bequeathed all those years ago. The Soviet Union is such a distant memory that the free health and education and lifetime employment beckon without a trace of their logical shakiness and practical shoddiness.
Dr. Bhattarai has been at the forefront of peddling precisely that kind of mendacity for so long that sometimes you wonder whether he really still believes what he professes are his beliefs. One is tempted to ask whether it is really communism that has defamed Dr. Bhattarai.

Kicking The Can (Of Worms) Down The Road

2011-12-18T14:54:00.000-08:00

Seeking to paper over its chronic internal woes, the CPN-UML wants to bring Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, together with Bam Dev Gautam and Amrit Kumar Bohara, into the constituent assembly.
The precedent certainly exists. The party brought in Madhav Kumar Nepal, someone who lost in both constituencies from which he had contested the 2008 elections, who rose to the premiership. Admittedly, that move was engineered more by the Maoists, whose chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal would subsequently come to rue. Yet, Maila Baje feels, we must not forget that Madhav Nepal’s ‘undemocratic’ entry came at a time when the assembly had a clear degree of legitimacy and embodied much hope and expectation.
Oli, like Gautam, was defeated in the election. Bohara, nominated by CPN-UML under the proportional representation system, refused to take a seat, citing his party’s poor performance in the polls. Today, all of the members are staying on beyond the two years the people had hired them for. It should be less of a blow to democracy should Oli and Co. eventually enter the assembly.
Yet a section of the party is opting for a go-slow approach. These members are more keen on giving Oli greater respectability in the party before sending him to the assembly. Members want Oli – who currently ranks 10th in the party hierarchy – to get the third position after Khanal and Madhav Kumar Nepal, with the title ‘senior leader’.
It might be useful to consider Nepal’s own contribution in the aftermath of Dahal’s resignation in 2009. What could have been a truly catastrophic succession struggle came to an easy denoument because of Madhav Nepal’s easy availability.
Now that the one the nation was waiting for – Dr. Baburam Bhattarai – has proved no different from his predecessors, Oli might be emboldened to seek the office that Madhav Nepal so assiduously denied him (and Gautam, for that matter) during the first phase of royal rule in 2002-2004.
Make no mistake. Jhal Nath Khanal is not acting out of any sense of altruism. And it’s not as if Oli allowed Khanal an easy time as premier. The UML chief needs to restore control in the party and rejuvenate the base. He sees an opening in the reality the CPN-UML has become more disciplined than either the Maoists or the Nepali Congress. Moreover, the UML chairman must have learned something from the dividends Dahal has reaped from his ‘magnanimity’ in allowing Dr. Bhattarai to take the top job.
Oli, too, has the benefit of wisdom. Instead of flaunting his external support – which we understand is considerable – he can hope to rely on either the Sher Bahadur Deuba or Ram Chandra Poudel faction, depending on the case. By pushing Dr. Bhattarai back into the swamp of the party, he could hope to benefit from the process of another realignment within the Maoists. The fact that the former rebels would be able to evade the full spotlight on their responsibility for the sordid state of affairs should give Oli some breathing space.
The smaller parties inside the assembly and those outside could still rail against the monopoly of the ‘big-party syndicate’. Our venerable civil society notables could continue pretending they have nothing to do to with the mess. (They were the ones, weren’t they, who believed they could lead the leaders before and after the April 2006 Uprising?)
The peace process will remain in good shape as long as we can kick the can down the road.

Wen Jiabao: A Tale Of Two Trips

2011-12-12T13:09:00.000-08:00

As the nation prepares to welcome Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, we cannot but ponder how spectacularly things have changed on the geo-strategic front. Seven years ago, Wen studiously left Nepal out of his South Asian itinerary in deference to India’s sensitivities. This time, he is scheduled to arrive as part of his country’s sustained drive to challenge India’s traditional predominance in Nepal.
After chiding the Nepali government for prematurely announcing Wen’s visit in violation of accepted diplomatic practice, Beijing subsequently has been leaking bits and pieces of information that are clearly aimed more at arousing the interest of audiences in India. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Nepal was never really a blip on the regional radar screen whose importance successive monarchs exaggerated for their vile ends. What is certainly new is that the Chinese have come forth in acknowledging Nepal’s importance with ever-greater candor after the country became a republic.
In February 2005, when King Gyanendra seized full executive control, China stood in sharp contrast to the rest of the world by calling it an internal matter. The royal regime, if not the monarch himself, sought to portray the stand as Beijing’s support for the takeover. The Nepalese opposition and key sections in India sought assiduously to reject the notion that the Chinese were in fact supporting the king.
In a flush of revisionist history, some Chinese experts, too, contended that the royal regime was needlessly reading too much into China’s traditional tenet of non-interference in foreign policy. But lest we forget, two months after the royal takeover, Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Wu Dawei told a news briefing in Beijing that his government supported the king and the government of Nepal to ensure national stability and reconciliation and for economic development. But Wu did not stop there. “The international community should respect the choice made by the Nepali people,” he counseled.
Wu’s forthrightness, however, could scarcely mask Beijing’s wider ambivalence. This was a time when the Chinese were miffed by the growing Indian and American involvement in the Tibet issue through the exile community in Nepal. Keeping quiet posed a problem for China. But openly backing the monarchy while New Delhi and Washington were both opposed to the royal intervention risked bringing the two largest democracies closer.
If the Indians could countenance greater American involvement in a country they jealously considered their exclusive sphere of influence, in the Chinese perspective, then that could only bode well for the evolving partnership between Washington and New Delhi to contain Beijing.
Anxious to keep the Indians away from the Americans, Wen decided to skip Nepal. But Beijing sent Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to Nepal on a stand-alone mission, whose utterances backed the royal regime.
Since the real fight in Nepal was not over democracy, but a contest among disparate external players to deepen their foothold in a strategically sensitive region of the world, it formed weird alliances. India and the West were pitted against the Chinese, Pakistanis and Russians. Democracy gave a veneer of legitimacy for intervention for one set of players. Suddenly, the Maoists gained greater acceptability as responsible partners while still branded terrorists (assisted no doubt by their shrewd assurances on a wide range of often-contradictory “international” issues as Christianity and homosexuality.)
Washington and New Delhi, to be sure, were still not on the same page. But they felt it would be far easier to compare notes this way than having the Chinese to spoil things. The Americans and the Chinese continued to hold bilateral consultations on Nepal within the framework of their strategic dialogue. New Delhi, ever mindful of maintaining its strategic autonomy, kept Nepal on its formal consultations with Beijing.
Despite the growing warmth in relations between the Asian giants, China believed India was not being reciprocal. Less than three months after Wen’s much-touted visit to India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh travelled to Washington and signed a document that established New Delhi on a path towards military and security partnership with the Americans.
The suave Shyam Saran, former Indian ambassador in Kathmandu turned foreign secretary, flew in to Beijing in early 2006 with assurances that New Delhi was not out in a grand campaign to contain China. The Indians shrewdly fed the Chinese information on Nepal that aroused some alarm in Beijing. The quid pro quo was a go-slow on the US-India nuclear deal, which the Chinese anyhow believed their Indian surrogates in the Indian political left would be able to derail. State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan gave the first intimation of a rethink of his government’s Nepal policy by postponing his visit to Kathmandu.
To Beijing’s disappointment, during a March 2006 visit to India, US President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Singh signed a nuclear cooperation agreement dramatically reversing long-standing US policy punishing India for its nuclear programs and its non-membership in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Worse, from Beijing’s perspective, the agreement allowed India to strengthen its civilian nuclear capabilities even while building a credible minimum nuclear deterrent aimed in large part at China.
When Tang did arrive in Kathmandu, it was too late for Beijing to walk back. Tang seemed to equate the royal regime with the alliance protesting it (by which time the palace had revitalized channels with Washington, which was queasy about the New Delhi-brokered 12-point alliance between the opposition parties and the Maoist rebels).
New Delhi, for its part, had hoped to pressure Beijing into settling the long-standing territorial dispute and failed. The Indians who pushed that approach today are openly calling for the deployment of the Tibet and Taiwan issues for that precise purpose. The game continues. Those political forces who railed against the monarchy for playing one neighbor off against the other in order to secure itself in power today find themselves able to do little else as a matter of daily survival.
It would seem audacious to some that an already weakened Nepalese monarchy was somehow a chip in the larger strategic rivalry of the times. Yet Maila Baje thinks it is within this framework that we can comprehend our current plight with a plausible degree of sanity.

Dahal’s Faith In The Tripartite Bargaining Model

2011-12-05T15:30:00.000-08:00

United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal wants Nepal to engage in some still nebulous mode of trilateral cooperation with India and China in the interest of boosting regional stability. Interestingly, his latest reiteration of this comes at a time when relations between the Asian giants, by both sides’ reckoning, have grown frosty.
Then almost in the same breath, Dahal says his party has not given up on the idea of a full-blown revolt to capture the state. In fact, he believes the Maoists may be closer than ever to achieving that underlying goal. These two assertions, Maila Baje feels, might not be as contradictory as they sound.
Dahal’s leadership of the drive to develop Lumbini into a Buddhist mecca has not impressed our local Buddhists. A large chunk of the otherwise placid community is in a confrontational mood. You can’t blame them. To have the world’s major officially atheist state patronize what ranks among the five largest religions is bad enough. Now the man associated with the worst killing spree in Nepal’s history is trying to reinvent himself as an advocate – if not exactly an acolyte – of the Light of Asia.
For the best part of a year, the Indians have been as candid as they could be as far as the geopolitical dimensions of the Dahal-China dalliance are concerned. Almost conceding their apparent failure to disprove that Siddhartha Gautam was born in what is modern-day Nepal, New Delhi is intent on building a rival movement of international Buddhism.
Having stripped Dr. Baburam Bhattarai of his self-righteous claim to singularity at this juncture of Nepali history, Dahal is now eager to return to the premiership on his terms. No, he doesn’t want to do so to complete the peace process and produce the constitution – processes that seem superficially to have progressed remarkably under Bhattarai. The Maoist chief wants to be able to lead the country to new elections to a body that could craft the constitution to the Maoists’ liking.
In this aspiration, Dahal is closer to Baidya. The duo believes – and many think Dr. Bhattarai, too, agrees – that the Maoists have at least three factors going for them: their ability to claim leadership of the Nepal’s splintered communist movement, the disarray in the Nepali Congress and Madhes-based parties, and the sheer financial resources at the disposal of the former rebels.
With some 65 percent of the vote having gone to the communists in the last test of popular popularity, the Maoists believe they can unite the fraternity in terms of influence. The C.P. Mainali wannabes can stay out and conduct home-based politics in the absence of organization and people.
The mess in the Nepali Congress is too obvious, while the disarray in the Madhesi parties provides an opportunity to the Maoists – in their view – to return to their pre-Gaur Massacre glory. As for financial heft, let’s not forget that, according to one Asian newsmagazine, the Maoists, while in the jungles, were the richest rebels in the continent.
Having demonstrated their flexibility on the democratic path, the Maoists believe they can blame their rivals to show the utter hopelessness of that quest. On the face of it, a violent capture of state power may lack international legitimacy. But what alternative would the rest of the world have? Dahal is said to have been particularly elated by the views expressed by some members of the Chinese media delegation that recently visited Nepal, who praised him as the man of the future.
We can’t be sure the delegates were speaking for their government – as much as we can’t be that they weren’t. The speculator in Dahal probably feels that by roping in the Indians in a tripartite partnership, he could force the West and the rest to fall in line. Certainly nothing to squander time on what constitute the principal and non-principal contradictions.

Call All You Want, But There’s No One Home…

2011-11-27T17:05:00.000-08:00

The Nepali Congress seems destined to live with the Koirala-Deuba hostilities. Party president Sushil Koirala has come to the point of publicly complaining that senior leader Sher Bahadur Deuba is not responding to his telephone calls. “Let us solve our differences through dialogue,” Koirala urged Deuba through the press the other day.
What began as a confrontation sparked by Koirala’s dissolution of four sister wings of the Nepali Congress – led by Deuba loyalists – remains rooted in the contrived reunification of the party in 2007 ahead of the constituency assembly elections.
While it has always made sense for Deuba to portray his dissidence as opposition to the arbitrariness of the leadership, the fact that the leader today happens to be surnamed Koirala helps him immensely. Nepali Congress members come from such diverse backgrounds that the party simply has too many fault-lines to cover. But who in the country’s largest democratic party could oppose a clarion call to free the organization from the clutches of a clan if it could cover the sundry motives they have?
Deuba himself has often conceded that, despite his bold public criticisms of Girija Prasad Koirala, he could not muster enough courage to put his grievances across directly to the grand old man. With Girijababu’s departure, Deuba no longer feels so constrained.
His crusade has changed in other ways. Prakash Man Singh, party general secretary and onetime loyalist, today warns Deuba of disciplinary action. (With Girijababu’s own departure from this mortal world, Prakash probably no longer sees the anti-Koirala campaign an extension of the travails of his late father, Ganesh Man Singh.)
Even among onetime loyalists in the Nepali Congress-friendly media, the mood has soured. Editors and columnists who once hailed his courage easily dismiss him today as a relic of the old Nepal.
None of this appears to have dissuaded Deuba. The other members of the Koirala clan are quiet. Sujata is laying low lest the controversy surrounding her son-in-law, Rubel, climb up the family ladder. As one of the original promoters of his party’s alliance with the Maoists, Shekhar is still crossing his fingers on where the 12-point experiment would lead.
The once-promising Shashank has been reduced to lamenting how Nepal has forgotten the national-reconciliation policy his father had propounded when there was actually a king to kick around.
Yet just as Deuba felt he had tamed the tribe, Sushil has shown a sudden itch to enter Baluwatar. The seeds of that ambition, sown during his visit to India earlier in the year, have been nurtured by the succeeding political shenanigans. If Girija Prasad Koirala could become prime minister without having ever served in a lower ministerial rung, what should stop Sushil?
As the notion of a national unity government animates the Nepali Congress, Deuba feels he is most qualified man to head it. You can’t blame him. The negatives associated with Deuba’s record have paled in comparison to what is going on today.
The Maoists have proved that the 40-point charter Deuba had rebuffed in 1996 was not the actual propellant of their decade-long insurgency. Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai has outdone Deuba in terms of bloating the cabinet. The ‘Pajero’ culture has turned viler both as a tool and outcome of political skulduggery.
Agreements far more toxic than the one on the Mahakali River have become commonplace. (At least during those days you could expect the principal opposition party to make a pretense of having split on account of anti-national agreements.)
As to the allegation that Deuba could not save democracy during his last two tenures as premier, isn’t it an article of faith among the current political class that true democracy ever existed in Nepal?
Looking ahead, maybe Deuba wants a new term to demonstrate that he is capable of something different, now that things have come full circle.

Reaffirming The Status Quo

2011-11-20T16:26:00.000-08:00

It seems Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai is intent on proving that he is no better than his predecessors were. The populism that began with the Mustang grandstanding persists in the Hello Sarkar ruse. But Dr. Bhattarai appears to recognize the limits of pretense. The supposedly most qualified contender ever for the premiership has a demonstrable capacity for abjuring any desire for excellence.
That Dr. Bhattarai prefers the company of criminals and other unsavory elements within his ranks of loyalists should not be surprising considering where he is coming from. That he can be so energetic in flouting his much-vaunted pledge of financial austerity bespeaks of an abiding and unsurpassable satisfaction with his record as finance minister. The size of his cabinet and army of advisers and aides is matched by the lavishness of his government’s expenditure on entertainment.
When the prime minister candidly concedes that he does not recognize all of his own ministers, claiming that a bloated cabinet was a political compulsion, you get a feeling that he is still out to expose the iniquities of the democratic process he has accepted for now. After all, the Maoists had taken up arms against both the monarchy and the parliamentary system.
In any other context, that would have been a shrewd way of Dr. Bhattarai underscoring his ideological steeliness. But it is becoming increasingly hard for him to prove that, while he might differ with Mohan Baidya and Pushpa Kamal Dahal on tactics, he still intends to build that Maoist utopia. All Dahal had to do was to silence his guns. The web Dr. Bhattarai has built through his words is too tangled to permit an easy exit.
After disfiguring the domestic ambience with his dour haughtiness, Dr. Bhattarai has disrupted the precarious geopolitical equation. While embracing the Indians with the flamboyant contortions of a proud supplicant, the prime minister has proceeded to alienate the Chinese with equally abhorrent intensity.
Indeed, the prime minister may have sought to deflect attention from those domestic woes by announcing Premier Wen Jiabao’s impending visit to the muddled republic. It was taken in such bad form from those up north that it did not matter whether they registered their dissatisfaction in writing.
Whether that premature announcement would be enough to sabotage the visit – if it were indeed in that stage of finalization – remains unclear. Regardless, Dr. Bhattarai seems to have sought primarily to bolster his credentials within his principal external constituency down south. Whether that fealty would hold him in good stead is a different matter. After all, when Girija Prasad Koirala sunk deeper into the Tanakpur morass in the early 1990s, one of the first Indians to counsel his government to dissociate itself from the man was the venerable Sukh Deo Muni.
Even after all this, Dr. Bhattarai’s wife, Hisila Yami, insists that he remains the best person to complete the peace process. Hard as it may be to acknowledge, Maila Baje feels she may have a point.
With the incumbent faring no better or worse than his predecessors, why upset the applecart? Such status-quoism may be something even the rabid revolutionary in Dr. Bhattarai might be prepared to embrace.

Amnesty Of Disgrace

2011-11-13T18:18:00.000-08:00

For a ceremonial head of state, President Ram Baran Yadav sure has an aversion to the rubber stamp. As the optimism generated by the Seven-Point Agreement dissipates faster than it bubbled up, it looks like the president is about to restrain a second Maoist prime minister.
Yadav is said to have been troubled by last week’s recommendation by the cabinet that he pardon Maoist legislator Balakrishna Dhungel, who was convicted by the Supreme Court in a murder case.
In an apparent effort to pre-empt the president, Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai, accompanied by the attorney general – a Maoist activist – met Yadav last week to press Dhungel’s case. The prime minister’s visit reportedly infuriated the president, who, Maila Baje understands, took it as an act of executive brazenness.
Arguing that the murder took place during the Maoist insurgency – ostensibly when abuses of the ultimate nature were carried out by both sides – the cabinet said Dhungel case was ‘political’ in nature. Accordingly, the Bhattarai government claims, the case falls within the purview of the presidential pardon the interim constitution stipulates.
A section of the Maoists maintains that the pardon stems from the framework of the peace agreement. But that claim cuts little ice. Dr. Bhattarai was roundly criticized by the United Nations, opposition parties, and human rights organizations, among others. Maoist secretary C.P. Gajurel, who belongs to the rival Mohan Baidya faction, wants the government to withdraw the decision forthwith (although his argument is that all conflict-era cases should be resolved together.)
In a statement laced more with mischief than anything else, Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal claimed that the decision to grant amnesty to Dhungel was taken through consensus when CPN-UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal was prime minister. Then the Supreme Court stepped in over the weekend, ordering a stay on the amnesty move, in response to a petition by the sister of the murder victim.
Upon arrival from the Maldives after attending the SAARC summit, Dr. Bhattarai trained his guns – for now – on ‘dollar-spinning’ human rights organizations for creating needless controversy. As the prime minister maintained that the cabinet decision was irrevocable, President Yadav has begun consultations with experts and advisers. He is expected to make a decision in two or three weeks.
It is unclear whether the prime minister would retreat or confront the president. If he had his way, Dr. Bhattarai would be disinclined to do another Dahal. Yet he is far more constrained than Dahal was during the controversy surrounding the sacking and subsequent reinstatement of then army chief Rookmangad Katuwal.
The Maoists no longer carry novelty as agents of change. Dr. Bhattarai has squandered much of his political capital through personal gimmicks and haughtiness. Moreover, Deputy Prime Minister Bijay Kumar Gachchaddar, the pivot of his coalition, has virtually challenged the pardon agenda.
All this has prompted Minister for Culture Gopal Kiranti to warn of a conspiracy to have the term of the constituent assembly lapse and revert executive power to the president.
That is a lame ploy. Considering all the experiments that have taken place over the last five years in the name of creating a New Nepal and where they have led, Nepalis might be willing to endure that option.

The Peace Muddle

2011-11-06T17:51:00.000-08:00

Count on Comrade Narayan Man Bijukchhe to make sense of the peace muddle.
“Unless the internal dispute in the Maoist party is resolved, conclusion of the peace process as outlined in the seven-point deal is impossible,” the chairman of Nepal Workers and Peasants Party presaged the other day.
Lest the country castigate him as a spoiler, the comrade barely paused for thought. The majority of the points incorporated in the new deal are ones the parties had agreed upon two years ago, Bijukchhe continued. He’s a little suspicious that the parties have suddenly decided to give it formal shape after Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai’s visit to India.
Bijukchhe was far from charitable about the overall political process. Claiming the seven-point deal was unconstitutional and against democratic practice, he accused the three principal parties of hobbling the legislature.
But let’s focus on the Maoists, since they are in the driver’s seat. Whether authentic or contrived, Maila Baje feels the Maoists’ internal rift is unlikely to be healed soon. This is so for a variety of reasons but predominantly because of a traditional one: the rift fits into the traditional Indian playbook.
The principal success New Delhi achieved during Prime Minister Bhattarai’s high-profile visit lay in tightening the pro-India tag around his neck. Dr. Bhattarai probably thought that if he could only be seen as taking on in earnest the fallout from the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA), he might shore up his personal position in his primary external constituency. But that was never the objective of his hosts.
Back home, in the intervening weeks, even sympathetic quarters have begun to question the way the prime minister has been going about defending the deal. For someone who long railed against the pernicious legacy of unequal treaties to go and sign a controversial one – regardless of the merits – was audacious enough. Seeking to defend the deal with every shield he can pick up has had a demeaning effect. Suddenly, Girija Prasad Koirala and Madhav Kumar Nepal have been resurrected as paragons of patriotism for their refusal to sign the agreement during their visits to India.
Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, having succeeded in sullying Dr. Bhattarai’s reputation after having conceded to him the premiership, has turned his attention to the Lumbini project, that other geopolitical fixture of our times.
Hardliner Mohan Baidya knows that he has little choice but to go along with the rest of the party and the political flow, be it the four-point deal with the Madhesis or BIPPA. But he also knows there is an opening here. If his faction could get the support of the traditional demolition derby across the southern border – which seems increasingly likely – he can hope to deflect any criticism of hypocrisy by projecting his group’s perceived northern tilt.
The mandarins up north, for their part, could be expected to relish that ruse. If perpetual political conflict is where India’s Nepal policy thrives, the Chinese have perfected ambiguity as the core of their pragmatism here.

Which Lhendup Does Our PM See?

2011-10-23T15:16:00.000-07:00

It seems the specter of Kazi Lhendup Dorji is going to haunt us ever more haughtily after Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai’s visit to India. When people ordinarily as far apart as Ram Chandra Paudel of the Nepali Congress and Ram Bahadur Thapa of the United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist join in revulsion at the centerpiece of the bilateral agreements signed during the visit, the departed Sikkimese leader has a ghost of a chance at salvation.
Since Lhendup Dorji has become much more than a metaphor in our national consciousness, Maila Baje feels we need to look at the apparition squarely in the visage – or whatever we can find of it. As he performed stylishly during different acts of Sikkim’s national stage, did Lhendup Dorji ever recognize how all that would culminate in the phenomenon that would live on as his singular legacy? Or was Sikkim’s merger into the Indian union in 1975 an amalgam of decisions, traits and attitudes whose denouement the leading protagonist could scarcely have been aware of at each step?
To be sure, Lhendup did not have boisterous detractors warning of the impending degeneration of his name into the kind of infamy it has sunk to in Nepal. (And, yes, Nepal, we must emphasize, until we learn of an outbreak of any serious independence movement in Sikkim itself). How much of the kazi’s animus towards the monarchy was personal? Even if it were significant enough, could it by itself have so blinded Lhendup to the possibility of the loss of his country’s independence? In the grand geopolitical scheme of things, how much were the wives at fault, the queen being an American and the kazini a European?
Or was Lhendup mindful of his moves all along? Perhaps, like the chogyal, he saw Sikkim’s status as an Indian protectorate an anomaly that needed to be rectified. Full independence – the chogyal’s choice – was perhaps impractical in the prime minister’s view. If so, Sikkim’s full merger into the Indian union would have been the only road left.
Yet, in his later years, after serving as Sikkim’s first chief minister, Lhendup left his state as if for good. Decades later, warning Nepal’s leaders of the perils of a prolonged democracy-monarchy fight, Lhendup cited his own statelessness as the ultimate eventuality. When the Indian government awarded him the Padma Vibhushan – the second highest civilian award – euphemistically for ‘public service’ in 2003, it listed him as a resident of West Bengal.
For all his ostensible penitence aimed at audiences in Nepal, Lhendup did not reject Indian honors flowing in his direction. When he died in Kalimpong in 2007, the Indian government paid fulsome tributes to Lhendup as the father Sikkim’s democracy. Indians unconstrained by official propriety were even more effusive in recalling how without Lhendup, Sikkim would never have become a part of India.
In Nepal, over the years, there have been numerous contenders for the Lhendup epithet. The current prime minister, who labeled several predecessors as such, has now come under the most rigorous suspicion. Rarely has the Indian media gushed over the arrival, presence and departure of a Nepali prime minister. Yet Nepalis feel they have little to feel good about.
When Dr. Bhattarai said he would not have become who he is without Jawaharlal Nehru University, it may have been a sincere expression of his appreciation. For a man with a definite way with words, he must have recognized the connotations the remark would acquire back home.
If the opposition parties and the Maoists are to be believed, Dr. Bhattarai signed the bilateral investment promotion and protect agreement against the explicit wishes of fellow politicians. If so, he took a risk and will have to live with it politically. The Indian media will no doubt continue praising his contributions to the development of bilateral relations.
Coming back to Lhendup Dorji, since our prime minister had the opportunity to study the man in detail in his quest to project the epithet on his rivals, maybe he understands Sikkim’s first chief minister better than most of us will ever. As someone who long rued Nepal’s post-Sugauli Treaty status as a semi-colonial and semi-feudal entity, which Lhendup does he recognize today? More specifically, does the prime minister even consider Lhendup a pejorative now that he is in the driver’s seat?

All Fired Up And Ready – For What?

2011-10-17T04:36:00.000-07:00

Who knew CPN-UML Chairman Jhal Nath Khanal had all this in him? He’s up in arms, stomping his feet and lashing out his tongue – all at his successor as prime minister. Dr. Baburam Bhattarai has no right to continue in office, Khanal declared the other day, describing the incumbent government as packed with criminals and the corrupt.
In fact, he was being charitable. Earlier in the month, Khanal virtually called Dr. Bhattarai a liar. “What has the government done so far to bring peace and the constitutional process to its positive end?” he asked. Before anyone could answer, Khanal growled: “Bhattarai has begun deceiving people in broad daylight.”
The sailing was never going to be smooth for our first Ph.D. prime minister. He may be the most educated head of government Nepal has had, but Dr. Bhattarai had to amend state regulations to appoint several members of his advisory and personal staff because they did not have the requisite academic qualifications.
While the people at large seem sympathetic to Dr. Bhattarai’s public gestures ever since he hopped onto that moving thing called the Mustang, they are growing restless about his ability – even willingness – to deliver. Dr. Bhattarai had begun by saying he would conclude the peace process within 45 days of taking office, only to clarify upon his return from New York that all he meant was the clock would start ticking after the parties reached consensus on key issues.
Fed up with Dr. Bhattarai’s trademark linguistic legerdemain, Khanal began accusing the premier of something more sinister: personal involvement in the murder case engulfing a member of his cabinet, Prabhu Sah. It is unclear whether Sah’s resignation was in any way linked to Khanal’s grand allegation, but Maila Baje is still compelled to think. Just a day or two earlier, Local Development Minister Top Bahadur Rayamahi, a key Bhattarai confidant, vowed that controversial ministers would not resign because that would distract from the peace process.
Khanal has vowed to obstruct parliamentary proceeding until Dr. Bhattarai sacks Defense Minister Sharad Singh Bhandari for his recent secessionist remarks. After Sah’s exit, pressure is mounting on the prime minister to show Bhandari the door, too.
It’s not just Khanal’s tone that’s gaining traction by the day. Consider some of the content. “Those hardest hit by the Tanakpur, Koshi and Gandaki [water agreements with India] and the [Indian] land invasion in Susta are the Madhesi population,” Khanal pointedly said at a recent session of the legislature. “What are the Madhes-centric parties … doing while the defense minister is making secessionist remarks?”
“The Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and Maoists hold a greater stake in the Madhes than the Madhesi parties,” he went on. “Do we want separate military battalions for Himal, Pahad and Tarai or do we want a National Army?” You can’t really quibble with his questions just because he never raised them while he was premier, can you?
Khanal’s defiance was hardly dull. “Look here, I am criticizing [the four-point deal underpinning the Bhattarai coalition], can you cut my fingers?” That came in response to Health Minister Rajendra Mahato’s pronouncement a few days earlier that anyone who raised a finger against the four- point deal should be prepared to have it chopped off.
Even if Bhandari is recalled, Khanal is unlikely to cease his tirades against Dr. Bhattarai. The former prime minister may not blame Dr. Bhattarai personally for having brought down his government. But he’s the man who now has his job.

In The Name Of The Father

2011-10-10T04:11:00.000-07:00

In death, Muktiram Dahal was deprived of that ultimate privilege a father of his generation would ordinarily expect. Although his eldest son, Pushpa Kamal, did light the funeral pyre, he chose not to perform the full rites traditionally deemed necessary to ensure that the departed soul attained ultimate salvation.
Yet Muktiram was fortunate in knowing ahead of time that he might not be destined for full adherence to tradition from his first offspring. Mother Bhawani Devi, who died in 1994, was deprived of Pushpa Kamal’s participation in her final journey altogether. The funeral rites were performed by the younger son, Ganga Ram, as the underground revolutionary had barely evaded arrest at the hospital where his mother was being treated.
In his tribute, Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai described Muktiram Dahal as a leading figure of Nepal’s agricultural revolution. “The Maoists have lost a guardian,” Dr. Bhattarai continued as cadres draped the corpse in the party flag.
While this posthumous revelation must have been the first time many Nepalis heard of the extent of Muktiram Dahal’s links to the party his son created and led, the country will not know how he viewed Pushpa Kamal’s trials, tribulations and triumphs.
It could not have been easy being father of someone blamed for over 12,000 deaths, billions in devastation and immeasurable fraying of the national fabric. Or perhaps Muktiram shared the feeling that civil war, as a nation’s collective tragedy, is incapable of apportioning blame to one side or individual. But, again, it must have been hard for a father to recognize that he was central to the radicalization of his son.
On several occasions, Pushpa Kamal has credited his revolutionary fervor to the injustices meted out to his father right in front of him by feudals and reactionaries. As that personal injury morphed into ideological inferno in his son, Muktiram Dahal must have struggled to reconcile his role in it all. Early on, Muktiram tried to dissuade his son from politics, arguing it was not something for the poor. But Pushpa Kamal was adamant and the father simply stepped aside.
During the height of the insurgency, Muktiram had urged his son to abandon violence and join peaceful politics. Pushpa Kamal did so several years later in radically altered political conditions. Muktiram knew his son would go far in life, he told a reporter in August 2008, but not as high as the premiership.
The fact that most Nepalis were prepared to put the decade-long spree of death and destruction in the interest of a new beginning must have eased Muktiram’s dilemma. When traditional political shenanigans returned to eviscerate the national spirit, the father could not have remained unaffected. The fact that the Maoists would be mired in the same malaise they had mocked in the other major parties must have exacerbated Muktiram’s anguish.
Describing his father as an honest man, Pushpa Kamal pledged to continue to work toward fulfilling his dreams. There is no way of knowing how the Maoist chairman feels about his father’s overall sentiments towards his political methods. During many moments of reflection, Pushpa Kamal must have grappled with the question valiantly. Lingering doubts – if indeed there are any – should not distract him from the task ahead. The virtuousness of Muktiram Dahal’s hopes and aspirations for the nation he left behind is powerful enough to guide his eldest son.

Who Really Needs A Maoist Split?

2011-09-25T16:00:00.000-07:00

With the Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Mohan Baidya factions engaged in a full-throttled war of words, talk of a split in the United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M) has become louder. Despite the growing acrimony in their public references to each other, Dahal and Baidya both claim the Maoists will defy Nepalese political convention by remaining united.
Still, the escalating duel has sent reverberations at multiple levels. The cynical school still maintains that the wily Maoists have manufactured another crisis for public consumption while aiming to gain further ground. Regardless of how the infighting ultimately affects the future of the Baburam Bhattarai government, the prime minister will still be complicit in putting the party above everything else.
Let’s take the realist school next. The decision to hand over the keys to the Maoist weapons containers and the four-point pact with the Madhesi alliance to cobble together the ruling coalition are the two things that has infuriated the Baidya faction. It is hard to believe that Dahal and Bhattarai could have pushed through either by keeping the hardliners in the dark. So any bad blood today would have to take account not only grievances accumulating over time but also the shifting alliances of the recent past.
What specific commitments did each faction make and who double-crossed whom? Here, too, the Maoists have only deferred to the personality and patronage-based debilities that are intrinsic to the system they have entered (which, again they had originally vowed to overthrow).
The more disturbing element of the discussion of the latest intra-party rivalry is the one that is being pursued with the greatest seriousness – superficially, though. The fighters in the camps do not support Baidya and his bluster of an armed revolt, we were told right after the keys row erupted. The Maoists have invested too much in the political process – and have become too dependent on its patronage – to do anything but struggle along through peaceful competition.
That narrative seemed to lose its luster pretty quick. Now we are told – including by expatriate conflict experts – that there is a real chance of at least a faction of the Maoists reverting to armed insurgency. Should they do so, one expert warned the other day, all of us should be prepared to bear responsibility.
Maila Baje, as usual, believes that alien hands are getting off too easily here. The external dimensions will define much of the international deliberations on the Maoists. Just consider the following:

* The Indians, who nurtured the Maoists the most during their most lethal years, are having the toughest time dealing with them in their ostensibly defanged form.

* The Chinese, who not only publicly repudiated the local adherents of the Great Helmsman as a stain on his memory but also continued to arm the royal regime until the very end to suppress the rebels, are today seen as the primary beneficiaries of the political rise of the Nepalese Maoists.

* In a span of three years, two American presidents – representing sharply polarized political parties – spared time for Nepalese Maoist prime ministers on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly while still keeping the organization on the terrorism list.

And we’re not even talking about the Europeans who have collectively and individually deployed the Maoists as a tool of autonomous assertiveness. (The international non-government sector has only picked up from where officialdom has chosen to restrain itself.)
So, who really needs our Maoists to split? Given the current goings-on in the party, the one-party Nepali Maoist state that everybody seems to dread might not be so all-round asphyxiating after all.

The Relevance Of Being Deuba

2011-09-19T15:55:00.000-07:00

“They took four years to hand over the keys of the containers with their weapons; how long will
they take to hand over the actual weapons,” Nepali Congress leader Sher Bahadur Deuba mused the other day. Some took that as an intelligent inquiry from a former prime minister widely dismissed as dreary.
The three-time premier has had much calumny heaped on him primarily because of his purported lack of acumen. Shortly after he took the oath for the first time in 1995, someone happened to mention casually that he was Nepal’s first western-trained head of government. The howls of derision erupted all at once.
Sure, Deuba had a brief stint at the London School of Economics, once critic conceded, but he spent most of his time out of academic circles. Others recounted the number of unskilled and tedious jobs he had held in and around the British capital all the while presuming to be a student. Still others claimed that the Nepali Congress had merely exiled him away to prevent him from joining the Panchayat system and that London – with or without the School of Economics – simply happened to be the first opportunity available.
Deuba managed to keep his coalition afloat through a variety of underhand means. Today, he can count some of the key beneficiaries of his patronage among those who continue rail the loudest against the vileness of his politics. Yet it has become easy to forget that his government was brought down through the foulest of means. Deuba was egged on by his party leader Girija Prasad Koirala to hold a vote of confidence he was not constitutionally obliged to seek, only to have Koirala prevent two ruling party MPs from voting, thereby depriving him of the crucial votes.
Deuba’s second stint, as the head of a majority government, proved more tumultuous. He held peace talks with the Maoists and, once they failed, mobilized the military against the rebels. He met the sitting U.S. president in the Oval Office and became the first Nepalese head of government to organize a regional summit. Besieged, he split the party and pressed ahead with his plan to hold elections, all the while reviled as a tool of the palace. The fact that he ultimately fell victim to the palace did little to rehabilitate his image. He tried to shame the leaders who pushed him to postpone the elections and resist resigning, but it proved futile.
Shunned by the fraternity, he became a palace-appointed prime minister of a multiparty coalition. At this point, he began losing some of his steadfast supporters. But Deuba knew they were with him primarily because they either opposed or had been shunned by Koirala. Again, Deuba sought elections above everything else, while his deputy prime minister, Bharat Mohan Adhikary, pressed for peace.
When the palace sacked Deuba a second time, he didn’t say much because it wasn’t too hard for him to accept that he had been a royal appointee serving at the pleasure of the monarch. He did end up on the receiving end of a high-profile corruption case. Buried in the recent dump of Wikileaks cables Maila Baje found an interesting nugget.
Shortly after his release from detention in the twilight of the royal regime, Deuba was quoted as telling US Ambassador James F. Moriarty that five years down the road, people would stop blaming the king for the affairs of state, regardless of how things unfolded. Amid the general jubilation over the sidelining and eventual ousting of the monarchy, Deuba rued the absence of proper mechanisms to contend with the Maoist steamroller. In their comments, embassy diplomats seemed to discount his sentiments as the grandeur of someone struggling to retain his relevance.
Deuba never exuded exclusivity. When party colleagues cited his poor command of the English language as host of the SAARC summit, he conceded that he had a hard time with Nepali as such. Deflected by his self-deprecation, critics continue to cite his elite matrimonial relations, his general geopolitical orientation and a host of far less pertinent tidbits to denigrate his relevance. But to little effect.
Deuba may have lost his bid to become a consensus prime minister, but not without forcing his principal rival, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, to step down from his self-constructed pedestal and become a mere mortal majority premier.
In the larger scheme of things, Deuba may have dismissed Dr. Bhattarai’s 40-point charter because of the exigencies of the Mahakali Treaty. Yet unlike most in his fraternity, Deuba is still is willing give the Maoist leader a chance to implement the vision that document championed. That may not necessarily be smart politics, but it is by no means irrelevant.

Unholy Or Not, It Sure Is Full Of Holes

2011-09-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

Barely two weeks in office, is Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai already so firmly entrenched on the defensive side of the field? No one has the power to bring down his government, Bhattarai is said to retort every time someone of any consequence broaches the oddity of the alliance he sits atop.
Bhattarai’s defiance, to be sure, contains a stronger tinge of displeasure than determination. After all, no less a personage than Communications Minister Jaya Prakash Prasad Gupta of the United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF) insists that the government is already heading down the path to failure.
In the midst of this brouhaha, Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Bhattarai’s staunchest ally – at least in public – goes ‘missing’ for almost 48 hours. Gupta, the most outspoken critic of the government from within, may be embittered by Bhattarai’s failure to grant him one of the deputy premierships. But let’s not forget that Gupta has become quite close to Dahal in recent weeks.
Critics of all colors are finding enough dirt to tar the ruling alliance. And the muck seems likely to stick the hardest on the man on the top. Most of the UDMF ministers bring a distinct reputation, for better or worse, to their latest jobs. The Maoist ministers, too, have become sort of known quantities. The cleanest slate belongs to Bhattarai. Unfortunately for him, it’s also the easiest to blemish.
The legislative numbers game apart, what make the motions of this alliance interesting is its interlocking antagonisms. If the Dahal-Bhattarai decision to hand over the keys to the Maoists’ arms containers has made Mohan Baidya livid, Gupta blames the Maoist squabbling for non-compliance with the four-point pact that sealed the coalition.
Baidya, however, sees the commitments as reflected on paper as an unmitigated threat to the nation. Specifically, he has disdain for the manner in which his party rivals agreed to establish a separate group for Madhesis in the national army while virtually surrendering away the right of wholesale entry of former Maoist soldiers into the state force. (You can quibble with the way Baidya seeks to establish equivalence between rebels and regular folks, but one point cannot be missed: the Maoist fighters have already proved their mettle).
Asked by a reporter for a leading daily whether the peculiarity of the ruling alliance would ultimately help him to revive his party’s nationalist plank, Baidya dodged. Yet his chuckles (which the interviewer made a point of inserting in the published piece) said it all. Anticipating irreparable rifts within the Maoists, some Nepali Congress and CPN-UML leaders have spoken of their readiness to prop up the Bhattarai government. At the same time, rival factions in each of the two principal opposition parties are becoming more candid in calling the Maoist-UDMF pact unholy.
The Gaur massacre brought out our north-south divide in gory vividness. A coalition that could have stood as a symbol of a much-needed healing process has brought back spasms of that pain – with the complicity of those who complain about it.

‘Less Risky But Still Dangerous’

2011-09-04T17:19:00.000-07:00

That’s how Nepal has been described in a survey of 198 states. Well, actually we share the category with the likes of Turkey, Mauritania, Morocco and Myanmar. While the Terrorism Risk Index – compiled by the British firm Maplecroft – ranks the world’s most dangerous countries, it also reflects the investment image there.
The first group on the list includes the 20 most dangerous countries, with Somalia at the top. Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan are among the other countries in the group. The two categories behind us are “moderately risky” and “safest” countries. In the region, we’re better off than Pakistan and India, but worse than Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (which, by the way, fares better than Britain). Globally, we outdo Russia and Israel.
Professor Bishwambher Pyakuryel, however, does not seem terribly impressed. “Nepal, though named less risky, has not been able to retain minimum growth and failed to attract any big multinational investment,” he said in a conversation with a leading daily. The prominent economist added that there is a systemic error in the country’s governance. “Without identifying the systemic error, it will be difficult for policy intervention.”
Experts insist that lack of internal capacity building, infrastructure bottlenecks, the energy crisis and militant labor unions, among other things, have hindered foreign direct investment. Yet according to published figures quoting the central bank, Nepal attracted FDI worth Rs 6.06 billion in the first 11 months of fiscal 2010/2011, compared to Rs 2.41 billion in the corresponding period the previous year.
With the country officially in peace – albeit a tenuous one – and foreign investment having more than doubled in a year, you might have expected to find Nepal in a different league. We may be the subject of intensifying Sino-Indian rivalry, but we are not as internationally isolated as Myanmar is. Nor do we have a religion-versus-secularism conflict at the state-level that is as searing as Turkey’s.
As our once-armed Maoists were poised to lead the government after their electoral success in August 2008, the military in Mauritania stage a coup against an elected government. Unlike Morocco, we tend to be in undisputed possession of the territory under our sovereign control. (Or at least an overwhelming part of it).
Now, Maila Baje recognizes that the risks are becoming ever more obvious. Even in our state of secular ecstasy, Christians are worried by the criminalization of proselytization. Deep down, homosexuals see the recent manifestations of our liberalism as the tolerance of a populace in transition. Civil society and their external enablers are so obsessed with addressing the impunities of the past that they are blinded to those of the present. (Maybe that’s their investment in the future.)
Yet look at it this way. Maybe we shouldn’t be worried by the systemic error in governance that Prof. Pyakuryel alerts us to. Perhaps we shouldn’t be worried by our place on the Global Terrorism Index or its implications for our economy. With all our ills, FDI did – and can – grow because the Indians who do most of the investing themselves fare worse on the index than we do. And let’s not even talk about the indirect inflows that make unholy alliances and break existing unfaithful ones. The Chinese, on the other hand, don’t even need to make public what kind of money they deal in – direct or indirect – because they know no one’s going to believe them anyway. As for the rest of the crowd, they know the kind of security risk and danger affords.

Who Had the Harder Part To Play?

2011-08-28T15:27:00.000-07:00

Dr. Baburam Bhattarai’s election as prime minister on Sunday brought a rare sense of anticipation across the board. Consider some of the storylines. Nepal finally gets its first Ph.D. head of government (the other two ‘Doctors’ who served in that capacity were medical ones – or so we are told). The chief ideologue of an armed insurgency that neither won nor lost on the battlefield becomes the scholar-premier. Bhattarai finally emerges from the long shadow of the Fierce One. And so on.
Bhattarai’s academic accomplishments, his ‘clean’ image and his successful tenure as finance minister all worked to his advantage – until now. Even before being sworn in, his penchant for speaking from all sides of the mouth and his established skills at obfuscation and evasion have come to the limelight.
One Nepali luminary conferred on him the potential to become a Khieu Samphan or a Robert Mugabe and published a 10-point plan to avert that descent. At least one lay observer across the southern border didn’t relish the “kumkum and garland” that adorned the premier-elect’s neck and face and wondered how far Lord Pashupati could be from his sights.
The challenges ahead remain formidable and it is to our credit that we haven’t collectively descended into the ‘yes-we-can’ frenzy on lowering the seas and healing the planet. Yet Bhattarai may have raised the bar for himself a bit by uniting the perpetually divided Madhesi parties behind his candidacy through that last-minute pact. Thus the new premier might have to revert to the late-Panchayat-era practice of splitting the Supplies Ministry into food and textiles, considering the pronounced preferences of some his supporters.
On the geopolitical front, things are not cut and dried. Long considered friendly to India, Bhattarai was recently dubbed Nepal’s Deng Xiaoping by the Chinese. So he will have to cross the rivers by feeling the stones. More so at a time when the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML, both finding themselves in the opposition at the same time, would be tempted to bury their inter rifts fan the first flames they detect within the Maoists.
Which brings Maila Baje to, shall we say, the principal contradiction. Just before the legislative vote, Dahal described Bhattarai as an A-1 candidate, whose intellectual and revolutionary credentials were proven nationally and internationally. “He is not only popular among the middle class, but has also proven himself as the leader of the workers and peasants,” the Maoist supremo told the assembled members. For a second, it seemed like Dahal had never purged Bhattarai or that Bhattarai had never schemed against Dahal.
Ahead of the constituent assembly elections in 2008, Dahal took a demotion from presidential candidate to supplant Bhattarai in the vying for the premiership. You could say that it was simply because he knew the country was going to have a ceremonial president. But don’t say you wouldn’t have a hard time believing yourself.
Before Jhal Nath Khanal’s surprising rise to the premiership, Dahal was as clear as he could be in his opposition to Bhattarai’s candidacy. (Dahal loyalists were even said to have given death threats to their vice-chairman.) He came around to supporting Bhattarai’s candidacy only to keep Mohan Baidya off his back. Should the party ever split, Dahal could probably live quite well without Bhattarai. But he drinks from the same trough as Baidya.
It may be hard to put a finger on precisely how and to what effect the power play within the Maoists might evolve. For a general sense, consider this: What looked like the harder part to play? Bhattarai digesting Dahal’s fulsome praise ahead or Dahal bringing out those words?

The Last Hope Of Our Republic?

2011-08-20T16:41:00.000-07:00

The time may have come to rally around Baburam Bhattarai as premier. And no, it’s not because he remains by far the most popular among the leading contenders.
Over the past three years, Dr. Bhattarai has remained unabashed in claiming personal credit for turning Nepal into a republic. To the extent that any single person could claim ownership over that endeavor, Dr. Bhattarai may even have a point. But the self-assertion has lost none of its arrogant ring.
Yet you have to acknowledge that the United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist vice-chairman might be able to give a semblance of sanity to this whole peace process precisely because of the personal stake he presumably sees involved here.
Then there’s that other reason. Dr. Bhattarai insists that he doesn’t want to become prime minister just to add one more portrait on that illustrious wall inside Singha Darbar. This means he comes to the job with a sense of purpose, regardless of how hazy that might sound to the rest of us.
A few months ago, he claimed to have started the process of developing a new model for Nepal, equating the country’s precariousness to that which Bhimsen Thapa had faced. He can’t be forced to show his hand unless he becomes prime minister, can he?
Our most favorite Maoist across the southern border is not anathema to the north. A visiting Chinese dignitary had bestowed on Dr. Bhattarai the title of Nepal’s Deng Xiaoping. Forget the layers of disparate meanings associated with the Great Mandarin’s pronouncement because there is a more important message. To the best of Maila Baje’s knowledge, the Chinese epithet has not provoked the slightest trace of derision from the Indians.
Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal will have to work the hardest to swallow his pride. Without the arsenal of Dr. Baburam Bhattarai’s vocabulary, Dahal knows he would have had long lost his war on the battlefield. Mohan Baidya, too, crossed the rubicon when he joined hands with Dr. Bhattarai against Dahal. He can just as easily begin collaborating with Dahal in undermining Bhattarai once again, but not before the latter takes the oath of office and secrecy.
By blaming the Nepali Congress’ “recklessness” for King Mahendra’s takeover in December 1960, Dr. Bhattarai seemed to have imperiled his position within our top democratic party. His lament that fake republicans were dominating national politics by sidelining the real ones, too, was a thinly disguised attack on the Nepali Congress.
The CPN-UML, too, will be hard-pressed to go along. Bringing Madhav Kumar Nepal into the Constituent Assembly, overruling the people’s mandate, was the greatest mistake of the Maoists, Dr. Bhattarai once lamented. He also had called the CPN-UML under Jhal Nath Khanal as a band of eunuchs.
Yet this is a time for the other parties to show magnanimity. If Dr. Bhattarai were to seek another extension of the constituent assembly, the people might actually turn out to be more sympathetic. If things are really so hopeless as to defy even Dr. Bhattarai, then Nepalis might be more inclined to look for reasons not necessarily related to the political class.
It would perhaps be too much to expect Dr. Bhattarai to acknowledge failure in formal words, should it come to that. His resignation would say it all. But would it hurt to expect him to succeed?

Political Destiny & Curse By Stealth

2011-08-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

Regardless of how things turn out after the resignation of Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal over the weekend, this much is clear. Politicians can keep their word.
Okay, Khanal broke his self-imposed deadline by a day. Against the general record of our politicos, does that really count against him?
If you think so, look at the element of the story. This was the first time – at least in Maila Baje’s recollection – that a significant segment of the political establishment had implored a prime minister not to resign.
Our quest to national newness has opened up political novelties. Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal resigned as premier in 2009 without anyone of consequence ever having demanded it. Madhav Kumar Nepal became the longest-serving caretaker premier in Nepal (and almost in the world) despite having extended the constituent assembly in exchange for what everyone had understood was his immediate resignation.
Nepali Congress leader Ram Chandra Poudel, that valiant soldier who claimed to have contested all those ridiculous rounds of balloting just to save democracy, is battling to keep his seat as parliamentary party leader of the Nepali Congress.
With the big and small parties all mired in internal conflict – some at multiple levels – the constituent assembly has become the proverbial tiger that everyone needs to keep riding. So Nepalis must brace for another extension to keep the chasing the dream of … nobody knows what.
But, then, are we really in charge? We keep hearing advice from certain foreign corners about the need for new elections. Successive elections for an assembly to write a new constitution were something proposed in these columns in the past – but only to the extent of emphasizing the absurdity with the absurd. That serious stakeholders could contemplate such a thing is scary, so say the least.
Yet other foreign quarters – including those who vociferously pressed the idea of radical change in the not too distant past – have become votaries of the status quo. Some worry that any vacuum might let Nepal regain its Hindu character and thus check the spread of the Good News. Others fear for the gains in sexuality a deeply conservative society has achieved.
When a Nepali starts talking seriously about the possibility of the existence of water on Mars – and is taken seriously – you can be pretty sure how badly those who have been using Nepal as a laboratory for far too long are going nuts.
Each day we discover that on the other side of the Himalayas lays a richer treasure trove of resources. (Actually that’s what Tibet in Chinese signifies.) But on this side, we are supposed to believe we are barren just because a guy called Toni Hagen said so many, many years ago. Elsewhere technology has helped to trace what was hitherto deemed untraceable. Yet we are expected to forget Hagen’s time and context and mull deeper into that sati’s-curse line. (Who exactly was the hapless lady and what were here precise words, anyone?)
Pardon the rambling, but it seemed like a good way to spend time before we discover the true story behind Prime Minister Khanal’s resignation – as well as appointment.

Dahal Charts A Middle Path

2011-08-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

Pushpa Kamal Dahal the geopolitician has consistently made far greater sense than he has as a politician. Look at how he sought to brush aside the stubbornly sticking pro-Chinese tag the other day.
“If you recall, when I was prime minister, I had mooted the idea of an east-west railway,” Dahal said in remarks to a daily newspaper before his departure for Kuala Lumpur. “That process is still on. Does that give me a pro-India tag?”
Dahal’s comments came in response to his increasingly active involvement in the Asia-Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation (APECF), an organization widely projected by the Indians and their Nepalese protégés as a front for the Chinese government.
In the past, when Dahal left to attend APECF sessions, he sparked fierce speculation on which ranking Chinese official he was actually meeting with and what new twist he would then give our hopelessly contorted politics.
When APECF proposed a $3 billion project to boost Lumbini as the equivalent of Mecca for the world’s Buddhists, Dahal’s involvement became even more headline grabbing. Then when it emerged that former crown prince Paras Shah, like Dahal, is a co-chairman of the foundation along with eight other individuals, heads started spinning faster. (Dahal never said he would pick and choose his associations with Nepalese commoners, so Maila Baje thinks he owed no explanation there.)
The announcement in Beijing last month that Hu Yuandong, head of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization’s China Investment and Technology Promotion Office, and Xiao Wunan, Executive Vice-Chairman of the APECF, had signed a formal agreement pertaining to the Lumbini project split our republican establishment right across the middle.
It took several weeks for an official response to come. The configuration of the ruling political alliance must have deterred an immediate response. One civil society luminary, flustered by China’s assertive intentions in post-monarchy Nepal, urged Beijing not to trust the Maoists. He coupled that assertion by explaining to us that the Chinese were only looking out for themselves in Nepal.
As the din of the collective ‘duh’ permeated the Nepalese ambience, the government secretary responsible for Lumbini’s development criticized the agreement, saying Nepal had not been consulted. Ordinarily, such a caustic remark would have sounded the death knell for the project. But in these extraordinary times, this bureaucratic appeal to our patriotism fell flat and the hapless official was forced to resign.
If news of Dahal’s departure to Kuala Lumpur gave a gripping headache to opponents of the Lumbini plan, just imagine how they must be feeling that he is scheduled to return home accompanying a senior delegation to discuss the details of the project. The team, led by senior Chinese leader Zhou Yongkang, serving as special envoy of Chinese president Hu Jintao, will hold discussion on conducting a feasibility study for developing Lumbini – and not just as a pilgrimage but a much broader special development zone.
“The birthplace of Lord Buddha is important for Nepal with regard to our economic prosperity and cultural development,” Dahal said in his newspaper interview. Officially still a confirmed atheist, Dahal would have a hard time peddling the four-fold noble truths in defense of the project. So the commercial aspect has come to the forefront. Yet there is more than a whiff of the spiritual in Dahal’s espousal of the middle path between our two neighbors.

Uncivil Thoughts, Unintentional Outcomes

2011-07-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

Our squabbling political class has had its hands full protecting itself from the people’s indignation. Now a leading Indian minister has the temerity to accuse them of imperiling the security of his country – well sort of.
Speaking to editors of some Nepali newspapers and magazines in New Delhi last week,
Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the lack of a stable elected government in Nepal has increased the security vulnerability of India.
Bewailing that the governments in Nepal have been of caretaker nature for long time, Chidambaram said a strong and stable administration that cannot focus on day-to-day tasks creates a lot of collateral damage. In the minister’s estimation, it allows Pakistani extremists to use Nepal as a transit point, enables the flow of fake Indian currency notes and perpetuates weak security mechanisms at the Tribhuvan International Airport.
As for a growing concern for his government, Chidambaram suggested he had no information of Chinese involvement in anti-Indian activities in Nepal. (Leave that to the flourishing industry in his midst peddling the line that Beijing is fanning India’s Maoist insurgency through their Nepali cousins.)
Lest Nepalis rise up against Chidambaram’s insinuations, Indian ambassador-designate Jayant Prasad Srivastav stepped in to proffer his governing philosophy. India never intended to interfere in Nepal’s political matters, suggested the man who is expected to begin mending the fences his predecessor, Rakesh Sood, breached. His implication was that if anything did happen to hurt Nepali sentiments, it was all unintentional.
Men like Maoist leader Netra Bikram Chand ‘Biplav’ are simply not impressed. India is plotting to derail the current left government, dissolve the Constituent Assembly and install a rightist government in Nepal by shunning the Maoists, he believes.
India has played the good cop-bad cop routine with great élan. By enduring an acceptable level of criticism from an assortment of Nepali constituencies, New Delhi has been able to reap far greater benefits. Of late, the cost-benefit analysis has skewed the other way. Accordingly, the Indians have been turning up the heat on those who were most energetic in promoting the 2006 realignment – within and outside – on the plea that it would work to New Delhi’s advantage.
Our political class remains too worn out to betray any further signs of discomfort. Their abettors in the garb of civil society are the ones that are cracking up inside. Some do not want Pushpa Kamal Dahal to cede control of the party in any way. (This comes from the same direction that described former king Gyanendra’s decision to sack prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba in October 2002 as constitutional but his appointment of Lokendra Bahadur Chand a few days later as illegitimate.)
Others are doing their best to persuade the Chinese that the Maoists and the monarchists are both Indian minions. (This, again, from quarters that were the first to count Nepalis fortunate to have had Prince Gyanendra Shah’s safe pair of hands intact after the palace carnage before they mocked him as Asia’s most humiliated man. This same constituency lauded the Maoists for having raised arms in defense of the people, unlike the king’s plundering and pillaging soldiers.)
Imagine the pain of these hitherto unaccountable men and women at not being able to vent their sentiments against their handlers. Special consideration for tax arrears have helped to muffle the more affluent, free medical treatment has helped to frighten the infirm of mind and soul, and old-fashioned financial prodding has enticed the worldly wise. For the rest, outright intimidation has worked well. Not a bad record for unintentional outcomes.

A Landing As Safe As It Could Be

2011-07-25T17:15:00.000-07:00

The leaders of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) seem to have settled their internal rifts with remarkable geniality – for now. The central committee meeting of the party Monday passed chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s political paper dividing organizational duties among the key protagonists flexing their muscles.
While the latest rejigging might not be enough to allow the party to focus on peace and the constitution – which Dahal’s document has called its main agenda – Maila Baje thinks it does allow the Maoists to deflect some of the blame for missing the next crucial national deadline on August 28.
According to Dahal’s proposal, senior vice-chairman Mohan Baidya will head the party’s organization department along with the disciplinary body while vice-chairman Baburam Bhattarai will chair the parliamentary board and will be the prime minister candidate for the future government. Similarly, another vice-chairman Narayan Kaji Shrestha will lead the party’s team in the current government complete with home portfolio until Bhattarai can take the top job at some unspecified future date. General secretary Ram Bahadur Thapa will oversee the military commission.
In the end, the much-ballyhooed Bhattarai-Baidya alliance, which saw Shrestha and Badal jump into the fray from their own vantage points, has ended up with Dahal staying put. Appearing to deconcentrate authority, he has in fact created an opportunity to play each rival off against the others.
Dahal knew his gambit would rile Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal and the Nepali Congress even before he got his rivals’ nods over the weekend. Both have not taken kindly to the Maoists’ effort at invoking extraterritorialism especially vis-à-vis the council of ministers.
Still, the settlement suits the other Maoist leaders just fine. Baidya and Bhattarai could rise above their ideological differences to challenge Dahal because they had other overriding imperatives. Baidya, in light of the all-round mockery Dahal’s pronouncements seem to be evoking within the nation, perceived the Chinese as being no less miffed.
Ever the man to publicly shun responsibility outside the party, Baidya sought to project Bhattarai as an alternative to Dahal. But only after ensuring a monumental geopolitical transformation behind the scenes. Baidya, we are told, has been instrumental in Bhattarai’s growing contacts with the Chinese. (Whether our hardest-line Maoist had any role in conferring the ‘Nepalese Deng Xiaoping’ title from a visiting Chinese dignitary remains unclear, though.)
Bhattarai, on the other hand, has grown disenchanted by how his gulf with Baidya has served to strengthen Dahal. Regardless of the genuineness of a Bhattarai tilt northward, the posture itself, Baidya knows, would be enough to rattle Dahal and sow a few seeds of distrust in Delhi. Baidya, unsure of the depths of Bhattarai’s southern grounding, was, however, happy to see him named prime ministerial candidate only to be checked by Dahal, who continues as leader of the parliamentary party.
Shrestha’s 11th hour posturing must have been viewed with some suspicious by both Baidya and Bhattarai, perhaps even as something sponsored by the wily Dahal. Badal’s movements may have been aimed at maintaining his own relevance in the affair, but it did have the added effect of diluting the opposition to Dahal. So the protagonists realized the folly of continued brinkmanship and sought a safe landing.
Given the goings-on in the other political parties left, right and center, the Maoists’ landing was the safest it could have been. So does it really matter whether the affair was a ruse all along or was for real?

Feel Ashamed, But Do Stay On!

2011-07-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

Gokarna Bista tells us he is ashamed of calling himself a minister because of the dishonest assurances political parties are peddling to the people. What makes Bista’s lament less of a laughing matter is the fact that he holds a portfolio that most politicians can only dream of clutching.
But our energy minister, who belongs to the CPN-UML, sees the Nepalese people mired in poverty, lacking enough to eat and deprived of education. Then he sees leaders, who instead of concentrating on the plight of the population, go on making eloquent speeches. Riding a car fluttering the national flag embarrasses him.
Exasperation sounds like a more accurate word. One of the first things Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal pledged after taking office was that he would take on the ‘water mafia’ and clear what has long been touted as Nepal’s only road to riches. Accordingly, he named a key loyalist, Bista, to pursue that objective.
At a public function not long ago, Bista accused ‘mafia elements’ of stuffing all those project licenses in their pockets all the while helping to plunge the country deeper into darkness and inertia.
Vowing to do everything possible to end – not merely reduce – the inexorable spate of load-shedding, Bista also ordered a crackdown on pilferage and other forms of leakage. He has also challenged the conventional wisdom that the crisis cannot be addressed without raising the power tariff.
Bista was recently quoted as saying that if the Nepal Electricity Authority could reduce leakage by a mere six percentage points, that would generate about 2.5 billion rupees of additional revenue. In other words, that would almost offset the annual loss incurred by the organization. That piece of information has energized the people to urge Bista to go after the big fish faster.
While remaining upbeat about the prospects of foreign investment in the hydropower sector, Bista says he refuses to wait for others to solve our energy crisis and seeks domestic investment to the extent possible. He wants to encourage local companies to invest in the hydropower through low-interest loans and other incentives.
The energy minister won plaudits from the media across the spectrum for such thinking. Yet his laudable effort to appoint a managing director for the NEA through competition, as opposed to direct political appointment, did not get off to an entirely propitious start.
Then Bista was blamed from within the UML party for acquiescing in the use of the term “people’s war” in the government’s annual policies and programs, which has allowed everybody to divert their attention further away from the task of drafting the new constitution. The upshot: Bista is seething to the point short of self-flagellation.
Maila Baje acknowledges how tempting it is in this situation to demand Bista’s resignation, especially if he continues pressing the humiliation horn any further. But maybe we should let Bista stay in his job and feel sorry for himself.
If his predicament is real, perhaps the pain would go some way toward inflicting collective shame on the government. If Bista is just faking it, he still does have that extra reason to be caustic about himself. After all, how many people are stabbed outside their house a few hours after being appointed minister?

Why Deuba Throws Caution To The Stars

2011-07-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

Nepali Congress leader Sher Bahadur Deuba says he sees no reason why he cannot be the next prime minister. For a man who allegedly failed to defend democracy twice during two previous terms as prime minister, Maila Baje would have expected Deuba to be more circumspect in his public comments regardless of the comfort level.
Yet things have turned around too fast for someone so addicted to the job to stay still. The Nepali Congress is no longer in the grip of the people who had pushed the alliance with the Maoists, insisting they could make it work. The external quarters that nodded with them are now left perusing their palms in remorse.
With Krishna Prasad Sitaula and Sujata Koirala struggling to wash off any stains from the Sudan scam, all Deuba needed was to push aside Ram Chandra Poudel. (Yes, the same man who once upon a time egged him on to split the party, promising to accept the chairmanship before coming out in a full embrace of Girija Prasad Koirala.)
During those interminable rounds of legislative voting to find a successor to caretaker premier Madhav Kumar Nepal, Poudel may have considered himself the only thing standing between democracy and a full Maoist takeover. For Deuba, Poudel’s endurance was an illustration of his aching for power without purpose – or was at least a perception that could be advanced some way.
It turns out that Sushil Koirala, someone who never has had to take decisions and live with them, entered into a secret deal with Deuba as a last-ditch attempt to reorganize the post-Girija party. If Deuba is today intent on cashing the check, it is because circumstances have turned favorable in more directions than he can behold. (As that Turkish psychic said a couple of years ago about Deuba, the stars can get better only in a rare few other Nepali pols.)
Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal may relish the prospect of Deuba’s return to center stage at a time when his rival Dr. Baburam Bhattarai is using his ostensible international acceptability to become prime minister. Even if he would want to forget the precise circumstances, Dahal probably remembers that Deuba remains the only Nepalese prime minister to have a full Oval Office meeting with the U.S. president.
Yet the prospect of a Deuba candidacy has engendered a flicker of hope within the Maoist chairman. Eyeing their opportunity, Poudel and key CPN-UML leaders have asked Dahal to reenter the race for the simple reason that he heads the largest party in the legislature, without whose leadership the peace process cannot progress. Whether this is a belated recognition of reality or a shrewd move to shift responsibility to the Maoists for the inevitable failure to draw up the new constitution within the current extension period, it has certainly left Dahal searching deep within.
New Delhi is likely to seek a full-fledged public gesture from Dahal – something the wily Maoist cannot wiggle out of easily – before granting any imprimatur on his candidacy. If Dahal does a K.I. Singh anytime soon, the surprise will lay less in his return to the premiership than in the swiftness of his consolidation of authority inside the party. (Faster in case the current crisis is all a ruse). By temperament and trait, Dahal is in a better position to deal with the aftermath should there occur a full and formal affirmation of the failure of the latest experimentation in reinventing a nation. If Dahal were to deem the price too high for his personal peace and security, then Deuba may be the one to watch for. Or maybe Deuba, who was prime minister when Dahal first marched out leading that ragtag band of marauders, knows something crucial the rest of us don’t.

Lest We Get Caught Up In The Rapture

2011-07-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

Sooner or later Nepalis will have to break out of the rapture over the elevation China has accorded its ambassadorship to Nepal and recognize that Yang Houlan is here primarily to further his own country’s interests.
That we are tripping over ourselves to discover what the appointment of such a senior diplomat might mean shouldn’t be a cause for concern so long as we keep things in perspective. Nepalis have lived long enough as a nation, state or whatever it is to recognize that regardless of the intensity of China’s interest, our fragility is our own to worry about.
Historically, Nepal has made a virtue out of exaggerating its proximity to China to the point of irritating the Chinese. In the days of yore, emperors and ambans were quite direct in conveying their displeasure. We were worse than barbarians – we were even addressed as robbers and bandits in official communication.
To remain independent, Nepalis have had to develop an uncanny way of keeping the British guessing about the true nature of our relationship with China. During the Anglo-Nepalese war, Lord Moira actually had planned for the possibility of Chinese military intervention on our behalf when Beijing was daring us to join the feringhis. Even after imposing the Sugauli Treaty on us, the governor-general was prepared to withdraw the residency before receiving assurances of Chinese acquiescence. The British had to defeat the Chinese in the First Opium War to discover that the Middle Kingdom was incapable of helping even if they wanted to. (And that was a big if.)
But the mandate of heaven weighed so heavily on imperial shoulders that Nepali tribute missions served to massage the imperial ego. Our crafty Rana rulers slipped in enough consignments of opium to ensure that commercially we came out on top from the pangs of political subordination. That so infuriated the Manchus that they formally claimed suzerainty over Nepal at the precise time the ground right around them was slipping away the fastest.
The Nepal-China peace and friendship treaty abrogated all previous treaties, allowing Nepalis to believe that Tibet was Beijing’s last stop. Chinese acerbity in official correspondence has ceased in modern times, barring that phase in 1967 during the height of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. But in private Chinese diplomats and academics are known to seethe in the same way at the Maoists as they did at the monarchs.
While Mao seemed to have forgotten his assertion that Nepal was among territories lost to the imperialists during the century of humiliation (a sentiment Sun Yat-sen shared), the Great Helmsman and his acolytes also perfected the traditional Chinese practice of proffering high-sounding but ambiguous statements of support contingent upon quid pro quos, something that has stood out sharper in the splendor of our newness.
China’s ambassador became the first foreign envoy to present his credentials to Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala in 2007 only after Koirala had made a full-throated pitch for China’s inclusion as a full member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. The prospect of that train being brought from Lhasa to the Nepalese border has energized four governments since the April 2006 Uprising, but who can really be sure about when to expect it to arrive? (Maila Baje recalls that the Qinghai-Lhasa portion was completed ahead of schedule.)
So when the next time a Chinese leader says his or her country will not sit idly by if anyone threatens Nepalese independence and sovereignty, by all means let’s not disbelieve those words. But even if Chinese soldiers happen to shed blood to defend Nepal’s territorial integrity, let’s be able to recognize – in full gratitude – that they would be doing so ultimately because they deemed it was in their national interest.

A Ruse Or Real?

2011-06-27T14:19:00.000-07:00

Is United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal battling for his political life or is the public war of words within the party merely a clever ruse?
The facts on the ground seem to point to the former. Vice-chairmen Mohan Baidya and Baburam Bhattarai, who can barely agree on anything, have mounted a joint challenge to Dahal. Together, the duo represents two-thirds of the parliamentary party. The former prime minister, who is now said to be in the minority on all party fronts, can no longer hope to pull ahead by pitting his two deputies against each other.
This is a sordid twist to a political saga woven with elements of suspense, intrigue and drama. From someone who was once thought not even to really exist, Dahal managed to meet the Chinese President, Indian prime minister and American president (albeit briefly in a wider gathering) within his first 100 days as premier.
His powers of evasion and prevarication were so masterful that flexibility and firmness became interchangeable terms on the negotiating table and on the battlefield. The country couldn’t figure out whether Dahal was really a republican or not until that vote during the first session of the constituent assembly in 2008. (Rumor has it that he was, until the last moment, still cautioning then-prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala that putting the issue to a vote might not be the right way forward.) Maila Baje has a nagging sense that Nepalis in general still do not seem to really know, given the number of escape clauses he has constructed over the years.
Even when he was caught on tape treading at the height of dishonesty on the number of Maoist combatants, he found admirers flabbergasted at his skills in juxtaposing time and context. For a while, he seemed to enjoy a personality cult reminiscent of the Great Helmsman that was largely devoid of the fear and coercion that characterized the phase up north.
Yet today, people on the lower rungs of the Maoist leadership have stuck their necks wide out to criticize the party chairman’s imperious ways. The fear of being turned into another ‘Alok’ has simply evaporated. Reports of Dahal’s alleged cowardice under fire are percolating from precisely those who were in the battlefield with them.
Charges of nepotism, favoritism, financial vice – the pervasiveness of which led Dahal to transform an organization based in four mid-western districts into a national party and the largest force in the last election – have come to hobble him. Although he chuckled them off on hearing them, rumors of a Sri Lanka-like crackdown under a prime minister K.P. Oli after the latest three-month extension of the constituent assembly expires are said to be haunting him these days.
Dahal has milked the Birendra-Madan-Bhandari-and-me defense to its fullest that is going to be of little help now. Even if he compromises with the foreign masters he accused of forcing him out as premier, will he have any way of knowing that they have shed their core inhibitions?
Will his persona and predilections allow him to concede the party leadership to Baidya and the premiership to Bhattarai? Will he be able to extricate himself from the special interests that have come to surround him and his family?
These are crucial questions. Yet it is hard to believe that Dahal has lost his ability to amaze us. That is why we must return to the original question. By keeping us guessing on the real-versus-ruse deal, Dahal could yet pull ahead of his detractors.

Politics In An Age Of Elitism

2011-06-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

A conspicuous sense of elitism has been creeping into the body politic for a while, culminating in the recent utterances of Dr. Baburam Bhattarai. No, the Maoist vice-chairman insists, he doesn’t want to become prime minister just to add one more portrait on that wall at Singha Darbar.
But he doesn’t restrain his minions from claiming that India, China, the United States and the European Union would all like to have him in the top job. (Thank goodness, he is popular with Nepalis, too. Imagine what it would be like to be in his party if he were less so.)
Dr. Bhattarai concedes that the Maoists, too, have been consumed by the factionalism and rivalries that have been the bane of other Nepalese parties. But that is only because of the former rebels’ increasing contacts with those same other parties.
Granted, without Dr. Bhattarai’s specialness, the Maoists would not have been the success story among the international revolutionary left despite their lack of a complete victory. You can go beyond that. Many a person who has topped his or her batch’s SLC list has soon lost the rush to excellence.
If Dr. Bhattarai had been cowered by the heavy police batons in the vicinity of Nepal Electricity Corporation during his relatively obscure days in the early nineties, he probably wouldn’t have become a serious contender for the premiership. Today his persona is such that his wife can become a minister just because of whom she is married to. (Although one must acknowledge the suffering she endured while joining her husband in that reform camp in the months preceding the 12-Point Agreement.)
But you can’t help notice the ludicrous levels the I-know-better-than-you air has taken. Dr. Bhattarai recently claimed that Nepal could fall victim to overt foreign interference within the next decade if we are not collectively careful. Aren’t we already there yet?
At another place, he decried the King Mahendra-style of foreign policy of playing one neighbor off against the other as thoroughly unworkable. But didn’t Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi visit the airport transit lounge for talks with King Mahendra whenever he was en route to a third country?
And didn’t Mao Zedong pay the much-maligned monarch that rare return visit to his residence in Beijing? If it was a game King Mahendra was playing, then New Delhi and Beijing were willful participants, weren’t they?
A senior Chinese leader not too long ago described Dr. Bhattarai as being Nepal’s Deng Xiaoping. (The more diehard Chinese communists and their Nepali cousins would probably see him more in Khrushchev’s mold.) Maila Baje feels the honorific may have also resulted from the Chinese belief that they could help Dr. Bhattarai save himself from becoming someone else.
In the aftermath of the Narayanity Carnage, Dr. Bhattarai had labeled King Gyanendra as Nepal’s equivalent of Lhendup Dorje – the Sikkimese quisling – an assertion he virtually said he stood by a decade later. That Dr. Bhattarai today should be battling to ward off the same epithet from within his own party – not to speak from a section of the country – says less about the country’s political craziness than about the corrosiveness of the careless talk by people certifiably smarter than the rest of us.

Help Us See Better, Doctor

2011-06-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

Having extended the tenure of the constituent assembly for a second time, our political parties seemed to be moving in the right direction. But that does not seem to have impressed many within the fraternity.
One skeptic is Nepali Congress central committee member Sashank Koirala. Speaking in Okhaldhunga last week, Dr. Koirala claimed that even a preliminary draft of the constitution would not be ready by the August 28 deadline. Then he added with a tinge of morbid resignation, “Nepalis even do not have the pen and a paper to draft their own charter.” In his estimation, our fluid political situation would continue.
Before you jump to accuse Dr. Koirala of the gleeful indifference that has characterized some in his increasingly fractious party, check what he said at another speech in Chitwan. “Political complexity will result in the country if the peace process does not get full shape within three months.”
Even if the constitution is not drafted in time, Dr. Koirala seemed to suggest, a modicum of progress in the peace process would be required to save the nation. Now, just what might that entail? (Who better than a trained ophthalmologist to see the writing on the wall? Just because President Bashar Assad in Syria seems to have lost some of that vision doesn’t mean all hope is lost in eternity.)
Dr. Koirala may or may not volunteer a solution in the days ahead. As for the complexity he predicted, we might have already reached that point. Mohan Baidya has inherited from Dr. Baburam Bhattarai the dissenter-in-chief title within the Maoists. A Maoist minister has been able to muster over 150 lawyers on his side in a case brought by human rights activists. Youths allied with the CPN-UML have reached deep into their legacy radicalism to go after the fourth estate – life and limb.
Madhesi parties outside of power have been consulting with representatives of the ancien regime we were led to believe had discriminated against them for nearly three centuries. Christian and gay groups are concerned that the freedoms that seemed to emanate from Nepal’s once heady march into a nebulous newness are under threat from the criminal statutes. And lest we be accused of distraction from real bread-and-butter issues, female actors are complaining their male counterparts are being paid much more.
Much as he admires Dr. Koirala’s candor, Maila Baje has a quibble with the man. Shortly after being elected to the constituent assembly, Dr. Koirala, in a conversation with his constituents in Nawalparasi, claimed that the interim constitution was based largely on a document that had arrived from the Indian capital. But he didn’t stop there. He said he had reliable information from political friends in New Delhi that Maoist leaders, including Dr. Bhattarai, were involved in preparing a tentative draft of the new constitution in New Delhi.
Of course, that assertion was viewed within the context of growing Indian interference in the immediate aftermath of the 12-point agreement. Has Nepal ventured too far since those days for that draft to be foisted on the country as a consensus document? If so, how then is Dr. Bhattarai’s stock as a consensus prime minister soaring at this precise moment?
C’mon, Doctor, we’re seeing so many things in our collective peripheral vision that are so hard to explain.

How About Mohan Baidya For Premier?

2011-06-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal doesn’t want to become prime minister again, a loyalist said the other day. Everyone that matters – India, China, US, UK, and EU – wants his deputy, Baburam Bhattarai, in the top job, according to one of his key supporters.
In the Nepali Congress, Sher Bahadur Deuba and Ram Chandra Poudel both want the premiership so bad they are working hard to keep each other out. And it gets better. Jay Prakash Prasad Gupta of the breakaway Madhesi Janadhikar Forum has staked his claim. If for no other reason than the fact that his is only party that has a republican suffix to it. And, meanwhile, even the fiercest critics of Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal in his CPN-UML don’t want him to step down right away.
But let not your hearts be troubled. On the constitution-drafting front – the real job before the nation, in case you missed it – things are moving, if spasmodically. So much so that the otherwise downbeat Nilambar Acharya, who heads the drafting panel, believes it may be possible to have a rudimentary text ready within schedule. (Maila Baje feels Acharya bears watching. He always tends to be the first to sound the bells of doom, for understandable reasons.)
In another spur to the process, if not exactly to peace, Dahal has decided to remove his PLA guards. The decision is based on the recent decision of the Army Integration Special Committee, which decided to send all combatants deployed for security of Maoist leaders to their respective cantonments within a week.
Realizing the importance of their presence at home, four members of the special committee – Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat, Barshaman Pun, Ishwor Pokharel and Jay Prakash Prasad Gupta – cancelled a long scheduled trip to the US. Their ardor was not shared by Madhav Kumar Nepal, Sujata Koirala and Hisila Yami, who left on a trip to Bangladesh. They probably thought they could cover the distance in time, should things come to that. In any case, the attacks on the Facebook fraternity as good-for-nothing do-gooders has somewhat abated.
The latest word is that the Maoists, if they cannot get Bhattarai, would put up Ram Bahadur Thapa ‘Badal’ for the premiership. Considering all that has happened since Dahal stepped down, the peace process would probably need a Maoist premier to get anywhere approximating a step ahead. For good or ill, Bhattarai’s intellectual firepower and Badal’s military genius has brought Nepal where it is today. So both are worthy contenders.
But since the past is no longer the preponderant issue, how about Mohan Baidya as prime minister? The hardliner seems to be everyone’s problem today. There is a great chance he will refuse and insist on his candidate, Badal. (Baidya even quit his constituent assembly seat after taking all the trouble to get elected.) If Baidya refuses, he will have committed himself a little more staunchly to the old-style Maoist communism he keeps threatening us with. But what if he agrees? Wouldn’t that be progress?

The Difference The Maoists Have Made

2011-05-30T07:24:00.000-07:00

You can’t say the Maoists’ arrival in the political mainstream has not changed anything. When needed, the hardest-line political force has been flexible enough to ensure repeated extensions of an assembly long beyond the life its progenitors – the sovereign people – intended.
Contrast that with the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML, who during Nepal’s second age of democracy (1990-2002), were congenitally disposed to dissolving parliament, to the point of self-annihilation, midway through its five-year term.
If the intention of the 2005 12-point agreement between the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists was to push the former rebels into the democratic process – as Maila Baje felt from the outset – then it has proved a succeeded. Not because democracy per se has prospered in Nepal by their arrival. But because of the Maoists’ progressive emaciation.
The signal lesson, however, pertains to the evolution and growth of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. There are still those who romanticize the former Nepalese rebels, mostly ensconced in the West and South. Guilt-ridden faculty-lounge discussants that refuse to believe that communism as that great balancing force in world affairs collapsed of its own dead weight. Ideological kooks who insist that communism collapsed only because it lacked the right kind of leaders. Those involved in the magnification and outright manufacture of all manner of grievances to secure funding for a career in newly proliferating disciplines.
Yet Nepalis increasingly recognize how the Maoists grew through the direct patronage of domestic – from the right to the left – and international forces that had their own agendas in shaping the post-1990 change.
Those who thought the Terai – that supposed cauldron of ethnic resentment and alienation – would be the first to erupt discounted how the open border would dissuade a key patron. Lighting the spark on the northern border in the guise of an ideology with specific connotations to the Great Helmsman there would give a degree of plausible deniability to the rebels’ real sponsors.
This, of course, is not to denigrate or deny the real grievances that simmered beneath the surface. But how many societies in our times with deeply ingrained political, economic, social and cultural grievances have descended into outright armed insurgency? And grievance is no static sentiment, as the Brahmins and Chhetris have demonstrated in recent weeks.
The leadership must be credited for our Maoists’ success. But the paradoxes here too abound. Supreme commander Prachanda’s ferocity and flexibility are lauded for the building of a ragtag band of malcontents into a formidable fighting force. Yet, according to reports now trickling out of Maoist quarters, Prachanda would start wailing at the first hail of gunfire on either side on the few fronts that he was actually involved in.
The hefty prose Dr. Baburam Bhattarai composed in defense of the insurgency has surely enriched the world of Nepali letters. But, then, a brief perusal of Mao’s own collected works would suffice to indicate how much more his forte lay in art of translation than conception.
On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Narayanhity Carnage, the Maoists’ chief ideologue stands by his original story that the surviving members of the royal family had a hand in the massacre against a vast geopolitical conspiracy. That’s laudable, considering the swiftness with which politicians are generally known to change their stories. But when the best Dr. Bhattarai, five years after claiming to have dragged the mainstream parties on the path to New Nepal, can do is emphasize the urgency of forming an inquiry commission, then you have got to think. Are the rest of us really that stupid?

Nepali Congress: Is It For Real?

2011-05-22T13:48:00.000-07:00

The general response to the Nepali Congress’ latest public campaigns seems to have exceeded the leadership’s wildest expectations. Although no one had quite ventured to write the party’s epitaph, its progressive emaciation was apparent. The post-Girija Prasad Koirala leadership was both dreary and divided.
The party’s resurgence – if one can call it that – appears to have energized the Indians as well. The venerable Times of India’s Nepal watcher, Indrani Bagchi, in a recent story credited Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee’s massive electoral success in West Bengal against the long-ruling left alliance with giving a new life to the Nepali Congress.
In fairness, the TOI correspondent is less parochial than the story’s headline makes it sound. The writer attributes the Nepali Congress’ success to the diminution of public fear of the Maoists and the dismal performance of Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal’s government. With each of the communist partners mired in deep internal rifts, it would be difficult to expect the government to perform any better. But, Maila Baje feels, our comrades surely know that such arguments, regardless of their validity, cannot win the argument.
Still, there is a place in the TOI story where Nepalis and the Nepali Congress must watch for. The party was on the verge of a rupture on the eve of Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna’s visit. “Giving the example of the Indian Congress party and how it had repositioned itself in Indian politics, Krishna reportedly told the NC leaders that they ran the risk of being their own
worst enemy.”
Suddenly things patched up in the party, long delayed appointments/nominations were formalized, and voluble leaders restrained themselves to the point where factionalism saw little, if any, place in the latest rallies. Sher Bahadur Deuba, the chief dissident, at one point even half-gyrated to the music amid the unfolding cultural tapestry.
The sense of rejuvenation reached a level where Nepali Congress cadres in Gorkha ended up thrashing six local activists of UCPN (Maoists).
To be sure, the Nepali Congress has seized the initiative by submitted a 10-point charter of demands to the UML-Maoist government, complete with an ultimatum. Unless the demands were fulfilled, the party insists, it would oppose the extension of the Constituent Assembly on May 28. In the end, the spirit of consensus will probably prevail in the Nepali Congress and the assembly will get a new lease of life.
How long after that can the personality-based rifts in the Nepali Congress be papered over? Power, after all, has always had a way of intoxicating the party to the point of implosion. Perhaps in the interest of its own well-being, the party should commit itself to staying out of the government for a while longer.

Between Elitism and Illusion

2011-05-15T16:26:00.000-07:00

Exasperated by the ideological muddle ensnaring his party, Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist firebrand Bam Dev Gautam has hit back at his rivals in the leadership. The former deputy prime minister no longer seems in a mood to consider them communists.
Although Gautam was careful not to name names during a speech in Nepalgunj the other day, his targets were clear. “We cannot take those Nepali Congress cohorts as communists, can we?” Gautam asked the audience. The images of Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli and Madhav Kumar Nepal must have been swirling around the place in their assorted manifestations.
At one level, Gautam merely articulated something that has been intriguing a far wider section of the populace. Oli’s public remarks have tended to fall at the right end of the political spectrum, on occasion surpassing those of Kamal Thapa of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal, if you take the monarchy out of the equation.
Unlike Oli, Madhav Nepal has been vituperative in his public references to former king Gyanendra Shah. But on other matters, Nepal has generally positioned himself on the right of many in the Nepali Congress. Although both seem to have trained their guns on the Maoists, deeper down it looks like they are going after a particular mind-set.
Yet other parts of Gautam’s speech were a bit grating. “What a surprise, some of our own senior leaders have been supporting a status-quoist party like Nepali Congress,” he thundered. What status quo, exactly? In post-April Uprising 2006 Nepal, the term status quo, at least in the political context Gautam refers to, is too amorphous to understand. When Chettris are able to bring significant parts of the country to a halt claiming discrimination, you have to concede how our notions of new and old are changing by moment.
Ideological consistency may not be Gautam’s stronghold. But he persisted nevertheless. “Our ideology is Peoples’ Multiparty Democracy (PMD) [and] the heart of PMD is revolutionary change”, Gautam insisted. That was the kind of language Oli and Nepal have long used to position themselves between radicals and moderates, all the while Gautam was taking turns consorting with the palace and the Maoists.
Still, the larger question pertains to the general direction of our politics. There those outside the arena who tend to dismiss as grossly insulting clear manifestations of popular disenchantment with the political class’ inability to deliver the constitution. Many in this group have a history of magnifying and even manufacturing grievances and institutionalizing an industry while masquerading as dispassionate observers. Now that the change they peddled had started losing some of its luster, it’s the people’s fault.
Then there are those in the political class who believe in the power of national consensus to work wonders when it comes to the crunch. It doesn’t matter a bit that the rest of the year is not so conducive to common cause. Those without similar faith in – or perhaps, more appropriately, fantasies about – the durability of last-minute deals are somehow roadblocks that must be cast aside.
Between this crass elitism and eternal confidence, Gautam’s comments point to the imperative of each one of us fighting our individual battles and reconciling ourselves within before pretending to know what it is that we collectively seek.

Convergence Of Contradictions

2011-05-08T19:02:00.000-07:00

Few expected Madhav Kumar Nepal to make life easy for Jhal Nath Khanal. Yet those anticipating a full-blown offensive between the incumbent premier and his immediate predecessor were bound to be disappointed.
Neither tradition nor temperament suggests that Nepal would ever become a boisterous belligerent. So when he claimed the other day that now was not the time to look for an alternative to the Khanal government, the sentiment was merely characteristic of the speaker. But make no mistake. In measured but meaningful cadences, Nepal is hitting back on the man who sought to subvert him from the get go.
Prime Minister Khanal’s principal rival within his CPN-UML, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, has been more vociferous. Even if Oli ever got over his defeat to Khanal in the election for party chairman over two years ago, he seems to see in his adversary enough to get aggravated by.
By timing his allotment of the home ministry to the Maoists at a time when Oli was out of the country, Khanal took a personal swipe at his rival. Cutting short his visit to Malaysia, Oli returned home to describe the move as “a serious conspiracy against the party, country, people and democracy”. Oli seems set to raise the decibels several levels at the upcoming party central committee meetings.
The prime minister, for his part, has been careful to cover his bases. By giving the home portfolio to Krishna Bahadur Mahara, he precipitated the exit of the original claimant, Barsa Man Pun, from the cabinet. Khanal has thus attempted to widen the fissures within the UCPN (Maoist) precipitated by party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s turnaround to embrace the peace camp. To be sure, Oli, Nepal and Co. would like to measure how all this might play out in Maoist ranks before pushing Khanal any further to the wall.
From the other end of the spectrum, the Nepali Congress is nibbling at – if not exactly biting – its nails. Barely able to keep his house in order, Nepali Congress leader Khum Bahadur Khadka insists the UML would split if the Khanal government continued in office. As the self-proclaimed mastermind of the damaging 1998 UML split, Khadka does carry some authority.
Oli and Nepal, Maila Baje feels, might want to pay deference to the likes of Khadka – at least in public. By depicting Khanal as polarizing figure, the UML’s liberal camp could hope to take over the party from the radicals. But what if Khanal were to risk a party split for the sake of retaining power? Oli at least might not be terribly bothered by that prospect.
By aligning his group with the Nepali Congress, Oli could hope to take on both the Maoists and the Khanal-led UML and find resourceful external patrons. The Madhesi parties, congenitally more likely to veer toward the liberal combine, could then fortify the new front.
While grappling with their own grievances, the Maoists can perhaps rest assured on one count. The fact that five years later, the Nepali Congress and the UML are still clamoring for the Maoists to demonstrate their commitment to peace says more about the mainstream parties than about the ex-rebels.
As events crystallize with approaching crucial May 28 deadline, Nepalis can brace for the next grand convergence of contradictions, a process that has long passed for our collective journey to a new Nepal.

‘Recklessness’, Revelation And Revisionism

2011-05-02T18:14:00.000-07:00

By blaming the Nepali Congress’ “recklessness” for King Mahendra’s takeover in December 1960, UCPN-Maoist vice-chairman Baburam Bhattarai may have imperiled his position as our top democrats’ favorite Maoist.
The politically correct version has long held that King Mahendra’s enormous autocratic ambitions led to the overthrow of Nepal’s first elected government and three-decade proscription on multiparty politics.
In subsequent years, deposed prime minister B.P. Koirala had been willing to factor in other national and international developments that worked to the monarch’s advantage. But Koirala’s party has steadfastly and singularly peddled the line of royal ravenousness.
This version has enjoyed almost universal acceptance in the political mainstream, including within our splintered but strong communist movement, a key beneficiary of the royal takeover. So much so that sections of the post-monarchical community of ex-panchas have articulated that assertion without the slightest trace of awkwardness.
So when someone of the stature of Dr. Bhattarai offers an alternative version of history, it is bound to acquire extraordinary attention. But, then, the man has been quite elastic in his assertions, configuring them in tune with the times.
During the second peace talks he conducted with the royal government, in 2003, Maila Baje recalls, Dr. Bhattarai asserted that peace was achievable precisely because the political parties that had mangled the 12 previous years were finally out of the way. Yet when those talks faltered, Dr. Bhattarai lumped Bhimsen Thapa’s and the Ranas’ rule together with that of the monarchs’ to depict a 240 years of crude kingship.
Still, a few questions are in order. Why would Dr. Bhattarai run against the current at a time when he needs to clear all the hurdles he can on his path to the premiership? Could this be a ploy to secure the Nepali Congress’ support for extending the constituent assembly? Failing that, he could then place responsibility for any post-May 28 “accident” squarely on the largest democratic party.
Because of the proximity of the event, Dr. Bhattarai probably didn’t find it necessary to recall how it was the Nepali Congress which led to then-King Gyanendra’s first takeover on October 4, 2005. Or he simply might not have wanted to humor the last monarch so early in the game. Maybe he wanted to perpetuate the guessing game that has held the Maoists in good stead in times of war and peace alike.
As for the Nepali Congress and Satra Sal, Dr. Bhattarai perhaps felt he was merely underscoring what the party understood all along. The fact that two-thirds of its 74 elected representatives in the lower house eventually joined the Panchayat system may not necessarily connote recklessness, but it is certainly revealing.

The Vetting And Barring Scheme

2011-04-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

In the regional power play, Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal’s coalition government has been rudely tossed onto the defensive. The new government formed in early February, according to a section of the Maoists, was the culmination of Nepali genius.
The claim gained wider resonance as the not-quite-secret seven-point accord underpinning the new coalition was reached during President Ram Baran Yadav’s visit to India ostensibly for consultations on breaking the deepening deadlock following Madhav Kumar Nepal’s resignation as premier.
Whether or how deeply the Chinese were involved in building the new alliance is hard to fathom. The most Beijing would publicly assert was the urgency of unifying all patriotic forces to strengthen Nepali sovereignty and territorial integrity. The elasticity of that assertion, Maila Baje feels, served China’s characteristic pragmatism. But the Maoists and, to a lesser degree, the CPN-UML, sought to profit from the perception of a new northern tilt.
So when a new minister of state representing one of the indigenous and marginalized communities our new Nepal was supposed to have advanced turned out to be an alleged confidant of the Dalai Lama, triumphalism collapsed with a raucous thud.
Minister of State for Finance Lharkyal Lama resigned amid allegations that he carried passports of both Nepal and India, apart from a Tibetan refugee ID card. A UML lawmaker from Sindhupalchowk district, nominated under the proportional electoral system, Lama was also accused of involvement in Free Tibet activities in violation of Nepal’s longstanding one-China policy.
While he termed the allegations as ‘imaginary and baseless’, Lama said he had chosen to resign to facilitate the government’s investigation into the charges. But the move seemed to have come after much personal resistance.
The controversy left Khanal with a putrid egg on the face. How lax could the vetting process have been. That, too, on something he would have been expected to exercise particular prudence. Khanal had hardly endeared himself to the mandarins up north when, somewhere on Chinese soil, he took a call from India’s powerful minister, Pranab Mukherjee, and cut short his visit to return home and criticize then-premier Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s decision to sack the army chief.
The demolition ball this time hit Dahal hard, too. Or maybe he anticipated – if not quite engineered – something like this. The Maoist chief has now veered to the peace camp led by Dr. Baburam Bhattarai. While hardliners like Mohan Baidya will continue to persist in the urgency of a people’s revolt, Dahal has craftily positioned himself for the post-May 28 situation.
Although visiting Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna reportedly gave Dahal an earful about the former rebels’ waywardness vis-à-vis the south, there are indications that New Delhi may be ready to meet Dahal at least quarter of the way.
No longer able to shun him, New Delhi has presented Dahal with blandishments. If he signed the dotted line – on, say, the extradition treaty, allowing Indian security personnel to man sensitive areas, etc – New Delhi could be sympathetic to the Maoist chief’s return as prime minister.
From his subsequent public comments, Dahal does not seem to have been entirely impressed. What he will do on the China front is anyone’s guess. Maybe – just maybe – he might clear the way for Dr. Bhattarai gain the premiership and implement his grand geopolitical vision. Dahal could then just as easily swing back to the Baidya camp to restore the regional equilibrium, regardless of how the Lharkyal Lama episode plays out.

Flashback: A Metaphor For Nepal’s ‘Newness’

2011-04-18T14:54:00.000-07:00

Usha Bista has become an apt metaphor for the tentativeness of our trudge toward a new Nepal. A member of the Loktantrik [Democratic] Everest Expedition 2007, Bista was part of a much-hyped endeavor to show the rest of the world how Nepal was advancing toward a post-monarchy pinnacle.
Teammates, firm on setting records of all sorts, ended up abandoning the 22 year old at an altitude of around 8,400 meters. That was after she fell nearly unconscious from swelling in the brain resulting from a scarcity of oxygen.
Earlier this year, expedition members had met with the top leaders of all the eight parties, whose flags they ventured to plant on the summit. As the marginalization of the monarchy proceeded as the one-point national agenda, Bista was at the center of another spin.
She was the first woman from the far-west region, from the Terai as well as from the Chhetri community, to mount an attempt on the world’s tallest mountain. The implication, of course, was that all but one of the Nepali women atop Everest belonged to the Sherpa community.
Discovered beside a path at the so-called “Death Zone” by a member of the Canadian Air Force, Bista was helped down the mountain to the South Col camp. There, British doctors, who had established a laboratory to explore oxygen deficiency in the blood, gave her emergency treatment. They escorted Bista down to a point where she could be picked up by helicopter.
In a nation where platitudes are being peddled as well thought-out plans and policies, Bista’s plight encapsulates the perils of our path. Of course, callousness is not new on our mountains. Two high-profile desertions last year triggered worldwide condemnation, prompting Sir Edmund Hillary to attack the degeneration of a once-lofty adventure into trophy hunting by the wealthy.
This mission was different. Members had an opportunity to prove that loktantra – loosely articulated as democracy without the monarchy – was really anything beyond a slogan epitomizing the Seven Party Alliance’s and the Maoists mutual antipathy for the monarchy.
The fact that climbers continued to tout their own achievements by abandoning a fellow team member in utter distress was bad enough. The reality that the Nepali media was complicit in a cover-up as long as they could is emblematic of loktantra’s manifestation as an exclusive tool for the perpetuation of the SPA-Maoist combine’s monopoly on power.
Surely, those unwilling or unable to go along with the current ground rules are doomed. Anything perceived to stand in the way of a nebulous newness is demonized as feudal, exploitative and antiquated. But when catalysts of change like Bista are abandoned at the first sign of incapacitation, what hope can there be for those outside the establishment perimeter?
There is a more poignant metaphor, though. Nepal is indeed lucky to have foreign friends and well-wishers ready to clean up the debris from our free fall. Surely their patience for platitudes cannot outlast ours.

Originally posted on Monday, May 28, 2007

Diplomacy And Politics of Estrangement

2011-04-11T03:46:00.000-07:00

The road to Delhi begins from Lainchour – and Rakesh Sood seems intent on keeping things that way. The soon-to-depart Indian ambassador scuttled a fence-mending meeting between Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Sharad Yadav of India’s Janata Dal (United) party was said to have arranged such a meeting after much behind-the-scenes jockeying. He and his Maoist-friendly colleagues have long pressed the fact that India cannot afford to snub the leader of the largest party in the legislature, regardless of Dahal’s ideology or idiosyncrasies.
But Sood and an influential section of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) reportedly saw matters differently. They advised New Delhi to first invite Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal to sound out the intentions of the new government.
It’s easy to see the shadows of all those black flags running amok in the Indian ambassador’s behavior. Yet Sood & Co. must have bolstered their resistance through their conclusion that the Maoists are, at best, running out of steam.
Earlier this month, Yadav voiced his frustration with Sood by publicly accusing the ambassador of “crossing all limits.” Sood, for his part, is no amnesiac. Yadav has not exactly been credible as a go-between. After all, he had failed to persuade then-Prime Minister Dahal to shelve plans to make Beijing his first foreign port of call. And that, too, after candidly claiming in the full glare of the media that doing so would only antagonize India.
In fairness, Dahal wants to uphold Nepal’s freedom to make the decisions it deems vital to its national interests. That conflicts with New Delhi’s basic psychology. In a recent BBC Nepali Service interview, retired general Ashok K. Mehta seemed to concede Nepal’s aspirations on every specific instance the questioner and his co-panelist, former Nepali ambassador to China, Rajeshwar Acharya, raised. Yet, on a philosophical level, Mehta, in his inimitable Nepali, insisted on India’s paramountcy, citing Nepal’s anatomical import as the head of South Asia.
Dahal, from the outset, probably recognized the difficulty a republican Nepal would face in warding off the dilemma successive monarchs faced vis-à-vis India. He also must have felt he would carry far more credibility in articulating Nepalese concerns as a democratically elected leader.
But Dahal’s obsession has had an echo-chamber effect, muddling the message not only among the intended audience but also among those on whose behalf he is making them. If by orientation and temperament Dahal seems ill suited for diplomacy, those same attributes make him unlikely to stop dragging India into the daily political discourse.
Dahal partisans may jump on RAW’s involvement in the latest ostensible sabotage as part of the effort to project Dr. Baburam Bhattarai as the next leader of the party. The Chinese, too, seem to have become alert to that reality and have therefore begun according greater respect to the vice-chairman.
It is hard to see Dahal making way for Bhattarai. So the Maoist chairman probably has another trick up his sleeve, perhaps even one connected to the latest convention of the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA). At a meeting the Indians believe was held in Nepal, the organization, among other things, resolved, “People all over the world look up to the Maoists in Nepal to break out of conspiracies and advance determinedly towards the completion of new democratic revolution.”
The Dahal plan could go like this. Let the constituent assembly die without its having formed a new constitution. Oppose President Ram Baran Yadav’s inevitable intervention by bringing the capital to a standstill for a few days. Then send out your own men and women on ‘spontaneous’ anti-Maoist demonstrations. Take a deep breath and renew the anti-Indian tirade.
New Delhi must have anticipated as much. The variables beyond are probably what both sides are anxiously weighing.

The Veep’s Mischievous Power of Disbelief

2011-04-04T13:26:00.000-07:00

Vice President Parmananda Jha believes that ninety percent of the news published in our newspapers these days is simply not true.
Now, why he chose to make that claim, of all places, while inaugurating the second general convention of Nepal Health Workers’ Union is anyone’s guess. Something he read that morning may have ticked him off. Or probably it was a restive thought that could wait no longer to ooze out.
Maila Baje, to be sure, wouldn’t have expected Jha to make such a bold assertion in front of a union of pen pushers. But there could have been a more appropriate forum, perhaps even one known to share his sentiments. Still, the venue should not diminish our quest to probe deeper into the Veep’s observation.
In fairness to Jha, few people in the world today believe everything they read in the papers. In many developing societies – including those we still consider paragons of a free press – the media enjoy some of the lowest public approval ratings of major national institutions.
Objectivity was always a false quest, given that human beings are by definition subjective. Read different news accounts of the same incident and event and you’re more likely to come to wildly different conclusions. What should belong to the opinion pages seeps in to flood that innocuous-sounding preserve called news analysis.
Despite all that hobbles news hunters and gathers these days, surely more than 10 percent of what appears in the papers must be true. Jha may be forgiven for his own prejudice here. The media have not been fair to him.
For instance, he took much heat for his insistence on taking the oath in Hindi. But some of the same critics, according to Jha’s subsequent revelation, had insisted that he hold firm. Few bothered to cover, much less contemplate, that angle.
If Jha seems to feel more aggrieved than the rest of his peers in the political sphere, well, he represents that segment of the Nepalese population that has long felt discriminated against. Part of the problem must be the nature of his office. At a time when President Ram Baran Yadav doesn’t seem to know what he is supposed to do, can you really blame the deputy for being so flummoxed?
Still, one cannot escape the imperative of stacking the Veep up against his standard. During his tenure, he has voiced pessimism at the possibility of the emergence of a new constitution on time, only to become more sanguine in subsequent pronouncements. (In his recent speech, he urged health care workers to put pressure on everyone to bring out the statute on schedule). There is little predictability in the man, although he is not the only one carrying that trait.
At times, it becomes impossible not to view Jha’s comments within the wider context of his prevailing relationship with President Yadav. In other instances, he does appear too beholden to the parochial politics of the force that nominated him to the office.
Jha may be no better or worse than the rest of the political class that has sought to benefit from plausible deniability afforded by an imaginative press. By seeking to confer strict mathematical precision on the veracity of the coverage, he may have exacerbated his own credibility issues.

The Curious Case Of Qiu Guohong

2011-03-28T17:32:00.000-07:00

Qiu Guohong and weakness? If those words go together, then that may be yet another indication of how bad things are likely to turn for us in the months ahead.
The first wave of news blandly suggested that Beijing had recalled its ambassador in Kathmandu eight months before he completed his three-year tenure. Then came suggestions that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was dissatisfied with Qiu’s ‘weak diplomacy’ in neutralizing anti-Chinese activities in Nepal. Really?
This is a man who, emulating his counterpart from India, began consultations with Nepalese politicians even before he had presented his credentials. Over time, Qiu’s pronouncements grew candid vis-à-vis Nepal’s independence and sovereignty, reminiscent of the pre-Cultural Revolution Mao Zedong era. While Qiu’s tenure saw a flurry of official Chinese visits, political and military, there was also a conspicuous spurt in assertions of Beijing’s soft power.
The Chinese Embassy, as the prevailing narrative holds, shrewdly facilitated the seven-point pact between the CPN-UML and UCPN-Maoist and a new government as President Ram Baran Yadav was on an official visit to India holding consultations on how to proceed with the protracted deadlock. Qiu’s embassy persuaded democratic governments to crack down hard on Tibetans in Nepal who were exercising their own democratic rights in exile.
Sure, his tenure had its share of downs. Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s government collapsed after an abortive attempt to sack the army chief. The fact that our current Prime Minister, Jhal Nath Khanal, who received a abrupt phone call from India and cut short his visit to China to return home to criticize the Maoists’ move he was originally said to have supported, reflected poorly on Beijing.
Moreover, the Maoists’ fall came after the leaking of a draft Chinese treaty that, among other things, envisaged a tightening of Nepal’s commitment to a One China policy. The Krishna Bahadur Mahara cash-for-votes telephone controversy was not one of Qiu’s proud moments, either.
But Qiu, Maila Baje believes, fared better than his predecessor, Zheng Xialing, who was also recalled before the completion of his term. Zheng, who made history by becoming the first ambassador in Kathmandu not to present his credentials to the king, ostensibly displeased his bosses by his inability to anticipate Tibetan protests in Kathmandu on the eve of the Beijing Olympics.
Said to have been vacationing while much of the Tibetan exiles’ planning took place, Zheng returned to work forthwith and hit hard on Nepal for not doing enough to calm the streets. But it was too late.
Generally speaking, Chinese ambassadors do not seem to have had a consistent tenure in Kathmandu. Zhang Shijie (1960-1965) and Cao Chi (1972-1977) each served over five years. Li Debiao (1987-1991) and his successor Shao Jiongchu (1991-1995) served over four years each. On the other hand, men like Ma Muming (1981-1983), Zhang Jiuhuan (1995-1998) and Wu Congyong (2001-2003) were in Kathmandu less than three years.
The shortest tenure was that of Yang Gongsu who served barely a year and a half when he was recalled in mid-1967. But he was part of Cultural Revolution’s foreign policy fallout when Beijing recalled every ambassador except – inexplicably – the one in Cairo. (Technically,Yuan Zhongxian had the briefest term – six months between 1955 and 1946 – but, then, he served currently as Beijing’s envoy to Delhi and Kathmandu).
What makes Qiu’s case curious is the revelation by a Nepalese daily he had lost out to the military attaché at the embassy. The military man, who is said to rank higher than Qiu on the ladder that really matters, considered Qiu too lackluster in his approach to the Tibetans.
That underscores a conspicuous trend wherein the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has acquired a growing influence over Chinese foreign policy. Juxtaposed with the substance and symbol of PLA chief Chen Bingde’s recent visit and the jockeying in the Tibetan exile movement following the Dalai Lama’s latest announcement about his future role, are we surprised that the Terai and the southern realm beyond is once again swinging into harried action?

Baburam’s Frivolous Bhimsen Fetish

2011-03-21T15:16:00.000-07:00

Six months after a visiting senior Chinese official described him as Nepal’s equivalent of Deng Xiaoping, UCPN (Maoist) vice-chairman Dr. Baburam Bhattarai says he is working on a model for a new Nepal. We are a far way from knowing the number, nature or navigability of the modernizations he envisages.
His inspiration, too, remains elusive. Yet Maila Baje feels Dr. Bhattarai has made a curious start of sorts. For someone who has identified Nepal’s long-running malady as stemming from the injustice of the 1816 Sugauli Treaty that ended our war with British India, Dr. Bhattarai has demonstrated an odd reverence for the man most responsible for the catastrophe.
After losing one-third of the national territory in a war he pushed over the objections of key commanders and courtiers, you would have expected Bhimsen Thapa’s career to end there. Instead he used the national debacle to consolidate his power, aided through a succession of minors on the throne and a willful patron in Regent Lalita Tripurasundari.
How the assassin of ex-king and regent Rana Bahadur Shah managed to strike precisely moments after Bhimsen excused himself from the fateful meeting and how he succeeded in decimating all of his rivals but stop Tripura Sundari from customarily stepping on to her late husband’s funeral pyre, remain other intriguing aspects of that period.
In likening his current stance to Bhimsen’s dedication to the national cause, Dr. Bhattarai has reopened another can of worms. What exactly did Bhimsen do to help Nepal recover from the Sugauli disaster? To be fair, he preserved Nepal’s current shape and size by shrewdly balancing off the Chinese and the British against each other. But, then, Dr. Bhattarai has no such admiration for the Ranas or the Shahs who did much the same perhaps with greater effect and élan.
As to Dr. Bhattarai’s implication that Bhimsen paid with his life for his patriotism, history’s judgment is more tentative. The seeds of Bhimsen’s downfall were laid in the mayhem through which he rose to power. The rival Pande clan, an assertive monarchy, a resurgent British India and a tepid China, combined with his own refusal to doubt his invincibility ultimately precipitated Bhimsen’s tragic death in prison. We may not know whether Bhimsen actually slit his throat or was murdered – or even hung himself as Dr. Bhattarai suggested – we do know it had little to do with patriotism.
In hyping such counterfactual historical continuities, Dr. Bhattarai may have been impelled by his traditional links to his native Gorkha, where Bhimsen’s family also came from. Admittedly, if they had succeeded in disrupting his activities on his home turf, Dr. Bhattarai’s rivals would have scored a major symbolic triumph. Further, in rooting himself in the region most closely identified with the growth of the modern Nepalese state, Dr. Bhattarai may have hoped to deflect criticism of purported ‘special relations’ with India.
But the visionary he sees himself as must be able to move beyond the comfort zone of extrapolating contradictions. Dr. Bhattarai will always be remembered as having given the intellectual firepower for republicanism in Nepal. Yet many will also continue to recall him as the man who overreached by averring how history would positively evaluate the contributions of King Birendra’s and all of his ancestors, just to delegitimize King Gyanendra in the aftermath of the Narayanhity carnage. And seven years later, he became the principal advocate of a cultural monarchy when King Gyanendra himself had pretty much made up his mind to pack his bags.
As chief propagandist for an organization that oversaw Nepal’s worst spree of destruction, Dr. Bhattarai used equivocation, evasion and prevarication to demolish rivals. Dissenting and discombobulating cannot burnish the credentials of a builder. Of course, Dr. Bhattarai, like the rest of us, sees everyday how his boss, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, gets away with gaffes and gaps. One reason Dahal does so is because he lacks – and does not seem to miss – the high-brow heft of Bhattarai’s honorific.

Homing In On The Maoists?

2011-03-13T17:40:00.000-07:00

Jasjeet Singh seems to have secured the home ministry for the Maoists. Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal and UCPN (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal both, in their own ways, have described the murder attempt on TV executive Yunus Ansari inside high-security Central Jail as an attack on Nepal.
The prime minister pledged to the legislators that he would hold a detailed inquiry into what happened and how. As the antecedents of the accused hit man revealed intriguing twists, there was, in Maila Baje’s view, a development that ranked much more than a related development. Bhim Acharya, the chief whip of the CPN-UML, publicly announced the Maoists would get the home ministry in the next cabinet expansion.
In the weeks since Khanal’s rise, the omnipresence of the prime minister has not been able to negate the absence of the home minister. From the outset, the premier could have kept the portfolio pending a resolution of the controversy, but he knew home affairs was a full-time responsibility. For that simple reason, all that talk about awarding the ministry to Bishnu Poudel, in addition to his defense portfolio, was probably a last-ditch ruse of the anti-Khanal faction in the UML.
The other major parties do not want to see the Maoists at the helm of the home ministry, for long obvious reasons. If anything, the escalation in the ex-rebels’ rhetoric since their ascension to power has bolstered their critics. Yet the Maoists themselves might not be that keen to designate the next home minister without properly vetting the credentials of the candidate.
Within each major party, former home ministers have carved a special place for themselves. The likes of Khum Bahadur Khadka, Govinda Raj Joshi and Krishna Prasad Sitaula continue to rattle the internal equations of the Nepali Congress. Deep down, Ram Chandra Poudel probably saw in his recent candidacy for the premiership less a lateral shadow of his stint as speaker than a vertical entitlement stemming from his home ministership.
In the UML, people like K.P. Sharma Oli and Bam Dev Gautam have used their terms as deputy premier and home minister – either clubbed together or during separate terms – to fortify themselves within the party and beyond. The former continues to hover around the constituent assembly, despite the fact that he lost the 2008 election. The latter, another defeated candidate, still cannot really be written off as a has-been.
The home hallmark is most conspicuous in the right. Kamal Thapa, King Gyanendra’s much-maligned home minister, is the chief of a party whose ideological consistency has of late drawn defections from former royalist organizations.
The Maoists appear anxious to want someone with little propensity to create his or her own fiefdom. A quadrangular factional contest may help Dahal, Mohan Baidya and Baburam Bhattarai to roil the waters to their liking. But it would be less likely to let any one of them dominate the process, much less the outcome.
Ansari blamed India’s premier external spy agency, RAW, for the failed plot to kill him. But sloppiness is not an attribute normally associated with RAW, especially when it comes to physical liquidation. Perhaps whoever was behind the attack wasn’t really trying to kill Ansari? Maybe they were anxious to see the Maoists get the home ministry, even more so than the ex-rebels themselves?

Medium, Message And... Mahara

2011-03-07T12:34:00.000-08:00

Krishna Bahadur Mahara’s elevation to senior deputy premier after much haggling within his UCPN (Maoist) and outside raises interesting questions. Let’s begin with the most general one.
Why has Mahara returned to the information and communication ministry after what was arguably a huge promotion? No offense to the men and women in that realm, but the No.2 person in the cabinet leading the contingent of the No. 1 party in the legislature would have been expected to get something far more potent symbolically and in substance.
With the CPN-UML’s Bharat Mohan Adhikari already having bagged his virtual preserve –finance – at the outset, the foreign ministry could have gone to Mahara. He is, after all, the chief of his party’s international department. But, then, that’s probably what Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal is dangling before the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum’s Upendra Yadav. (Or is it Sujata Koirala her Nepali Congress?)
Defense might have sounded more dignified for Mahara. But, like the home portfolio, it was too sensitive for the Maoists. Even minister without portfolio would have been more DPM-like, in this case.
Not that Mahara is unqualified for the job. During the height of the insurgency, he was the public face of the Maoists. He led the rebel delegation in the first round of talks with the government. When that fell through, he emerged from hiding to appear on CNN, discharging himself well before an inquisitive international audience.
During his last stint in the ministry… well, top officials there welcomed him back last week saying they had fond memories of his working style. And that says something even after discounting the sweet talk built into the bureaucracy.
During last year’s cash-for-votes telephone scam, Mahara acquitted himself quite well. First he directed his purported Chinese interlocutor to his boss on such a lucrative offer. In the follow-up conversation, Mahara quizzed the caller on whether he had already opened other channels to the party. Once satisfied that he wasn’t being bypassed, he quickly regained his customary cool. And when the conversation was made public, threatening to tarnish Mahara’s personal reputation, he wiggled out with skill.
Far from issuing a flat denial, Mahara conceded that the voice heard on the recording might have been his. He went on to accuse his detractors of creating a montage of disparate innocuous conversations only the sum of which would suggest a scandal. The perfect technology defense.
As a leading lieutenant of party chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Mahara seems to have won enough support from the Mohan Baidya and Baburam Bhattarai factions in returning to the cabinet. (He didn’t seem to be on the original list the top comrades had been skirmishing over.) And this brings Maila Baje back to the information and communication conundrum.
Or maybe it’s not really one. With so much at stake for everybody, the former rebels seem to have settled on controlling the medium and the message. Prime Minister Khanal has exhibited an incredible ability to define reality distinct from what those around him see and feel. Now that’s dangerous for a party that once considered it had Khanal on its side and went ahead and sacked the army chief. Little did it anticipate that mysterious phone call (to quote the Chinese) that forced the CPN-UML chief to cut short his visit up north and return home to criticize the move.
So the Maoists now expect Mahara to define whatever comes out of cabinet meetings to dominate the national conversation. Khanal can complain but even he knows how his No.2 would cushion him from an increasingly resentful UML.
In its disarray, the Nepali Congress might take comfort in the thought that Mahara represents that rare Maoist today who had actually begun as a student activist adhering to B.P. Koirala Thought. And within the Maoist fold, Baidya and Bhattarai are probably counting on Mahara’s ebullience to trip Dahal some way somewhere down the line.
Maybe all that public squabbling over the home ministry was actually aimed at getting Mahara in high and close enough to rein in the premier. He may yet get the home ministry. But from next time, our parties might even start fighting over who gets to hold the information and communication portfolio.

No Soft Spot To Land On

2011-02-28T04:11:00.000-08:00

China and Pakistan are planning to invade Nepal, if you believe the leader of India’s Samajwadi Party, Mulayam Singh Yadav. There is a strong case for taking him seriously. Yadav is a former federal defense minister. And he made the remark in a speech at the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of parliament, a venue targeting a multiplicity of audiences.
During his February 22 speech, Mulayam Singh also asked Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh why India’s relations with Nepal and Sri Lanka had deteriorated in recent years. But Maila Baje would like to leave that for another day.
The palpable desire on the part of some Indian “hyperrealists” to precipitate a showdown with China has been recounted in these pages in the past. Quite conspicuous also is the determination of some Chinese hardliners, including those in the People’s Liberation Army, to “refresh” the lesson they had imparted to the Indians half a century ago.
That Tibet has become the principal fault line is amply underscored by the reality that it encompasses most of the bilateral issues of contention. Beijing has not been persuaded by New Delhi’s protestations of good faith. India’s hosting of the Dalai Lama and his government in exile is merely symptomatic of the deeper issue: India’s deeply held sentiment that it always has had deeper affinities with Tibetan than have the Chinese. Beijing’s sustained efforts to integrate Tibet with the mainland have solidified New Delhi’s resentment.
If the continual discovery of mineral resources in Tibet has exacerbated India’s traditional soreness against the background of their economic rivalry, the military dimensions of Chinese infrastructural development in Tibet have intensified New Delhi national-security sensitivities. In this equation, the likelihood of Pakistan opening a second front in the event of another Sino-Indian war remains more than academic.
Whatever the legitimacy and authenticity of the Free Tibet movement elsewhere, the campaign represents a clear and present danger to Nepal. When Wikileaks recently revealed a conversation between foreign minister Ramesh Nath Pandey and U.S. ambassador James F. Moriarty during the royal regime, the response was one of outrage and derision at how the palace could try to trade off Tibetan refugees for American support. Yet today’s leadership has few qualms over inflicting on Tibetans refugees the treatment they accused the royal regime of perpetrating on the Nepali democratic movement.
The post-monarchy turmoil has turned Nepal into a far more lucrative center for the Free Tibet movement, which enjoys the patronage of a motley mixture of governments, churches, philanthropists and activists often working for their own specific purposes. Ordinarily, any government would be expected to exploit the inherent contradictions to further the nation’s interest. How far Nepal’s position has diminished can be discerned from the simple fact that the older non-fictional Buddha’s Warriors continues to trump the fictional albeit more recent Buddha’s Orphans in the international book publishing discourse.
The challenge for Nepal to maintain its longstanding policy that Tibet is an integral part of China persists. If anything, Beijing’s post-monarchy assertiveness has underscored the extent of its determination to make Kathmandu to live up to its commitment.
The last time the India-meets-China-in-Nepal thesis resonated so loudly, in the Sixties, the Chinese were thought to be capable of air landing up to one lightly equipped infantry division within five to seven days, provided they could seize the Kathmandu airfield. By extensive utilization of pack animals and porters, the Chinese could then expect to support attacks by one infantry regiment through each of the Naralagna Pass to Bajang; through Kore pass to Dana; through Kyirong Pass to Nuwakot; through Kodari Pass to Dhulikhel; and through Rakha Pass to Dingla.
The viability of even limited Chinese forces in northern Nepal was deemed largely dependent on stockpiling and their ability to sustain porterage operations through the northern passes in winter. India, for its part, had direct military involvement in Nepal through a full-fledged mission and communication personnel along our border with China.
Technology has changed the dynamics. This time, the Chinese have advanced missile capabilities in place in Tibet clearly targeting India. The logistics for rapid deployment of PLA troops are well entrenched. The Indians, on the other hand, confidently proclaim that their armed forces are no longer the ill-equipped band trounced in 1962.
India plans to deploy two mountain divisions in the northeastern border area with China by the middle of this year to plug gaps in along the Arunachal Pradesh frontier. The two divisions consist of 20,000 soldiers, a squadron of T-90 tanks and a regiment of artillery. The Indian Air Force, which deployed 36 Su-30MKI fighters, its most advanced multi-role fighters, to the north-east in 2009, is set to upgrade and expand the fleet.
The refurbishment of the airfield at Surkhet and elsewhere is expected to give the Indians an advantage. But no less important for the putative belligerents will be the hearts and minds of Nepalis. For us, though, soft power or hard, the squeeze is likely to persist all the way to breaking point. As the yam has withered and dried, its brittleness has grown. The softness evoked by Mulayam Singh’s first name might have cushioned us a bit, even if briefly.

Democracy, Discontinuity And Deceit

2011-02-21T14:30:00.000-08:00

In the cacophony gripping the latest commemoration of our quintessential February ritualism, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai’s voice seemed to make the most sense. “With the country already having been declared a republic,” our national dissenter in chief observed, “celebrating Democracy Day is irrelevant.”
Come to think of it, it’s far worse than irrelevant. If you pursue the vision of the votaries of New Nepal all the way through, it’s outright hypocritical. The prevailing storyline today is that the democracy that dawned on that February morning in 1951 was merely a restoration of an autocratic monarchy.
Every popular struggle since has been against successive monarchs’ refusal to announce elections to the constituent assembly – the cornerstone of the promise of the heady morn – according to the fable so assiduously constructed after the April Uprising. Today, if Nepalis finally find themselves saddled interminably with such an assembly, it is only after they had vanquished the monarchy.
But history, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, has many cunning passages, corridors and issues, making sense of which involves a perception not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence.
If mere intentions were worthy of commemoration, Maila Baje feels going back to Padma Shamsher Rana’s still-born reformist constitution – a response to the contagious freedom movement of the times – might have been more sincere. Celebrating the National Movement of 1842, in which the army-backed nobility pushed King Rajendra to restrain Crown Prince Surendra, would have better illustrated the depths of the Nepali quest for change.
There were those who pronounced the Delhi Compromise – the heart of Democracy Day – a betrayal. These people included members of the Nepali Congress, which supposedly spearheaded the democracy movement. Together with the communists, these dissidents might have been able at least to mount a symbolic resistance aimed at redirecting history. But the dominant political class driving the preponderant party chose to memorialize its own version of history.
Even there, the scale with which compromise has prevailed over conviction has been striking. The Nepali Congress has always claimed how it brought back a king that had fled to Delhi. That assertion has not been able to hide its pain at having had to sign the dotted line in New Delhi and to serve under the very prime minister it purportedly overthrew.
The communists were locally too miniscule to challenge the Delhi Compromise. Their newly ascendant Chinese ideological soul mates might have stepped to help in. But, then, that was precisely what pressed the advocates of compromise. Amid the political and military pressure to maintain the Delhi Compromise, the communists’ torpor led them to produce some of the strongest royalist collaborators.
But why have the Maoists – hitherto the loudest advocates of collective national discontinuities – acceded to Democracy Day? They could have taken a stand against public observations. Better still, they might have energetically disrupted celebrations to bolster their credentials. Revolt or peace, after all, the vision of each Maoist camp is aimed at correcting the ills of traditional democracy.
But, then, who better knows the promise inherent in compromises? Didn’t Dr. Bhattarai, in the aftermath of the Narayahity carnage, write how Nepalis would always highly rate the contributions of King Birendra and all of his predecessors – all in an effort to isolate and illegitimize the new monarch? And more germane to our times, didn’t he advocate a cultural monarchy as King Gyanendra had pretty much made up his mind to pack his bags?
Nikita Khrushchev is a name Dr. Bhattarai would probably not want to hear, considering the parallels the late comrade has evoked within the Maoist party. But it would be instructive here to recall what Jawaharlal Nehru had once conveyed to the Soviet leader. Because, deep down, Dr. Bhattarai, like most current drivers of change, know that you don’t change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall.

Taking In The Tibet Tangle

2011-02-13T20:29:00.000-08:00

In terms of damage control, the past week was hectic if not exactly hysterical. The taming of the Jhal Nath Khanal government required the denial of the home and defense portfolios to his Maoist patrons. Infuriated, the ex-rebels vowed not to join the government, a posture that served to expose both the peace and revolt camps within the party. But since the Maoists initially didn’t fully comprehend the Nepali Congress’ ability or willingness to step in and save Khanal, if so required, they started having second thoughts.
As for Khanal, the fact that the Maoists – and not he – characterized his government as anti-Indian gained traction. Once in power, there was little else the prime minister could do but seek New Delhi’s goodwill and support. In his first extensive interview with an Indian newspaper, Khanal seemed to make the right noises about respecting India’s security interests.
By envisaging Cambodia as his first foreign destination, the prime minister sought to maintain symbolic adherence to the image of Nepali ingenuity the Maoists created for him – and perhaps more, given our extended parallels with that South East Asian nation.
Nepalis, however, Maila Baje feels, must brace for a larger fight looming on the horizon, which has little to do with the new constitution. Although everyone is tiptoeing around the Tibet issue, Nepal is likely to face far greater convulsions than those created by the Khampa Rebellion over a generation ago.
The Achilles’ heel of a rising and assertive China, Tibet has entered the crosshairs of hardliners in India who are seeking a showdown in pursuit of other aspects of the Sino-Indian bilateral relationship. Predictions of war in 2012 made by a leading Indian strategic analyst continue to roil Beijing amid the approaching 50th anniversary of the ‘lesson’ it believed it taught New Delhi.
New Delhi, which never reconciled itself to Beijing’s incorporation of Tibet, is sensitized by continuing revelations of vast mineral wealth in the region and China’s drive to harness it for military as well as economic purposes. The Chinese, for their part, recognize how fast the Naxalites insurgency has flared across regions of India that are rich in mineral resources. Could the Indian Maoists be stopped from the turbulent and resource-rich northeast, home to myriad other uprisings?
As they seek to preempt an escalation of the threat from Nepal to Tibet, the Chinese have been dropping off hints on how an unstable Nepal could inflame insurgencies in India, not necessarily limited to the Maoist variant.
For the Americans, the abandonment of the Khampas was not universally popular. If anything, much of the original justification for backing the Tibetan resistance retains its relevance. One group of veterans made a public display of their enduring fealty by commemorating the site at Camp Hale in Colorado where the original Khampa warriors were trained.
Still, the Chinese and Indians see stark incongruities. As President Barack Hussein Obama’s administration all but welcomed the military coup in Egypt as a democratic alternative to Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year regime, parts of the world saw the triumphalism as emblematic of declining American power. Weeks earlier, Obama hosted Chinese President Hu Jintao at a White House state dinner with much fanfare, during which a key attraction was an anti-American anthem going back to the Korean War.
In the eyes of Rush Limbaugh, the leading conservative American radio commentator, the toasting of Hu represented a far vulgar display. Last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner (Obama) feted the jailer of this year’s laureate (Liu Xiaobo) in the presence of another former laureate (Jimmy Carter).
Beijing, which funds the massive American deficit spending, saw how Obama, on the eve of his visit to China in 2009, refused to meet with the Dalai Lama in Washington. When U.S.-Chinese tensions escalated the following year, Obama did receive the Dalai Lama at the White House but made the Tibetan spiritual leader leave from the backdoor, sidestepping bulky trash bags.
Indian hardliners itching for a fight with China acknowledge they cannot count on the Americans. Nor do they seem to want to. Standing up to China on Tibet as an equal will have a palliative effect on the 1962 psyche. It would force the Chinese to understand the power and potential the Indians have accumulated over half a century.
In one sense, both putative belligerents could benefit from the Americans hedging their bets, with Beijing relishing it as an endorsement of its comprehensive national power and New Delhi as a justification of its pursuit of strategic autonomy. Does all this sound convoluted? Who ever said our geopolitics were any simpler than our politics?

Buoyancy In The Boundlessness Of Betrayal

2011-02-07T17:24:00.001-08:00

It must have been quite a moment to savor for Jhal Nath Khanal on the night of his election as premier last Thursday. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made two frantic attempts to contact Khanal before finally getting through to congratulate him.
During a visit to New Delhi last year, a visibly snubbed Khanal was on his way to the airport for the flight back home when he finally got word from Dr. Singh’s aides that he would get a meeting with the top man. That last-minute advance was not enough to perk up Khanal’s facial expressions at Tribhuvan International Airport, although he was careful not to use words conveying the sentiments inside.
He has not had to spell things out this time around, either. Prime Minister Khanal’s parameters have been defined by Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who took pains to describe the new government as being a product of indigenous genius. But as the sting from Devi Prasad Regmi’s slap now throbs on countless cheeks across the southern border, the Indians can be expected to gear up for action. How the Maoists managed to return to power by proxy was the refrain of the Indian commentariat well before the purported seven-point secret agreement revealed that the new government would be led by turns by the CPN-UML and the former rebels.
Dissenter-in-chief Dr. Baburam Bhattarai will prove useful in preventing Dahal’s return to the premiership. If New Delhi was in no mood to see the Maoist chairman back in the top job, Dr. Bhattarai was more than acceptable, a point the vice-chairman himself pushed with thinly disguised lament in recent days.
But more important for the anti-Dahal brigade in general may be the hardliners in his party. Mohan Baidya, who had joined Dr. Bhattarai in opposing Dahal’s decision withdraw from the race and support Khanal, has kept his powders dry.
For the hardliners, the Maoists’ participation in power would now leave the revolt option – that great propellant for melancholy cadres– in limbo. The party’s official documents – in spirit, if not necessarily in letter – stands against the Maoists’new ascendancy.
Then there remains that major stumbling block in the peace process: the fate of the Maoist army. Though the formal transfer of the PLA combatants to the special committee of the government was achieved with great fanfare, the Maoists were already expected to resist all further moves for a variety of reasons. Now, according to the secret deal, the combatants will be either put together as a new security force on its own or form a new unit along with the same number of state security forces. Both options have triggered opposition from the principal parties, and not only on the merit or otherwise of the issue alone.
As the beneficiary of so many layers of betrayals all around, Prime Minister Khanal probably recognized the ridiculousness of his undertaking well before the votes came in last Thursday. But Maila Baje feels Khanal can easily afford to sit back and relax. The Maoists, the Nepali Congress, and the CPN-UML, as well as the Terai-based parties, will need time to sort out their internal woes festering since the election.
The Indian premier was quick to sense that Khanal remained the only man standing between Baluwatar and Dahal. Our new prime minister has coveted the job for far too long not to know how to put that emotion to great personal use.

Contingency, Irony And The Presidency

2011-01-30T17:38:00.000-08:00

It must have been somewhat uneasy for President Ram Baran Yadav to have to leave on a visit to India on January 27. Wouldn’t he have loved to reach the Indian capital in time for the Republic Day Parade as the chief guest the previous morning?
And what could have provided India’s clearest imprimatur on the most conspicuous novelty of a new Nepal. But others cannot be expected to be guided by uninhibited definitiveness when we are pinching ourselves all over to see if things are happening for real. Conversely, did the timing of Yadav’s departure contain any subtle meaning?
With Nepali parties still struggling to form a government, Yadav might have stayed back to supervise things. The Maoists, according to party chief and prime ministerial contender Pushpa Kamal Dahal, are wedged between reactionaries and revisionists.
Another aspirant, CPN-UML chairman Jhal Nath Khanal sees Nepal itself caught between local and foreign reactionaries. The factional realignments in the UML are more than matched by those in the Nepali Congress.
Caretaker Premier Madhav Kumar Nepal indicts so-called ‘tail’ leaders – i.e., those willing to be led by other parties – as the problem. But his deputy, Bijay Kumar Gachchadar sees the Big Three as principal barriers.
Notwithstanding the reunions and reminiscences in Kolkata and Chandigarh, Yadav is certainly not abdicating his responsibility. Hastily given partial official status, the presidential visit is expected to feature deliberations on Nepal’s checkered peace process.
The departure of a Nepal Army team to India around at the same time could not be entirely unrelated to the Yadav agenda. The inputs provided by a low-key military delegation, regardless of the venue and mode, could provide an inkling of a presidential regime’s ability to handle any new situation.
No, Maila Baje doesn’t think the overriding concern relates to an inability to promulgate the new constitution. The Indians seem to believe that can be taken care of, one way or the other. The specter of Chinese-inspired subversion deep inside India through Nepal it what has taken precedence. The arrest of three alleged Chinese spies who slipped over from Nepal continues to fuel media speculation. Photographs in the possession of a Chinese lady presenting herself as a journalist seem to link Nepal to Indian insurgencies.
And now the Indians have begun boldly declaring that Ugyen Trinley Dorje, the man we know for his daring escape from Tibet to India via Nepal in the winter of 2000-2001, may not be the 14th Karmapa Lama, but a Chinese plant. Although that line of reasoning persisted from the outset, New Delhi was hitherto unwilling to ascribe to Beijing the wisdom of effecting such perfect deception.
In retrospect, that war-in-2012 drumbeat we heard over a year ago was sounded by those who were itching for one. The 50th anniversary of India’s humiliating defeat at the hands of China would be a fitting occasion to exact revenge. And, since Nepal knows how taking no sides would be perceived as taking one by one of the putative belligerents, it would matter if the war is hot or cold.
As for the Republic Day celebrations, the foreign guest invited the greatest number of times from the neighborhood remains the king of Bhutan, Jigme Dorje in 1955, and his son, Jigme Singye, in 1984, and 2005. Regardless of how fact that makes President Yadav feel, it surely does make a lot of Nepalis feel much better.

Lest We Slip Into a Slap Fest…

2011-01-24T03:52:00.000-08:00

CPN-UML chairman Jhal Nath Khanal was stoic about the slap heard across the state, but the political class is drawing all manner of lessons. The people, for their part, are lionizing Devi Prasad Regmi for giving such force to their frustrations. In detention on a public-offense charge, he has seen a surge in moral and material support.
Khanal and his fellow politicos made Nepalis believe that they were the best people to take care of us. Or, at least, better than the rest. Enough people took to the streets in the spring of 2006 inspired by a nebulous vision of newness.
King Gyanendra had wanted a little over a year and half more to complete his agenda of handing over power to an elected government capable of building peace and stability. How many of the far more numerous Nepalis who had stayed home during those tumultuous 19 days did so because they refused to buy into a palpably contrived alliance between the mainstream parties and the Maoist rebels will never be known. But the people who did come out led their leaders, who had seemed ready to accept the first royal overture.
In a sense, our politicos are mere reflections of us, equipped with the same fantasies, fears and foibles. But there seems to be something more. For all the arrogance and indifference so famously attributed to them, it is hard not to admire the vicissitudes these individuals are capable of bearing. (Between Singha Darbar and Nakkhu, UML leader Pradeep Nepal once described his tribe as being precariously perched.)
It is hard to believe that even the seemingly most abominable specimen really entered public life with a malignant motive. Are they prone to aggrandizing themselves before others? More likely than not. But deliberately destroy the nation? Come on.
As any sovereign people, Nepalis are free to harbor expectations. But if a politician – to use that worn adage – promises to build a bridge where there is no river, the people cannot be expected to go far with a gullibility defense. When leaders who had long insisted that a constituent assembly would only open a Pandora ’s Box came around to supporting the Maoists on that count just because of the assertiveness of one monarch, we surely could have asked them for at least two more good reasons.
Today the box continues to spew all kinds of things, with control slipping away from the ruling class. For them, prolonging the day of reckoning has become the measure of progress. Nepal Workers and Peasants Party chief Narayan Man Bijukchhe, who sees presidential rule as the only way out, insists the leadership does not want to say so openly for fear of admitting their collective failure. Surely even Bijukchhe – and his college pal, President Ram Baran Yadav –knows we cannot keep going on knocking the head of state’s doors every few years without expecting to inaugurate a new blame game.
As an individual, Devi Prasad had every right to be angry at this hopelessness. Not everybody has it in him or her to smack the leader of a major political party. But the cheerleading is getting scary. The national putrefaction is systemic, only feeding on the individual predilections and prejudices of leaders. In their collective wisdom, the people are expected to redeem them.
If the minister who slapped that government official or the legislator who slugged the finance minister is moving scot-free, the outrage should not be allowed to inaugurate an all-round slap fest, therapeutic though it might seem. There are enough of those outside our borders who want prove how failed we have become as a state. The least we could do is to avoid becoming a collective failure in spirit.

Loitering Around The Premier League

2011-01-16T18:20:00.000-08:00

In terms of sheer effrontery, India’s public triumphalism in having evicted UNMIN from its purported backyard is rivaled by a palpable surge in prime ministerial ambitions in Nepal. Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, CPN-UML chairman Jhal Nath Khanal and the Nepali Congress’ Sher Bahadur Deuba are among front-runners who each seem prepared to countenance either of the other two if only to keep the other aspirants out.
Yet the field is wide. Ram Chandra Poudel, the Nepali Congress leader who withdrew his candidacy after becoming the uncomfortable sole contestant for most of the 16 unsuccessful legislative legerdemain, remains very much in the fray, if you ask a section of his party members.
One section of the UML has floated the candidacy of Bharat Mohan Adhikary in the interest of maintaining factional balance. Not one to shy away from his newfound prowess as a power broker, Maoist leader Mohan Baidya has pushed Ram Bahadur Thapa for the top job.
Whom do the Indians envisage? After bolstering Maoist leader Dr. Baburam Bhattarai’s credentials for the high office, New Delhi insists that it would be comfortable with anyone who it believes it could work with. Quite a standard, that. But even the lame affirmation of detachment has not been able to stand for long. Through familiar representatives, New Delhi has made its preferences clear.
Nepal is the head of India, retired general Ashok K. Mehta said in a recent interview with a Nepali weekly. In that magnanimous vein, any imbalance at the top is bound to rattle the rest of the body. Pressed to name names, Mehta insisted that Madhesi Janadhikar Forum-Democratic leader Bijay Kumar Gachchadar may be best suited for the premiership, a candidate Maila Baje has endorsed in the past, albeit for different reasons.
How gullible might Gachchadar be to this intimation? He is hardly unfamiliar with the resume enhancement Dr. Bhattarai achieved through two successive visits to India in the past fortnight. The Maoist leader, it is understood, conducted more substantive discussions with his putative patrons during the Mumbai sojourn, emboldening him to proclaim his readiness to assume any responsibility.
Yet how might Dr. Bhattarai actually rate his chances, notwithstanding his impressive standing in Nepali public opinion polls. He was not blind to the shabbiness with which the CPN-UML’s Khadga Prasad Oli was treated in official circles in the vicinity of the Vivekananda International Foundation conference. Ram Chandra Poudel, who felt he had earned New Delhi’s appreciation, if not the premiership, by merely continuing his losing candidacy for so long, was not even invited to the conclave. One Indian daily, known for conveying New Delhi’s official views on Nepalese affairs, even characterized that legislative process farcical.
In issuing a joint statement pledging post-UNMIN support to Nepal, the heads of diplomatic missions of Australia, Canada, Denmark, EU, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States have established themselves in a lesser league of their own. India, in other words, is set to be in the driver’s seat.
But, clearly, New Delhi also seems to appreciate how the Chinese, Russians, Pakistanis and all other stakeholders will chart their own course in the ambiguity of the post-UNMIN milieu. All roads may lead to Delhi, but, in India’s estimation, no Nepali traveler must be allowed to take anything for granted.

Enduring Earthly Relevance Of Divine Counsel

2011-01-09T16:16:00.000-08:00

Prithvi Narayan Shah is riding a new wave of recognition in republican Nepal. From across the political spectrum, a growing number of leaders are voicing reverence for the founder of the nation, as opposed to the progenitor of Nepal’s last royal dynasty.
Such acknowledgment of our roots was never antithetical to our march to newness. The belatedness of the sentiment surely does not detract from its relevance, especially with the imminent withdrawal of the United Nations peace mission, or UNMIN, and the regionalization of Nepal’s search for peace and stability.
UNMIN chief Karin Landgren vented her frustration with Nepal’s knottiness by stating that the nation stood between presidential rule or an outright military takeover and a Maoist revolt. Although Landgren phrased her remarks in a way suggesting she was merely regurgitating popular sentiment, they prompted much outrage. Yet much sympathy was also available from sources as disparate as Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai and Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal’s Kamal Thapa.
At U.N. headquarters, Indian diplomats could barely conceal their glee at having mounted a hugely successful start at the Security Council in evicting the United Nations from India’s backyard. As New Delhi unleashed its much-touted seminar diplomacy, the broadly participated event turned out to be merely a sideshow to Dr. Bhattarai’s confabulations with top Indian figures associated with that country’s Nepal policy.
If Nepalis back home sought to see Dr. Bhattarai as the next prime minister, the man was in no eagerness to dispel that notion. The Chinese, of course, already labeled him as our version of Deng Xiaoping, which was interpreted to mean anything. In the current context, Beijing’s appellation does not appear to stand in the way of Dr. Bhattarai’s ascendancy.
His boss, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, finds himself in the pre-12-point agreement phase, when he had to lift the punitive action against Dr. Bhattarai and dispatch him to New Delhi to forge an anti-palace alliance with the mainstream parties. This time, Dahal desisted from fresh action with a screech that battered his own reputation. Even the man he deputed to escort Dr. Bhattarai to the Indian capital chose to make news by sparring with former army chief Rookmangad Katuwal, to little effect.
After a meeting with President Ram Baran Yadav, Dahal ruled out the possibility of presidential rule or a Maoist revolt, at least not immediately in the case of the latter. (Maila Baje found his silence on the possibility of an army takeover rather intriguing.) Relegated to essentially a leader of a faction – albeit the dominant one – from his grand pedestal of supremo, Dahal may have little choice but to accept Bhattarai as prime minister. Even if were to succeed in regaining the premiership, Dahal will have to confront a rejuvenated Bhattarai. Fighting his battles from within the party and government would seem to be his safest bet.
Despite India’s conspicuous delight, the withdrawal of UNMIN has come at a time when it faces a palpable erosion of its tradition influence. During Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s recent visit, New Delhi exhibited the dominance of the ‘hyperrealists’ hawks by not reiterating that it considered Tibet a part of China. Juxtaposed with India’s decision to send its representative to the Nobel peace prize award ceremony to Chinese dissident Liu Xiabo, the trends point to continuing political tensions between the Asian giants. Yet Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Wen spared time to discuss the fragility in Nepal, while we were regaled by the Paras Shah-Rubel Chaudhary ruckus.
After Wen’s visit, the hot line between New Delhi and Beijing has already seen prime ministerial consultations on Nepal at least one more time. Beijing seems anxious to restore stability through the military and other tools still available, while New Delhi is eager for a democratic façade to any changeover. In that seemingly narrow space lies much potential peril for Nepalis.
Prithvi Narayan Shah wanted posterity to maintain friendship with both neighbors. A closer reading of his most celebrated divine counsel suggests that he considered the danger from the south more serious. It would be worthwhile to extrapolate that assertion into our times and draw our lessons. The Chinese regularly give out messages in support of Nepal’s independence and integrity, but in a way that is barely audible to themselves. The Indians, for their part, speak from all sides of their mouth for everyone to hear.

Straight To The Heart

2011-01-03T03:51:00.000-08:00

Stung by Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal’s uncharacteristically blistering harangue on the telephone the other day, Unified Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal accused the CPN-UML and the Nepali Congress of plotting with ‘outside’ forces to subvert the peace process.
But Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal (RPP-N) chairman Kamal Thapa apparently was not impressed by the rationale for Dahal’s invective. The following day, he clubbed the Maoists with the other two big parties as part of a foreign-funded conspiracy against something even priceless, the nation.
Though Maila Baje was tempted to ruminate on the latest twirl in the love-hate relationship between Thapa and the Maoists, the somberness of the moment was too stark. India’s entrance into the United Nations Security Council with the advent of the new year has left Dahal with little else than moving our Supreme Court in a last-ditch bid to stop UNMIN’s withdrawal.
The Maoists’ hopes of regaining Indian patronage, on the other hand, have improved with Dr. Baburam Bhattarai’s very public defiance of Dahal. Yet Chinese benefaction could easily have been on Kamal Thapa’s mind. An increasing number of Nepalis who had welcomed Beijing’s post-April Uprising assertiveness today have grown wary of how that might ultimately imperil the nation. The regionalization of Nepal’s conflict-resolution initiatives may or may not prove to be a greater incentive. It would certainly limit our room for maneuver, so to speak.
The ‘constrictionists’ have benefited from the upsurge of the issue of Nepali money. The longer the organizers of the upcoming Bryan Adams concert take to figure out how many thousands they want to charge for each ticket, the more it is going to roil public opinion. As the son of a Canadian diplomat, Adams has an internationalist perspective rooted in childhood, something rare for rock stars. But it is hard to imagine that he somehow sees Nepal as revenue enhancer.
Given his involvement in Georgia, another country seeking to gain its footing against the shadow of a powerful and meddlesome neighbor, Adams’ eagerness to sing at Dasarath Stadium perhaps acquires additional significance. Conversely, with the departure of the United Nations mission having become such a pressing imperative for many, this new internationalist had to be properly discolored at the outset, irrespective of his motives.
The bright side here is the growing appreciation among Nepalis of the character and contours of foreign influence. Granted, there still are powerful voices within who want to portray concerns of international skullduggery as hubris, history and geography confirm that such apathy plays into the hands of the meddlers. No matter how distasteful Nepali politicos may sound in depicting the foreign hands that sway their rivals, collectively they go – apologies to Bryan Adams – straight to the heart.

Denial And Deception: Sorry ’Bout That

2010-12-27T13:42:00.000-08:00

Just as we thought Sri Lanka’s apology had settled that curious diplomatic fracas, Colombo strenuous denied ever having said sorry to us. So we are back to the old question. Did or didn’t President Ram Baran Yadav ask his Sri Lankan counterpart, Mahinda Rajapakse, to be a peace mediator in Nepal?
Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris repeatedly told his country’s parliament that Yadav had done so during a meeting with Rajapakse in China in late October. Colombo’s latest stance bolsters that position. Peiris, of course, had a vested interest in extolling Rajapakse’s credentials as a peacemaker, especially as an alternative to the regional you know who. As his nation’s top diplomat, Peiris may have easily employed that time-tested tool of his profession in what he considered the pursuit of national interest.
Our own media had reported that Yadav had met Rajapakse in Shanghai, the only foreign counterpart he did so in China, saying they had discussed the peace process. From the local coverage, Yadav had made a bland request for Colombo’s support to the peace process. So when the Sri Lankan media reported Peiris’s far more definitive claim, our president’s press secretary issued a flat denial. Yet Peiris persisted.
When Sri Lanka’s Deputy Foreign Minister Neomal Perera arrived in Kathmandu for a regional conference, few Nepalis seemed to associate him with his boss’s assertions. During a courtesy call on Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, according to section of the Sri Lankan media, Perera offered an apology on behalf of Peiris. The idea ostensibly was to keep things quiet. Once word got out, Colombo issued a flat denial. Clearly, this is much more than a story of who lied.
To Maila Baje, the circumstances in which it gained traction remain far more complex and merit greater scrutiny. When Rajapakse suppressed the once seemingly invincible Tamil Tigers, he sparked easily audible voices of displeasure in India. Although the Tamil Tigers were responsible for the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, New Delhi did not seem too happy with the suppression of the group. Among other things, the overt backing of Beijing had made Colombo’s enterprise particularly galling for New Delhi.
Through that triumph, Colombo felt it had broken out of the sphere of India’s influence – psychologically if not physically – which New Delhi expected to have formalized even after its ill-fated military expedition two decades ago. Thus, as the Rajapakse government has discovered to its discomfiture, the storyline has now shifted to allegation of Sinhala war crimes against Sri Lankan minority Tamils.
President Yadav, for his part, had hosted Rajapakse as the first head of state to visit Nepal since it became a republic. Yadav thus went into the Shanghai meeting with a high comfort level. Our president, moreover, already had demonstrated his eagerness to gratify his Chinese hosts. In a republic as wobbly as ours, the presidency remains the most vulnerable institution. How far Beijing has reconciled itself to Nepal having become a republic – at least in its current form – remains open to question. Around the time of Yadav’s trip, Beijing had hosted Vice-President Parmananda Jha, Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and leading Maoist commanders. And as far as China is concerned, every visit has a remarkable degree of official halo.
So President Yadav tread familiar path on befriending China. He urged Beijing (through its top rep in Lhasa) to accelerate the extension of its railway network up to Nepalese border, sidestepping the abiding obsession of the Indians. Any fallout from the south would be manageable, in Yadav’s estimation, by the sheer orientation of the Nepalese government.
Once in Shanghai, Yadav could have been carried away by his ebullience. It would not be hard to see how he might have sought Rajapakse’s role in Nepal’s peace process as part of his northern charm offensive.
It is easy to be sidetracked by Yadav’s current public persona as ceremonial president. Scratch the veneer a bit and you can see his keenness for a new version of that much-maligned Article 127, notwithstanding his professed desire to return to his village as a farmer. Yadav essentially remains a Nepali Congress stalwart and his partisan role during the recent party convention has been amply chronicled by the aggrieved faction.
While Yadav would indeed emerge stronger in the arena of plausible deniability, why would the Sri Lankan foreign minister lie – if that were indeed what he did – and stand firm? Projecting the smaller South Asian nations’ ability to extricate themselves from their own problems is an objective Colombo shares with Beijing, an aspiration non-official Nepal would easily endorse.
Then there is the fact that Peiris’s claim came after Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna’s visit to Sri Lanka, ostensibly to open consulates in the southern and northernmost parts of the island nation. Krishna travelled to the southern town of Hambantota to open a consulate barely a week after the government launched the first stage of a 1.5-billion-dollar Chinese-funded port there. The other new Indian mission is in northern Jaffna, the former stronghold of the Tamil Tigers and ostensibly the most ideal venue to whip up the war crimes allegations against Colombo.
Who would benefit from a falling out of the two nations on northern and southern ends of South Asia, intent on redefining the region’s strategic balance? That’s where the heart of the matter lies, regardless of who may be lying around the edges.

Chitwan Mêlée And The Back Stories

2010-12-20T08:40:00.000-08:00

Paras Shah and Rubel Choudhary are probably having a hard time counting the number of people thankful for the Chitwan fracas.
The Nepali Congress has managed to paper over – if temporarily – the rift created by party president Sushil Koirala’s contentious appointments. Sujata Koirala, who was on the verge of striking an alliance with Sher Bahadur Deuba to prise the general secretaryship away from Krishna Prasad Situala, has now been emboldened to go it alone, courtesy of her live-in son-in-law.
Sitaula, it emerged early on, was the man who instigated a hesitant Rubel to file the complaint against the former crown prince. But Maila Baje feels that was aimed more at influencing the Nepal component of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s talks with his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao in New Delhi. Bringing all those skeletons out of the Mandikhatar closets while Sujata was abroad was secondary to Sitaula’s last-ditch effort to disprove the inherent inanity of the 12-point agreement.
The Maoists, for their part, managed to forge a semblance of unity between Mohan Baidya and Pushpa Kama Dahal factions as well as name India as the principal enemy. Granted, they clubbed “domestic reactionaries” with our southern neighbor. But the ex-rebels’ end-justifies-the-means reaction to the Paras controversy put all that in context. Chief dissident Dr. Baburam Bhattarai did rail against ex-royalty for trying to fish in troubled waters. But when he blamed the current leaders – his rivals within the party included – for emboldening them, Bhattarai sense of glee was unmistakable.
The Chitwan mêlée allowed the CPN-UML to deepen indecision on whether to espouse ideology (Maoists) or expediency (Nepali Congress) in going forward. That is no mean achievement for a party that exacerbated the farce succeeding the resignation of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal. As for the pro-monarchist Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal, rumors of a rift with the ex-royals seemed to be just that, considering the sustained street action.
The Americans were frantically trying to contain the embarrassment likely to result from the Wikileaks revelations on Nepal. Yet Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood, who faced Maoist black flags in Dhankuta, was the greater beneficiary. The Ministry of External Affairs’ public embrace of the ambassador did little to appease Sood or brighten his prospects in Nepal. With the hands of the law having reached the former crown prince, a public offense case has been filed in Solukhumbu against the local Maoist leader for hurling shoes at Sood over two months ago.
The special treatment police meted out to Rubel must have emboldened the kinsfolk of all the other drivers of new Nepal. Whether the women and children will be off limits, allowing the principals to monopolize the name-calling and finger-pointing, is another matter.
What else might have gone on behind the crescendo is anybody’s guess. If there were unusual arrivals or departures – aircraft as well as individuals – at the airport, someone somewhere must have taken note. Less visible would have been any private deliberations at key venues.
If Nepal were to take a decisive turn in the new year, it would be hard not to see the ambience – if not entirely the essence – of this period as a key spur.

The Maoists’ Mendacity Of Hope

2010-12-13T15:42:00.000-08:00

So the Maoists have now unequivocally conceded that they had espoused the mainstream opposition’s version of democracy only to uproot the monarchy. The real news for Maila Baje lay not in Maoist leader Dev Gurung’s blatant repudiation of loktantra but in the public exasperation of the Nepali Congress’ Ram Chandra Poudel.
In retrospect, the 12-point agreement was the culmination of a thought prevailing in a section of the Indian establishment from the start. A Pushpa Lal-Bharat Shamsher-B.P. Koirala alliance against the palace was never really outside the realm of possibility. Nor was its corollary of whipping up Nepal’s ethnic, linguistic and religious disparities to demolish the international identity the country saw so essential to its survival. However, the evident risks of pursuing those courses long outweighed the expected benefits. Those files were stacked away somewhere, but certainly were not gathering dust.
When the equations changed toward the end of 2005, the Maoists and the mainstream parties were brought together in an alliance against the palace. The Maoists were no doubt in search of a safe landing. But clearly, in that instance, New Delhi had read them the riot act. Still, in consenting to become the propellant of the anti-palace campaign, the Maoists must have tried to gauge what India’s real objections to the monarchy were.
It was certainly not any sickening displays of opulence. Nor could it have stemmed from any aversion to the feudalistic heritage many ex-royals have injected in their political reincarnations across party lines in India. How only one of the three Himalayan monarchies independent India considered irksome managed to survive was best answered by the content of the relationship Bhutan had developed with New Delhi. Top Maoist leader, for their part, were quite perceptive about this reality in the words they wrote and spoke.
In the 2008 elections, the Maoists managed to avoid the political marginalization the architects of the 12-point agreement had envisaged for them. So when the ex-rebels, once in power, chose to tilt toward China, there was some expectation that they were fully prepared for the fallout in the interrogatory and retaliatory forms. Admittedly, taming an organized political force that had emerged with the largest share of votes in elections certified as free and fair should have been harder for the Indians. But the Maoists chose almost to flaunt how every step aimed at assuaging Beijing was, by extension, one aimed at infuriating New Delhi.
Out of power, the Maoists were still best placed to prove how a nation’s expectation of fortifying itself against the convulsions created by the complicated relations between the two regional giants could not be called hubris. But, as the Palungtar conclave demonstrated, the former rebels were more interested in papering over their internal rifts by identifying principal, secondary and tertiary enemies in a preposterous claim to capture state power.
If Gurung’s claim seemed to sound less a statement of fact than an admission of remorse, there is good reason.

Whose Reputation Is Really On The Line?

2010-12-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

Krishna Prasad Sitaula has become the newest emblem of an old malady gripping the Nepali Congress. As a polarizing figure, Sitaula may be non-pareil, but he continues a tradition upheld by men like Bhadrakali Mishra and Surya Prasad Upadhyaya.
While they drew much ire from within the Nepali Congress neither man had enough influence to take over the party like that other polarizer Girija Prasad Koirala eventually would. As long as they lasted, however, Mishra and Upadhyaya had forced the Nepali Congress to learn to live with them.
Critics, including many longtime associates, had called them puppets, whose external masters had devised for them specific roles that could never be clear or conclusive. As politics grew murkier in the 1990s, so did the motives and intentions of the puppeteers. No clear successor to the likes of Mishra or Upadhyaya could thus be established. On specific issues, and during specific contexts, a variety of people came into prominence.
Sitaula, in Maila Baje’s estimation, seemed to do so remarkably swiftly after the royal takeover of February 1, 2005. Safe on Indian territory, a week after the palace struck, Sitaula told Indian reporters that the Nepali Congress was ready to join hands with the Maoists against King Gyanendra. Of course, Sitaula carried the usual proviso that the Maoists must first lay down their arms. But that contention was made redundant in the next paragraph of the Press Trust of India story when Sitaula revealed that Girija Koirala had virtually finalized some kind of a deal with the Maoists, thereby precipitating the royal action.
Regardless, the Sitaula track would have to await the endorsement of the Indian National Congress government, which was still hoping to engage with the royal regime all the while seeking to appease its avowedly republican Marxist allies. When the palace sought to project greater international maneuverability, the Sitaula scheme came to the forefront. His special relations with sections of the Indian Marxists and the intelligence services gave the plan some indigenous cover. The Dhaka SAARC summit, of course, made that line of action inevitable and propelled Sitaula’s politics.
When Sitaula, as Home Minister, escorted Maoist chairman Prachanda to Kathmandu for peace talks, U.S. Ambassador James F. Moriarty felt compelled to ask Prime Minster Koirala to describe the antecedents and implications of the special ties his newest kid on the block seemed to share with the rebels. Many in the Nepali Congress subsequently branded Sitaula as a Maoist all but in name, while Koirala one more than one occasion wondered aloud whose home minister Sitaula really had become.
Still, it fell upon Sitaula to persuade ex-king Gyanendra to hand over the crown and scepter and vacate the palace in favor of the placidity of Nagarjun. However, by then, the Gaur massacre had alienated the Maoists from Sitaula. As Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal departed from the New Delhi-driven 12-point agreement script, Sitaula, predictably enough, became an acerbic critic of the Maoists.
Girija Koirala’s death was thought to have ended Sitaula’s career. Barely on speaking terms with the new party leader Sushil Koirala, Sitaula secured his space. The issue of extending the constituent assembly, we are told, served as the basis for the grand rapprochement.
Fate was propitious to Sitaula. He happened to walk into a heart clinic to visit Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, only to suffer a bout of chest pains. An immediate angioplasty and “stenting” made him fit as a fiddle – ready to confront the resentment smoldering in the party.
Sushil’s nomination of Ram Chandra Poudel and Sitaula as vice-chairman and general secretary, respectively, as his first official action convulsed a party that was supposed to have emerged united after the post-Girija Koirala convention. Sujata Koirala, Arjun Narsingh K.C. and Ram Sharan Mahat – all claimants to the general secretaryship – have now joined Sher Bahadur Deuba’s faction in criticizing Sushil’s act of brazen unilateralism.
Why would Sushil risk grand dissidence in the first place? With little to go beyond his surname in terms of political credentials, Sushil was no long ago named by India’s intelligence community as a leading benefactor of its Pakistani counterpart. By projecting the two most India-friendly members of his party, Sushil must have felt he could redeem his name while putting the onus of victory on someone else.
Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood has inherited much more than the interventionist traits of a renowned predecessor, C.P.N. Singh. He shares the stodgy Singh’s outspokenness in deriding anti-Indianism as an inherent affliction of the Nepali political class. If the overt external prop these two men supposedly enjoy – and have at times unabashedly flaunted – failed to see them through, then, Sushil knows, that would be more of Sood’s problem.

Our Managers of Contradictions

2010-11-25T15:33:00.000-08:00

Mohan Baidya and Dr. Baburam Bhattarai had gone into the Maoist plenum at Palungtar hoping to tame their boss. They seem to have succeeded, albeit not without having shamed themselves a bit.
Most of the delegates at the conference, we are told, admonished Pushpa Kamal Dahal to cut back on his verbal machinations. The chairman’s multi-speak, far from managing contradictions, was tarnishing the party’s image. The reprimand undoubtedly thrilled the two vice-chairmen.
But they, too, had their earfuls. Baidya was asked to consider his age and health before opening his mouth. At his stage of life, many delegates feel, guardianship would be his best contribution. His radicalism, in any case, only ignored the country’s ground realities.
The latter – a favorite Bhattarai term – was not propitious for the junior chairman, either. Ideological eloquence has its time and place, but certainly not when it comes to publicly airing internal rifts. The top rebel penman seemed to enjoy the least support among the People’s Liberation Army.
In a sense, the Maoist conclave has institutionalized the status quo. Sail on comrades, but do not rock the boat, at least not in public view. For the rest of the country, the conference has shown how profoundly the three-way split pervades all echelons. Dahal, Baidya and Bhattarai cannot stand one another, but they cannot stand alone, either. The prospects of any two coming together against the third, if anything, appears to have receded amid such diffusion of dissidence.
Yet none of the men is likely to abjure his position. Dahal by nature, Baidya by outlook and Bhattarai by attitude are incapable of reinventing themselves.
The ringing affirmation that the Maoists remain a divided house marks the first success for the architects of the 12-point accord across the southern border. To their diffident political masters, these designers proclaimed how the Nepalese rebels could be employed to strike at the royals and then neutralized. Today, the Maoists cannot afford to abandon the mainstream, nor can they expect to monopolize it. With the other political forces in far more pathetic shape, Nepal will continue to hemorrhage. ‘Nepalization’ will stand beside ‘Bhutanization’ and ‘Sikkimization’ as metaphor not only for a process but also for prescriptions specific to time and space.
The emaciation of the Maoists may or may not deprive the Indian Naxalites of any of their ideological fervor. Clearly, the denigration of their Nepali cousins would allow the Congress, BJP and the mainstream communists to use the Indian insurgency to advance their own politics. Might it still be prudent to write the Maoists off? Who knows how they might employ their current divisions to open up new possibilities – internally and regionally – when contradictions abound everywhere?

Still Waging Our Peace War

2010-11-21T16:25:00.000-08:00

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal exonerates the Maoists from damaging allegations that they are training India’s Naxalite guerrillas. In return, our former rebels beat up Finance Minister Surendra Pandey in parliament just when he thought he had the Maoists’ approval to present the delayed budget.
The minister happens to be an in-law of Premier Nepal’s chief rival in his CPN-UML, the chairman Jhal Nath Khanal. Amid the bedlam, the prime minister rams his budget through a presidential ordinance and announces his intention to go to Russia for a tiger summit.
The Maoists, upholding their pledge to block a full-fledged budget, get to growl inwards at their Gorkha plenum. The Nepali Congress’ Ram Chandra Poudel, the sole candidate for much of the legislature’s embarrassing search for a new prime minister, is left in limbo. However, he, too, gets to boast that his hanging candidacy is what stops the Maoists from capturing the state.
Meanwhile, the chief of the Armed Police Force denies ever having suggested that he had found no evidence of the Maoists’ training the Naxalites – which had ostensibly underpinned Premier Nepal’s exculpation. And so the peace process completed four agonized years.
When the nation is expected to pin its hopes on secret conclaves, peace in pieces looks better than nothing. But what exactly is it that we have been collectively seeking?
For the mainstream parties, the peace process was something to hit back at the monarchy with. The Maoists went along because their principal external patron shared that sentiment, all the while hedging its bets.
Today, the international community is anxious to see the integration of the state and former rebel armies as the most compelling evidence of peace. This comes at a time when fewer and fewer ex-fighters seem to consider that as a prerequisite to peace. The human rights wings of the world body want to see that part of their agenda on the front-burner, something their cousins in the non-state sector are far more incendiary in asserting. Words like justice and reconciliation would have retained their sonorous ring if the truth of it all had not kept shifting so swiftly.
A chastened Nepali Congress today wants the Maoists to prove their commitment to the democratic process, despite the fact that the voters validated those credentials by electing them the largest party over two years ago. Even then, the Nepali Congress wears a far more substantive aura than the UML, which does not seem to know what it wants from the ex-rebels.
The Indians want the Maoists sidelined because they had envisaged the ex-rebels merely as something that would propel the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) protests beyond Ratna Park. The SPA’s subsequent performance has fallen far short of New Delhi’s expectations. The mainstream parties may have succeeded in pulling the Maoists to their own level of ordinariness. But they did little to foil the ex-rebels’ overtures to Chinese pragmatism. Beijing, which once helped the palace and the parties in their effort to crush the rebels, today wants the Great Helmsman’s local offspring to head a broad patriotic front.
The Americans want the ex-rebels to maintain equidistance between the regional behemoths and have been extending a lateral hand in all directions. The Europeans, Russians, Japanese, Pakistanis, Arabs are all staking their claims. The international left is more interested in peddling such pet issues as homosexuality and abortion – not to mention that perfect watermelon, environmentalism – as the defining characteristics of Nepal’s newness over everything else. The global right is not only resisting with full force, but the evangelical variant also wants to spread the Good News in such a way that there is no Second Going.
What do Nepalis want? Surely, there must be something more than the CNN Hero and Alternative Nobel laurels.

Accounts Of Awe And Aggrandizement

2010-11-15T12:24:00.001-08:00

All these years later, Marich Man Singh Shrestha, the last prime minister of the partyless Panchayat system, continues to extol this quality of that polity: Where else could someone from his modest social and economic milieu rise to become head of government?
It wouldn’t take much to hear in Shrestha’s query the tenor of inadequacy many ex-panchas still express almost as an act of expiation. Hard as it might be to believe, there were people who were genuinely inspired to serve their nation under the banner of partylessness. Yet it turns out that every man or woman like Shrestha was outnumbered by those who believed they had the right to be served by the system.
The post-April Uprising spurt in published reminiscences of the period abounds in such sentiment. Take this gentleman who reached the pinnacle of political, administrative and diplomatic service. Doubtless, Nepalis today continue to benefit from his wisdom percolating across the media on diverse matters. In ruminating on them, there are times he appears to emphasize his own role in events all the while demeaning what he was representing.
Not that we couldn’t have tolerated personal aggrandizement from this esteemed personage, at least. A youth once seen milling around a foreign medical professional apparently impressed the benefactor sufficiently to find his mooring in higher education overseas. The country saw in him immense promise even before he had submitted the dissertation justifying the erudite honorific that was a rarity then.
Questions persisted as to when – or even whether – he ended up fulfilling that academic requirement. Then far intense speculation swirled around the true purpose of his ascendancy. But these things hardly detracted, as far as Maila Baje is concerned, from the extraordinariness of his personal story. But today condemnation of the system that seemed to have made all that possible tends to appear as an essential ingredient of his recollections.
Another gentleman recently revealed how one monarch had dispatched him to China on a highly sensitive mission. Nowhere in his tantalizing narrative did he seem to marvel at the great trust he happened to bear amid Nepal’s geopolitical vulnerabilities. Everything seemed to have been scripted to demolish the monarchy’s image in keeping with the prevailing political climate. The reality that the man reached one of the top rungs of the palace-led system, complete with its perks, remained buried in his story.
A few former palace officials continue to offer interesting details about how individual royals varied in their values, attitudes, needs and expectations. But for the most part, their musings have descended into a barefaced settling of scores. The holier-than-thou approach of advocates for rival palace camps has marred what remains of redeeming value for historians. How even the supposedly worst victims in individual palace secretariats ended up far better than the average stalwart retiree in the Singha Darbar wing of the civil service, especially in terms of providing for their family, is not part of the storyline.
Everybody was simply too good for the Panchayat system and therefore the polity simply owed them. It is this subtext that makes former prime minister Shrestha’s seemingly worn-out words all the more refreshing.

Dishonesty Is Such A Bustling Word…

2010-11-08T15:16:00.000-08:00

So we are no longer capable of integrity in camera. Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal blamed the lack of honesty for the failure of the two-day secret talks among top leaders of the major three parties at Hattiban.
From the accumulated wisdom available to us, you could commiserate in Nepal’s ostensible naiveté. What power can arise or hold its own without hypocrisy, lying, punishments, prisons, fortresses or murder? (Leo Tolstoy) Or is our honorable gentleman outright uninformed? It is not power that corrupts people but fools who get into a position of power that corrupt power. (George Bernard Shaw).
However untrue everyone else may have become, Prime Minister Nepal does not seem to have lost his own candor. He wanted the premiership so bad that he moved destiny. Once there, he started radiating so much triumph over common sense that everyone else felt impelled to ask him to quit. He did so on his terms and is set to become the longest caretaker head of government in the world. Contentment was bound to run out. Regardless of particular status in power, the man knows that the country wants him to take care of them.
But the Maoists won’t allow him to present the budget in the legislature because they believe he’s going to interpret approval as a regularization of his government. Premier Nepal so detests the comparisons with Nagendra Prasad Rijal that he wants to hand over the reins to President Ram Baran Yadav. No one, with the ostensible exception of Nepal Workers and Peasants Party President Narayan Man Bijukchhe, likes that idea.
Might Nepal’s candor help the country get a new prime minister? The three parties were mulling the prospect of a rotational prime ministerial system before that secret conclave. Even though the current legislature has barely six months of life left, this Back to Village National Campaign central committee-style collective leadership still sounds interesting. It would allow the rival aspirants within each party, too, to deliberate on how they might take turns. Through last-minute consensus, the assembly could be extended again, legitimized by, if not anything else, precedent. But here too the Nepali Congress, which wants the first crack at it, is playing the spoiler.
So Prime Minister Nepal will probably want to continue until the alternative arrangements U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke about after UNMIN’s departure. The government would perhaps delay responding to the Indian government’s allegations that Nepalese Maoists are training their Indian counterparts on our soil – or at least waffle.
With the dawn of the New Year, all the three major external players will have been at their seats on U.N. Security Council. The unstable tripolarity on Nepal can then be expected to enter a new phase of instability. Prime Minister Nepal, no doubt, knows that Nepalis do not have a monopoly on perfidy.

Contemplating The Counteroffensive

2010-10-24T20:51:00.000-07:00

It took the Government of India 10 days to summon our Ambassador Rukma Shamsher Rana and lodge a strong protest over the Maoist attack on Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood in Solukhumbu. New Delhi, moreover, allowed Kathmandu to remind itself how the remonstration was the first since 1989, when Nepal bought arms from China, precipitating a crippling trade and transit embargo that produced a deformed democracy.
The contrast Sood’s plight offered with the reception accorded Chinese ambassador Qiu Guhong in Mustang around the same time doubtless aggravated the Indians from the start. But they must have waited to ascertain how the Maoists would behave in the aftermath. The ex-rebels not only seemed unapologetic but almost relished the prospect of repeat performances. Nepalis in general are left pondering the size and scope of India’s likely response to the Maoists’ brazenness.
Opinion seems divided on our end. There are suggestions from some quarters that India has, in the past few years, become more magnanimous toward Nepal. Not out of altruism, though, but out of cool confidence. In the global balance of power, New Delhi believes it is in the best position to maximize its autonomy. From one side of the mouth, the Americans can claim how China has become an equally vital stakeholder in Nepal. From the other, they must acclaim New Delhi as a partner to stabilize South Asia.
Moreover, Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s brandishing of the ‘China card’ does not amount to a clear and present danger to India because New Delhi knows the extent of Beijing’s distrust of the Maoists. The other school of thought holds that Dahal may be tilting northward on the express advice of the south to help avoid encroachment of the Indian version of the Monroe Doctrine by the Americans. If you can’t stop the dragon from breathing hard down your neck, the second best thing is to try to lower the temperature. As long as the Indians recognize that the Chinese cannot be a viable economic substitute for Nepal, they feel secure enough. So when Nepal Workers and Peasants Party president Narayan Man Bijukchhe claims that the Indians, being Dahal’s political progenitors, remain unruffled by the northern alliance, he has a point.
But would the Americans countenance a diminution of their influence? So here comes the other twist, pushed by the Rastriya Jana Morcha’s Chitra Bahadur KC. Continued political rivalry could result not only in the reversal of the republican order but the return of the Panchayat system. Before laughing off KC’s remark as a has-been’s quest to maintain relevance, consider this: for all its alleged internal ills, the Panchayat system did absorb the competing external pressures to provide geopolitical equilibrium.
It is no accident that the deadline we are most worried about is the expiry of the current mandate of UNMIN, not the term of the constituent assembly. From Chinese soil, Dahal contended that the end of UN mission would not affect the peace process.
With India set to take up its seat on the Security Council at the beginning of next year, the counteroffensive from the south is likely to carry the payload of all the other directions.

As Long As It Catches Mice…

2010-10-10T15:26:00.000-07:00

It’s becoming harder not to see the acerbity in the tenor of Dr. Baburam Bhattarai’s observations on India in the light of the appellation emanating from the north.
Honestly, Maila Baje really doesn’t know whether He Yong, the secretariat member of Communist Party of China Central Committee, had actually described Dr. Bhattarai as Nepal’s equivalent of Deng Xiaoping during their meeting in Kathmandu last month. But Beijing as well as the Maoists seem to have sensed the benefits of letting the parallel prevail.
More interesting are the motions gripping our Maoists. When Dr. Bhattarai met separately with Shyam Saran, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s special envoy, earlier in the year, the Maoist leader engendered much criticism from within his own party. When Dr. Bhattarai met He, in no less confidential circumstances, the entire party appeared elated. In fact, leading Bhattarai critics seem ready to wear the Dengist badge with pride. (He, whose recent career rested on the campaign against corruption and indiscipline, must have been struck by the Nepalese obsession with his rank as vice-premier.)
Reading deeper into the tea leaves, no member of the Bhattarai faction sought to play up the questions surrounding party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s Malaysian sojourn. If the former rebels have embarked on an internal realignment with a pronounced geopolitical tilt, then the postponement of the extended meeting of the politburo has come in handy.
As to the Deng name, it holds particular resonance for Dr. Bhattarai, the preeminent Maoist economic pragmatist this side of the Himalayas. But it connotes many other things. “He can write and he can fight”, Mao Zedong once said of the comrade he called the “little man”. When Mao purged Deng during the Cultural Revolution, he equated Deng and Liu Shaoqi as capitalist roaders. Whereas Li’s fate was almost doomed from the beginning, Mao seemed to hold Deng – in the words of the celebrated China-watcher, Harrison Salisbury – in “special reserve”.
Dr. Bhattarai’s antecedents in the party have been far less tumultuous. But he, like Deng, has been a man in a hurry, one whom his boss has learned not to underestimate.
There are palpable gaps in his record. How seriously Bhattarai questioned Dahal’s leadership and policies during those crucial underground days remains unknown. Everything seemed to have unraveled during his first purge in 2004-2005, which was lifted on account of India’s desire to settle scores with the palace.
Before the constituency assembly election, Bhattarai was projected as the party’s prime ministerial candidate. But, then, Dahal lowered his sights from the presidency, probably because he was not so sure the monarchy would be abolished. Dutifully serving as finance minister, Dr. Bhattarai worked to raise revenue collections and steered clear of the controversies of the Dahal government.
Earlier this year, Dr. Bhattarai’s brinkmanship pushed Dahal toward extending the tenure of the constituent assembly. Despite his growing popularity in the race to succeed Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal – within the party and outside – Dr. Bhattarai remained in fetters. Just as he seemed to have made up his mind to openly challenge Dahal, the Shyam Saran brouhaha erupted.
When the Krishna Bahadur Mahara ‘cash-from-China’ controversy broke out, many a whisper emanating from the aggrieved attributed the leaked tape to someone ostensibly close to the Bhattarai faction.
During all this, the Chinese must have recognized that Dr. Bhattarai was the only Maoist prime minister Nepal could hope to get in the near term. So instead of allowing the Indians to walk away with the trophy, Beijing saw it fit to begin conferring titles in the way the Ming and Qing courts did. In doing so, the Chinese may have hoped to inject some suspicion in the minds of their principal rival for influence. Dr. Bhattarai is too much of pragmatist not to see the benefit of publicly attempting to readjust his geopolitical posture.

Treading Between These Two Thapas

2010-10-03T12:49:00.001-07:00

From the extreme ends of the political spectrum, at almost the same time, Nepalis last week heard frantic pleas for preserving the nation’s identity.
Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal President Kamal Thapa, who has become increasingly vociferous in asserting the need to restore both Hinduism and the monarchy officially at the core of nationhood, has come out heavily against foreign egregiousness in this area.
Ideologically opposed to both religion and royalty, the Unified Maoist’s Ram Bahadur Thapa Badal, too, has acknowledged the urgency of strengthening Nepal’s ‘glorious’ identity in the face of sustained external onslaughts. What he didn’t say merits no less scrutiny. Contrary to what might have been expected from someone of his persuasion, Badal hasn’t explained how both institutions might have subverted that glory.
Nor has he expounded on how an identity he presumably believes had once stood out in the comity of nations might regain its position without them. That’s why it becomes prudent to anticipate some point of convergence between the opposite camps without the cynicism that customarily surrounds the subject.
Internally, there has been growing recognition – from votaries themselves – that the political changes ushered in since April 2006 to the detriment of the monarchy have failed to supplant the crucial pivot it had provided to the nation.
Indeed, through sheer legacy and character, Nepali Congress President Girija Prasad Koirala regained the leadership the assorted crew of activists and organizers had become tempted to arrogate to themselves in the post-uprising period. Flawed as his leadership was in terms of stemming the slide, Koirala’s departure only revealed the threat of tentativeness on holding the center. True, it may still be impolitic to equate the country’s fate with the crown and religion. Amid the inability of the successor elite to create a new anchor, howls of derision become barely distinguishable from those of despair.
The principal foreign powers have secured their ground sufficiently to acknowledge the perils of prolonged rivalry. During the last phases of the active monarchy, the United States managed to build a huge embassy largely bypassing what would have been close parliamentary scrutiny. The Indians dug in deeper by installing their long-awaited consulate in Birgunj and forcing their way directly into the northern reaches of Nepal with economic largesse. The Chinese secured a clampdown on their Tibetan challengers and much more. At this stage of republican Nepal, all three powers have reached a point unrestrained by the logic of the strategic triangle. The European Union, Japan, Pakistan and Russia all feel they have a stake in the region. Non-state advocacy groups consider themselves no less important stakeholders.
A sense of mortification prevents the architects from repudiating their blueprint. So U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake recently cited ‘progress’ in Nepal whereas the International Crisis Group described the country as not being exactly gripped by ‘chaos’. As a psychological palliative, neither assertion is comforting on the ground because of the obvious disconnect.
Conversations in private reveal the depths of the foreigners’ amazement at Nepal’s ability to rile them. Haunted from the outset by the prospect of an open-ended commitment, they have been assiduously attempting to build internal capacities to hasten an exit strategy. Every ostensible breakthrough has sowed the seeds of the next confrontation. The four-month extension of UNMIN has bought the international community time – but for what? Precipitate action would require the courage of convictions, something you know is sorely lacking when all the external players are busy scratching their heads.
The convergence between the statements of the two Thapas may have been entirely coincidental. In terms of the imperative of internally driven peace, the possibilities are too good not to cherish.

New Roads To Yesterday

2010-09-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

*The head of government cancels his trip to New York City because the United Nations secretary-general refuses to meet him.

*The Nepali Congress ponders its next move as its dynastic head, an ailing Koirala, is in hospital.

*The chatterati expect politics to take a new turn when the ceremonial head of state returns from visit to China.

If there is any remaining hope of newness in Nepal, it surely seems to be in the refurbishing of the old. But what else can the people do?
How sensible is it to blame an assembly that has outlived its two-year life for failing to produce a prime minister even after the eighth ballot? And how different might any such premier be from the incumbent, whom voters had actually packed off into retirement?
The tentativeness of the peace process is gripped by the tantrums within the major parties. Even before all the results from the much-touted unity convention of the Nepali Congress came in, the Sher Bahadur Deuba faction began complaining of the underhanded tactics Sushil Koirala and his loyalists used to secure victory. Individuals may be free to switch camps with abandon in Nepal’s self-proclaimed most democratic party, but the convention seems to have widened emotional differences.
Within the CPN-UML, the ruling and dissident establishments are busy trying to demolish the other. But the real battle is over whether the party should align with our northern or southern neighbors, with or without the generals.
It is hard not to join in the glee over how the Maoists are now reaping what they had sown vis-à-vis the prime ministerial election process. But the ex-rebels do not seem to have exhausted their ability to amaze. After chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s withdrawal from the contest, his deputy, Mohan Baidya, now insists that the Maoists would even ready to be a part of a CPN-UML or Nepali Congress-led government if it helped toward forging national consensus. Having done so much to set the two mainstream parties apart over the past weeks, the Maoists have shown that they now need to compromise for a new government.
The international community is understandably perplexed. Clearly, UNMIN wants to abandon the field with the same fervor its critics desire to evict it. The whole brouhaha earlier this month was only about the manner. UNMIN now gets to get out on its own terms, by blaming the parties.
Amid the wackiness, hope springs eternal among some. Civil society leaders Daman Nath Dhungana and Padma Ratna Tuladhar want the protagonists to sign a new understanding, urging civil society to play a new role. But can these self-appointed messiahs go scot-free, especially since the ridiculousness of the 12-point agreement and aftermath was purely papered over by civil society’s insistence that the parties could work things out? Just because these men and women are back to donning their lawyers’, doctors’ journalists’ and activists’ hats does not absolve them from complicity in the chaos.
These are indeed remote issues when you see a caretaker government set to stay in office longer than K.I. Singh’s full-fledged administration had. All eyes are on President Ram Baran Yadav, but where is his gaze? The relevance of the question becomes apparent now that Nepal Workers and Peasants Party president Narayan Man Bijukchhe, the most vocal advocate of presidential rule, seems unsure of whether the incumbent is capable of upholding that responsibility.

Death By A Thousand Cuts

2010-09-21T04:00:00.001-07:00

The recent troubles of two journalists have put the spotlight on the new pains gripping the profession. Not that the tribe ever really had it easy in Nepal. Under the Ranas, the only place where the dissemination of news and views stood a chance was in exile.
The dawn of democracy promised to bring a new morning for the fourth estate. Publications competed with politicians to capture the public domain. Newspapers became instruments to attain power as well as places to settle scores after the fall.
With the rise of the Panchayat system, the press and the parties fell together. But a new breed of scribes came up. The joie de vivre of the private-sector papers compensated for the staidness of the government press. Many editors masqueraded as critics of the partyless system, while the real crusaders were hurting.
If the palace press secretariat emerged as the chief national editorial board, it did its job with some semblance of order. In the 1960s, one key official was an academic while another had a degree in journalism. The man at the top during much of the 1970s and 1980s at least came to the job with a letter to the editor published in TIME magazine in defense of the crown.
The year of the referendum brought a new spring. Although the Panchayat system got a decade-long extension, the papers, like the still-banned parties, refused to let go of their freedoms. Opposition grew from within the liberal flank of the Panchayat system and was reflected in the weekly press.
When a pancha-cum-turned journalist was shot, the clumsiness of the perpetrator did not diminish the arrival of the new peril. But you still had legions of boisterous men in safari suits raking in their Dasain allowances and government advertisements, while the real opposition was toiling away. So these latter journalists participated as well as covered the movement to restore multiparty democracy in 1990.
The advent of private-sector media houses brought a new breed of young and enterprising people who tended to consider themselves only behind the king, queen and crown prince in the national order of precedence. (Not Maila Baje’s characterization but an actual assertion by a member of that group, made with a tinge of cynicism.)
Times had changed in less assuring ways. A Maoist editor was one of the early high-profile victims of that convulsion. In the aftermath of the Narayanhity carnage, the editor of the largest daily was arrested for printing an opinion piece by a top Maoist. It was perfidious alright but also provided a critical foray into the geopolitical maneuvering preceding the tragedy.
When a tabloid printed that damaging picture that forced the ostensible subject, an aspiring actress, to commit suicide, the editor’s life seemed to hang in the balance. Shortly thereafter, Nepal turned into an internationally certified death zone for journalists.
Sadly, journalists continue to lose their lives. But the increasing danger is one of a death by a thousand cuts. An editor who also happens to be an advisor to the vice-president, who has not endeared him to anyone, is arrested for having printed an advertisement for recruitment in a banned armed outfit.
Another reporter, visible on the increasingly rancorous water resources beat for a leading daily, is prosecuted for sexually harassing a co-worker. There are just too many holes. The story behind the stories is probably already having a chilling effect in the trade.

Anxiety Attack, Conventional Conceit

2010-09-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

As it prepares for its crucial 12th general convention, the Nepali Congress has notched up some notable successes in its self-rejuvenation campaign. The organization has drawn in some 180,000 new members, with those in the 18-35 age group comprising some 29 percent of the entrants. Regardless of whether this would be enough to reverse what was becoming a gerontocracy, there is a palpable sense of optimism within.
The leadership has been busy projecting the upcoming event as a celebration of unity. This is understandable since it is the first convention after the reunification of the Koirala and Deuba factions. Concerns that the rift remains to be fully healed have pervaded the discourse on both sides.
In spreading the unity message, some of the Nepali Congress’ traditional smugness has returned. Former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba reminded the country the other day that, like it or not, the Nepali Congress is the only democratic party. A few days later, assistant general secretary Arjun Narsingh K.C. went a step further by likening the Maoists and the CPN-UML as kindergarteners when it came to democracy.
Such egotism is bound to unnerve the other major and minor parties that have stood the popular test. But the more relevant dimension of that contention is internal. How could the party that claims to have led all three of Nepal’s democratic upsurges end up contributing the most to squandering the promise of two and imperiling the third?
Did the party really play such a monumental role in, to borrow a favorite line, restoring a king that had escaped to Delhi in 1950? Or did the Nepali Congress leadership peddle that narrative to mask the ignominy of having merely signed the dotted line in the Indian capital? B.P. Koirala’s effort to marginalize the monarchy, while ideologically consistent for a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, reflected a monumental misreading of the geopolitics of the time.
The 1959 election did not mark – to borrow a more recent phrase – the end of history. The admixture of charisma and rigidity glued with impetuosity was bound to come unstuck. Prison and exile did not diminish B.P. Koirala’s sense of righteousness. When he finally acknowledged the paramountcy of external factors in Nepal, B.P. crafted it in the guise of a national reconciliation policy, which was essentially an effort to mask the original letdown.
The Nepali Congress’ retelling of the 1990 story was another self-serving embellishment of what was a new geopolitical turn. Fear of the extremists taking the field nudged the palace and opposition parties, in tandem with the external protagonists, to accelerate what was essentially a work in progress. In the ensuing tussle, the Nepali Congress had time and popular tide on its side.
The arrogance bred by the desire to monopolize the democratic space could only come with its natural corollary: an abiding fear of relegation to the opposition in open and competitive politics. In blaming the palace, the CPN-UML or the Maoists for the October 2002 meltdown, the Nepali Congress establishment simply refused to take responsibility for the sequence events that culminated in the party split earlier in the year.
By forcing the palace to restore the House of Representatives, G.P. Koirala vindicated a stance that some of his closest colleagues had begun to doubt. But to what effect? Compared to 1951 and 1990, the 2006 script had even far little to do with the Nepali Congress. That the Nepalese people had to return to the man most responsible for the last democratic debacle for their supposed salvation was a reflection of the anomaly of the time, something the Maoists played on.
If the former rebels ended up driving the early phase of the peace process, it was because they had entered the mainstream with a firm intent to hammer away the Nepali Congress quest to monopolize the political space, if not necessarily to supplant it. It has become amusing for a far wider audience to see some of the same people in the Nepali Congress who once found it politically chic to hail the Maoists for having raised their weapons in defense of the people to now come out and criticize the former rebels for failing to become full-fledged civilian party.
You did not have to have a tinge of a Marx, Lenin or Maoist to recognize the common political, economic and social cords the Nepali Congress and the monarchy shared. With that link sundered, the party could only be left gasping for air. The death of the patriarch accelerated the sputters.
From the flux, the Nepali Congress may still be able to reinvent itself in accordance with the country’s requirements. And Nepal would be better for it. So when Deuba and his ilk regurgitate how the Nepali Congress is the only democratic party around, their conceit is not the real problem. It is their attempt to palm off an anxiety attack as a burst of confidence.

Techniques Of Recording And Reading Tapes

2010-09-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

As the reverberations from latest Maoist audiotape scandal continue to head in all directions, this much is clear. Krishna Bahadur Mahara is having such a hard time denying that it was his voice that we all heard that he has not bothered pursuing that line of defense.
From his contention, it seems the contents of those two conversations were an amalgamation of disparate statements he might have made in different contexts. Once the answers were conveniently compiled, saboteurs easily crafted their questions.
Outlandish perhaps, but Mahara’s assertion is not implausible. The pauses, cadences, ambient noise and gratuitous whispers together with the muffled quality of the second recording raise new questions. The purported Chinese accent could very well belong to anyone sharing a linguistic legacy with the Middle Kingdom.
The first few questions could easily have come from a news reporter, a doctoral student, or a purely personal acquaintance intent on finding out what really ails the world’s newest republic.
The price tag Mahara purportedly quoted could have meant something else, like, say, his estimation of how much the Indians were paying the 50 MPs to stay away from voting for the Maoists. How are we to be sure the “help” the “friend” was offering was the Rs.500 million referred to? Maybe the “friend” had a Sun Tzu-like exhortation for the Maoists that would create uncertainties for rivals through the application of direct and indirect non-financial maneuvers.
Indeed, the haggling over the venue of a meeting between Mahara and the “friend” over the two conversations raises problems. Saying Hong Kong had a large Nepalese community that could spark all manner of speculation, Mahara wants Chengdu. But the interlocutor is reluctant, saying he does not want any impression of government complicity. Singapore is another potential destination for Mahara, but the interlocutor seems to suggest somewhere more accessible without a special permit. In the end, Hong Kong or Singapore emerge as possible venues.
Here, too, the interlocutor might be talking about a “friend” seeking to write an authorized biography of Mahara. How could a man active in Nepali Congress student politics during the referendum period emerge as a leading Maoist? B.P. Koirala sought to veer closer to the palace to ward off what he saw was a growing Indian-Soviet nexus in South Asia. Did that revolt Mahara and goad him toward a radical nationalism that no political force had espoused? Maybe someone from a leading think tank in Beijing was anxious to probe that dimension of China’s regional developments in the past to extrapolate lessons for its peaceful and harmonious rise?
Then there is the question of how the tape was recorded. Mahara insists that Nepal Telecom, his service provider, does not have the technology to do so. Did the U.S. National Security Agency listen in on a series of conversations as part of its job of monitoring terrorism chatter and forward those bits and pieces to India’s Research and Analysis Wing as part of counterterrorism collaboration? Were there willing accomplices within the Maoists, sore over the way Pushpa Kamal Dahal succeeded in keep losing the prime ministerial election for the simple intention of keeping any other rival emerging from the party? If so, were those Nepalese voices heard in between apparently directing which segments to play up?
Of course, Maila Baje concedes the tapes could be what they are. In that case, it only goes on to prove that the Maoists, as their critics contend, have a far way to go to becoming a civilian party. In a place where even walls have ears, you just don’t put money where your mouth is, especially not when you don’t know who the person on the other end really may be.

A Man On A Mission With A Message

2010-08-29T13:32:00.001-07:00

Upendra Yadav is a man on a mission. Over the weekend, the former foreign minister described India as the main obstacle to solution of the two-decade long Bhutanese refugee problem. The chairman of the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) also threw in his lot with the Maoists and emphasized the urgency of extending the tenure of United Nations Mission in Nepal.

You have to hand it to the ex-Maoist lawyer. He has come closer than any former foreign minister in identifying the crux of the Bhutanese refugee problem, as far as Nepal is concerned. Citing Bhutanese insincerity, Yadav said, India always chose to remain silent whenever the Nepalese government sought its help in resolving the crisis. “So, Nepal alone cannot do anything to repatriate the refugees,” he said in a conversation with a Bhutanese delegation at his residence.

Yadav told the Bhutanese team that Nepal’s Madhesi people were in a better position than the traditional elite to empathize with the refugees, owing to their “similar suppression” from those in power. He assured the Bhutanese team that he would raise their concerns with caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and other leaders. What kind of reassurance that must have instilled in his interlocutors in our own tottering times is best left to the imagination. Still, it was an act of boldness on the part of the MJF leader.

He was no less audacious in directing his attention to UNMIN. The mission’s role was still relevant, Yadav averred, as the country was not yet free from the danger of conflict. Though reborn as a republic, some anti-republic forces were actively working to fulfill their motives, he claimed. Considering his recent own dalliances around that five-star hotel in front of the former palace, Maila Baje is forced to wonder what exactly he has in mind. But, then, you cannot discount the import of that assertion precisely because of Yadav’s motions.

In any case, not everything he said should inspire cynicism. Pointing to the threats of conflict from a number of armed outfits operating especially in the Eastern and the Terai regions, Yadav said UNMIN could play a role in roping these groups into the mainstream of peace.

If you think Yadav exudes the kind of confidence any incumbent foreign minister should, there may be a good reason. He probably rues the fact that by this time he would have returned to the job under a Pushpa Kamal Dahal government, were it not for Indian obstructionism. So even if you think his comments on Bhutan and UNMIN sounded more like they were meant for audiences across the southern border, at least try not to tune them out. Not just yet.

The Refuge Of Affectations

2010-08-09T18:33:00.001-07:00

The sullen demeanor Shyam Saran wore on his departure from Kathmandu should not obscure us to the success he believes he achieved during his three-day sojourn as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s special envoy. Notwithstanding the secrecy with which the former foreign secretary conducted himself, as far as the substance of his confabulations went, Saran succeeded in widening the Pushpa Kamal Dahal-Baburam Bhattarai rift – conceding nothing – in keeping with the original intent of the 12-point accord.
Contrary to expectations in many quarters, the former ambassador to Nepal was not on a mission to handpick the next prime minister. He wanted to throw down the dice once again in an effort to force the other two principal players, China and the United States, to make their next move. In a sense, he was on a mission to salvage his personal credibility. And to understand the mission, it becomes to understand the man.
Saran represents that face of India’s Nepal policy that has taken the hardest hit. The Sitaram Yechuris and S.D. Munis could have hollered at the top of their lungs forever on the wisdom of abandoning the monarchy. Without the pulling the Indian External Affairs Ministry firmly in their camp, Messrs. Y&M wouldn’t have stood a chance. Predilection and circumstances made Saran the perfect medium.
Emulating the perfect babu, Saran rose in the Ministry of External Affairs by playing all sides. He succeeded in wooing opposite personalities like A.P. Venkateshwaran and Muchkund Dubey with equal gusto, keeping his true self to himself. Working the media, he even succeeded in turning an upsetting appointment as ambassador to Myanmar into an act of energetic altruism.
Returned to power in 2004, the Congress-led government of Manmohan Singh merely confirmed its Bharatiya Janata Party-led predecessor’s decision to catapult Saran to the position of foreign secretary. His admirers on left, however, never lost faith in his ideological moorings. The Maoists on both sides of the border had to be stopped before they eroded the space of the mainstream communists.
Despite his own predilections against the monarchy as an historical anachronism, Saran as foreign secretary could not have pushed the MEA to make a final break and press the Maoist-Seven Party Alliance 12-point agreement. But External Affairs Minister Kunwar Natwar Singh’s disgraceful exit from the ministry on allegations of complicity in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal in Iraq, left the field open for Saran. After King Gyanendra helped shift South Asia’s geopolitical locus at the Dhaka summit in November 2005, Saran won over many skeptics.
The Manmohan Singh government, despite its reliance on the Indian left, needed more prodding. Governments come and go but the Indian nation would have to live with the consequences of any precipitous move, especially one entailing the abolition of an entire institution. With Singh having assumed direct charge over the MEA, Saran was well placed to present his case personally to the top man. King Gyanendra, familiar with Saran’s antecedents and antics as ambassador and after, excluded him from joining the palace deliberations with Karan Singh. Saran, who considered himself nothing less than a co-equal on that mission, was understandably irked. Once back home, he almost singlehandedly pulled India away from the twin-pillar policy by presenting to his government as a fait accompli the “mood” on Kathmandu’s streets.
Like some of his predecessors who had become foreign secretary after ambassadorial or No.2 stints at Lainchour, Saran was already seeing himself in larger-than-life hues. He had the added disadvantage of assuming charge of the MEA bureaucracy after the viceroyalty in Nepal. Exacerbating the megalomania was the fact that he worked directly under the prime minister until October 2006. Once Pranab Mukherjee became foreign minister, Saran’s glory days ended.
The Indian Administrative Service, eager to ensure its primacy over all things bureaucratic, rose up against Prime Minister Singh’s effort to get Saran a year-long extension. So he won appointment as the Prime Minister’s Office as a special representative. His media buddies lavished him with praise for the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal and prophesied better things in his new brief: climate-change envoy.
Meanwhile, the new foreign secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon – who like Saran superseded more experienced officers – gave a candid admission of how difficult his job had become as the MEA pulled in different directions under his predecessor. On Nepal, New Delhi’s tentativeness had become clearer. Every move in Nepal’s republican set-up was now a work in progress measurable against the Saran roadmap. By the time Menon became National Security Adviser, Saran had sunk deeper in conflict with State Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. There was little he could do but head for the PMO exit door.
With the prospect of irrelevance looming larger, Saran could no longer see his judgment questioned so widely. So he contrived the pretense that the centrality of the 12-point agreement – the weakening of the Nepalese Maoists – remained as workable as ever. The Nepal mission, Maila Baje understands, was largely drawn up at Saran’s own initiative.
So what’s the deal here? By appearing to prop up Dr. Bhattarai, Saran believes he can restrain Dahal from hobnobbing any further with royalists as well as Beijing. Should Dr. Bhattarai get the premiership, his own pro-Indian image would be an albatross around the Maoists’ neck making the prospect of a party split untenable. That way, the Americans, forced to deal with the Maoists as a single organization, would be less emboldened to play off the Indians and Chinese against one other.
The secret meetings that really counted for Saran were the ones with Dahal and Dr. Bhattarai. While reminding each of the commitments he had made during the 12-point agreement negotiations, Saran must have been explicit in spelling out his expectations as well as the cost of non-compliance. Dr. Bhattarai himself has added his voice – albeit still muffled – to the chorus against foreign interference, hasn’t he?

Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled

2010-08-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

“Nepal royals & Maoists making common cause worries India,” the top Nepal watcher for venerable Times of India intimated us the other day. Quoting unnamed sources that the former king’s son-in-law was lobbying for Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s bid to become prime minister by “trying to buy off some constituent assembly members particularly from the smaller parties,” the correspondent went on to speculate on the motives for the “bizarre development … that is certain to upset India”. (Whether Dahal’s improved tally in the third round of voting had anything to do to royal patronage might be worthy of a follow-up.)
After professing the perfunctory proviso that it was not clear whether the son-in-law was actually on behalf of the ex-king, the reporter went on to blur the distinction. Why would Gyanendra Shah embark on such a venture? “Certainly there is absolutely no chance of the Maoists reinstalling the monarchy.”
Probably not. But who knows what the Chinese are up to? It would be relevant to note that a long-time royal associate turned critic reminded us recently that Dahal had pledged to support the monarchy if Beijing expressly asked him to do so. You could argue that Dahal chose not to challenge that assertion because he had made the purported undertaking at a time the monarchy was an established – and perhaps eternal – fact. But, then, you are also forced to reflect on the Maoist leader’s innate ability not to foreclose any option.
There is a constituency across the southern border that believes the Maoists could win the largest number of seats in constituent assembly elections because King Gyanendra lobbied on the ex-rebels behalf. By urging the Nepalese people to vote in the interest of the nation, the monarch was sending a thinly veiled instruction to his silent supporters to vote for the Maoists. The royalist vote, no matter how minuscule, tipped the balance for the Maoists in many constituencies, according to this version.
Whether the ex-monarch’s apparent rehabilitation among sections of constituencies that campaigned to “teach him a lesson” during 2005-2006 was rooted in that realization remains a strand the TOI reporter chose not to pursue. It would also be germane not to ignore the publication’s penchant for subterfuge. During the height of the Seven-Party Alliance-Maoist engagement in New Delhi, the TOI wrote about how India’s left hand was in the dark about what the right hand was doing. As we all know, both had been firmly clasped together.
In the search for answers, the journo also speculated that, like India’s former royalty, Gyanendra Shah may be searching for some political relevance by aligning his family with the biggest political player in Nepal. Or the former royal family, knowing India’s discomfort with the Maoists, could be looking for something from New Delhi. “Either way, this is not a welcome development so far as India is concerned.”
Judging from other reports, New Delhi sought to make its displeasure known before the publication of the report in what has long been considered the government’s unofficial mouthpiece. Under strict instructions from the Madhav Kumar Nepal government, security officers deployed during the former king’s latest temple sojourn went on the offensive against journalists seeking to ask him a few questions.
The effort to malign the ex-king sputtered. Days after Mr. Shah promptly apologized for the untoward incident, former crown prince Paras drew another impressive crowd (for him) in the Terai, a region throughout monarchy years we were led to believe was the most virulently republican.
There have been further developments that should confound the TOI reporter. Royalist foreign minister Ramesh Nath Pandey suddenly meets President Ram Baran Yadav at a time when the maligned home minister of the time, Kamal Thapa, days after asserting that even the Maoists have started feeling the absence of the monarchy, sets off on a visit to Europe.
Or maybe the TOI reporter, in the grand tradition of the publication, is faking it. Like much of the rest of anti-monarchy constituency that has realized its miscalculation, the journo perhaps wants to make it look like the Chinese alone are writing the script for the next act.

Geography Of Political Thought

2010-07-26T21:06:00.000-07:00

As many legislators voted for Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal as cast their ballots against Nepali Congress vice-president Ram Chandra Poudel in the second round of voting for prime minister last week. Unless the frenzied behind-the-scenes jockeying that we all can sense is under way produces something spectacular, Nepal seems set for an extended spell of parliamentary gaucherie.
Yet there seems to be a dark horse lurking behind the shenanigans. Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (Democratic) leader and Deputy Prime Minister Bijay Kumar Gachhadar has made no secret of his prime ministerial ambitions. Given the unabashed way in which the Madhes-based parties are bent on extracting their pound of flesh, Gachhadar’s time may have indeed come.
The president and vice-president already represent the region and a premier with roots there is unlikely to resolve the Madhes issue. After all, playing up the discrimination card has proved politically potent for all within the country and geopolitically invaluable for those outside. Nepalis, for their part, have recognized the geographic, ethnic, linguistic and socio-cultural variations in the debate. But non-Madhesis, apparently, are expected to be more of listeners than anything else.
If Girija Prasad Koirala was not considered rooted deeply enough locally to prevent a hemorrhage toward regionalism from the Nepali Congress – including some longtime loyalists – no ethnic hillsman or woman can expect to drive the deliberations. Yet the agenda needs to be advanced in a manner consistent with the aspirations of all Nepalis if a constitution with a modicum of credibility is to emerge.
Gachhadar remains part of the madhesi alliance whose common platform barely disguises its divisions. Still, he wields enough individual and ideological distinctiveness to rise to the occasion. As a Tharu, Gachhadar could refocus attention on the nuances of the Madhes debate. A supporter of restoring the Hindu character of the Nepali state, he could inject relevance into the national picture whose hues have shifted after the heady exhilaration of the spring of 2006.
Now that we have heard rumors of an estimated price tag of 200 million rupees on Nepali secularism, there is some urgency to revisit the haste with which Nepalis had to let go of Hinduism before contemplating casting aside the kingdom. Although Gachhadar has not explicitly endorsed the restoration of the monarchy, he certainly possesses the capacity to press forward that side of the national debate as well.
Then there is Gachhadar’s recent open claim, fresh from consultations in New Delhi, that he enjoys India’s blessings as far as the unfolding political developments are concerned. Considering that assertion, the Chinese can be expected to become more energetic in opposing or coopting him. The Americans would have an easy time playing both sides. On the bright side, you wouldn’t have to be a terminal cynic to appreciate the invigorating candor of it all.

Proportions And Politics Of Prejudice

2010-07-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

Vice-President Parmanand Jha certainly spoke for much of the country last week. “Even after the year-long extension of the constituent assembly, the Nepalese people are not at all certain whether they will get their constitution,” he declared.
Seeking to prove the Veep wrong, the major parties have set April 13, 2011 as the date for promulgating the new statute. Seeking to project an element of seriousness to their assertion, they gave a two-month timetable to the state restructuring commission to come up with recommendations on one of the more contentious issues. Yet 22 out of the 25 parties in the assembly registered their disagreement over the decision by the Nepali Congress, the CPN-UML and the UCPN-Maoist to form the commission. Not quite a confidence booster.
That’s where Jha’s other assertion gains relevance. In order to build an inclusive society, he said, it is vital to enact inclusive acts and put into practices rather than limiting them into mere words. It would be wrong to view the preceding as a mere reiteration of Jha’s well-known claims of anti-Madhesi discrimination. Things are different this time, something even the Veep appears to acknowledge.
In a statement he made a few days earlier, Jha had the candor to claim that discrimination had been reduced to some extent. The top two – albeit ceremonial – offices have gone to the community. The caretaker premier is associated with the Terai constituency he lost in the last test of popular strength than the Kathmandu neighborhood that spurned him. Moreover, a Madhesi leader is among the men staking their claim to form the next government.
And all this is happening at a time when we still haven’t settled on who is a madhesi or what it take to be one – geography, ethnicity, skin color, verbal intonation, political sympathies, social behaviors, etc.
“Why can’t the state openly accept that there exists discrimination at the state level?” “Is it incorrect to demand equal representation?” When Jha asks such questions, they must be taken as rhetorical ones. Otherwise, the deadliness of the Maoist insurgency and the difficulties of peace process are there for all of us to see.
Stung by the parochialism that marred his last attempt at prominence, the Veep has attempted to rope in the cause of other marginalized groups. But the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN) has opted to break its own new ground. It declared a fresh stir to pressurize the political parties to draft the constitution on time. “It is immaterial for us which party leads the government and who is elevated as next prime minister,” Rajkumar Lekhi-Tharu, the chairman of NEFIN, said at a press conference. “We want a constitution that ensures rights to the Janajatis,” he said repeatedly.
Finally, someone seems to have their priorities right. NEFIN has declared economic blockade August 14, 2010 for Kathmandu valley and disruption of vehicle movement throughout the country. If this is not the kind of common cause Jha had hoped to build, then perhaps he should begin wooing other constituencies that now feel dispossessed, such as, say, Brahmins and Chettris.
As to the issue of discrimination in general, someone once said that if we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other causes for prejudice by noon. Another averred that human history is written by the fluid of prejudice. Still another claimed that everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences; no one can eliminate prejudices – they can just recognize them.
What do you do after that? Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument, we are told. Since it is all in the mind, if you believe that discrimination exists, it will. These nuggets of human wisdom accumulated over experiences good and bad over the centuries have their relevance in our context. But for the international laboratory that we have become, there is that added problem. We can’t really recognize where the highlighting of discrimination ends and the rationalization and legitimization of it begins.

Watching All Those Skeletons Dance

2010-07-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

After the abolition of the monarchy, many Nepalis expected a torrent of putrefaction gushing endlessly deep from the bowels of Narayanhity Palace. A few enterprising scribes brought out purported “exposes” they were careful enough to qualify as works of fiction. Beyond that, it has been period of disappointment for thrill seekers.
Two years after the last king vacated the palace, no underground torture chamber has surfaced. There has not been the faintest trace of any grand harem. The elusiveness of the shrines to royal decadence and debauchery is weighing down the most fervent forager. For all its worth, the palace, since it was turned into a museum, has made international news for its monumental drabness – and that, too, for about five minutes. As former royalist minister Prakash Koirala mused the other day, who would have expected the last crown prince to get the kind of public reception he now revels in?
Yet skeletons have been tumbling out of other closets. Nepalis have become more informed of the machinations of the palace bureaucracy, the incivility of the military secretariat and the insecurity posed by a bevy of collateral royals. These days, the Mallas, Thapas and Pandes all have their advocates pushing their own versions of history. Everybody has reputation to destroy. Corrupt parvenus are juxtaposed with ostensibly pedigreed multi-millionaires. Palpalis undermined traditional Gorkhali families. Traitors to the king and country were repeatedly rewarded. The loyal and the honest were continually sidelined. Victim and aggressor alike pose a holier-than-thou pretense that enlivens the narrative.
Perspectives abound from outside as well. Yet they seem to hide more than they reveal. Take the two most gripping examples. The man who helped found the Rastrabadi Swatantra Bidyarthi Mandal continues to tell us of his disenchantment with the Panchayat system. Reborn as a journalist after the referendum, he invited such wrath from the princes that only a clumsy gunman appeared capable of providing the anti-climax. Yet there are elements of Edensque proportions that are missing from the story, especially after our own drug wars got nastier amid the American crackdown in the mid-1970s. Politics alone cannot – and must not be allowed to – explain events that may be actually rooted in the growing exclusivity of economic opportunity.
In another exposition, we learned how King Mahendra’s supposed emissary to Mao Zedong years later got an invite from Indira Gandhi. By that time, the interlocutor, by his own admission, refused the monarch’s advance request for a debriefing. His locus standi does not surface in any appreciable way, given the seriousness of his purported involvement. Nor does it emerge in any way how the man mustered the courage to defy whom conventional wisdom has held to be the most vengeful among our modern monarchs.
Yet the gentleman seems to have possessed rare indispensability. Years ago, Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal is said to have assured him that the rebels would accept the monarchy if the Chinese specifically asked them to do so. The gentleman’s failure to facilitate dialogue between the two sides brought another revelation. The Americans and Indians had entrenched themselves too deep on opposite sides of the breach at a time when they were publicly touting the convergence of their views.
Maila Baje tends to find the Newar families that have traditionally served the palace – some over several generations – the most reticent when it comes to giving out even off-the-record royal tid-bits. Should that change, we can expect things to reach a new level of spiciness. Until then, let’s appreciate the skeletons we get to their barest bones – mindful of the ambiguities and obfuscations accompanying the cracks and crevices.

Flashback: Who Do We Want Maoists To Be?

2010-07-04T06:52:00.001-07:00

India’s Maoists accuse their Nepali brethren of betraying the cause. At the same time, Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram believes our ex-rebels may be arming his country’s increasingly lethal insurgents. The truth must lie somewhere in between.
Clearly, our Maoists succeeded far beyond their wildest dreams. The Nepali Congress had democracy on their side. Yet their insurgencies faltered almost from the start. When the Jhapali Reds began hunting heads, skulls should have accumulated across the country. After all, the people who abhorred the partyless government had no other way of articulating their sentiments. Leaders in those two groups came in various shapes and sizes. There must have been a reason beyond ideology, injustices and idiosyncrasies for the Maoists’ triumph.
With that question, Maila Baje slipped into sleep. The probe persisted with every move of the eye, starting from that April midnight in 1990. King Birendra lifted the ban on political parties to checkmate the Indians, who were pressuring him to Bhutanize Nepal. New Delhi was stunned by the monarch’s impudence but it certainly was not out of options. While Nepalis were dancing and singing their way to “one of the world’s best constitutions”, the real fight had entered a more virulent round.
Controlled chaos was always the operational term on India’s Nepal file. In the post-1990 years, it seemed far easier to operationalize. The Chinese, on the other hand, pulled back from their Panchayat-era assertiveness, only after ceding space to their allies, the Pakistanis. As the Nepali Congress squandered opportunity after opportunity, the Unified Marxist-Leninists were getting too big for their boots. Enter the Maoists.
Clearly, the palace saw the Maoist rebellion as a vindication of its disbelief in the Fukuyaman end-of-history exegesis the mainstream parties had been peddling. More important, however, was the dominant Indian and Western view of this ragtag band of extreme Nepali leftists. They could come in handy to show the UML its place. The Nepali Congress, not too soon, was mesmerized by the prospect. Sure, success would swell the Maoists’ head, too. But that was for another day.
By the end of the nineties, Nepalis had a revelation. The world’s only Hindu state’s relations with India had never been as bad as it had during the first few years of the ascension of a Hindu nationalist-led government in New Delhi. Of course, the palace’s ties with prominent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders remained excellent. But they were Indians first. Across the southern border, the dump-the-monarchy cabal was ready for the final battle King Birendra had apprehended from moment of his enthronement. By the time of the Narayanhity massacre, this group of Indians believed they had an organized group ready to take control.
In the West, the monarchy had more influential allies than adversaries. But that changed after the US Republicans’ White House win in 2000. When the neocons in the wider West discovered that King Birendra and Crown Prince Dipendra were up to something not in conformity with their worldview, the equations shifted. As vital as Nepal was as a geopolitical prize, it was menacing as the world’s only Hindu state. Nepal was among the six most difficult countries to spread the Gospel. The godless Maoists could not be the answer.
The India-West divide became apparent after the carnage when Zee News and Star News were confidently reporting that no one had survived the Narayanhity massacre and that thousands of Maoists were moments away from capturing the palace. CNN was equally certain about that Prince Gyanendra was safe in Pokhara. The Maoists who were supposed to storm Narayanhity simply melded into the crowd of mourners.
The Maoists recognized they were totally in India’s lap now. This was not a source of comfort to the Indian government. But those who botched up had an instant CYA moment. In the eyes of much of the world, the Great Helmsman and his legacy were associated more with the Chinese. Why not paint the new king as pro-Chinese, notwithstanding the fact that his entire business associations had been with the Indians?
The Indians enjoyed plausible deniability. And there were other interests at play. Controlled chaos meant peace as a prelude to more virulent war. Every life lost became a statistic. Every infrastructure blown up was a potential opportunity for reconstruction.
The Maoists’ success rested on their flexibility with alliances. If being branded as palace lackeys helped, that was fine for the time. If allying with India helped perpetuate the myth the Nepal would become a paradise the moment the monarchy was out, that was good, too. War and peace, purity and flexibility all became interchangeable concepts and campaigns. Without the arsenal of Dr. Baburam Bhattarai’s words, Pushpa Kamal Dahal would have had long lost his war on the battlefield.
The external investment paid off in 2005, when King Gyanendra did what his brother or nephew would have done: adjust Nepal’s geopolitical locus. The see-we-told-you-so grin on the Indians was too wide to measure for the mortified westerners. With the monarchy finally out of the way, the Maoists could be mainstreamed as part of India’s national-security strategy.
To their good fortune, the Maoists joined the mainstream at a time of great geopolitical shift. Chinese President Hu Jintao visited New Delhi but not without instructing his ambassador there to reaffirm claims to Indian-held territory. After using former U.S. president Jimmy Carter to validate their electoral triumph and rise to power, the Maoists looked northward.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s men and women, in the eyes of China’s Nepal pointman, Wang Hong-wei, not only emerged as the largest party. It is also the best placed to unite all nationalist elements. Yet, considering all that has happened, the Chinese, too, must be wondering who they would like the Maoists to be. That was the question Maila Baje woke up to and has been pondering ever since.

Originally posted on October 26, 2009

Chicken Soup For The Meddling Soul

2010-06-28T13:34:00.000-07:00

At times, the comparisons must be getting too uncomfortable for Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood. He enjoys nowhere near the power of his legendary predecessor, Chandreshwar Prasad Narayan Singh.
Okay, maybe he does. It’s just that Sood doesn’t monopolize matters the same way. For one thing, the Great Meddler didn’t have to contend with the Americans, Europeans or the Chinese.
Today politicians in power do everything to woo Sood to stay there. Those outside castigate him eternally. And those who want back in are more liable to see attacks on Sood and his establishment as the surest path to success.
The newspapers have been after him all along. Even supposedly friendly ones are at it now. The Indian government’s federal-state administrative rigmarole makes for a weird inspection procedures on newsprint and pretty much everything, but our aggrieved media house goes public – and gains sympathetic amplification
Sood is Nepal’s new king, the Wall Street Journal blog, "India Real Time", suggested the other day, quoting the sentiment of some journalists. “[Sood] can meet the prime minister anytime he wants and call the ministers and give directions,” one scribe from the affected newspaper was quoted as saying. “That’s far beyond what any normal diplomatic protocols allow.” As if that’s a privilege only the Indian ambassador enjoys these days.
The media house thinks India is paying back for having leaked Sood’s letter demanding that Nepal grant India the contract to print the machine-readable passports both for security and financial reasons. (What about the payback India expects for the 12-point agreement?)
It was reported that the Indian Embassy had had a hand in forcing a change of ownership in the said media house a couple of years ago. Perhaps the beneficiaries have been enticed and emboldened by far more powerful patrons? Again, all this may be a red herring for some real scoop in the days and weeks ahead. But the media, here, is merely a footnote in the larger story.
When news came in that Sood was being sent to Nepal instead of Jayant Prasad, the son of former ambassador Bimal Prasad, there was an air of anticipation. In Afghanistan, he was credited with ensuring the turnaround from an incorrigibly pro-Pakistan nation to one more conducive to India. An expert on disarmament, Sood’s tenure could have had special relevance in Nepal. He is among the few Indian deputy chiefs of mission who continue to be talked about in Washington.
Yet during his tenure, Nepal has slipped significantly – and certifiably – away from India’s orbit. Every time the American ambassador acknowledges China as an equal stakeholder in Nepal, Sood’s superiors must seethe at their man on the ground.
But His Excellency may draw some comfort from history. Some of his predecessors have risen to become foreign secretary, while others are still consulted for their expertise on the country. Given Sood’s uneasy ties with Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, it might be helpful to review C.P.N. Singh’s brush with B.P. Koirala.
“It is said openly in Katmandu that the ‘real ruler of Nepal today’ is Indian Ambassador Sir C. P. N. Singh,” The New York Times had reported on December 16, 1952. Indeed, B.P. Koirala was so upset about Singh’s behavior that he demanded his recall as a precondition to improved Nepal-India relations. B.P., of course, had a personal grudge. First, he saw Singh catapult an obscure man called Bhadrakali Mishra as a Nepali Congress member in the coalition cabinet led by Mohan Shamsher Rana.
Mishra instigated B.P. to quit the cabinet en masse on the ground that he would automatically be invited to lead a ‘homogenous” Nepali Congress government. Instead, King Tribhuvan asked Matrika Prasad Koirala. B.P. never forgave Singh for preventing him from becoming Nepal’s first post-Rana premier.
When the Nepali Congress won the first general election and King Mahendra showed no sign of inviting him to form the new government, B.P. had learned his lesson well. While seeking Jawaharlal Nehru’s intervention with the palace, B.P. was careful to display due deference to the then Indian ambassador. It worked.
When the Indians tried reminding B.P. of that “favor”, especially during his talks on his way to and from Israel, Koirala ascribed his position purely to the people’s mandate. (How Nepal’s political history may have evolved had Subarna Shamsher Rana become Nepal’s first elected premier, as many in the Nepali Congress had desired, is worthy of deeper analysis.)
C.P.N. Singh found that the exertions of office would not go unrewarded. Back home, he became governor of Punjab. As B.P. prepared to assume the premiership, Singh was serving as ambassador to Japan. Amid B.P.’s incarceration, exile and infirmity, Singh would go on to head the Reserve Bank of India and serve as governor of Uttar Pradesh.
As for the legacy of interference, Singh lives on through his daughter-in-law’s television broadcasts into Nepal. The odds are Sood will have his payback – with interest.

Goings-On In Their Neck Of The Woods

2010-06-20T20:05:00.000-07:00

You would have thought the Sher Bahadur Deuba-Ram Chandra Poudel contest would place Kul Bahadur Gurung closer to the premiership. However, the Nepali Congress may be veering toward another janjati, Amik Sherchan. A Maoist, former deputy premier and partner of the anti-palace Seven Party Alliance-Maoist combine, Sherchan has the right credentials to break the stalemate. But the idea still sounds a little warped.
Within the Nepali Congress, Poudel seems have the edge over Deuba, now that that sections of Deuba’s NC (Democratic) have joined hands with Sushil Koirala’s centrist faction. Sushil’s support helped Poudel gain the parliamentary party leadership over favorite Deuba last year and the alliance seems to be intact.
Still, the three-time former premier is not about to concede defeat. The fact that Deuba was sacked twice – failing to hold elections the first time and inability to bring in the Maoists for talks the second – does not seem to be a disqualification. Deuba supporters insist the party and country must consider his international standing. His Oval Office meeting with President George W. Bush and tenure as SAARC chief seem to be the primary considerations.
But the personal has gone deep into the political. Deuba can’t forget that Poudel as speaker had some knowledge of the machinations of Girija Prasad Koirala when he forced Deuba to seek that vote of confidence he was not obliged to in 1996. Nor does Deuba seem to be able to get past how Poudel egged him on to break away from Koirala, promising to assume the presidency of the new outfit, only to stick with the grand old man.
Deuba’s acquiescence in Sujata Koirala’s elevation to the deputy premiership was partly a way of his getting back at Poudel. By aligning himself with Khum Bahadur Khadka’s Hindutva brigade, Deuba has proceeded to undercut Poudel’s Sanskrit background. Back from talks in New Delhi, Sujata, too, has carefully claimed that all the Indians are interested is in consensus.
Poudel has little beyond the party’s history to peddle. The Nepali Congress cannot get any more democratic or socialist than it already claims it has. Many still blame Deuba for sullying the party’s image through public perceptions of corruption, cronyism and outright clumsiness.
But then he seems to have won some new adherents. Ram Sharan Mahat, Deuba’s finance minister who had refused to side with him during the party split, now seems to be in favor of the Tarun Dasta. Or, at least, he wants to bring the issue within the party for discussion amid the Maoist onslaught. (Indeed, the armed force appears to be one of few issues Ram Mahat agrees with his brother, Prakash.)
If Sherchan were to get the job, it would only be to let the Nepali Congress factions to continue examining their necks for knottiness of the post-monarchy lumps.

Be Of Good Cheer, Little Guy!

2010-06-14T15:37:00.001-07:00

Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) chief Pashupati Shamsher Rana asserts the nation’s smaller parties would be forced to take a “harsh” decision if the Big Three persisted with their waywardness. Since Rana did not shed any light on scale of severity they might be contemplating, Maila Baje was forced to scratch his head.
Rana’s threat came after Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) withdrew its support from Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal’s government. So it was tempting to probe a link. But, then, NWPP chief Narayan Man Bijukchhe clarified that his party’s decision did not mean he had sought the resignation of the prime minister. And that was before he claimed that a new government would be formed in a week. (So does that mean Nepal is going to lead the new government, too?)
With this feverishly spinning head, one was forced to turn to Nepal’s oldest hand on such matters, Rana’s one-time boss and current party colleague, Surya Bahadur Thapa. The former prime minister stated the whole imbroglio stemmed from the rise of extreme leftist forces. As one of our earliest Maoists, Bijukchhe would thus fall into Thapa’s exclusionary zone. So you have to veer toward the prospect that the ex-panchas may be up to something on their own.
Are they about to withdraw the votes they cast two years ago in favor of declaring Nepal a republic? Honestly speaking, when Lokendra Bahadur Chand ended up voting with the majority, it became infinitely harder to view the moment with a complete sense of finality. The ex-panchas never said their vote was not conditional, say, on the constituent assembly’s being able to write a constitution within its stipulated schedule.
Even if they were to take back their votes, the ex-panchas would hardly make a dent in that resounding verdict. Thapa rubbishes such talk. Instead, he believes a new force would emerge from any vacuum. It’s hard to fathom that. But, then, who thought K.P. Oli, who was not a member of the assembly, would emerge to oversee a gentleman’s agreement with the Maoists on extending the assembly’s tenure in exchange for Premier Nepal’s resignation. (Let’s not even consider how the Maoists took his word based on a three-point undertaking neither Oli nor Nepal cared to sign.)
Yet that agreement seems to go to the heart of the matter. Therefore, Rana hastened to accuse the big three parties of forcibly extending the assembly despite the fact that his own organization was complicit in the act. At least RPP-Nepal’s Kamal Thapa, considering the way his party voted, can assert with credibility that the elected members have turned themselves into self-appointed custodians of the nation.
We don’t know whether Rana and Surya Bahadur Thapa will ever be on the same page. Stung by the past, their party is still in a drawn-out process of unification, which makes consistency an even more elusive commodity. In their dissonance, they might have just provided the divided Nepali Congress a chance to stroke its neck and revisit that first vote in the constituent assembly.

A Rivalry Entrenched In Eternity

2010-06-07T16:40:00.000-07:00

Their epic rivalry seems destined to go on forever. Deputy Prime Minister Sujata Koirala refused the Republic Day honor her government bestowed on her late father because it ranked him below Ganesh Man Singh. It was reassuring to know that she didn’t take umbrage at Girija Prasad Koirala being equated posthumously with Man Mohan Adhikary.
But Sujata is being needlessly insecure. Juxtapose the records, even at the risk of dreariness. Girija Prasad was elected premier five times and appointed once. King Birendra – and presumably the Nepalese people – wanted Ganesh Man to take the top job once. But he declined.
When Singh was making his early sacrifices for democracy, Girija Prasad was learning the ropes from his brothers. Democracy gave Ganesh Man his moments in power, something that eluded Girija Prasad for quite long. But the youngest Koirala brother continued to sharpen his skills. B.P. and Matrika were busy bickering, and Tarini and Keshab were maneuvering around in other ways. So G.P. got the most of all worlds he was to put into great use later.
While Singh was mastering homeopathy in Sundarijal, with B.P. reading, writing and reflecting, Girija Prasad was trying to negotiate their release, but failed. During Singh’s exile and incarceration, Koirala was building the party by, among other things, masterminding a hijacking and weeding out undesirables.
During the relatively liberal post-referendum Panchayat years, Ganesh Man rode around on that rickety Mercedes. Koirala had his wobbly jeep. A top palace official revealed the other day how B.P. had asked King Birendra not to engage with other Nepali Congress leaders. Imagine the aggravation of each when Ganesh Man and Girija Prasad took turns trying to impress upon the monarch the urgency of post-B.P. reforms.
In the end, the king exasperated both. Singh failed to comprehend what he considered the palace’s almost desperate recalcitrance and Koirala was vexed by its refusal to dangle anything better than a Panchayati deputy premiership. And that impelled both to further action. Ganesh Man commanded People’s Movement I, which Girija Prasad initially opposed. Koirala reaped the largest reward, while Singh couldn’t keep his place in his party. The outcome of that anomaly had become apparent long before democracy crumbled.
Koirala commanded People’s Movement II, retroactively redefined its mandate and abolished the monarchy. He couldn’t get the presidency. (The Nobel Peace Prize seems equally elusive, now that the committee has begun to award expectations as well as achievement.)
Like Singh’s, Koirala earthly flaws billowed away in the funeral pyre. But that should not obscure the principal contrast. Ganesh Man refused to take on the responsibility of completing the movement he commanded. (Considering how Koirala ran the premiership during his appointed tenure – complete with oxygen masks – one wonders whether extended bathroom visits alone might have prevented Singh from doing an equally stellar job.) Girija Prasad bit off more than he could chew, leaving the country clenching its jaws perhaps in perpetuity.
In the posthumous honors, Ganesh Man may deserve a notch higher than Girija Prasad for the simple reason that he died first. Still, in what way exactly did Singh contribute to consigning the crown to history? At least Nepal’s only communist prime minister to serve under the monarchy was ideologically a republican. But, then, you can’t ignore the fact that Ganesh Man’s party mounted those two botched attempts at regicide.

Miracle Mongers And Their Methods

2010-06-01T04:03:00.001-07:00

In the end, the blatantly bickering Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) contrived that miracle at midnight to prevent a damaging split in the party. United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal, itching for that penultimate showdown with rival Baburam Bhattarai, went along. Maybe we have the story mixed up.
Amid the uncertainty preceding the tripartite consensus, Bhattarai had pledged his support to proponents of extending the Constituent Assembly’s tenure even if that meant his faction would have to cross the floor. A split in the party would have been acceptable to people like Mohan Baidya. But if that had happened during the vote, Bhattarai, for the first time, would have exhibited his preponderance in the party. Better to take a step back and allow Bhattarai to overreach.
The ideologue is no egghead when it comes to the political slugfest. In reality, he has wisened up in direct proportion to the number of times the premiership slip by his grasp. After the assembly was extended, Bhattarai colorfully called the agreement a check that had every chance of bouncing. Were that to happen, Bhattarai warned, he would claim the principal and interest in full measure.
For now, the onus is on him to pressure Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal to resign. Dahal can breathe easier knowing that those who put faith in Bhattarai’s line after the general strike fiasco would not pester him for a while.
Should Bhattarai become premier, it might not turn out to be so bad for Dahal. At the head of an unruly coalition, Bhattarai can expect to dispense patronage to strengthen his grip on the party. By instigating his own loyalists certain to get key ministries and sections of the other coalition partners, Dahal could hope to constrain Bhattarai’s space. Then by citing his inefficiencies, the Maoist chief could try to resurrect his formation.
Bhattarai, of course, would be tempted to tilt southward, seeking to return to the geopolitical intent of the 12-point agreement he virtually rammed down Dahal’s throat in 2005. Both recognize that the slightest whiff of such obsequiousness would be enough to set off the rank and file in all directions.
But by then, Bhattarai knows, the prospect of a grand political realignment will have pushed the UML to another moment of truth. The Nepali Congress, too, groping for that post-Girija Prasad Koirala way of life, will have not ceased to amaze the country by the preposterousness of its paroxysms.
And the constitution? There may still be hope. It shouldn’t take that much of a miracle to reconcile the Maoist and Narahari Acharya versions and put it to a vote.

Actually, Everyone’s Raring To Go

2010-05-24T09:55:00.000-07:00

For a country lamenting its lack of soft power that is both supple and supreme, India must be enjoying the spectacle unfolding in Nepal.
Having to cede the ground to the likes of the French and the Norwegians may have injured Indian pride. What was the alternative? The Americans now insist they have a convergence of views on Nepal with not only New Delhi but also Beijing. And the United Nations? Wasn’t it supposed to have been an Indo-Chinese initiative to limit external influence? It has become a behemoth in its own right.
Indians have long complained how Nepal’s policy toward them is based on extracting concessions without meeting its obligations. In the beginning, Jawaharlal Nehru would fire off missives to Matrika Prasad Koirala castigating this strain of anti-Indianism. Then the New York Times went on to portray how the average Nepali considered the threat from India far more insidious than that from China. Nehru and his daughter and grandson then opted for economic pressure to keep Nepal on a tight leash. With every assertion of its version of the Monroe Doctrine, Nepal became hospitable to alien influences from all quarters.
That was then. Today India is pulsating with Great Power ambitions. It believes it deserves a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council on its own merit, bypassing the rigmarole called the reform agenda. The Chinese can’t say no to their face. The Americans say they would love to hear Hinglish in its diverse intonations resonate in the chamber permanently. How bad must it hurt the Indians to realize that they cannot even tend to their neighborhood?
In the aftermath of “People’s Movement II”, no Indian leader or official of importance really expected Nepali leaders to credit New Delhi with their rise to power. Deep down, many Indians must have expected our leaders to be more subdued in their rage once they fell. When a former prime minister starts publicly accusing the Indians of murdering a king, you know the dissonance can get only detrimental.
There is a reason for this. Bahadur, ordinarily a term evoking awe and admiration, is a stinging pejorative because it is still in currency. Nobody remembers how regularly the Manchus up north called us bandits. Time is a greater healer. Distance, too, is a softener. The fact that Nepal always seems to be among that select group of countries subject to rigorous visa screening procedures seems to escape us.
Macao, one of two Special Administrative Regions (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, became the latest to rank us among the Nigerians, when we have had our own immigration woes with those good folks. (The visa stringency of other SAR, Hong Kong, need not be recapitulated here.) Yet the open border with India continues to be blamed for Nepal’s woes by no less a man than Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, the Maoist friendliest to our southern neighbor with unrivalled consistency.
Surely, there will be many among us who would prefer asphyxiation by distant devils to spite the one closest to us. That won’t stop the Indians from regaling in how more and more Nepalis are finally realizing how when it comes to pushing and shoving around, everyone – near or far – is raring to go. Whether we have learned the real moral of the story is a different matter.

Some Words To Go With ‘Our’ Voices

2010-05-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

With the Constituent Assembly now having failed its primary responsibility, Maoist leader Mohan Baidya ‘Kiran’ tells us his party will unveil the ‘people’s constitution’ from Khula Manch on May 29 to mark Republic Day. But the statute will not be promulgated immediately. Phew.
Baidya tries to sound reassuring in another way. The new constitution would be based on the discussions that took place in various thematic committees of the assembly and would be promulgated only in consultation with the other parties. But, then, haven’t the Maoists already said the door to compromise has been slammed shut.
By whom, it is not clear because it does not seem to matter. What we do know is that the Maoists abruptly withdrew their general strike for a reason. You cannot promulgate a ‘people’s constitution’ from the streets without letting the people back onto them in time first.
What exactly would this constitution supposed resonating with our voices look like? Most of us think we have a fair idea. In a great leap, the People’s Republic of Nepal would likely resemble China not of 1949 but that of the mid-Sixties. The opposition will have a place in a consultative assembly expected to rubberstamp the official line. The recalcitrant will confront struggle sessions complete with dunce caps. But how might all this be codified in words and paragraphs? Here are some of Maila Baje’s thoughts.
The Preamble: “Chairman Dahal is the great leader of all the nationalities of the country, the head of our proletarian dictatorship state and the supreme commander of the whole nation-whole army. Vice-chairman [Baidya/Bhattarai/Shrestha, take your pick] is Chairman Dahal’s close comrade in arms and successor, and the deputy commander of the whole nation-whole army. The thought of Pushpa Kamal Dahal is the policy leading all the nation's work.”
The People’s Liberation Army: “It is the task of the People’s Republic of Nepal’s armed forces to guard against subversion or aggression by imperialism, social imperialism and their lackeys. The PLA and the people’s militia are led by the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist.”
Fundamental Rights: “The most fundamental rights and duties of citizens are to support Chairman Dahal and his close comrade-in-arms to support the leadership of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal, to support the dictatorship of the proletariat, to support the socialist system, and to observe the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Nepal.”
The State: “The PRN is a full-fledged Socialist state led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.” (The very first paragraph of the Preamble originally contained assurance that the people’s democracy could “build a prosperous and happy Socialist society.” But we understand that was put in abeyance by the party pending a final decision on Dahal’s successor.)
The People: “There is three-level system of ownership within the collective ownership economy. According to that system, ownership is shared by the people’s commune, the production brigade and the production team - the latter being the basic accounting unit within the three-fold system. The right of members of people’s communes to operate small-sized private plots shall be ensured provided that the development and the absolute supremacy of the collective economy is guaranteed.”
The Upshot: This will be Nepal’s first constitution to acknowledge with great pride the country’s status as a dictatorship.

Clenched Fist Versus Tender Fingers

2010-05-10T13:33:00.001-07:00

In the contest of spin, the Maoists and the government are on overdrive. Deep down, Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal knows he cannot persuade the Nepalese people that the suspension of the previously proclaimed fight-unto-the-finish indefinite shutdown was no capitulation. But he persists.
The government was instigating violence to prepare for a state of emergency that, in turn, would provide the perfect pretext to extend the tenure of the constituent assembly, the Maoists insist. Or was the anti-Maoist sentiment among the people too strong to ignore, especially considering that there might be a couple of more election cycles before the former rebels could really hope to capture state power? Maybe the pressure from abroad was too hard to bear. (When the Norwegians come out so openly against the cause, what hope can there be?)
Pitiable as the Maoists’ plight may be, it pales before the vulgarity of the government’s triumphalism. The Maoist retreat does not diminish the state’s responsibility to function on its own competence. But, then, the fact that national players have so disgracefully lost the initiative is not the main issue here. Nor is the perception that India has lost ground. The strongest coalition of international powers at any given moment will have the decisive say. And it did, through the Europeans, this time. But what did we hear?
Everyone bought time from this ordeal. The CPN-UML, which had teetered on the brink of a split, will have to tend to its wounds. The Nepali Congress’ paroxysms have not fully shaken the party before the final showdown at the convention. Within the Maoists, the Dahal-Bhattarai face-off, which has been papered over for so long, must now be allowed to run its course. Without that, the party cannot gain relevance.
Whoever emerges the winner, the Maoists should quit trying to establish themselves as another Nepali Congress or UML. They have proved sufficiently proved their democratic credentials by winning the largest number of seats in elections the international community largely certified as free and fair. As the co-signatory to the peace accords, they are not unjustified in feeling they have an equal right to define and deliberate upon whether the original intent has been maintained. The challenge, again, lies in persuading the people of the validity of their grievances. In this sense, the tactical retreat may be just that.
Where the Maoists can entrench their position is on the nationalist plank. Amid his fiery rhetoric and the fierce ridicule it has generated, it is easy to forget Dahal’s basic success. He is still around to criticize India and coddle the Chinese and confuse the Americans. Even if the Maoist supremo’s anti-Indianism were in reality New Delhi-inspired drivel, its putrefaction has long exceeded the tolerance of even the most devious sponsor. As we all know, leaders have lost their lives and political careers for far less. To tout Dahal’s survival as success might seem tantamount to cravenness to some, but you cannot diminish its importance.
Without fighting their internal battles first, the major parties cannot hope to confront one other in ways necessary for a decisive breakthrough. To say so can no longer be dismissed as an extremist rant it once used to be. We know how compromises beget half-measures that sow the seeds of even greater conflicts.
Ordinarily, the recalibration of the external hand this episode has revealed would have been exciting news. But with so many fingers working in so many odd ways, things promise to become messier. How about figuring out whether what we see next time on the external horizon is really a clenched fist or a quintet of dexterous tender fingers?

What Would We Do Without Him?

2010-05-03T17:16:00.001-07:00

In Nepal’s triangular logjam, western powers have filled the space vacated by the monarchy four years ago. So it seems in the estimation of Narayan Man Bijukchhe. But what about that most vilified external hand? The leader of Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) has chosen to give the Indians a pass this time.
The Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML are feudal parties, Bijukchhe asserts. No surprises here. The Maoists are dividing the country in the name of caste, ethnicity and regionalism, and hence, do not qualify to be counted as communists. By pitting the two poles against each other, the western powers are pushing Nepal to perpetual failed status. With much of Washington, London and Brussels already in a muddle, they more than ever need lousier places to cheer them up.
In castigating the collective West, the spokesman for the toiling masses of Nepal has made this much clear. The folks in that hemisphere are incapable of changing their colors, regardless of the fact that the first black man in the White House is ideologically the reddest any American could ever hope to be.
Bijukchhe accuses UNMIN of conspiring against Nepal in much the same way the Maoists have. By playing up our divisions, the international merchants of peace get to settle down to business. Okay, but what do we do next? Never at a loss for creative solutions, Bijukchhe wants his onetime classmate, President Ram Baran Yadav, to impose presidential rule and extend the tenure of the constituent assembly.
Forget whether we could really hope to get a constitution that way. The key point to ponder is Bijukchhe’s reason for keeping mum on India this time. Distrust of our southern neighbor has remained the very essence of his being. In 1971, as a young radical, Bijukchhe broke away from Pushpa Lal Shrestha’s faction of the Communist Party after that organization supported India’s intervention in what was then East Pakistan. Bijukchhe also criticized Pushpa Lal’s enthusiasm for cooperation with the Nepali Congress and the failure of his party to condemn the Soviet Union as imperialist. As the Sino-Soviet split widened, Bijukchhe considered it prudent to tag himself onto the belligerent closer to home.
After the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990, and especially during the hung parliament of 1994-1999, Bijukchhe was a central figure in Operation Destabilization. His handful of MPs would make and break governments. But at least the NWPP leader had the honesty to concede that it was all part of Indian machinations. In the process, Bijukchhe perhaps saw some expiation in studiously avoiding power.
Considered close to King Gyanendra until the very end of the monarchy, Bijukchhe nevertheless remained an energetic face of the anti-palace opposition. A signatory to the 12-point agreement between the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists, he was the first leader not only to cast doubts on the wisdom of the enterprise but also the motive of the prime facilitator.
By seeking presidential rule backed by the army, it is easy to suspect whether the NWPP leader may have struck a tacit alliance with India. With a madhesi commoner as supreme commander, Bijukchhe probably thinks the generals can mount a genuine and popularly acceptable second national unification campaign. But Maila Baje has another take. Maybe the NWPP leader believes the Maoists are already doing a pretty good job of going after India. By taking on the West, Bijukchhe can still don his individualist image and keep his own ground.
Nepalese politics would be drabber without him, wouldn’t you say?

A Premier In His Prime

2010-04-26T15:46:00.001-07:00

For a man who came to office with an image as a consensus builder, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has surely evolved over the months. Or is he really stuck in the groove? In some ways, after all, Nepal still behaves like the leader of the opposition during much of the 1990-2002 phase of democracy, when the CPN-UML tried to decide who the ruling Nepali Congress should name premier.
Nepal announced the other day he would not resign until a consensus candidate emerged to succeed him – and, yes, that someone better not be named Pushpa Kamal Dahal. That sentiment was far from gracious, especially in view of the Maoist leader’s latest olive branch. At least Dahal promised to disband the Young Communist League in exchange for a return to Baluwatar. (The Maoist chairman, of course, seems to have realized that his promise to extend the term of the constituent assembly in exchange for the premiership has raised more cackles than confidence.)
But look at matters from Nepal’s vantage point. Having toiled so much for the high office, he could hardly be expected to let go so easily. And especially not in favor of Dahal. Forget that the Maoist leader is responsible for much of the current rancor for having foisted onto the constituent assembly a man voters had doubly denied direct access. But that was not the only way Dahal demeaned democracy. As if his failure to sack an army chief he so boisterously accused of insubordination was not bad enough, Dahal resigned the premiership last year without anyone having demanded he do so. And what kind of politician threatens to capture state power and then dangles all these goodies to wriggle in?
For Nepal, it is not about playing favorites between Dahal and Dr. Baburam Bhattarai. There are far too many claimants to his job. Deputy Prime Minister Sujata Koirala has dubbed her boss a failure and wants her Nepali Congress to form the next government. That is her way of saying how badly she wants the top job. Try convincing the Nepali Congress about her suitability, especially now that papa is not around to preach. That would set off Sher Bahadur Deuba, Ram Chandra Poudel and Sushil Koirala in another orgy over the order of precedence in the party.
Nepal’s other deputy, Madhesi Janadhikar Forum leader Bijay Kumar Gachhadar, has already projected himself as the next premier. He may have the traits and temperament, but can he rally the MJF, much less the nation, on this one? The three top jobs of the nation going to men from the eastern Terai would make even the most historically aggrieved among us to pause for a chuckle.
Within his own party, Nepal can continue pitting contenders against one another. Chairman Jhal Nath Khanal seems to want to choke on his words each time he attempts to open his mouth lately. Perennial malcontent Bam Dev Gautam, who seemed to relish the royalist tag in the bad old days, does not seem to mind being called a Maoist in all but name these days.
With all the political capital Defense Minister Bidya Bhandari has invested in the army, could she be counted out? Even if that meeting between leaders of the UML-allied Youth Force and the generals was merely a rumor, we know who the generals’ favorite comrades are. Let’s say K.P. Oli, with his external patronage and internal belligerence, emerges as the frontrunner. Can we really be sure he is healthier than Bhandari and hence in a better position not to fly out of the country for medical treatment/consultations?
The machine readable passport fiasco may have undermined Prime Minister Nepal’s standing down south. But what else can the Indians do if they still can’t quit sulking? And the Chinese? Somebody seems to have an answer. Consider this gem from the Zimbabwe Herald of April 20, 2010 in a story extolling Harare’s ties with Beijing: “Zimbabwe supports the One China Policy on Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Nepal.”

Freakishness Of Feeding Off The Dead

2010-04-19T19:07:00.000-07:00

Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s insistence that the tenure of the constituent assembly could be extended only by a government led by his party sounds pretty devious. But it still falls short of the duplicity of his deputy, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, who claimed a couple of weeks ago that the late Girija Prasad Koirala had concluded it was time for Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal to go.
The temptation to milk the dead has cut across party lines with particular sharpness in recent times. No sooner did we hear from a section of the Nepali Congress that Koirala had presided over a secret decision to extend the assembly than the CPN-UML made a formal decision in favor of such a move. Yet the more pertinent perplexity pertains to why Dahal would want to lead the government during these spooky times. (But, then, who really has figured out why he was so anxious to resign last year?)
Prime Minister Nepal should have been the first to jump for joy. In death, Koirala so easily evaded responsibility for his failure to lead the peace process to its logical conclusion. By letting the Maoists return to Singh Durbar, Nepal would have lived to fight another day.
But the decision is not the premier’s alone. The non-Maoist parties know that a cop-out is a luxury they can’t afford. Were the Maoists to take over and extend the constituent assembly, what’s to say that that would not amount to an extension in perpetuity? Leaders on the right and the left might yet find it easy to live without a permanent constitution. What scares them is prospect of being crammed into something akin to a People’s Consultative Assembly only to rubber-stamp Maoist decisions.
That trepidation has grown after Koirala’s death. Remember how the Maoists used to be ridiculed for contemplating capture of state power. Who in their right mind in the comity of nations would let such egregiousness stand in such a geopolitically sensitive region? Well, few people seem to be laughing now.
What else can the world do when it has run out of options? If the Americans could support the Taleban and the Khmer Rouge for a while, why should they be reticent about our far more elegantly malleable and ductile Maoists?
Recognition of a Maoist takeover of Nepal would not be an indictment of the international community’s cold pragmatism. It would amount to a repudiation of the other political parties and civil society that arrogated to itself the moral right to lead our leaders.
And the real nightmare of the non-Maoists? Dahal & Co. just might declare Koirala the father of the people’s republic. He’s not exactly in a position to decline, is he?

Nepali Congress: Relevance Inelegance

2010-04-12T04:13:00.000-07:00

The Nepali Congress’ struggle for relevance has become particularly heartrending in the aftermath of Girija Prasad Koirala’s death. Look at the seniormost leader the party affirmed the other day. Forget that Krishna Prasad Bhattarai advocates the restoration of the monarchy and the 1990 constitution. He isn’t even a member of the party.
Although the plunge into republicanism pushed the Nepali Congress toward oblivion, the party could maintain its preeminent position because of the stature of Koirala. A sizeable section of the lower-rung leadership was said to have opposed his abandoning the party’s traditional adherence to constitutional monarchy. They kept quiet perhaps out of recognition that Koirala’s main priority for the times – and the 12-point agreement’s principal premise – was to tether the Maoists to the peace process as tightly as possible.
India’s antipathy for King Gyanendra’s independence did not diminish the value it placed on the monarchy. Sikkimization and Bhutanization may have become policy prescriptions through audacious moves, but Nepalization assumed ad-hocism. Hence, the ‘baby king’ card. But Gyanendra Shah wasn’t about to acquiesce in the retention of a monarchy wherein others got to chose who sat on the throne. Instead, he chose to redefine the debate as whether the monarchy needed Nepal more or vice versa.
In the meantime, the Nepali Congress glimpsed the real reason for B.P. Koirala’s affinity for the monarchy: self-preservation. Republicanism has come in all hues on the left. With the UML increasingly taking on a centrist ground all but in name, the Nepali Congress’ turf is surely shrinking. Now, the party abhors the notion that republicanism in Nepal is somehow colored red. Nepali Congress leaders periodically like to remind us that members had introduced a formal resolution against kingship at the celebrated Bairganiya conference. But perceptions have overtaken facts here, just as they have on the issue of the constituent assembly.
As part of the 1950 Delhi Compromise, the Nepali Congress owned that commitment as much as the Ranas and the Shahs – and Jawaharlal Nehru – did. B.P. Koirala ceded the party’s longstanding demand for an assembly because he thought parliamentary elections had a better chance of institutionalizing democracy. Or he may have calculated how his party stood to gain that way. It was in the seventies that he recognized where his party’s principal challenge lay. The first time India pressured the NC exiles to stop their anti-palace insurgency, B.P. clearly saw China from behind his Sundarijal bars. The second insurgency fell flat on B.P.’s watch when he was forced to divert his meager resources to the campaign to liberate Bangladesh. National reconciliation germinated in B.P.’s mind long before his stifling incarceration during Indira Gandhi’s emergency.
Even as the past rings anew, the Nepali Congress cannot avoid an ideological resilience that is forward looking. Without doubt, the intrinsic value of democracy will resonate forever as an ideal. But an ideal, by definition, allows anyone to grasp it. In terms of sustenance, the practical past, too, is unreliable. The Nepali Congress can justifiably proclaim its centrality in our perpetual democratic struggle. But almost seven constitutions later, its role in our democratic malaise is apt to be questioned by more and more people. And that would allow other parties to articulate democracy in their own terms, as the Maoists have.
With democratic socialism having become almost a contradiction in terms, the Koirala brand name could still work some wonders for the Nepali Congress. Sujata Koirala probably has the best shot at wresting the dynastic mantle her father held high for two decades. But for what purpose, considering how, as the party’s leader in government, out of whack with the rest of us she has proved to be on that key symbol of new Nepal: machine readable passports?

Too Lame, Wouldn’t You Say?

2010-04-05T07:31:00.000-07:00

A former prime minister and a former foreign minister who share little else in common now clamor in unison that the Americans and the Indians eliminated King Birendra and most of his family. The only way that indictment could get louder is if the incumbent premier were to open his mouth in exactly the same way. (Which he might, should he be removed from office. He was, after all, the man who so vociferously demanded the massacre probe commission and then refused to serve on it.)
This is not quite the situation the country had expected after King Gyanendra vacated Narayanhity Palace. From the rhetoric blaring throughout his five-year reign, you would have thought the new leaders would haul him to the Tudhikhel pavilion, extract a full confession and drag him to Bhadrakali for you know what. But no. Not one leader has dared respond to the challenge newly assertive citizen Gyanendra Shah laid out during his valedictory speech from the palace.
So the story line changed. Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Chakra Prasad Bastola and the others who are now likely to speak believe King Birendra’s nationalism did him in. That the “foreign hand” could become handy for everyone in its own way was made amply clear early on when Dr. Baburam Bhattarai penned that imploration on not legitimizing the new kot parba. Dahal used the Birendra-the-nationalist wrap for, among other things, personal effect. Should he be silenced – even by a loony disgruntled cadre – his supposed patriotism should not.
In that sense, Bastola is in a different league. Although he later fell out with his illustrious in-law, his family loyalty seems to have persisted. After Girija Prasad Koirala’s death, he pushes the preposterous line that the then-premier was supposed to have attended what everyone knows had always been a strictly royal family affair. Moreover, Bastola expects us to forget that Birendra and Koirala were barely on speaking terms.
After the tragedy, Koirala often told us that the palace massacre was part of a ‘grand design’. But over the preceding months, the king and his premier had drifted far apart on a variety of national and international issues, including mobilizing the military against the Maoists, the bill granting millions of Indians citizenship and relations with China, to name a few.
Koirala had described the Hrithik Roshan riots as actually being an outburst of popular sentiment against the monarchy. Birendra had taken the unprecedented step of convening a cabinet meeting in the palace. And in the run-up to that fateful Friday, didn’t Koirala gush more than once at how he was finally about to feel like a truly popularly elected premier. If Bastola wanted to absolve Koirala of any role in the massacre – which seems to be his prime motive – he should have paid more attention to concocting a more believable story.
The Americans and Indians don’t seem terribly perturbed by these recent allegations. And why should they. The international left and the right has always castigated U.S. intelligence’s dirty tricks in Asia, Africa and Latin America knowing full well that the agencies concerned never respond to such allegations. As for the Indian intel guys and gals, they are no less impervious than their American counterparts. But they have an added reason for indifference. Dahal couldn’t have maintained his celebrated subterranean existence all those years without their assistance. Nor could Bastola have emerged as one of the central figures in the Forbesgunj hijacking and cashed it in politically for so long.

Of Day-Dreaming And Nightmares

2010-03-28T17:09:00.000-07:00

The interviewer captured the moment the best. Asking former king Gyanendra Shah how he felt to be living as a commoner, Suman Giri used the mundane tapai and brought considerable poignancy on the television screen. By Giri soon couldn’t help adding the hajur honorific.
Shah answered each question patiently and reflectively, almost weighing every word. The intonation and cadence were strikingly similar to his late brother’s and father’s. And it scared the wits out of the political class.
If the former monarch were daydreaming about the possibility of a restored crown, as the political class continues to claim, President Ram Baran Yadav, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and the entire pack down the line of wouldn’t have gone nuts. The nightmares before that interview must have been frightening.
Their collective castigation couldn’t obscure the wider message. The last king had no problem acknowledging how he had learned a lesson from his people. Ouch. The collective slap on the post-April 2006 political class was stinging. Leaders generally blame their defeat on rigged elections. They rarely see it as popular reprimand. And the Maoists? Well, the ex-king suggested that he found life in the jungle could be productive, too.
Shah underscored not only the interim nature of the current transformation but its entire premise. The politicians thought they could do a better job, so Shah left the palace. Those who denied the king his three years to complete his roadmap are about to enter the fifth of theirs. But look at the bravado. The president, who was saying the constitution didn’t envisage presidential rule, still asserts his duty to preserve the republic.
The political class is not the only ones shamed here. Remember the doctors, engineers, lawyers and journalists who believed they were far better than the politicians were? Since they led the leaders four springs ago, the change would be real. Yet today, Asia’s most humiliated man – as one civil society leader was impatient to claim Shah had become – shows not the slightest trace of mortification. The February 1, 2005 coup (yes the reporter used that word and Shah did not dispute it) turned out to be a mistake, but, in view of the preceding circumstances, appropriate. And our politicos thought they could evade their responsibility.
As the day of judgment looms, the dissonance is becoming starker. The politicians believe merely the constitution is at stake here. A deadline missed here or there might not have mattered much if the people could really believe in the class’s ability to deliver. The ex-king spoke of the need to clear misconceptions about the monarchy. Nepalese are already doing so about their collective identity. With Brahmins and Chhettris in agitation mode on the urgency of inclusiveness, unity in diversity has shed at least some of its pejorative ring.
There is still a long way to go. Indian guru Ram Dev emphatically asserted Buddha was born in Nepal at a time when an American television network was close to airing a documentary claiming the contrary. There was no Nepal or India in Buddha’s time. Does that give the Indians the right to claim what’s not theirs? No. But it certainly doesn’t stop the rest of the world from seeing the incongruence of Nepal being so selective in reclaiming its past.
What alarms the political class the most is the prospect this time of the international community rallying the other way. Our two giant neighbors are both worried by the deepening crisis but neither is in a position to intervene drastically. The international community – regardless of the UNMIN fiasco – has no appetite for an open-ended commitment that would make Afghanistan look like a picnic. When the world stood behind the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists, it was not interference but friendly interest, we were told. What would that amount to now?
In the end, Gyanendra Shah put his faith in the people. Let them decide what they want. During the constituent assembly elections, the parties crafted a republican agenda and won a resounding victory. All but four members, including the mild-mannered hard-line ex-pancha Lokendra Bahadur Chand, voted for the abolition of the monarchy. So why the controversy over the finality of that decision?
The flimsiness of that exercise was always apparent to the most ardent republicanism. The assembly elections were held in a climate in which the monarchists weren’t simply allowed to function. At least the Maoists would appreciate that, especially since one of their earliest complaints against the 1990 order related to how the Nepali Congress and UML were monopolizing the political center and edging out other voices. If republicanism were the true will of the people, then that would represent the end of the story.
If not, history will have been vindicated. Nothing shows that the April 2006 uprising was against the monarchy. Sure, millions took to the streets and raised slogans against the monarchy. But far too many millions stayed home for whatever reason. An adverse referendum verdict – on the monarchy, secularism, federalism – would allow the political class to admit failure. That shouldn’t be so hard, now that it didn’t seem so for the only person who supposedly could do no wrong.

How Yesterday Tells Of Tomorrow

2010-03-22T03:35:00.001-07:00

Four years after that spring of discontent propelled us into supposed newness, it’s becoming harder to ignore the fallacy of the entire premise. By dumping all our ills on the monarchy, did the people really expect to evade our responsibility for our being? The agents of change continue to wear brave faces. But they cannot conceal their utter bewilderment over where republicanism, federalism and do-what-ever-you-will-ism will land everyone. It’s harder when there’s no one else to blame, isn’t it?
Nepal’s emergence in its modern, unitary form was not a fluke of history. Before that, we were a confederation of confederations. Like people who ran petty principalities elsewhere in the world, ambitious and ruthless rulers sought unity for further conquest. When the ruler of one undistinguished state bequeathed a legacy of overrunning territory after territory in a web of ambitious, intrigue and bloodshed, his heirs confronted no less zealous votaries of empire on the north and south.
But, then, the king only sat atop courtiers, commanders and soldiers. Those who did the heavy lifting came from all backgrounds and classes. When they shed blood, no drop was redder than the other. The Brahmins so vilified for having monopolized the subsequent state structure were the ones who bore the brunt of exile and anguish. The equally reviled Chhettris lost their heads because treachery and loyalty was defined by the power equations of the moment. True, the vast majority of the people remained marginalized and continued to lead a life of toil and want. That reality cannot obscure the risks of death and disbarment proximity to power carried. Neither kings nor courtiers were spared the tumult. For good or ill, that’s how we got where we are.
One king’s determination to enthrone his offspring from a Mathil Brahmin widow he had wed destabilized the country. This is not to suggest that madhesis can somehow be held collectively and perpetually responsible. Nor can the hillsfolk. King Rana Bahadur Shah could not have done much without willful collaborators among his courtiers. Everyone was convulsed by the aftermath. The point here is not the abundance of blame to go around. It is merely that without any of its disparate groups, the Nepal of yore cannot be conceived. And without that past, there will be nothing to measure the newness of tomorrow. To put it differently, no one has a greater claim to Nepaliness than anyone else.
The Qing and the Company didn’t choose not to conquer Nepal because we were not worth it, as they have led us to believe. If that were the case, their successors wouldn’t still be fighting their own larger battles on our turf. Forget water, our location was always our greatest resource and will always be so. The opportunity will lie in grasping the context. The Licchavis and Mallas used that for commercial and cultural advantage in the past. King Mahendra employed it to internationalize our national identity and aspirations to far greater effect than in drawing assistance for basic infrastructure. Just because King Gyanendra happened to be the man who so vociferously emphasized the advantages Nepal stood to gain as a transit state doesn’t diminish the intrinsic worth of that enterprise. Was all that worth it? The debate will never end. Can we change it? Try on.
This blast from the past would have been irrelevant had reason found a place in the midst of our rage four years ago. After all, it takes a group like the Khmer Rouge whose ideological repulsiveness was matched by a collective ruthlessness to begin anew at Year Zero. Notwithstanding their successes in exposing our fissures, Nepal’s Maoists thrived on the contradictions of their rivals – a finite commodity once they get toward being the only ones around. Capture state power they might in the impending vacuum, but what will they do without the courage of their convictions, no matter how craven they might have been in the first place? Rants don’t resolve much.
It has been tempting these past four years to portray the loudest critics of change as those who stand to lose the most. But let’s stop pretending that those who stand to gain the most aren’t constantly consumed by doubts over whether change can be sustained geopolitically more than internally. History may be harsh but it is hard to undo. That is why the Indians can still seek the counsel of the ex-king or the Chinese can contemplate inviting him on a visit despite the fact that it was their representative who ended the practice of ambassadors’ presenting letters of credence at the palace while we still had the monarchy.
Even after elected representatives abolished the monarchy, the ex-king continues to focus on his national role. Ceremony was always part of the crown and that aspect of it could never go away as long as Nepalese held tight to their traditions. Politically, too, how many of us really refuse to take comfort in the realization that the king and the army are still around to pick up the pieces and clean up should all hell break loose faster?