From The Archives: Geo-Politician Prachanda

Originally posted on Tuesday, August 22, 2006

In his latest avatar as geo-politician, Maoist supremo Prachanda claims India is trying hard to retain the monarchy. In the considered opinion of the supreme commander of the “People’s Liberation Army,” expressed in an interview with BBC Nepali Service, the Indian Army remains at the forefront of the campaign.
For a man who once boasted that his real war would be with the Indian men and women in uniform dispatched to prop up the “old regime,” this progression in thought has all the hallmarks of an honorable retreat.
For students of the triangulation school of thought in India’s Nepal policy -- such as yours truly -- the Maoist supremo was merely stressing the obvious. However, he used another BBC question to set the tone of the debate that is likely to evolve over the weeks and months. The Nepalese Maoists would support India’s attempt to get a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council if New Delhi reconsidered some of its policies toward its small neighbors.
Our erudite chairman continued: “[New Delhi] presently follows what is known as Nehru doctrine under which it seeks to intimidate, interfere, expand its influence and dictate its terms on its neighbors.”
If India reconsidered such a policy, then it would deserve a permanent seat in the Security Council. Now, Prachanda didn’t expound on how such a policy shift might overcome a Chinese veto. Or, even before that, receive Indonesia’s, Pakistan’s and other key Asian nations’ endorsement in the regional rounds. But, then, Prachanda was merely expressing his party’s opinion.
And no insignificant one, at that. This assertion would be the easiest one for the most fanatical of royalists – barring perhaps the religious right -- to agree with. (Any subtle overtures here, Comrade, on, say, secularism for ceremonialism?)
Rounding off the circle, our comrade in chief opined that U.S. pressure and India’s hard-line groups have emerged as the hurdle to Nepal’s independence. Something the Great Helmsman’s country would easily concur with regardless of who those hardliners actually are.
Asked about Nepal’s northern neighbor, Prachanda said China’s policy toward Nepal has traditionally been to back the king as a factor of stability. But the April Uprising against the monarchy may have forced China to reconsider that policy, he added. The operative word here may be “may”. Could a Maoist-palace alliance be in the works here? Not unlikely considering what else the rebel in chief had to say about China.
Urging India to concede the right to self-determination to Kashmiris and people in its northeastern states, he acknowledged the urgency of granting the same opportunity to Tibetans. “But we think that the autonomy that the Chinese government has given there is in accordance with the aspirations of the Tibetan people,” he added.
Asked about the strategic importance of the new Beijing-Lhasa railroad, Prachanda said Nepal and South Asia in general would stand to gain. But not before explaining how Nepal has had to rely on its southern neighbor because of the economy, open borders, transport and communication. “This has put us in a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis India which, instead, is in a position to take undue advantage [of us].”
Few might have expected Prachanda to praise Osama bin Laden. So he condemns Al Qaeda’s attacks on innocent people the world over under a blind religious garb as terrorist activities. But only to make his next point. “[I]t is the US which is a bigger terrorist than bin Laden in the sense that it was the US which created him during the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.”
In a rare deference to reality over rhetoric, Prachanda conceded that the Maoists were incapable of fighting the US. Then comes the olive branch. “It’s not that we do not want to have relations with the US once we go to power. All we want is to wage an ideological resistance against the US muscle-flexing in the world.” An unexpected resonance of Noam Chomsky and far-left fringe of the Democratic Party. (The Maoist supremo must be watching and listening to all those bin Laden and Zawahiri tapes.)
But when it comes to Nepal and Nepalis, Prachanda remains defiant. “There are more than a hundred countries which are smaller than us. It is not easy for the US to invade us, like it did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If India and China have such designs those would not succeed either, because forces capable of countering such designs have already emerged here.” Does his spirit have any less nationalistic ebullience than all those songs on Panchayat-era Radio Nepal?
Look at the ground Prachanda has prepared. He can claim he tried his best to republicanize Nepal but, as a true communist, can no longer ignore the objective realities of geopolitics and globalization. Those Nepalis who’ve always believed that the monarchy isn’t the problem would certainly not deny Prachanda that Marxist fig leaf.

Empowered And Imperiled

A group of reporters takes their woes to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and come out of the meeting all the more anxious. Collapse of this government, the former rebel-in-chief tells them, would be tantamount to the failure of the state.
Few Nepalis expected their first post-monarchy premier to sound like Louis XIV. But Dahal, too, lacked the bravado normally associated with such assertions over the ages. Our prime minister sounds genuinely worried about the fate of his government. And why shouldn’t he be?
The Nepali Congress has intensified its warning against creeping totalitarianism of the extreme leftist variety. Any working alliance with the Maoists is now limited to bringing out a popularly drafted constitution. The most strident criticism has come not from the Nepali Congress’ anti-communist wing but from friends like Dr. Shekhar Koirala.
Excoriated for having bent over backward to the Maoists during the first two years of the peace process, Koirala ostensibly has had enough. Now he warns the ex-rebels that Nepali Congress members in the constituent assembly would collectively resign once they get the first whiff of a people’s republic. How much of Dr. Koirala’s latest rants stem from the Maoists’ breach of their reported pledge to honor Uncle Girija as the country’s first president remains unknown. But Shekhar Da looks like a commander of a multi-pronged attack.
The main opposition party is asking Defense Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa ‘Badal’ to explain his assertion that President Ram Baran Yadav had cancelled his trip to China for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics under pressure from foreign powers. Now, if Badal meant the United States, he wouldn’t have hesitated to name names. Whatever he says or doesn’t say will reflect on his boss. The two major coalition partners are becoming more of subversives. (And we haven’t even touched upon the rivalries deepening within the erstwhile people’s warriors.)
The Unified Marxist Leninists’ K.P. Sharma Oli asserts that the Maoists would be wiped out in eight years. General Secretary Jhal Nath Khanal, although sounding less intimidating, has lowered the bar. He believes the UML would beat the Maoists in the next election. Ordinarily, the two UML men might have been hailed as statesmen, considering how far away that exercise seems. But eyeing the next generation before warming up to constitution making is a gross abdication of responsibility.
Khanal’s predecessor, Madhav Kumar Nepal, doubts Dahal’s patriotism after the premier chose to extend an olive branch to India moments after returning from China. Whatever the precise reasons the Maoists reneged on their pledge to support Nepal as their presidential candidate, the former general secretary at least could blame his defeat in both constituencies in last April’s elections. By inducting fellow loser Bam Dev Gautam in the cabinet as his No.2, Dahal has added double insult to Nepal’s injury. Gautam has now become the only UML leader to serve twice as deputy premier, a distinction he will use to bolster his politics well into the future.
Madhesi Janadhikar Forum chief and Foreign Minister Upendra Yadav has asked his cadres to go after the Young Communist League. Nothing like the Gaur carnage is about to ensue. But Yadav has synthesized domestic and diplomatic pressure on the Maoists. By blowing hot and cold on India’s exact responsibility for the Koshi disaster, Yadav has already put Dahal on the defensive before his Delhi visit. Reports of a second prime ministerial visit to China can be of little use here until the state media announces the itinerary.
October may be a couple of weeks away, but the air is bound to acquire added chill when revolutionaries in power feel they are imperiled.

Freedom, Fluster And Fatalism

Viewed from a section of the south, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s northern sojourn was a damp squib. That the Maoists’, like their ideologically disparate forerunners in power, never intended to set off fireworks, was beside the point.
Beijing, according to the dominant Indian media storyline, did not shower financial largesse on Dahal suggestive of a patron-client relationship. The trust deficit, therefore, must still be too wide. By alienating Delhi, Dahal only contributed to shortening his tenure as premier. The last conclusion stems locally, from analysts allied to the opposition Nepali Congress known to reflect Indian opinion.
Yet the sting still seems to burn in other parts of New Delhi. The Manmohan Singh government is anxious to welcome Dahal on his way to the United Nations General Assembly. Landing in New York City is not tantamount to visiting the United States, but the Indians don’t want to be downgraded another notch.
Dahal, upon return, immediately went on damage-control mode. He said he would make his first political visit to India. Why this sudden surge of obsequiousness? Did the Chinese really cold-shoulder him?
There’s probably a very basic explanation. Dahal must have had ample time during his shadowy subterranean existence – before the People’s War, if not during it – to study the range of India’s capabilities in Nepal.
Shortly after his election as our first democratically elected premier in 1959, B.P. Koirala had rebutted his Indian counterpart’s suggestion that Nepal fell within India’s security perimeter. In response, Jawaharlal Nehru yielded to B.P.’s assertion of Nepali sovereignty. But he chose to make public the letters exchanged with the 1950 treaty. Mohan Shamsher Rana, the Nepali signatory, could afford to laugh off the time lag; history had ensured an irredeemable reputation for his clan.
B.P., on the other hand, wasn’t going to be beholden to the Ranas eight years after their ouster. Certainly not when he was building bridges to Israel, one of Nehru’s favorite whipping boys.
B.P.’s assertion was bold, but it would mark the beginning of his travails. After eight years’ imprisonment in Sundarijal, B.P. went into exile in India to discover that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who had almost become nanny to his daughter Chetana during his official visit as premier, couldn’t schedule a mutually convenient meeting for quite long.
A pattern of sorts emerged. In 1971, the Nepali Congress’ arsenal for the second insurrection against the palace had to be redirected to Bangladesh. Amid the 1975 emergency in India, B.P. somehow concluded that Sundarijal had been more comfortable. (At least he could gauge the mood of the royal regime by the quality of the cheese it offered each day.) Clearly, he died ruing the capacity for greatness his Indian friends had squandered in Nepal.
Yet B.P. was lucky. Few can decouple UML leader Madan Bhandari’s death in 1993 from his fierce opposition to the Tanakpur accord. Marx had enough space to live a life of influence in Nepal. He didn’t have to hobnob with the commies in West Bengal in an effort to paint Bihar and Uttar Pradesh red.
It’s hard to miss the connection between the Narayanhity carnage eight years later and King Birendra’s refusal to sign that controversial citizenship bill. The struggle between the palace and Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala over the precise number of the treaties to be signed during Chinese premier Zhu Rongji’s visit might seem like a footnote today. Could it be any coincidence that the ones that weren’t would have had integrated Nepal’s economy closer to the north, leaving it less vulnerable to political manipulations from the south?
That ex-king Gyanendra owes his commoner’s status to his effort to bring China into SAARC as an observer is well known. Until then, efforts by one section of the Indian establishment to create a Maoist-mainstream alliance against the palace were being ridiculed by the other end. Honestly, how many of us haven’t wondered whether the last king could have avoided a fate worse than his brother’s were it not for the dimness of the potentially expedient line of succession?
Clearly, Prime Minister Dahal took a great risk by boarding that flight to China. His subsequent clarifications should not substantially diminish its importance. It would be safe to say that his personal well-being is now intertwined with Nepal’s.

The Snub Of The Story

So this is what it has come down to. King Gyanendra infuriates India by easing China’s entry into the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and is eventually overthrown. The Maoists, whom the Indians used to empower their listless lackeys in the mainstream, do bring down the royal regime. China, which armed the royal regime against rebels who they claimed tarnished the memory of the Great Helmsman, ends up embracing the Maoists.
The Maoists go on to win the largest number of seats in the elections carefully choreographed in New Delhi. The Indian Maoists see the outcome as vindication of their continued armed struggle. New Delhi tries to foist another lackey onto the presidency, this time through the Maoists. But Ramraja Prasad Singh is routed by Ram Baran Yadav, whose Nepali Congress scuttles at the 11th-hour the Maoists’ alliance with the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum’s Upendra Yadav.
The Maoists feign outrage and refuse to form the government. They relent, but set preconditions that deepen the deadlock. Interim prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala gets to attend the SAARC summit, but jawbones about his parleys with the Indian leadership as a way of keeping the job. The Maoists use Upendra Yadav’s men and women as a buffer against the Unified Marxist-Leninists (UML), still smarting from the ex-rebels’ refusal to back former general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal as president.
The UML seeks the army’s help to checkmate the Maoists. But the generals remind general secretary Jhal Nath Khanal that it was not for lack of will that the royal regime failed to crush the rebels. The Indians pressure President Yadav from cancelling his visit to China, but the Beijing Olympics open without a glitch. Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal becomes prime minister. UML ministers refuse to take the oath because Bam Dev Gautam is not designated No.2 in the cabinet. Gautam, who lost the election, is portrayed as just another power-hungry pol, which suits the UML’s Jhal Nath Khanal, Madhav Kumar Nepal and K.P. Sharma Oli just fine.
The Koshi floods spark a rivalry between the heads of state and government in an anti-Indian frenzy. Prime Minister Dahal, for his part, prepares for his first address to the nation. He paraphrases paragraphs from compendiums of King Mahendra’s speeches and flies to Beijing to attend the closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games. By the time he lands in the Chinese capital, Dahal’s trip acquires all the trappings of an official visit.
The Indians feel the stinging slap. But they can’t figure out whether it really came from Dahal. After all, he owed his life and limbs to the anonymity Delhi’s outskirts had provided for so long. So the whack also smacks of Beijing’s drive to contain India from joining the U.S.-led containment of China.
Then Foreign Minister Upendra Yadav defends Dahal’s visit as part of an effort to restore balance in Nepal’s relations vis-à-vis its two giant neighbors. He doesn’t stop there. Yadav warns foreign ambassadors not to expect a free rein under the new government, a day after Indian ambassador Rakesh Sood is a no-show at the prime minister’s departure ceremony.
By this time, the Nepali Congress leader enjoying the closest ties with the Maoists, Shekhar Koirala, has warned of withdrawing his party’s representatives from the constituent assembly if Dahal & Co. veered toward totalitarianism. Rastriya Prajatantra Party (Nepal) leaders irked by chairman Kamal Thapa’s late-blooming bonhomie with the Maoists break away to return to the mother party.
Both factions attend the birthday bash for former queen mother Ratna, who still lives in Narayanhity Palace, at the former crown prince’s residence while the owner is away. The celebrations turns into an intense political conclave at a time when former king Gyanendra was supposed to be writing his memoirs at what is still officially Nagarjun palace.
Before Prime Minister Dahal can draft that eviction order, the former king is said to have made up his mind to settle in Him Shail, the Tahachal residence he inherited from his childless late uncle Himalaya and aunt Princep. Suddenly, for the rumor mill, the ex-monarch’s graceful exit has turned into a strategy for a grand comeback.
Come to think of it, the former king never insisted on that referendum he had obliquely pushed during that conversation with Japanese reporters. Prime Minister Dahal, for his part, has not revised his public assertion as rebel-in-chief that the Maoists would accept a Panchayat-style monarchy if the people so desired. Is there some connection here? Just curious.

Real Change In The Works

The principal political forces have struck a balance – or at least a semblance of it – in our post-monarchy state structure. The Nepali Congress has the presidency, while the Maoists control the premiership. The Unified Marxist Leninists (UML) hold the constituent assembly, while the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) controls the vice-presidency.
How factional dynamics within these parties play out remains the key imponderable. And the spotlight falls squarely on the Nepali Congress. Sher Bahadur Deuba suddenly jumped into the ring after Ram Chandra Poudel was touted as the token challenger to Pushpa Kamal Dahal for the top executive job. Why did a three-time premier agree to such a conspicuous losing proposition? 
Was this the outcome of last-minute confabulations among diplomats from countries traditionally influential in Nepal? Or did it stem from Deuba’s desire to live up to his given name in front of the man he once called brave? Or to reinforce the message that, come what may, he is the pretender to the premiership?
How long will the Nepali Congress deign to stay in the opposition? The UML’s populist Nine S’s program instantly goaded the party into alliance with the royalists. Although royalty has departed, sections of the Nepali Congress-friendly media have reached out to ex-royalist Prakash Chandra Lohani of the Rastriya Janashakti Party to endorse their view that the Dahal government cannot, by any definition, be considered consensus driven.
The Maoists would love to know what the Nepali Congress is really up to, but their own house remains messy. When Dr. Baburam Bhattarai issued that hard-hitting statement defending his nationalist credentials, it became clear that the former rebels have much more than residual resentment from the purge of 2005. 
Dahal, for his part, has resigned as chief of the People’s Liberation Army to become the entire nation’s premier. The analogy may not hold, but our new premier, under protection of the state army, must find himself counting Pervez Musharraf’s travails once he shed the uniform in Pakistan.
The UML remains the wild card, especially since it has four former deputy premiers constantly itching for the top job? Khadga Prasad Oli and Bam Dev Gautam may be tugging the party in opposite directions, but general secretary Jhal Nath Khanal has other ambitious comrades to worry about.
The MJF is an amalgam of rightists, leftists and centrists that ran old Nepal. In a party that still calls itself a forum, members are perhaps at greater liberty to ventilate their disagreements without having to own up ideologically relevant consequences. Yet the fault lines in the MJF appear more debilitating to the nation.
Despite such murky portents, the state can no longer postpone the process of writing the new constitution. Madhav Kumar Nepal, the former chief of the UML, and Bishwanath, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, seem to be the leading contenders to head the drafting panel. 
You could question the choice, since both were the principal architects of the doomed 1990 constitution. In a spirit of conciliation, however, you could also argue that these men desire to set things right this time. Upadhyaya, in particular, can be expected to exhibit more seriousness on the issues of language and ethnicity he had summarily dismissed during the 1990 drafting process.
The process is not going to be pretty. Those seeking inclusion in state structures have already sharpened their swords. What about those resisting exclusion? It would be a mistake to laugh off the recent call for an alliance between Bahun-Chhettris and Rana-Shahs. In the battle for survival, history offers a sobering lesson. It’s not how the Ranas and Shahs joined hands after the 1950 change. It’s how the Gorkha Parishad, supposedly the party of the Ranas, joined hands with the Nepali Congress after the royal takeover a decade later. As for the priestly caste, the kumai and purbia bahuns could finally settle their scores, now that we no longer have royal preceptors. Where do jaisis and khatris fit in all this?
Hindi, as Vice-President Parmananda Jha recently stated, could end up as an official language in the constitution. Could Urdu be a less credible candidate, considering the prominence of our Muslim minority? (Going by Indian media reports on the mushrooming of madrassas along the border, Arabic could be an equally potent contender, though.)
Still, real change may be in the works. During our last brush with democracy, all three elected assemblies died a premature death at the hands of ambitious prime ministers. Considering the strenuousness of its task, this one could get extensions ad infinitum. New Nepal, indeed.