When I Met The RAW Chief

Denial being the general disposition of the fortnight, yours truly initially didn’t want to broach the subject. But the scattered pieces made a compelling chronicle – a reverie of sorts, if you will.
When Samant Kumar Goel walked into the room hand extended, he evoked little that was, so to speak, spooky.  Wavy hair parted at the extreme, whitening faster at the temples, he could pass for your average mid-level Indian Embassy bureaucrat. Not someone whom our trembling political class would so assiduously deny having met.
After the customary preliminaries, Goel’s smile persisted, exposing a gap between his two top frontal teeth that served to underscore the space between his public and personal personas.
An expert on Pakistan, Goel was reputed to have planned the airstrike on Balakot in Pakistan in response to the Pulwama terror attack in India February. Although the international media was skeptical of the extent of the damage the Indian Air Force inflicted on terrorist infrastructure run by Jaish-e-Mohammed, the strike did help Prime Minister Narendra Modi win massive re-election months later.
The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) is generally led by China or Pakistan experts, often in turns. China now having replaced Pakistan as India’s primary concern in Nepal, wasn’t Goel’s arrival so early in his tenure a bit incongruent? Unless it was part of micromanaging post-2006 Nepali politics?
“Is there really a distinction between Beijing’s and Islamabad’s footprints in Nepal, considering that they march to the same tune everywhere else?” Goel asked.
That general question was enough to suggest that his mission was aimed at our domestic affairs. Better steer the conversation toward the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Nepal.

MB: “What percentage of your time, money and energy is spent on Nepal?”

SKG: “Yeah, like we wake up each morning to figure out how better to subjugate Nepal.”

MB: “Well it does seem that way, considering the plots of your recent Bollywood spy thrillers.”

SKG: “Let’s not get distracted by images.”

MB: “No, really. Wasn’t it RAW’s long-held position that a monarchical Nepal was an inherent threat to India and that you finally won out through the Shyam Saran dimension of the Karan-Saran roadshow?”

SKG: “All that maneuvering between those two royal proclamations, having come to naught. Shyam Saran did persuade us that the Chinese would keep out of Nepal if we could pull off the Maoist-SPA 12 Point Accord.”

MB: “Then what? Prachanda and Baburam turned out to be as unreliable as the rest?”

SKG: “Worse than that. Prachanda rubbed it in at every opportunity. Even today, Baburam pontificates as if he has had no hand in it.”

MB: “Sikkim was a feather in your cap. The political class that replaced the chogyal has played its prescribed part well. How did Nepal turn out so differently?”

SKG: “That’s what baffles us. Just take one example. The official Nepali line after Pulwama was reprehensible, to say the least. It was almost designed to exonerate Pakistan. And all this after an attack on Indian soldiers masterminded by a guy who already humiliated us on that aircraft that took off from Kathmandu to park on that tarmac in Kandahar 20 years ago.”

MB: “Do you really think it was that bad. I mean, Nepal has independent relations with Pakistan. We can’t accuse them of something the way you do without evidence?”

SKG: “If it’s not Pakistan, then it’s China or the United States. What business do you have in a free and open Indo-Pacific when your foreign minister can’t even be honest with his own parliament about what he said and signed in Washington?”

MB: “So you think we’re doing all this on purpose? That there’s some visceral antipathy toward Indian rooted in the collective Nepali mindset that no politician can depart from? Not even those you have carefully nurtured?”

SKG: “It sure does seem like it, doesn’t it?”

MB: “OMG, has RAW finally concluded that an independent Nepal itself is threat to India?”

A smiley silence ensued eerily too long. I had more questions. Would India take over? Would the Chinese? Would they divvy us up? But, then, the gap between Goel’s teeth started expanding faster than my heart rate.
I woke up perspiring and petrified. A bad dream? Sure. But that doesn’t quite convey the haunting feeling that lingers on.

Flashback: The Guinea Pigs That Went To School

Even in exasperation, Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli excels at enlivening things.
“Attempts to make the country a guinea pig to experiment rights and make it a playground for elements with untoward objectives cannot be accepted,” he declared on Constitution Day. The phase of experimentation in Nepal was over, asserted Oli, with a proviso: “If anything is yet to be experimented here, they are models of speedy development.”
Implementing our new Constitution was not going to be easier than drawing it up. Still, we are in a ditch that is deeper than anyone could have determined. Obstacles – perceived and real – seem to emerge from every corner.
Of new Nepal’s three props, republicanism and secularism were going to be contentious. The monarchy and Hindu statehood never stood a fair chance in the political climate whipped up during and after People’s Movement II. Advocates of republicanism and secularism – domestic as well as external – knew they had to strike the proverbial iron when it was hot. Even in the heat of the moment, they had to sneak in such sweeping changes through the backdoor.
True, more than 90 percent of the elected assembly eventually endorsed the Constitution. But, then, this overwhelming support emanated from the only constituency that was allowed any consequential participation in the political process. Demonization and defamation were scarcely conducive to collective coolheadedness. The surprise, then, is that the constitution did not receive 100 percent endorsement.
The monarchy and Hindu statehood, to be sure, were not established as a political reality based on the popular vote. So it is disingenuous at one level to rue their departure without direct popular sanction. Still, a country that has practiced seven constitutions in 70 years also comprehends how everything eventually becomes political – in aspiration as well as appraisal.
It is confounding how precipitously the third peg – federalism – has fallen into disrepute. Oli’s present position and scope of participation in the past might have precluded him from greater candor. The occasion and venue of his remark have certainly amplified his message. Debating whether federalism was right for the country was useless, he said, stressing that leaders had to implement decisions that had been made.
The guinea pig analogy is vivid enough to encompass our times as well as those bygone. Counterfactuals are invariably entertaining. In this case, they may even be instructive. Take, for example, our 1950-51 revolution. With the benefit of Indian, British and American archival material, it would be fair to wonder whether King Tribhuvan would have been restored to the throne had British and American communication and forward-deployment abilities been able to compensate for India’s geographical advantage.
Conversely, had the British and Americans proceeded to act on the imperative that Nepal was vital to upholding their common interests in South Asia in the aftermath of the Raj, might the Indians have kept quiet? In the worst case, would the 1950 Treaty have receded into the irrelevance Nepal’s full incorporation into the Indian Union would have dictated?
History has a cold logic that engenders an abundance of ‘what ifs’ that looks backward and forward. Nepal has not lacked for a string of seemingly unrelated events in and around the neighborhood that have created fertile ground for experimentations of all sorts for those with the will and wherewithal.
As the Red Scare provoked the Free World to contrive an alternative that drew enough from tradition to preserve the present and pinpoint the future, the two communist behemoths weren’t sitting idly by either. If international communism could co-exist with the monarchy in Nepal, could those staid and stolid comrades be that all that bad?
Basic democracy, guided democracy, partyless democracy were all local variants of initiatives funded – if not entirely fashioned – by the leading democracies in search of a halfway house in a turbulent world. Stalin and Mao had their communes, we got our American-funded cooperatives. Such consideration makes it easier to comprehend the correlation between specific episodes of détente and those of liberalization of our Panchayat polity.
When the Berlin Wall came crashing down, things perforce took another turn. Amid the hubris of the ‘end of history’, democratization had to be pursued at all costs. Again, the imperative was to strike when the iron was hot. China after the Tiananmen Square massacre and a Russia smoldering in the wreckage of the Soviet Union provided a rare window of opportunity. If liberal democracy could succeed in places like Poland and Nepal, well, then, history could be deemed to have truly ended. Structural adjustment and macroeconomic stabilization were bold supplements. Except that the Fukuyamans failed to appreciate that the Russians and Chinese weren’t going lay low forever. Nor were the likes of RAW and ISI to lack new missions.
As the Maoists complemented the Marxist-Leninists in our communist contingent amid democracy’s discontents (while Poland’s comrades reincarnated themselves as the Democratic Left Alliance), new thinking was required. Could development and security be somehow integrated to the satisfaction of all? How about a separate Armed Police Force to maintain internal security? Might an integrated command of security forces work better? We tried those and more and ended up with a still unexplained massacre in the heavily fortified palace.
Long before King Gyanendra dismissed him the first time, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba ended up a helpless bystander as US Secretary of State Colin Powell proceeded to discuss Nepal’s needs directly with the monarch and the military chief. The global war on terror was as ambiguous as it was all encompassing. Defensive imperialism and enabling the state were ideas desperately in need of a laboratory.
When the axe did fall on Deuba, most influential foreign governments supported the palace. Our ground had lost none of its fertility. But, this time, external agents were more than willing to and capable of experimenting at cross purposes, and far beyond Nepal’s carrying capacity. No surprise, therefore, that Deuba’s second dismissal prompted such severe condemnation.
In view of those and subsequent developments, Oli perhaps want us to pause and ponder. If we want to keep contriving victimhood, manufacturing grievances and inventing new rights, we certainly won’t lack external patronage and pelf. We can still marvel at how a movement against autocratic monarchy ended up producing republicanism, secularism and federalism and where else it might take us. But at some point, we need to get real. We have what we have and must at least try to make it work.
As for guinea pigs, they have to be very fortunate to survive the experiments and live the aftermath. Human beings – and nations – need more fortitude.

Originally posted on September 23, 2018

Veggie Tales, Sliced And Diced

If things keep going this way, the government is likely to evoke more pity than fury from the people.
A matter that ordinarily might have been addressed administratively and diplomatically has prompted Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli to issue a rare public apology. Coming from the head of a tone-deaf government, that means a lot.
But perhaps not enough. Few Nepalis really believe that the Indians are deliberately sending poisoned fruits and vegetables into Nepali homes. The reality that the narrative has caught on so ferociously underscores the vulnerability of the government more than the vileness of the account.
Desperate to divert attention from its internal disarray, the main opposition Nepali Congress is compelled to test the limits of creativity. They are hurling everything at the government in the hope that something will stick. Tragically for the Oli government, much of the muck is starting to stick. Other critics – organized and otherwise – cannot afford not to jump in.
After successive bungles, Oli this time took the route of regret, which is revealing, to say the least. Maybe the Indian Embassy letter did not originally merit the prime minister’s attention. Carried away by his own eloquence amid the building momentum, Oli was perhaps too ebullient in denying the existence of such a missive. By the time it emerged that the said letter did exist, the crisis had ballooned enough to explode in the government’s face.
Still, you wonder why the real horror underlying these happenings remains hidden. If the Indians are poisoning us with the full complicity of a government we elected as the culmination of a New Delhi-charted course, why is our wrath so narrowly focused?
That’s the kind of question Industry Commerce and Supplies Minister Matrika Yadav and Minister of Communication and Information Technology Gokul Banskota are beginning to ask. Did the Nepali Congress supply organic fruits and vegetables Yadav wondered the other day, after steadfastly refusing to take the fall. Banskota was more extensive in pondering what the Nepali Congress might really be doing? Glorifying B.P. Koirala during the day and Comrade Biplav at night, perhaps?
Not that the Oli government doesn’t deserve what has been coming its way. The hype of the Unified Marxist-Leninists’ unity with the Maoists was a thinly veiled electoral ruse. Out of alternatives, Nepalis thought it just might work. After the factions did unite into the Nepal Communist Party (NCP), the two putative co-chairs couldn’t even christen the new organization right. With the abbreviation having become part of the formal party name, popular abhorrence was bound to overflow. (Moral: Don’t rub it in after taking us for a ride.)
With each passing day, the NCP’s fissures have only widened. In the beginning, the rivals acted as if nothing in the history of amalgamations was so solid. The narrative worked for a prime minister who was anxious to consolidate his power as well as for his rivals, who knew it would eventually hurt Oli the most. Factional allegiances are said to be shifting to the benefit of former Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, but the former Fierce One doesn’t look so sure.
In not so hushed tones, Oli’s other ‘strength’ is being talked about – his flexibility to mount a U-turn, should the situation so demand. Among today’s satraps, after all, the skinniness of his commitment to republicanism, secularism and federalism remains unsurpassed. Maybe collective national pity is what Oli is waiting for.

When The Person Is The Party

Even by his own standard of piercing ripostes, Baburam Bhattarai’s tweet responding to the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) co-chairs’ invitation to join the organization was in a class of its own.
Welcoming into the NCP a handful of functionaries disillusioned by Bhattarai’s decision to merge his Naya Shakti with the Federal Socialist Forum Nepal of Upendra Yadav to form the Samajbadi Party Nepal in May, NCP co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal was in a palpably magnanimous mood.
The former Maoist supremo urged senior comrades like Mohan Bikram Singh, Chitra Bahadur K.C., Narayan Man Bijukchhe, Mohan Baidya, Netra Bikram Chand to join the NCP in the interest of strengthening Nepal’s long-splintered communist movement.
K.C. and Bijukchhe rejected Dahal’s invitation, insisting they did not consider the NCP a communist party in terms of ideology, organization or behavior. Baidya, echoing those sentiments, went a step further. He invited Dahal to join his Communist Party of Nepal Revolutionary Maoist to rekindle the original cause.
In the case of Dr. Bhattarai, Dahal, among other things, said the former Maoist chief ideologue’s doctorate would be worthless outside communist environs. For reasons best known to himself, Dr. Bhattarai hasn’t wanted to elaborate too much on whether he still considers himself a communist. So Dahal’s remark was bound to irk. But that wasn’t probably the real trigger.
Dr. Bhattarai’s 1986 Ph.D. dissertation was later published as book titled ‘The Nature of Underdevelopment and Regional Structure of Nepal: A Marxist Analysis’. Dahal’s attempt to confine Bhattarai’s expertise within communism couldn’t go unanswered by someone intent on broadening the scope and appeal of Marxism in the modern political arena.
When Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli joined Dahal in entreating Bhattarai to join the NCP, the practical implications of their intent became clearer. “Why would a party with people like Dipak Manange need intellectuals, Dr. Bhattarai shot back?” (He didn’t forget to refer to the NCP as ‘Kamau-nist’, dismissing the organization as a money-making machine.) 
A lot of NCP loyalists must be cringing at much more than the cordiality with which Manange was welcomed into the NCP in Gandaki Province, considering bad PR already corroding the party. Chief Minister Prithvi Subba Gurung compared Manange to China’s Zhu De, a one-time warlord turned Chinese Communist Party luminary.
This incongruent combination of Maoism and mobsterism wasn’t something Dahal needed to confront now. Nor did Oli need a reminder of the thin line between communism and criminality in the public perception. But, then, Manange is a but a pawn in the broader factionalism in the party, a fact that has restrained the co-chairs.
Bhattarai didn’t need Dahal’s and Oli’s gratuitous offer, either. As the chairman of the federal council of the Samajbadi Party Nepal, he has become a leader of the ruling alliance. Moreover, the Samajbadi Party Nepal has outdone the NCP by giving its two leaders distinct designations, Upendra Yadav being named chairman of the central committee.
Whatever the causes and consequences of the Oli-Dahal wrangle, the fact remains that Bhattarai is a former prime minister who wouldn’t mind getting that job back. With Madhav Kumar Nepal, Jhal Nath Khanal along with Dahal, the NCP already has three ambitious ex-premiers. Bhattarai the person is his own party, which is perhaps what his tweet really meant to say.