Thapa himself hasn’t given a compelling reason for switching parties. His contention that the RPP, committed to the restoration of constitutional monarchy and Hindu statehood, was working against the popular mandate may be theoretically sound enough. Yet it is an insufficient explanation, given how politics is playing out. Even if we concede that republicanism and secularism (and its third cousin, federalism) were ever set in stone as a precondition to a new Nepal, public opinion has shifted sufficiently lately to undercut Thapa’s argument.
Thapa has also said he decided to join the Nepali Congress to confront the communist juggernaut. The entry of another republican into the party at a time when more and more Nepali Congress loyalists are counting the cost of their decision to dissociate from constitutional monarchy makes little sense.
Such realities, however, have not stopped both sides from bouncy back-slapping. Thapa said he felt a sense of homecoming in that his late father, former prime minister Surya Bahadur Thapa and founder of the RPP, was once a Nepali Congress functionary.
NC general secretary Shashank Koirala, too, was effusive in his praise. His late father, B.P. Koirala, Nepal’s first elected prime minister, would have wholeheartedly welcomed Surya Bahadur Thapa had he renounced the Panchayat system and joined the Nepali Congress, Shashank gushed.
Really? Discerning students of Nepali politics would be required to suspend disbelief here. When King Mahendra freed B.P. from prison in 1968, eight years after dismissing Nepal’s first elected government and abolishing multiparty democracy, a reconciliation process was under way between the two titans.
Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa, in collaboration with Indian Ambassador Raj Bahadur, moved swiftly to scuttle things. How well the elder Thapa succeeded has been put on the public record by B.P. and his intermediary and younger brother, Girija Prasad Koirala. Thapa contrived the fiction that King Mahendra actually intended to harm B.P. and relentlessly peddled it to the point where the Nepali Congress leader was spooked enough to exile himself in India and raise arms against the royal regime.
After that, Thapa’s political fortunes, too, plummeted. Shortly after King Birendra ascended to the throne in 1972, Thapa began campaigning against what he denounced as the ‘dyarchy’ of Narayanhity Palace and Singha Durbar. When the royal government threw him behind bars, Thapa went on a hunger strike that failed to intimidate the new king.
Finding himself in the political wilderness, Thapa once again turned to B.P., who had returned home from exile on a platform of national reconciliation. During the monarch’s extended tour of the eastern region, Thapa issued a statement demanding the death penalty for B.P. for treason. Instead, the palace permitted B.P. to travel to the United States for medical treatment.
Back as prime minister to oversee the 1980 referendum, in which a ‘reformed’ Panchayat won by a comfortable majority, Thapa continued to head the government. King Birendra had made a public pledge to respect the views of the minority, i.e., the multiparty camp.
B.P., the lone voice in the opposition who accepted what he called an ‘inexplicable’ but democratic verdict, sought a basic concession that would allow the Nepali Congress to contest the elections. Could the Panchayat bosses strike down the requirement that candidates should belong to one of the six class organizations? Thapa, mindful of the challenge this would pose to his politics, led the anti-B.P. charge here, too.
Even after all this, maybe B.P. would have exhibited his characteristic magnanimity and welcomed Surya Bahadur Thapa into the Nepali Congress. Still, it would be a stretch – if not outright slanderous – for Sunil Thapa to claim that his joining the party was akin to a homecoming.
