Guttural Gasps Of Gloom

The real obstacle to political reconciliation in Nepal is becoming ever more visible in the incessant whining that passes for news and analyses in the Indian media these days.
By concocting a second “agreement” between the Seven-Party Alliance and Maoist rebels in New Delhi this month, the anti-monarchist wing of the Indian establishment had hoped to inflict a decisive blow on King Gyanendra’s regime.
For some reason, the joint statement embodying New Delhi’s message never materialized. It looks like the interlocutors on both sides still cannot fathom the breach that still divides them. In India, the search for the spoiler has zeroed in on the United States.
Despite the overall bonhomie in the aftermath of President George W. Bush’s visit earlier this month, the Indians remain infuriated by the firmness with which Washington has positioned itself against the SPA-Maoist alliance.
A report the other day on an Indian webzine, suggesting that Washington was about to lift its arms embargo on the Royal Nepalese Army, has been roundly denied by the American Embassy in New Delhi.
On the fact of it, the story was dubious; it relied purely on Indian officials who lacked the conviction to go on the record on such a sensitive issue. The American denial therefore may not deter further Indian conjectures.
Judging from official American pronouncements over the months, Washington might be more tolerant of the Maoists if they established their democratic credentials. For the Americans, that would mean a general and comprehensive disarmament before unqualified adherence to multiparty politics.
To be sure, the rebels have been making noises on the latter; on the former, they demand international supervision. Superficially, that stand can be read as an unwillingness to trust the royal regime. Deeper down, international supervision is a nice way of saying no, especially in view of China’s opposition to any direct external role in resolving Nepal’s conflict.
The Indians, too, would like to see the Maoists shun violence and join the political mainstream -- but for a different reason. The taming of the Nepalese Maoists would be an important component of any Indian strategy to quell the flames of ultra-leftist violence at home before it is too late.
New Delhi appeared to have made some headway by extracting an explicit pledge from Nepalese Maoist supremo Prachanda that his “People’s War” was confined to the kingdom.
By reaffirming Beijing’s traditional backing for the monarchy, while appealing for broader political reconciliation, Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan frustrated India’s designs. It is no accident that Indian newspapers have stepped up their defamation campaign against the monarchy, this time with a special focus on belittling Crown Prince Paras’ visit to Europe.
For some collective psychological reason, traceable perhaps to their humiliating defeat in the 1962 border war, the Indians don’t seem capable of looking straight into Chinese eyes to express displeasure. In this instance, too, they have reverted to the circuitous route Pakistan and the United States have provided.
So when U.S.-Indian relations are brought up, “natural allies” and “synergies” become buzzwords. When the United States is referred to in terms of Nepal’s conflict, the Indians bring up Washington’s darker shades through the adjectival forms of proper nouns like “Guantanamo Bay” and “Abu Ghraib.”
With Nepal struggling to break free from India’s stranglehold, the gasps and groans are becoming louder on the Indian side.

‘Gen. Grandson’ & Grandstanding

One can’t miss the profound irony when Pashupati Sumshere Jang Bahadur Rana and Surya Bahadur Thapa use almost the same language in lampooning the government. The two “royalist” leaders, bitter adversaries during the Panchayat decades, see Vice-Chairman Tulsi Giri and Home Minister Kamal Thapa as the principal threat to Nepal.
Rana, head of the rump Rastriya Prajatantra Party, has plenty of reasons to lambaste Home Minister Kamal Thapa. After all, Thapa, once appointed to the cabinet, broke away from the RPP with a sizable portion. The prerogatives and patronage of power might enable Thapa to lead his party to victory in the upcoming parliamentary polls. (Provided, of course, the mainstream parties scrupulously stick to their boycott pledge by not fielding any independent candidates.)
If the multiparty Panchayat system King Gyanendra’s critics say the palace is bent on introducing, who better than Kamal Thapa to be its official face. Dr. Giri offers another potent symbolism; he was the principal aide to King Mahendra when the palace introduced the non-party version of the polity.
What does all this have to say about Rana, though? As Marich Man Singh Shrestha and Navaraj Subedi might point out, it was men like Surya Bahadur Thapa and Rana who were the real enemies of the Panchayat system. The first masqueraded as the liberal face of the partyless system but in actuality advanced the agenda of a particular group of non-Nepalis. Rana, on the other hand, read the palace’s mind and joined the anti-Surya Bahadur Thapa bandwagon to reach power. In the end, Surya Bahadur Thapa and Rana joined hands to bring down the Panchayat system.
Surya Bahadur Thapa’s antecedents, loyalties and motives need not be recounted. Rana, however, merits greater scrutiny, not least because of his matrimonial ties to and financial interests in India. “Gen. Grandson,” as he is known, might have been running Nepal today as hereditary prime minister, had Indian Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru honored his pledges of support to Mohan Sumshere Rana. Pashupati-raja, the grandson of Mohan Sumshere, earned the title of general while he was still an embryo purely on account of biological and sociological interventions.
Despite the childhood scars inflicted by the death of his father, Gen. Bijay Sumshere Rana, Nepal’s ambassador to India, apparently by electrocution in his bathtub, Pashupati-raja went on to an illustrious academic career at Oxford. Back home, he helped bring out The Nepalese Perspective, the Panchayat system’s first serious attempt in English to influence local and foreign opinion.
Legend has it that Rana learned the Nepali alphabet after returning from Oxford. If that is true, one cannot but commend even more his mastery of the language. Rana went on to establish the Center for Development and Administration, one of early instruments the Panchayat used to draw Ph.D.s into the polity. As Education Minister during the 1979 student strikes, Rana was forced to resign.
Behind this sustained record of achievement, could there have been a murkier side? Something buried deep in the recesses of the mind that had to do with his failure to maintain the political lineage of his ancestors? Today, for all practical purposes, the Shahs and Ranas look one and the same. The finer distinctions have much to do with recent upheavals. The scions of Chandra Sumshere Rana – great grandfather of Pashupati-raja – do not consider with particular fondness the descendants of Juddha Sumshere Rana – the great grandfather of King Gyanendra. All because of issues relating to the social status of Juddha Sumshere’s mother in caste-conscious Nepal.
Having won all five adult-franchise-based elections Nepal has held, Pashupati-raja was on the road to winning the coveted premiership democratically. Instead, Juddha Sumshere’s ghost returned to mock him in the form of the palace’s February 1, 2005 takeover.
However, there is a more crucial strand to this story that remains hidden. Pashupati-raja is also the father of Devyani Rana, the woman we are told Crown Prince (King?) Dipendra was so madly in love with. The official version of the palace massacre of June 1, 2001 still maintains that Crown Prince Dipendra gunned down King Birendra and every other member of his family, together with half a dozen other royals, before committing suicide – all because Queen Aishwarya refused to let him marry Devyani.
Devyani Rana conveniently left Kathmandu, at a time of day/night when hardly any air traffic had been scheduled. She refused to depose before the investigation committee apart from conveying a few sobs. King Gyanendra and Crown Prince Paras continue to be the targets of rumor, hearsay and innuendo. But Devyani is free to fly into and out of Kathmandu at will largely unnoticed by the public.
Might Pashupati-raja have some interesting insights into that whole tragedy? At the very least, he could probably encourage a forthright account from daughter Devyani on what transpired during those frantic cellphone calls before Crown Prince Dipendra supposedly embarked on his murderous spree.
That he can accuse Dr. Tulsi Giri and Home Minister Kamal Thapa of posing a grave threat to Nepal certainly says much about the smoke-screen that passes for politics these days.

A Singular Comrade Singled Out?

The royal regime seems to hold a huge grudge against Madhav Kumar Nepal. Nepalis were expecting to see the perennial premier in waiting freed from house arrest. Instead the mainstream’s comrade in chief has been whisked away to an undisclosed location by the Armed Police Force that was guarding him.
Home Minister Kamal Thapa won’t let us in on anything more than that you-can’t-misuse-communication-equipment-while-under-house-arrest bit. Was Makune exchanging seditious emails with his brothers? Why is the royal regime according Makune this, shall we say, special treatment?
Undoubtedly, the man has an extraordinary record of accomplishment. He emerges almost out of nowhere to help write the new democratic constitution in 1990. Then his boss, Madan Bhandari – who himself emerges from obscurity to lead the then Marxist-Leninists – offers only critical support to the statute.
A couple of years later, Madan Bhandari, along with an associate, dies in a mysterious car accident. Makune, an indirectly chosen member of the upper house of the legislature, is catapulted to the top. Few expect him to last long amid the bevy of more formidable comrades.
Makune and his allies spew fire on the streets about exposing the conspiracy behind Bhandari’s death. The protests help him consolidate his hold on the party. Once in government, as deputy premier of a minority government, Makune forgets all about the Dasdhunga accident.
Moreover, instead of revising the Tanakpur water resources accord with India, which Bhandari had led a crusade against, Makune ends up widening the net by agreeing to the Mahakali Package.
Makune’s boss, Prime Minister Manmohan Adhikari, confides in close associates that he feels freer discussing important matters with Nepali Congress leaders than with his own “boys.”
Adhikari dies while campaigning for the UML. Following the elections, the party finds itself on the opposition benches. Makune feels no need to fill the UML chairman’s post, arguing that Adhikari was a special case.
He spearheads the Lauda Air corruption scandal against Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, until it emerges that the comrades are neck-deep in similar shady practices with China Southwest Airlines.
After the Narayanhity massacre, Makune advises King Gyanendra to form a high-power investigation committee to probe the tragedy. When the king does, he refuses to serve on the committee.
Having played his part in the ousting of Koirala, Makune not only hails Sher Bahadur Deuba’s rise; a few weeks later the UML takes out a procession in support of Deuba’s land-reform program.
He travels to Silguri for a secret meeting with Maoist supremo Prachanda, discovering that the leaders of almost all the mainstream communist factions have been invited. Prachanda later accuses him of divulging full details of those discussions to King Gyanendra. Makune responds by fully endorsing Deuba’s decision to mobilize the army against the rebels.
When time comes for extending the state of emergency, under which the army has been deployed, Makune wants concessions from Deuba. It’s couched in terms aimed at strengthening the supremacy of parliament over an assertive palace under King Gyanendra. Deuba feels the comrades want a permanent share in power through a national government.
Falling out with Koirala, following long-simmering rivalry, Deuba dissolves parliament. Koirala expels Deuba from the party. Makune welcomes the elections, saying the prime minister has full prerogative to call one.
Makune seeks to project an aura of political consistency, citing the UML’s opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision to restore the house dissolved by premier Adhikari in 1995. The real reason turns out to be his calculation that, in the midst of a divided Nepali Congress, the UML would win a majority.
When King Gyanendra fires Deuba on October 4, 2002 for his failure to hold the elections on time, the entire mainstream heaves a sigh of relief. Makune seemed the most enthused. Only when Lokendra Bahadur Chand becomes prime minister days later does the mainstream see a regressive palace.
The anti-palace campaign heats up. Makune promises to encircle Narayanhity with 100,000 people. Considering the UML’s organizational abilities, that was not a threat to be taken lightly. The U.S. State Department’s Christina Rocca lands in Kathmandu and meets Makune and other agitators. Suddenly the UML remembers the urgency of holding organizational elections in Janakpur.
Our wily Prachanda announces a ceasefire and begins peace talks with the palace-appointed government. Dr. Baburam Bhattarai is confident of leading a new coalition in power. If Krishna Prasad Bhattarai could do so in 1990, surely the Maoists have precedent on their side.
But Washington slaps the terrorist tag on the Maoists. The peace talks hit a roadblock. Chand’s days are numbered. Makune is the leading candidate to succeed him. Surya Bahadur Thapa, despite his troubled ties with Nirmal Niwas during the Panchayat years, freshly returned from a visit to India upstages Makune.
A war of words breaks out within the UML. Khadga Prasad Oli, who headed the dissidents at the Janakpur conference, is cozying up to the palace. Something big is about to happen in the UML.
Something does. Amar Lama, the driver of the land-cruiser in which Madan Bhandari and Jeev Raj Ashrit died, is about to make an explosive revelation. He is abducted and killed before he could get to the reporters.
The peace talks, which had been sputtering on, formally collapse. Surya Bahadur Thapa’s days seem numbered. But he seems to have some supernatural gift for survival.
Prachanda, meanwhile, is still on Makune’s mind. He heads to Lucknow for a meeting with the Maoists. Makune returns home saying Prachanda is willing to restart peace talks if they are held with an all-party government. A government informant is in the UML entourage. The only real news to emerge from the Lucknow talks: Dr. Baburam Bhattarai concedes that the Maoists can never come to power as long as they continue attacking India.
Dr. Bhattarai regains a fondness for his Jawahar Lal Nehru University days. Makune becomes our latter-day Dr. Keshar Jang Rayamajhi, the royal communist. Deuba already has been cast as Dr. Tulsi Giri. (Little did Nepalis know that the original men were not yet done on the political stage.)
Finally, months later, Surya Bahadur Thapa resigns. The mainstream alliance leaders can’t decide whether to meet King Gyanendra. When the leaders finally do, they cannot come up with a consensus candidate.
Makune reminds Koirala of the alliance’s earlier undertaking. The Nepali Congress chief says events have overtaken that commitment. Suspecting mischief, Makune decides to file a formal application with the palace secretariat. He goes to Koirala and the other leaders for their signature.
They smooth-talk him into filing the petition on his own behalf. Only later does Makune realize he has joined a long list of wackos and nut cases seeking the premiership. The country, meanwhile, is left without a government for almost a month.
An infuriated Makune ditches Koirala and Co. to back Deuba’s new coalition. With the reappointment of Deuba, he argues, the royal regression has been half corrected. He selects a safe contingent of ministers. The UML chief speaks from both sides of his mouth. His ministers are clueless about cabinet decisions.
The top palace nominee in the cabinet, Dr. Mohammed Mohsin, warns that the kingdom may soon enter a more authoritarian phase. Makune still can’t decide whether to remain in or leave the Deuba coalition.
King Gyanendra strikes on Feb.1, 2005. Makune is the last top leader to be freed from detention. He visits India like most of the other leaders. He sets himself apart, though, by using a forum there to blast the Chinese government for supporting the palace.
Back home he threatens to take members of the royal regime and the military to the International Criminal Court. He doesn’t bother to explain through which route because no one asks.
The political discourse becomes ambiguous. Loktantra replaces prajatantra as the Nepali equivalent of democracy. Then comes the term “total democracy.” Does this mean republicanism? Then the 12-point pact between the mainstream parties and the Maoists is unveiled.
Makune tries to take full credit for it. He argues that the accord was the outcome of a long process he had initiated with Prachanda in Silguri and Lucknow, among other places. Makune seemed to have rehabilitated himself among the Maoists. Could this singular record explain why the royal regime is singling him out?

Colorful Contortions

The contortions of Nepalese politics can often be traced to the colorfulness of some of its characters. Take Bamdev Gautam, for instance. A firebrand orator, he has that rare ability to go into vocal hibernation.
The one-time deputy general secretary of Nepal Communist Party (Unified Marxist-Leninist) is today one of the leading proponents of a closer alliance between the mainstream parties and Maoist rebels. Having evaded the royal government’s last crackdown, Gautam emerged in New Delhi to fine-tune last November’s 12-point pact between the Seven-Party Alliance and Maoists.
After the second memorandum of understanding was made public, Gautam has set for himself a higher goal. He insists that a joint appeal for peaceful protests from the eight parties, perhaps even a fresh rebel ceasefire, could come as early as next month. The final assault on the royal regime is imminent?
What makes Gautam so confident of the triumph of the bipolarization of Nepal’s three-way conflict? His personal contacts with the rebels, perhaps?
Gautam is best remembered for having catapulted Lokendra Bahadur Chand, who had 11 of the 19 MPs of the royalist Rastriya Prajatantra Party, to the premiership in 1997. He inaugurated the process that would fully and formally rehabilitate the ex-panchas.
As Chand’s deputy and home minister, Gautam had struck a tacit understanding with the Maoists, who were in the process of consolidating their hold of the hinterland. The rebels allowed the UML to sweep the local elections.
Gautam’s accomplishment fueled his political ambitions. He broke away from the UML, citing policy and procedural disputes that began with the controversial Mahakali River treaty with India. Gautam took with him a sizeable chunk of comrades to form the Marxist-Leninists and propped up Girija Prasad Koirala’s coalition government. He fell out with the grand old man and focused on rebuilding the party for the next elections. Except that he underestimated the motives and means of his erstwhile UML colleagues, who Koirala had reached out to. Not a single ML member was elected to parliament.
After the blame game subsided, Gautam did the best thing he could. He returned to the UML in the interest of communist unity. All those differences he had cited earlier, well, flowed away in the Mahakali.
After King Gyanendra dismissed the elected government of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on October 4, 2002, Gautam appeared ready to give the monarch the benefit of the doubt. As UML leaders stepped up criticism of the palace, Gautam preached moderation. Many saw him as a potential palace-appointed premier.
When UML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal ditched the agitating opposition alliance to join Deuba’s government, the top comrade blocked Gautam from leading the party contingent. The UML put up Bharat Mohan Adhikary for deputy premier. When King Gyanendra dismissed Deuba a second time and took over full control on February 1, 2005, appointing himself head of government, Bamdev was infuriated.
Months later, he became the first mainstream commie to travel to the Maoist heartland in western Nepal to strike a deal with the Maoists to inaugurate a democratic republic. The UML hadn’t fully reverted to republicanism yet. So Gautam came in for considerable criticism from his comrades. When the party finally concluded that the palace considered the UML more of a threat than the Maoists, Gautam stood vindicated. Among the most inveterate critics of India, Gautam is now explaining the wisdom of holding talks in New Delhi.
Maila Baje recalls an interview Nepal Television’s Bijay Kumar did with Gautam in 1997 after he cobbled together the Chand-led coalition. The pugnacious Kumar asked the deputy premier whether he had ever expected to reach that post. The question kind of stung Gautam. He told Kumar that he expected to become premier the moment he saw, from the audience gallery in the Rastriya Panchayat, the prime minister answer members’ questions.
The sharp Kumar caught Gautam right there. Entry into the unicameral legislature was restricted to bearers of official passes or individuals sanctioned by members. As someone who was on the run from the partyless regime’s administration, how did Gautam manage to get into the chamber? We’re still waiting for the answer.

Conflicts In Cusecs

With India, China and the United States now separately pressing the urgency of political reconciliation to pull Nepal back from the precipice, Maila Baje thought he could finally exhale some exhilaration. Barely half a lung went into motion when an Indian newspaper headline beckoned: “Future conflicts might revolve around water.”
For someone who grew up knowing how water has been more of a curse to the kingdom, an apocryphal vision became inevitable. So one read on. It was utter disappointment.
The headline was taken from the tail-end of the third paragraph consisting of a single sentence attributed to a university professor. No background, context or perspective.
In Nepal’s national vocabulary, the word that almost always follows water is India.
Governments have been graded by the generosity with which they have surrendered Nepalese rivers to India.
The world’s largest democracy, for its part, was never interested in buying Nepal’s hydroelectricity. At least not for the exorbitant cost per unit.
In a sense, the Indians have a point. Power projects are costly in Nepal partly because of the topography. Toss in corruption and project delays arising from political posturing and costs can go skyrocketing.
Why pay World Bank-dictated prices when you can impose any price on that great vassal Bhutan?
To be sure, a little finesse might have brought in Indian investment with the attendant cost controls. Of course, getting the Indians to pay anything in such a scenario would be another challenge.
So geography continues dictate things. Liquid that could have fueled endless roaring turbines flow south with full freedom, leaving Nepalis with nothing to show for it. In their furious moments, Nepalis thought they could open the floodgates and inundate adjoining Indian states. In reality, it’s Nepali land that is submerged by the dams India regularly constructs.
Where matters seem a bit complicated, the Indians can cleverly use ruses. After parliament ratified the Mahakali Treaty in 1996, the then water resources minister exulted how the sun was going to rise from the west.
One comrade across the aisle suggested that Nepal could finally uplink all those megawatts to satellites and cater to the highest bidders.
The “Indian stooge” tag stuck on Girija Prasad Koirala and his Nepali Congress whereas the commies and royalists in parliament were more energetic backers of the Mahakali project.
The detailed project report was supposed to have been published within six months. A decade later, Nepalis haven’t received a trickle of information. Instead, they are enduring seven-hour blackouts a day and dry taps for most of the year.
Meanwhile, the hills of Uttar Pradesh state on the Nepal border became part of a separate Uttaranchal state. Inter-state rivalry provided New Delhi with the perfect excuse for inaction.
Nepal ended up virtually renouncing future claims to additional cusecs of water. For India, the ambitious river-linking project, conceived decades earlier, was ready for implementation.
To be fair, what might have happened if all our rivers flowed north? Get real, you might say. Amid such engineering feats as the rearranging of triple gorges, there is nothing that should stop our thirsty northern neighbors from prospecting our principal natural resource. The headline is scary, isn’t it?