Indian Defence Review

Any dispassionate analysis of the current situation in Nepal will deal with some uncomfortable questions. It seems that the Indian government has not dealt with these questions properly. By “facilitating” the virtual Maoist-take-over of the Himalayan country, New Delhi has committed what could be, in course of time, a monumental strategic blunder.

All told, Nepal is essentially a “Hindu country” and for majority of God-fearing Nepalese the King is the “Living Vishnu”, the supreme God of the Hindus. They may not approve of the absolutist rule of the King, but that does not mean that they will accept the personal humiliation of the King by taking away even ceremonial role, something the present political arrangement is indulging in with fan and fare. The Institution of the monarchy or “King” has always been an important pillar in Nepalese society and polity. That is precisely the reason why countries such as India, the US, Britain and China had hitherto talked about the monarchy as an “important pillar” of Nepal. In fact, India and the US, while opposing the royal take-over, had always emphasised on the importance of Nepal remaining a “constitutional monarchy”. Therefore, it is really perplexing how India is now reconciled to the Maoists’ insistence on a “Republican system”.

Secondly, with the King, the principal contradiction (to use the Maoists phrase) no longer the rallying point between the Nepali Congress and the Leftists, including the Maoists in the new interim Parliament, it remains to be seen how coherently this interim parliament and the interim government that will now have a Maoist deputy prime minister, is going to function and make preparations for the elections to the proposed constituent assembly. In the 330-member house, besides the 83 Maoist legislators, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) that is also in the Koirala government has 83 MPs. Five other smaller left parties together have 16 more members. Thus against Nepali Congress’s 85 members, the Left, overall, has 182 MPS. In other words, the interim Parliament is predominantly Left-oriented and that will have its impact on the Koirala’s government. Therefore, in Nepal now we have a Prime Minister whose decisions will not necessarily reflect his or his Nepali Congress’ views. How far this sort of alliance will lend to the stability of Nepal will always remain a question mark. One is not sure whether there will be a new “contradiction” between the Leftists on the one hand and the Nepali Congress, which represents liberal views in Nepal, on the other.

As it is, a senior Maoist central leader, Dina Nath Sharma, has been on record that there is a move now among all Left parties represented in the interim parliament to form a common front. He also said the CPN (Maoist) would lead the alliance. It is an open secret that the supreme leader of the Maoists, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known as Prachanda, wants to be the President, the elected head, of Nepal. That is why despite the Left’s overwhelming majority in the interim Parliament, he allowed Koirala to continue as the Prime Minister.

But do Prachanda and his Maoists, represent the majority in Nepal? Let it be noted that the Maoists had performed disastrously in the parliamentary elections in early 1990s, winning just a couple of seats. It was after this that they decided to shun the democratic path and opt for the so-called revolutionary or violent path to capture power in 1996. All these years, the Maoists have used threats, extortion and killings to get their way. They have killed poor, innocent people and those who have criticised their top leaders. Their war has encouraged and spread a culture of intimidation and violence. Prachanda and others have defended these tactics, arguing that during war such incidents do occur and that they regret mistakes.

However, the biggest question that remains unanswered is whether or not Prachanda and his Maoist followers have renounced violence forever in favour of multiparty democracy. Of late, Prachanda has said in various interviews that he is prepared to have peaceful competition with other political parties. But what happens if in this peaceful competition Prachanda loses? Is he prepared to sit in opposition benches as is normal in a democracy? There are no clear answers to these questions. All told, one should not forget that the Maoists still have their army and arms, which, at the moment, are in barracks and under UN supervision. And that has been made possible because Koirala as the prime Minister agreed to Parachanda’s precondition that the Nepal Army, that is, the legitimate armed forces of a sovereign country, will also remain in barracks under UN supervision. All this is a temporary arrangement. What will finally happen to the Maoists Army if Prachanda sits in opposition?

In any case, before the present arrangement was agreed upon, Prachanda was of the view that “the [people’s war] would not be discarded until the final construction of Communism” and that Nepal could be used “as a base area of world revolution, internationalist in content and national in form.” It may be pointed out here that the Nepalese publication ” The Kathmandu Post” in its issue of September 20, 2006, carried some details of the resolutions of the Fourth Conference of CCOMPOSA (Coordination Committee of Maoists Parties and Organisations of South Asia) held recently in August 2006 at an undisclosed location. These give the impression that the Maoists in Nepal, contrary to what they claim as having renounced people’s war and go for competitive democracy, would continue to deepen and extend their links with the Maoists of the region and work for the seizure of power by armed force.

The CPN (M)- Prachanda-led Maoists- which attended the CCMPOSA, along with eight other Maoist outfits of South Asia, was a party to the following decisions:

All this has risen to natural apprehensions that Prachanda may be following the typical Maoist path – during the second world war, Mao Tse-Tung joined the so-called United Front with the Chinese nationalists led by Chiang Kai-Shek; but once the war ended and the Japanese were defeated, he fought and drove away the nationalists to Taiwan. Now that the King has been literally overthrown, the democrats of Nepal could well be Prachanda’s next targets.

As it is, the present arrangement between the seven party-alliance and the Maoists and the consequent interim constitution do not reflect the aspirations of all the Nepalese. Besides, critics have pointed out major flaws in the interim constitution. For instance, through gerrymandering, it gives disproportionately high representation to certain regions of the state while denying the people living in the Terai Region, derogatorily referred to as ‘Madheshis’, their rightful share in governance. They are believed to constitute more than fifty per cent of the population of Nepal. If true representative elections were to be held in Nepal, these Madheshis would surely hold the levers of power. However, whereas the hill constituencies with hardly six to eight thousand voters send one representative to the Parliament, almost seventy to eighty thousand voters elect one representative in the Terai region.

Administratively present day Nepal is divided into 75 districts. Out of these 55 districts are hilly and snow clad, and despite being larger in size, are sparsely populated. The northern border of many of these districts have borders Tibet. The 20 Southern districts have common borders with West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal in India. The mother tongue of the sons of the soil in these 20 districts is Maithili, Bhojpuri, Avdhi, and other dialects of Hindi, but they interact with each other in Hindi and have Hindi as their common language of communication. These people not only speak Hindi but are also culturally and ethnically closest to India. And this is something that has not gone well with the dominant political elites of Nepal, including the Maoists. Policy makers in Nepal and India must not lose sight of imperatives of geopolitics. While the main threat that Maoists held was the siege or capture of capital Kathmandu, the Madhesis can economically strangulate Nepal as most of the supply arteries from India passes through the Terai region. Geographically, the other neighbour of Nepal, China, is ill-placed to be an effective alternative. Incidentally, the Maoists have relatively lesser influence in the Terai region; they are more powerful in the hilly countryside. As a result, there are organisations like Madheshi People’s Right Forum and (MPRF) and Janatantrik Terai Mukti Morcha, which are not happy with the “flawed” interim constitution. They have regularly organised “bandhs” and paralysed the normal life as a matter of protest. They demand genuine devolution of power and rights to preserve their language and culture. How, then, the Leftist-dominated Nepalese polity, which obviously does not like Terai region’s special affinity with India, will reconcile with these demands is going to be a major challenge as far as peace and stability in Nepal is concerned.

This brings, finally, the question of the India-factor. The relationship between India and Nepal is always unique, given the fact that the two share an open border. And this border has been used by anti-India elements to access India. India’s concerns arise from the fact that eastern Nepal which borders the narrow sensitive Siliguri corridor connecting the entire north-east to the rest of India, is being used by Pakistan’s ISI to sponsor insurgency in the north-east and transfer small arms and contraband. In other parts of India too, it is reported that the large quantities of weapons and ammunition seized, including RDX, have been traced to the Nepalese route. Secondly, and this we have already noted, the Maoists of Nepal have always had close relations with their counterparts in India, particularly the dangerous Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in Bihar and the People’s War Group (PWG) in Andhra Pradesh. With the twin forces of the ISI and Maoists, who now rule the country, in its territory, Nepal will attract all the more attention in India now onwards.

Prachanda, of course, is thanking India these days for its positive role in legitimising the Maoists in Nepal. But, will he reciprocate? Given the above-mentioned resolution of the Fourth Conference of CCOMPOSA, that is doubtful. Besides, Prachanda’s recent statements that “the Kashmiri people should also get their right of self determination – the right to decide their fate and this applies to the people of north-east India” (though he made it clear that self determination does not exactly mean separation) and that “Nepal should maintain equidistance from India and China” – something that would defy history – are certainly food for thought for India.