By Sanjay Upadhya
May 21, 2007
Contrary to all outward appearances of ambivalence, the Nepali Congress appears to have cemented the centrality of the monarchy to its identity. Each new reiteration by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala of the inevitability of a republic has encouraged some of his closest associates in the party to articulate the crown’s continued relevance with greater clarity.
This affinity, to be sure, does not stem from an underlying affection. Shared class characteristics, as the Maoists like to point out, may be responsible to some degree. If anything, political pragmatism is the prime compulsion for the Nepali Congress.
The precise details of the April 24, 2006 compromise between the Seven-Party Alliance and King Gyanendra – if there was one in the first place – remain under wraps. For Prime Minister Koirala, seizing that middle ground between the monarchy and the Maoists became the first order of business. By playing off the palace and the Maoists against each other, Koirala succeeded in bringing the former rebels into government.
In formalizing the postponement of the constituent assembly elections after roping in the Maoists, Koirala exhibited, more than anything else, his vaunted party-building skills. Maoist chief Prachanda saw where things were headed. Sensing a trap, key associates began to feel they might be better off staying out power. In retrospect, the feverish bargaining over rank and portfolios right up to Koirala’s departure for the SAARC summit in New Delhi provided a convenient cover for all the protagonists.
Prachanda has been making obligatory allegations of betrayal to fortify his flank within. The Maoist chief understands how perilous the peace front of his “people’s war” can be. Despite all the other good things his Young Communist League is doing, the bad ones are hogging the headlines. For the country, it no longer matters how deep the internal split in the Maoists really runs. The nationalism and revolutionary planks in their platform have decayed the fastest.
In the legacy-building stage of his political career, Prime Minister Koirala may have grasped Nepal’s broader options. Vignettes from his previous stints in power must be swirling around him. Facing massive street protests against the Tanakpur accord in 1992-94, Koirala certainly did not relish those pleas by some normally sympathetic Indians for New Delhi to distance itself from the man. The escalation of the Maoist insurgency, the political instability preceding the Narayanhity Massacre and the wider convulsions it created must have encouraged deeper introspection.
After King Gyanendra took over full executive powers in October 2002, Koirala and the Nepali Congress, like much of the mainstream, were at the nadir of their popularity. While other leaders geared up for the looming collision with the palace, Koirala considered his own vulnerabilities. When the palace-appointed government purportedly agreed with Maoist negotiators to limit the army to a five kilometer radius of the barracks, Koirala became the first leader to criticize this infringement of state sovereignty.
That statement became part of a wider dynamic that ultimately shut the door on a palace-Maoist deal that would have bypassed the parties. The bonus Koirala sought – and may have succeeded in getting – lay in plugging that vulnerable hole Tanakpur exposed.
Last year, when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh welcomed him to New Delhi as a South Asian statesman, Koirala must have found it hard to suppress that chuckle inside. For someone who had a hard time scheduling meetings with then-premier Atal Behari Vajpayee during the early years of the anti-palace movement, this was quite a leap – and illusory.
Koirala was too close to his illustrious brother not to have experienced the exasperation B.P. Koirala felt in the late 1960s before abandoning efforts to renew relations with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. During the eight years B.P. was imprisoned at Sundarijal, time had not stood still.
B.P.’s subsequent years in exile must have occasioned ample review of his brief tenure as Nepal’s first elected premier. When Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru declared in parliament in November 1959 that any external aggression on Nepal and Bhutan would be treated as an aggression on India, B.P. felt compelled to respond.
Speaking in the Nepali legislature, Koirala said he took Nehru’s statement as an expression of friendship, but added that Nepal, being a fully sovereign and independent nation, decided its external and home policies without ever referring to any external authority.
Over a week later, Nehru affirmed he agreed entirely with Koirala’s interpretation, but not without disclosing the secret letters that had been exchanged with the 1950 Treaty. Of course, B.P. did not have the benefit of hindsight to see how his battle with the palace would only set the stage for a larger phenomenon that would marginalize the Nepali Congress for three decades. If B.P. considered exile in Sarnath a lot like Sundarijal, who could have understood this better than his youngest brother.
In his current tenure, Prime Minister Koirala has become a changed man. He is an ardent champion of China’s entry into the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation as a full member. The prime minister appeared unconstrained in seeking the new Chinese ambassador’s help on ensuring smooth petroleum supplies as the Indian Oil Corporation began tinkering with the taps.
In the cryptic maneuverings that pass for Nepali politics, these moves may be devoid of real substance. Yet coming from Koirala, the symbolism becomes starker. It was not too long ago, after all, that he flew straight into New Delhi from talks in China, left alone to battle the diplomatic fallout. Unlike B.P. Koirala, age has made this prime minister less susceptible to external “penalties” for flaunting his independence. This allows him greater leeway to build his legacy.
The logical question here is whether Koirala can impose his views on a party that largely considers itself the principal victim of the palace. Koirala is the Nepali Congress. Those who broke away under Sher Bahadur Deuba in mid-2002 had an opportunity to prove otherwise. The country recognizes how far anti-Koirala-ism has worked. For most of the younger Koiralas competing for the family mantle, the monarchy remains a pivot. Party members who disagree are most welcome to find another tent.
This brings us to another area where the Koiralas have proved particularly adroit. By allowing the communist factions monopolize the so-called “progressive/left” banner, the Nepali Congress can blur the distinction between the Unified Marxist Leninists and the Maoists, especially in those crucial western eyes.
When the Maoists relentlessly blame international power centers for conspiring to retain the monarchy, the Nepali Congress can afford to nod in affirmation and sit back. Prachanda and Co., by their own logic, have a long way to go toward establishing the scope and structures of republicanism as a viable alternative. Prime Minister Koirala, meanwhile, can continue uttering those obligatory republican sentiments.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Behind The Bombast And Bluster
By Sanjay Upadhya
May 2, 2007
For an organization that has flourished on ambiguity, obfuscation and even prevarication, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist’s latest internal commotions could be yet another subterfuge. Still, it is becoming difficult to view media reports on the ex-rebels’ growing disenchantment with India in isolation from their increasing assaults on Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, their determination consolidate the fiefdoms ministries they control have become, and their newfound eagerness to forge a broader republican front on the left.
Forest Minister Matrika Prasad Yadav’s altercation with Prime Minister Koirala on the military and the projectiles hurled at Peace and Reconstruction Minister Ram Chandra Poudel at the main mass meeting marking the first anniversary of the collapse of King Gyanendra’s regime, among other things, may not be entirely unrelated events. Some mid-ranking Maoist leaders have started reminding the country that Koirala holds the record of having had the greatest numbers of effigies burned. The peace process may not be in danger. But it will not become more tranquil or methodical.
Today’s Maoists barely resemble the group that declared war on the state 11 years ago with a manifesto top heavy with grievances against India. Indeed, Prachanda and Dr. Baburam Bhattarai were already articulating the urgency of toning down their anti-Indian rhetoric at the Lucknow talks with UML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal in 2003. Whatever the truth behind the Prachanda-Dr. Bhattarai split that came to the fore in mid-2005, the events leading up to the 12-point agreement with Seven Party Alliance in New Delhi underscored the centrality of India in the Maoists’ internal deliberations.
With enough sophistication, Prachanda’s very public turnaround in New Delhi could have helped the peace process. For a brief moment, it looked like the Maoists were actually capable of creating that vital mixture of nationalism and democracy Nepali politics has been oscillating between. The moment Prachanda felt compelled to criticize Pakistan in order to woo India, he forced many Nepalis into that awful disposition between laughter and lament.
Clearly, India’s immediate goal in securing the 12-point accord was to tame the palace, as evidenced by New Delhi’s enthusiastic albeit premature welcoming of King Gyanendra’s first address to the nation. Prachanda and Dr. Bhattarai could not have been oblivious to New Delhi’s larger objective: the mainstreaming of the Maoists as a national security imperative. By subduing the inspirational fount of the Naxalites, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would be more comfortable in confronting what he has called greatest internal security threat since independence.
India’s duality on the Maoists has survived the royal regime. The security establishment, which was more amenable to engagement with King Gyanendra’s government, continues to uncover the Nepali ex-rebels’ purported wider links to terrorism. The political establishment, excluding the Hindu nationalist flank, is busy assuring Indians and the rest of the world that Nepal’s Maoists have little more than ideological ties with the Naxalites.
When the Maoists rail against India’s “trap”, they obviously have the former group in mind. But blaming Indian Hindu extremists and royalists for instigating madhesis, janjatis and other groups that still feel disenfranchised cannot help much. The amplification over the past year of traditional grievances the Maoists claimed to have articulated has questioned the premise of the “people’s war.” Prachanda’s frivolities have only reinforced the siege.
Prachanda’s purported retort at a recent central committee meeting that C.P. Gajurel and Mohan Baidya would still be languishing in Indian prisons without his overtures to India sounded pragmatic. The problem is, Baidya was among those criticizing the party supremo’s policy. If today’s Maoists are the same group of ideologically disciplined people credited with mounting the world’s most successful post-communist revolutionary movement, could they be expected to correct this drift? If so, in which ways? How would the Maoists’ sustained effort to build ties with China in light of Beijing’s policy of pragmatism fit into this drive? More importantly, how would New Delhi respond?
For the moment, the disgruntled Maoists have made renewed calls for unity between nationalist and democratic forces against Indian designs. In the past, that slogan allowed the Maoists to veer closer to the palace. What does “nationalist” imply in the republican context beyond the broader leftist front?
The Nepali Congress seems have grasped the implications of that question. The party continues to remind the Maoists of their undertaking to allow the first sitting of the constituent assembly to decide the fate of the monarch less out of scrupulous adherence to existing agreements than political pragmatism. It is hard to miss the murmurs within the Nepali Congress suggesting that the palace may actually constitute a lesser threat to democracy than the Maoists.
For now, though, the bombast and bluster over the wisdom of declaring a republic from the interim parliament, government and streets provides a convenient cover for all.
May 2, 2007
For an organization that has flourished on ambiguity, obfuscation and even prevarication, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist’s latest internal commotions could be yet another subterfuge. Still, it is becoming difficult to view media reports on the ex-rebels’ growing disenchantment with India in isolation from their increasing assaults on Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, their determination consolidate the fiefdoms ministries they control have become, and their newfound eagerness to forge a broader republican front on the left.
Forest Minister Matrika Prasad Yadav’s altercation with Prime Minister Koirala on the military and the projectiles hurled at Peace and Reconstruction Minister Ram Chandra Poudel at the main mass meeting marking the first anniversary of the collapse of King Gyanendra’s regime, among other things, may not be entirely unrelated events. Some mid-ranking Maoist leaders have started reminding the country that Koirala holds the record of having had the greatest numbers of effigies burned. The peace process may not be in danger. But it will not become more tranquil or methodical.
Today’s Maoists barely resemble the group that declared war on the state 11 years ago with a manifesto top heavy with grievances against India. Indeed, Prachanda and Dr. Baburam Bhattarai were already articulating the urgency of toning down their anti-Indian rhetoric at the Lucknow talks with UML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal in 2003. Whatever the truth behind the Prachanda-Dr. Bhattarai split that came to the fore in mid-2005, the events leading up to the 12-point agreement with Seven Party Alliance in New Delhi underscored the centrality of India in the Maoists’ internal deliberations.
With enough sophistication, Prachanda’s very public turnaround in New Delhi could have helped the peace process. For a brief moment, it looked like the Maoists were actually capable of creating that vital mixture of nationalism and democracy Nepali politics has been oscillating between. The moment Prachanda felt compelled to criticize Pakistan in order to woo India, he forced many Nepalis into that awful disposition between laughter and lament.
Clearly, India’s immediate goal in securing the 12-point accord was to tame the palace, as evidenced by New Delhi’s enthusiastic albeit premature welcoming of King Gyanendra’s first address to the nation. Prachanda and Dr. Bhattarai could not have been oblivious to New Delhi’s larger objective: the mainstreaming of the Maoists as a national security imperative. By subduing the inspirational fount of the Naxalites, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would be more comfortable in confronting what he has called greatest internal security threat since independence.
India’s duality on the Maoists has survived the royal regime. The security establishment, which was more amenable to engagement with King Gyanendra’s government, continues to uncover the Nepali ex-rebels’ purported wider links to terrorism. The political establishment, excluding the Hindu nationalist flank, is busy assuring Indians and the rest of the world that Nepal’s Maoists have little more than ideological ties with the Naxalites.
When the Maoists rail against India’s “trap”, they obviously have the former group in mind. But blaming Indian Hindu extremists and royalists for instigating madhesis, janjatis and other groups that still feel disenfranchised cannot help much. The amplification over the past year of traditional grievances the Maoists claimed to have articulated has questioned the premise of the “people’s war.” Prachanda’s frivolities have only reinforced the siege.
Prachanda’s purported retort at a recent central committee meeting that C.P. Gajurel and Mohan Baidya would still be languishing in Indian prisons without his overtures to India sounded pragmatic. The problem is, Baidya was among those criticizing the party supremo’s policy. If today’s Maoists are the same group of ideologically disciplined people credited with mounting the world’s most successful post-communist revolutionary movement, could they be expected to correct this drift? If so, in which ways? How would the Maoists’ sustained effort to build ties with China in light of Beijing’s policy of pragmatism fit into this drive? More importantly, how would New Delhi respond?
For the moment, the disgruntled Maoists have made renewed calls for unity between nationalist and democratic forces against Indian designs. In the past, that slogan allowed the Maoists to veer closer to the palace. What does “nationalist” imply in the republican context beyond the broader leftist front?
The Nepali Congress seems have grasped the implications of that question. The party continues to remind the Maoists of their undertaking to allow the first sitting of the constituent assembly to decide the fate of the monarch less out of scrupulous adherence to existing agreements than political pragmatism. It is hard to miss the murmurs within the Nepali Congress suggesting that the palace may actually constitute a lesser threat to democracy than the Maoists.
For now, though, the bombast and bluster over the wisdom of declaring a republic from the interim parliament, government and streets provides a convenient cover for all.
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