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Title: Notes on Nepal Author: Red Marriott Date: 2013 Language: en Topics: Nepal, Maoism, Libcom.org, critique Source: Retrieved on 13th November 2021 from https://libcom.org/tags/nepal?page=1 Notes: Compilation of articles written for Libcom.org by Red Marriott between April 2006 and August 2013.
In-depth analysis of the situation in Nepal, including the
anti-monarchist protest movement, the Maoist insurgency, the
international economic background and the Nepalese working class.
Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world; most people have
never used a telephone, never mind a computer, the staple diet for most
of the country is ‘dhal batt’ — rice and/or lentils with maybe some veg
— every day, for life. The terrain is a mix of three altitude zones; the
Himalayan mountains — the so called ‘roof of the world’, their foothills
and valleys, and the southern plains with some rainforest. The Kathmandu
valley is the centre of administration, commerce and what industry there
is. The country is a mix of 70% Hindu and 20% Buddhist religions (Buddha
was born in Lumbini in the south), 4% Muslims who are clustered around
the border with India, plus a few more obscure sects. In the Kathmandu
valley a synthesis of Hinduism and Buddhism is practiced by the Newars,
while in the eastern and western hills, the oldest religious form,
Shamanism, still survives. 80% of the population work in agriculture, an
estimated 40% live in extreme poverty. Gross national income per head
stands at US $240, according to the World Bank. Illiteracy is very high,
though diminishing gradually; 35% of men, 70% of women.[1] The
industrial working class is clustered around the Kathmandu valley and a
few other urban areas; the unions claim several hundred thousand members
but the figures are questionable; membership fluctuates considerably due
to casualised employment and changing political loyalties. Many workers
are non-unionised.[2] There is a rigid caste system, but religion
doesn’t appear to be significant in party politics, apart from the
class/caste aspect. Slavery was officially abolished in the early
1900’s, though a form of neo-slavery continued well into the 1990’s in
some more remote rural areas; family debts were inherited by the
children and could never realistically be worked off as more debt was
added, so were passed on in turn to the next generation as a form of
indentured servitude. This is now outlawed, but indentured villagers are
still occasionally discovered and rescued from such slavery. Yet these
local archaic feudal remnants co-exist alongside a tourist industry that
provides internet cafes with global satellite connections.
The modern parliamentary system was established after a bloody democracy
movement in 1990, a reluctant concession from the King. As in recent
events, demonstrators defied curfews, were shot down, fought back —
bodies of headless cops could be seen in the streets. But it was a
popular multi-class struggle to establish democracy, and the conceding
of it stabilised things; but in those days the Maoists were not part of
the equation. The parliament has two main parties; the relatively
conservative Congress Party, and the Communist Party
(Marxist-Leninist)[3], which is, ironically(?), pro-China and
pro-parliamentary democracy. The larger part of the poor mainly vote for
the communists, but there is much cynicism about politicians and
bureaucrats in general. Corruption and bribery is a fact of everyday
life; and while the political class have enriched themselves, most
people’s standard of living has changed little since the emergence of
democracy in 1990.
Most of the Himalayan mountain range areas are only accessible on foot,
donkey or helicopter, so the State has always had a minimal presence
there. Subsistence farming, seasonal work migration and tourism are the
economic base of these areas. It is here that the ‘maobadi’ — Maoist
insurgents of the Nepalese ‘People’s Liberation Army’ — have established
themselves, in this ideal guerrilla terrain. 10 years ago they were a
small student-based grouping, little known in the country and always
dealt with heavily by the authorities (in 1997, when guerrilla activity
had barely started, 400 students were locked up for trying to attend a
party conference in a remote area). Like most so-called ‘3^(rd) World’
guerrilla groups (Mao, Zapatistas, Castro/Guevara, Shining Path etc),
they have their origins in a ‘cadre’ of university intelligentsia but
have gradually gained peasant support. This intelligentsia presumably
sees its options stifled by lack of economic development, due to an
incompetent, small and weak merchant class and a royal
family/aristocracy reluctant to abandon their divine right to rule. They
have a typical cadre mentality; communism equals sacrifice, hierarchy,
conquest of the state, industrialisation and cult-like obedience to
iconic political dogma and chief dogmatists.[4]
We are simply not well informed enough to give a definite answer as to
why the guerrilla movement emerged when it did and gained such support.
We can only speculate; that by 1996, there was disillusionment after 6
years of parliamentary democracy that had delivered little improvement
for the poor, whilst obviously enriching politicians and bureaucrats;
that joining the guerrilla army offered a sense of unity and adventure
to youth more appealing than the narrow horizons of a life of
subsistence farming in rural isolation. Escape from traditional cultural
restrictions for women may account for the high female involvement (one
third of guerrillas). Perhaps the shortage of available farming land was
a factor — Nepal is intensively farmed, with terraces cut out of every
available hillside, and the mountain terrain means only 20% of the land
is cultivable. There is also apparently a strong aspect of religious
fanaticism to the maobadi guerrilla culture; “Perhaps the most complex
aspect of Maoist morale strength to grasp, particularly for Westerners,
is the cult of sacrifice. Anne de Sales, in the European Bulletin of
Human Research (EBHR, v24), discusses this aspect in a way that
brilliantly conveys its strength and centrality as a motivating force
for Maoist fighters. In 1997, writing about preparations for launching
the ‘people’s war’, Prachanda noted that, “New definitions of life and
death were brought forward. The physical death for the sake of people
and revolution was accepted as the great revolutionary ideal for oneself
as it gave true meaning to life.”....
....This belief of what ‘death in action for the cause’ means is clearly
an extraordinarily powerful motivating force when facing extreme danger.
It must be fully integrated with the other factors contributing to
Maoist morale in any assessment of the likelihood of RNA success through
its current approach of simply killing as many Maoists as possible. For
the RNA, such a policy carries with it the clear danger of measuring
operational success and campaign progress by that most misleading of
yardsticks – the body count.” (Himal South Asian, 2006).
In the areas they hold the Maoists have instituted reforms and controls,
and have set up various organisations as parallel-state structures.
According to human rights groups and survivors, they have often enforced
a brutal and murderous discipline on the population in guerrilla-held
areas, including the abduction of children as soldiers into the army[5].
Drinking alcohol is allowed at their discretion, and villagers are
encouraged, sometimes forced or even abducted to attend political
meetings. The reforms, such as equality for women, would be more or less
‘advanced’ depending on local traditions; in some areas the mountain
women have long had a reputation for being more independent and self
assured. They are left alone to run things for long periods when the men
migrate for work. (Apart from the normal seasonal work migrations within
Nepal, many poorer Nepali men pay agents large amounts to secure jobs in
Saudi Arabia, as security guards, cleaners etc. They often stay for up
to 4–5 years, saving money, and sending some back to family. If they’re
lucky, they can return, build a house and be more likely to find a wife.
Another main form of migrant work is joining the Ghurka regiments —
thousands of youngsters apply every year — only a tiny proportion
accepted. Ghurkas (properly ‘Gorkhas’) were incorporated into the
British army after 12,000 trashed an attempted invading force of 30,000
British soldiers in the 1814 Nepal War.)
Tourism has recovered substantially from the initial decline after the
start of the guerrilla activity. In Maoist controlled areas the
guerrillas levy a tax on tourists — they realise this tolerant attitude
is both profitable and sensible so as to maintain the support of the
many poor who depend on tourism for a livelihood. The guerrillas were
smart enough to issue a statement of reassurance to tourists.
But the oft-quoted figure of 80% Maoist control of the territory is
perhaps not quite as impressive as it appears. The real centre of power
is the Katmandu valley, centre of government, industry and commerce. The
harsh remote mountain terrain may be militarily important, but hardly
economically. It is in the valley that any decisive battle will be
fought. But the Maoists have launched brief raids into the valley and
during the recent general strike kept it successfully blockaded.
In 1948 the British quit India; when China went ‘communist’ in 1949 the
new Indian government became concerned at the weakness of Nepal as a
buffer state. In 1950 the two countries agreed a ‘peace and friendship
treaty’ to consolidate their alliance, including a policy of ‘mutual
defence’; later that year China invaded Tibet, confirming in India’s
eyes their worst fears of the Communists’ intentions for the region.
Since then, Nepal has become a strategic buffer zone its two big brother
neighbours compete for influence over.
The Chinese government has pledged support towards the Nepalese
government’s move in curbing the Maoist insurgency. China terms them
only as ‘ultra-leftist guerrillas’, and certainly not truly Maoist,
unsurprisingly. It was reported last year that they sent 6 armoured
personnel carriers to the King to aid his fight against the ‘Maobadi’
insurgents. This was shortly after he dismissed the prime minister;
disapproving of this politically destabilising act, India then stopped
its military aid — which apparently prompted China to offer its own. The
acceptance of military aid from India is politically controversial[6] —
there is much hostility between some Indians and Nepalis (check out
recent internet blogs), rooted in a history of land border disputes that
continue on a small scale to the present, and Nepal’s general dependence
on its big brother neighbour. Mountainous as the northern territory is,
the southern border with India is necessarily Nepal’s lifeline. Nepal is
landlocked and dependent for import/export trade movement on the Indian
transport system, particularly the port of Calcutta. Nepal hardly even
has a rail system, only on a small scale on the southern plains. (So
expect few Mexican-type pics of insurgents hanging on the side of a
locomotive while holding rifle proudly aloft...) India has used this
dependence on several occasions to deny right of transit to Nepal as a
means of blockade and political leverage to influence Nepal’s internal
politics
Both the US and Indian interests have been eyeing up the prospects for
exploiting the great hydro-electric power potential of Nepal. The US
energy company Enron, before its spectacular collapse, was preparing to
begin work on a massive hydro-power project in Nepal. Enron’s financial
meltdown was a fortunate turn of events for the thousands of mainly poor
Nepalis who would have been displaced from their villages by this
project. (The damming and flooding would have been an ecological
disaster too.) For Indian capital, the harnessing of the inherent energy
of the Himalayan water system would be a convenient source of both
electricity and (as a by-product of the energy extraction process)
irrigation for agriculture.
James F Moriarty, US Ambassador to Nepal, expressed ruling class fears
for the stability of the region recently, stating that the Maoists in
Nepal “...also pose a threat to stability in larger parts of India”. In
July 2001, a regional Maoist organisation, with parties in five
countries, CCOMPOSA (Coordinating Committee of Maoist Parties and
Organizations in South Asia), was created[7]. According to The
Economist, 157 out of 593 districts in India are affected by some degree
of ‘Naxalism’ (Indian Maoist guerrilla activities). 102 of the effected
districts are newly affected areas of guerrilla expansion. The strongest
bases of Indian Maoism are in Bihar and Andra Pradesh. It is likely that
much of the recent diplomatic pressure put on the King by US and Indian
diplomats has been to point out that it is preferable to have the Maoist
leadership integrated into the parliamentary process than to have them
holding dual power in much of the country. How much difference this will
make in the long term depends on the ultimate political goals of the
Maoist leadership and what they are prepared to do achieve them.
If the Maoists were to seize power in Nepal — and the only choices
appear to be this or a major accommodation of them into the political
system — it would obviously displease both their neighbours, India and
China. There are many Tibetan refugees in Nepal who’ve escaped over the
border (though some were repatriated — to an uncertain fate? — recently,
at China’s request). China would be concerned that a Maoist victory next
door might encourage similar forms of struggle in Tibet or inspire a
more militant independence movement. India would also be concerned that
it would encourage the extension of peasant struggles there. A
repressive attitude towards a Maoist Nepal might be the one thing they
could agree on. It is possible it could inspire some form of struggle in
the rest of China — though the peasants and workers are in a quite
different situation there, in a fast developing economy rather than a
stagnant one. But there is a growing class antagonism in both the
rapidly expanding economies of China and India as the emerging new class
of entrepreneurial capitalists flaunt their enrichment at the expense of
the poor.
But if/when the King goes, the outcome may be less predictable than some
think. The Maoists have rethought their policy recently — their central
committee has concluded that the armed struggle is a dead end long term.
A decline in spectacular damaging attacks on the Royal Nepal Army, due
to foreign military aid making the RNA more effective and well
protected, and the declaration of the post 9/11 War on Terror, make the
Maoists more of a target for internationally-funded counter-insurgency.
This produced some demoralization in the ranks and some degeneration
into apolitical banditry. The Maoists could continue a skirmishing war
indefinitely but they are totally out gunned (a third of their weapons
are said to be 50 yr old rifles) and they have apparently acknowledged
“publicly that they cannot seize and hold anything in the face of RNA
action” — presumably the areas they do hold are seen as containment
areas by the RNA. They have also realised that India would not tolerate
an officially Maoist Nepal on its doorstep, nor would other global
powers be too impressed.
and in the streets
In November 2005, the Maoist leadership signed an agreement with the
pro-democracy alliance of 7 opposition parties (SPA) stating that they
favoured a democratic parliamentary system. Since then the opposition
parties have apparently co-ordinated their demonstrations and strikes so
as not to clash with insurgent actions.
The SPA called the general strike on Apr 6^(th). On the later
demonstrations in late April there were millions in the streets
nationwide, and reports of banks, government offices and police stations
being ransacked by roaming mobs. It’s possible the SPA democrats and the
King were afraid the opposition politicians were losing control of the
movement on the streets and wanted to re-establish their authority and
leadership. This and external US and Indian diplomatic pressure
influenced the King’s capitulation.
The demonstrators ignored the curfews imposed and made them
unenforceable nationwide by sheer weight of numbers. Despite beatings
and shootings by police and army, they appear to have become
increasingly confident and many are now openly calling for the
establishment of a Republic. This is extremely blasphemous in Nepal, the
last remaining Hindu Kingdom, as the King is officially considered to be
an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu.
If a Republic is eventually declared but the King refuses to budge,
(even in the face of international pressure ) there may be defections in
the lower ranks of the police and army, though the higher ranks of the
RNA are traditionally exclusively high-caste semi-feudal loyalists from
one family (the Ranas), closely interlinked with the Royals who appoint
all officers. The loyalty of the security forces would probably
determine whether there is an urban civil war or not. If it happens, the
Maoists could ride to victory on the back of the wider pro-democracy
movement and then choose between one party rule or parliamentary
democracy. But if they denied democracy this would presumably provoke
internal resistance and likely external intervention, and lead to a
continuation of civil war and/or a Maoist reign of terror. In a
post-revolutionary democratic parliament the Maoists would be sure of a
large slice of power, so it seems more likely they’ll go for the
democratic option. This may seem an unorthodox turnabout in classical
Maoist guerrilla terms, but not in terms of Nepalese politics. Every
major Nepalese political party has gone through an earlier period of
armed struggle, before being integrated into the mainstream political
arena. As things stand now, with the King giving in to the demands for
new elections, the Maoists have called a 3-month ceasefire and will be
standing candidates for parliament.
Political power growing out of the barrel of a gun? It is a leftist
illusion to see Maoism as outside or beyond bourgeois politics, in Nepal
or elsewhere. Maoism has always had a schematic theory of progressive
stages of revolution involving cross-class alliances with supposedly
‘progressive’ bourgeoisies in the conquest of state power. When the
Chinese CP took power, having won the civil war in, 1949, their official
line was that the ‘class struggle’ (supposedly incarnated in the
political advancement of the vanguard party and their victory over the
nationalists) was ‘the victory of the national bourgeois democratic
revolution’.
‘3^(rd) world’ armed leftism is typically a form of substitutionism for
the failings of a weak underdeveloped native bourgeoisie. Local
conditions restrict the modernising accumulating powers of this class,
both politically and economically. So the non-mercantile bourgeoisie —
the student intelligentsia with restricted options in a stagnant economy
— go to the peasantry, offering a unifying ideology based on peasant
aspirations and progressive conquest of state power. They increasingly
fulfil a statist role in guerrilla-held areas. Two Chinese anarchists
describe developments after the seizure of power there in 1949; “Having
won control of the state machine, the only way to move forward for the
Maoist bureaucracy was to impose a regime of ruthless exploitation and
austerity on the masses.
The bureaucracy began to carry out the task of primitive accumulation.
Because of the lack of capital-intensive industry, economic development
depended on the most primitive methods of extraction of surplus value:
in the countryside, mobilising millions of peasants and
semi-proletarians around the construction of public works and irrigation
projects, built almost bare-handed by the rural masses; in the cities,
forcing the workers to work long hours for extremely low wages, banning
strikes, putting restrictions on the choice of employment and so on.
The new bureaucratic capitalist class in China did not emerge because of
the development of new modes of production. It was on the contrary, the
bureaucracy which brought the new mode of production into existence. The
Chinese bureaucracy did not originate from the industrialisation of the
country. Industrialisation was the result of the bureaucracy’s accession
to power.” (Lee Yu See & Wu Che, Some Thoughts on the Chinese
Revolution; in ‘China — The Revolution is Dead — Long Live the
Revolution’, Black Rose Books, Montreal, 1977.)
The Maoists have now lifted their blockade on Kathmandu valley and are
calling for immediate elections to the constituent assembly. Their long
term strategy is likely to be defined by how well they do in these
elections. ’...during an interview on May 28, 2001, Prachanda admitted
that “the [people’s war] would not be discarded until the final
construction of Communism.” He confirmed, “Our talk of negotiation [with
the government] is a revolutionary tactic advanced in a conscious and
balanced manner after drawing lessons from the same negative experience
in Peru.”’ (frontpage.com). This statement from 2001 by the leader of
Nepal’s Maoists sounds uncompromising, but given the Maoist belief in
cross-class alliances with ‘progressive’ bourgeois factions and their
approaching participation in elections, there could be a pragmatic
change of the invariant political line to justify the start of a ‘Long
March through the institutions’ of bourgeois democracy. The leadership
may have already accepted that the one-party Chinese model of
development is simply unrealistic under present conditions in Nepal;
though they may still retain a desire for it, US and Indian objections
and interventions would seem to override this.
his head?
More than ever, the King’s days look numbered. If he refuses to stay out
of politics and eventually makes another attempt to assert sole power
over parliament, the level of repression and authoritarianism needed to
maintain his long-term rule now would be unlikely to be attractive to
anyone, possibly even his security forces.[8] And he has so enraged the
democratic parties and their popular support that a Republic is closer
than ever. The US and Indian governments have been distancing themselves
from the King. They would now see a continued royal presence with
internal unrest as a destabilising influence on the region. His own
court and civil servants may be losing faith in him; rumours circulated
that during the 3 week general strike and protests the government was
paralysed — the King’s puppet ministers more or less abandoned their
posts and left their secretaries to run things.
“Even though the king said in his proclamation that the present Council
of Ministers would continue to function until the new one is formed, the
ministers have already suspended operations. And the ministers are
caught in the middle of nowhere since they are presently unable to move
out of the government quarters. The general strike and the curfew
clamped in the capital have made it difficult for them to move to new
places ... Following the royal proclamation of April 21, the ministers
have lost whatever little political significance they had. Sources said
they have already stopped going to their offices.”
An old Sanskrit saying tells that “A king is only appreciated inside a
country — however, a wise person is appreciated all over the world.” The
present King could hardly claim either. The King’s capitulation to the
pro-democracy movement is for him really only a step back to the
beginning, a restoration of the parliament he dissolved last year. All
he’s achieved is contempt for his political incompetence from interested
parties — US India, China — and a much increased popular demand for a
republic. The politicians returning to parliament are the same ones that
Nepalis are generally cynical of after their 16 years of democratic
rule, in which time little has improved for the poor; but they are still
generally considered preferable to royal autocracy. On past form, the
King seems too stubborn to settle down into the role of symbolic head of
state. Members of the 7-party alliance are now openly calling for a
republic; if they push for this the King and his army may make one last
bloody stand, before exile beckons.
Events have a habit of repeating themselves in Nepalese politics — “the
first time as tragedy, the second time as farce” etc. Since 1950,
whenever faced with armed or other political opposition, the royal
autocracy have repeatedly promised democratic reform, before abandoning
the commitment with another wave of repression;
assembly elections in the 1950s
government in December 1960.
protests in 1990.
seized absolute power, jailed the political leaders and gagged the
press.
This time could be different; the calls for a Republic are far louder
than ever, the US and India are frustrated with the King’s provoking and
handling of the crisis and now probably see him as a liability. Neither
wants a “failed state” in the region; such a lawless area could become a
convenient base of operations/transit route for various nearby guerrilla
groups in North India, Kashmir (and possibly Tibet) in the future.
American policy advisers explain the real regional contest as between
China and India; “The larger context for the U.S. is the ongoing contest
for pre-eminence in the Eurasian land mass. Events from NE Asia, SE
Asia, South Asia to the Middle East will be determined by who is the
prime power in Central Asia. Nepal is one of many sideshows.” - Richard
Fisher, Asian Security Studies Fellow at the Centre for Security Policy.
The US is now more stretched and fragmented militarily than at any time
since the Vietnam war. The troop commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan
mean that decisive US on-the-ground intervention in relatively minor
regional insurgencies like Nepal are for now not a viable option. For
the moment they are limited to offering military aid,[9] advice and
training on counter-insurgency techniques and applying diplomatic
pressure. This is a practical weakening of America’s function, global
image and self-identity as geo-political military policeman of the
world.
For the moment, the situation in Nepal might be classified as an
unfinished bourgeois revolution. But then, perhaps one could have said
that at any time since 1950. The once and for all decisive abolition of
royal autocracy is the logical next historic step for the bourgeois
forces — yet that is no guarantee they will finally take it.
And the consequences for the development of any autonomous movement of
self-organised class struggle beyond and against bourgeois democracy?
The industrial working class is a minority in a predominantly peasant
population. We make no hierarchies of one sector of the poor being more
important or radical than the other; but the industrial workers[10] have
certain specific potential areas of struggle (transport, industry etc)
that are unique to them and would be of crucial importance in any future
movement. The rural and urban poor are dependent on an alliance with
each other to affect any real change in their own mutual interests. So
far they have only taken sides with one or other of the factions
competing to rule over them. To go further than a more democratic
management of continued poverty they will have to stop taking sides and
start making sides. Despite the limits of the pro-democratic framework
of recent events, many of the poor may have realised, through the
flexing of their collective muscle, a sense of their own potential power
to act more directly in their own class interests. Without wanting to be
determinist, in the absence of an autonomous movement of the poor moving
beyond demands for democracy, there will probably need to be a period of
disillusionment with a new Kingless democracy system before any such
autonomous movement will emerge.
has probably the best up to date news from Nepal.
the guerrillas.
RNA — Royal Nepalese Army — state forces
SPA — Seven Party Alliance — bourgeois democratic faction, including
affiliated trade unions — now includes Maoist insurgents
PLA — People’s Liberation Army — armed insurgency wing of Nepal Maoists,
commonly known as ‘maobadi’
Please bear in mind that this is written at some distance from the
events it discusses, relying mainly on what filters out through various
medias and various biases. Consequently, it has plenty of ifs and buts;
and there are bound to be some errors and limits, of both fact and
interpretation. Nepal tends to normally be a bit off the radar of most
people’s knowledge and awareness, so this will hopefully fill in a few
gaps.
The title refers to the Long March undertaken by Mao and the Chinese
communist guerrillas in 1934–35 during the civil war. The March was
quickly mythologised by the new ‘communist’ state as part of the intense
cult of celebrity built around Chairman Mao. Recently, some researchers
have written accounts, based on their meetings with eyewitnesses,
claiming that the communist version of the Long March is literally a
myth; that communist leaders, far from marching, were actually carried
on couches or ‘litters’ by porters for most of the journey! True or not,
the March has attained legendary status as an example of the supposed
exemplary heroic revolutionary commitment and sacrifice of the ‘Glorious
Chairman’ and the rest of the old ruling clique.
The leaders of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) on Monday (15^(th)
January 2007) entered Parliament, 10 years after leaving it to begin
their guerilla war.
The goal of stripping power from the monarchy has been achieved — as
much by last year’s widespread pro-democracy street protests as by their
guerilla activity. The King is no longer head of state, has no political
power and has been relieved of much royal property and other assets.
Parliament has still to decide whether the monarchy is to be retained in
a ceremonial role (as in the UK) as preferred by the moderates, or
completely abolished as favoured by the Maoists. A temporary
Constitution is in place while this question is debated.
UN officials have overseen the decommissioning of the guerilla army and
their disarming, which begins today. Politically the CPN(M) has gained
immensely from the war, returning to Parliament with far greater
prestige and more seats; these have been allocated by the interim
administration until the next General Election is held. This is
dependent on resolution of the Constitutional issues, including the role
of monarchy and demands of ethnic minorities for greater representation,
such as in the Terai on the southern plains where there are calls for a
separate federal region.
The CPN(M) will surely still spout some of the rhetoric of ‘class
struggle’ and shroud things in terms of ‘marxist ideology’. But in
reality the Maoists are set to enjoy the juicy privileges that are the
lot of the political class in Nepal. Routine corruption oils the wheels
of power and the social status is accompanied by an extremely
comfortable standard of living far above the poverty of the masses of
their ‘constituents’. Mao’s slogan is verified, once again; for the
Nepalese Maoists, political power has truly grown out of the barrel of a
gun.
A brief look at some aspects of the political situation in Nepal today
and its wider regional context.
The rapidly expanding economies of some parts of Asia have not been
accompanied by a uniformly greater integration into Western structures
of political administration. South Asia is experiencing a crisis of its
democratic institutions; leftists, islamicists and nationalists compete
with ruling powers for conquest of the state and domination of workers
and peasants. In Sri Lanka the Tamil Tigers continue their bloody
independence struggle; in Pakistan opposition groups organise street
protests, including armed clashes, against the President; in Bangladesh
the Parliament and political activity is indefinitely suspended as the
military leads an ‘anti-corruption’ crusade. The major powers in the
region are concerned about this destabilisation. India, China and the
Western powers are worried that political instability is fertile ground
for the growth of Maoist guerilla groups and also militant Islamic
formations. Much of the remoter areas of the region are ideal terrain
for opposition groups to establish para-military bases. In weak
democratic states — i.e. weak in terms of cultural rootedness and in
terms of convincing perceived benefits delivered by democracy to the
mass of poor constituents — oppositional forces are able to exploit
these weaknesses of function and delivery in the democratic process.
Nepal functions as a buffer zone between India and China, the two major
powers of the South Asia region. The continued unrest and instability in
the country is of concern to both it’s big brother neighbours —
competition for influence on political developments is considered
important by all interested parties, the US, UN and EU included, for the
long-term stability of the region.
Since the maoist insurgency in Nepal ended last year and their leader
Prachanda led the party elite into Parliament the negotiations over the
future role (if any) of the monarchy, a new constitution and the holding
of elections have dragged on. After a decade of fighting, the maobadi
troops, some of whom grew up as child soldiers in the army, found
themselves with too much time on their hands. So the youthful
ex-guerillas have been reorganised by the maoist leaders into the “Young
Communist League”. The YCL has caused some embarrassment for the maoist
parliamentarians; since the official UN-supervised ‘disarmament’,
extortion and its brutal enforcement have continued in the areas they
dominate. This has damaged the popularity of the maoist Party (CPN(M)) —
‘peacetime’ is turning out to be not so peaceful for local businessmen
who are beaten for resisting demands for greater ‘donations’,
journalists attacked for reporting these actions and residents obliged
to continue paying taxes to the YCL cadre. Maoist leader Prachanda has
had to make a public apology for the excesses of the YCL heavies. So the
Parliamentary leadership have now attempted to remodel the YCL as a
public service organisation, “nabbing smugglers and the leakers of a
national school exam paper, cleaning up garbage, clearing out the touts
that plague Kathmandu airport, and directing traffic.”
The YCL’s current activities are based presumably on a number of
factors;
end, many stuck in temporary camps awaiting implementation of
demobilisation programs; so boredom and insecurity about their future
encourage extortion and petty banditry as a possible long-term career.
the maoist camp — we can assume the Parliamentary faction, enjoying the
lavish comforts of urban MPs, are considered by some hill and plains
guerillas to have gone soft and reformist. While the MPs have secure
political careers ahead, the rank’n’file troops face uncertainties and
limited options.
that they still have the means to return to armed struggle if they are
not given the political concessions they want (as political wings always
use their armed wings as a bargaining factor). They reinforce the idea
that the maoist leadership must be kept ‘on-side’ in order to be
encouraged to exert control over the YCL.
Perhaps the Maobadi leadership are trying to use the YCL in a somewaht
similar way as Mao used the Red Guards during the 1960s Chinese Cultural
Revolution . After years in the political wilderness following the
disaster of his ‘Great Leap Forward’ programme (which led to millions of
deaths from famine) Mao sought to regain control of the state and ruling
Party. From his only remaining base of power — the Army — Mao encouraged
the formation of student Red Guard units to attack his rivals in the
state apparatus. Massive agitations were conducted across the country,
with large Red Guard student detachments moving across the country and
disrupting economic and social life for several years. But the Neplalese
Maobadi leaders should also remember that Mao temporarily lost control
of some Red Guard factions — some took his early calls for a ‘commune
state’ based on the Paris Commune model too literately and
‘ultra-democratic’ and ‘anarcho-syndicalist’ ‘errors’ and ‘deviations’
had to be be ruthlessly ‘corrected’ by the standing army under the
direction of Mao. (Some disillusioned ex-Red Guards later went into
exile in Hong Kong and wrote interesting critiques of their
experiences.)[11]
Much has been made recently by some Maoist supporters of the ‘servant of
the people’ role of the troops in the maoist-controlled areas. While it
may be true they have, for example, recently stopped some sandalwood
smugglers operating, it has also been claimed that the smuggling has
long been allowed in maobadi areas and taxes levied accordingly by the
guerillas. Similarly a profitable trade in the Yarsagumba herb
(cordyceps sinensis), reputed to be a ‘natural viagra’, is said to have
been controlled for several years by the guerillas in the remote areas
of the plant’s habitat. Local peasant collectors pay a tax by weight to
the maobadi.
The maobadi say they have abolished the child sex trade in the areas
they dominate. This is probably true — but that doesn’t prove that the
other statist forces condoned it (though certain elements may have done
unofficially). It only means that any power group with the long-term
concentration of security forces that guerilla troops have in an area
are able to control socio-economic activity to a greater degree than
under normal state policing (which is generally minimal in remoter areas
of Nepal). So it’s not necessarily prooof of the higher moral stance of
the guerrillas. And one has to take into account another form of child
abuse practiced by the maoists — the press ganging/abduction of children
into their army. Add to that the traditional sexual puritanism of
maoism, as evidenced by the severe repression of gays and the guerilla
leadership’s claim that homosexuality is only a capitalist deviation
that would not exist under communism.[12]
A visitor to Nepal reports that the maoists have instigated ‘forced
“strikes” whereby they told workers to strike or face their military
justice (similar tactics in India have led to starvation of villagers
who have no other work due to the Maoists seeking to raise working
conditions but when they’re unable to do so still refusing to call off
the coercive strike... causing migrations). Moreover rival party members
(stalinists) have been murdered in the Maoist occupied zones.’
This para-state role as tax collector and overseer of local capital
accumulation has sustained the guerilla army through 10 years of war.
Some who were recruited (or sometimes abducted) as child soldiers have
known no other life and the legacy of the long ‘revolutionary struggle’
leave the majority of them with few options other than continued petty
banditry and extortion or return to a civilian life of low-wage work in
town or country. Should they be under any illusions as to how radical a
restructuring of economic and social relations they have fought and died
for, their leaders are clear that it’s business as usual and the new
political bosses will be much the same as the old;
We are not against foreign capital, says Prachanda
Maoist chairman Prachanda and senior Maoist leader Dr Baburam Bhattarai
at the 41^(st) annual general meeting of the Federation of Nepalese
Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FNCCI) in Kathmandu Monday, June 04,
07. The FNCCI general meeting kicked off on Sunday.
Maoist chairman Prachanda has said that his party is not against foreign
capital and foreign investment.
Addressing the programme organised by Federation of Nepalese Chamber of
Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) on the occasion of its 41^(st) AGM,
Prachanda said, “There are concerted efforts to portray our party as
being anti-foreign investment and anti-foreign capital. This is not
true. We want to develop national capital and national industries. But
we are not against foreign investment.”
Prachanda accused that feudal and reactionary elements were trying to
portray Maoists as being against nation’s economy.
“We are not against foreign capital but we are against foreign
hegemony,” he said, adding that his party’s refusal to receive
commissions and its attempt to refuse to accept all kinds of conditions
imposed by donors had ruffled the feathers of such elements.
He also said that his party does not stand against private property.
“Some accuse us of trying to distribute poverty. But we want to
distribute prosperity,” he claimed. nepalnews.com, Jun 04 07
But the YCL may be a long-term problem for the Nepalese state; some
guerillas may be integrated into the Nepalese Army, as planned, but
others may prefer to take their chances as hill bandits. Some may even
develop a critique of a sell-out by the Maoist leadership as they see
them settle into their privileged lifestyle of Parliamentary careers.
The YCL has also played a central role in the ethnic conflicts in the
Terai region of the southern plains. Here the Madhesi’s are demanding a
greater representation in the national Parliament and there are rumours
of intentions to pursue an independent Madhesi state. India foreign
policy is involved in this political situation; they have alternately
aided the maoist guerillas, then turned against them.
In earlier times, the Maoist leadership waging a war against the Nepali
government was led to a believe that Delhi was acting for their benefit.
Once the Maoists decided to join mainstream politics and become a part
of Parliament as well as the government, Indian diplomats found it
expedient to entice one or two breakaway Maoist factions and extend them
support, on the basis of which they have launched a separatist movement
in the southern plains called Terai. One of the leaders at the forefront
of this “Madhesi” movement, Upendra Yadav, is a Maoist renegade who in
2004 was arrested on Indian territory with two of his comrades.
New Delhi quietly handed over the two to Nepali authorities but set
Yadav free while he was still in Indian territory. There is a widely
held perception that Yadav, who physically resembles the people of the
nearby (to Nepal) Indian state of Bihar, is being used to sustain a hate
campaign against Nepalis of “hills” origin. [...] [Put rather crudely
perhaps, the Nepalis of the plains often have a closer resemblance to
Indians — while those of the hill regions often resemble more the
Chinese.]
Yet New Delhi was instrumental in making them a party to a 12-point
agreement with the Nepali Congress-led front of seven political parties.
One agreement led to another, and eventually the Maoists fully joined
the constitutional process, finally becoming a part of the interim
government on April 1 this year.
But now India sees them as a deadly menace, a sort of Frankenstein’s
monster. But the stinging question is: Who supported them so that they
could be where they are now? AsiaTimes, 6 Jun 07
The Indian and US diplomats were central to arranging the integration of
the maoists into the Nepalese Parliament as a means of stabilising the
region. But now the threat of a maoist-dominated Nepal (depending on how
well they do in elections) has its own dangers; the native Nepali
political elite do not seem very skilled at containing the political
ambitions of the maoists. One theory is that while India seeks to
maintain Nepal as a buffer zone against China, they also seek to make an
independent ‘Madheshland’ state on the Terai plains — a buffer within a
buffer against possible maoist encroachment on their borders that could
encourage stronger links with India’s own peasant leftist Naxalite
guerilla movements. A dangerous game, as a divided Nepal in turmoil
could cause many other problems for India.
The Madhesi political movement has had several bloody clashes with the
YCL in the past year, with 65 dead. The maoist attempts to repress the
Madhesi movement, target activists, prevent rallies etc have been
unsuccessful. As described above, there is a strong ethnic and caste
element to the conflict; despite being supposed champions of the poor,
the maoist leadership is (like leaderships of most peasant leftist
movements) highly educated and in Nepal mainly from the high Brahman
caste of the northern hill region (though the majority in the hill areas
are obviously lower caste). In contrast the Terai plains are peopled by
lower caste Madhesis who are under-represented in Parliament. The Nepali
caste system and ethnic tensions have not traditionally been a cause of
such violence as they have in India, but it’s present influence on
politics is obviously to some extent expression of a longer underlying
resentment. Some commentators believe that India is capitalising on this
by encouraging the unrest in the hope of engineering its breakaway
Madhesi buffer state. But as always the relationship with China is
uppermost;
“In a broader context, Indian is jittery over possible Chinese inroads
into Nepal through the Maoists; here the interests of New Delhi and
Washington converge. That the United States and India consult on Nepal
has been made public by their officials on numerous occasions. In
response to a US Congress committee query on March 22, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice conceded that “our closest international partner
in working on affairs in Nepal is India”.” Asia Times, 6 Jun 07
Like all the other diplomatic players in the region, China blows
opportunistically hot and cold in its relationship with the maoist
leadership — the Chinese provided anti-guerilla military aid to the
Nepalese King only shortly before he was forced to relinquish power a
year ago; and Beijing always refused to recognise the Maobadi insurgents
as true Maoists. Yet Nepali Maoist leaders have made several visits
recently to Beijing as guests of the ruling elite. This closer
relationship worries India and the US.
With elections to the Constituent Assembly postponed from June until
November-December, interested parties will be concerned that Nepal does
not fall into an indefinite suspension of democratic process as has
occurred in Bangladesh. Even though it’s widely believed that western
powers encouraged the present situation in Bangladesh as a means to
resolve the political stalemate, it is in itself an admission of
instability and what geo-political analysts call ‘failing state’
vulnerability. The ‘export of democracy’ is not proceeding as planned in
South Asia at present.
A brief look at the recent activities of Maoists in Nepal and India.
Under pressure from the Maoists, the government has finally declared
that Nepal will become a republic. For several months the political
process towards elections has been stalled in Nepal. The Communist Party
of Nepal (Maoist) (who entered Parliament following the end of their 10
year guerilla war) originally agreed that any decision on the future
role (if any) of the monarchy would be postponed until after the
elections for the Constituent Assembly.
But since the end of the war the Maoists have lost much popularity;
largely because of their strong-arm tactics in their long-running
protection/extortion rackets levied on local businesses and residents.
They have also exercised a form of periodic censorship against
newspapers critical of their activities, by intimidating workers and
enforcing strikes to disrupt distribution. In the southern Terai plains
region they have been involved in inter-ethnic rivalry, resulting in
several deaths.
Seeing this drop in support, the Maoists became determined to postpone
the elections, buying time to improve their electoral prospects. So
three months ago they left the government, announced they were now
demanding the abolition of the monarchy and threatened a return to civil
war if their demands were not granted. After months of wrangling, they
have got their way. The abolition appears now as only a legal formality
soon to be delivered; “If the elected [constituent] assembly endorses a
republic by a simple majority, ... the king [will] be stripped of his
crown”. The Maoists have also forced some changes to the electoral
system: Prime Minister Koirala, “who had also been opposing the Maoist
demand for a fully proportional electoral system, has now reached a
compromise with the rebels to hold the polls employing a mixed system in
which 60% of the seats will be chosen proportionally and the remaining
40 through straight contests.” The King was already a spent force,
stripped of all power and most of his wealth — his last card was played
when he suspended Parliament in 2006, but was forced to back down by a
Seven Party Alliance coalition (including the Maoists) of bourgeois
parties and by popular street protests. But he has played one final
strategic role — as a political pawn for the Maoists. How the mighty are
fallen.
For the wider Nepali ruling class, the Maoists represent a continuing
problem. Any hope that the former guerillas’ integration into Parliament
would lead to a more normal democratic process has been dented further
by recent events. The Maoists still retain their ace card — the threat
of a return to guerilla war is laid on the table whenever negotiations
are not going in their favour. The Maoists are now ready to rejoin the
government.
The Nepal Maoists have had strong links with the much older Maoist
‘Naxalite’ movements in neighbouring India. There is a long and
interesting article on past and present aspects of this movement, here;
The article reveals that whereas universities were previously the
heartlands of recruitment for the Indian maoists — leftist guerilla
movements traditionally recruited their functionaries from
over-qualified students with few career prospects due to stagnent
economic conditions — now the booming IT-driven economy and accompanying
growth of the skilled middle class has destroyed this cadre recruitment
for the the Maoist movement.
The article also reports that in those remoter forest areas with great
potential for mining and other resource extractions the Maoist threat is
being used by vested government and business interests as an excuse to
use terror to clear forest villages and herd villagers into less remote
camps near main roads. This separates them from their traditional means
of subsistence in preparation for a new life as wage labour in the mines
or other extractive industries. The new enclosures... or in the
sanitised jargon of modern security specialists — “strategic hamleting”.
The article reports too that in some areas the Maoists are well
accommodated within the local political ruling structures and have a
clever scam operating with them; the Maoists keep up sufficient level of
activity to show ‘evidence’ of them being a security threat — this
justifies regular applications by the remote local government to the
central government for increased security funding. Once secured, the
proceeds from the government funds are then divided amongst the Maoists,
local politicians, government officials and security forces.
After several decades of activity the Indian Maoist guerillas only have
any control over the remoter densely forested areas where there is
either minimal or no state presence. The article describes how this has
led some Indian Maoists to drop the gun and adopt more mainstream
political tactics, similar to the change in tactics of the Nepali
Maoists. But most Naxalites still look with scorn upon what they see as
the sellout of the Nepali party since it laid down the gun.
From a Western point of view the struggles of Asian peasants, landless
labourers and the wheelings and dealings of their political masters may
seem of little consequence. But their circumstances mirror to varying
degrees the situation of large parts of the world. Though rapid
population shifts to the cities are accelerating, the population of both
India and China, the two fastest growing economic giants, is still
massively rural — in India 70%, China around 40%. One in 10 people on
earth live in rural India. Only in 2007 has the balance in the global
population begun to shift to an urban majority. The exploitation of
diminishing energy supplies and other limited resources (such as mining
and deforestation) destroys environments and cultures; an
industrialising process that relentlessly eats away at traditional means
of subsistence — with brutal ecological and social consequences of
global significance (e.g., deforestation as a major contributor to
global warming; “responsible for 25% of all carbon emissions entering
the atmosphere, by the burning and cutting of about 34 million acres of
trees each year”).
Whether displaced, dispossessed and forced into urban shanty towns as
cheap labour for the ‘Export Processing Zones’ supplying the global
market (with those left behind in the rural village often dependent on
the urban wage of relatives — a typical scenario being parents leaving
their children to be raised by grandparents); or slaving down the mines
that occupy their former lands; or subsisting as a semi-proletarianised
reserve army of casual labour; or perhaps even as insurgent rural rebels
freed from the shackles of Maoist guerilla dogma — the impoverished
masses of rural Asia will be a factor of some importance. The new
enclosures create new struggles.
In the Terai region of Nepal, on the southern plains, an indefinite
general strike has been ongoing for over two weeks; curfews are in
force.
It has been initiated and enforced by a coalition of local ethnic
Madhesi groups, in pursuit of provincial autonomy, greater parliamentary
representation/proportional representation and the ‘right of
self-determination’.
Its timing is an attempt to put pressure on government in the lead up to
the Constituent Assembly elections — the first elections since the end
of the Maoist guerilla war and the subsequent Maoist integration into
Parliament. As the Terai borders India, it is the essential supply route
for landlocked Nepal, hemmed in as it is by the northern Himalayan
mountain range. So the strike, which prevents all transport movement, is
an effective blockade of the country. In the capital, Kathmandu,
supplies of fuel, food and other essentials are very low.
The Terai holds 70% of Nepal’s arable land and accounts for over half of
its GDP via industry and border trading. Almost 50% of the population
live in the Terai. “Madhesis” comprise many different ethnic,
linguistic, caste and religious groups that inhabit the Madhes (the
plains), in southern Nepal. The present ethnic movement started in
January 2007. Since then numerous clashes and murders have occurred
between police, nationalists and Maoists, including feuds between rival
Madhesi groups. Today there are over two dozen armed and unarmed groups
and parties active in the region. (See earlier report here)
There is racism against Madhesis — in the northern capital of Kathmandu
their darker complexion means they can be looked down on as “migrant
Indians” (there is a long-running resentment in Nepal towards their
domineering Indian neighbour) and in India they can be discriminated
against as “Bahadurs”, an Indian stereotype for working class Nepalis
(although their historical origin is said to be as migrants from the
Madhesh plains region, and the concept of Madhes or Madhesi is said to
predate modern India and Nepal; yet they are perceived as culturally
closer to Indians). Madhesis have little representation in government
(around 5%) — those high-castes from the northern hills occupy most
important state posts, and most of the Maoist leadership is from the
same origin. Opportunist Madhesi politicians, some of whom have hopped
from Maoist to ethnic-nationalist groups as fortunes change, now see
their chance for power; they are using traditional popular resentment of
caste, ethnic and regional inequalities to push towards political power
and redraw the political map in their favour. There have recently been
many attacks, banishments, theft of land and other intimidation of those
Terai dwellers, known as ‘Pahades’, whose ethnic origin is of the
northern hills. There have been resentments that recent ‘land reforms’
by the northern central government have favoured Pahades. The wide
participation of Madhesi politicians in the Maoist insurgency was in
hope of a fairer land reform and also of greater regional power — their
separatist turn is in part an expression of their disillusionment.
The forces involved and the diverse interests they represent are
potentially complex; those leading the present strike include ethnic
Madhesi nationalists, seeking either regional autonomy within a federal
Nepal, and/or eventual full national independence. Some of these are
former Maoist leaders who split from the Maobadi movement and have had
several bloody clashes with them since. Some believe that India has
cultivated/encouraged these splits; as a means to create a buffer state
between what they believe may become an increasingly Maoist-dominated
Nepal. Many would see an Indian-backed separatist split as a prelude to
Indian annexation, as happened in neighbouring Sikkim. Nepal has long
been considered as a buffer state between the two rivals, India and
China, and India is concerned at recent closer relationships between
Nepali Maoists and the Chinese state. Other possible Indian
considerations are the creation of a buffer between Indian Naxalite
peasant movements (See earlier report here ) and their Nepali Maoist
comrades. There is also a potential for further Indian encroachments on
Nepali natural resources.
There are a dozen major ethnic groups in Nepal with around fifty
languages and dialects; some have already expressed their own
grievances. There is some potential for a Balkanisation of Nepal, so the
government will be eager to resolve the present unrest. Today (Weds
27^(th)) it was announced that talks between the government and the
United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF) — an alliance of three groups —
had collapsed. But with the Constituent Assembly elections just seven
weeks away, negotiations in some form will surely continue, in an
attempt to resolve the conflict. Independence for the province has been
ruled out by the government; the Maoist party, despite their ideology
being historically supportive of national ‘liberation’ struggles, are
also opposed to Madhesi self-determination. (Maoist leader Prachanda
even branded the new rebels — some of them his recent allies — as
“criminals and gangsters” unworthy of negotiation. Ironic, considering
his own party has often enough been accused of using the same tactics to
fund themselves and to win a place in Parliament; and whose aggressive
example has surely inspired the ethnic rebels to pursue their own
agenda.) An eventual compromise deal is likely to be greater political
representation for the region and a degree of local autonomy. The
government and its Western allies will be keen to avoid both a descent
into a new civil war in Terai, and also a splitting of the country into
two. Such a split would probably leave Nepal’s northern half without 70%
of its arable land, totally dependent on China for trade and supplies
access and would greatly increase tensions between the two big brother
states of India and China.
For the dirt poor peasants and workers of Nepal there is little optimism
to take from present circumstances — no doubt whoever ultimately
triumphs in the political arena, there will be little gain for the most
exploited as long as they remain pawns and cannon fodder for the
political elites.
The general strike called by Madhesi ethnic groups of the southern Terai
plains region has ended with most of their demands granted.
Two days after an agreement with the United Democratic Madhesi Front
(UDMF) — paving the way for the April 10 Constituent Assembly elections
— the government today signed an agreement with the Federal Republic
National Front (FRNF), an alliance of seven groups agitating in Terai
and eastern regions.
The government has promised that the Constituent Assembly will, after
the upcoming elections, grant autonomous status to the region within the
framework of the existing Nepalese nation. Ethnic representation in
Parliament and in government bureaucracy will also be increased; the
same rights are promised to other ethnic groups in the country. It is
uncertain how many similar claims will be made, but there is already
some debate as to who has the best claim to an original ethnic identity
as the most ‘authentic’ Terais. The Terai is a multi-ethnic region with
different groups arriving at various points in history and the somewhat
loosely defined category of ‘Madhesh’ do not have by any means the
longest history of a presence in the area. The Tharus claim their
descent back to the Buddha — who they claim as a Tharu — and beyond into
the mists of history. (Buddha was born in the Terai at Lumbini). The
Tharus consider the Madhesis as later southern immigrants from what is
now India. So there may be further disputes, both within the Terai and
elsewhere, over who is the ‘most ethnic of the ethnics’ as competing
groups challenge for local political power.
Meanwhile Maoist leader Prachanda — who, despite only recently
describing the Madhesi rebel groups as “criminals and gangsters”
unworthy of negotiation — has participated in the negotiations and given
his blessing to the agreement. He has also stated this week that the
approaching Constituent Assembly elections can become the vehicle by
which they become a ‘communist’ government. This is simple
electioneering on his part; any outright win by the Maoist party is
extremely unlikely. Any future Maoist rule in Nepal, whether in local or
central governement is likely to try to model itself on the regimes of
those Indian states run by local ‘Communist’ Parties — crude forms of
municipal Stalinism with an increasingly market-oriented openness to
foreign investors enticed by tax-free Economic Processing Zones. Much
like those typically seen in other more developed Asian economies, but
with even more ‘competitive’ wage levels. But that is so far wishful
thinking for Nepal; one of the least developed economies with one of the
least skilled workforces and a weak infrastructure — and consequently,
so far, one of the least attractive investment options.
The Maoist party — former guerrillas CPN(M) — have won a clear majority
in last week’s elections. But what changes will this mean for Nepal’s
workers and peasants?
The result so far is for the 240-seats first-past-the-post vote for the
Constituent Assembly. Results for the decisive 335-seat proportional
representation part of the Assembly will take longer, but the Maoists
are expected to do well in this too.
The result is a big surprise that goes against most media predictions.
It seems that the Maoists’ organisational structure, which extends to
the remoter areas, has survived largely intact since the end of their
guerilla war. This network served well as an election campaigning
machine, particularly in the less accessible rural areas where other
parties have no presence. There were reports by other parties of Maoist
intimidation of voters and rival candidates. Official election
observers, including some representing the UN, were reported to be
overstretched in their work, and the Election Commission overseeing the
fairness of procedures ordered 106 polling centers to hold re-polling
due to irregularities. Nevertheless, most observers seem willing to
accept the overall result. (Many who might have otherwise challenged the
result may have been put off by the Maoists’ pre-election declaration
that they would not accept defeat in the election; they claimed to be so
sure of victory that a defeat would be evidence of their being cheated!)
Even with some irregularities, the vote does appear to reflect a big
shift in political allegiances among the population. Perhaps, in the
world of generalised corruption that is Nepali politics, the voters
decided — better the devil you don’t know than the one you do.
What is the programme of the Maoists? They have been eager in recent
days to reassure local capitalists, potential foreign investors and
regional neighbours. Nepal being a buffer state between China and India,
the world’s two fastest growing economies, they hope to reap some
benefits from the proximity and have been cultivating diplomatic
relations for some time. They are quite explicit that they will pursue a
programme of economic expansion; one can assume this will include some
modest land reform and redistribution, attempted job creation and will
follow the model of other Asian economies in attracting foreign
investment with Economic Processing Zones where major tax concessions
are available to foreign capital enticed by a plentiful supply of
dirt-cheap labour.
Reading statements made in recent days by Maoist party leaders one can
see new government policies in the making;
The Maoists central leadership has said that the party which has swung
the country’s politics during the freshly concluded CA poll will not
deviate from the “globalization and liberalization” process that was on
in the world today.
Outlining the would be economic policy of the Maoists party when in
power, Comrade Prachanda said that “we will not confiscate the
properties of the owners contrary to what has been disseminated in order
to malign the Maoist party”.
According to him, after the political revolution that has just finished,
the Maoists will henceforth concentrate its entire efforts aimed at
bringing about what he called “economic revolution in the country”.
“Rest assured, we are in favor of the capitalist economy”, Prachanda
said.
Talking on the Maoists militias, Prachanda said that they could be used
as “industrial security force” time permitting.
This may mean that the troublesome bored youth of the Young Communist
League (see earlier report) — demobilised Maoist guerillas at a loose
end with no clear role in the post-war society — will now be deployed to
maintain a militarised labour discipline to make foreign investment even
more attractive.
Prachanda also had all praise for the Indian establishment for all that
the Indian government did in creating an atmosphere which could bring
the Maoists back to Nepal.
“I hope India will continue its support to Nepal”, Prachanda added.
Prachanda also made it clear that his government would continue its
relations with China, the European Union, World Bank, the Asian
Development Bank and the IMF.
Telegraphnepal.com 17 Apr 08
And so all the regular ‘anti-imperialist’ sloganising so often heard
coming from the Maoist camp is quickly airbrushed from history and
disappears into the Himalayan mist.
... Dr. Bhattarai said that the “mantle of economic revolution would be
handed over to the businessmen/industrialists and that we in the
government would only facilitate their march towards economic
revolution”.
We would like to assure everyone that once the Maoists come (into
government) the investment climate will be even more favourable. There
shouldn’t be any unnecessary misunderstanding about that. The rumours in
the press about our intention are wrong, there are reports of capital
flight, but this shouldn’t happen. And the other aspect is that once
there is political stability, the investment climate will be even
better. Our other agenda is economic development and for this we want to
mobilise domestic resources and capital, and also welcome private
foreign direct investment. The only thing we ask is to be allowed to
define our national priorities.
The “domestic resources and capital” available to the Maoists to
“mobilise” are the extremely cheap labour force and the natural
resources, primarily potential hydro power projects with all their
possible damaging ecological impact.
We want to fully assure international investors already in Nepal that we
welcome them here, and we will work to make the investment climate even
better than it is now. Just watch, the labour-management climate will
improve in our time in office. What happened in the past two years with
the unions happened during a transition phase....
Nepali Times 16 Apr 2008
This translates as — “yes, we have in the past called strikes (to
further the interests of the Party rather than the workers) by
Maoist-dominated unions to prevent printing and distribution of
newspapers who gave us unfavourable coverage; and we have attacked and
kidnapped officials of rival unions such as GEFONT and DECONT (see
allegations here )- but now investing capitalists can expect as firm a
hand applied to maintain discipline in the workplace and minimise
disruption to profit creation. This is in the grand tradition of
Bolshevik labour relations started by Lenin”.
The Maoist ambition appears to be a sustained and speedy growth along
the lines of China — but they will be starting from a far less
favourable socio-economic base, in far less favourable conditions as a
global recession begins to bite. The best that the Maoist state can
probably hope for — at least in the short-term — is to be used as
another out-sourcing area where cheap unskilled labour is exploited by
its larger industrial neighbours. But that is quite enough to enrich the
new ruling elite. And if, after a few years of discovering that the new
whip hurts as much as the old whip, the Nepalese poor then become
disillusioned with their Maoist masters and look like voting them out of
power; we may then find the Maoists announcing that their industrial
development has finally ‘abolished feudalism’ and completed the
‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’. Therefore parliamentary democracy
will have become obsolete and it will be time for the ‘dictatorship of
the proletariat’ in the form of an indefinite one-party Maoist state.
footsteps
Nepal’s Maoist Party has won around 220 seats in the recent Constituent
Assembly (CA) election, about one-third of the total. Though the largest
party, they don’t have an overall majority; they have stated their wish
to lead a coalition government.
But as the result became clear Maoist leader Prachanda told journalists
“I will be declared the acting President of this country very soon…which
will be followed by occupying the post of the all powerful President of
New Nepal…this is the peoples’ mandate…no force on earth can disobey
this mandate”. (Telegraphnepal.com 26/4/2008); the man who has long
talked of his wish to ‘abolish royal autocracy’ now speaks of his “all
powerful” role.
Recent news reports reveal the wages and expenses of the newly elected
members of the Assembly. While they spend an indefinite period drawing
up a new national Constitution they will be paid — by Nepali standards —
enormous wages;
each CA member will receive net salaries of 23 thousand one hundred
rupees per month (£176/$345/Eur224). On top of this they’ll get expenses
for drinking water, electricity, telephone, rent, newspapers &
“miscellaneous”. These expense allowances bring the total income of a CA
member to 45 thousand 98 rupees (£345/$674/Eur437) each per month.
The CA President (probably Maoist Party boss Prachanda) will have a
monthly salary/expenses income of 60,600 rupees (£463/$905/Eur588) —
plus a petrol allowance of 24,500 rupees (£187/$366/Eur237). The vice
president will scrape by on a few thousand less.
So the ruling class, led by the Maoist ‘proletarian vanguard’, feather
their nest. These salaries must be compared with the Nepali average wage
of just $200 a year (£102/Eur129); Nepal is the poorest country in Asia.
Around 10% of the population takes 50% of the wealth, the bottom 40%
takes 10%. 85% of Nepalese people don’t have access to health care. So
the monthly income of a CA politician is well over three times the
annual national average wage! Jobs within the CA are already being
allocated by all the various member parties to their friends and family.
In a public appearance last week Maoist leader Prachanda said, “I had
the opportunity to play the role of Lenin itself in Nepal”. With his fat
salary and perks he is certainly following in Bolshevik footsteps; Lenin
travelled in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, as did other government
officials. “Autocracy’s main enemy, Vladimir Lenin, had no reservations
about inheriting the hated old regime’s automobile collection. Lenin
used the Tsar’s Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost to drive around town while his
colleagues divided up the rest of the collection among them. But two
revolutions and a civil war had taken their toll on the cars, and in
1919 (during a time of famine and extreme hardships for the poor) the
Council of People’s Commissars had to order 70 more from London.”
(Aeroflot site). Lenin moved into a dacha (country house) previously
owned by a millionaire, while much of the other Bolshevik leadership
took occupation of the luxurious Lux hotel in Petrograd, dining on
preferential food rations.[13] Then and now, for those who inherit the
State, its perks and luxuries are clearly irresistable and seen as just
reward for their conquest and devotion to power. And so the new Nepalese
republic is born — the furniture and faces at the top have been shifted
around a little, and that is all.
There’s another interpretation (though less likely) of the reference to
Lenin — as a coded pointer towards a historical precedent; that
Prachanda’s long-term plan is for the Constituent Assembly in Nepal to
share the same fate as it did in Russia. When the Bolsheviks were ready
to seize sole power for themselves, a revolutionary guard (led by
Anatoli Zhelezniakov[14], an anarchist sailor[15]) dismissed the CA,
dominated as it was by indecisive bourgeois moderate politicians. The
Bolsheviks saw its dissolution as a decisive step in the progress from a
bourgeois to a proletarian revolution (though the fact that, unlike
Nepal’s Maoists, the Bolsheviks did not emerge victorious from the CA
elections may have influenced their choices too). The Maoists might,
ideally, like to achieve a neat Leninist orthodoxy by replicating this
state of affairs, but they know the necessities of ‘realpolitik’.
External geo-political pressures and economic realities mean that — for
the moment, at least — they need to play the democratic game in order to
attract foreign investment, so as to try and build up a sound
politico-economic base. A strong and stable State power is always a
class relation based on efficient exploitation and its rewards.
As a strike wave sweeps the country, the Maoist leadership agrees to
banning strikes.
Since the Maoists emerged in the April 2008 Nepal elections as the
largest party (though without an absolute majority) to lead the new
coalition government, they have failed to heal existing divisions — in
their own party, within the parliamentary political system and its
ruling class — or within the intermingled social, caste and ethnic
tensions across the wider society. In fact, all these divides have
widened. And since November a strike wave has spread across the country.
The ongoing strike wave is diverse;[16] everyone from transport workers,
labourers and poor villagers to doctors, teachers, students, journalists
and other professionals are striking and blockading across the country.
The demands are equally wide-ranging; wage rises to counter rising food
and fuel prices, demands for better public services, local councils in
remote rural areas demanding increased funding from central government,
calls for land distribution to the rural poor. There are also many short
local strikes and actions in protest at attacks, murders and
intimidation by political factions; relatives of murdered victims demand
compensation and investigation of the crimes. Some strikes are led by
different unions (with their various political affiliations, including
the Maoists), others actions are self-organised by participants.
Therefore some will be a more genuine expression of self-organisation in
pursuit of material need — while others may be called as political
strikes to pursue, not workers interests, but only political advantages
of one party faction over another.
And the conditions of life giving rise to the social unrest grow worse.
Inflation of basic goods continues, the electricity infrastructure
cannot meet anywhere near the demand of consumers; 16 hr interruptions
to supply for “load-shedding” have become routine across the country and
both domestic and business life is planned around them. (Some claim this
is partly a result of the Maoist destruction of electricity sub-stations
during the 10 year guerilla war and the subsequent decline in
infrastructure projects.[17]) This frustrates employers and workers
alike, limiting productivity for bosses and also lowering pay for
workers who aren’t paid for interruptions. The hungry bellies of the
poor are rumbling with discontent, and even the professional middle
classes are feeling pangs of frustration.
Faced with the unrest, Maoist Party leader and Nepalese Prime Minister
Prachanda proposed to fellow politicians a ban on all public sector
strikes, to which the seven major parties all agreed. In a recent press
interview, just prior to the agreement, the Maoist governmental Finance
Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai tried to justify a ban;
Q: The business community’s concerns are exactly what you stated. One,
they say, the government’s attitude to labour issues leaves a lot to be
desired and that labour problems are getting worse. Second, there cannot
be high growth until there is an adequate supply of power.
Bhattarai: I wouldn’t say the situation is getting worse. Things were
much worse in the past. But the people wanted very fast recovery; that
hasn’t happened. Things are improving but not to the desired level. Both
the management and workers have a common interest now, for the
development of the economy. They both fought against the feudalism,
autocracy and monarchy. Now, to create a vibrant industrial economy, is
in the interest of both the management and the workers. But this reality
is not sinking in their minds. This government is playing its role in
creating a healthy relationship between the two. There were some
disputes, especially regarding the minimum wage issue. This has been
solved. So what I appeal to the management is that they should provide
the minimum wage. The workers shouldn’t resort to bandas and strikes. If
this understanding is honoured we’ll have a healthy environment in the
days to come.
Q: So the party wants to ensure that whenever there is a labour dispute,
legal recourse should be taken?
Bhattarai: Yes. At least for some time, there should be no bandas and
strikes in the industrial, health, education sectors, on the major
highways, in the public utility sectors. The government is trying to
build political consensus on this issue.
80% of Nepal’s population is rural and amid the rocky mountain terrain
there is a shortage of arable land (only about 20% can be cultivated)
and a lack of infrastructure; unsurprisingly there is increasing
seasonal and permanent migration to cities into casualised employment.
But most of the country is too economically weak to develop much beyond
a subsistence economy — and in the present global recession attracting
significant foreign investment looks more remote than ever.
Nepal is in reality an underdeveloped capitalist economy with certain
remaining feudal hangovers within social relationships. (These
traditions are either declining or adapting to modern-day norms.)
Abolition of monarchy and the pro-democracy movements in recent decades
might be seen as part of an unfinished bourgeois revolution[18] — yet
the Maoist leadership generally present their desire to move towards
greater industrialisation as the beginning of a bourgeios-democratic
revolution. The Maoists portray the present period as one in which Nepal
is emerging from feudalism (as supposedly evidenced by the recent
abolition of the monarchy; unlike, e.g, ‘feudal’ royalist Britain!) and
so needs to build up a strong national industrial economy. The lack of a
strong national entepreneurial bourgeoisie has hindered such a
development in Nepal, and — like nationalist and leftist parties across
the ‘3^(rd) World’ — the Maoists intend to play that developmental role
themselves, in alliance with other ‘progressive’ bourgeios forces. The
Maoist leadership are reported to be discussing with China the creation
of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in Nepal. SEZ’s are industrial zones
offering partial or complete tax exemption to foreign investors (and
sometimes also to native capitalists) along with other financial
benefits including stricter labour discipline. Having just passed the
relevant legislation, their concern to impose stricter discipline on
unruly workers is clearly linked to establishing SEZ’s and a general
desire to attract greater foreign investment;
KATHMANDU, Jan 22: After four years of finalizing the draft, the cabinet
on Thursday endorsed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act, paving way for the
implementation of the SEZ projects in the country. [...]
...the Act treats SEZ as a land where other domestic laws related to
labor and industries would not be applicable. It has mooted an
autonomous SEZ Authority to oversee its operations.
The source stated that the ratification of the Act, which had so far
lingered due to the differences over the tighter labor provisions, had
became possible after the seven parties recently agreed not to launch
strikes in the industries or disturb productions.
“The Act allows workers to unite and practice collective bargaining, but
prohibits them from undertaking activities that affect production and
normal operations of industries,” said the source. It also allows the
entrepreneurs to hire workers on a contract basis. [Our emphasis.]
Last year we observed;
Any future Maoist rule in Nepal, whether in local or central government
is likely to try to model itself on the regimes of those Indian states
run by local ‘Communist’ Parties — crude forms of municipal Stalinism
with an increasingly market-oriented openness to foreign investors
enticed by tax-free Economic Processing Zones. Much like those typically
seen in other more developed Asian economies, but with even more
‘competitive’ wage levels. But that is so far wishful thinking for
Nepal; one of the least developed economies with one of the least
skilled workforces and a weak infrastructure — and consequently, so far,
one of the least attractive investment options.
Maoist leaders have expressed desires for closer economic co-operation
with both its big brother neighbours. It is likely that in the long
term, China intends to treat Nepal as an extended zone of its economic
activity, somewhere with cheaper labour costs to outsource to, so as to
offset rising labour costs in China. But, for the moment, the global
recession limits the likelihood of such investments. Nepal’s southern
neighbour, India, is never happy to see closer relations between Nepal
and its rival China, but it has its own economic leverage. India is
downstream from the untapped hydro-electric potential locked in Nepal’s
great Himalayan water systems, has longed wanted to exploit it and can
offer investment and expertise. China is investing in various
infrastructure and transport links in poorer South Asian countries, but
northern Nepal is hemmed in by the Himalayan peaks and so remains
dependent on India for the continued flow of essential supplies across
its southern border. It is a commonplace that Nepali politicians
periodically use the anti-Indian nationalist card to distract from their
problems and failings at home, as the Maoists are doing at present; but
for all the nationalist rhetoric, they know any threat to an open border
would be, at present, close to economic suicide. (This was illustrated
when India expressed its dissatisfaction at Nepal buying arms from China
by closing the border for several months in the 1980s — a move that
progressively paralysed Nepal.)
The Nepalese and Indian armies have traditionally had a close
relationship. The famous Ghorkas serve in both armies. The Indian army
trains most Nepalese officers — there is such a close relationship that
the Indian Army chief is honorary chief of the Nepali Army traditionally
and vice-versa. The negotiations that are dragging on over how/if/when
Nepal’s Maoist ex-guerillas should be integrated into the Nepalese Army
are therefore of some concern to India. The Maoists are attempting to
gain greater control over the Army, causing serious unease in rival
parties.
A deep split in the Maoist Party has emerged; Prachanda and co.‘s ruling
elite are comfortably settled in their lucrative governmental
positions[19] and appear to prefer to pursue a ‘parliamentary road to
[so-called] socialism’. Having ended the 10 year civil war after
realising its limits as, at best, an indefinite stalemate between state
and guerillas — and being forced to acknowledge that, in any case,
powerful neighbours India and China would probably not sit idly by in
the event of a bloody military coup likely to destabilise the wider
region — the party leadership committed itself to parliamentary conquest
and secured electoral victory.
Meanwhile, the lower level party cadre have gained little from the
electoral road. Unlike in many other ‘national liberation struggles’,
the Nepali Maoists did not decisively defeat other ruling class factions
— instead, they achieved political power via a compromise with them. So
many of the comfortable official posts are already filled; as one of the
poorest countries in the world, Nepal has too few resources to expand
its existing bureaucratic class or its entrepeneurial middle class
sufficiently to absorb former guerilla personnel to their satisfaction.
So, after ten years of war, what’s on offer for those lower in the Party
hierarchy seems scant reward for their efforts. Now a faction led by a
senior Party leader Mohan Biadhya, popularly known as Kiran, are
demanding an immediate progression towards ‘full communism’; i.e., a one
party state capitalist system in the style of traditional Maoism.
These dissatisfied Party elements who want to ‘march firmly onward to a
communist state/People’s Republic’ are becoming more openly critical of
the democratic gradualism of the Party leadership and their
parliamentary roles. One recent manifestation has been the dispute over
names; the pro-democratic faction wants to drop ‘Maoist’ from the party
name and become simply the Nepal Communist Party. This is largely a
gesture to the IMF and other foreign aid and investment providers,
showing them that the NCP has put down the gun and embraced mainstream
politics. But for the Party hardliners this is the most despicable
renegade ‘revisionism’. (Both sides are aware that such disputes and any
resolution symbolically reflect the balance of power in the Party. Those
who control the slogans, symbols, labels and icons remake the Party in
their own image partly by the dissemination of images of the powerful;
for the “vanguard party” they are an essential tool of hierarchical
power. See “The Mao Cult”;
) Similarly, a long debate between the two factions at a recent Party
conference over ‘the way forward’ included a clumsy compromise over the
retitling of the the nation-state. As “blogdai”, a cynically amused
Nepali blogger, put it;
Those brilliant Maoists have been banging their heads together for six
days to try and mend a catastrophic rift in their party. It seems most
of the hard-liners want to announce an all Communist “People’s Republic”
immediately; while Prachanda wants to go a little slower so as not to
throw the country back into chaos. After what blogdai can only assume to
be an excruciating application of sheer brainpower, our boys in red have
decided to call Nepal the “People’s Federal Democratic National
Republic.” Just think of the expense in stationary this will incur!
PFDNR Nepal.
The Young Communist League (YCL) is sometimes described as the disguised
military arm of the Maoists, or, increasingly, as their paramilitary
wing[20]. In 2006, after the Maoists agreed to end their 10-year
“People’s War,” they signed a peace pact with the government, thereby
agreeing to confine their “People’s Liberation Army” (PLA) in designated
cantonments under UN supervision. About 20,000 members of the Maoist PLA
are living in forest camps as the government seeks to integrate them
into the national Army. However, Nepal’s military has said it doesn’t
want to accept the fighters immediately “because they are still
politically motivated”.
There is general disbelief at the small number of PLA fighters
registered in the cantonments. It seems that the party transferred a
substantial number of PLA personnel to the YCL so that they could move
around freely, provide support to the party’s activities and continue
their fundraising activities of extortion and protection rackets levied
on businesses.
At present, the frustrated former soldiers have too much time on their
hands, too little money and few prospects for advancement. This is a
serious problem for the Maoist politicians and for the wider society.
Their racketeering and extortion, intimidation and assassination of
political rivals and critics destabilises the country, inhibits
industrial production, retards the formal political process and
encourages the growth of other paramilitary factions such as the UML
‘Youth Force’ and various ethnic/separatist groups.
The YCL has been both an asset and a burden to the Maoist leadership
since the ceasefire. During tough negotiations with other parties, it
has been useful for the Maoists to encourage a certain level of
paramilitary activity by the YCL. It has served as a warning that, if
the Maoists don’t get what they want, the possibility of a return to
guerilla war remains. It has also implied that if political concessions
are not given, the Maoist leaders will look discredited in the eyes of
their hotheaded youth and so risk losing control of them and/or be less
concerned at reining them in. But now, as the two rival Party factions —
hardliners and parliamentarians — face each other, who can command the
loyalty of the YCL may become crucial. It seems likely that the
hardliners may have the YCL on their side, the parliamentary road having
delivered so little to the rank’n’file soldiers. Yet a hardline effort
to immediately advance to a state of one-party rule would mean an
attempted military coup; in effect, a probable return to an indefinitely
stalemated guerilla war. So we could see a smaller Maoist guerilla
faction taking again to the hills, while the Maoist politicians remain
in Parliament. (The Maoist parliamentarians could retain their own
paramilitary force and/or ally with other parliamentary groups.)
In response to growing post-election Maoist brutality, other political
parties have formed youth groups. Youth cadre of the non-Maoist
Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML)[21] — the third
largest party in Parliament — have been abducted and murdered by the
YCL; last week another was viciously attacked with machetes by YCL
cadre. Now the UML Youth Force — itself accused of intimidation and
involvement in extortion — is threatening its own ‘People’s War’ against
the Maoist-led government if the YCL are allowed to continue in their
gangsterism. As one former UML leader put it, when expressing fears that
the Youth Force may become as much of a problem as the YCL;
“If the ruling party itself keeps a paramilitary force then there is no
reason why other parties won’t also try to form their own,” he said,
adding “and if everybody starts to form their own paramilitary forces
then the atmosphere in the country will be very dark. The Prime Minister
should seriously think about this thing,” Nepalnews reported.
This seems to be what is increasingly happening — “War is the
continuation of politics by other means” — (Clausewitz).
Maoists have also intimidated journalists critical of their brutality
and have admitted murdering at least one[22]. Several newspapers have
been targetted and temporarily shut down by Maoist trade unions and
journalists attacked by Maoist goon squads; the union activity here
being used for intimidating critics rather than pursuing workers’
interests. The UML’s Youth Force have also recently carried out a
similar attack on a newspaper office.
In the southern Terai plains region an ethnic Madhesi movement (which
includes ex-Maoists) continues to call for national independence for the
territory and to compete with Maoists and other factions for
paramilitary dominance of the area. A female journalist, Uma Singh, was
killed in Terai last week; her murder may be a response to her writings
against the dowry marriage-payment system that has such oppressive
consequences for women in Nepal.[23] But she was also critical of land
seizures and extortion rackets in Terai carried out by a former Maoist
cabinet minister (now sacked),[24] and her father and brother were
‘disappeared’ by the Maoists during the civil war. Some suspects have
now been arrested, one a local Maoist leader.
Back in 2006 during the popular pro-democracy protests that eventually
toppled the King and preceded the Maoist ceasefire, we commented;
And the consequences for the development of any autonomous movement of
self-organised class struggle beyond and against bourgeois democracy?
The industrial working class is a minority in a predominantly peasant
population. We make no hierarchies of one sector of the poor being more
important or radical than the other; but the industrial workers have
certain specific potential areas of struggle (transport, industry etc)
that are unique to them and would be of crucial importance in any future
movement. The rural and urban poor are dependent on an alliance with
each other to affect any real change in their own mutual interests. So
far they have only taken sides with one or other of the factions
competing to rule over them. To go further than a more democratic
management of continued poverty they will have to stop taking sides and
start making sides. Despite the limits of the pro-democratic framework
of recent events, many of the poor may have realised, through the
flexing of their collective muscle, a sense of their own potential power
to act more directly in their own class interests. Without wanting to be
determinist, in the absence of an autonomous movement of the poor moving
beyond demands for democracy, there will probably need to be a period of
disillusionment with a new Kingless democracy system before any such
autonomous movement will emerge.
Is the time ripe for such a movement, is it close and soon to emerge
from the present confusion? The Maoists were, for many Nepalese, a hope
for major change in the stagnating corruption of political life. But
this illusion is evaporating. The options ahead look difficult for the
ruling class and bleak for the poor — as the Parliamentary political
process is impeded by distrust and the added decision-making problems of
a coalition government; as parliamentary rivalries threaten to spill
over into paramilitary war; as a split within the Maoists between
gradualist democrats and one-party state capitalists looks more likely;
as electricity infrastructure, food and fuel inflation hardships
increase daily.
If the Maoist hardliners break away from the parliamentarians and take
the YCL paramilitaries with them, this could easily spark a renewed
civil war involving the national Army, various paramilitary wings of
parliamentary parties (including Maoist oppositionists) and also smaller
ethnic separatist groups.
Perhaps the one bright spark is the ongoing strike wave; maybe an
independent social movement of rural and urban poor will emerge from the
growing cynicism with the false promises of political solutions. Most
Nepalis appear weary of war and many disillusioned with politics. But
with these class struggles surrounded by a tangled web of intersecting
ethnic, separatist, nationalist and political group tensions, and these
divisions and rivalries becoming more brutal and militarised — the
potential of an autonomous working class movement emerging look
difficult, to say the least. And divided though the ruling class is, the
one thing that unites them, from left to right, is the necessity to ban
strikes. The politicians have already illustrated that — whatever the
gloss put on it — they understand their conflict as an inter-class one
to decide among themselves who will govern and exploit the poor, and by
what methods.
Reports of recent developments in Nepal and the Maoist-led government’s
proposed crackdown on workers’ struggle.
Several months ago we reported public statements by Maoist government
ministers that they intended to legislate to ban strikes (see
). This was received badly by some pro-Maoist internet leftists; on more
than one site it was falsely insinuated that we were dishonest and/or
inaccurate (though they failed to show any evidence of this), that we
had misinterpreted the meaning of these statements or their motive etc.
With quite desperate and convoluted argument, some even tried to defend
a strike ban as part of the ‘building of socialism’ in the interests of
the working class.
As previously reported, to encourage foreign capitalist investment the
Maoists have already passed legislation to restrict workers’ rights to
defend their interests in the proposed Economic Processing Zones (EPZs).
KATHMANDU, Jan 22: After four years of finalizing the draft, the cabinet
on Thursday endorsed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act, paving way for the
implementation of the SEZ projects in the country. [...]
...the Act treats SEZ as a land where other domestic laws related to
labor and industries would not be applicable. It has mooted an
autonomous SEZ Authority to oversee its operations.
The source stated that the ratification of the Act, which had so far
lingered due to the differences over the tighter labor provisions, had
became possible after the seven parties recently agreed not to launch
strikes in the industries or disturb productions.
“The Act allows workers to unite and practice collective bargaining, but
prohibits them from undertaking activities that affect production and
normal operations of industries,” said the source. It also allows the
entrepreneurs to hire workers on a contract basis. [Our emphasis.]
Now Maoist finance minister Dr Bhattrai has told Nepal’s International
Chamber of Commerce that the promised strike ban will soon be
operational;
“We are in a new political set-up and it demands a new outlook in
business and industries also,” said Bhattrai. He assured entrepreneurs
that the private sector would remain a key economic player in the
country. He asked business communities to explore fields of competitive
advantage.
Nepal is in political transition and there are many problems in trade
and commerce sector. “The government knows the problems and is working
to solve them,” Dr Bhattarai said. The government has been providing
subsidies in fuel to industries from the second half of March.
Furthermore, the government is planning to restrict bandhs [street
protests] and strikes in industries and essential commodities. “Such
regulations will come soon,” he assured.
(Himalayan Times online — Apr 10 2009)
That seems clear enough, even for pro-Maoist leftists.
The Maoist-led government in 2008 officially abolished the Haliya system
of bonded labour that survived in the more remote parts of Nepal.
“Haliya also refers to the bonded labourers and the literal translation
means ‘one who ploughs’. Labourers have to work as haliya to pay off
loans to their moneylender-landlord. Once in debt they lose all control
over their conditions and through exorbitant interest rates and other
charges become trapped and unable to pay off their debt.” (Anti-Slavery
International.) The Haliyas largely belong to three categories: the
traditional ones, born into Haliya families; Haliyas who spend their
lives trying to pay off debt inherited from their forefathers; and those
who till their masters’ land. A majority belong to the second category.
Haliya predominantly affects the Dalit untouchable Hindu caste of
western Nepal.
But since abolition the government have provided no infrastructure to
replace the former means of subsistence, leaving the ‘Haliyas’ (bonded
labourers) and their dependents with no means of support.
Quote:
“The government did precious little to ensure our rehabilitation,” said
a frustrated Dhani, who had little option but to opt for servility to
fend for a large family of 10 members.
His life story resonates with social ills that are yet to be weeded out
in this day and age.
Dhani was released from Gore Saud’s household last year. Subsequently,
he submitted a plea in the District Office, Doti, claiming his freedom.
But, in retrospect, the longing for a better secured future has
backfired.
“I’ve to depend on my old master again since the government has failed
to come up alternative means of livelihood for me,” lamented Dhani.
For some, things are even worse;
Quote:
Dhani has a brother-in-arms in Tula Ram Mul of Barbata of Doti, who,
too, is seeking a bonded existence all over again. He had gained freedom
a good three years ago. But, even human bondage is not finding any taker
these days as Tula Ram found out to his dismay.
Nar Bahadur Sarki, a freed Haliya from Chhatiban, is also in the horns
of a dilemma. He has been denied an opportunity to serve his old master.
(Himalayan Times online — Apr 9 2009)
Matrika Yadav, a former leading Maoist, has split from the ruling
Unified CPN (Maoist) party — claiming that leader Prachanda/Kamal and co
have abandoned socialist principles and are living in luxurious
corruption. (Maoist ministers have chauffeur driven cars and salaries 40
times the average Nepali wage.) He has organised a new party —
CPN-Maoist — with other disaffected Maoists.
On Wednesday night (8^(th) Apr) these two factions clashed in Biratnagar
bazaar, south-east Nepal. Matrika’s faction torched a bus in which the
Unified Maoist cadres were travellng. Shots were fired, with some
casualties including police. Since then the police are patrolling in
large numbers and have had to use baton charges and tear gas to break up
clashes. Things are now reported to have quietened down.
Across Nepal such clashes are occurring regularly between different
political rivals — disputing various political, ethnic, separatist and
other territorial claims. One legacy of the Maoist civil war is that the
gun is becoming the first resort in settling rival claims — bullets have
become the dominant mode of political discourse.
government — sackings, lies and videotape
Last week (on Monday 4^(th) May) Unified Communist Party of Nepal
(Maoist) Chairman and Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal (also known as
Prachanda, “the fierce one”) resigned. This was the latest twist in a
long running power struggle.
Prachanda had sacked Nepal Army (NA) chief Katawal, who is considered
central to resistance to Maoist attempts to seize control of the Army,
after General Katawal had refused to integrate thousands of Maoist
guerilla People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops into the regular Army.
But the country’s President, Ram Baran Yadav, a member of the main
Nepali Congress opposition party, overruled PM Prachanda and told the
General to stay put. This was welcomed by the other governing parties
fed up with the increasingly dictatorial style of the Maoists; but as
the Maoists are the majority party, the ruling Constituent Assembly is
now barely functional.
Wary of each other’s motives, it seems that both the NA and PLA had
broken the 2006 peace agreement by beginning new recruitment — though
both excused themselves by claiming that they were only filling vacant
posts. All political and military factions are aware that control of the
army is key to the Maoist project of eventual seizure of state power.
“In a televised address to the nation, Prachanda said he was stepping
down in response to an ‘unconstitutional and undemocratic’ move by
Nepal’s president to stop the elected Maoist government from sacking the
army chief.” This proved highly amusing when, later that day, a video of
Prachanda speaking to the Maoist guerilla PLA commanders was released
anonymously to the media.[25] Recorded after the Maoists had signed the
peace deal and promised their commitment to parliamentary democracy, it
showed Prachanda telling the faithful that this was all a clever ploy, a
temporary tactical move to capture sole state power for themselves. He
jokes about how they manipulated the United Nations Mission in Nepal
(UNMIN) verification process of registering troop numbers, as part of
the peace deal. He reveals that the real guerilla strength was only
7,000 rather than the 35,000 actually registered. This would help them
later claim more places for loyal ex-guerillas within the Nepalese Army
— as part of the ‘integration’ process — as a means to take control of
it.
... it has revealed that the Maoists had taken a strategy to let the
Constituent Assembly elections happen only if they could win. Dahal said
the Maoists would let the CA elections happen only if they could smell a
victorious situation. “Either we would not let the CA happen or the
(Nepali) Congress would not. The CA elections will happen only in the
situation in which either the Congress or we can win.”
The video broadcast by Image Television for the first time on Monday
after Dahal stepped down from the government over the Chief of the Army
Staff’s dismissal controversy was reportedly shot at the UNMIN monitored
Shaktikhor cantonment on Jan. 2, 2008 before the historic Constituent
Assembly elections.
Admitting that the real strength of the PLA was around 7000, Dahal who
was the supreme commander of the PLA said the Maoists, however, managed
to show the figure as 35,000 to the United Nations Mission in Nepal
(UNMIN), and got 20,000 verified.
“Before the compromise was made in fact we were few. We were about
7,000,” says Dahal in the video talking about the UNMIN verification
results, “We managed 35,000 in the camps and it (figure) came around at
least 20,000.”
“We shall not say this to others,” the then PLA chieftain said with
smiles and added, “But this is the fact.”
Stating had the party shown the PLA’s real strength after the
verification the count would drop to 4000, Dahal said, “Our leadership
shrewdly made up the regular army from 7,000 to 21,000,” adding, “We
haven’t decreased (in number), we have increased. Moreover, we have
formed the YCL [Maoist paramilitary thuggish youth wing] outside. We
haven’t left that (army) structure. We have been adding up thousands
there also.”
Addressing the Maoist combatants residing at the cantonment at the time
when the country was preparing for the CA elections, he revealed the
plan to disapprove the UNMIN verification after winning the polls.
“After we win, we will not consider the verification as basis (for the
army integration). We will make other provision. Why would we abide by
that after we win? ... Why would we follow it when we are on the upper
hand?”
Moreover, Dahal said the PLA that is politically aware can hold full
control over the national army even if it gets entry in a small number.
“They (Nepal Army) know only to tread boots. This is not the case with
us,” he said, and argued that it was the reason for army chief
(Rookmangud) Katawal to publicly speak against the army integration.
(eKantipur.com — 5 May 09)
Prachanda also revealed his plan that both compensation money given to
the families of Maoist guerilla ‘martyrs’ killed in the decade of civil
war — and also funds to maintain living ex-guerillas still garrisoned in
cantonments under UNMIN supervision — should be divided so that 90% went
to the Party to be used for funding an insurrection to seize state
power.
Anybody who had bothered to compare the contradictory statements of
Maoist leaders since they entered government would know that they will
play up their insurrectional intentions when talking to the Party
faithful (to keep them on-side and ever-optimistic of a brighter future)
and play up their democratic commitment when talking to the
international diplomatic community (to secure aid and investment and a
secure niche in the wider geo-politics of the region). So the video
revelations are no great surprise — but are nevertheless a great
embarassment to Prachanda — the UNMIN, for example, will not be amused
at seeing him gloating over fooling them.
In his speech Prachanda also took a quick swipe at the American Maoists
of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, dominated by the
Revolutionary Communist Party, led by the slavishly adored guru Chairman
Bob Avakian; “We are members of RIM. Indian Maoists are not in RIM. The
American communists do nothing but talk. Sometimes they criticise us and
sometimes they support us. When they will find us joining the
government, they might write some articles which I am sure no one reads
or understands.”
Another embarassment — if he realises it — is that Prachanda has
admitted in the video that the military capability of the Maoist forces
is much weaker than was generally believed. With a recent gradual slow
drift away from the cantonments by bored ex-guerillas these numbers have
likely decreased even further. So the Maoists’ constant threat to return
to civil war if they don’t get their own way politically now perhaps
looks less threatening. They could take up the gun again, but with even
less prospects now than the indefinite military stalemate of their
previous achievements. This is one reason why they are likely to look
for a political solution to enable them to re-enter government.
“it was the Indian establishment which facilitated the Maoists to assume
power in Nepal through the use of the 12 point agreement that was signed
in New Delhi on November 22, 2005”. (Indian foreign minister Pranav
Mukherjee — January 2009)
It is regional geo-politics that has inevitably snared Prachanda. Nepal
cannot escape the influence of its big brother neighbours, India and
China. During the decade of Maoist guerilla war Prachanda is said to
have spent much time in India being courted by Indian intelligence
services. It was they who set up the 12 point programme of 2005, the
peace deal that ended the civil war and brought the Maoists into
alliance with other bourgeois forces against the King and led to the
present Republic. This led to the Maoists’ intergration into
parliamentary politics. Since the Maoists’ election victory they have
developed closer ties with China. China has a policy of buying influence
and useful infrastructure in poorer regional neighbour countries. As
part of this process it funds development of transport infrastructure
which has a potential dual commercial and military use. India is
concerned that Nepal may become another pearl in this Chinese regional
“string of pearls”.
India, for historical, geographical, commercial, cultural and linguistic
reasons, has traditionally had the greatest influence over Nepal.
Nepalese politics has always been conducted in the shadow of Indian
surveillance and Indian interests. Hemmed in by the northern Himalayas,
the southern border has been the essential trade and supply route for
Nepal — and India has, when displeased with Nepalese policies, shut down
border traffic and so exerted its will on Nepal. So the closer ties with
China has annoyed India — and it is widely believed that Indian
intelligence directed the Nepalese President to block the dismissal of
General Katawal. The Indian and Nepalese armies have always been very
closely connected, the Nepal Army being trained by the Indians. The
Indian army chief is also ceremonial head of the Nepal Army and vice
versa.
The Maoists must have now regained their lost senses in having taken
India for granted. India used and overly used the Maoists to sideline
the arrogant Monarch ... The Indian establishment had not even imagined
that a person who resided in New Delhi for more than eight years
enjoying lavish care and comfort will exhibit his intolerance towards
the dictates and sermons of the New Delhi administration. (Himalayan
Times — 4^(th) May 09)”
It seems that Prachanda, under pressure from his Party rank’n’file, went
against Indian wishes in insisting on dismissing Katawal. This was
anyway an unnecessary risk; General Katawal was due to retire in three
months time. Since his resignation Prachanda has complained of those who
‘serve their foreign masters’. The political establishment with close
ties to India are commonly known as ‘Indo-pendents’. Yet now his Indian
masters have shown him who’s boss, Prachanda/Dahal goes running back to
them to try to placate them. He has been reminded that those who put him
in power expect his loyalty and obedience;
Dahal, while, on the one hand, addressing the party mass meets
criticizes the local partners for serving to their foreign masters (read
India), on the other, in his talk with the Indian media revels
indirectly that he is also subservient to the Indian dictates. This
double standard!
In an interview with the Hindu at the Baluatar residence on Sunday May
10, 2009, Pushpa Kamal Dahal reveals that he had asked Ambassador Sood
to request New Delhi to send Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon or
some other senior Indian officials for talks on the increasingly tensed
standoff over the sacking of the Nepal Army chief.
“We knew some confusion is there between the Maoist-led government and
India on this question,” said the former rebel leader turned Prime
Minister of the country.
In an attempt to appease the Indian leadership, the Prime Minister who
during the decade long rebellion lived in India, also tells that the
flurry of High Level Chinese delegation visiting Nepal had arrived in
Nepal uninvited. A big setback to China, indeed!
“The initiative for these visits came solely from the Chinese
side…mainly because of the Tibet crisis”, Dahal tells The Hindu dated
May 11, 2009. (Telegraph Nepal — May 11 09)
Meanwhile the Maoists again play the anti-India nationalist card at
home, portraying themselves as heroic defenders of national sovereignty
— yet, as was pointed out;
a Maoist team led by none less than the party chairman Pushpa Kamal
Dahal had met a high ranking delegation of India’s notorious
intelligence agency RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) in July 2007 in
Sikkim of India.
The crème de la crème of the Maoists leadership crossing over the Nepali
territory to meet the RAW top-agents comprised of none other than
Prachanda, deputy in command Baburam Bhattarai, leader Ram Karki and
Nepalese expatriate leader of the Maoists Party, Hari Bhakta Kandel
alias Pratik.
Mr. Pratik is an Indian national who has a house in Damak, Jhapa
district.
The Maoists’ leaders had crossed the Nepali territory on July 27, 07 at
around 6:00 PM and arrived in Nepal the next morning staying in the
alien land for over 12 hours.
The RAW team was led by T. Hermis- the then chief of the Indian
intelligence agency.
Hermis was a RAW man in Kathmandu and stayed here for over three years
in the Indian embassy. Mr. Hermis is now a retired man and currently
resides in Banglore.
Thus, the Maoists party’s fresh anti-India rhetoric holds no water, as
they were once close to the RAW and had been told to rule Nepal.
(Telegraph Nepal — May 11 09)
Since the Maoists left the government their cadres have been clearing
rival political forces out of villages in their rural strongholds, under
threat of death;
In Argakhachi District, a senior Maoist leader, Top Bahadur Rayamajhi
ordered his cadres to capture each and every village, whip the Nepali
Congress and UML cadres, those who have supported what the Maoists take
as, the unconstitutional move of the President.
Leader Rayamaji has served a week-long warning to all to join the Maoist
party or else face the stringent penal actions.
“If the President remains undeterred in his move, we are also ready to
take-up to the arms”, Rayamajhi threatened addressing a gathering in
Sandhikarkha, Argakhachi.
Innocent citizens continue to arrive at the district headquarters along
with their family members in the district of Bardia. All have similar
pain and plight.
“They were told to leave the village else killed by the Maoist”, reports
declare. “No one sleeps during the night, they fear the Maoists would
come at night and kill them,” locals who have gathered in the District
Headquarters told the media.
In Pokhara, Kaski, the YCL cadres in a broad day light mercilessly
thrashed Transport Workers.
This is the Maoist version of Peoples’ Supremacy, perhaps. (Telegraph
Nepal — 12 May 09)
Nepal has not recovered from the civil war — the same conflicts are
merely played out at a political level, yet constantly threaten to
return to military conflict. The entrenched political elite — largely
subservient to the Indian ruling class — are slow or disinterested in
granting the basic social reforms the Maoists call for, and which have
given them popular support; ie, land reforms, an end to indentured
servitude, caste and ethnic oppression, desperate poverty, health and
education access etc. Certainly a Maoist dictatorship would only be a
newer more modern form of class rule — one where the duties and rights
of a ‘good communist citizen’ may well include a denial of the right to
strike, as already proposed by Maoist ministers in the interests of
economic development (see;
). An attempt at a programme of social reforms would probably be a
sensible measure by any new opposition coalition government. But the
largely insensible shorted-sighted and fragmented Nepali ruling class —
with a weak national economic base — is unlikely to have the historical
perspective to act in their own long term interests and so pre-empt the
Maoists in this way. Nepal seems set to slide into increasing
fragmentation, as various ethnic and separatist demands are voiced in
various regions. The strongest of these is on the southern plains, where
the Madhesi movement (partly led by ex-Maoists, likely backed by Indian
intelligence) is staking a political (and increasingly para-military)
claim for regional autonomy, possibly as a first step towards full
national independence. (Depending on who forms it, the Madhesi
politicians may hold the balance of power in the next government, so are
insisting on major concessions.)
At its most extreme, this fragmentation could lead to a country broken
into two northern and southern proxy spheres of influence — a
Chinese-dominated north next to an Indian-dominated south. It is not
that the larger powers probably want this fragmentation and
destabilisation on their doorstep; but if mini-statelets (or warlord
territories) emerge across Nepal these will inevitably be drawn into
competitive allegiances with their larger neighbours. Any prospects for
the emergence of a strong independent working class movement tend to get
disorientated among the confusion and brutality of political claims of
rival contenders competing for the role of new ruling class.
Though with no overall majority, the Maoists hold 38% of the seats in
the Constituent Assembly, twice as many as the nearest rival. The
parties have struggled for months now over the writing of a new
constitution; but this requires a two-thirds majority in favour. In 1994
Prachanda’s Maoists abandoned their Parliamentary seats and took to the
hills to prepare for their guerilla war. Despite their regular threats,
the prospect of the Maoist majority now picking up the gun again seems
unlikely. For the moment, they will probably continue with a rolling
series of street protests and blockades (bandhs). Nepal waits to see
what, if any, new government will be formed and whether the Maoists will
return to it.
legislations
In January and April 2009 two libcom news articles were published[26]
reporting that the Maoist-led government had expressed their intention
to use legislation to ban strikes in some industries. These articles
were quite widely reproduced on various websites and caused some
controversy; online pro-maoists were particularly upset. So much so that
some of them used a combination of inaccuracy and distortion in an
attempt to discredit the articles. We have refuted these dishonesties
wherever possible, but as they have continued[27] we have decided to
restate the facts here for convenient reference.
Since the articles were written we have also found some additional proof
of the Maoists’ intentions to ban strikes and we present it here.
Part 2 is a more general commentary on the political role of Maoism in
Nepal and its function in promoting capitalist development.
“We are not fighting for socialism,” he said ... “We are just fighting
against feudalism. We are fighting for a capitalistic mode of
production. We are trying to give more profit to the capitalists and
industrialists.” (Prachanda, Nepalese Maoist Party leader — Daily
Telegraph, 31 Oct 2006.
)
Having won the most seats, but without an absolute majority, the
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) became the leading party in a
coalition government in 2008. Even before they entered government the
Maoists made it clear they were happy to sign up to a policy to repress
militancy in the workplace and discourage strikes; in 2006 they signed a
10-point agreement with other parties to end the decade-old guerilla war
and join an interim coalition government. Known as the Comprehensive
Peace Agreement (CPA), Point 7 of the agreement declares:
“Both sides believe in the fact that the industrial climate in the
country should not be disturbed and production should be given
continuity and that the right of collective bargaining and social
security should be respected.” Any disputes with employers should be
solved “in a peaceful manner”. (
)
The Maoist position on how state power should be used to deal with
strikes is one of the few issues they have remained consistent on since
a governmental role became a possibility. This shows that the claim that
this attitude originated as a response only to “reactionary strikes” by
other rival parties is false.
The libcom articles made clear that the Maoists had expressed clear
intentions to ban strikes, not that they had actually banned any
strikes. The article was republished elsewhere by others unknown with
the changed title “Maoists ban strikes”; some pro-maoists have used this
fact to try to distort the issues. They split these hairs to deny that
their Maoist heroes ever did ban any actual strikes so as to distract
from the fact that, regardless, they clearly expressed an intention to
do so and legislated a strike ban to give their government the power to
do so. The Maoists headed the Ministry of Labour when the legislation
described below was introduced.
But the Maoist-led government did enact legislation to ban strikes. This
came into force during their rule; so, under their rule, strikes became
illegal, having been banned by their legislation. Most rational people
would accept that, once that legal ban became operational and striking
became illegal, that a strike ban was then in place. By some strange
logic, pro-maoist apologists claim that in the case of Nepal this was
not so. We suspect that if any Western non-leftist government enacted
similar legislation that the pro-maoists would have a different view. So
if the article was republished by others with the title “Maoists ban
strikes” this is anyway hardly a distortion.
There has therefore been confusion made, sometimes deliberately, when
describing what strike ban proposals and what actual legislation the
Maoists made when leading the government. We will try to clarify the
process here. Two different pieces of legislation were invoked to give
anti-strike powers. Firstly, in January 2009 the Special Economic Zone
Act was ratified.
The Special Economic Zones Act had been drafted four years before by an
earlier government and had lain dormant until the Maoist-led government
revived and endorsed it as an anti-strike weapon. Special Economic Zones
(SEZs) are geographical regions where production and export-import
activities are concentrated. They are governed by specific economic laws
giving preferential tax concessions/exemptions to investors. A defining
characteristic of SEZs and their attraction to potential investors is
their stricter labour discipline, usually including laws banning
strikes. Workers are employed on perpetual short-term contracts and so
vulnerable to dismissal at short notice with little or no compensation.
The goal is usually for less-developed poorer nations to attract an
increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the country.
Though areas have been designated for the Zones, there are no
operational SEZs in Nepal at present (the planned opening of the first
in Feb 2009 was postponed but the first is due to open in 2012(?) at
Bhairahawa). But the implementing of the SEZ Act was clearly an attempt
to pave the way for attracting both foreign and local investment in
future SEZs. This is the method now commonly used in Asian countries for
stimulating industrial development; to utilise their plentiful supply of
low-wage labour power to produce for export markets in richer countries.
The Chinese model is typical of SEZs, and one very influential on
Nepalese Maoists;
Not surprisingly, some of the most successful SEZs in China were
actually totally exempt from national labor laws when they were first
created in the 1980s. (
Feb 2010)
The formation of the first SEZ in Shenzhen in May 1980 and their rapid
growth was followed by the removal of any right to strike from the
revised Chinese Constitution in 1982. (This was apparently also
influenced by the independent Solidarnosc union movement in Poland at
the time, which the Chinese state saw as a disturbing example of workers
challenging the domination of Stalinist-type state capitalist regimes.)
A recent 2010 report describes the kind of labour conditions common to
the Chinese SEZs that have so inspired the Nepalese Maoists;
A recent spate of stories focusing on electronics companies with
manufacturing operations in the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have
highlighted poor labour standards and reputational risks relevant to all
multinational corporations with subsidiaries and supply chains in China.
[...]
During 2010, various sources raised concerns about the working
conditions for young workers at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, where
it is reported that 12 workers, aged around 20 years old, have committed
suicide since the beginning of this year. [...]
An undercover investigation by a journalist into the suicides at Foxconn
found that most employees “do not make a living,” so are forced to work
overtime.
Every month each employee would sign a “voluntary overtime affidavit”
waiving the 36-hours legal overtime limit, per month, so that they could
earn a living wage. [...]
A report published in January 2009 by the US-based NGO National Labour
Committee (NLC), entitled “High Tech Misery,” also reveals sub-standard
working conditions in plastics and electronics factories in Dongguan.
The report claims that employees are forbidden from going to the
restroom or talking to colleagues.
Workers are also fined for being one minute late and work an average of
81 hours per week, sitting on wooden stools with no backrests. According
to Maplecroft’s report, the SEZs are well-known for their ability to
attract foreign investors because of tax incentives and a large pool of
cheap labour.
However, SEZs are also subject to a prevalence of labour rights
violations due to weak enforcement of labour laws. [...] (China Labour
Standards;
— 28/07/2010)
In March the Maoists published their party manifesto for the upcoming
Constituent Assembly governmental election, clearly stating their
programme of capitalist development centred around attracting foreign
investment in SEZs;
Foreign investors who specially invest in industries that provide
substitutes for import shall be welcomed. Joint investment with 51%
national investment shall be highly emphasized. Keeping in mind the
large market in India and China, ‘special economic area’ shall be
established in major Southern and Northern border areas to establish
export-oriented industries. (New ideology & new leadership for a new
Nepal: commitment paper of the CPN(M) for the CA election, March 2008;
)
After the Constituent Assembly election of April 2008 the Maoists became
the leading party of the coalition government. The development of SEZs
were again emphasised as a key part of Maoist economic policy. As Maoist
party chief and new Prime Minister Prachanda made clear, the Chinese
model of hyper-exploitation of the working class is the preferred path
to ‘socialism’ for the Maoists;
“We will build special economic zones like China,” Prachanda said. “The
special economic zones stimulated China’s economic development, and we
want to learn from China. China’s experience is really helpful for us.”
In the interview, Prachanda emphasized the geographic proximity between
China and Nepal, and the high respect that Nepalese people have for
China and Chinese people. “For Nepal’s national independence, it is
critically important for Nepal to maintain intimate relations with
China” (Nanfang Daily, June 30 2008). (
)
When the Maoist-led government set their first Budget in October they
stated;
“... The Act relating to the special economic zones will be enacted in
this Fiscal Year. Necessary provisions are made in the accompanying
Finance Act for providing customs and income tax exemption facilities in
the special economic zones.” (Oct 6 2008) (
-...)
So despite their regular ‘anti-imperialist’ rhetoric the Maoists were
bending over backwards to invite foreign capital to exploit the cheap
labour of the country (and in the process make the Nepali ruling
political and economic elite richer).
As promised, the SEZ Act was then endorsed in January 2009 to pass into
law;
KATHMANDU, Jan 22: After four years of finalizing the draft, the cabinet
on Thursday endorsed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act, paving way for the
implementation of the SEZ projects in the country. [...]
...the Act treats SEZ as a land where other domestic laws related to
labor and industries would not be applicable. It has mooted an
autonomous SEZ Authority to oversee its operations.
The source stated that the ratification of the Act, which had so far
lingered due to the differences over the tighter labor provisions, had
became possible after the seven parties recently agreed not to launch
strikes in the industries or disturb productions.
“The Act allows workers to unite and practice collective bargaining, but
prohibits them from undertaking activities that affect production and
normal operations of industries,” said the source. It also allows the
entrepreneurs to hire workers on a contract basis. [Our emphasis.]
So eager were the Maoists to get the SEZ zones of hyper-exploitation up
and running that opposition leaders were complaining that in their haste
the Maoists had bypassed normal parliamentary legislative procedure by
unilaterally using an “ordinance” mechanism to activate laws onto the
statute books, rather than the normal legislative route, so as to avoid
wider scrutiny by other parliamentary parties in the Constituent
Assembly;
... the Nepali Congress (NC) leader Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat has deplored
the government for bringing out ordinances ”by sidelining the
parliament.” He said that the introduction of ordinances instead of
legislations at the parliament smacked of Maoists” totalitarian
attitude. (thaindian.com — 29^(th) Jan 09
)
The intention of the Maoists to attract investment by offering a
potentially strike-free SEZ environment are clearly shown in the above
reports and Maoist statements. But due to the general political
instability (making investment unattractive) and changes of government
in recent years, no SEZs have opened for business and the SEZ Act was
apparently stalled in the final stages of its implementation into the
law books; it has gathered dust in legal limbo since the Maoists left
government. (The Act had suffered a similar fate in the hands of the
government that preceded the Maoist-led regime.) Recent reports in 2010
suggest that SEZs may soon finally become operational and the Act
receive its final passage into the law books.
All the above only gives additional proof that the various excuses made
by Western pro-maoists — that there is no available evidence that the
Nepali Maoists intended to legislate for anti-strike powers or had any
intentions to ban strikes etc — are false. The invented excuse that a
strike ban proposal was only made in response to disruption caused by
strikes organised by “reactionary parties” to “undermin[e] the
Maoist-led government” is also shown above to be false; the SEZs were
part of the Maoist economic program from before they entered government
and the 4-year-old SEZ Act of an earlier government was revived to
facilitate establishing SEZs.
The population of Nepal is presently around 80% rural and agricultural,
though migration to the towns continues to grow. About three million
Nepalese — over 10% of the population — have also gone abroad seeking
work for varying periods. But wage labourers are only a small minority
in Nepal; agriculture employs 76% of the workforce, services 18% and
manufacturing/craft-based industry 6%. Most of the non-agricultural
manual workers work in the informal craft sector, mainly in small
workshops. The garment and carpet industries, once employing several
hundred thousand workers, with substantial exports, have suffered a
recent drastic decline — partly due to the phasing out of the World
Trade Organisation quota system in 2005. For those who see increasing
capital accumulation encouraged by appropriate state policy as their
political agenda — and all the main parties are in principle agreed on
this — industrial development aided by foreign investment remain key
goals.
The development of capitalism and of an exploited proletariat is the
goal of Nepali Maoism — they claim it is an essential part of the
building of ‘socialism/communism’. If the workers don’t know what’s good
for them and that they must not defend their conditions with strikes
then a future Maoist state would soon teach them by force of law. For
the Maoists, the ‘liberation of the proletariat’ will apparently be
advanced by submission to the investment opportunities and preferences
of international capital. As one of the world’s poorest countries,
Nepal’s investment appeal is in the cheapness of its surplus labour
force — and a government willing to keep wages at an “attractively” low
level. A quick look elsewhere in Asia shows what this means for workers;
eg, this is the basis of the “success” story of the Bangladesh garment
export industry (paying the lowest industrial wages in the world to an
often malnutritious workforce[28]) and other poor countries; and these
are the countries Nepal’s Maoists (or whichever other bourgeois party is
in power) must compete with in a race to bottom to attract SEZ
investors.
One might have thought that a Party claiming to represent the most
oppressed would have made a political issue of the existence of
anti-strike legislation and demanded its abolition when it was in a
position to do so. But quite the contrary — as well as the SEZ Act,
there is also a second piece of anti-worker legislation the Maoists
armed themselves with...
Services Act
The second legislation used by the Maoist-led government to arm
themselves with strike ban powers was the Essential Services Act. The
1957 Essential Services Maintenance Act allows governments to ban
strikes for six months at a time. The Maoist government Ministers were
coming under increasing pressure from Nepali capitalists to restore
order on the streets and in the workplace. The Maoists, as an opposition
party, had popularised the ‘bandh culture’ of strikes, shutdowns and
street blockades; in government they were now facing its use by various
competing groups with diverse demands.
By March 2007 — after the Maoist ceasefire and in the approach leading
to the election for the Constituent Assembly — the Nepali bosses were so
exasperated by the economic disruption that they even conducted their
own bandh to pressure the government and the Maoists to stop the
widespread bandhs that had been disrupting commerce[29]. Ten days later
the Maoist leaders — eager to show Nepali capitalists and potential
foreign investors that they were prioritising capital accumulation as a
potential future government — met with representatives of Nepali
businessmen and agreed to form a joint committee to deal with the
problem;
Maoist chairman Prachanda, senior Maoist leader Dr. Baburam Bhattrai and
president of Maoist-affiliated trade union Shalik Ram Jamarkattel met
with president of Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and
Industries (FNCCI) Chandi Raj Dhakal, president of Nepal Chamber of
Commerce (NCC) Surendra Bir Malakar and president of Confederation of
Nepalese Industries (CNI), Binod Chaudhari where the two sides agreed to
form the committee. (
March 28,2007)
One can imagine how loudly Western pro-maoists would denounce it as a
‘sell-out’ if left party and union leaders in Western countries formed
joint committees with their local Chambers of Commerce. But when the
Nepal Maoists do it, it magically becomes its opposite — part of a
‘revolutionary’ process.
In a TV interview a week after their election victory in April 2008, the
Maoists again reassured the Nepali ruling class it would be business as
usual;
Baburam Bhattarai, the deputy chief of the Maoists, ... “Our party has
no plans to confiscate private property,” Bhattarai said, marking a
change in the philosophy of an armed party that had in the past said it
would seize the excess land of capitalists and aristocracy and
distribute it among the landless in a revolutionary land reformation
measure.
“We promise full security to private ownership, property and
investment.”
The architect-turned-revolutionary said the new vision for a “new,
affluent and developed” Nepal included transforming the current
agro-based economy into an industrial one.
“We envision a pro-industry, capitalist economy with more investment in
tourism, hydropower, medicinal herb-based industries and agro-based
industries,” Bhattarai said.
He said the government led by his party would encourage private
investment in productive sectors so that more jobs were created while
discouraging investment in non-productive sectors.
He also tried to allay fears of labour militancy under a Maoist
government.
“The government will bring together labourers and owners and the
tripartite negotiations will come up with a new labour act,” he said. (
— April 20^(th), 2008)
On trips abroad PM Prachanda tried to encourage foreign investment in
Nepal. After nearly a year of governing — and two months after the
anti-strike SEZ Act was endorsed — the Maoists’ message to capitalists
and the working class on the undesireability of strikes remained the
same;
PM ‘Prachanda’ assures to solve industrial sector’s problem
By Biz Correspondent on March 18, 2009
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ on Wednesday said the
government was committed towards resolving problems being faced by the
industrial sector of the country.
Saying that the industrial sectors are backbones of the nation economy,
PM Prachanda during a meeting with representatives from business
community, said that government was going to prohibit all kinds of
strikes in industrial sector declaring the sector as banda free zone.
Representatives of from Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and
Industries (FNCCI), Confederation of Nepalese Industries (CNI) and
Nepalese Chambers of Commerce had met the PM ‘Prachanda’ and submitted a
memorandum urging the government to address various issues related with
industrial sector... [Our emphasis] (
— nepalbiznews.com 18 Mar 2010)
Three weeks later, fellow Maoist Minister Bhattrai echoed Prachanda’s
strike ban desires;
“We are in a new political set-up and it demands a new outlook in
business and industries also,” said Bhattrai. He assured entrepreneurs
that the private sector would remain a key economic player in the
country. He asked business communities to explore fields of competitive
advantage.
Nepal is in political transition and there are many problems in trade
and commerce sector. “The government knows the problems and is working
to solve them,” Dr Bhattarai said. The government has been providing
subsidies in fuel to industries from the second half of March.
Furthermore, the government is planning to restrict bandhs and strikes
in industries and essential commodities. “Such regulations will come
soon,” he assured. (Himalayan Times online — Apr 10 2009 — also; Apr 9,
)
And come soon they did — in the same week it was reported that;
KOSH RAJ KOIRALA
KATHMANDU, April 7: The government has invoked the Essential Services
Act (ESA) 2014 B.S, which bans strikes, in 16 various crucial service
areas, starting Monday.
Among other things, the ESA bans all manner of strikes in the import and
distribution of petroleum products including LPG (liquefied petroleum
gas).
This latest move by the government comes in the face of growing
instances of strike in various essential areas and just a week after
petroleum dealers and tanker operators launched nationwide strikes,
causing acute shortage of petroleum products in Kathmandu Valley and
other parts of the country.
Home Ministry spokesperson Nabin Ghimire said the import and
distribution of petroleum products has been recognized as an essential
service and strikes in this service banned, at the request of the
Ministry of Commerce and Supply. “We hope that enforcement of the act
(ESA) will do away with the tendency of organizing strikes in the
critical services area,” he added.
As per the Essential Service Act 2014 BS, those directly involved in
strikes against essential services are subject to a six-month jail term
or a Rs 200 fine or both. Likewise, those inciting strikes or tacitly
supporting the strike organizers are liable to a one-year jail term or a
Rs 1,000 fine or both.
Last year also, the Home Ministry had enforced the ESA to ensure the
availability of essential services. However, the ESA then did not
recognize the import and distribution of petroleum products as an
essential service. “We have also included internal security-related
services as an essential service,” spokesperson Ghimire said.
The ESA remains in force for six months from the date of its
notification through the Nepal Gazette [an official government legal
publication].
According to a notice published in the Nepal Gazette, the government has
recognized drinking water supply, electricity supply, hotels, hospitals
and drugs manufacturing, garbage collection and disposal, and banking
and insurance as essential services. Surface and air transport services,
communications services including the post and telephones, airports and
government printing and publication services are also included under the
ESA. [Our emphasis]
koshraj@myrepublica.com
Published on 2009-04-07 09:41:00
So the Maoist-led government had invoked the ESA to enforce what is a
virtual blanket ban on strikes[30]. As far as we know they only appear
to have used this law against oil tanker operators; but a spokesperson
for the Maoist-led government is quoted explicitly referring to its
wider application; ‘ “We hope that enforcement of the act (ESA) will do
away with the tendency of organizing strikes in the critical services
area,” ‘The ESA was activated in the same week that Maoist finance
minister Dr Bhattrai told Nepal’s International Chamber of Commerce that
the promised strike ban would soon be operational, and could clearly be
used to deliver what he promised to bosses; “the government is planning
to restrict bandhs and strikes in industries and essential commodities.
“Such regulations will come soon,” he assured.” (Himalayan Times online
— Apr 10 2009)
The Maoists left government before they got much chance to use these
powers more widely — on 4^(th) May 2009 Maoist Party Chairman and Prime
Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal (also known as Prachanda) resigned over a
dispute with the President regarding the sacking of an army General. But
the legislation that the Maoist-led government had revived and
implemented is clearly a provision for an almost blanket ban on workers’
strikes.
Some may claim the ESA strike ban was only done ‘for the sake of the
public good’ to relieve shortages of basic goods and services — but this
rings hollow when one sees that after leaving government Maoist-led
disruption of essential services such as fuel was considered fine as a
tactic — as in Nov 09;
KATHMANDU: Unified CPN-Maoist-affiliated All Nepal Petroleum Workers’
Union (ANPWU) on Monday lived up to its threat, shutting down all
private petrol pumps in the Kathmandu Valley for an indefinite period.
The closure comes in the wake of the Nepal Petroleum Dealers’
Association’s (NPDA) ‘failure to fulfil’ ANPWU’s 16-point charter of
demands.
The Maoist union’s stir has spread beyond the Kathmandu Valley as well.
ANPWU members today picketed at all nine Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC)
depots across the nation for the fifth consecutive day. NOC depots are
located in Amlekhgunj, Pokhara, Biratnagar, Nepalgunj, Surkhet, Dipayal,
Janakpur,
Birtamod and Thankot.
The fuel crisis is likely to deepen in the coming days.
The All Nepal Trade Union Federation (ANTUF) — the workers’ front of the
Maoists — today announced that it would lead the ongoing agitation.
The Western pro-maoists have invented the claim — with no supporting
evidence — that “The Maoists briefly put forward a proposal to
temporarily ban strikes in certain key sectors. This was at a time when
the country had no electricity for most of the day, there was a food
shortage and strikes and bandhs called by reactionary parties were
causing chaos and undermining the Maoist-led government.” (
) In fact in the period preceding the introduction of the ESA blanket
strike ban the main rival governmental parties were not involved in
organising most of the strikes and bandhs.[31] The most common strikes
and bandhs were by transport personnel and businessmen (protesting
against bandh blockades and shutdowns disrupting their business),
students (including Maoist groups), regional ethnic movements, low-caste
rights groups and local people agitating for compensation or better
services. Further, these same types of strikes by the same groups
carried on at a similarly high level for months after the Maoists left
government (as did the oil tanker strikes) — so the claim that the
Maoists were only reacting with their anti-strike policies and
legislation to strikes designed to target and discredit their government
is false, another fiction invented by Western Maoist apologists to
excuse the embarassing anti-working class policies of the Nepali
Maoists.
To attempt to justify the strike ban proposals as ‘necessary for the
public good’ is to take the vantage point of bourgeois parliamentary
politicians against the interests of those workers who would be
threatened by jail by these legislations.Yet as soon as they were out of
government the Maoists were happy to return to bandhs and strikes that
impeded the distribution of basic goods — these political demonstrations
were in their Party interests and its pursuit of power, while workers’
strikes for working class economic interests would have clearly been
against the interests of a Maoist government and its goal of capitalist
accumulation; ie, its exploitation of the working class.
When in power, strikes become increasingly undesirable for the Maoists —
when out of power they again become a political weapon. So we can
conclude; shortly before they decided to leave government the Maoists
stated that they wanted to stop workers’ strikes, and they then
invoked/activated legislation giving them the legal power to do so.
While in power the Maoists revived and endorsed legislation for SEZs
incorporating anti-strike clauses — and also invoked and activated the
blanket anti-strike law The Essential Services Act. Two pieces of
anti-strike legislation prepared for use under their rule. That’s pretty
good going for the self-appointed champions of the exploited masses.
Yet the Western pro-maoist cheerleaders and excusers have expressed a
3^(rd) Worldist leftism with typical double standards. If anyone
proposed any banning of strikes in the West these Western leftists would
be the first to talk of class oppression – but clearly, in places like
Nepal it’s supposedly in the interests of the workers themselves to have
their strikes banned. We’ve been here before and we know where it
leads... to workers being jailed for ‘counter-revolutionary disruption
of socialist construction’.
In 2010, strikes and bandhs have remained a problem disrupting the
smooth functioning of commerce. And recently there have been proposals
for a new strike ban. As in the past, the Maoist leaders are reported to
be in agreement with the other bourgeois politicians for a ban;
KATHMANDU, April 3: The government is mulling over banning forceful
closure of industries and restricting all forms of strike that affect
productions at the export-oriented industries for six months.
The new provision that the government is seriously contemplating to
address the long-running demand of the private sector, however, will
allow trade unions to place professional demands and stage protests like
working with black bands. [..]
To enforce the new rule, the government is currently discussing on two
options: declaring state of ´industrial emergency´ or activate Essential
Service Act, listing export-oriented industries as one of the essential
sectors. These options were recommended to the cabinet by a high-level
government committee, involving secretaries from various ministries.
“Both these options can be implemented and can help keep export-oriented
industries free from strikes,” the source added.
But since the implementation of the provision will need strong
commitment from all political parties, the committee, in coordination
with the private sector, also held a series of interactions with senior
political leaders, including the UCPN (Maoist) leaders, to forge
consensus on it.
“The leaders were concerned that the step might curb workers´ rights to
push professional demands and pursue collective bargain. But once we
informed them about formation of an all party mechanism to uphold them,
they agreed to it,” said Kush Kumar Joshi, president of Federation of
Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI).
FNCCI that is elated by the positive response from the leaders has even
urged the government to enforce the new provision within 15 days.
However, given the experiences of political leaders easily disowning the
commitments they made in the past, sources said that the government is
still not satisfied with the level of consultations and is soon holding
talks with the trade unions as well. [Our emphasis]. (Apr 3^(rd) 2010
)
Considering their present hostility to rival parties, some leftists
might have expected the Maoists to have exploited this anti-working
class proposal to show to the working class the true interests of their
rival parties. But that would be to call the Maoists’ own bluff — as
their previous activities show they are in agreement with banning
strikes when having the state power to do so.
“Bolshevism will remain formidable as long as it can maintain its
monopoly on the interpretation of revolution.” (Cronin & Seltzer — Call
It Sleep)
Maoism retains the conception of socialism and communism inherited from
19^(th) century social democracy; the myth that it’s simply a form of
administration of production, politically administrated by leftist
politicians on behalf of the workers who are now “freed” in their labour
by being “represented” in government by those who rule over them in
their name.
As we have said previously; “Maoism is another form of management of
class society, not the abolition of class society nor a road leading to
it.” Developing capitalism means developing the exploitation of a
proletariat; whether this exploitation is directed primarily by a
one-party state that calls itself ‘communist’, or (often more
efficiently and with greater concessions) by parliamentary democracy in
alliance with private capital, the relationship between state, ruling
class and working class remains one of class exploitation..
As we replied to some pro-maoists who tried to excuse/defend the strike
bans on the basis that with such policies the Nepal Maoists were
building socialism;
You are in effect saying that until Nepal has developed sufficient
infrastructure to a certain level, the workers must postpone their class
struggle and so leave themselves defenceless — and you are trying to
justify that by saying that the advancement of that class struggle is
secured by the presence of the maoists in the ruling class, who must be
free to exploit the workers as part of ‘the building of/struggle for
socialism’. Nothing could be more absurd, anti-working class and
counter-revolutionary. (
— our intervention begins at comment 33.)
The Maoists still hope to eventually re-enter government as the leading
party; perhaps then we will finally see the full flowering of the
Maoists’ policy on labour relations in practice.
It is clear from the various Maoist statements on economic and
governmental policy that their primary conflict with rival sections of
the ruling class are political — while they agree with them that
socio-economic class relations of capitalism must not be abolished but
developed and intensified[32]. The Maoists see the Nepali bourgeoisie as
hindered by their lingering ‘feudal’ roots, this so-called
‘semi-feudalism’ making them incapable of developing the productive
forces.[33] The entrenched caste-ridden political bureaucracy,
land-owning class and merchant capitalists have been a fetter on
industrial development. Therefore the Maoists seek to play the role of
surrogate bourgeoisie and remodel the political system so the
traditional vested interests no longer hamper industrial expansion and
modernisation — so “concluding the capitalist people’s revolution”, as
they put it! Alongside this accumulation through expoitation of the
working class a certain level of ‘social wage’ — benefits, pensions,
rising living standards etc — might at some point be generated to
satisfy the Maoists’ voter base, stabilise society and encourage local
consumerism. That is the extent of the radical nature of the Maoist
project. Other unashamedly capitalist powers have achieved the same
elsewhere, whilst more stagnant ‘underdeveloped’ economies sometimes
achieve (generally more modest) reform via more drastic leftist
political maneouvres and interventions. The Nepalese Maoist project is
intended to use the state to develop ‘public-private investment
partnerships’, a modernised variation from traditional leftist
state-capitalism; that this is wrongly associated with real communism —
the self-emancipation of the working class and abolition of class
society — is only a continuation of a mythology that remains one of the
most illusory lies of the 20^(th) century — thankfully, with generally
diminishing appeal.
The great delusion of 3^(rd) Worldist leftism is to believe that the
bourgeois state can be used to impose capitalism’s relations of
production and political structures with the intention of abolishing
them later. The processes of wage slavery, commodity production, class
rule, bourgeois ideology and state power are thereby reinforced by the
assimilation into the mechanism of class society of what claims to be
its enemy.
This strategy — using Mao’s description of a period of “New Democracy” —
is couched in traditional Maoist terms; but this is not China 1949 and a
Maoist seizure of sole state power in Nepal now is far less likely.
Unlike Mao’s victory in 1949, in Nepal the traditional bourgeoisie is
not defeated politically or militarily and must be dealt with in the
parliamentary arena. The Maoists could not win but only achieve an
indefinite stalemate in the guerilla war that ended in 2006; the Nepal
Army, closely tied to its Indian counterpart, remains a decisive force.
The traditional dominance of Nepali politics by southern neighbour
India’s diplomacy and intelligence services, the growing economic
influence of northern neighbour China, the wider geo-political
influences of the US and EU; all make Nepal a sideshow in a much bigger
geo-political Great Game. So a traditional Bolshevik state-capitalist
regime (though still desired by one Maoist faction) hardly seems
feasible here.
After leaving government in May 2009 a video was released showing
Prachanda telling a Maoist gathering how he had fooled the UN monitors
of the ceasefire peace agreement (UNMIN) over the numbers of former
Maoist combatants.[34] He revealed that the real active strength of his
People’s Liberation Army at the end of the guerilla war was not the
official figure of 20,000, but really only 7,000 (not many from a
population of 30 million); since 2006 ex-soldiers have been stuck in
cantonments awaiting resolution of an elusive political deal as to how
they might be integrated into the national Army. Bored and wanting to
get on with their lives, numbers have dwindled further as some have
drifted away, a few have been discharged and there has been the
occasional suicide; so the ability to reignite a “People’s War” appears
remote, unpopular and with even less chance of advancing the Maoist
project.
Considering the relatively small numbers engaged in Maoist military
activity and the Party’s failure, after 15 years, to have engineered
‘the masses’ to join them in a revolutionary overthrow of the state, one
can conclude that the remaining popular support for the Maoists is much
more a mandate for political reform than for revolution. The recent May
2010 demonstrations in the capital Kathmandu — repeatedly promoted by
the Maoists as the ‘final push’ that would continue until the government
was toppled — were a miserable flop, as most of the bussed-in peasants
(some complaining of Maoist pressure to attend) drifted away after a few
days to hurry back for the planting season. This inability to sustain
the protests exposed further the limits of the Maoists’ support.
“But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into
state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the
productive forces. In the joint-stock companies this is obvious. And the
modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society
takes on in order to support the general external conditions of the
capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the
workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what
its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the
capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital.
The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more
does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does
it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The
capitalist relation is not done away with.” (Engels — Anti-Duhring,
1878)
“We do not believe that private property should be abolished”
(Prachanda, Chairman of the UCPN(Maoist) — interview with BBC news,
3^(rd) Sep 2008)
“... In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
single sentence: Abolition of private property. “ (Marx & Engels, The
Communist Manifesto, 1847)
“... property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist,
to appropriate the unpaid labour of others, and to be the impossibility,
on the part of the labourer, of appropriating his own product.” (Marx,
Capital, 1867)
For the Maoists, and leftism in general, the difference between
capitalism and socialism/communism is only a difference of political
administration; who runs the state and how. This reductionism fails to
see (or masks with a ‘socialist/communist’ ideology and phraseology)
that capitalism is the social organisation of extracting surplus value
out of those directly producing — and is the particular forms that this
exploitation of labour takes in its historical evolution. The state
administration is one mechanism to facilitate this process. In societies
like Nepal with more stagnant and unresolved political structures,
rooted in longstanding historical factional ruling class rivalries,
leftist state-capitalist regimes can attempt to resolve certain
contradictions of political structure and function for underdeveloped
capitals and so prepare the conditions for a more efficient, modernised
and profitable phase of accumulation. This is an underlying reality of
what the political conflicts in Nepal are based on — whether the state
and its political mechanisms can be used to transcend the various
fragmented political and economic interests that have prevented
socio-economic development and innovation. Added to the mix are the
geo-political implications of Nepal’s traditional role as buffer state
between the two emerging industrial giants of India and China, and all
the external pressures, limits and necessary diplomacy this brings.
The underlying contest between the two ideological forces in Nepal
(broadly characterised as the Indo-centric and the proto-liberational
formations) has largely determined the contours of Nepali political life
over the past fifty years, and will continue do so. (A Himalyan Red
Herring? — Saubhagya Shah; Himalayan ‘People’s War’, Ed. Michael Hutt,
Hurst & Co., London 2004.)
This “underlying contest” applies as much to the Maoists, their changing
positions and their own internal factional divisions as to their
political rivals. Whoever is in power in Nepal is there largely at the
grace and tolerance of Indian political strategy and its regional
imperial role[35]; and must also accomodate China’s increasing economic
and infrastructural investment which will buy them deeper long-term
political penetration.
There is a fundamental false consciousness at work; while the Maoists
believe themselves the masters of historical progress, leading society
through the necessary linear stages of economic development prior to
communism — they are in fact as much the historical tools of the global
expansion of capitalism. International capital has so far found Nepal of
little attraction to invest in; the proposed SEZs and anti-strike
legislation is an attempt to attract the capital investment necessary to
kickstart the economy. The fact that political power has become an end
in itself, for Maoist leaders Prachanda (who sees himself as Nepal’s
Lenin) and co, is actually an obstacle to the political resolutions that
would bring the stability necessary to make Nepal an attractive
investment option. So the anti-strike legislation will probably
eventually be used to try to bring an end to the bandh culture
popularised by the Maoists. This will occur either when the Maoists have
achieved power (or a leading role in power-sharing) and no longer need
to mobilise their supporters towards that end — or when the Maoists have
been decisively defeated and the political system has been restructured
by other forces.
Nationalism and class struggle are irreconcilably opposed. A nation is a
bourgeois reality: it is capitalism with all its exploitation and
alienation, parcelled out in a single geographical unit. It doesn’t
matter whether the nation is ‘small, ‘colonial’, ‘semi-colonial’ or
‘non-imperialist’. All nationalisms are reactionary because they
inevitably clash with class consciousness and poison it with chauvinism
and racialism. (Third Worldism or Socialism; Solidarity —
)
If one can only conceive of ‘revolution’ as a political programme of
Party policies of capital accumulation pursued and implemented within
the framework of the nation state, commodity exchange and private
property — then one is not talking about a process of the
self-emancipation of the exploited or any challenge to the social
relations of capitalism. (And one has learnt nothing from the historical
tragedies of 20^(th) century Bolshevik counter-revolution.) We remain
unconvinced that using ‘underdevelopment’ as an excuse for strengthening
and generalising capitalism brings communism closer — to think so, one’s
conception of communism must be nationalistic, and fixated on
accumulation of surplus value and commodity exchange as the measure of
the possibilities for communism. From this political perspective,
communism is at present too expensive for the leftist nation-state to
‘buy into’, so accumulation must be intensified until communism can
affordably be ‘purchased’ by sufficient capitalist development! No room
in that quantitative capitalist logic for the abolition of wage labour,
state, classes, commodities etc — as part of the process of
revolutionary struggle of the exploited in their qualitative
transformation of social relations. ‘The masses’ remain mere components
of the accumulation process; the footsoldiers, cannon, farm and factory
fodder of the Maoist party elite (who quickly began to live as well as
other politicians; “the monthly income of a CA politician is well over
three times the annual national average wage!” (
)). The political horse-trading, ‘court intrigues’ and diplomatic
double-dealing that have dominated Maoist activity in recent years —
both in international diplomacy and the parliamentary arena and also
internally between the Party’s rival factions — are not class struggle,
but only political competition within the political elite for possession
of the state.
Nepal is sandwiched between two of the largest and expanding Asian
industrial economies, India and China. If one rejects the notion of
necessary/inevitable historical stages within narrowly national
frameworks one can see that advanced means of production are present in
the region – and their artificial scarcity imposed by present social
relations could readily be overcome, and so communised and spread by a
revolutionary social movement that refused to be bound by nationalist
ideology, national borders or particular state interests and forms. That
is more difficult than a vanguard party seizure of national political
power (i.e., a mere change of administration rather than proletarian
revolution of social relations and conditions – leftist bureaucratic
power v proletarian insurgency), but in our opinion is the only
realistic means of self-emancipation for the working classes (both urban
workers and poor peasantry); i.e. the abolition of class society. But
proletarian self-organisation and communisation is all very far from the
public/private partnerships, state capitalist and/or SEZ pretentions of
the Nepali state, Maoist-led or otherwise. Capitalist development is
capitalist exploitation in motion and it is an error to equate the
presence of leftist parties within the state and their increased
bureaucratic power with an actual seizure and transformation of
productive forces and social relations by an insurgent proletariat
themselves.
Even if that is off the agenda, the immediate interests and confidence
of the working classes can only be defended and advanced by recognising
the reality of their class relations in Nepali society; that there is a
ruling class that seeks to exploit them, and that some of them will call
themselves Maoists.
September 2010
Nepalese Maoist ‘revolution’
Reflections on the recent evolution of Maoism in Nepal.
luxury mansions etc...
In March 2011, after a long period of negotiations between the main
parties over how to advance the ‘peace process’ and write a new national
constitution, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) re-entered
government. Having left government in 2009, this return was made
possible by the resolution of the ‘integration process’ for Maoist
ex-combatants, finally agreed between the main parties. Six years after
the end of the Maoist Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) decade of guerrilla
war and after years of inactivity in cantonments (barrack camps)
awaiting an agreement, the majority of PLA combatants opted for
integration as career soldiers into their former enemy, the state Nepal
Army (NA). Under the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)
the remainder were given resettlement grants to finance a return to
civilian life.
A Maoist minority, the ‘hardliner’ Baidya faction, opposed the
integration deal and disarmament but were too weak to oppose the UCPN(M)
majority grouped around the Prachanda & Bhattarai factions. After a
free-for-all jockeying for power in the Party, and various shifting
combinations of opportunistic alliances between the three, Prachanda and
Bhattarrai formed an alliance to sideline Baidya and force through
demobilisation. After a long period of instability in Nepali politics,
the Maoists rejoined government with Bhattarai as Prime Minister.
the money)
The Baidya faction would prefer a policy of “people’s revolt” for
establishing something closer to a Maoist one party dictatorship. Baidya
is a militarist whose power base and constituency is primarily the
hardline section of the PLA, while Prachanda & Bhattarai are now
primarily Party parliamentary politicians appealing to a broader base.
They are also, unlike Baidya, involved in wider diplomacy; as always,
India continues to lay down the law diplomatically to a large degree in
Nepali politics. Prachanda has exhausted all attempts in and out of
power to circumvent India’s wishes, while Bhattarai has always been a
more skilled pragmatist acknowledging that India must be accommodated —
so they have allied to secure their comfortable parliamentary careers
and a role for the Party in Nepali governmental politics.
The more realistic Party factions had long realised that the military
war was not winnable against the might of well armed NA and Indian
forces — and that there is little popular enthusiasm for the ‘revolt’
some factions repeatedly pretended to promise so as to rally their
troops; or to threaten rival parties with as a bargaining chip, but
never delivered.[36] The 2010 May protest in Kathmandu — promoted as a
‘final push to topple the government’ — was a fiasco for the Maoists
that revealed the limits of their support and options.[37]
Any political mandate from supporters they have is far more for reform
than revolution; numbers of supporters and voters have never translated
into anywhere near equivalent numbers of soldiers. So the military
option is unpopular, unlikely and unwinnable. Bhattariai had long
realised this, Prachanda belatedly and Baidya is now reluctantly forced
to see he may have to accept it. Baidya has probably missed the boat on
establishing a credible parliamentary political career and the NA may
not offer him a military role even if he wanted it. The present Party
crisis and the factional splits over strategy are indicative of the
historical impasse they’ve reached.
Many former PLA combatants, wanting to get on with their lives, drifted
away or got bored of poverty and restrictions in the cantons while
waiting years for a promised integration solution. As the PLA
rank’n’file stagnated, meanwhile internal Party complaints grew about
the luxurious lifestyles and enrichment of the Party leaders — as they
lived the high life on their massive parliamentary salaries, bought
property and sent their kids to private schools.
Whatever rhetoric they occasionally still spout to please the Party’s
left wing, Prachanda & Bhattarai have accepted that the military war is
over, so in the integration Agreement they’ve traded their (already much
declined) military capacity for political goals. And that is the only
realistic option for the Maoists — like most other Nepali parliamentary
parties, including the conservative Nepali Congress, they’ve had their
period of armed struggle and are now, with difficulty, being
accommodated into mainstream politics. The guerrilla war has turned out
to be simply the Party leaders’ way of demanding entry on more
favourable terms. (A small armed splinter group could conceivably begin
guerrilla operations, but with even less chance of success than the
PLA’s past efforts.)
Those who continue to fantasise about a UCPN(M) led Maoist guerrilla
‘revolution’ are well past their sell-by date. Nearly all the online
pro-maoist cheerleaders who for over a decade slavishly praised Nepali
Maoism as the heroic leaders of world revolution have now retreated into
a deafening silence, without offering any credible analysis or
explanation for such developments[38] (predictable though they were to
those not blinded by naïve romantic illusions of ‘heroic’ guerillas and
faraway events).
rank’n’file
The pseudo-communists have simply reproduced within the Maoist Party the
social relations of the wider society. Having faced up to the likely
realities of civilian life and their uncertain career prospects — and in
the shadow of the Party’s political elite’s shameless money-grabbing
since the ceasefire — the middle and higher ranks of the People’s
Liberation Army have decided it’s every man for himself and have been
looting the PLA lower ranks, demanding a large part of their government
demobilisation payments. Many rank’n’file PLA ex-combatants have
reported being looted by the Maoist upper ranks. The following is just
one of many recent Nepali press reports containing similar statements by
both named and unnamed ex-PLA members;
6 Feb 2012
Combatants’ Farewell: Violence as party ‘demands’ fighters’ cash
Dozens of combatants complain commanders snatched cheques, ID cards
Bechu Gaud in Nawalparasi & Motilal Poudel in Surkhet
With the Maoist party allegedly trying to pocket about half the money
given to combatants opting for voluntary retirement, the process of
bidding farewell to the former Maoist fighters has faced a new hurdle.
Dozens of retiring Maoist combatants on Sunday complained that their
commanders snatched away pay cheques and identity cards. In Surkhet,
commanders snatched away account payee cheques of some 26 combatants of
the Jharana Smriti Brigade, Section Vice-Commander Man Bahadur Chand
told the Post.
Things turned violent at the fourth division in Nawalparasi after the
commanders forced the fighters to deposit 40 percent of the money.
Witnesses said a bruised fighter was seen staggering outside the camp
after a brawl. Commander Ranadip allegedly beat up some four combatants
inside the camp after they refused to follow the “order”.
Each of the 7,365 combatants is collecting cheques worth Rs 250,000 to
Rs 400,000 as part of the first instalment
“We risked our lives for the party’s sake and now the party is doing
injustice to us,” said combatant Dhan Bahadur Rana from Arunkhola,
Nawalparasi. “The amount we are paid is peanuts. We are shocked that the
party is trying to take it from us.”
Section Vice-Commander Chand of Surkhet said the party demanded he
deposit Rs 200,000 and take home the rest, a mere Rs 50,000. [...]
(our emphasis)
It has been revealed that part of the wages due to PLA cantonment
residents in past years were paid to the Party administration. There is
concern too by PLA rank’n’file from all Party factions that savings held
in trust by the Party for ex-combatants may not be returned (probably
having been spent largely subsidising the expensive lifestyles of the
Party elite);
.
‘Where’s our deposit money, comrades?’
Wednesday, 07 December 2011 09:22
POST B BASNET/KIRAN PUN
KATHMANDU, Dec 7: With the process of their integration and
rehabilitation moving ahead smoothly, personnel of the Maoist People´s
Liberation Army (PLA) have sought the return of money the party has kept
as “deposits”.
The Maoist party has been retaining Rs 1,000 from the salary of each of
the 19,525 combatants every month since November 2006 till November,
2011.
The combatants were told that Rs 500 out of the Rs 1,000 was to be
deposited as each combatant´s savings, while the rest of the money was
to go to party headquarters, the combative outfit Young Communist League
(YCL), and for various activities.
According to sources, the PLA commanders will soon hold talks with
Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal about the return of the money.
“Our painful waiting at the cantonments is finally over and it is time
to part ways. So the party should now return the money which was kept as
savings,” said a PLA vice-commander who did not want to be named.
The total amount of money the party has collected from the salaries of
the 19,528 combatants since 2006 stands Rs 1.17 billion.
Going by what the party pledged to the combatants, Rs 585.84 million
should now go back into the pockets of the combatants.
But many junior PLA commanders doubt if the party will return the money
easily.
“We are not sure if we will get the total amount we are supposed to get
as voluntary retirement packages, let alone return of the deposits,”
says a junior level commander.
But some others are mulling ´tough measures´ against the party if the
money is not returned.
“We may have to resort to legal procedures for justice. We will knock at
the doors of the courts,” said a junior commander. [...]
Each of the seven PLA divisions is said to have millions of rupees kept
from the combatants´ salaries. According to sources, a large portion of
the money has already gone to party headquarters.
Besides, the combatants´ money has been invested in many ventures
including the Jana Maitri Hospital and some FM radio stations.
Sources: Republica
When previously in government during 2008–2009 the Maoists had endorsed
and enacted legislation to ban strikes. Our articles on this provoked
many excuses, lies and personal slanders from pro-maoists online,[39]
though none could discredit the truth of our comments. Recently, as
confirmation of our earlier analysis and just a month after UCPN(Maoist)
began to again lead the government, we find that Maoist PM Bhattarai —
along with the Maoist-affiliated ANTUF union — has brokered and endorsed
a new (4 year!) strike ban agreement with employers;
30 Sep 2011
Govt nod for No Work No Pay policy
HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE
KATHMANDU: The government today endorsed the March 24 agreement between
employers and major trade unions that proposes implementing ‘No Work No
Pay’ policy and providing social security allowance to workers.
Endorsing the deal, today’s meeting of Central Labour Advisory
Committee, held under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Baburam
Bhattarai, who is also looking after the Labour and Transport Management
Ministry, made a four-point pact to maintain industrial peace.
Endorsing the March 24 pact between Federation of Nepalese Chambers of
Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) and three major trade unions – General
Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions (GEFONT), National Trades Union
Congress and All Nepal Trade Union Federation (ANTUF) – the meeting has
solved most of the labour-related problems in the industrial sector,
Krishna Hari Puskar Karna joint-spokesperson for the ministry, said.
The government has pledged to introduce Social Security Act within three
months.”It is a great achievement,” Bishnu Rijal, the GEFONT president,
said. “We have also agreed to form a committee of employers, trade
unions and the government to solve labour disputes,” he said, terming
the move a milestone in the history of Nepali trade union. The meeting
agreed to form a Minimum Wage Board and enforce the ‘industrial peace
year’ declaration that envisages banning industrial strike for the next
four years.
FNCCI has hailed the deal. “Employers are happy with the deal. We are
withdrawing our case from Supreme Court,” said Pashupati Murarka,
president of FNCCI’s Employers Council’, referring to the plea it had
filed against the government in the Supreme Court for ‘neglecting’ the
March 24 pact and publishing the labour ministry’s April 16 agreement
with minor trade unions in the government gazette. The panel has hiked
the monthly salary of tea estate workers by Rs 1,064.
(Our emphasis)
This episode exposes the rank opportunism of the Maoists. The Bhattarai
faction of ANTUF had originally opposed this no strike agreement in an
alliance with the Baidya faction. This was at a time when these factions
found it opportune to temporarily ally politically against Prachanda’s
clique as all 3 factions competed for influence over Party policy and
control of the union (and its lucrative income). A few months later and,
having become PM, Bhattarai signed the same anti-strike deal his union
faction had once opposed. The opportunism and cynical shifting alliances
of all the Maoist leaders is shameless; eg, in 2008, when Prachanda was
PM and he and Bhattarai endorsed strike ban legislation there were no
reports of objection from Baidya. Instead Baidya was then promoting the
Party’s ‘Prachanda Path’ dogma and its governmental policies as the
world’s great new revolutionary theory.
The strike ban again endorsed confirms the productivist goals of Maoism;
the working class is to be exploited in the name of ‘communism’ to
develop capitalism as a supposed route to ‘communism’. (‘Communism’ =
Party rule + industrial development via working class exploitation.) The
strike ban will be useful in disciplining the working class to accept
their allotted historical role, as will the hyper-exploitation
conditions of the Maoists’ proposed Special Economic Zones (SEZs) with
their more repressive labour conditions designed to attract foreign
investors.[40]
Now, there has been rapid deterioration in party’s proletarian conduct
and working style. The competition of individual concern, interest and
return is trying to replace collective concern, initiative and sacrifice
for party and revolution. Mutual help, reverence and healthy criticism
among comrades is gradually being replaced by the trends of
non-cooperation, intolerance and unhealthy criticism. The economic
anarchy and opacity, on the one hand, is rapidly making the party slide
down from the communist ideals and, on the other, it is making the
mutual relation among comrades very much suspicious and unhealthy. A
communist system of unconditionally depositing cash or appliances
obtained from any source by a comrade of any level of the party has been
disappearing and a very bourgeois process of piling up and using them
personally by those whoever can is burgeoning. From this, thousands of
honest and revolutionary cadres have been victims of desperation,
humiliation and discomfort, for they are entrapped in the problems of
solving their own daily subsistence, minimum supply of daily
necessities, family problems and basic problems of the local people,
where as a trend of taking individual benefit by a few party officials
and some ‘actives’ is growing. This situation has created wide
dissatisfaction among the revolutionary cadres and it has time and again
given rise to natural unrest and fury before the party leadership and
the party centre. In order to bring this situation to an end, there is
no other way than sorting out plan to develop proletarian conduct and
working style and implementing them firmly in the party. (Present
Situation and Historical Task of the Proletariat; UCPN(M) document, 2009
—
)
The Maoists are no different from other Nepali parties insofar as they
too run various schemes of varying legality to finance the Party and
enrich those at the top of their hierarchy. The revenue sources include
smuggling[41] and protection rackets extracting payoffs from
businessmen, in which the Young Communist League (YCL) have been active.
Rival Party trade union factions have accused other Maoist union leaders
of operating their own form of protection, whereby strikes are avoided
or ended by employers paying off union bosses.[42] The Maoist unions
also provide security personnel for the lucrative Kathmandu casinos.[43]
Recent official declarations by Nepali political parties show that the
Maoists are by far the richest of all. Yearly Party income is reported
to now exceed 90 million rupees; more than one million US dollars.[44]
Yet this wealth is concentrated in few hands — with consistent
complaints from the Party rank’n’file that an elite of Party leaders
have become very wealthy since the ceasefire, taking family trips
abroad, acquiring property and sending their children to private
schools.[45] These hierarchical inequalities of institutional power and
wealth are the real class conflict within the Party, rather than the
ideological and policy conflicts between Party leaders often misnamed as
‘class struggle’ over the ‘correct line’.
30 Jan 2012
Nepal’s top Maoist under fire for luxury mansion
By Deepak Adhikari (AFP) – 2 days ago
KATHMANDU — Nepal’s top Maoist politician, who led a 10-year insurgency
in the Himalayan country which left 16,000 people dead, was accused
Monday of selling out after moving into a lavish mansion in Kathmandu.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who goes by the nom-de-guerre Prachanda (The Fierce
One), is a former Communist guerrilla who rose from humble village
beginnings to lead a “people’s war” against Nepal’s royal family and its
political elites.
The rented 15-room property — 1,500 square metres (16,000 sq feet) of
prime real estate near the bustling city centre — includes parking space
for more than a dozen vehicles and a table tennis room, his office told
AFP.
“The Maoists have deviated from their stated goal. It used to be
socialism but now they have surrendered to bourgeois state power,” said
Mumaram Khanal, a political analyst and former Maoist leader.
“It is natural in such a situation to transform into someone with the
characteristics of a member of parliamentary politics. They are
revolutionary only in words, not in deeds.” [...]
The new mansion costs the Maoist party just over 100,000 rupees ($1,300)
a month, the aide told AFP, a modest sum in many countries but almost
three times the average annual income in Nepal, one of the world’s
poorest countries.
... The home is in Kathmandu’s exclusive Lazimpat where his wealthy
neighbours once lived in fear of his Maoists coming to power and seizing
their property.
Instead, Prachanda has moved in among them, into a red-brick mansion
next to a home owned by one of his former class enemies, General Shanta
Kumar Malla (Rtd), a former military adviser to the late King Birendra.
The compound includes a 15 room suite of offices and a private family
residence and parking space for ten cars. [...]
His son has said on his Facebook page that he had moved for security
reasons and to live somewhere more befitting a “man of Prachanda’s
stature”.
But it has compounded the resentment of some of his comrades who have
noticed his designer suites, expensive watches and luxury cars.
(Our emphasis)
As the leadership has accumulated massive parliamentary salaries and
other less visible revenue streams the Party rank’n’file have for years
complained of the luxurious lifestyles of the Party elite — with little
effect. The long containment of the PLA ex-combatants in the cantonments
has been very convenient for the Party elite; with the rank’n’file
quarantined and neutralised the leadership’s business of accumulation of
political power and its accompanying wealth has been achieved with
minimum effective opposition from the poorest PLA veterans.
Nepali Maoists talk about abolishing feudalism (or ‘semi-feudalism’) and
again mystify terms. Rather than talking about capitalism and feudalism
as modes of production they refer to various surviving cultural habits
and institutions originating in feudalism as proof that feudalism still
exists, rather than its remnants adapted to an evolved setting.[46] They
confuse a moral judgement of conditions of exploitation in poorer
countries with an analysis of production relations; i.e., how a surplus
is extracted from labour in the context of Nepal’s function in a global
economy. The predominantly rural population of Nepal is not peopled by
medieval serfs — but by a majority of smallholding farming families
operating within a capitalist market (alongside some larger landowners,
tenant farmers and rural landless labourers). While much peasant farming
is at subsistence level, rather than market-driven, it is not this that
solely defines the mode of production and its social relations. Many of
the peasantry are unable to feed themselves year-round from their
available land — and so pursue a semi-proletarian existence as migrating
seasonal workers selling their labour power elsewhere. Many are also
longer term migrant workers; a million peasant and urban sons and
daughters work abroad and are integrated into the global economy as
modern proletarians.[47] Their ‘remittance’ cash sent home has
transformed the Nepali economy, in particular the property and land
market.
Blinded by their redundant categories, the Maoists miss what is most
interesting about recent developments in peasant life;
It is commonly observed that traditional feudalism still prevails in the
Madhesh. But, in reality, it has now been replaced by a labourer
dominated society. About two to three decades ago, when labourers from
Madhesh started going to Punjab, Haryana and also to ... for a quarter
of a year ... Their migration was for a limited period, that is when
they had no work for their engagement at home. It was a periodic
employment migration. But, for the last two decades, labourers have been
going to the Gulf countries for employment. In the beginning, the Muslim
community took the lead. But now there is hardly any landless family
that doesn’t have one or two members working in those countries. The
common people have considered foreign employment as the only means of
eradicating their poverty. Interestingly, they go there even after
paying exorbitant interests on the money they take as loan for paying
the agents towards their services and airfare. [...]
There is a glaring change in the living conditions of the people. They
are mow living in the cemented brick-houses, which are replacing the
thatched huts gradually. Cemented roofs or tiled roofed houses can be
observed almost everywhere in the village. [...]
The second priority of investment of remittances falls on the
procurement of land, which is the prime permanent source of income for
the have-nots as it is very much needed to meet the food requirement.
The availability of land for sale in abundance is yet another factor
facilitating the transfer of ownership of land. The traditional
landowners are desperate for selling off their land as there is a dearth
of labourers in the villages. The dearth of labourers is attributed to
the young workers having left the villages for foreign employment. The
cost of cultivation has increased substantially. There is very little
irrigation facilities and lack of timely and adequate availability of
fertilisers. The ownership of land is gradually getting transferred from
the haves to the have-nots, the new class of labourers. It can be safely
said that nearly forty to fifty percent of the land ownership have been
shifted during the last fifteen years from the traditional owners to the
landless class.
Interestingly, the female members of the families are becoming
landowners. Since the male members of the families are out of home to
earn their livelihood, the female members of the families naturally
become the land owners when any new piece of land is bought. For
instance, out of four registrations we made, three registrations were in
favour of female owners. This is really a milestone of social changes
taking place in the remote areas. [...]
July 2010
So here we have an odd, but modern, form of proletarian condition;
village poverty — partly caused by insufficient land for subsistence of
families — encourages migration for work abroad. This creates a labour
shortage at home that encourages bigger landowners to sell their
untilled land — to be bought by the remittance earnings causing the
labour shortage. And so the earnings of the peasant-turned-emigrant
proletarian can often be used to more fully establish the returning
emigrant as landed peasant. (Or to expand the base of
smallholders-cum-seasonal proletarians.)
Rural feudalism? No;
At Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) [in Kathmandu], scenes of
youths like Gaihres forming serpentine lines to board airplanes headed
toward major labor destinations, mostly an unchartered territory for
most of them, is not uncommon. Their aim is to reach the intended
destination, not get duped by manpower agencies, and land on a
decently-paying job. The expectation of their families is likewise.
Enter Kathmandu and head toward the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA)
and you will see a much more chaotic scene: Anxious, curious, and
confused aspirant migrants waiting to get their passport issued. [...]
Go farther away from the city center and you will see a completely
different terrain. New buildings are popping up everywhere and there is
an influx of migrants in and around city centers. Some of the villages
lack the backbone of local economy i.e. youths. Elderly and kids are the
main inhabitants of villages as youths have/are headed either to
overseas labor destinations or to major city centers. Daily wages for
manual labor have more than doubled. Interestingly, each alternate house
either has a ‘cold store’ or a retail store—one wonders from where
demand comes from. Perhaps, this is the best way to kill time. The
opportunity cost of labor appears zero to them. There is no better way
to waste labor than be self-employed—unproductive sales person waiting
for customers in a place where pretty much every household owns a retail
store!
The influx of money sent by migrants sweating and saving pennies
overseas is changing the way we consume and invest. While consumption
accounts for over 90 percent of GDP, gross domestic savings is
equivalent to a mere 9.7 percent. Banks are becoming big fat kids from
slim ones as remittances are constantly pouring in, facilitating instant
easy lending to a handful of sectors. Due to political instability,
squeezing returns on investment and pressure to maintain comfortable
profit margin, banks are eschewing lending to traditional
employment-generating sectors. Instead, money is channeled into
construction, real estate, and import-consumption sectors. These sectors
are referred to as “unproductive” i.e. they do not absorb much labor for
employment given the scale of domestic investment.
In the last five years, construction and real estate sectors grew at an
average of 4.5 percent and 7 percent annually, respectively. In real
estate, credit flow doubled from Rs 7.71 billion to Rs 14.92 billion in
the past two fiscal years. Unfortunately, GDP growth rate was around 3
percent and industrial sector growth just over 1 percent. Due to neglect
and flawed priority, the contribution of remittances in stimulating the
real sectors is minimal. [...]
Aug 2010
The Nepalese banks have in recent years followed the global economy in
its expansion of debt provision — predictably fuelling an inflated
property market which is already falling into negative equity (i.e.,
properties now worth less than they were bought for) and which seems on
the brink of a major crash.
The working class remaining at home, though expanding, remains a
minority of a largely (80%) rural agricultural population. Nepal is
sandwiched between the two emerging industrial giants of India and
China; it is the relationship to those neighbouring proletariats that
will likely define the chances ultimately of any radical movement of the
poor in Nepal — which would need to have a very different character to
the Maoist insurgency.
Elsewhere in the remoter poorer areas of the countryside aid shipments
of rice rations by NGOs and government have, by creating a subsistence
dependency, influenced the stagnation of agriculture and created a
business chain of suppliers, importers, transporters, distributors and
state and NGO bureaucrats that often remains keen to perpetuate this
profitable dependence. Tourism in wealthier, more ideally situated,
rural areas has in recent years also helped inflate the property market
into eventual negative equity and is another connection to global
markets. None of these economic conditions can be described as “rural
(semi-)feudalism”.
Nepal is not “feudal” but increasingly integrated into a global
capitalist economy that uses less developed regions to source a cheaper
mobile surplus labour power. Maoists may feel obliged to claim a
dominant (semi-)feudalism still needing to be overthrown — as a
convenient excuse to justify their capitalist goals and to try to make
those goals appear differently motivated than rival parties. (They can
also then claim that they are fulfilling some grand historical mission.)
But it is not anti-feudal Maoism transforming the Nepali economy — but
rather its relationship to global capital and its supply of labour power
to it. The party squabbles over the political management of the Nepali
state may be a long, slow and still unresolved process — but, as shown
above, meanwhile global capital itself continues to develop the
capitalist economy by its intense exploitation of the Nepali poor. The
national management of that exploitation and its relationship with
global capital (e.g., via those zones of hyper-exploitation — the
Maoists’ beloved SEZs — and by attracting foreign investment) is the
real point of contestation for all rival Nepali parties.
It is a leftist illusion to see Maoism as outside or beyond bourgeois
politics, in Nepal or elsewhere. Maoism has always had a schematic
theory of progressive stages of revolution involving cross-class
alliances with supposedly ‘progressive’ bourgeoisies in the conquest of
state power. When the Chinese CP took power, having won the civil war
in, 1949, their official line was that the ‘class struggle’ (supposedly
incarnated in the political advancement of the vanguard party and their
victory over the nationalists) was ‘the victory of the national
bourgeois democratic revolution’. (Nepal: A Long March towards bourgeois
democracy? — libcom article, 2006;
)
Maoist ideology advocates conquest of state power and, as part of that
process, stages of collaboration with a “bloc of four classes” including
the “progressive bourgeois forces”. So recent developments are only the
predictable outcome of the general logic embodied in Maoist practice.
There is no ‘sell out’ or ‘betrayal’; Nepalese Maoism did not ‘betray’
but (regardless of what it thought itself doing) fulfilled its role as
the armed faction of the anti-monarchist pro-bourgeois democratic forces
(‘revolution’ is arguably stretching definitions too far). Global
geo-political realities always determined that the Maoists were
confronting, not only the Nepali ruling class, but also the regional
interests of their giant neighbours India and China alongside the wider
diplomacy of the US and EU. Unlike their earlier Chinese Maoist model,
under less favourable conditions Nepalese Maoism failed to even defeat
the national ruling class militarily or politically; the only ‘betrayal’
then is to have deluded themselves and their followers that a state
conquest was ever likely or near — and that such a conquest could ever
lead to a classless society. If the subsequent abolition of royal
autocracy in 2008 was to be classified as any kind of “revolution” at
most it could only be as a political/constitutional ‘revolution’
consolidating bourgeois democracy,[48] and this was not achieved by the
Maoists alone but by a multi-party alliance.
Maoism largely takes the Marxist terminology originally developed as
descriptive and interpretive of 19^(th) century western industrial
society and applies it to a very different form of capitalist society
where the typical western industrial development and its proletariat is
often minimal or absent. This leads to various mystifications, such as
the notion that ‘Marxist’ ‘revolutionaries’ must function as a surrogate
bourgeoisie and force this development. Unlike Maoism, Marx never
intended to develop a theory of peasant revolution based on class
collaboration; yet his more mature thoughts on rural societies — derived
largely from study of the Russian mir peasant communes — saw that there
wasn’t necessarily an ‘inevitable’ stage of capitalist development that
peasantries had to pass through as a pre-condition for ending
capitalism.[49]
Maoism sees all working class interests and revolutionary potential as
dwelling only within the Party — therefore obedience to the leadership’s
Party line is the first and last ‘revolutionary duty’. If one accepts
the totalitarian mentality of this absolute identity between Party and
class then all criticism of the Party and opposition to it must be
“counter-revolutionary” and “anti-working class” and be treated
accordingly. Unsurprisingly, Western pro-maoists have long been happy to
excuse and defend all the above examples of exploitative practices
within Nepali Maoism; the strike bans, promotion of Chinese-style
hyper-exploitative SEZs, parliamentary participation and its
accompanying creation of a wealthy Party elite etc. All these
anti-working class/anti-rural poor measures are acceptable to those who
equate all working class interests as embodied in the progressive
accumulation of political power by the Party. The conception of
‘revolution’ and ‘communism’ remains on the bourgeois terrain of
possession of state power; it has nothing to do with proletarian
self-organisation and everything to do with the organisation of the
obedient proletariat by the ruling party. Hence the treatment of the
working class as a passive component of class society, allotted its
roles. For ex-PLA combatants — as guerrilla cannon fodder to enable the
political ascent of the Party elite, to be then looted and discarded by
them. (The Party leadership spent much of the war in India far from any
bullets.) For the workers — to be a passive voter constituency aiding
the same political ascendancy and as labour power to be pimped to global
capital via SEZs and strike bans. (Exposing the emptiness of decades of
Maoist “anti-imperialist” sloganising.)
The western pro-maoists have no apparent analysis of what some of them
call a ‘sell out of the Nepalese Revolution’. At best, they blame it on
a deviant ‘revisionist line’ taken (for some unexplained reason) by the
Party leadership; the same leadership they had uncritically praised, for
over a decade and until only a few weeks before disarmament, as the
purest revolutionary idols who were faithfully applying Maoism in Nepal.
But, in the misty eyes of western pro-maoists, the final unforgiveable
sin was for Nepali Maoism to destroy the romantic spectacle of heroic
3^(rd) World guerrillas fighting (a mythical) ‘feudalism’. The recent
PLA disarmament betrayed all their wet dreams and their present silence
of sheepishly withdrawn support will likely only be broken by the
adoption of some other faraway romantic guerrilla ‘Cause’ run by similar
political rackets. We can expect little insight and reflection on, eg,
the predictable link between the accumulation of political power by the
Party elite of a hierarchical organisation and their simultaneous
accumulation of material wealth and luxurious lifestyle. Nor many
insights on the limits of guerrilla activity generally — though all the
blood of the PLA guerrilla “martyrs” has achieved little but the
enrichment and career advancement of the Maoist Party elite and has
challenged the existence of a class society not one bit.
One can only see the Maoists as “selling out” if one thought them
capable of “buying in” to a proletarian revolution as a vanguard party
leadership. But if one believes the self-emancipation of the working
classes via the abolition of class society could only begin to develop
within a different historical process — one diametrically opposed to the
un-communist Maoist Party and their vanguardist, statist, nationalist
and productivist conceptions of change — this is largely beside the
point. Given these conceptions, present events were not only
predictable, but arguably embedded in the hierarchical practice and
program of the Party from the beginning.
Guerilla Maoism has generally been limited by its rural isolation from,
lack of resonance with and weak grounding in the urban working class;
but the UCPN(M) has now made limited inroads via their trade unions. The
Party leadership ruled over a guerilla army used as a mass of impersonal
human material — in much the same way it seeks to exploit the labour
power of the working class. In both the war and post-war eras the
Party’s hierarchical command structures have sought to reduce the mass
of individual subjects to an objectified mass, passive components to be
exploited; in wartime as a mass of peasant military labour — in
peacetime as a mass proletarian labour army.
But a general growing Nepali disillusionment with politics may breed
clarity. The perpetual intense competition of left and right factions of
Nepali politics for control of the state has dominated society to the
extent that it’s tended to subordinate all other struggles to these
organisations’ goals. But recent developments could be seen historically
as perhaps beginning to ‘clear the decks’ for what is always ultimately
necessary for struggles of the exploited; to recognise that those who
seek to rule over ‘the masses’ in their name are often the greatest
obstacle to radical social movements and must be opposed as the aspiring
left wing of the ruling class. The self-organisation of struggles must
be a struggle against such enemies as much as any other; how many among
the Nepali exploited will draw this conclusion and use it to inform
their future practice is too early to say.
To call the Maoists’ present factional rivalries ‘class struggle within
the Party’ is another myth; these rivalries occur far above the heads of
the exploited, who have no more influence on them than on the squabbles
of any other party leadership — the masses of poor are mere spectators,
even if such power battles are undertaken supposedly in their name. The
relationship is the same as between all other political party
representatives and their constituencies. The claim that they represent
opposing class outlooks is, again, transplanting mystified Marxian terms
onto the leftist wing of the bourgeois democratic process and its
internal rivalries. (All three Maoist leaders are from highly educated,
high caste relatively upper class backgrounds.)
The armed struggle is over (unless Baidya’s faction were to make a last
desperate attempt) and has paved the way for the Maoist majority to be
integrated into parliamentary politics. So far there has been no
“Nepalese Revolution” to “sell out” as disillusioned pro-maoist
ex-cheerleaders claim. Even in Maoist terms they’ve failed to get
anywhere near their oft-expressed and distorted conception of
‘revolution’ — ie, the Party’s exclusive seizure of state power. (Some
will desperately claim they are still progressing through the ‘necessary
stages’ towards that.) They can’t even claim sole credit for overthrow
of the monarchy — that was achieved in alliance with a wider “Jana
Andolan-II” pro-democracy movement, including a Seven Party Alliance and
major street protests[50]. Nor can they claim any evidence for a
revolutionary sentiment among the vast majority of the poor; the leaked
Prachanda video revealed the PLA strength at ceasefire as only 7,000
after a decade of guerrilla war[51]. So we see no ‘revolution’. To talk
about ‘a sell out of the Nepalese Revolution’ also implies that the
Maoists co-opted/recuperated and led astray a larger revolutionary
movement. But there was no such movement pre-dating the Maoist
guerrillas — and, as recent events make even clearer, the Maoists’
activity was an armed reformism seeking military and political entry and
accommodation within the bourgeois state, as functionaries and
beneficiaries of the ruling class. Pro-maoists may pretend otherwise,
but the remaining internal Maoist conflicts are not between
‘revisionist’ and ‘revolutionary’ ‘lines’; but only about the extent and
pace of this accommodation and its rewards.
The competing Party factions have expressed no disagreement over the
Party’s long term economic programme; ie, its plans to exploit the
working class via SEZs, strike bans etc. The conflicts are over which
route to be taken to maximise the accumulation of political power (with
its accompanying wealth) and how it is to be allocated between the
competing Party factions: i.e., the politics of a red bourgeoisie.
of the Legacy Raj
Written by Saubhagya Shah during the Maoist guerilla war in Nepal, an
analysis of how the Maoists and the conflict were put to use by Indian
diplomacy as part of their wider regional domination.
“...The core tensions of the Legacy Raj are sustained by the
polymorphous character of the post-independence power elites, whose
conception of self and mission oscillates between that of anti-colonial
heroes on the one hand and heirs to the British Raj on the other. It is
this contradictory impulse that generates cycles of destabilisation
outwards into the regional system in the form of economic pressures,
political subversion, proxy wars and military adventures.”
... “Precisely because India lacks formal treaty rights commensurate
with its ambitions in Nepal, New Delhi has undertaken a range of
diplomatic and covert manoeuvres to ‘mold the political evolution of
Nepal in its own image and to establish some kind of de facto
protectorate’.” ... “The familiar historical terrain the Maoists have
traversed over the past seven years en route to their final rendezvous
with the Legacy Raj provides a basis for identifying the Maoist war as a
replication of the conventional form of oppositional politics, rather
than a revolutionary break from it. All successful oppositional
engagements have so far entailed a coupling with Indian interests in
order to encircle, coerce and compromise the Nepali state, and it
appears that the Maoists have also opted for this proven strategy,
albeit in a different guise.”
=888=
‘If the impetus for conflict develops externally, if the strategists,
supplies, and grounding ideologies come from outside the country, and if
all of these are structured principally to benefit foreign goals, what
is the relevance of the concept of internal war?’ (Nordstrom 1999)
‘What if these theorists are so intent on combating the remnants of a
past form of domination that they fail to recognize the new form that is
looming over them in the present?’ (Hardt and Negri 2000)
The notion that the armed campaign launched by the Communist Party of
Nepal (Maoist) in 1996 is a reaction to chronic poverty, inequality,
lack of development, corruption and general neglect by the government
has assumed the status of a truism among the Maoists’ apologists and
critics alike. As general descriptions, these characteristics certainly
hold true, and to a large extent they help to legitimise and rationalise
the rebels’ actions. Such generalisations, however, do not explain why
the present insurgency chose a particular time-space coordinate or a
specific form for its manifestation. Nor does the argument that
destitution and underdevelopment were causal factors explain why Rolpa,
Rukum, Salyan, Dang and Pyuthan districts of Rapti zone became ground
zero for the Maoist insurgency. If social and economic marginalisation
alone were responsible for the emergence of the communist revolt, the
hill districts of Karnali, Seti and Mahakali zones would be far more
likely candidates, not only because of their grinding poverty and
chronic food shortage, but also because of the nature of their terrain
and their inaccessibility from state centres. By national standards,
Rapti zone displays average developmental indicators: most of the
district headquarters are linked by a road network, the area is
traversed by the all important east-west Mahendra highway, and it enjoys
a network of basic rural telecommunication facilities (Gurung 1998:
171). Rapti zone also boasts a relatively prosperous agricultural
countryside. In recent years, Rapti hill districts have even achieved a
small measure of commercial success in exporting cash crops such as
fruits, spices and vegetables.[52] It is therefore apparent that the
epicentre of the Maoist uprising is by no means the most marginal region
in Nepal. A holistic analysis of the Maoist insurgency must therefore
move beyond simplistic economic causality and engage with the other
processes and forces that are at work: the economic context can only be
a point of departure, not the analytical conclusion. I suggest that the
factors that led to the rapid growth of the insurgency include: acute
disunity within the ruling parliamentary parties; the ideological and
structural weakness of the Nepali state; the rapid ethnicisation of the
Maoist movement; a long-standing culture of recruitment into foreign
armies in the Maoist heartland; extra-territorial linkages; and, most
significantly, the general retreat of the Nepali state during the
initial phase of the conflict (Shah 2002).
The immediacy of the Maoist crisis has caused many to forget that this
is not the first time that Nepal has experienced an armed rebellion in
its hinterlands. Similar disturbances in the past were quickly defused
when the state displayed sufficient determination and coherence in its
response. A decisive stance on the part of the state prevented minor
uprisings from developing into protracted guerrilla wars. In contrast,
the reaction of the state to the Maoist insurgency has been
characterised by utter confusion, to the extent that even after six
years of particularly destructive violence the government in Kathmandu
had yet even to define the nature of the threat. Official pronouncements
continued to describe the Maoist insurgency variously as a simple law
and order problem; as a socio-economic malaise; as terrorism; or as just
another ‘political issue’. In the absence of any conceptual clarity
among the ruling elites, public security deteriorated rapidly, even as
the Maoists consolidated their organisation and military assets at a
brisk pace between 1996 and 2001.
Rather than seeing the people’s war as a phenomenon unto itself, I will
argue that the present conflict does not merely exhibit strong parallels
with the oppositional politics of the past century in Nepal, but is in
fact a continuation of that tradition — a tradition that is sustained by
the particular nature of South Asian inter-state relations and wider
global opportunities and constraints. The recourse to history and
geopolitics not only makes familiar what otherwise appears unique, but
also offers a tentative trajectory for the current conflict in Nepal. We
are, after all, enjoined by Mao himself to ‘Look at its past, and you
can tell its present; look at its past and present, and you can tell its
future’ (Mao Zedong 1967: 11).
In linking the Maoist movement to the wider regional context, the unit
of analysis must always extend beyond the national borders, especially
those of a nation characterised as a ‘periphery of a periphery’ (Cameron
1994). What happens across the porous boundary often has more influence
on events than what goes on inside. Therefore, I argue for a
historically linear and geopolitically horizontal frame of reference for
the people’s war. Furthermore, the notion of national security as the
sum total of internal and external determinants implies that any
examination of the Maoist issue in Nepal must be attentive not only to
the internal dynamics but also to the external forces that shape the
present conflict (Thomas 1986, Gordon 1992). Theoretically and
empirically, the challenge is to recognise the internal and external
sources of the war and trace the specific pathways of their
intersection.
Methodologically, the topic of Maoism in Nepal is still highly
problematic for a scholarly assessment because the complexities of the
guerrilla conflict expose the limitations of both anthropological and
social-scientific approaches. On the one hand, the arbitrary violence
and physical risks of a war zone make a sustained ethnographic rendering
of the insurgency impossible.[53] On the other hand, the sudden twists
and turns, public posturing, hidden agendas, and a shifting nexus of
clandestine alliances at both national and regional levels overwhelm
standard social science tools. Any attempt at drawing a coherent picture
of the on-going war has to rely largely on newspaper reports, the
elliptical public utterances of the protagonists, party political
literature, and cryptic pronouncements from various government sources.
In the fog and din of war, hazarding meaning in the silences and
absences of the propaganda campaign often rests on a creative deployment
of Max Weber’s notion of verstehen and Paul Ricoeur’s suggestion of a
‘hermencutics of suspicion’.
I have found ‘oppositional politics’ to be a much more useful conceptual
tool in explicating the Maoists’ motives and actions than splitting
hairs over the semantics of ‘terrorism’ or ‘people’s war’, which are
overburdened with ideological and moral expediencies. When shorn of its
rhetorical posture, the CPN (Maoist) seeks quite simply to overthrow the
present regime and monopolise state power. The means employed to achieve
this goal will be seen as ‘terrorism’ or as ‘people’s war’, depending
upon the sympathies of the evaluator. Moreover, by examining the present
conflict as a form of oppositional politics geared primarily to
capturing the whole or a part of state power, it becomes possible to
establish explanatory connections and continuities with earlier forms of
oppositional politics in Nepal and their external implications.
Considering the numerous wars, ethnic and secessionist conflicts,
nuclear stand-offs and foreign military interventions of the last five
decades, the description of the post-colonial settlement in South Asia
as ‘intrinsically unstable’ comes across as an understatement (Gordon
1992: 19, see also Ramana and Nayyar 2001, Ganguly 2001, Kothari and
Mian 2001, Sisson and Rose 1990). A combustible mix of colonial legacy,
imperial ambitions and religious extremism ensures that the whole
region, home to a fifth of all humanity, is never far from Armageddon.
At the heart of the subcontinental maelstrom is the Legacy Raj Syndrome:
a regional milieu characterised by a high level of inter-state
depredation and bad faith. The core tensions of the Legacy Raj are
sustained by the polymarphous character of the post-independence power
elites, whose conception of self and mission oscillates between that of
anti-colonial heroes on the one hand and heirs to the British Raj on the
other. It is this contradictory impulse that generates cycles of
destabilisation outwards into the regional system in the form of
economic pressures, political subversion, proxy wars and military
adventures. Independence, which bequeathed the greater part of the
British Raj to the Indian republic, also left it with a split
personality. Ashis Nandy’s examination of the post-colonial mind is
apposite in this context:
It is not an accident that the specific variants of the concepts with
which many anti-colonial movements in our times have worked have often
been the products of the imperial culture itself; even in opposition,
these movements have paid homage to their respective cultural origins. I
have in mind not only the overt Apollonian codes of Western liberalism
that have often motivated the elites of the colonized societies but also
their covert Dionysian counterparts in the concepts of statccraft,
everyday politics, effective political methods and utopias (Nandy 1982:
198).
While India’s representation of itself as the ‘largest democracy’, its
anti-colonial legacy and its Gandhian profile offer a certain moral high
ground on the world stage, New Delhi’s ability to shake things up in the
immediate neighbourhood provides the masters of the Legacy Raj with
experiential proof of their imperial inheritance and a direct measure of
their self-worth. Because the history of empires in recent centuries has
been dominated by white Euro-American expansion and hegemony, even the
most astute observers have failed to recognise the derivative imperial
practices of black and brown sahibs, even when their impact is no less
consequential for millions (Ahmad 1983, Ludden 2002, Hardt and Negri
2000). The ‘pathological urge to dominate’ (Mannoni 1990: 102)
apparently transcends racial and territorial discontinuities. The chasm
between India’s international persona and its regional practices has led
some to the ‘sobering thought that colonial powers such as Britain,
France and USA should display greater respect for UN principles than
democratic India’ (Datta-Ray 1984: 60). Thus, the lived experience at
the regional margins is out of line with the two dominant tropes of
South Asian scholarship and discourse: ‘post-colonialism’ and
‘independence’.
Following their anti-colonial struggle, the Indian elites cultivated a
progressive internationalist identity by subscribing to the principles
of Panchasheel (the five principles of peaceful coexistence in
interstate relations), non-alignment, and the United Nations. Nehru and
his generation of Indians claimed the moral leadership of the Third
World in a discourse of de-colonisation and Afro-Asian solidarity. This
was projected in moral opposition to the Western powers, which were seen
as tainted by colonialism and slavery. Paradoxically, however, within
South Asia the Indian nationalists mimicked and consolidated the British
colonial worldview and practices (cf. Rose and Scholz 1980, Jayawardena
1992, Jalal 1995, Werake 1992). Consequently:
The long anti-colonial struggle left the Congress party with a hybrid
security policy. It was a policy that was shaped both by the nature of
the predominantly non-violent struggle and by British colonial attitudes
to security. The two made uneasy bedfellows. Generally, this innate
tension was resolved through application of the Gandhian doctrine of
non-violent conflict resolution in India’s dealings on the world stage
and adherence to the colonial inheritance in its actions on the
subcontinent (Gordon 1992:6).
The duality was apparent in many of the Indian leaders. Even as they
chased the British out of the subcontinent, Nehru and others ‘...sought
to have India recognized as the rightful successor to the British Raj’
in the region (Wriggins 1992: 97). Accordingly, India’s goal of
‘quarantining the subcontinent from what it would regard as outside
interference’ has remained the basic foreign policy objective since
independence (Gordon 1992: 172–3). India made its proprietary claim to
the quarantine zone in January 2002, when Colin Powell, the US secretary
of state, visited Nepal to offer support to the government in its fight
against the Maoist rebels. The Times of India,[54] a mainstream
newspaper that consistently reflects the Indian government’s thinking on
regional matters, expressed its objection to Powell’s visit thus: ‘If
Pakistan-based cross-border terrorism violates Indian sovereignty, the
same sovereignty is no less transgressed when, despite the 1950 treaty
with Nepal, Indian sensibilities are ignored by Mr Powell’s explicit
offer of military aid to the Himalayan kingdom’ (22 January 2002).
Independent India came to nurture great power ambitions and was not
satisfied with merely maintaining the level of influence the British had
exercised over the Himalayan kingdoms (Khadka 1997: 76–8, Dhanalaxmi
1981). While the British had largely limited themselves to defining the
Himalayan states’ foreign policy options, India sought to control their
domestic politics as well. According to one assessment, New Delhi’s
primary goal has been to ‘obtain both regional and external acceptance
of India’s hegemonic status in the subcontinent’ (Rose 1978: 60). While
reinforcing the basic tenets of British imperial policies, ‘Indian
hegemony over the subcontinent
has been modulated in a number of phases that involved the integration
of the princely states, the forcible absorption of Hyderabad, Kashmir,
and Goa, the annexation of Sikkim, an imposed protectorate over Bhutan,
a dominant presence in Nepal and Bangladesh, and finally the humbling of
Pakistan’ (Ziring 1978: vii).[55] In the eastern
Himalayas, a treaty concluded in 1950 turned Sikkim into an Indian
‘protectorate’. As it turned out, the danger to Sikkim did not come from
any adversary, but from the protector itself: twenty-five years after
Sikkim signed the treaty of friendship, India annexed it through a
two-stage process of destabilisation and military occupation (see
Datta-Ray 1984). A similar treaty concluded with Bhutan obliged the
latter to be ‘guided’ by India on foreign affairs and defence (Rahul
1971). It can be argued that the inner contradictions of India’s
regional policies have contributed much to making South Asia one of the
world’s most volatile and violent regions, and that Indian officialdom
tends to regard its actions as both righteous and successful.
Nepal’s relationship with postcolonial India posed different problems.
Because of its older national roots and a monarchical line that
pre-dated the British consolidation of India, New Delhi could not
convert Nepal into a formal dependency through treaty instruments as it
did with Sikkim and Bhutan. Nepal was described as ‘a wholly sovereign
state’ and India had ‘no legal title to interfere in its affairs. The
treaty of friendship concluded by the two countries in 1950 provides
only for consultations in the event of a threat to the security or
independence of either party’ (Myrdal 1968: 194). Even though the last
Rana prime minister, Mohan Shamsher, had made significant concessions to
India in the 1950 treaty in a desperate bid to prolong the Ranas’ rule,
this was apparently not enough to satisfy New Delhi’s ambitions in
Nepal.
Precisely because India lacks formal treaty rights commensurate with its
ambitions in Nepal, New Delhi has undertaken a range of diplomatic and
covert manoeuvres to ‘mold the political evolution of Nepal in its own
image and to establish some kind of de facto protectorate’ (Myrdal 1968:
195). These initiatives have yielded mixed results for India, and have
had profound consequences for Nepal. One of the most consistent features
of this policy has been the covert and overt support India has provided
to various oppositional outfits fighting the Nepali state, in order to
exert leverage over the latter. Indian goals in South Asia and the means
employed to achieve them are best framed in terms of the closely linked
concepts of ‘compellene’ (Schelling 1966), ‘coercive diplomacy’ (George
1994), or ‘strategic coercion’ (Freedman 1998). ‘Strategic coercion’
refers to the ‘deliberate and purposive’ use of threats to ‘influence
another’s strategic choices’ in inter-state relations (ibid.: 15): ‘The
distinguishing feature of coercion is that the target is never denied
choice, but must weigh the choices between the costs of compliance and
non-compliance’ with some room for bargaining as well (ibid.: 36).
Examining the linkage between terrorism and the concept of strategic
coercion, Lepgold observes that in recent decades there has been an
‘increase in politically motivated, state-sponsored or state-assisted
violence against citizens and governments of other states’ (Lepgold
1998: 135). This form of coercion can include active participation in
specific terrorist acts across the border, or a more passive tolerance
where a ‘government is looking the other way while terrorists or drug
traffickers are operating on its territory’ (Lepgold 1998: 145).
Syed Ali brings the framework of ‘strategic coercion’ to bear on India’s
strategic policies towards Tibet, Kashmir and Sri Lanka, and argues that
India is characterised by its use of ‘covert coercion’ as an instrument
of regional policy. The major advantage of this form of coercion is its
plausible deniability:
Those engaged in coercion have tended to be reluctant to spell out their
specific demands and deadlines. Instead they have appeared to rely on
the target interpreting their activities as establishing the parameters
of acceptable behavior (Ali 1998: 249).
The concept of strategic coercion in interstate relations illuminates
and complements Blackstock’s earlier notion of ‘subversion’ as a foreign
policy tool which falls between open diplomacy and covert military
action. A state which is pursuing subversion against another can utilise
local ‘counter-elites’, which can be either political or ethnic
formations. These elements are deployed in a variety of ways in order to
cause the ‘splitting of the political and social structure of a
victimized state until the fabric of national morale disintegrates...
These tensions or vulnerabilities may be exploited by setting such
groups against each other in hostile, uncompromising opposition’
(Blackstock 1964: 50). A subversive strategy leads finally to:
...the undermining or detachment of the loyalties of significant
political and social groups within the victimized state, and their
transference, under ideal conditions, to the symbols and institutions of
the aggressor. The assumption behind the manipulative use of subversion
is that public morale and the will to resist intervention are the
products of combined political and social or class loyalties which are
usually attached to national symbols, such as the flag, constitution,
crown, or even the persons of the chief of state or other national
leaders (Blackstock 1964: 56).
If they are viewed in terms of Blackstock’s framework, the past five
decades of Nepal-India ties stand as a classically subversive
relationship. The overall thrust of New Delhi’s policies towards Nepal
has been inspired by narrow national interests and not universal values,
even if concerns about democracy, human rights and progress are
occasionally raised to legitimise aggressive pursuits. A brief survey of
Nepali oppositional politics and its interface with Indian strategic
interests is necessary to further clarify and concretise these concepts
and processes.
After Jang Bahadur’s bloody coup in 1846, a motley opposition began to
coalesce around the exiled monarch, Rajendra, in Banaras. Unfortunately
for Jang Bahadur’s opponents, the British had already made a pact with
Nepal’s new ruler by this time. As a result, the East India Company
firmly discouraged the opposition groups from organising any resistance
to the usurper from Indian territory. The first serious opposition to
Jang Bahadur dissipated after a brief battle in the Alau plains near
present-day Birganj. King Rajendra was subsequently captured by Jang
Bahadur’s troops and imprisoned for the rest of his life. The defeat of
the purely domestic opposition stabilised Rana autocracy for another
hundred years (Bhandari 1970/1: 115, Tyagi 1974).
Nepali oppositional groups would find favour in the Indian plains only
after the departure of the British from the subcontinent in 1947. With
Nehru’s barely concealed support, the Nepali Congress was able to
quickly dislodge the 104-year-old Anglophile Rana autocracy in 1950
after a few skirmishes in the tarai towns (Nath 1975, Rowland 1967). New
Delhi helped to install the first democratic government in Nepal, in the
expectation that it would remain dependent upon India for its policies
as well as its security. ‘As much as we stand for the independence of
Nepal,’ Nehru made it known, ‘we cannot allow anything to go wrong in
Nepal or permit that barrier [the Himalayas] to be... weakened because
that would be a risk to our own security’ (Gordon 1992: 7–8). However,
when China attacked India in 1962, it pushed across its long and
disputed border with India: Beijing had no need to detour through
Nepal’s mountainous terrain to get to India. Even though Nehru’s
concerns about the security of Nepal’s northern frontier were thus
proved to be largely unfounded, successive generations of Indian leaders
and bureaucrats continue to use the issue of Himalayan security to place
conditions on Nepal’s independence.
Along with the imperial prerogative of ‘security’, India has used its
democratic credentials to give a moral colouring to its acts of economic
and political manipulation in Nepal. India’s decision to oust the Ranas
and install a Nepali Congress Party government has accordingly been
interpreted as a strategic response to the new threat posed by communist
China’s arrival in Tibet, or as a logical extension of India’s
democratic mission in the Third World. But if India was motivated by an
urge to spread democracy in South Asia, why would it exclude Bhutan — a
country that is under treaty obligations to abide by New Delhi’s advice
— from its democratic mission and instead support a non-democratic
regime there? As one of the more insightful writers on power
illustrates, various ideological claims ‘have furnished explanations and
warrants for imperialist domination and resistance to it, for communism
and anticommunism, for fascism and antifascism, for holy wars and the
immolation of infidels’ (Wolf 1999:1). It is an irony of democracy that
great powers have tended to buttress authoritarianism among useful
clients while wishing democracy on non-acquiescent states. South Asia is
no exception to this global paradox.
Having been ousted from power by King Mahendra in 1960, the Nepali
Congress was in the midst of an armed revolt in the early 1970s. After
strong protests from Kathmandu, the then Indian foreign minister Swaran
Singh issued a statement assuring the Nepal government that India would
not allow its territory to be used for anti-Nepal activity (Gaige 1975:
187). Later, when the Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi, further
curtailed his political activities, the Nepali Congress leader B. P.
Koirala gave up the path of armed rebellion and returned from exile with
a new policy of ‘national reconciliation’. As a consequence there was a
cessation of India-based violence in Nepal for the next decade or so.
A cursory review of the fate of oppositional politics in Nepal shows
that there is a high probability of success when there is sufficient
foreign support. When such patronage is lacking, political opposition
has had to compromise with the Nepali state. ‘You can’t be victorious in
an armed struggle,’ reminisces K. P. Bhattarai, the former prime
minister and one of the founding members of the Nepali Congress Party,
‘unless you have a false border’.[56] Like a flirtatious wink,
Bhattarai’s ‘false border��� is more than the unregulated frontier between
the two countries: the wink is, rather, an allegory for the furtive
affair with the alien. Frederick Gaige had come to the same conclusion
from an academic standpoint almost a quarter of a century earlier when
he concluded: ‘Although the terai is a natural base of operations for
the Nepali Congress or the Communist party...it is unlikely that without
the blessing of the Indian government, opposition parties will be able
to mount another serious campaign against the government’ (1975: 193).
Some of the notable examples of failed insurrections include Dr K. I.
Singh’s revolt against the agreement reached in New Delhi in 1950
between India, the Ranas, the Nepali Congress and King Tribhuvan; and
the violent campaign launched by the Marxist-Leninist faction of the
Communist Party in Jhapa in the early seventies. Both of these uprisings
lacked external backing. In the former case, Indian troops actually
intervened to capture K. I. Singh from within Nepal (Rowland 1967: 147,
Sharma 1970).
Following King Mahendra’s royal coup in 1960, the Nepali Congress began
its second armed rebellion from bases in India. These attacks, organised
by Subarna Shamsher, were developing into major threats to the regime
when the Indo-China war broke out in 1962. Distracted and demoralised by
the Chinese invasion on its northern frontier, the Indian government
abruptly suspended its proxy campaign against the Nepali government (see
also Jha 1977 and Chatterji 1980). Thus, the newly introduced Panchayat
system received a reprieve that lasted for thirty years.
Although this is denied by the new orthodoxy in Nepal, New Delhi
contributed significantly to the eventual dismantling of the Panchayat
system in 1990. The bold proclamation made by the Indian leader Chandra
Shekhar during the initiation of the people’s movement in Kathmandu 1990
was not very different from Nehru’s rationalisation of the ejection of
the Ranas, which he issued in an expansive moment in the Indian
parliament almost four decades earlier. Nehru declared, ‘...we have
accordingly advised the government of Nepal ...to bring themselves into
line with democratic forces that are stirring the world today and that
there can be no peace and stability in Nepal by going back to the old
order’ (Rowland 1967: 146–47). Addressing an opposition rally less than
a kilometre from the royal palace in Kathmandu, Chandra Shekhar, who
later became India’s prime minister, invoked the same moral sanctimony
in attacking King Birendra and the Panchayat regime: ‘...no man should
consider himself god, and... they [the people of Nepal] should take
courage from the overthrow of tyrants like Ceausescu, Marcos and the
Shah of Iran’ (Khanna and Sudarshan 1998: 53). One unalloyed
acknowledgment provides a rough estimate of the extent of external
collaboration in the 1990 oppositional project:
The pro-democracy movement in Nepal can never he too grateful to all
Indian political parties and leaders who have supported it. Chandra
Shekharjee’s involvement in our movement deserves a special mention
because he not only helped to organize support for it on such a wide
scale in India but has also inspired the people of Nepal themselves to
take part in the peaceful struggle for the restoration of their freedom
and rights through his historic speech at the Nepali Congress conference
in Kathmandu on 18 January 1990 (ibid.: 58–9).
Although India extracted a number of favourable treaties after 1990 and
has since enjoyed the convenience of dealing with a more compliant
government in Kathmandu, underlying bilateral irritants such as
territorial occupation, unequal sharing of water resources, trade and
transit hurdles, issues of immigration and citizenship rights for Indian
nationals, and the Bhutanese refugee problem have become even more acute
between the two countries since 1990. Vir Sanghvi, an Indian
intellectual, acknowledges that New Delhi has played different forces
off against each other in the past, and that India is now having second
thoughts about what it achieved in 1990. Bilateral issues have soured
such that ‘Today, we are actually much worse off in terms of India-Nepal
relations than we were at any point in the 1980s’ (Sanghvi 2001). So,
has the less than full satisfaction with the post-1990 status quo in
Nepal led India to contemplate alternative possibilities? The shifting
regional patronages and expedient alliances necessitate a scrutiny of
the transition from the people’s movement of 1990 to the present
people’s war.
If New Delhi’s strategic goal is to exert a de facto dominance over
Nepal which it does not enjoy through de jure means, a condition of
perpetual disruption serves this end. Frequent shifts in alliances and
regimes keep the clients on their toes, forcing them to concede more to
retain regional patronage. Insecure, transient rulers in Nepal are more
likely to acquiesce to Indian demands than those who do not owe anything
to India for their survival. It is no surprise that many of the most
controversial treaties and accords with India have been concluded by
insecure Nepali rulers threatened by an externally-backed opposition, or
immediately after a regime change when the new elites are burdened with
gratitude for the external patronage they have received. For example,
all of the controversial Indo-Nepal treaties on the exploitation of
Nepal’s natural resources were enacted immediately after a change of
regime in Nepal: the Gandak and Koshi treaties after the ousting of the
Ranas in 1950, and the Tanakpur and Mahakali treaties after the
overthrow of the Panchayat in 1990. Indeed, Mohan Shamsher signed the
Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950 at his weakest moment, when his
regime was already beginning to crumble.
In 1990, the Panchayat government had been similarly disabled by the
mutually reinforcing actions of opposition demonstrations and the
year-long Indian trade embargo. At a moment of extreme vulnerability,
New Delhi sent a new treaty proposal on 31 March 1990 for the king to
sign in return for the possibility of relieving the pressure on his
beleaguered government. The terms of the new proposal were so harsh that
they ‘virtually put the clock four decades back to July 31, 1950’ (Kumar
1992: 18). The crux of the treaty proposal rested on four restrictions
on Nepal: 1) Nepal would not import arms or raise additional military
units without Indian approval; 2) Nepal would not enter into a military
alliance with any other country; 3) Indian companies would be given
first preference in any economic or industrial projects in Nepal; 4)
India’s exclusive involvement would be ensured in the exploitation of
‘commonly shared rivers’ in Nepal.[57] Rather than sign the treaty with
India in the hope of saving the Panchayat regime, King Birendra instead
pre-empted New Delhi’s calculations by abruptly handing over power to
the alliance of the Nepali Congress and the United Left Front without
seeking Indian assistance or mediation. While some of the Indian demands
contained in the proposal were later fulfilled in the Joint Communique
of 10 June 1990 signed by the interim prime minister Krishna Prasad
Bhattarai in New Delhi, and other secret agreements entered into by the
newly-elected prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala in 1991, many of the
demands still remain unmet.[58] Viewed from this perspective, the Maoist
insurgency now provides a convenient leverage against the Nepali state
to assist the Indian government in its pursuit of the strategic
objectives contained in the treaty proposal of 1990. Moreover, the
unresolved territorial dispute between the two countries, the efforts to
grant Nepali citizenship to Indian immigrants, the lingering Bhutanese
refugee issue and the controversial trade and transit treaty are other
Indian interests that would be directly affected by the duration and
direction of the Maoist insurgency.
During the first two years of the Maoist insurgency it became clear that
the government’s half-hearted, directionless approach to fending off the
rebellion was failing. Instead of taking the necessary measures to
contain the Maoist threat, successive governments chose the easier path
of simply vacating the areas contested by the rebels. As more and more
districts were lost, the Nepali police, the government’s mainstay
against the Maoist guerrillas, began to suffer crushing defeats, even in
its defensive retreats. The gravity of the military situation aroused
calls in various quarters for the deployment of the Royal Nepalese Army
(RNA) against the guerrillas. However, an outcry against army deployment
from within and without the ruling party weakened the leaders’ political
resolve and they backed away from taking the hard decisions.[59] After
causing sensations on several occasions by making public statements in
support of deploying the army against the Maoists, Prime Minister Girija
Prasad Koirala performed a famous volte face when he reportedly said
‘What if the army also fails like the police, do we then invite the
Indian army?’
Why was the Nepali government so loathe to employ the legitimate force
at its disposal in order to contain an armed rebellion that was clearly
spinning out of the control of the demoralised police force? The absence
of the political will and vision necessary to defeat a growing
insurgency not only provided the Maoists with spectacular
morale-boosting victories and battle experience against the civil
police, but also enabled them to amass significant quantities of arms,
ammunition and communication equipment from government armouries.
Furthermore, the rebels superbly exploited the chronic infighting
between and among the government, parliament and the political parties
as they played one side off against the other (Shah 2001). The extreme
disunity within the ruling circles prevented the Nepali state from
articulating a clear, consistent and convincing response during the most
critical phase in Nepal’s history. The ambivalent attitude of the
leadership towards the armed rebellion during its formative years
enabled a small fringe outfit to grow into a fearsome military machine
within a few years. Had political will and unity been present, the
initial disturbances would have been contained with minimal loss of life
and property in 1996 and 1997 when the Maoists were still testing the
political waters. Instead, the problem was allowed to fester and develop
into a full-blown war that is now shaking the very foundations of the
Nepali nation. In this sense, the Maoist crisis reflects a spectacular
failure of leadership and governance at the highest level.
One reason for this reluctance could be the political culture of the new
ruling class. Having been so recently engaged in a long struggle against
the Nepali state from both within and without the country, there is
still some residual discomfort and ambivalence among the new political
elites in identifying with the core responsibilities of the Nepali
state. The progressive, anti-establishment image cultivated during long
periods of exile and opposition has not entirely worn off, nor has the
romance of populist identification. It is not unusual for such
politicians to experience a degree of ambivalence about employing the
ultimate state power against those who happen to employ the same
anti-establishment discourse, using similar populist idioms. The public
perception of corruption and incompetence amongst the politicians also
undermined the new elites’ moral authority to take up the Maoist
challenge with sincerity. Besides these personal dilemmas, there was
perhaps a structural element which fostered inertia and a sense of
futility among the ruling circles and prevented them from taking up the
Maoist threat with a sense of conviction and purpose. Some inkling of
the broader sources and inspirations behind the Maoist movement, the
politicians’ own experiences during the long years in opposition, and
some appreciation of the nature and fate of previous oppositional
movements in Nepal could have had a significant impact on the will and
morale of the post-1990 democratic regime as it pondered the Maoist
hazard.
An important part of the Maoists’ mystique rested on their aura of being
rooted in the red hills of Rukum and Rolpa. This provided them with
unassailable political authenticity and moral legitimacy. It is from
this moral high ground that the Maoists could label everyone else as
anti-national stooges of Indian and imperialist masters. However, the
sheer pace of a number of ‘diagnostic events’ (Moore 1994) in the recent
past has chipped away at this well crafted aura of authenticity and
unassailability.
The first of these ruptures in the Maoist narrative was brought about by
the murders of King Birendra and his family on 1 June 2001, which came
as both an unexpected bonanza and a potential pitfall for the CPN
(Maoist). Prior to the regicide, the Maoists had maintained a
theoretical opposition to the monarchy, but had refrained from any
direct attack on the institution as they systematically isolated and
eliminated the police, local critics, and lower echelon workers of other
political parties. It appears that the Maoists too were momentarily
taken aback by the sudden turn of events in the palace. They
nevertheless came to a tactical decision to seize the moment of fear,
sorrow, and confusion to fast-forward their plan for a general urban
uprising.
The Maoists portrayed the dead king as a patriotic figure who had been
slain by the American and Indian intelligence agencies and local
reactionary elements for standing up to oppose hegemonic designs on
Nepal, and for refusing to participate in the larger imperialistic
strategy of encircling China. The top Maoist ideologue, Baburam
Bhattarai, stated in an article in a Kathmandu paper that the massacre
was the handiwork of ‘reactionaries’, ‘expansionists’, ‘fascists’ and
‘imperialists’. The Maoist leader declared that ‘anyone crowned king
will only be a puppet in their [the imperialists] hands’ and added,
‘from any point of view, traditional, feudal monarchy is dead and the
birth of the republic has already taken place’ (Bhattarai 2001 b). The
Maoists accused the ‘Gyanendra-Girija clique’ (the new king, Gyanendra,
and the Nepali Congress government headed by Girija Prasad Koirala) of
being part of a larger external conspiracy. Claiming to be the only
nationalist force left standing in the illustrious patriotic lineage of
Prithvi Narayan, Mahendra and Birendra, the Maoists implied that they
were the rightful inheritors of the dead king’s patrimony and
legitimacy. The rebels called on the RNA to desert and urged the public
to join a gencral insurrection.
In order to spark off a general uprising against the new king, the
Maoists unleashed an unprecedented series of attacks across the country
in an attempt to destroy the morale of the government forces. Dozens of
policemen were killed in these well-coordinated attacks, and numerous
barracks were destroyed. On the night of 12 July 2001, the Maoist forces
captured the Holeri garrison in Rolpa without much fighting and took
more than seventy policemen hostage. At this point the government
finally ordered the army to rescue the captured police personnel from
the Maoists. Although many details of the army’s operation in Holeri
remain obscure, and none of the captives were rescued as a result of it,
the Maoists suddenly ceased their offensive and entered into talks with
the government. The army’s entry into Rolpa was not a battleground
defeat for the rebels, nor was it a tactical success for the government,
yet it succeeded in abruptly shifting the focus of the Maoist
campaign.[60] It is probable that a number of considerations encouraged
the Maoist high command to retreat from armed confrontation with the
army at the time. First, the intensified military campaign had failed to
spark the expected general insurrection from the public. A journalist
commented on the failed putsch:
There just wasn’t enough critical mass in the protests for the Maoists
to instigate an urban uprising by piggy-backing on public anger and
shock, and the spontaneous outpouring of public grief indicated that
deep down Nepalis believed, even respected, the institution of monarchy
(Sharma 2001).
Clearly, the Maoist republicans had over-estimated the level of
anti-monarchy sentiment among the urban populace, and especially in the
army and other state organs. Without the synergy of a popular uprising,
the heightened military campaign made unsustainable demands on the
rebels’ capabilities. Similarly, despite its rhetoric, the Maoist high
command might also have come to the conclusion that it was not yet ready
to take on the army. Thus came the classic tactic from Mao’s book: ‘one
step backward’. Even though what happened in Holeri was not the Nepali
army’s finest hour by any stretch of the imagination, the prospect of a
face-off with the army seems to have momentarily dampened the Maoist
leaders’ euphoria (see S. J. Shahi 2001).
The next turning point came in the form of a dramatic revelation in
August 2001 that the Maoists were operating from bases in India: this
cast them in an entirely new light (see Onta 2001, Lal 2001, Regmi
2002). The damning expose not only shattered the Maoists’ virtuous image
of being rooted in Nepal, but also raised the spectre of sinister
political duplicity. Numerous intellectuals in Kathmandu pointed out the
Maoists’ doublespeak on India — public defiance, secret complicity — the
false coin of Nepali nationalism. The columnist Puskar Gautam asked why
the Maoists had chosen India as a base and why India was hosting them on
its territory, and wondered if the ‘People’s War and the republic
thereof will turn out to be the result of Indian generosity as well’
(Gautam 2001/2). Given India’s political interest in Nepal and the open
border between the two countries, it must be considered a considerable
feat for the Maoists to have concealed their Indian ties for so long.
The revelation of the Maoists’ secret links with India would have been
less damaging were it not for their initial shrill opposition to India.
Having identified New Delhi as the hegemonic power which presided over
Nepal’s semi-colonial condition, the Maoists had fed the masses for
years on strident anti-India rhetoric. In a leaflet distributed
throughout the country on 13 February 1996, the CPN (Maoist) denounced
the Nepali government for ‘prostrating itself before the foreign
imperialists and expansionists and repeatedly mortgaging Nepal’s
national honour and sovereignty to them. The present state has been
shamelessly permitting the foreign plunderers to grab the natural water
resources of Nepal and to trample upon our motherland’ (CPN [Maoist]
1996a: 18). In one interview, Prachanda asserted that his army would
ultimately fight and defeat the Indian army in Nepal. However, such
strident anti-India rhetoric was not accompanied by any tangible
anti-Indian action. Apart from burning a few buses belonging to schools
owned by Indians, the revolutionaries fastidiously avoided touching any
of the substantial Indian economic interests in Nepal, even as they
systematically destroyed the national infrastructure.[61]) In fact, the
Maoist insurgency coincided with a quickening in the pace of New Delhi’s
encroachment upon Nepali territory and the unilateral damming of border
rivers (see Gautam 2001/2). While the Maoists intimidated Nepali
citizens who wished to join Nepali military and police forces, they
displayed a remarkable tolerance of the continued recruitment of Nepali
youth into the armed forces of India and Britain. This was despite the
fact that in the ultimatum they served on the government in 1996 the
Maoists had demanded an immediate end to the recruitment of soldiers
into foreign armed forces.
The secret ties with the Delhi Durbar proved to be a costly
embarrassment to the Maoists, to the extent that their ‘nationalist
credentials are currently in tatters’ (Gyawali 2002: 37). The paradox of
receiving Delhi’s patronage is that while it invariably leads to power
and privilege in Kathmandu, the tie itself is a great drain on moral
legitimacy. That is why the Nepali elites and counter-clites continue to
marshal much intellectual and political labour to deny, mystify and
glorify their Indian connections, deploying the circular logic of
cultural kinship, geographical proximity, and historical inevitability.
The Maoists likewise gained a decisive military edge from their
collaboration with the Indian state. The military advantage, however,
came at a significant loss of political authorship and moral autonomy as
the collaboration quickly degenerated into an asymmetric clientpatron
dependency.
Before the Maoists could recover from this expose, the 11 September
attacks on the United States pummelled them further onto the defensive.
The United States’ sudden military presence in South Asia prompted
Pakistan and India to try to outbid each other in their anti-terrorism
credentials. Pakistan took the difficult decision to sacrifice the
Taliban it had nurtured for a decade, in the futile hope that it could
rescue its Kashmir front. The retreat from Afghanistan brought
Pakistan’s long quest for ‘strategic depth’ vis-a-vis India to an abrupt
end. The intrusion of an external power in such a violent fashion was
also a different kind of setback for India’s strategic goal of
quarantining the subcontinent from external forces. India knew better
than to oppose the US military expedition at this juncture of world
history. Instead, it sought to capitalise on the new regional equation
in two ways: first, by having the US lean heavily on Pakistan to rein in
the militants fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir, and, second, by
bringing Pakistan to submission by emulating the new American posture on
terrorism.
Despite India’s efforts to project Islamabad as the ‘epicentre of
terrorism’, Pakistan does not enjoy a monopoly on state-sanctioned
terrorism and proxy wars in South Asia. External subversion, despite its
redefinition as ‘terrorism’ in the new political lexicon, remains a
standard foreign policy instrument in South Asia (see Singh 1992, Little
1994, Ali 1998, Sardeshpande 1992, Piyasena and Senadheera 1986). The
use of proxy wars and subversion as instruments of foreign policy is so
pervasive that when the Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
exhorted the nations of South Asia to desist from all types of terrorism
at the eleventh summit conference of the South Asian Association for
Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Chandrika Kumaratunga, the Sri Lankan
President, who has lost an eye to bombs planted by terrorists, reminded
the regional dignitaries that ‘We can’t encourage and finance friendly
terrorist organizations in one place and attempt to defeat the others
[elsewhere]”.[62]
Outside the region, Western nations had all along been urging the Nepal
government not to seek a military solution, and to solve the Maoist
issue through peaceful negotiations. After the attacks on New York and
Washington DC, the West became less willing to counsel peace. The sudden
turn in global events is likely to prove unfavourable for the Maoists in
the short run. The Maoists reacted to the new US war on terrorism with
their usual defiance. They accused the United States of being the
biggest terrorist and even threatened to fly planes into Singha Durbar
(the government secretariat) and Narayanhiti royal palace to fulfil
their objectives.[63] However, this public bravado was belied by a
discernible and urgent desire for peace among some Maoist leaders.
Kathmandu observers spoke of a
...completely changed Prachanda at the moment from what he used to be or
the manner he used to serve ultimatums to the government...this changed
stance of Comrade Prachanda could be due to the September 11 events in
America which has tentatively vowed to wipe out the menace of terrorism
from the world’s map. Secondly, and most importantly perhaps, Comrade
Prachanda and his insurgency got a major jolt the day the Indian
leadership branded their organization as terrorist.[64]
Just as the sudden Chinese attack on India’s northern defences caused
Nehru to halt the Nepali Congress armed operations in 1962, the attacks
on the United States in September are likely to strengthen the hand of
the Nepali state against the Maoists. At the very least, the events of
2001 forced some of the main contradictions of the Maoist movement into
sharp relief. As the diagnostic events discussed above indicate, the
Maoists found themselves looking at a potentially adverse external
environment, a more cohesive Nepali state that was gradually becoming
less responsive to their intimidations, and their own ideological front
that was cracking under the pace of events largely out of their control.
Taking everyone by surprise, the CPN (Maoist) gambled on a bold military
exit from the political stalemate of late 2001. On 21 November Prachanda
announced that his party was walking out of the peace talks.
Immediately, the guerrillas launched a well-coordinated series of
attacks across the country, destroying government headquarters in Dang,
Syangja, Makwanpur and Solukhumbu districts. Dozens of security
personnel and civil servants were killed and the guerrillas made off
with a huge quantity of weaponry from government armouries and millions
of rupees from the banks. It became clear that the rebels had used the
four-month long ceasefire to strengthen their organisational base,
improve their logistics, rearm, and get hundreds of their
battle-hardened comrades released from detention. Up to this point the
Maoists had carefully avoided confrontation with the army as they mauled
the police force at will, but on 23 November they attacked the army camp
in Ghorahi in western Nepal, and on the same night the government
headquarters in Dang and Syangja were destroyed. The large amount of
army ordnance looted from the Ghorahi army camp added automatic weaponry
to the Maoists’ arsenal and raised their morale enormously.
Historians will debate whether the Maoists were too successful for their
own good in this offensive. The rebels probably intended to inflict
quick, crushing military defeats to force the government to accede to
more of their demands, a tactic that had worked in the past. However,
the scale of the devastation shook the government from its slumber of
denial and appeasement and caused it to muster the political will to
finally face up to the aggression. On 26 November a State of Emergency
was declared and the RNA was ordered to fight the Maoists, now
officially described as terrorists.
For the first time in the six-year-old war, the Maoists were facing a
credible resistance internally and growing isolation externally,
especially in the West. In their decision to resume their violence, the
rebel commanders seem to have underestimated the resolve of the
government and the capability of the RNA, which had not seen sustained
action since the Nepal Tibet war during the 1850s except for brief
skirmishes with Tibetan guerrillas in the early 1970s (see McGranahan
2002). The Maoist gamble to take on the ultima ratio regis at this point
was no doubt, among other things, influenced by the often dismissive
assessment of the RNA as nothing more than a ‘ceremonial’ and ‘token’
force lacking substantive purpose or potency. Despite the terrible body
blows it received in the battles of Ghorahi, Achchani, Gam, Sandhikharka
and Jumla, the RNA did not simply crumble, as was the case with the
police force. What the army lacked in terms of tactical brilliance and
offensive flair was partially offset by its ability to absorb Maoist
poundings without organisational collapse. During its first year of
deployment the army not only checked the further growth of the Maoist
military but also reoccupied some of the positions earlier vacated by
the police. In all this, the army proved its critics wrong, at least for
the time being. Even though the RNA lacks an advanced arsenal or
adequate logistics, it has substantial historical depth and an
institutional coherence that is absent in some other organs of the
Nepali state. Indeed, some of the core regiments of the army predate the
founding of the Nepali nation and as such they were directly involved in
the national unification campaign that began from Gorkha in the 1740s.
As a consequence, the army is under a greater ideological imperative to
resist the Maoists than other, younger state organs.
The sequence of events since 11 September 2001 and its impact on the
Maoist war in Nepal makes one acutely aware of how significantly the
fate of the peasant eking out a subsistence in Jumla is tied to that of
a broker working in the World Trade Centre in New York or a clerk at the
Pentagon in Washington DC, even if the connection is not of any
consequence in the reverse direction. The most interesting realisation,
however, is not that soft states like Nepal are buffeted strongly by
regional and international currents, but that even an avowedly
revolutionary opposition often subsists by colluding with the same
hegemonic structure it claims to resist.
To what degree can an autonomous resistance movement subsist in a
vulnerable nation-state? Paradoxically, movements that promise
liberation may deepen dependency when the intensification of the
struggle causes the protagonists to raise their bids for external
support in order to vanquish internal foes. After fighting Nepal’s
rulers for over three decades from India, B. P. Koirala wrote, ‘If the
struggle is dependent on someone else’s support, that person will later
impose his interests and we too become ingratiated to him’ (Baniya
1997/8: 40). It is too early to predict which specific demands New Delhi
might seek to project through the Maoists, but it is clear that it will
want to strengthen its bargaining position on several of the outstanding
bilateral issues discussed earlier against a government which is
internally distracted and weakened. Such motives will be disavowed, but
that is the nature of ‘strategic coercion’:
It may also be in the interests of both parties to deny that coercion
has played a role even when it has: the coercer may not wish to appear a
bully while the coerced may wish to dispel any idea that he is a
weakling. What is at issue here is the way in which the actor constructs
reality: the quality of that construction is a separate issue (Freedman
1998: 16).
The costs of acquiring foreign patronage add up on both sides of the
present conflict. If he did not have the Maoists to vanquish at home,
Sher Bahadur Deuba would not have rushed to put Nepali airspace and
airports at the disposal of the United States in its war on Afghanistan.
The immediate cost of this was the sacrifice of the principle of
non-alignment which had been the hallmark of Nepal’s foreign policy for
four decades. Even though non-alignment appears anachronistic in the
aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, it had nevertheless been
one of the few avenues in which Nepal had asserted its independent
identity after it emerged from the shadow of the Ranas and their British
patrons. Indeed, the quest for an autonomous existence within the
nation-state system had been a major part of the Nepali nation-building
project since the 1950s.[65]
Non-alignment was not only of ornamental value for Nepal, it had real
material consequences as well. From the Indian sepoy mutiny to the two
world wars, the Nepali government contributed men and material to the
British war effort. Such tributary practices continued even after Indian
independence, when Mohan Shamsher dispatched a Nepali military
contingent to assist Indian forces during the Hyderabad crisis. After it
joined the non-aligned movement, Nepal did not feel compelled to send
troops to any of India’s many wars in the region. It is no surprise that
a section of the Indian ruling circle had been rather cool towards
Nepal’s bid for non-aligned status.[66]
The enduring frustrations in the bilateral relationship emanate from a
silent struggle between Nepal’s post-colonial aspirations and the
neo-colonial ambitions of the Legacy Raj. The bilateral stress has also
served to neatly bisect the Nepali political landscape into two
antagonistic camps since the 1950s. The successors to the Ranas, the
Nepali Congress Party and King Tribhuvan, were content with the new
political order at home and with India’s assumption of the British
suzerain role. After King Tribhuvan’s death, an alternative political
formation soon coalesced around King Mahendra and other nationalists
which sought to take the emancipation from the Ranas to its logical
conclusion by seeking not only an internal transfer of power but also
liberation from India’s external domination. The crown’s ideological
shift has caused New Delhi to maintain a rather critical, and
occasionally hostile, attitude towards the Nepali monarchy since the
1960s.[67] S. D. Muni, a prominent Indian academic whose views help
articulate New Delhi’s policies on Nepal, represents the dominant Indian
position when he argues, in his recent comments on the Nepali Maoists,
that ‘The constitutional monarchy in the Nepali context is an inherently
incompatible arrangement’ which poses ‘the one real obstacle’ in
synchronising Nepal’s ‘developmental interests vis-a-vis India’ (Muni
2003, emphasis added). By implication, it would appear that the Indian
ruling establishment finds all other political forces in Nepal,
including the Maoists, to be amenable to its interests.
The underlying contest between the two ideological forces in Nepal
(broadly characterised as the Indo-centric and the proto-liberational
formations) has largely determined the contours of Nepali political life
over the past fifty years, and will continue do so. The schism is a
double bind for Nepal: on the one hand the ideological fault-line
disables the articulation of a internally cohesive polity, on the other
hand the same fissure continues to offer a convenient point of ingress
for Indian political and economic manipulation.
Despite their appropriation of Mao’s legitimating brand name, the Nepali
Maoists have displayed little fidelity to the Great Helmsman’s economic
and political programmatic.[68] Seven years into their people’s war,
they have yet to articulate a coherent economic, political and social
vision for the country. The forty-point ultimatum issued to the prime
minister in 1996 (see Appendix A) was a listing of individual grievances
rather than a cogent revolutionary reordering of the economy, state and
society. After entering into peace negotiations in July 2001, the
Maoists put forth three substantive demands: the abolition of the
monarchy, the formation of a interim government, and the election of a
constituent assembly. By the third round of peace talks in November
2001, the rebels were insisting only on the constituent assembly. In
light of the fact that the Maoists had not spelled out what is wrong
with the present Constitution or what they would like to replace it
with, the insistence on electing a constituent assembly to frame a new
Constitution seems like the proverbial cart before the horse.
There does indeed exist a disjuncture between Maoism as a Iegitimating
ideological discourse and the CPN (Maoist) as its practitioner in Nepal.
The core thrust of Mao’s programmatic was two-pronged: liberation from
foreign domination and the reordering of internal class relations were
two sides of the same revolutionary struggle. So far, the Nepali Maoists
have displayed no real appreciation of Nepal’s neo-colonial position in
the region or any commitment to the dual thrust of Mao’s strategy.
Internally, they have moved decisively away from their vaguely defined
‘semi-feudal’ and ‘semicolonial’ mode of class rhetoric to the
mobilisation of a militant ethnic constituency (See Lecomte-Tilouine in
this volume, Magar 2001).[69] Theoretically, Maoist publications still
continue to represent ethno-national liberation as contingent on the
resolution of the class conflict. Tactically, however, the Maoists’
proposals for ethno-religious and regional mobilisation are far better
articulated than their formulations on economy, class, or state. The CPN
(Maoist) has declared the right to self-determination for all
‘nationalities’, ‘oppressed’ and regional groups (CPN [Maoist] 2001:
538). The process of ethnic polarisation and mobilisation calls the
claims of the Nepali state to represent the diversity of the Nepali
population into question, and wins the Maoists recruits and bases among
the ethnic minorities.
With this objective in mind, the Maoists have created or aligned
themselves with ethnic and regionalist outfits such as the Limhuwan
Liberation Front, the Khambuwan National Liberation Front, the Magarat
Liberation Front, the Tharuwan National Liberation Front, the Tarai
Liberation Front, and the Newa Khala. Analysing the relationship between
the Magar ethnic revival and the Maoist war, Marie Lecomte Tilouine
(forthcoming) finds a strong convergence between the growth of the
Maoist movement and ethnic assertiveness among various groups during the
past decade. Even though the Maoist leadership is predominantly Bahun,
Chetri and Newar, the rank and file, and especially the fighting units,
are reported to contain a higher concentration of ethnic groups (Onesto
1999: 3). The selection of Rapti as the Maoist core zone is no
coincidence: Magars are the largest ethnic group in the area and have
contributed significantly to the Maoist guerrilla units. In an
interview, Prachanda is quoting as saying. ‘...these nationalities are
so sincere and such brave fighters — historically they have had this
kind of culture’ (Onesto 2000: 6). The paternalistic homology thus
established by the Maoist leader between race, culture, honesty and
bravery is reminiscent of the colonial discourse on martial races.
The Maoist declaration of the ‘right to self-determination’ for ethnic
groups no doubt follows the precedent set by Mao in China and Lenin in
the former USSR. Following Sun Yat Sen, Mao proclaimed the right to
‘self-determination’ for minorities and the need to protect their
‘spoken and written languages, their manners and customs and their
religious beliefs’ (Mao Zedong 1965: 306). Once the communists had taken
over China, however, the promise of self-determination amounted to
little more than costumed affairs at state pageantries, while in the
former USSR forced relocations and assimilations were the order of the
day during most of the Soviet Raj.
There is a certain sophistry involved in establishing equivalence
between the Chinese and Soviet notion of a ‘minority’ and Nepal’s
closely interspersed and interlocking fields of castes and ethnicities.
Unlike the former USSR and China, Nepal has no clear majorities or
minorities, nor are there clearly delineated ethnic territories. It was
basically due to this absolute power differential between the majority
and the minorities that the Soviet and Chinese communists could promise
the right to secession and later deny it, with few repercussions.
If the Nepali Maoists are earnestly committed to the project of creating
multiple ethnically homogeneous states out of present-day Nepal, they
will clearly be deviating from the precedent set by Mao, who made an
expedient use of the minority constituency during the revolutionary war.
But if instead the CPN (Maoist) is seeking to fully emulate Mao by
taking the ethnic fronts for a power ride, the experiment could be
entirely different in Nepal. After the Maoists attain their political
goals and seek to demobilise, the ethnic genie, raised on ambitions of
secession and separate statehood, may not wish to go back into the
bottle so quietly: ethnic chauvinism has a tendency to take on a life of
its own. Unlike Mao and Stalin, the Nepali Maoists would not have the
wherewithal to contain the ethnic firestorm they had ignited.
Even as the CPN (Maoist) continues to promise the ethnic fronts a
self-determination that would, in theory, re-establish the
pre-unification baise and chaubise principalities, in the same breath
they also speak of being the true guardians of unified Nepali
nationalism as founded and expounded by the House of Gorkha (Bhattarai
2001b). The Maoists have been very critical of all other political
forces for their alleged anti-national credentials, and they have
asserted with puritanical zeal that they alone stand for the territorial
integrity of a single country.
As if its diametrically opposed positions on the nation and multiple
‘nationalities’ were not confusing enough, the CPN (Maoist) passed an
even more intriguing resolution at its second national convention in
early 2001, calling for Nepal to enter a soviet-style federation of
South Asian republics (Waglc 2001, also see Sharma in this volume).
Short of a military conquest, the prospect of such a regional union
emerging in South Asia through mutual consensus is highly unlikely.
Despite the serious political and historical obstacles which stand in
its way, it is interesting that the leaders of the ruling Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) in India have also aired their hopes for the
realisation of a subcontinent-wide ‘Akhand Bharat’ nation, basing these
hopes on brahmanic assumptions about the religious and cultural unity of
South Asia.[70] The apparent convergence in the world view (or regional
view, to be more precise) of India’s far right and the Nepali far left
is quite interesting.[71] All three of the Maoist propositions
reviewed here — the promise of self-determination which, when taken to
its logical conclusion, would entail dividing present-day Nepal into
multiple ethno-states, the nationalistic pledge to consolidate the
existing nation-state; and immersion into a sub-continental federation —
cannot be true at the same time. In fact they stand as mutually
exclusive. Despite being often accused of dogmatism by their detractors,
the Nepali Maoists display a remarkable degree of ideological mobility
and deliberate ambiguity, and have proved to be particularly dexterous
in maintaining contradictory positions. The drift from both Maoist and
Marxian doctrine was officially institutionalised in early 2001, when
the party’s second national conference declared its governing ideology
to be ‘Prachanda Path’, appropriately conveying the double meaning of
‘extreme path’ and ‘path of Prachanda’, after their party’s powerful
chairman.
While the Maoists are shifting internally from the rhetoric of class
conflict to that of ethnic polarisation, externally, their rhetoric on
imperialism and hegemony notwithstanding, they have so far exhibited
little interest in undoing Nepal’s subordination in the regional or
global matrix. On the contrary, the rebels have adopted a Machiavellian
pragmatic to turn the Nepali state’s historic external limitations into
potent assets. These strategies, while conveying the appearance of novel
breaks with the past, invoke historical precedents at several levels.
Karl Marx’s sense of dejà vu is particularly illuminating here:
...just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things,
in creating something entirely new, precisely in such epochs of
revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past
to their service and borrow from them names, battle slogans and costumes
in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honored
disguise and this borrowed language (Marx 1978: 595 [[i]The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
]).
The familiar historical terrain the Maoists have traversed over the past
seven years en route to their final rendezvous with the Legacy Raj
provides a basis for identifying the Maoist war as a replication of the
conventional form of oppositional politics, rather than a revolutionary
break from it. All successful oppositional engagements have so far
entailed a coupling with Indian interests in order to encircle, coerce
and compromise the Nepali state, and it appears that the Maoists have
also opted for this proven strategy, albeit in a different guise.
A cursory survey of the fate of recent communist insurgencies in the
Third World provides us with some possible scenarios for Nepal. Under
favourable external circumstances, it is conceivable that the state will
defeat the Maoists, as was the case in Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.
Alternatively, if the regional milieu continues to favour the Maoists,
the present strife could degenerate into a long war of attrition as in
Colombia at present, and Guatemala and El Salvador in the past, before
the rebels finally made peace with the state. Although the CPN (Maoist)
models itself on the Shining Path movement and takes much inspiration
from its Andean comrades, the Peruvian State under President Fujimori
largely destroyed the Peruvian Maoists. Unless the prevailing
international context alters radically, the Maoists are unlikely to
replicate the classic communist victories once seen in Vietnam,
Cambodia, Cuba, Korea and China.[72]
Although it is a relatively weak state, Nepal has in tile past displayed
a remarkable ability to defuse, co-opt or neutralise armed rebellions
when the rebels have lacked sustained foreign backing. If the Maoists
are denied Indian support and Western governments continue to back the
Nepal government in the present conflict, the Maoists will find it hard
to repeat their spectacular successes. On the other hand, whenever there
has been adequate extra-territorial support for Nepali oppositional
forces, the Nepali state has had to concede not only to them but also to
their foreign patrons. Sensing the lack of enthusiasm for orthodox
communist doctrine among important constituencies both within and
outside the country, the CPN (Maoist) leadership in 2002 began to
quietly back-pedal on its revolutionary goal of a Maoist one-party state
and a communist economy.
The only revolutionary objective now retained is the destruction of the
‘feudal’ monarchy (RW 2002, MIM 2002).[73] The latest ideological
repositioning is seen as a tactical manoeuvre to check the growing
isolation from the middle classes and to make the insurgency more
acceptable to a Western audience which might be opposed to communism but
sympathetic to a republican cause arrayed against a ‘feudal monarchy’.
The ideological dissimulation from the dictatorship of the proletariat
to what Maoist leader Bahuram Bhattarai describes as a ‘bourgeois
democratic republic’ has already contributed to a vertical split within
the Nepali Congress in 2002. If the ruling party fissure becomes a
catalyst for a wider realignment in the underlying bipolarity of Nepali
politics, the process will produce strategic military and political
options and assets for the CPN (Maoist).
It is interesting that even as the Indian government stepped forward to
condemn the Maoists and offer the Nepali army some military
hardware,[74] newspaper reports suggested that the Maoists continued to
receive supplies and shelter in India.[75] By supporting and supplying
both sides of the civil war in Nepal, New Delhi has perfected the
imperial art of divide and rule. This is not the first time it has done
so. Before Mohan Shamsher signed the controversial treaty with India in
1950, Nehru went on assuring the Nepali prime minister that India would
come to his aid even as New Delhi was readying the Nepali Congress for
the eventual assault against the Ranas (K. C. 1976: 12). As B. P.
Koirala put it, ‘It seems that India always had two opposing jaws; one
would direct [us] to stay with tile king while the other would encourage
[us] not to he afraid of going against the king’ (Koirala 1998:
305).[76] The clashing of jaws is a powerful metaphor for the
internecine conflict that is violently churning up the entrails of the
divided Nepali polity today.
The editorial in the Times of India which sought to chastise US
secretary of state Cohn Powell for offering the Nepal government some
support against the Maoists also gave an indication of India’s
relationship with the Nepali rebels by contrasting them favourably with
Osama bin Laden. ‘Unlike the Taliban and many outfits inspired by Osama
bin Laden, the Maoists of Nepal, for all their violence, represent a
progressive protest movement which is neither anti-modern nor
exclusivist in ethnic and religious terms,’ the paper argued.[77] In a
cogent critique of the various hegemonic discourses of civilisation,
enlightenment and order the British employed to,justify their domination
over the Indians, Jawaharlal Nehru noted: ‘Thus hypocrisy pays its
tribute to virtue and a false and sickening piety allies itself to evil
deeds’ (Nehru 1966: 63). While it might be too early to judge whether
this advocacy of the ‘progressive, modern and inclusive’ Maoists is
inspired by Nehru’s ‘sickening piety’ or by something noble, the message
from India’s fourth estate was quite clear: one country’s terrorists are
another’s progressive agents. Given the disposition of the Legacy Raj
and the oppositional imperative in Nepali politics outlined in this
chapter, the contours as well as the final outcome of the present war
will depend largely on the manner in which the opaque relationship
between the Delhi Durbar and the Nepali Maoists matures in the months
ahead.
Source; A Himalyan Red Herring? — Saubhagya Shah; Himalayan ‘People’s
War’, Ed. Michael Hutt, Hurst & Co., London 2004.
strategy in Nepal
Stephen Lawrence Mikesell argues that the common leftist definition of
Nepal as wholly or partially “feudal” is wrong and historically
inappropriate and that those ‘Marxists’ claiming it are in contradiction
with Marx’s own expressed views.
THE NEPALESE Left starts with the premise that the countryside of Nepal,
if not the state, is feudal. Although this is a more critical stance
than many works which describe the country in terms of being timeless
and ‘traditional’, it is theoretically, historically and comparatively
incorrect. Moreover, it seems strategically unwise. Although this
interpretation is based on materialist theory, it misreads Marx’s
analysis of feudalism [e.g. in Marx and Engels’ Introduction to The
German Ideology (1983) and ‘Forms which Precede Capitalist Production’
(1973a)]. Moreover, in the last years of his life, Marx (1972) strongly
opposes it.
In the first place, that relations take feudal forms does not
necessarily mean that they are feudal in content or that the state is
feudal. A study of feudalism in Europe shows that it arose from the
disintegration of the Roman Empire, a highly centralized state
controlling the entire Mediterranean, Western Europe, and a large part
of Asia. This is not at all the experience in Nepal.
Over the course of five centuries that the Roman Empire developed in
Western Europe (from the first quarter of the first century BC to the
last quarter of the fifth century AD), not only did Roman society
drastically change, but the relations in the countryside under the Roman
rule among the tribes which eventually overthrew it also transformed.
Consequently, it is important not to too quickly attribute feudalism to
other areas of the world without accounting for and comparing conditions
that presupposed its development in Europe.
As one of the driving forces of the expansion of the Roman empire, its
citizens set themselves up on landed estates in conquered provinces
worked by enslaved captives. Simultaneously, the Romans established
cities across Europe as seats of administration and trade. The rule of
these cities over the countryside was essentially political, meaning
that production itself did not in substance change. On the fringes of
the empire, the various German tribes were forced to organize for war
against the Roman expansion. In the later centuries, this took an
increasingly aggressive form. Since the development of the Ancient city
was characterized by territorial expansion with its citizens becoming a
landed class, Marx spoke of this expansion of the Ancient European city
as ‘ruralization of the city’.
In the late empire of the fourth and fifth centuries AD, developments
led to the appearance of a number of conflicting interests which
increasingly weakened the empire from within while the threat from
without grew ever stronger. The long years of war against increasingly
powerful German tribes placed a heavier and heavier tax burden on the
countryside, causing an ever larger split between the strong landholding
class and the city. These developments were compounded by a growing
class of restless landless citizens and freed slaves within the cities,
and growing restlessness among slaves working in the countryside, with
their sympathies for the Germans. The landless proletariat remained an
unorganized rabble, threatening the rulers (inducing subsequent rulers
to promise greater amounts of ‘bread and circuses’ to sedate the masses)
but never posing a threat to take over state power.
Due to the long history of expansion and centralization, when the
Western Empire eventually fell at the end of the fifth century the
collapse of the state machinery was so complete and widespread that it
reduced political power into many small estates and individual landlords
organized according to the militarized order of the invading tribes.
Although much weakened and depopulated, the cities stood in opposition
to the countryside. Throughout the immense area of what was once the
Western Empire, cities for the first time had become relatively
independent of the control of landed property interests over the state.
Feudalism was then characterized by a gradual process of exertion of the
independence and extension of control of cities over the countryside and
eventually the state. Thus, unlike before, the expansion of the feudal
cities took the form of ‘urbanization of the countryside’.
At no time in its history has Nepal, however, been characterized by
either the great centralization that provided the historical basis
preceding the rise of feudalism or the complete collapse of the state
that defined it. In the West, at least, where Rajputs had been
establishing themselves from the beginning of the millennium, the state
in Nepal was always characterized by increasing centralization, and at
no time has control of the landed classes over it been relinquished.
Unlike in feudal Europe, towns and cities never emerged in opposition to
the landed property classes and the countryside. Rather, they developed
as seats of control of these landed property classes. Consequently,
instead of exerting their independence, the urban industrial and
mercantile classes remained subordinated to the landed classes, taking
their hegemonic form, caste.
The centuries from the time of King Prithivi Narayan Shah, the first
king of modern Nepal (d. 1775), have been characterized by unprecedented
centralization and realignment of production and development of social
interests, in Nepal, India and globally. Prithivi Narayan’s
‘unification’ of Nepal assumed already great inequality in the
countryside which caused hill peasants to rally around him and his
promise of agricultural land to his followers.[78] The contingency of
the plots on ruling interests of the state, and the subsequent
centralization, both of control by landed property within the country
and the growing strength of industrial capitalism without, neither
alleviated conditions in the countryside nor helped establish industry
as an independent force. And while bazaar merchants became a strong
force within Nepal, this has been primarily due to their role in the
circulation of industrial commodities from without. The conditions of
feudalism as a form of state or in the content of the general relations
of the people simply never existed in Nepal.
We know quite well Marx’s understanding of the global process from his
earlier works, especially Capital. But there seems to be a continuing
debate about how he interpreted developments in the Indian subcontinent.
Best known are his writings in the New York Daily Tribune on India
during the Great Revolt of the 1850s, when Marx first began to
familiarize himself with India and characterized British rule as far
more despotic and destructive than was ever previously experienced in
India. However, he also saw this rule as representing a revolutionary
force that would introduce contradictions to bring the subcontinent out
of its assumed stagnation. He developed this understanding in the
Grundrisse (Marx 1973a) with the addition of an ‘Asiatic form’ to his
Hegelian schema of property and modes of production in the history of
the world that he had previously developed in his introduction to The
German Ideology.
Some scholars particularly reacted to this understanding of Marx,
especially in its subsequent unilinear interpretations and formulations
unintended by Marx. Aware that characterizations of Asia as stagnant
have been an aspect of expansionist western colonial and imperial
ideology, these scholars try to show how Indian and other Asian Empires
were indeed feudal and thus contained dynamic contradictions in the
sense of feudalism in Western Europe (Berktay 1987; Alavi 1980).
While agreeing with the critique of Western European Orientalist theory,
I have been unsatisfied with these authors’ attempts to use particular
feudalistic characteristics in order to characterize entire regions or
eras as feudal. For Marx and Engels (1983), the general character of a
society or stage of social development is defined foremost by the
general underlying relation of city and countryside at the basis of the
division of labour characterizing the society. Selective focus on the
appearance or lack of specific features can cause this essential
relationship to be overlooked. Such a focus on the presence or lack of
particular characteristics, such as of guilds in India (Alavi 1980) or
large estates in Nepal,[79] cannot in itself define a modal difference.
Marx seems to have been reassessing his ideas on the subject when he
turned to the newly emerging ethnological literature in the last years
of his life.[80] First, in applying his knowledge of ancient and feudal
Europe in his reading of Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society,[81] Marx
shifted his focus from an abstract hypothetical typology of the forms of
property to a historical and comparative study of the development and
transformation of clan-based states into states representing private
property (with the subsequent subordination of the clan to the
patriarchal family).
While previously Marx had developed a theory of the rise of the city in
terms of a typology of production relations based especially on his
knowledge of Europe, in the Morgan notebooks he shifted his focus to the
particular histories of this transformation as it occurred variously
throughout the world. His focus was less on essential, ideal Hegelian
framed differences, as previously, than on how the same processes took
different forms and represented various interests in different places
and periods throughout the world.
In particular, Marx’s notebooks on Edward Phear’s The Aryan Village
focus on the substance of British colonialism in rural India. Here we
see that Marx does not attribute the conditions of rural India to
feudalism. To the contrary, he castigates Phear for making just this
interpretation.
So small the accumulated capital of the villagers and this itself is
often due to the mahajan = merchant, money dealer—one who makes it his
business in the villages to advance money and grain to the Ryot on the
pledge of crop. Extreme poverty of by far the largest portion, i.e., the
bulk of the population in Bengal (the richest part of India!) seldom
rightly apprehended by the English people. (Marx 1972:249)
(This ass Phear calls the Constitution of the village feudal). Outside
of this Village Constitution the Mahajan, the village capitalist. The
village ryot has to periodically pay money; e.g., to build new or repair
hut of the homestead, to make a plow or another instrument, to purchase
a pair of bullocks, the seed required for planting, finally, travel for
himself and his family, several kists of rent to be paid before all his
crops can be secured and realized. In the western part of the Delta, his
savings seldom suffice to tide him over; the period which elapses before
his yearly production realizes payment. Thus he must go to the Mahajan
for money and for paddy as he wants them. Customarily it takes the form
of a transaction between both sides: the paddy for sowing and for food
and also other goods, become supplied under the condition that he return
an additional 50% in quantity at the harvest time; money is to be repaid
at another time, also at harvest time, with 2% per month interest either
in the form of an equivalent of paddy, reckoned at bazaar prices, or in
cash at the option of the lender. As security for execution of this
agreement the Mahajan frequently takes mortgage of the ryot’s future
crop, and he helps himself to the stipulated amount on the very
threshing floor, in the open field. (63, 64)
The Zemindar—this false English landlord—merely a rent-charger; the ryot
a field-labourer, living from hand to mouth; the mahajan, who furnishes
the farming capital, who calculates the labor and pockets all the
profits, is a stranger, having no proprietary interest in the land; a
creditor only, whose sole object is to realise his money advantageously
as possible. After setting aside his golas (hut in which grain is
stored) as much of the production come to his hands, as he is likely to
need for his next year’s business, he deals with the rest simply as
cornfactor, sending it to the most remunerative market—and yet he has
not legitimate proprietary status in the community, while those who
have—the ryot and the zemindar for different reasons are apparently
powerless. Hence, the unprogressive character of an agricultural
village, as described by a young zemindar. (Marx 1972:256–7)[82]
Here it is evident that at that time in Bengal, Marx sees that the
substance of relations of the landed property classes was not feudal. He
saw instead that the merchants dominated the countryside and castigated
Phear for interpreting the relations of the country as feudal. Under
feudalism rent takes the form of the entire surplus, under capitalism
the rent portion taken by the landlord represents only one part of the
surplus. The rest enters into circulation as interest and profit of
merchants. Even when the landlords physically collect the entire surplus
in the form of rent, if conditions force them to enter it into
circulation controlled by merchants (or transnational corporations),
then in effect the merchants deduct the profit portion and reduce the
landlords’ share into the rent one.
Marx’s previous typology that presented India as ‘stagnant’ no longer
seemed relevant in his Ethnological Manuscripts. Indeed, he recognized
later in the text that significant changes in landownership, including
subinfeudation, had been going on prior to the entry of the British into
India (Marx 1972:262). The British totally transformed the system by
converting land into private property, in effect favouring the
development of merchant class interests over and against those of other
classes (to say nothing of the labourers).
The conversion—by the English rogues and asses of the Zemindaris into
private proprietors made by itself (if also not in the idea of the
former asses) all intermediate interests into rights in land, and the
owner of such interest could encumber the land or alienate it within the
limit of the right; he could receive his ownership itself against the
complex Hindu joint-parcenary form. (147, 148) (Marx 1972:263)[83]
The implication is that by making property alienable, the British laid
the ground for the full alienation of the land by one of the dominant
classes in the countryside, the merchants, allowing it to become the
primary dominant class under the British. This obviously served the
purposes of the English, because it meant that land and labour could be
concentrated under capital and the surpluses easily alienable to enter
into the circulation of industrial commodities. These processes were
also taking place within Nepal from at least the time of the Ranas, and
they were greatly accelerated from the beginning of the twentieth
century.
The full history of this mercantile class was described by Ray (1988) as
originating in the handling of the credit operations of the Mughal
armies. The merchants’ domain of operation was the bazaar. With the
entry of the British into the subcontinent, the merchants served to link
between the European dominated organized business and industry on the
one hand, and the artisan and peasant economy on the other. The members
of the Indian capitalist class acted as servants of the colonial economy
(thus coming under the term of comprador capitalists),[84] allowing them
to displace the control of landed property over the countryside and
extend their strength through control of up-country markets. The string
of crises of the first half of the twentieth century (the world wars and
Great Depression), allowed the bazaar merchants, with their much smaller
and more flexible operating margins, to push the European interests out
of the organized economy and establish their own control over the state
in alliance with the transnational interests.[85]
In the Himalayas, the conquest by Gorkha of the various hill states in
the last part of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries allowed a
nearly simultaneous expansion of merchants from the conquered cities of
Bhatgaun and Lalitpur into the hills west and east of the Kathmandu
valley, respectively. They built bazaars throughout the middle hills,
first on the basis of trade in indigenous products such as homespun
fabrics and other goods, but increasingly of fabrics, salt, cigarettes,
thread, kerosene, and other goods imported from British India and other
foreign countries. This, combined with usury, allowed them to exert
increasing control over the land. They entered the surpluses extracted
through whatever means in Nepal back into circulation, now global in
extent, contributing to the realization of values, employment of labour,
investment in new means of production, and the accumulation of
industrial surplus in Europe, the United States and Japan.
Thus the production and reproduction and the activity of the ruling
classes within Nepal became increasingly committed to the expansion of
industrial capitalism without the country even prior to the date usually
set as the watermark of foreign influence, the (misnomered) ‘Democracy
Revolution’ of 1950–1. Despite the continued existence of landlordism
and patronage, key elements of the dominance of landed property were
eclipsed. The combination of agriculture and industry was broken as
factory-produced cloths, shoes, cigarettes, etc., displaced
village-produced ones. Consumption and production in the village became
another step in the circulation of industrial commodities. A large
portion of the social product was put to reproducing mercenary soldiers
whose purpose was (and is) to police the new global rule being
established by capitalist interests. Increasing amounts of labour are
being recruited into India and elsewhere. And finally, the landlords
themselves enter surpluses, collected in the form of rents, into the
market.
Even previously, surpluses were not entered into an estate economy
characteristic of classical feudalism. Rather, they were controlled, if
not directly, by a centralized state in the service of landed property
distributed in the form of prebendal estates. Subsequent changes in
distribution of surplus have depended upon the ability of various
classes to assert their control over the state. This has in part taken
the form of assertion of monopoly control by ruling families in alliance
with transnational interests—a position analogous to that of the Birlas,
Tatas, arid other large houses of post-independence India. In opposition
to them, in addition to the bazaar-based merchant and contractor
interests, is a growing bureaucratic and intelligentsia interest.
Although the ruling families were trying to consolidate their hold over
the countryside with unprecedented expansion of state mechanisms into
the villages, they instead succeeded in creating yet another class
interposing its interests over the direct producers. Up to now, the
radical opposition forces have failed to capitalize on this failure of
the government; and they now necessarily await for a spontaneous
uprising to deliver the state into their hands.
Unlike the pattern under feudalism, the expansion of the indigenous
capitalist class was facilitated by increasing centralization, not
breakdown of the state. Whereas in feudalism the functions of government
devolved to estates and other local polities; in the Nepal state,
offices and a growing bureaucracy have increasingly absorbed not only
the estate functions but social ones of all kinds in the name of
rationalization. Growth of industrial production and monopoly centred in
other countries provided the force behind the expansion of the
merchants. Presently, so-called ‘development’ means the increasing
assertion of transnational corporate control over society and state. The
form that this process takes is less consequential to the transnational
corporations than the end result—who controls use of the natural
environment, markets and surplus labour.
Certain strategic implications follow from this reinterpretation of
feudalism in Nepal. If the present problems of Nepal are interpreted in
terms of a persistence of feudalism, the problem of change is merely one
of disposal of the feudal classes and the capture of state power by a
more progressive emerging national bourgeoisie. But when the problem
becomes understood in terms of the transnational class relations which
have subordinated Nepalese society and interests to their own, then the
solution becomes of another order entirely.
Transnational capital is extremely well organized. For example, it
brings sugar estates in Honduras and cocoa estates in Peru, oil in the
Middle East, shipping transport from Korea, computers from Japan, and
media in Manhattan together to produce and distribute cola beverages in
Kathmandu. Compared with the means available to the people of Nepal, its
resources are bottomless, its presence ubiquitous, its class character
complex, and its ideology as many-faced as all the Hindu gods and
goddesses (and incorporates them into its pantheon, needless to say).
Second, even within Nepal it works through a myriad of occupations and
statuses—including bureaucrats, consultants, contractors, merchants,
industrialists, educators, doctors, movie producers and movie hall
owners, Brahmans, and even Communists; its influence and the people who
see their interests and aspirations aligned to it are everywhere. In
order to capture state power, where does one start? And what does it
mean to capture state power? Even the leadership of the political
parties is easily purchased and co-opted.
While agitation at the level of the nation state is important, an
increasingly important strategy would be to educate and organize people
to recognize and confront capital in its various and changing forms and
strategies. The problem is not so much one of leading a universal class,
as it has often been framed in the past (usually with the aim of using
this class for particular purposes), as obtaining universal engagement
by that class in struggle. Even if the leadership is decapitated or
sells out, as happens again and again, resistance can then continue.
Mere capture of a particular nation state cannot change the present
alignment of forces in the world and the general hegemony of capital. In
a world where the nation state has been subordinated to a truly global
form of state, where presidents and kings are merely beribboned,
bemedalled and bespectacled executives of its interests,[86] where
production is shifted to wherever labour and bureaucrats are most
pliant; popular change (especially a revolutionary one) necessitates the
development of a broad-based local, to say nothing of international,
consciousness and organization reaching to the lowest levels. Otherwise,
the hoped for spontaneous uprising, if it comes, may be co-opted by one
or more of class interests in league with transnational capital.
Struggle must be a continuing one, dependent on people more than
leaders, met in ways that are even more imaginative and diverse than the
many guises of transnational capitalism.
This chapter was originally published by the Jhilko Pariwar in Jhilko,
Vol. 10, No. 3, 1990, pp. 3–13. It is republished here with the generous
permission of Hisila Yami.
Source; Chapter 11 of Class, State, and Struggle in Nepal – Writings
1989–1995 – by Stephen Lawrence Mikesell – Manohar Publishers, New
Delhi, 1999.
[1] A thorough collection of statistics on Nepal (and other countries)
can be found at the United Nations Population Fund site;
[2] The 7-party bourgeois alliance also includes the three national
trade union confederations, the National Trade Union Congress (NTUC)
claiming membership of 200,000, the General Federation of Trade Unions
(GEFONT) 364,000, and the Democratic Confederation of Nepalese Trade
Unions (DECONT) around 6000 (though these are all thought to be quite
exaggerated or heavily fluctuating figures).The most leftist of these
and closest to the parliamentary ‘Communist’ Party, GEFONT, supports the
SPA bourgeois alliance and its democratic goals, and has,
unsurprisingly, not even expressed a pretence at any broader
revolutionary class agenda. There are also many more non-affiliated
workers in the country. GEFONT seem to be organised in a typically
bureaucratic and hierarchical structure, judging by their own
descriptions. But it’s unlikely that they could always be so centralised
locally in practice. Given the nature of the terrain, and lack of access
to phone lines in many rural areas, local branches are likely to be
fairly autonomous outside of the towns. For example, they have a
‘trekkers & rafters’ branch; these are the guys who carry goods, often
enormous loads on their backs and/or mule trains and river rafts, up and
down the otherwise inaccessible mountain tracks and waterways. We would
assume they would necessarily have to be organised quite autonomously in
their day to day functions.
[3] The Maoist party is called the ‘Nepalese Communist Party (Maoist)’
to distinguish itself from the parliamentary CP which is
(Marxist-Leninist).
[4] It’s interesting to note that seemingly every major peasant
insurgency, from authoritarian Maoism thru the Zapatistas (old and new
versions) to the libertarian communism of the Makhnovists, has had a
unifying charasmatic figurehead. The figureheads came to their positions
largely in recognition of their skills in military strategy; but one can
speculate if this is a diverting/recycling of the traditional role of
peasant religious icons/mythical warriors for political goals? Prachanda
is the Nepal Maoists’ leader and his bog-standard Maoist ideology is
known as ‘Prachanda Path’.
[5] See, for example, reports at the Human Rights News site; hrw.org —
civilians are targeted from all sides in this war. The RNA mortar bombs
rebel areas indiscriminately from heliocopters; due to their difficulty
in maintaining a presence in these areas they have trained and armed
vigilante groups. These vigilantes often become a brutal law unto
themselves in the villages. “The Maoists shot at my house two nights
ago. My family and I ran away into the fields, and we now spend the
nights there. It was because I am a member of the vigilante group. There
are forty to fifty vigilantes in this village. But we have to be part of
the group. If we didn’t join, we’d be in trouble with [the leader of the
local vigilante group]. If we do join, we face trouble from the Maoists.
We are caught in the middle.”
—Vigilante group member in Nawalparaisi district. 10 years of civil war
has claimed 13,000 lives.
All sides, the Maoists as much as any, have been reported to use
abductions, extortion, torture, murder etc of civilians in this war. The
Maoists forcibly ‘recruit’ schoolchildren to their army.
“I was fourteen. The Maoists came to my village saying one person from
each family must join them. I don’t have any brothers, and my sister is
just nine years old—it was either me or my mother.… When the two-month
program was over, I wanted to leave, but they said they would shoot me
if I tried. I was carrying bags and was given a grenade—the Maoists
taught me how to use it and how to throw stones.” —fifteen-year old
“Parvati P.” ... “the Asian Human Rights Commission (in its 2003 report
“Children and the People’s War in Nepal”) estimated that children may
comprise up to 30 percent of Maoist forces.” “Data collected by Nepali
human rights organizations INSEC and Advocacy Forum shows that during
the ceasefire the Maoists abducted thousands of children. In its
December 2005 report “Three Months of Ceasefire” INSEC suggested that
from September to December 2005 the Maoists abducted 8777 persons, most
of them students and teachers. Although most of the children were
released after participating in political indoctrination programs, it is
clear that a significant number joined the Maoist forces.” (All quotes
from hrw.org)
All independent political activity is obviously dangerous and banned in
rebel-held areas.
[6] This is despite the fact that Indian officers train the Nepalese
Army. There is an uneasy feeling amongst many Nepalis that India sees
Nepal as historically belonging proper to a greater India, and would
ideally like to annex it. But this option seems very unlikely,
considering that the Chinese would probably interpret such a move as
more or less a declaration of war.
[7] There is also a Maoist ‘International’; the Revolutionary
Internationalist Movement(RIM). The US Maoist Revolutionary ‘Communist’
Party — headed by the slavishly idolised Chairman Bob Avakian, and for a
long time America’s largest leftist group and guerrilla Maoism’s biggest
western cheerleaders — has a strong influence in RIM. But their website
seems strangely muted about recent events; they say little except to
complain that the US Ambassador is calling the Nepal Maoists “an
illegitimate political force”; they don’t comment on coming political
choices. Presumably hedging their bets to see which way events unfold,
and readying themselves to negoiate a sudden total change of the
infallible political line if necessary, to justify Maoism’s brightest
light in the world entering parliament with their fellow bourgeois
politicians. Alternatively, groupies that they are, the RCP may simply
switch allegiance to some other ‘hot’ insurgency.
[8] KATHMANDU, April 26 (2006) — Chief of the Army Staff (CoAS) Pyar
Jung Thapa has said the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) is positive about the
merging of Maoist troops with the national army. Speaking to CNN
following the Royal Proclamation, Thapa expressed optimism that dialogue
with the outlawed rebels would usher peace in the country. In his
seven-minute interview, Thapa also stated that the RNA was willing to
work with any government and that it would continue to be answerable to
the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister of the country. During his
interview, he said the Maoists could be incorporated into the national
army on the basis of their capability and qualification.
This is a curious public statement, coming immediately after the King’s
capitulation to the pro-democracy movement. There is more than one
possible interpretation; that it is either a statement that the
historically absolute loyalties of the RNA top brass are shifting away
from the King to the democracy movement and its long term goals, or it
is a double bluff to put the Maoists off their guard. Or both...?
[9] Military aid from the US stands at $20m since 2002, and more is in
the pipeline for 2006.
[10] In a country like Nepal there is a much larger social and class
division between white collar workers and blue collar manual workers,
which corresponds to a much earlier period of class relationships in
more ‘advanced’ capitalist countries. Literacy, caste and extended
family business connections all have a strong influence on employment
opportunities.
[11] See ‘Red Guard — from schoolboy to “Little General” in Mao’s China’
by Ken Ling; Macdonald, London, 1972 and ‘Red Guard — the political
biography of Dai Hsiao-Ai’ by GA Bennett & RN Montaperto; George Allen &
Unwin, London, 1971.
[12] And all this is acceptable to win support even from some
‘anarchists’, sometimes justified because there aren’t any more formal
radical forces in Nepal — ignoring the fact that any more radical
elements would quickly face repression from maoist guerillas. Even
independent trade unionists have been killed or driven out of
maoist-controlled areas. Supporting some of the more liberal NGO’s would
be more ‘radical’ than siding with the sexual feudalism of the maobadi.
This 3^(rd) worldism is just dumb opportunist and/or naive leftism pure
and simple.
[13] “Ante Ciliga described what he called the state capitalists’
‘morals on the morrow of the October revolution’ as follows:
From the first days of the October revolution, the Communist [sic]
leaders had shown a great lack of shame in these matters. Having
occupied the building, they furnished it with the best furniture from
shops that had been nationalized. From the same source their wives had
procured themselves fur coats, each taking two or three at a time. All
the rest was in keeping. (Ciliga, 1979, p. 121)
Far from the emergence of the privileged consumption enjoyed by the
state capitalist class coinciding with Stalin’s rise to power, some of
the state capitalists of Stalin’s day looked back with nostalgia to the
comfortable life they had experienced during the early years of
Bolshevik rule:
During the winter of 1930 fuel ran short and we had to do without hot
water for a few days. The wife of a high official who lived at the Party
House was full of indignation. ‘What a disaster to have this man Kirov!
True, Zinoviev is guilty ‘fractionism’ but in his day central heating
always functioned properly and we were never short of hot water. Even in
1920, when they had to stop the factories in Leningrad for lack of coal,
we could always have our hot baths with the greatest comfort.’ (Ibid.,
pp. 121–2)
Another illustration that Stalin was not personally responsible for
establishing state capitalist privilege in Russia is that during the
period 1923–5, when Stalin had only an old car at his disposal ‘Kamenev
had already appropriated a magnificent Rolls’ (Medvedev — 1979, p. 33).”
(State Capitalism — the wages system under new management, Buick &
Crump.)
[14] On Zhelezniakov, see;
[15] The Ukrainian anarchist “Makhno defended that action and explained
that Zhelezniakov, a Black Sea sailor and delegate to Kronstadt, had
played one of the most active roles in 1917. Makhno merely expressed
regret that the fiery sailor, who enjoyed great prestige among his
colleagues, had not simultaneously seen fit to dismiss Lenin and his
“Soviet of People’s Commissars” which “would have been historically
vital and would have helped unmask the stranglers of the revolution in
good time.”
[16]
— is a site that lists an updated chronology of ‘bandhs’ ([b-awN-dh]
adj.: Bandh, a Nepali word literally meaning ‘closed’) — i.e. strikes
and public protests in Nepal.
[17] As one blogger in Nepal says; “The Maoists can not just shrug off
from their share of responsibility to their bourgeois counterparts for
accepting past mistakes. While the past Panchayat, Kangressi, & “hijda”
UML governments were certainly corrupt to their bone-marrows, the
Maoists should not forget that they were also running a parallel
government for the past 15 years. During their People’s War, the Maoists
claimed to control all Nepal’s territory except Kathmandu and not only
obstructed new development projects but also destroyed the existing
infrastructures – a revolutionary method of weakening the “feudal
governments” by forcing people into the Dark Ages. The Maoists even used
to warn people not to expect any construction projects, as they were
uprooting the remnants of feudalism.”
[18] See our earlier analysis;
[19] See our earlier comments;
[20] See our earlier comments on the YCL;
[21] Somewhat confusingly, the non-Maoist ‘Communist Party of
Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist’ (UML) is a long-established
parliamentary party, while the Maoist party — until recently the ‘Nepal
Communist Party (Maoist)’ (NCP-M) — has just merged with/absorbed the
smaller CPN-Ekata Kendra Mashal (EKM) and so become the United
CPN-Maoist. Though, as noted in the text above, the ‘Maoist’ may soon be
dropped.
[22] “In 2007, a year after signing the peace agreement and pledging not
to attack the media, Maoists killed journalist Birendra Shah in southern
Nepal. For almost a month, the former guerrillas denied having a hand in
Shah’s disappearance. However, after continuous pressure by Nepal’s
leading media organization, the Federation of Nepalese Journalists, [the
Maoists] accepted responsibility. The main suspects accused of actually
carrying out the attack are still at large.”
[23] Dowry is a financial obligation paid by the bride’s family to the
family of the bridegroom. (Less commonly, in some cultures payment can
be in the opposite direction -referred to as “bride-price”.) On dowry,
see;
and for speculation on the caste basis for dowry and bride-price
traditions;
[24]
[25] Links to video of the speech (with English subtitles);
On fooling UNMIN over troop numbers;
On taking over army;
On using ‘disbursement’/compensation cash to prepare for revolt;
[26]
[27] Perhaps the most ridiculous of all these attempted smears and lies
is the most recent, where we are accused of launching; “what seemed to
have become a clear attack against the UCPN-M by an Anarchist
organization known as Libcom” ... “This of course struck waves of anger
by those on the left, ranging from anarchists & leftist-communists.” ...
“the selected reporting by Libcom was used in nothing more than a
propaganda campaign in order to demonize the Maoist-led government.” The
author appears to compare (or equate?) our criticisms with the
propaganda campaigns of bourgeois states — a typical Stalinist amalgam
technique that tries to discredit all criticism by conflating the
radical with the conservative — a sign of the absence of any more
credible defence;
“The propaganda campaign continues
Through out each separate region, which similar resistance being waged
by Maoist rebels, & similar counter-resistance being waged by the
bourgeois states, a propaganda campaign has been used with no mercy in
order to try & dismantle what oppositional forces stands in the way of
the ruling elite. These campaigns are not coincidental, they are not
unintentional. These are campaigns, in which are merely waged by
capitalist/imperialist forces ...” (The War on Truth Against the Maoist
Rebels; August 16, 2010 by BJ Murphy
)
The rest of the article is a simple repeat of earlier Western pro-maoist
inaccuracies and excuses.
Other examples of pro-maoist responses and distortions;
— followed by some excellent critical comments by ‘kdog’.
— our comments begin at post no. 42.
— comments correcting various slurs and untruths begin in comments
beneath article at post no. 33. The debate here was at least, for the
most part, reasoned and not merely dismissive.
— a longish debate between left-communists and anarchists against
pro-maoists.
— see comments beneath article.
[28] For some curious effects of malnutrition on Bangladeshi workers,
see;
[29]
March 19,2007
[30] The scope of the Act is extremely wide;
2009-Oct-01
The Essential Services Act (ESA), 1957, bans strikes and protests in 16
sensitive service sectors that are essential for the public. They are as
follows:
Banking services, Postal service, Electronic and print media,
Telecommunication service, Transportation service including road, air
and marine transport, Work related to civil aviation and maintenance of
aircraft, Public security, Services on railway station and government
storages, Mint and government print service, Manufacture of defense
goods, Electricity supply, Drinking water supply, Hotel, motel,
restaurant, resort and tourist accommodation and other similar kinds of
service, Import and distribution of petroleum goods, Hospital, health
centres and manufacturing establishment of medicine and distribution,
Garbage collection, transfer and recycling services. (
)
[31] See the nepalbandh site;
[32] For further evidence see;
But guerilla war is not at all a uniquely radical tactic of the Maoists
— all the main Parliamentary bourgeois parties today have had periods of
armed struggle in their history in pursuit of bourgeois democracy. That
the Maoists regularly make various contradictory statements about the
extent of their commitment to parliamentary politics as an end in itself
is partly a reflection of factional differences within the party — and
of the distance between any Maoist-desired one party state-capitalist
regime and what greater global powers (India, China, US, EU) will
tolerate.
[33] A term describing the pre-capitalist social relations emerging in
Europe in the Middle Ages, unsurprisingly, has limited application in
Nepal today. It appears to be more a clumsy application of standard
Leninist phraseology rather than striving for historical and materialist
precision in categorisation. So it is somewhat misleading to talk of the
‘semi-feudal social relations’ of the countryside; land tenure in Nepal
is not a static relic of “feudal” times. There have been modern land
reform policies since the short-lived democratic governments of the
1950s. These were continued by the monarchy. Land is a valuable and
appreciating commodity in Nepal; agricultural fertility, urban
development, proximity to tourist locations and transport networks
determine value and create a lucrative real estate market. One can talk
more accurately of “the persistence of semi-feudal forms of exploitation
in an increasingly monetised rural setting” — and the conditions “of the
poor peasantry, the semi-proletarians and the landless” (P Chandra). But
subsistence farming of peasant smallholdings alongside some larger
estates and tenant farming — rather than vassals and serfdom — are the
characteristic forms of land tenure. There is also a semi-proletarian
character to many of the young villagers; they will often travel to
towns for seasonal waged work during quieter farming periods, while
others travel abroad to work for sometimes lengthy periods before often
returning to farming. The money they return with and send back as
“remittance” is changing the economic relations of the rural areas
through acquisition of land, housebuilding, youth migration creating
farm labour shortages and so higher wages etc. It is these forces — the
relations of a mobile working class to global labour markets — that are
now changing rural social relations rather than the ideological claims
of political parties to be ‘abolishing feudalism’.
“The Maoists continue to analyse and represent the Nepali political
economy largely as a feudal enterprise. For instance, Baburam Bhattarai
recently described Nepal as being within ‘precapitalist socioeconomic
relations’ (Bhattarai 2002a). However, some economists have argued that
‘the Nepali state is no longer ruled by feudals: it has long since
passed, especially since the 1980s, into the hands of the trading class
comprador bourgeoisie’ (Gyawali 2002: 37). The Maoists are, in effect,
‘trying to overthrow feudalism in a country already ruled by merchants’
(ibid.).” (A Himalyan Red Herring? — Saubhagya Shah; Himalayan ‘People’s
War’, Ed. Michael Hutt, Hurst & Co., London 2004.
)
This ‘feudal’ analysis allows the Maoists to present themselves as the
most progressive, visionary historical force and ‘validates’ (or
excuses) their pro-capitalist program.
[34] See;
[35] India’s domination of south Asian geo-politics and its continued
central role in Nepal cannot be underestimated. Shah’s article
illustrates well the divide and rule policies of Indian regional
diplomacy, their hegemonic grip and the Nepali Maoists’ accomodation to
it. Despite Prachanda periodically playing the anti-India nationalist
card against overbearing Indian political interference, communication
lines are kept open at diplomatic levels. This ‘defending the nation’
pose was during the civil war presented to the Nepali public even as
Prachanda and co. were secretly comfortable guests of the imperial big
brother India and operating out of Indian bases. The predominantly
well-educated and high-caste Maoist leaders might pose in combat
fatigues on occasion; but while rank’n’file Maoist combatants were dying
for the ‘revolutionary cause’, some Maoist leaders were for several
years given supplies and shelter in India as part of the negotiations
and manipulations of the Indian intelligence services — even as India
supplied the Nepal Army with military hardware to combat the Maoist
insurgency and shoot ‘the comrades’ down.
“By supporting and supplying both sides of the civil war in Nepal, new
Delhi has perfected the imperial art of divide and rule.” ... “These
contradictory moves from India, especially after 11 September 2001, can
perhaps be explained by the possibility that the various organs of the
Indian state, viz. the foreign ministry, defence establishment and the
intelligence services, were pursuing different sets of objectives within
the same policy framework towards Nepal, and not necessarily working at
cross-purposes.” ... “A month after the Indian foreign minister had
labelled Nepali Maoists ‘terrorists’ and publicly pledged support to the
Nepali government in the conflict, the senior Maoist leader Krishna
Bahadur Mahara flew in from New Delhi on an Indian Airlines flight to
lead the Maoist delegation in the third round of talks with the
government held in Kathmandu. Subsequently, many of the Maoist leaders
continued to provide regular statements and interviews to various media
from different Indian cities.” (A Himalyan Red Herring? — Saubhagya
Shah; Himalayan ‘People’s War’, Ed. Michael Hutt, Hurst & Co., London
2004.)
This is not to deny that there exists genuine conflicts of interest
between the various competing factions in the Nepali political arena;
but the apparent issue of nationalistic conflicts has at times been used
by both Maoists and the Indian state as a convenient smokescreen for
collaboration and manipulation where their paths intersect in pursuit of
their respective strategic goals.
[36] The Maoists used the same cynical tactics as other parties to
inflate the image of their popular support;
“After demolishing large parts of the city to widen roads, the
municipality and government have trained their sights on Kathmandu’s
squatter settlements like this one on the banks of the fetid Bagmati.
Politicians settled supporters on the floodplains and public land in
Kathmandu over the past 20 years to pad up vote banks, occupy prime real
estate and muster numbers for street demonstrations. Many in the slums
are millionaires with other houses and property in the city, and they
now have so much political clout no politician dare evict them.”
“The settlers below Bagmati Bridge in Thapathali were first brought in
by the Maoists in 2006 for the pro-democracy movement against king
Gyanendra. They have subsequently been used for political rallies like
the six-day total shutdown in 2009.
“It was us who provided the numbers for the Maoist party for its show of
strength in political rallies,” says Dipak Rai, who leads the Struggle
Committee of Squatters, “and now the same party is trying to get rid of
us.
The Maoists, it turns out, were just following in the footsteps of the
UML which perfected vote-bank resettlement in Kathmandu into a fine
art.”
[37] Bussed-in peasants began draining away after a few days of
orchestrated protest in Kathmandu, some complaining of being pressured
to attend by Maoist cadre. For all their claimed rural support base, the
Maoists appear to have badly miscalculated by timing the protests just
as the peasants’ crucial planting season began.
[38] The appeal of 3^(rd) worldist ‘Marxism’ to western leftists is
partly a rejection of revolutionary possibilities for the western
working class. Western Maoism is now largely US-based, where for a long
time Maoist politics dominated leftism. It remains based partly on
romanticising faraway struggles — far enough away to blur all
contradictions and to be uncritically fed dubious flattering propaganda.
‘Anti-imperialism’ is seen as sufficient reason to support and excuse
the most repressive regimes (though Mao’s cosying up to Nixon and Pol
Pot’s 1970s bloodbath were to finally shatter some illusions). In the
1960s many white leftists (oft-times motivated by guilt) saw the white
working class as ‘bought off by imperialism’ — and US blacks as most
oppressed, therefore the US ‘proletarian vanguard’. Many black leftist
groups identified with 3^(rd) world national liberation struggles — and
guilt-ridden white leftism often followed their lead.
[39]
Other examples of pro-maoist responses and distortions;
http://kasamaproject.org/2010/01/05/unraveling-a-lie-no-nepals-maoists-didnt-ban-strikes/
— followed by some excellent critical comments by ‘kdog’.
— our comments begin at post #42.
— comments correcting various slurs and untruths begin in comments
beneath article at post #33. The debate here was at least, for the most
part, reasoned and not merely dismissive.
— a longish debate between left-communists and anarchists against
pro-maoists.
— see comments beneath article.
[40] On SEZs, see;
[41] See this smugglers dispute where rival Party factions grassed each
other up/snitched to the Party and to the cops;
[42] On union rivalry, see;
The Maoist ANTUF union reflected the wider Party divisions when it split
along the lines of the three factions and had to be patched back
together; “What does the dissolution of the three parallel Maoist trade
unions mean? It means that the situation had become untenable in the
eyes of the public, even if the absurdity of three separate unions
belonging to the one mother party was simply a reflection of the
seemingly irreconcilable three-way split in the highest echelons of the
not quite United Communist Party of Nepal, Maoist.”
[43] “The casinos in Kathmandu are another source of income for the
union. Sources say the union raises more than Rs 100,000 from each of
the eight casinos here. “The union gives protection to the casinos and
the casino owners pay handsome amount to the union leaders for that,”
says a junior leader of the union.”
[44]
[45]
[46] The dominant overall mode of production is easily confused by
shallow 3^(rd) Worldist observation;
Question; which ‘3^(rd) World’ country is described thus? “Not until the
1960s did the urban population surpass the rural population.” ... “Until
the middle of the twentieth century, agriculture was dominated by small
holdings and family farms. Two factors have affected rural land holdings
since World War II. There has been an acceleration of the rural exodus
leading to a strong migration toward cities, along with a consolidation
of farm lands that had been scattered through inheritance patterns.”
Answer; No, not a developing Asian country that would be termed as at
least ‘semi-feudal’ by Maoists — the country is France.
[47] A recently published report by World Bank (WB) on “Immigration And
Remittance Fact Book 2011”, stated that till 2010, some 982,200 Nepali
people have migrated to foreign lands, which accounts for 3.2 percent of
total population of the country, reports Karobar daily. Of the total
Nepali immigrants, 68.2 percent are female while 13.8 percent are
refugees. The top 10 destinations for Nepali immigrants include India,
Qatar, USA, Thailand, UK, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Brunei, Darussalam,
Australia and Canada. Those Nepalis who have migrated to other countries
for the purpose of study account for 3.5 percent of total migration.
[...] “In 2011, the country received US $ 3.5 billion as remittance,
which accounts for 23 percent of the country’s GDP.”
Other sources claim the number of migrants as much higher, up to 2
million.
[48] As we had indicated in 2006 during the pro-democracy protests;
“Since 1950, whenever faced with armed or other political opposition,
the royal autocracy have repeatedly promised democratic reform, before
abandoning the commitment with another wave of repression; ... For the
moment, the situation in Nepal might be classified as an unfinished
bourgeois revolution. But then, perhaps one could have said that at any
time since 1950. The once and for all decisive abolition of royal
autocracy is the logical next historic step for the bourgeois forces
...”
[49] Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the “Peripheries of
Capitalism” — ed. T. Shanin, Monthly Review Press, 1984.
[50] One could argue over how crucial the Maoists’ participation in
Jana-Andolan II was in achieving its goals. But the existence of such a
movement was certainly not dependent on the Maoists — as shown by the
first Jana-Andolan democracy movement in 1990 which occurred years
before the emergence of the Maoist Party and its guerrilla activity. On
People’s Movement-II;
[51]
[52] It may be recalled here that Rapti zone was the beneficiary of a
USAID-funded integrated rural development project during the 1970s and
1980s.
[53] Conducting research on conflict issues or contested arenas is never
risk free, but the sheer violence of guerrilla war is likely to distort
the direction and focus of research, or simply make it impossible. These
risks are particularly severe for local scholars, intellectuals and
journalists. For a pertinent discussion of research methodology in
dangerous contexts see Jipson and Litton (2000).
[54] For a discussion of the role played by the mainstream Indian media
in projecting the Indian government’s views on Nepal see Bhusal (2001).
[55] After the departure of the British from South Asia, the Americans
sought to fill the power vacuum in the region after the onset of the
Cold War and China’s involvement in Tibet and the Korean war. During
this phase the Indians courted US influence, but they also resented the
US presence in the region at times. For a brief discussion of the
Indo-American relationship in the Himalayan region see McMahon (2002)
and Goldstein (1997).
[56] From K. P. Bhattarai’s autobiography, Atma Katha, quoted in
Spotlight, Septembcr 2001.
[57] The monarchy faced a range of daunting options when the
oppositional movement got underway after the Indian embargo.
‘Conjecturally, had the democratic movement in Nepal been prolonged at
this juncture, the monarchy would have been confronted with a difficult
choice. It would have been imperative for the monarchy and the Panchayat
System either to cave in to Indian demands in exchange for (at Ieast)
India’s critical restraint on the democratic forces in Nepal or order
increased repression and bloodshed by further alienating the people’
(Kumar 1992: 7). Kumar reproduces the text and a detailed discussion of
the controversial treaty proposal.
[58] When Nepal’s interim government took power in 1990, India ended its
year-long embargo on Nepal as a gesture of goodwill. Unfortunately, the
democratic transition did not bring subslantial changes to the bilateral
relationship. Despite its profession of support for the new government,
New Delhi paradoxically insisted on retaining the bilateral regime that
had existed during the Panchayat era (diplomatically, it was referred tu
as the ‘status quo ante’). Many of the political and economic challenges
that have confounded bilateral relations since 1990 are a consequence of
this contradiction between the profession of democratic endorsement and
the practice of coercion.
[59] Himal Kabarpatrika 10, 2, 2000 (16 Kartik 2057 v.s.), and various
postings on stratfor.com (2001) analyse the debate on army deployment
against the Maoists.
[60] The Holeri debacle, however, led to the resignation of prime
Minister Girija Prasad Koirala. A number of military officials,
including the chief of staff, have indicated in subsequent interviews
that the civilian authorities had failed to give the military due orders
and specify the rules of engagement to take on the rebels (see Nepali
Times, 21–7 December 2001). It is likely that the prime minister issued
an equivocal order that left him with enough room for denial should the
operation go wrong. The army’s reluctance to proceed into combat without
full backing from the political leadership and a clear operational
mandate was also interpreted in various quarters as a secret plot
between the king and the Maoists to discredit the multi-parry system.
After the CPN (Maoist) made monarchy its sole target following the royal
massacre, conspiracy theories that saw a royal hand behind the Maoist
rebellion have largely subsided.
[61] Newspapers have reported that the Maoists inflicted 12 billion
rupees worth of damage on airports, hydropower stations, schools,
hospitals, roads, bridges and telecommunication facilities. During the
same period, the rebels captured 330 million rupees worth of cash and
bullion from public banks (Yogi 2002; Nepali Times, 94, 17–24 May 2002).
[62] Telegraph, 25 January 2002.
[63] Kathmandu Post, 24 September 2001.
[64] Telegraph, 10 October 2001.
[65] There might be little substantive difference between Jang Bahadur’s
march to Lucknow to relieve the British and Sher Bahadur’s offers of’
assistance during the Afghan war. Both were presented as civilisational
wars of their times, and the services rendered can be read as tributary
obligations of a dependent condition.
[66] A typical view on this issue argues rather condescendingly that,
‘Though not impracticable, the conduct of’ a non-aligned policy in this
geopolitical setting posed concrete difficulties. For instance, if Nepal
wanted to seek co-existence with communist China, it inevitably implied
a dislocation of the intimate socio-economic bonds subsisting between
its people and India’ (Nath 1975: 308). See Myrdal (1968), Jha (1977),
Khanal (1977), Muni (1977) and Rose (1977) among others for a discussion
of Nepal’s struggle for non-alignment and neutrality in foreign
relations. King Birendra’s proposal to have Nepal recognised as a Zone
of Peace was rejected by India on similar grounds (Jayawardena 1992:
300).
[67] Perhaps the most overt manifestation of this antagonism occurred
when the Jain Commission, constituted by the Indian government to
investigate the murder of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi,
implicated the late Queen Aishwarya as a conspirator in the
assassination. Many in Nepal saw the commission’s report as a tactic
employed to shame and intimidate Nepal’s monarchy after the fall of the
Panchayat (Samakaleen, 11 Dec. 1997; India Today, 8 Dec. 1997).
[68] The Chinese foreign ministry and its diplomats in Kathmandu have
gone to great lengths to distance themselves from the Nepali Maoists.
The Chinese ambassador to Nepal stated that the Nepali rebels were
soiling Chairman Mao’s name by their terrorist activities (People’s
Review, 16–22 May 2002).
[69] The Maoists continue to analyse and represent the Nepali political
economy largely as a feudal enterprise. For instance, Baburam Bhattarai
recently described Nepal as being within ‘precapitalist socioeconomic
relations’ (Bhattarai 2002a). However, some economists have argued that
the ‘Nepali state is no longer ruled by feudals: it has long passed,
especially since the 1980s, into the hands of the trading class
comprador bourgeoisic’ (Gyawali 2002: 37). The Maoists are, in effect.
‘trying to overthrow feudalism in a country already ruled by merchants’
(ibid.).
[70] timesofindia.com, 22 Jan. 2002.
[71] Even as the CPN (Maoist) indulges in the systematic destruction of
the Hindu religious and cultural edifice in Nepal, senior Maoist leaders
have upheld the right of Hindu fundamentalists to build the Rama temple
on the disputed Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya. Maoists have also sought
to win favours from New Delhi by giving credence to Indian accusations
that Nepal has become a launching ground for Pakistani subversion
against India (Spotlight, 24–30 May 2002).
[72] Comparing extreme left politics in Peru and Nepal, Andrew Nickson
suggests that a transition from authoritarian rule to a non-performing
democratic regime is a fertile space for Maoist revolutionaries. ‘In the
case of Peru, the early years of the armed struggle launched by Sendero
Luminoso went largely unreported in the euphoria created by the return
to democracy. There was general disbelief that a tiny faction of the
cummunist movement which had been quiescent during the military regime,
would choose this moment in time to launch its revolutionary war’
(Nickson 1992: 382). While there are some commonalties in the evolution
of the CPN (Maoist) and the Shining Path Maoists of’ Peru, there are
also significant differences, especially in their regional and
ethno-religious contexts, which Nickson did not take into account.
[73] These ideological shifts were first reflected in two articles
posted oil the web by Baburim Bhattarai during the first half of 2002.
The first of these is addressed to a Western audience, while the second
one is aimed at the Nepali middle classes and Nepali migrants working in
the West.
[74] After 11I September 2001 the Indian prime minister and foreign
minister publicly announced that India would help the Nepali government
in its fight against the Maoists, whom they now identified as
terrorists. India was the first country to do so (People’s Review, 17
Oct. 2001).
[75] These contradictory moves from India, especially after 11 September
2001, can perhaps he explained by the possibility that the variuus
organs of the Indian state. viz. the foreign ministry, defence
establishment and the intelligence agencies, were pursuing different
sets of objectives within the same policy framework towards Nepal, and
not necessarily working at cross-purposes.
[76] A month after the Indian foreign minister had labelled Nepali
Maoists ‘terrorists’ and publicly pledged support to the Nepali
government in the conflict, the senior Maoist leader Krishna Bahadur
Mahara flew in from New Delhi on an Indian Airlines flight to lead the
Maoist delegation in the third round of talks with the government held
in Kathmandu. Subsequently, many of the Maoist leaders continued to
provide regular statements and interviews to various media from
different Indian cities.
[77] ‘Terror Error’ (editorial), Times of India, 22 Jan. 2002.
[78] As Marx pointed out in the case of the founding of Rome, this
process laying claim to soveriegnty has been repeated throughout
history: ‘old trick of the founders of cities to draw to themselves an
obscure and humble multitude, and then set up for their progeny the
autochthonic claim... “From the neighboring places a crowd of people of
all kinds came for refuge, without distinguishing freemen from slaves in
quest for novelty, these were the first to come, because of the (city’s)
greatness.” (Liv. I, I.) ... Shows that the barbarian population of
Italy was very swollen, discontent among them, want of personal safety,
existence of domestic slavery, apprehension of violence’ (Marx 1972:
226–7). Probably much the same can be said for Nepal, especially its
western region.
[79] In fact the existence of guilds prove nothing, since in Europe
guilds were the form taken by commerce and industry under the dominance
of landed property in self defence against it, prior to their assertion
of their hegemony and conquest of the state. Thus guilds can be expected
to exist wherever landed property is dominant. The key experience of
Western European feudalism, however, is that landed property had lost
control of the centralized state and as a consequence the city stood in
opposition to the countryside and landed property, eventually to
subordinate it.
[80] Some authors, such as John Mepham (1978), argue that in the course
of writing Capital, Marx dropped his earlier Hegelian categories and
turned to scientific ones. (A secret that seems to have eluded even Marx
in his prefaces to Capital where he described the manner that Hegel,
albeit inverted, provides the methodological basis of his analysis.)
Beneath this argument lies the motive of substituting a positivist,
ahistorical approach for a dialectical, historical one, removing the
revolutionary implications from Marx’s work. It allows Marx to be used
for establishing new forms of class power, such as that of the
bureaucratic intelligentsia under Stalin (which also is why Stalin
argued that it was unnecessary to read the first chapter of Capital) or
according to Althusser and the Frankfurt School of Marxism to further
the ends of liberal bureaucratic intelligentsia in the west (Mikesell
1992a). Teodor Shanin (1987) in his study of the late Marx argues that
in his Ethnological Notebooks Marx turned from a unilinear theory of
history, supposedly espoused in the preface to Capital, to a multilinear
one. However, Marx had already developed this multilinear theory in his
Grundrisse (1973a) . If in a rhetorical flourish he wrote that England
represented the future of Germany (and other countries), it was because
he saw capitalism as spreading over the world and subordinating all
other forms, not because he saw all forms of society as naturally
evolving towards capitalism. He was already far more sophisticated than
many of his epigones, who subsequently interpreted his categories
unilinearly. Marx turned to intensive study of the histories of other
societies late in his career to ascertain how private property and
states representing private property developed out of or subordinated
clan organized society (in his notebooks on Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient
Society), and how industrial capitalism subordinated states with already
well-developed forms of private property, such as India (in his
notebooks on Edward Phear’s The Aryan Village). A careful comparison of
the Ethnological Notebooks to his early works such as the German
Ideology shows him using the same dialectical methodology, but with more
depth, sophistication and knowledge.
[81] Marx discarded important flaws in Morgan’s work which Frederick
Engels (1983) later went on to use as the basis of his own
misrepresentation of Marx. Chief among them was Engels’ reliance on
Bachoven’s theory of the ‘mother right’, which Marx disdainfully
dismissed with two paragraphs in different parts of his Ethnological
Notebooks. The ‘mother right’ presented society as originally
matriarchal, due to the certainty of the natural linkage of mother to
child, but eventually men imposed the patriarchy in revenge for the
previous domination of women. Anthropologists generally never accepted
this thesis, but probably for the wrong reason—i.e. that it seemed too
speculative. Basically, it represented the dominant Victorian ideology
of the newly emergent monopoly capitalism in the late nineteenth century
(and more generally an ideology of the rule of middle classes that had
been emerging through the course of the developments in feudal Europe)
that women must be ‘put in their place’. Marx, in contrast to Engels,
saw in his Morgan notebooks that it was the rise of private property and
the subsequent subordination of the clan to the patriarchal family that
led to the subordination of women. Among the middle classes of feudal
cities, the position of women worsened as property, increasingly in the
form of capital, became more concentrated. Subordination of women was
one way of keeping property from being dispersed among other families or
lineages, particularly of wives, as happened under the communal
ownership represented by the clan. This oppression of women reached its
extreme in Victorian Europe, where on the one hand capitalists were
fighting to prevent their capitals from being dispersed among other
capitalists. On the other hand among the workers, first, more poorly
paid women were being used to force down the general level of wages
among the labour force, second, the cost of reproduction and maintenance
of the labour force was being thrown entirely onto the wives and mothers
of the workers rather than being born by the factories. These different
strategies of capital reached their extreme during the latter half of
the nineteenth century because of the immense competition resulting from
the concentration of capital in monopolies (see Lenin 1975). Although
now the oppression of women among the ruling classes is becoming
irrelevant for capital (though it certainly continues in the form of
male monopoly, as a class, over ruling and high status positions), the
history of the oppression of women among the working classes is still
relevant in the context of the spread of factories into the Third World
and a concentration of national capital into transnational corporations
in a manner analogous to the early rise of monopoly capitalism (see
Magdoff 1969; Mitter 1986).
[82] German part translated by the author with minor editing, italics
removed.
[83] See note 5.
[84] The term ‘comprador’ has been used to denote the merchant classes
in Nepal. I am not entirely comfortable with the term, because it was
originally used in China to refer to Chinese agents in foreign firms who
handled the Chinese employees and business of the firms. It was used by
Mao to refer to a class that along with the landlord class existed as
‘wholly appendages of the international bourgeoisie, depending upon
imperialism for their survival and growth’, which ‘represent the most
backward and most reactionary relations of production in China and
hinder the development of her productive forces’. He contrasted these to
a ‘middle’ or ‘national bourgeoisie’ which ‘represents the capitalist
relations of production in China in town and country’ (Tse-Tung
1975:13–14). Due to its own interests in independently monopolizing
state power, revolutionary strategists have thought that they can
initiate revolution in alliance with the ‘national bourgeoisie’ and then
subsequently break the alliance to complete the revolution. This
strategy succeeded temporarily in Russia due to the war-induced upheaval
at the time of the revolution. In China in 1927, Germany in 1920, and
India in 1947 this strategy set back the revolution in the former and
destroyed it in the latter two countries. In all three cases, as
generally, it effectively delivered power to the bourgeoisie class.
Dependency development theory or so-called ‘neo-Marxism’ turned this
strategy into an unabashed theory of development of the national
bourgeoisie, which still appeared revolutionary and somewhat daring to
liberal intellectuals due to the retention of Marxist terminology and
its apparent challenge of transnational interests. But even in 1926, Mao
saw that, given the international character of production and the
division of labour, the independence of these classes was an illusion.
[85] The real content of the transfer of power in India (see Ghosh
1985).
[86] Even in the 1989 presidential election in the United States, the
main issue besides ‘presidential appearance’ was over which candidate
was the best executive. Intelligence and vision rarely entered into the
discussion. Unfortunately, the immense economic and military power that
transnational capital gives to the ‘national executives’ makes them
immediately dangerous, in the long-term destructive, and in the short
run at least, marginally accountable to their own national populations.