A week of worldwide notice has elapsed after what has been
described as a “historic accord” between Nepal’s interim prime
minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, and the hitherto mystery-shrouded
Maoist leader, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, with the popular nom de guerre of
Prachanda. Only eloquent silence, however, has emanated from the two
capitals, though it is their official responses that the people of
the Himalayan state await with utmost anxiety.
The accord between the top leaders of the Seven-Party Alliance
(SPA) in interim power and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or
the CPNM, reached and announced on June 16, can mean a quantum leap
for the mountain country that has just overthrown a cruelly despotic
monarch. But it is a leap in the dark, so long as the accord is not
assured of a modicum of support by these two capitals that stood by
the now-dethroned king till the very last.
The silence from Washington was very much expected. The
anti-monarchy movement, which had brought the CPNM and the
parliamentary parties together, did not make the Bush administration
more benign toward the Maoists. The US ambassador to Nepal, James F.
Moriarty, said on June 8 that the administration had not yet taken
the CPNM off its list of “terrorist organizations,” on the basis of
which it had backed King Gyanendra with military largesse. Moriarty
has made no subsequent statement that shows any change in the US
assessment.
New Delhi, however, was in a different category, despite its
anxiety not to be out of step with its newfound “strategic partner”
in Washington. Its pro-king diplomacy, when the popular upsurge
against Gyanendra was its peak, drew considerable flak inside India
as well - even from peddlers of the “strategic partnership” who felt
that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government should not have
allowed itself to be seen on the losing side.
Ever since the king’s defeat in the streets of Kathmandu, New
Delhi’s mandarins have stopped talking of the “twin pillars” of
Nepal’s stability as the monarchy and the parliament, tacitly putting
the Maoists out of the pale. India’s external affairs ministry has
not followed Moriarty in reiterating that the Maoists are not yet
free from the “terrorist” tag. Its reluctance to hail the historic
accord, however, is an ill-concealed expression of its continuing
reservations about the Maoists.
The government would seem to have left it to a Left ally to
welcome the accord. Sitaram Yechury, a leader of the Communist Party
of India (Marxist) or the CPI (M), had brokered an SPA-CPNM alliance
against the king earlier. And the CPI (M) extends crucial outside
support to the minority government of Manmohan Singh. This, however,
does not ensure indefinite or unconditional New Delhi indulgence for
the Maoists.
As noted before in these columns, Gyanendra enjoyed support from
India’s far right and some of its feudal “houses of royalty.” They
kow-towed to him, above all, as a “Hindu king” and, indeed, sought to
crown him as a “Hindu emperor.” It is now too late in the day for
them to pursue this particular line of support. But they can still
ally covertly with Gyanendra (who may not have given up the game for
lost) on anti-Maoist grounds.
Here they can find an ally also in the Singh government and its
retinue of security experts. New Delhi has lately discovered that
Indian variety of Maoists, better known as Naxalites, pose the
primary internal security threat to India. They thrive especially
among tribal people, who have been losing their land and forests to a
variety of exploiters ranging from the feudal to the transnational.
The far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - which rules in two
States with sizeable tribal populations, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand -
is making anti-Maoism a multi-purpose issue.
The BJP regime in Chhattisgarh is pursuing a program called
“Salwa Judum (Campaign for Peace),” portrayed in its propaganda on
television channels and elsewhere as popular resistance to the local
Maoists. The CPI (M) has exposed the program as really "a police
action," with the participation of deserters from the Maoist ranks.
The BJP has not stopped with condemning this as Left support for
“terrorism.” The far-Right’s media friends are busy trying to rouse
fears of dangerous links between Nepal’s Maoists and those wearing
the same label in Chhattisgarh and elsewhere. We may hear more of the
same in the coming days.
The CPNM would seem to nurse no illusions on this score. Around
the same time as Moriarty was warning Nepal’s Maoists, Prachanda was
cautioning India and the SPA against hatching any anti-Maoist
“conspiracy.” “Why are they trying to bypass us?” he was quoted as
asking.
He and his colleagues may be less suspicious now of the SPA, and
the CPNM is also indulging in its share of what history may prove to
be hype over the accord of June 16. Nepal’s Maoists, however, do not
conceal their continuing worry and wariness over New Delhi’s future
role.
Dev Gurung, a top CPNM leader and a member of the Maoist team
holding talks with the CPA, has spelt it all out. On the day of the
Koirala-Prachanda accord, Gurung told the media of the importance the
Maoists attached to abrogation of the India-Nepal Treaty of Peace,
Friendship and Cooperation signed in 1950. There is no section of
Nepal’s political spectrum that does not denounce the treaty as
utterly unequal. Even impeccably pro-Bush sections of the India media
have asked for a replacement of the treaty with one representative of
the post-monarchy Nepalese reality.
When Koirala came to New Delhi in the first week of June, he came
with an SPA mandate against committing himself to any treaty with
India. If the Singh government plans to propose a new treaty, it is a
closely guarded secret.
Gurung raised another prickly issue of India-Nepal relations when
he said the 1,800-km-long border between the two countries could not
remain porously open forever. He could not but have alarmed interests
with clout in the Indian capital when he declared that Nepal could
not continue to be “a captive market for Indian goods.”
The Maoists are not silent all about their India-related
apprehensions. It is for New Delhi to break its silence over its
response to the change in Nepal, to new history in its neighborhood.