The Indian government is duty-bound to prevent
the criminal-militant nexus from using Bihar and
Uttar Pradesh as a base from which to threaten
the Constituent Assembly process in Nepal.
The citizens of Nepal go in for Constituent
Assembly elections on April 10, to put in place a
601-member House that has the dual responsibility
of drafting a new constitution and serving as
Parliament during the interim. The Constituent
Assembly is a necessary condition for the country
to achieve political stability, sustainable peace
and a return to pluralism, nine years after the
last general elections. In between, the
population has suffered the Maoist "people- 217;s
war," a dirty reaction by the state, the
autocracy of Gyanendra, an unprecedented people’s
movement that rejected royal autocracy and Maoist
violence, and heightened identity-based
assertions that continue to this day. The hope is
that the Constituent Assembly will define a
democratic constitution that will simultaneously
address the many conflicting and complementary
demands of marginalised minorities and, at long
last, provide stable politics as a platform for
economic progress.
India too seeks stability in this country that
runs along the northern frontier of Uttar Pradesh
and Bihar, and it has done its bit as an
interlocutor in the recent past. Having
facilitated the discussions in New Delhi in the
autumn of 2005 that brought the Maoists to an
understanding with the parliamentary parties, New
Delhi is now asked, specifically, to rein in
militants who have been engaged in bombings and
targeted killings in Nepal’s Tarai plains while
taking refuge across the open border. These
militants - most importantly the one known as the
Janatantrik Mukti Morcha-Jwala Singh - hold the
ability to destabilise the country as it goes in
for elections.
Meanwhile, the Indian intelligentsia should be
alert to attempts by Hindutva forces, especially
political elements along the borderland, to force
their agenda on the Nepali people. This January,
L.K. Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party
launched a blistering attack on the UPA’s Nepal
policy and advocated a Hindu monarchy, while
exaggerating links between Nepal’s Maoists and
Indian naxalites.
To be sure, there are more than enough extremist
threats to the polls from within Nepal. Having
come to open politics barely two years ago, the
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is capable of
widespread intimidation during its first
electoral exercise, to try to stave off
humiliation at the ballot box. The polls could
also be destabilised by a welter of violent
newborn groups. Many of these are receiving
encouragement, if not support, from the
royalists, who believe (correctly) that the
political parties will use the Constituent
Assembly to do away with the monarchy once and
for all.
While the Maoists, militants and
arch-conservatives within Nepal are to be tackled
domestically, it is the responsibility of the
Indian authorities to halt the ongoing activities
of the JTMM-JS, which over the past two years
have operated with impunity from Indian towns
such as Sitamarhi, Raxaul, Darbhanga and
Gorakhpur. The State governments in Patna and
Lucknow must not allow local politics to wreck
Nepal’s return to normalcy. It must also insist
that the Madhesi militants lay down arms and talk
to Kathmandu, or at the very least submit to a
ceasefire. New Delhi has the clout, and should
put it to good use when so much is at stake.
Madhes rises
The mass upsurge of the People’s Movement of
April 2006 sought peace and pluralism, and
mandated the writing of a new constitution to
redraw state-society relations. What is known as
the Madhes Movement of last winter was a
spontaneous uprising by the people of
Tarai-plains origin who have long felt excluded
amidst the highlander identification of the
nation-state. ’Madhesi’ is an amorphous term
referring to caste categories of the eastern
Tarai in particular, but the movement represented
a historic demand of plains people for inclusion
in the national mainstream. And indeed, the mass
mobilisation of the Madhes Movement has changed
the face of Nepali society, and new political
forces have emerged to take advantage of the
space that has opened up.
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala was unable
to countenance the identity-led nature of the
agitation in the Tarai, heretofore a docile vote
bank for his Nepali Congress party. He was
therefore slow in addressing the Madhesi demands,
which referred to recognition and compensation of
those killed during the previous year’s
agitation, proportional representation in state
organs (including the army), changes in electoral
laws to enhance Madhesi participation, and so on.
As the government procrastinated, the demands
became more strident and even unrealistic,
including self-determination and the declaration
of the 500-by-20 mile Tarai plains as a single
province - “Ek Madhes, ek Pradesh.”
Though riding a wave of anti-Kathmandu sentiment
across the Tarai, the most critical weakness of
the Madhesi leadership was perhaps that it tended
to represent the eastern-Tarai caste categories.
It would be difficult to maintain the pan-Tarai
momentum for long, because, like the country
taken as a whole, the plains too are divided by
language, faith, caste, class, religion,
indigenity and point of origin.
As time went on, it became clear that quite a few
among the Madhesi leadership were seeking
consortium with the royalists of Kathmandu, as
well as the Hindutva forces across the border.
Hindu-right organisations in Nepal have a limited
base, and for long drew their influence and power
by proximity to the royal palace. But combine the
Indian fundamentalists, sections of Madhesi
militants, royalist politicians and the criminal
gangs of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh acting in loose
concert, and you suddenly have quite a vicious
brew to upset the election cart.
At the Narayanhiti royal palace, Gyanendra seemed
energised by the turn of events, which included
strikes across the plains over the month of
February and what amounted to an economic
blockade of Kathmandu Valley by the Madhesi
activists. He sent emissaries to meet with
Hindutva and BJP stalwarts in India in a bid to
revive the flagging fortunes of the monarchy. For
a while, a couple of weeks ago, it suddenly
looked as if the Constituent Assembly would be
held hostage by the BJP-Congress rivalry within
India, with the former all set to loudly proclaim
the restoration of the Hindu monarchy in Nepal as
a political plank.
Fortunately, while the role of other Indian
entities and organisations cannot be vouched for,
at this stage the Foreign Ministry in South Block
played its card in favour of a pluralistic,
representative evolution in Nepal. By extending
the tenure of Indian Ambassador Shiv Shankar
Mukherjee until after the April elections, the
Manmohan Singh government also sent a message
committing its own agenda and standing to the
holding of elections on schedule in Nepal.
The polls having already been rescheduled twice
before, the polity would have been unable to
sustain another postponement, which would in all
likelihood have led to a right-wing, militarist
shift in government. With the Koirala government
becoming suddenly flexible in negotiations, the
Madhesi leadership known to favour a poll
postponement had no option but to call off the
agitations in the Tarai. By the end of February,
all the credible political forces had been
dragged and cajoled into election mode, and the
people of hill and plain alike were finally
certain of being able to exercise their franchise.
Towards April 10
The sovereign, elected Constituent Assembly is as
close to a magic wand as the Nepali people can
hope for. It is certainly one that they deserve,
to deliver them from the extreme instability,
political violence and the democracy deficit of
the last decade. The economy is currently at a
standstill, even while the northern and southern
neighbours grow at near double-digit rates. The
people of Nepal have not had a whiff of the
so-called peace dividend, nor any post-conflict
rehabilitation to speak of, almost two years
after the “people’s war” ended.
For the 601-member House, the challenges of
constitution-writing, as well as government
formation, will be enormous. To begin with, the
legislators must rise above the extreme populism
that has gripped Nepali politics like a
malignancy over the last two years, and the lists
of party candidates are not inspiring. Besides,
the modalities of the Constituent Assembly’s
functioning have not been discussed and there is
the possibility of great confusion and anarchy
immediately after the elections. That is clearly
an urgent matter to be discussed in the days
ahead, but for the moment the job is to protect
the elections from two quarters: those parties
inclined to participate but influence the polls
through fear and intimidation, and those forces
within and without who will try to disrupt the
elections through killings, kidnappings and
bombings.
Fortunately, we know the potential spoilers. The
Nepali intelligentsia and civil society must keep
an eye on the domestic forces - royalist
politicians, militants, criminals as well as the
unruly ranks of the CPN (Maoist) - to prevent an
election derailment. India’s opinion-makers can
help Nepal in its return to normalcy by
watchdogging the Hindutva-inclined monarchists so
that they have no scope to interfere in the
affairs of a neighbour. The Indian government,
meanwhile, is duty-bound to prevent the
criminal-militant nexus from using Bihar and
Uttar Pradesh as a base from which to threaten
the Constituent Assembly process. A peaceful,
prosperous Nepal will reverberate in the Ganga
plains as well.