Originally published in Liberation, the magazine of the Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist Liberation. A longer version can be found at the socialist e-journal, Links, http://links.org.au.
"Nepal Stuns World, Itself: Poll Peaceful, Turnout 60%" — that was the banner headline of the Kathmandu Post on April 11, the morrow of the historic constituent assembly elections.
It was stunning indeed that the constituent assembly elections in a Nepal torn by civil strife were held in a remarkably peaceful atmosphere, and with a huge participation of the people.
However the real stunner came some hours later, when by the midnight it became clear that a "red star" was rising in full bloom over Sagarmatha, i.e. Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world, in the erstwhile Himalayan Kingdom.
In an ironic reversal, at a time when people were speculating whether the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) would accept the verdict or return to the jungle again in the eventuality of their presumed certain defeat, the people of Nepal catapulted the Maoists to power.
It was indeed a great comment on the complete alienation from the popular masses and the myopic vision of the middle-class opinion makers in Nepal, as well as the corporate media and powers-that-be in India and the world over, that until the election results started pouring in they were all predicting a lead by the Nepali Congress party, with the Maoists third.
To be in Kathmandu was to have a real feel of the excitement in those tumultuous days — in its moment of epochal transition from monarchy to republic — under revolutionary communist leadership.
Writing on the wall
The writing on the wall was there for anyone willing to see, that the Maoists were set to win in quite a big way.
All along the route from Birganj, the gateway to Nepal on the India border, up to Kathmandu, we found bold, beautiful wall writings by the Maoists calling upon the people to participate in the constituent assembly elections to make Nepal a federal, democratic republic, abolish the monarchy and make CPN-M leader Prachanda the first president of republican Nepal.
The hectic movement of the enthusiastic Young Communist League (YCL) cadres on campaign vans with red flags atop, wearing the hammer and sickle in a circle — the election symbol of the CPN-M — on their clothes and even painted on their bare bodies, could be seen all around.
As we entered Kathmandu, the first comment we heard from the young conductor of the city bus gave us some hint of the things to come. As soon as he came to know that we were interested in the elections, his impromptu reaction came, gleefully and confidently, "The Maoists are winning here".
Just on the heels of the elections, while roaming the lanes of Kathmandu, we found a broad pattern to the social preference for various parties, of course based on our limited experience in the Kathmandu valley. The traditional upper sections favoured the Nepali Congress, the liberal middle sections supported the Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML) and the lower, unorganised working masses and overwhelmingly the youth vociferously worked for the Maoists.
Many liberal theories are now being peddled to explain the Maoist victory, ranging from its trivialisation as just an anti-incumbency factor to downright defamation by terming it a victory for "terror" tactics and "intimidation" by YCL cadres. There are even some funny theories suggesting that people made Maoists victorious lest they again return to jungle to restart violence!
In fact, the Maoist victory was in-built in the very logic of the political developments leading to the virtual demolition of the monarchy in the November 2006 uprising.
The choice was obvious for the Nepalese people reeling under the dead weight of the monarchist-feudal regime that had turned Nepal into an extremely backward country and a happy hunting ground for imperialist forces and Indian hegemonism for centuries.
As the Nepali Congress was at the forefront of the battle for democracy in 1950s, people went with it and Congress became the main political force. But the monarchy soon consolidated its autocratic power and ruled with an iron hand for the next three decades.
In the next wave of the anti-monarchy battle in the early '90s, the CPN-UML played the crucial role, joining hands with the Nepali Congress. The CPN-UML then emerged as a major political force.
Democratic struggle
However, this uprising could not reach its logical conclusion. The king, though weakened by the blow of the heroic people's movement, was down but not out. With his hold on the army still intact, he gradually manoeuvred his way out.
The opportunist parliamentary political games fatally corroded the moral authority of the main political parties and made them prey to royalist machinations. They became captive to the forces of the status quo instead of persisting with the radical course towards the fulfillment of the unfinished agenda of establishing a republic.
As a bourgeois-landlord party, this path was quite natural for the Congress, but the CPN-UML too could not make any radical departure to break the impasse.
It was at this critical moment that the CPN-M came out unequivocally for an uncompromising battle against the monarchy, rejecting even the liberal proposal of ceremonial status for the king as proposed by the other main parties.
And with this central slogan they galvanised the whole of Nepal, arousing and mobilising in particular the vast rural masses and youth with the dream of a new Nepal — a republican democratic Nepal, free of bondage and backwardness, as well as imperialist looting.
Winning the vast rural masses to their side, they deprived autocracy of its main social prop in society. Thus was paved the way for the eventual fall of the dead weight of the monarchy like a dry wooden log.
The rest was done by the king himself in his arrogance and patently miscalculated bloody palace coup — monopolising power and doing away even with the minimal semblance of democracy, ostensibly on the pretext of crushing the Maoists on behalf of the ruling elite.
In this war against Nepal's people, he was obviously banking too much on the mightiest power of the world, the US and of course, his time-tested protagonists, the Indian rulers.
The US openly offered him all-out help and cooperation in his autocratic rule in the name of crushing the Maoists. While the king declared an award of Rs5 million for Prachanda's head, the US put the CPN-M on its terror list and did much business in arms and ammunition with royalist Nepal.
All this further alienated the already discredited and hated king and with the formation of an alliance of Maoists and other anti-monarchy forces, the stage was set for a final showdown between the royalists and republican forces.
It is curious to see that the Indian establishment and even some Communist Party of India-Marxist leaders are patting themselves on the back for advising the Maoists to shun violence and "join the mainstream". In Nepal, it is apparent that the Maoists are the mainstream while the so-called mainstream the Indian rulers wanted them to join has been relegated to the margins.
The dichotomy of armed struggle versus elections is a false one; it is obvious that the essence of the Maoists' rise lies in their uncompromising battle against the monarchy. The form of that battle followed as per the demands of politics at different junctures.
Lessons
It was here that they proved to be of a very different mettle from the Indian Maoists, who remain cut off from crucial questions of Indian politics and from the political pulse of the people. The Indian Maoists were always flummoxed by the change of tactics of the Nepal Maoists.
The Nepal Maoists' experience till now also presents a contrast to the CPI-M — far from tailing behind the ruling-class formations as the CPI-M does, the CPN-M pioneered the agenda of the republic and led the pro-democracy movement from the front, while ruling-class formations vacillated and dragged their feet as is their wont.
We can only wait and watch the trajectory of the new republic, and the role of Nepal's communists on the road to people's democracy and socialism.
The world has witnessed that the successful consummation of a popular mass movement for a republic has been led by none other but those very communists who were tagged as "terrorists".
The pronouncements of some "strategic analysts" and foreign policy experts in India as well as the right-wing Hindu chauvinist ideologues are also revealing. They glaringly prove the popular perception of the Nepalese people that India's rulers regard Nepal as their fiefdom.
These Sangh ideologues and "expert" advisers of the Indian ruling class accuse the Indian government of "gifting" away Nepal to the Maoists and failing to protect that great guarantor of "India's interests" — the Nepalese king.
They forget that Nepal, in the first place, was never theirs to "gift away"! And if the Nepalese people choose to get rid of their king, and vote overwhelmingly to do so, shame on those who imagined they could meddle and reverse that decision!
One such "expert", Brahma Chellaney, writing in India Today, ended by declaring that the Madheshis who live in Nepal's south and "populate the Terai, Nepal's food bowl, are India's natural constituency, and that card is begging to be exercised".
In the past much damage has been done by the hegemonic and erroneous Nepal policy of the Indian ruling establishment — it's time for a new beginning, forging a healthy democratic bilateral relation based on genuine equality, mutual respect and benefit.
In a society where the level of subservience to the monarch was such that until yesterday parliamentary candidates, prospective people's representatives, sought blessings from the king by offering a coin at his feet, the abolition of the monarchy is no less than a miracle — a miracle achieved by the Nepalese people.
Let us hail this great victory of the Nepalese people and the republican forces, and warmly wish them success in facing the many complex challenges that lie ahead on the road to democracy and socialism.