Nepal: The Maoist dream

Sita Acharya was part of the cultural wing of the Maoist party [Prabhat Jha/Al Jazeera]

Shree breaks down as she removes it from a bag beneath her bed. It was another Khukuri, wielded, Shree says, by Maoists, that beheaded her father, a cadre of the Nepali Congress (NC) party, in 1997.

“But I never thought of revenge. If I had wanted revenge, I could have gotten Maoists arrested by reporting them to the armed forces. And the armed forces could have killed them,” she says as tears roll down her cheeks.

Shree says she worked with the people who killed her father and had normal relations with them.

Civilians suffered greatly during the war; caught in the crosshairs of the security forces and the Maoists. Rolpa suffered more than other districts as the rivalries between the Maoists and NC spiralled.

The rape victims have not made their cases public. Almost all such rape cases were committed by the armed forces

“We lost our neighbours and our kin,” she says. “We don’t want such conflict again. We want to live freely. ”

After her father’s death, Shree moved to Libang. These days she is an NC district leader.

The party dominated Rolpa politics before the Maoists, and is now second to them in popularity in the district.

Political violence became frequent when the Maoist United People’s Front (Samyukta Jana Morcha) challenged the NC after multi-party democracy was revived in 1990.

“Based on cases filed by NC supporters, police tortured, terrorised and killed some Front supporters,” Shree explains. And since the NC was identified with state power, their cadres and leaders became a target of Maoist attacks.

The violence continued throughout the war.

“The state, mainly the armed forces, used to go into villages and torture, kill, threaten to kill the family members of Maoist members, PLA fighters, and their supporters just on the basis of information from their spies,” she says.

Shree feels the victims are still ignored, and that the true extent of the war crimes committed remains hidden. “The rape victims have not made their cases public. Almost all such rape cases were committed by the armed forces,” she says.

First, Maoists tried to win people’s hearts. If they failed, they used force, such as kidnapping or killing

“Many things changed after the Maoist movement,” she reflects. “But it is not true that Maoist action alone decreased social discrimination. The rise in education is another factor.”

Her society has changed profoundly over the last 20 years, as has her life.

 She now lives with her husband, who has returned after spending more than 10 years working in the Middle East. But jobs are still hard to come by in this nation of about 30 million, so he plans to return there soon – this time to Israel, where he hopes to find work on a farm.

Chapter II: The Human Cost of the War

The widow – “What happened to my husband?”

Lautan Kumari Chaudhary remembers the knock on her door. It was 3am on April 11, 2002, and three people had come looking for her husband in Mangalpur, their village in Bardiya district’s Rajapur.

“We were sleeping. Somebody called, ‘Comrade! Open the door!’ I opened the door. Three people – two were in army uniform – entered,” says Lautan, who, like her husband, belongs to the historically persecuted indigenous Tharu ethnic group.

If my husband is alive they should bring him here. If he’s dead, they should show me where he is buried. They should show us his bones

Located on a dense delta created by the River Karnali and extending to the border with India in the south, Rajapur is predominantly populated by ethnic Tharu people. Until a year ago, the region could only be accessed by boat, but the government has now built a bridge.

Landlessness has long been common among the Tharus and, before the war, many worked as bonded labourers for upper caste landlords.

“The Maoist war changed the landlord-labour relations. Tharus began to assert as Maoists raised their issues. Many of the Zamindars who exploited them fled the areas, selling their land,” explains local activist Bhagiram Chaudhary.

“They tied both hands of my husband and took him away,” Lautan remembers. “My [four-year-old] son woke up and started to cry. ”

She never saw her husband again, and says he wasn’t a Maoist.

Two other men were also picked up from the neighbourhood that night. They, too, never returned.

At least 15 members of the Tharu community – including Bhagiram’s brother and sister-in-law – “disappeared” from the villages of Rajapur.
 Bhagiram says the Tharus were “systematically targeted”.

Nationwide, nearly 1,400 people were “disappeared” during the war. According to the UN, more than 250 cases of enforced disappearances were reported in Bardiya district alone – the highest number in a single district.

The son and activist – “We have died many times”

I openly challenged them. I am not afraid to die. We have died many times

So far, the government has provided compensation of $500,000 Nepali rupees (around $4,705) to the affected families and scholarships to the children of the “disappeared”.

But today, relations between Tharus and people from the hills of Nepal, known as Pahadis, who have traditionally been better represented by the ruling elite, remain fraught.

In 2015, protests by Tharus who were dissatisfied with the country’s new constitution, in the district of Kailali, resulted in the deaths of eight police officers. In response, a Pahadi mob burned down dozens of Tharu houses, as security forces looked on. Thousands of Tharu men fled their villages fearing retaliation.

Chapter III: The Leaders

Prachanda was [a] master tactician, the pragmatic politician, the charismatic but mysterious leader, the motivator-in-chief, the lead military planner – all rolled into one – of the Nepali revolution

Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal

The strategist – “If we had not compromised, it could have ended very badly”

The mild-mannered man sitting on the leather sofa in a blue suit and tie barely resembles the image of a feared and mysterious military leader. But that is what he once was.

 Sixty-one-year-old Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who is better known by his nom de guerre, Prachanda, is the chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre) and the current prime minister of Nepal.

 He led the Maoists during the war and, for decades, lived in hiding.

But in 2006, he embraced multi-party democracy, signing the Comprehensive Peace Accord.

Now he explains his party’s change in tactics. “Struggle is necessary but the form of struggle should be changed in a peaceful and democratic way,” he says, smiling.

But 10 years after the war ended, the hopes of millions of Nepalese who rallied behind the Maoists, have given way to pessimism and distrust, as their demands for a more inclusive economic and political structure remain unmet.

Ethnic minorities, such as the Madhesis and Tharus, say the new constitution, passed in September, ignores their demands and that the Maoists have betrayed them.

But Prachanda defends his party’s position on the constitution. “The issue of constitution is republicanism, federalism and secularism and inclusive representation of the marginalised people; all these major issues have been addressed in the new constitution,” he says, adding that the constitution could still be amended to address the grievances of those dissatisfied with it.

Prachanda became prime minister of Nepal for the second time in July

In 2008, the Maoists, who dominated the first Constituent Assembly (CA), removed the monarchy in its first sitting and declared Nepal a secular republic. But since then the wheels of change seem to have stalled.

“The new democratic revolution was meant to smash feudalism and imperialism, but we could not completely smash feudalism,” Prachanda admits.

The Maoist leader has been accused of compromising on a number of the party’s wartime demands. But, he says, “If we had not compromised, signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and entered electoral politics, the communist movement could have been sabotaged, or it could have ended very badly”.

The former guerrilla leader who once led a simple life in the hills of Nepal has been criticised for allegedly developing a taste for luxury in the years since the war.

His mansion in the upscale Lazimpat area of Kathmandu is guarded by commandos from the same army that for 10 years he fought.

If we had not compromised, signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and entered electoral politics, the communist movement could have been sabotaged, or it could have ended very badly

Born into a lower middle class, upper caste Brahmin family in Kaski district, Prachanda had once toyed with the idea of joining the Royal Nepalese Army after completing his secondary education.

But, instead, he attended an agriculture college in Chitwan. There, he was influenced by the writings of Marx, Stalin and Mao.

He became a teacher, and like many of his comrades joined an underground communist movement that wanted to abolish Nepal’s repressive feudal structure.

In 1979, he left his teaching job and became a full-time political activist. Seven years later, the Communist Party of Nepal (Mashal), of which he was a member, launched an armed attack against the government. But with few military capabilities and little experience, it failed.

Kiran, the then leader of the party, resigned and nominated Prachanda as its new leader in 1989.

When Prachanda took over the reigns, the party was a marginal political player. But his organisational skills and revolutionary rhetoric helped to galvanise thousands of Nepalese, particularly those from minority ethnic groups, behind it.

“There was little understanding that all these ethnic and cultural groups were severely underrepresented in the state structure,” explains Aditya Adhikari, author of The Bullet and the Ballot Box: The Story of the Maoist Revolution.

Adhikari says the Maoists exploited the historical grievances of ethnic minorities that traditional democratic parties had failed to acknowledge.

Inspired by Peru’s Shining Path guerrillas, the Maoists launched the war on February 13, 1996. They had just two guns at the time – rifles that had been supplied to Tibetan rebels by the CIA in 1961.

In 2012, Kiran told journalist and author Prashant Jha why he’d chosen Prachanda to replace him: “He was a young revolutionary talent. I recognised it.”

But post-war, Prachanda developed serious ideological differences with his political mentor Kiran, who left the party in 2012. The Maoist leader finally managed to bring other factions back in May of this year, when some splinter groups reunited under his leadership.

There was little understanding that all these ethnic and cultural groups were severely underrepresented in the state structure

Heavily influenced by Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Prachanda advanced his own ideology, called Prachandapath, which was adopted as the official party line in 2001.

But his transition from leading a successful armed rebellion to the messy and often divisive politics of Kathmandu has been anything but smooth.

He became prime minister after the first post-war election in 2008, but his decision to sack the then army chief saw his tenure end abruptly the following year.

 What many considered the two most urgent tasks facing the new government – settling the fate of thousands of Maoist combatants and writing a new constitution – seemed to take a back seat as Prachanda and the party became embroiled in one controversy after another.

In 2013, when the second post-war Constituent Assembly elections were held, the Maoists lost.

“If Prachanda had focused on trying to complete the peace process and then work to complete the constitution, it would have sealed his place in history,” says Prashant Jha.

“Their mistake was why did they open so many political fronts up. They picked the wrong battles. What was the reason to sack the army chief?” he asks.

The Maoists may be down but Prachanda believes they are not yet out.

“Implementation of the constitution and initiating the process of economic development is our top priority,” he says.

The Ideologue – “Nepal will be the most developed country in South Asia”

On February 4, 1996, Maoist leaders Baburam Bhattarai and Pampha Bhusal met Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba in Kathmandu. They handed over a letter containing 40 demands and set February 17 as the deadline for the government to accept them or face war.

But four days before the deadline was to expire, the Maoists launched a series of attacks on police posts across Nepal, initiating the decade-long armed rebellion that was to follow.

“[The] Maoist party was a vehicle to wage war against the old feudal autocratic state,” explains Bhattarai, who was the Maoist party’s theorist and ideologue during the war, from his residence in the Lalitpur area of Kathmandu valley.

Baburam Bhattarai left the Maoist party after constitution was passed last year

Like many of his comrades, Bhattarai was deeply concerned about debilitating poverty, economic inequality and mass illiteracy in the country.

Two years into the war, Bhattarai wrote a paper – The politico-economic rationale of people’s war in Nepal – in which he criticised the country’s highly unequal land distribution and mass poverty.

The establishment of a new democratic socio-economic system and state, he wrote, was the goal of the war.

But did it achieve those goals?

“I think we achieved something and could not achieve some other things. So, in balance, I think it was a positive development in the history of Nepal,” Bhattarai reflects.

“With the passing of the new constitution through the Constituent Assembly and declaring the country a federal democratic republic, most of the political demands were fulfilled,” he explains, adding that “the economic part of the revolution is still to be completed.”

Bhattarai began to gravitate towards left wing politics after reading communist literature. It was a gradual process.

He was born in 1954, the same year as Prachanda, in Gorkha district, to a poor agricultural Brahmin family. Education was then mostly the preserve of the urban elite, but he was fortunate to be sent to a Christian missionary school.

A brilliant student, Bhattarai earned a scholarship to study architecture in the Indian city of Chandigarh. He completed his Masters in New Delhi, where he met his wife and future comrade – Hisila Yami.

I think we achieved something and could not achieve some other things. So, in balance, I think it was a positive development in the history of Nepal

But it was at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, where he completed his PhD in 1986, that he began to move towards Marxism.

His PhD thesis – The nature of underdevelopment and regional structures of Nepal: A Marxist Analysis – became a political and economic manifesto for the “People’s War”.

While in India, he formed the All India Nepalese Students’ Association.

In 1991, when Nepalese democracy was revived by King Birendra after street protests, he became the leader of Samyukta Jana Morcha – the overground front for the Maoist party.

Prachanda, then a mysterious figure, anchored the Maoist party’s military strategy. After war was declared, both moved to neighbouring India, only to return in the last phase of the conflict in 2004.

During the war he was also the Maoist party’s main interlocutor and a conduit to Kathmandu’s media.

Bhattarai believed the monarchy was the crux of the country’s problems. His public opposition to many of Prachanda’s ideas, such as opening communication with the monarchy during the war rather than forging an alliance with traditional democratic parties, did not go down well with the hardline faction of the party leadership.

In 2004, he was suspended from the party and put under house arrest, allegedly at the behest of Prachanda.

The following year, the Maoists suffered a huge military setback in Rukum district’s Khara village. The losses prompted Prachanda to make peace with Bhattarai.In October 2005, Maoists met in Rolpa district’s Chunbang, where the party’s political objective was changed from forming a people’s republic to a democratic republic in line with what Bhattarai had been advocating.Prachanda was a man of action while Bhattarai’s strength stemmed from his deep theoretical understanding of Nepal’s socio-economic situation. Together, they led one of the most successful revolutions of modern times.“It was a relationship of cooperation and competition, a relationship in which both deeply resented each other’s qualities but recognised that they were incomplete separately,” wrote Prashant Jha.Bhattarai was one of the key negotiators for the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Accord and it was under his prime ministership that the peace process – primarily the integration of the Maoist fighters – was finalised.He served as finance minister in the first Maoist government, which was led by Prachanda.When the country’s new constitution was passed under his chairmanship, he admitted that ethnic and indigenous minorities had been given a raw deal.He has spoken out publicly in support of the agitation by the Madhesis, when most parties have either dithered or resorted to nationalistic rhetoric in response.Bhattarai quit the Maoist party after the constitution was passed, stressing that the biggest challenge facing Nepal is economic prosperity.“To bring about economic development … the Maoist vehicle is not very appropriate given the national and international situation,” he explains, looking at a framed portrait of Lenin in his living room, which declares in Nepali: “Final victory will be ours.”Bhattarai has formed a new party called Naya Shakti (New Force) that he believes will “embark on a path of fast economic development”.“Though there are certain challenges right now, if we succeed in mobilising a large section of people and unite them under the banner of [an] alternative new political force, in a few decades Nepal will be the most developed country in South Asia,” Bhattarai says forcefully.

The Chronicler – “The People’s War was a dream that the Maoists made a reality”

At a roadside cafe in Kathmandu’s Chabahil area, Khagendra Sangroula sits alone at a table, smoking and sipping tea.

Sangroula is Nepal’s leading Marxist literary figure. His books, essays and columns have been widely read and he has received literary accolades.

“I was inspired by communism and began writing,” he explains.

“In the beginning I wrote about Dalits, the poor and backward,” he continues, the cafe’s makeshift tarpaulin roof flapping vigorously in the wind.

From the excesses of the monarchy during the Panchayat era to the revival of democracy in the 1990s and from the armed Maoist rebellion to the overthrow of the king in 2008 – Sangroula’s pen has documented it all.

He has written 14 books, including three novels that have told the tale of Nepal’s oppressive caste hierarchy.

He has also translated Marxist literature into Nepali, including the works of Mao, which inspired thousands of young Nepalese, particularly those from marginalised communities.

In his book, Prashant Jha explained how Prachanda used to say: “Dai (Brother), we grew up reading your work.”

Born in 1946, in the Panchthar district of eastern Nepal, Sangroula moved to Kathmandu in 1967 to pursue his studies. It was there that he was drawn towards anti-monarchy activism.

His interest in Marxism developed in the capital as he came into contact with other young leftists. Global events, such as the war in Vietnam and the experience of communism in Russia and China, helped to mould his perspectives.He started working with Niranjan Govind Baidya, a senior communist party leader who also ran a bookshop in Kathmandu.Sangroula’s first novel, Chetana Ko Pahilo Daak, (The call of first consciousness) which he wrote in 1971, dealt with the theme of communist ideology and revolution.Since 1971, he has translated 30 books into Nepali. The first was a novel by Ngoc Nguyen set in Vietnam called The Village That Would Not Die.Most of the books he has translated have been Russian and Chinese revolutionary novels that have played a role in propagating communist ideology in Nepal.“Mao Zedong’s New Democracy was the holy book of Nepal’s communists,” he says, adding that Leninist and Maoist literature first came to Nepal – in the Hindi language – via India.“The Chinese and Russian communist literatures were translated into Nepali much later,” explains the bespectacled septuagenarian writer.Sangroula describes how a communist armed rebellion in India, called the Naxalite movement, influenced Nepal’s communists.“KP Sharma Oli, the former prime minister, came from that movement of [Nepalese inspired by the Naxalites in] 1971,” he says.His 1999 novel, Junkiriko Sangeet (Music of Fireflies), depicted relations between Dalits and upper caste Nepalese during the Panchayat era. It was praised in literary circles but wasn’t warmly received by the Maoists.“Junkiriko Sangeet was on the plight of Dalits,” he explains.

 But the Maoists felt that it gave too much credit to NGOs for helping the marginalised and oppressed.“[It seems it was] written to make fun of Marxism, the communist party, class struggle, people’s resistance and revolution,” wrote Prachanda of the book.But, Sangroula insists, the communists did not address the everyday issues facing the people, such as health, education and employment opportunities.

Mao Zedong’s New Democracy was the holy book of Nepal’s communists

“They only talked about big political agendas. Communists want to capture the state and they think that everything will be solved after that,” he says with a smile.

 But, he adds of the communist parties and their grassroots work, “they made people aware of their rights”.

Despite his close relations with many communist and Maoist leaders across generations, he hasn’t been hesitant in critiquing them.

 “I never formally joined any party. I always worked from the side. That’s why I had the space to criticise the communists,” he explains.

“In some places they call me a friend of Baburam and Prachanda. They think I am also a Maoist,” he says, smiling.

But in his long career as a writer and activist, Sangroula has always been on the more moderate side – and has sometimes been attacked by Maoists for that.

“I never was extreme in my ideas, that’s probably why I have still survived as a writer,” the 70-year-old reflects.

Still, the Marxist author acknowledges the contribution of Maoists.

“A lot has changed,” he says. “The People’s War was a dream but the Maoists made it a reality.”

“Dalits, Tharus, Janajatis, women and Madhesis rose against the state for their rights, which they could have never imagined doing before.”

But, Sangroula believes the Maoists were coopted after coming to power.

“Maoist are no longer Maoists,” he concludes. “They are nationalists.”

 

Story
Saif Khalid | Gyanu Adhikari

Design & Development
Praveen Srihari | Alaa Batayneh

Photography
Prabhat Jha

Video Editor
Nadine Cheaib