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The
Origins of the Nepalese Maoist Insurgency
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the general public in Nepal, the Maoists were quite an unknown entity until
they burst into the scene in 1996. That is understandable in a country
which has seen the communist groupings split, merge and split again so
many times that only an acute observer will be able to navigate this history
with ease. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) itself was no different
and given that the left centre-stage since the restoration of democracy
in 1990 had been dominated by the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist),
the Maoist party (and its earlier reincarnations) was perceived as just
one among the conglomeration of factions that spanned the political spectrum
from the CPN-UML onward to the extreme left. |
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 The origins of today's Maoists go back to the late 1960s. Following King
Mahendra's seizure of state power in 1960 after arresting the cabinet and
dissolving the elected parliament, all political parties were banned.
Within
the Communist Party of Nepal, there emerged two groups: one that preferred
to work together with the king and the other that demanded the restoration
of parliament. That difference of opinion was later formalised with a split
that reflected the Sino-Soviet rift, with the pro-king faction allied to
Moscow and the other to Peking. Despite the ban, like other political parties,
the communist grouping opposed to the monarchy continued functioning, but
given the prohibition in place, various local units had begun to operate
independently.
In
this situation, two of the communist leaders who had made a name as radicals
within the party, Mohan Bikram Singh and Nirmal Lama (who died last year),
set about creating a new party apparatus. In spite of differences with
their contemporaries, including with the
founder of the Communist Party of Nepal, Pushpa Lal Shrestha,
they succeeded in holding what they called the communist party's Fourth
Convention (Chautho Mahadhiveshan) in 1974 and named their new party the Communist
Party of Nepal (Fourth Convention).
Its basic divergence was that while
Pushpa Lal had always maintained the need for the communists to join hands
with all forces (read, the Nepali Congress) in their fight against absolute
monarchy, the Fourth Convention opposed any such inclination. The Fourth
Convention also demanded the election of a constituent assembly to write
a constitution (as opposed to Pushpa Lal's stance which called for the
restoration of parliament), and its strategy was to begin a people's movement
which could at the opportune moment be converted into an armed revolt.
The top leadership of today's Maoists comes from this school.
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Meanwhile, quite unconnected with these happenings, an actual communist
uprising took place in a corner of Nepal. This was in Jhapa,
the southeastern-most district of the country and right across the border
from the Naxalbari region in India. The Naxalite movement was well underway
in West Bengal when, in April 1972, a group of young Nepali activists
began a campaign to eliminate "class enemies' in Jhapa. This turned out
to be no more than a romantic adventure and was suppressed by the king's
government in no time. A total of seven "class enemies' were killed before
the leaders were jailed and the movement ended. At its founding, the Fourth
Convention came out vehemently against the Jhapa Movement, declaring: "While
we support the spirit and sacrifice shown in the struggle against class
enemies, the terrorist tactics adopted...cannot be called Marxism-Leninism.
This is a form of semi-anarchy."
The Fourth Convention denounced the Jhapa uprising, yet it did represent
the extreme left in Nepal, and until the mid-1980s it remained the major
player among the communist factions. In 1983, Mohan Bikram broke away and
formed the Communist Party of Nepal (Masal) (masal meaning torch
in Nepali). (In 1984, Masal became one of the founding members of the Revolutionary
International Movement/RIM, a grouping of Maoist parties worldwide.
The present-day Maoists have since replaced Masal within RIM.) Two years
later, Masal split further into CPN (Masal) and CPN (Mashal). These divisions
led to an erosion of public support for the Fourth Convention, ironically
to the benefit of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist),
the party set up by the leaders of the Jhapa Movement.
It
was in the Mashal party that Pushpa Kamal Dahal (the Maoist supremo
who goes by the nom de guerre of Prachanda) appeared on the top
rung of leadership for the first time, and later became its general secretary.
The other well-known present-day Maoist leader, Baburam Bhattarai,
remained with Mohan Bikram.
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That was the situation until the launch of the 1990People's
Movement, which was undertaken by the
Nepali Congress and a grouping of seven left parties, the United Left
Front (ULF), against King Birendra's Panchayat system. Although
the mother party, the Fourth Convention, became part of the ULF, neither
Masal nor Mashal joined it. With other small leftist groups, they instead
formed an alliance called the United National People's Movement, and only
joined the People's Movement once the street protests had gathered momentum.
The climactic moments of 6 April 1990,
when police firing on the Kathmandu streets culminated in the capitulation
of the old regime, is believed to have been the handiwork of this latter
group - its having incited the demonstrators to try and storm the Narayanhiti
Royal Palace.
Following
the restoration of democracy, the hardline left parties pressed for an
election to a constituent assembly as a means of delivering a genuine people's
constitution rather than have a document handed down by the "establishment".
(The formation of a constituent assembly was in fact promised by King Birendra's
grandfather, Tribhuvan, as part of the so-called Delhi Agreement of
1951 which led to the downfall of the 104-year-old Rana oligarchy.
The Nepali Congress party itself had agitated initially for elections for
a constituent assembly and only later accepted the general election as
offered by King Mahendra in 1959.)
Instead of a constituent assembly, however,
some selected representatives from the Nepali Congress, the left, the royal
palace and some independents were given the task of drafting a new constitution,
which was promulgated in November 1990.
That same month, four parties, including the Fourth Convention, Masal and
Mashal, merged to form the Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre),
with Prachanda as general secretary. The first general election was approaching
at the time and there was pressure from within for the party to take part
in it.
Accordingly, the United People's Front (UPF) was floated as the
political wing of the Unity Centre, and in the first parliament, the UPF
emerged as the third largest group (with nine seats) after the Nepali Congress
(110 seats) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) (69). (The latter, which remains today the all-powerful opposition party
in Parliament, was a coming together of the Marxist-Leninists, which had
become the largest leftist organisation by 1990,
the remnants of Pushpa Lal's party and others of the left.)
The
Unity Centre held its first conference a year later in which the proposal
for a "protracted armed struggle on the route to a new democratic revolution"was
discussed and accepted. It was also decided that the Unity Centre would
go underground although, in practice, it remained semi-underground. By
the time the 1994 mid-term elections had come around, Unity Centre had divided between a
Unity Centre headed by Nirmal Lama and another under the same name led
by Prachanda.
The UPF also fell apart, reflecting that split, with the
group that supported Prachanda being led by Baburam Bhattarai.
Both factions of the UPF approached the Election Commission for recognition.
The one which supported Nirmal Lama was given recognition. Baburam Bhattarai
then called for a boycott of the elections, an action that at the time
was perceived more as a face-saving measure.
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1996:
Beginning of the insurgency
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| March
1995, Prachanda's Unity Centre held its "Third Plenum', during which they foreswore elections (it is believed
at the insistence of RIM) and decided to take up arms. It was during that
meeting that the Unity Centre was renamed the Communist Party of Nepal
(Maoist). In September the same year, the party's central committee
adopted a "Plan for the historical initiation of the people's war" which
stated that the "protracted people's war [will be] based on strategy of
encircling the city from the countryside according to the specificities
of our country. The Party once again reiterates its eternal commitment
to the theory of people's war developed by Mao as the universal
and invincible Marxist theory of war." |
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(As
far as the RIM is concerned, before 1996, the Maoists of Nepal needed -
for the sake of their standing within the country - to claim membership
in RIM, howsoever marginal that organisation may have been to world politics.
The document cited above talks about the CPN (Maoist)'s "serious responsibility
to contribute towards the further development of Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement/RIM, of which our party is a participating member..." However,
Nepal's Maoists have become the vanguard flag-bearers of the revolutionary
movement worldwide, and it seems that it is the RIM which needs association
with the Nepali Maoists to provide its very raison d'être.)
This,
then, was how thing lay when on 4 February
1996, Baburam Bhattarai presented
the Nepali Congress-led coalition government of Sher Bahadur Deuba with a list of 40 demands related to "nationalism, democracy and livelihood".
These included abrogation of both the 1950 and the Mahakali treaties
with India (one on "peace and friendship" and the other on the sharing
of the water on the western frontier river); introducing work permits for
foreign (i.e. Indian) workers in Nepal; curtailing all privileges of the
royal family; drafting of a new constitution through a constituent assembly;
nationalising the property of "comprador and bureaucratic capitalists";
declaring Nepal a secular nation; and also details such as providing villages
with roads, drinking water and electricity; and complete guarantee of freedom
of speech and publication.
Incidentally, these demands were not much different
from the points outlined in the 1991 election manifesto of the above-ground
united UPF. Bhattarai's covering letter contained an ultimatum that unless
the government initiated positive steps towards fulfilling those demands
by 17 February 1996,
"we will be forced to embark on an armed struggle against the existing
state."
Prime
Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was on a state visit to India when the
Maoists struck in six districts on 13 February, four days before the deadline
had even expired. (Even today, the mainstream left seeks to lay the blame
for the Maoist problem squarely on the door of the Nepali Congress, since
the fighting began when the latter was running the government. But, as
the Congress spokesman and a minister at that time, Narahari Acharya, points
out, Baburam Bhattarai's 40 demands contained just two points more
than a similar list presented on 31 December
1994 to Prime Minister Man Mohan Adhikari,
who was heading the minority government of the CPN-UML. Acharya's argument
is also that, demands or no demands, the Maoists would have begun the uprising
since that was the kind of violent political agenda they had opted for.)
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Nepal
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