Prachanda has shown extraordinary flexibility, and not just with India.
No prime minister from a neighbouring country has attracted as much attention as Nepal Prime Minister Pushpakamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, when he came to India last week. Prachanda began life as a teacher but was involved in politics. As a Maoist, he spent 10 years underground of which eight he spent in India, mostly in Haryana. So little was known about him that lore in Kathmandu in the late 1990s went that Prachanda was just a nom de guerre for human rights activist and Maoist sympathiser Padma Ratna Tuladhar who ran the Maoist movement from Kathmandu but let it be known that Prachanda was here and there and everywhere to prevent capture by the (then Royal) Nepal Army.
The first time the world put a face to the name was in 2003, when the Nepal Army circulated the first set of pictures of a bearded Prachanda beside Baburam Bhattarai, his colleague and comrade and Bhattarai’s wife, Hisila Yami. So important was it for Prachanda to retain his anonymity that not only did he never use his real name, but when two rounds of negotiations were held between the government of Nepal and the Maoists, it was Bhattarai who conducted the talks. He remained underground, with the price on his head going higher and higher. Like the Shining Path guerillas in Peru, his Way came to be known as Prachanda Path.
Maybe the long spell underground shaped his beliefs because when Bhattarai proposed that the Maoists join other political parties to fight an overground battle to topple the King, Prachanda refused. This was the beginning of the development of two groups among the Maoists: One, a set of ‘hardliners’ led by Prachanda who was supported by his guru Mohan Baidya, the doughty organiser from Thabang and CP Gajurel (both leaders were arrested in Chennai on charges of carrying a false passport and were kept in jail as long as India maintained its ‘twin pillar’ — constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy — policy towards Nepal). Also supporting this line was military commander Ram Bahadur Thapa ‘Badal’ — now defence minister who will be winging his way to China on September 22 for a bilateral visit.
But the Battle of Khara intervened.
The first battle of Khara was an attack by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the Nepal Army in the mid-western district of Rukum in May 2002. More than 100 Maoists were killed in this battle. For reasons best known to the Maoist leadership — we can now surmise that it must have been at Prachanda’s insistence — decided to attack the Army at the same place again in 2005.
Presumably Prachanda thought this would be his great military victory, his Napoleonic triumph — for around the same time, Bhattarai and Hisila Yami were demoted by the politburo to the level of ordinary party members. Restraints were placed on their movements: by now Bhattarai had begun arguing at all Maoist fora that the military route was not the only way to toppling the monarchy and seizing state power. Bhattarai attacked his opponents as “those who consider feudal autocracy as more progressive than capitalistic democracy”.
But, in fact, the 2005 battle was a disaster for the Maoists. 350 cadres died. Bhattarai stood up, vindicated in his victory by the Maoist defeat.
But this is where Prachanda the statesman began surfacing. In November 2005, India helped Nepalese political forces agree to the Delhi Declaration, where the Maoists decided to join the overground movement for the overthrow of the monarchy. In June 2006, when Prachanda addressed the Hindustan Times Summit, a questioner asked if the Maoists had given up armed struggle. “Yes, we have,” Prachanda replied.
This is why Prachanda’s visit to India is so important. He has shown flexibility to an extraordinary degree and India, understandably, hopes to build on this. He has also resisted traditional India-baiting as a form of politics (in the old days, the Kosi disaster would have become a major diplomatic incident for political football in Nepal with India as the football — never mind that it is India who is as much the victim).
India must have shared its perspective on the changed Prachanda with the United States because despite being on the Terrorists Exclusion List, Prachanda goes to the United Nations General Assembly (with wife and son: he is a family man and never goes anywhere without his wife) later this month. Baburam Bhattarai, having just presented the budget, is preparing to travel to New York for a meeting with the World Bank.
It would be only too easy to crow over ‘defanged’ Maoists and sneer at how they’ve fallen in line. But they also have to be supported for they have — temporarily — given up their most vital belief, armed struggle, in the interest of peace and democracy. For this, Prachanda deserves to be congratulated as a statesman.
He has no dearth of problems: he has to run a coalition in which Maoist ministers are attacking the non-Maoists, Nepal’s economy is shot, he needs to run a party, rein in the Young Communist League, address the issue of nationalities in Nepal and somehow find the time to help draft a constitution. The people have high expectations: they demand to know how, despite Nepal’s hydroelectric potential, the country has to endure hours of load-shedding every day, there are long queues for petrol and diesel although there is no war on now, and there are no jobs. But at least now, Prachanda shows responsibility and promise. And he has shown that he cannot be baited.
