Monday, October 03, 2005

Militarists, Maoists, Monotones, Dorambaites, Naxalites


You've got to name names. There is naming and shaming.

What I used to call monarchists, they have been misnamed. They are Militarists. In India they have Naxalites, in Nepal you have Dorambaites. And then you have the Monotones, my dear fellow democrats, Girija the most visible member.

There is some general somewhere who authored Operation Doramba. He said, go mess things up. If there is peace, we become irrelevant. That person or clique can be tracked down. If not now, then after the democratic government takes over.

The authors of Operation Palpa can be tracked down, if not now then later.

Armies are designed to fight foreign enemies. But we live in a day and age when national boundaries have achieved a near permanent status. So the army needs an enemy, and if it be domestic, then so be it. The dog needs its food, it will dig for it if necessary.

One name for the Indian Maoists is that they are Naxalites. There is a place called Naxal. Like there is a Jhapa in Nepal, there is a Naxal in India. They kickstarted their movement there. And hence the name.

In Nepal, you have Doramba. The army decided it was going to show who was in-charge. An army that is on the people's payroll, a mafia army. A ragtag army nearly out of ammunition, hounding the black markets of the world for supplies. The state army itself has become a guerrilla army, universally disapproved of and despised. It looked into the mirror so long, it itself became the mirror.

Hitler had gas chambers. The militarists in Nepal have army barracks. It does not matter if it is the innocent that are being tortured, although it would also matter even if the Maoists were, as some are. They beat, they electrocute, they kill. Then they deny. Ostrich birds might have table manners, these RNA generals don't.

When you torture the Maoists, and the innocents, mostly innocents, overwhelmingly, when you torture the journalists, you feel like you are doing your job. It is the prison experiment. The utter powerlessness of a prisoner arouses the worst instincts of the captor. It is psychology.

They think the international regime is a joke. Laws of war are a joke. As long as they are within the boundaries of Nepal, they are okay as long as they are in power.

Even fools get their last laughs.

The king is the ringleader of the Militarists. Tulsi Giri is the court clown. He likes to humor the media.

And then you have Girija. He fought for democracy for decades. He hijacked a plane. And then, boom, there was democracy in 1990, and it has been downhill ever since. To be in power is to be crowned with thorns. To be out of power is to be in exile.

There is a clause in the constitution: Girija-says-so. Revive House, revive House, revive House.

It is an utter dead end. There is no escape, no breathing room. There is no glamor to it. It is just Girija going round and round in circles. He is in no hurry. As long as there is a democracy movement, Girija will feel relevant. As soon as there is democracy, Girija is going to feel irrelevant all over again. Because then you have to deal with policy, with governance issues, with issues in economic growth and social justice.

The Dorambaites are getting desperate. It is a clique. It can not be too many people. The army, just like the bureaucracy, is an inefficient institution. That clique can be bleached out. That clique is the enemy of peace. Those are the king's pets.

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