Monday, February 28, 2005

Major Indian Support For Democracy In Nepal


Nepal Democracy Solidarity Convention
Organized by the political parties and groups of India
24 February 2005
Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi

Chandra Shekhar, Former Prime Minister: Any human who pretends to be a god, who wants to be a god will be destroyed completely. This king does not seem keen to learn and think. He wants to subdue the wishes of the tens of million of people for his personal ambition ..... If the king does not change immediately, more actions from India are necessary ..... I wish the king of Nepal had some brain.

Harkishan Singh Surjeet, General Secretary, CPI (M): The king has murdered people’s democracy in Nepal ...... We will not give any chance to this autocrat. Our government is solidly behind you.

Dipankar Bhattacharya, General Secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist): .....the absolute king is back. This time, this monarchy needs to be abolished completely ..... If our government supports this regime in Nepal we will wage a struggle against our government from here ..... Nepal will certainly be a people democratic republic soon.

Romesh Bhandari - Central Working Committee Member, Indian National Congress: The king needs to learn that suppressing people is going to be dangerous for monarchy. I had told Birendra once, “look at what happened in Iran, how the king had to flee, learn from that" ..... People are like steam. If you suppress them they will burst. The more the king suppresses the people, the more dangerous it will be for him ..... The king should take back his step immediately. We warn him.

Dev Brat Bishwas, General Secretary, Forward Block: .....all of India is with Nepal, the people of Nepal, and for the movement for democracy. We give you complete support for your democracy movement ..... This king - how did he dare take this step? ..... We are the largest democracy in the world. We have to support democracy movements, especially in our neighboring country Nepal, with which we have special ties. We believe you will start a joint movement soon.

Prof. Bimal Prasad , Former Indian Ambassador to Nepal: We should not forget the Nepal issue after a few months ..... The Indian government had issued strong statement immediately after the king’s move. But statement by themselves mean little if not followed by concrete action ..... we don’t know how long the fight will go on for ..... I never trusted this king’s motives. This is a very cunning man (ye bahut dhurt aadmi hai). I know him since long. Maybe he’s compulsive.

Surendra Mohan, Senior Socialist Leader: The kings of Nepal have always been against democracy. After the coup of 1960, it took 30 years for democracy to be restored. But this time it won’t take that long. .... The political parties in Nepal, you need to go against monarchy now

Anand Sharma - Spokesperson and Member of Central Working Committee, Indian National Congress: You need to amend this constitution so that such type of incidents can never repeat in the future.

Vijay Pratap, Coordinator, Socialist Front: Now you have a clear choice to make - monarchy or democracy. The dark Feb 1 was a blessing in disguise..... I appeal to each political party in India to form a special Nepal cell..... The BJP needs to apologize to the nation, if you can’t get the Vishhow Hindu Parishad to retract its statement supporting the king’s coup...... What the king of Nepal did has nothing to do with Hinduism. ..... Differences will remain in terms of ideology. Such differences should indeed remain. But, you can still have a working unity. The Maoists should also realize this. ..... The Maoists support multi-party democracy only as a strategy, not as an objective. They need to compromise with the democratic political parties

A. B. Bardhan, General Secretary, Communist Party of India: The king has asked for three years. He wants three years to consolidate his autocracy. I tell you, this time, he will not have three years. See what happens within three months ..... The prime minister invited us in the evening of 1 February to discuss the situation in Nepal. I told him that evening that India should immediately stop military aid to this autocrat..... This king will not survive for long. .... The Nepali Maoists are Nepalis and the Indian Maoists are Indians. They are separate. India should not be paranoid about the Nepali Maoists...... We need to be conscious that this agenda should not die down after a few months.

Dilip Singh Bhuriya, President, Jan Bikash Congress: We are the largest democracy in the world. But in our neighbor democracy has been strangulated. Nepal is burning now.

Brija Bhusan Tiwari, Senior Leader, Samajwadi Party: My electoral constituency is near to the Nepal border. I have been meeting many Nepali friends. I was suspecting for long that this king would take such a step. He has always been against the people. He has been against the Nepali people of Indian origin ..... We need to put so much pressure on him that he is forced to retract his step.

Surendra Shastri, President, Jay Jawan Jay Kishan Party: He has always been against democracy.

Ramesh Dixit, Professor, Luckhnow University: This is rare occasion and issue in India in which, for the first time, political forces ranging from CPI(ML) to the Congress are together at the same stage. Interestingly, one former prime minister of India inaugurated this event, and another former prime minister is going to close it.

VP Singh, Former Prime Minister of India: For India, the important issue is not the king, but the nation..... we do away with autocracy and reinstate democracy without any mess, very cleanly. As they say, lets skim off the fat, without disturbing the milk.
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Sunday, February 27, 2005

Ideological Overture To The Nepali Maoists


Maoism, or for that matter, Marxism, or Leninism, if followed like a dogma, leads one to a dead end. It has to be seen as a guidepost at most, and as one might apply it to one's local conditions, as the Nepali Maoists have tried to do, one has always to be taking into account the facts on the ground, as they stand and as they emerge, as well as lessons that can be drawn when Maoism was applied in other parts of the world, mostly to bloody, inhuman conclusions, like in Peru and Cambodia. If the Nepali Maoists were to ignore all facts on the ground, as well as those from distant lands, they end up being a closed cult, a dictatorial organization that leads its followers to disaster, and self-destructs its "movement" after the "fuel" might have run out, like that of a forest fire, taking a life of its own, coming to an end on its own, leaving little, if anything, in the form of legacy.

On the other hand, the Nepali Maoists can claim the theory of Maoism as their guidepost and inspiration that they have tried to apply to Nepali conditions out of a deep sense of patriotism as well as a non-compromising allegiance to social justice. And as they constantly seek empirical evidence to support their claims and goals, always keeping an open mind, not only to members of their organization, but also to those from other organizations with different ideologies, there is a possibility these Nepali Maoists could make major contributions to Nepali society, and help herald a new era of social justice, but only if they learn to harness the power of peace, compromise, and coalition-building, as they have harnessed the power of armed insurgency, and repeated statements that echo each other, only if they finally come around to the idea of co-existence with other political parties within a peaceful multi-party framework.

From the Encyclopedia Britannica Online: "Maoism has clearly represented a revolutionary method based on a distinct revolutionary outlook not necessarily dependent on a Chinese or Marxist-Leninist context ..... The young Mao was a nationalist, and his sentiments had been strongly anti-Western and anti-imperialist even before he became attracted to Marxism-Leninism about 1919–20...... Mao's nationalism combined with a personal trait of combativeness to make him admire the martial spirit, which became a cornerstone of Maoism...... Mao's political ideas crystallized slowly. He had a mentality that was opportunistic and wary of ideological niceties...... China's hundreds of millions of peasants, for he saw potential energy in them by the very fact that they were “poor and blank” ..... For a time after the creation of the Chinese Communist state in 1949, Mao Zedong attempted to conform to the Stalinist model of “building Socialism.” In the mid-1950s, however, he and his advisers reacted against the results of this policy, which included the growth of a rigid and bureaucratic Communist Party, and the emergence of managerial and technocratic elites—accepted in other countries, especially the Soviet Union, as concomitants of industrial growth...... Maoism's alternative to growth led by elites and bureaucracies was to be growth brought about by revolutionary enthusiasm and mass struggle. Maoism undertook to pit the collective will of human beings against the customary and rational dictates of economics and industrial management. The violent excesses of Maoism and its inability to achieve sustained economic growth led after the Chairman's death to a new emphasis on education and management professionalism, and by the 1980s Maoism appeared to be celebrated mainly as a relic of the late leader."

Also here: "His thought was complex, a Marxist type of analysis combined with the permanent fundamentals of Chinese thought and culture...... and the necessity of struggling against bureaucracy, wastage, and corruption in a country of 600,000,000 to 700,000,000 inhabitants, where very old civilizations and cultures still permeated both the bourgeois classes and the peasantry, where bureaucracy was thoroughly entrenched, and where the previous society was extremely corrupt..... In his effort to remain close to the Chinese peasant masses, Mao drew upon an idea of nature and a symbolism found in popular Chinese Taoism, though transformed by his Marxism. It can be seen in his many poems, which were written in the classical Chinese style."

Like Mao broke with the Soviets, the Nepali Maoists should have the guts to break with Mao himself, the most important might be to do with violence. Real social change ultimately exists in a realm of peace. That peace has to be part of the Maoists' vision. It has to be added to their portfolio.

The first step could be an aggressive overture on their part to the Nepali parties with a vision of a Democratic Republic, with a Constituent Assembly as a first step, with a clear willingness to accept the verdict of the people, even if it might come in the form not of a Democratic Republic, but in the form of a reformed Constitutinoal Monarchy, and Multi-Party Democracy. They could still hope to mobilize the public opinion in some later referendum to turn the country into a Democratic Republic.

The second step could be to work within the multi-party framework to create a Nepal that (1) abolishes the army, just as the Maoists disband their own armed units, (2) dramatically increases state expenditures on education upto the secondary level, and primary health care, making both free of cost and universal, and letting the poor have universal access to micro-credit to start small businesses, and (3) bans fund-raising by political parties, and instead the parties get funds for party building and election campaigns from the state that is directly proportional to the number of votes they might have earned in the last held national elections.

The vision becomes one of attempting to create a classism-less society through peaceful, democratic means, the way of the ballot box. Classism-less, as different from classless. Classism-less allows for diversity in income due to the fundamental role of the market in wealth creation, but it does its very best to make sure no person's socio-economic background prevents that person from reaching his or her maximum potential.

I urge the Nepali Maoists to take their ideology to the next level by breaking up with Mao himself so as to no longer be a slave to a way of thinking that necessarily depends on unending violence, as if it were a group addiction, and not an intermediate step to liberation.

Paramendra's Reading Lists: Maoism
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