[News] Angels and Demons in Nepal

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/chandra05242006.html

May 24, 2006


Inside the People's Movement


Angels and Demons in Nepal

By PRATYUSH CHANDRA

Today, the talk of people's power in Nepal is the 
order of the day. Even the Mainstream Media, 
Moriarty, Manmohan and their intellectual goons 
are full of that. Evidently they are having 
hysterical fits intensified by the return of the 
Cold War paranoia. The possibility of the 
Maoists' coming over ground and their 
revolutionary agenda -- targeting the Nepali 
dependency -- being constitutionalized is 
definitely a grave crisis for Indo-American 
imperialism in South Asia. And in order to have a 
scope for diplomatic engineering, they need 
sanitized expressions like people's movement, 
people's power etc without identifying who the 
people are and without detailing their demands.

Definitely the mainstream hatred against the 
Maoists knows no bound. The media campaign to 
denigrate the Maoists has never been so vigorous 
as now, showing the crisis and desperation in the 
imperialist camp -- its failure to color and 
control the democratic upsurge in Nepal as in 
East Europe and other parts of the world. As one 
of the coup organizers against Chavez in 
Venezuela, Vice Admiral Ramírez Pérez told a 
private channel just after the coup on April 11, 
2002, "We had a deadly weapon: the media." And as 
Pablo Neruda, once reminded us, "He's the 
skulking coward hired to praise dirty hands. He's 
an orator or journalist. Suddenly he surfaces in 
the palace enthusiastically masticating the sovereign's dejections".


1. People's Movement: a New Phase in the People's War?

Just a cursory reading of the mainstream media 
headlines on Nepal and the Maoists today show 
that they increasingly concentrate on Maoist 
"extortions" and other "criminal" activities. One 
needs to just go through the reports under those 
headlines to have a glimpse of the conscious game 
plan. Only to cite a couple of examples:

1. As reported, recently, Indian company Dabur 
suspended its operations in Nepal. The headline 
and the first paragraph of the report in 
Telegraph (May 20), one of the mainstream 
newspapers in India, told it was because the 
company refused "to buckle under the extortion 
threats of the Maoist rebels". But the same 
report subsequently went on: "The 
Maoist-affiliated trade union, All Nepal Trade 
Union Federation (ANTUF), on May 15 issued a 
22-point charter of demands to all the units in 
the Bara-Parsa-Birgunj industrial belt. They 
demanded scrapping of the labour contract system, 
payment of a minimum monthly wage of Rs 5,000 and 
provisions of housing, medicare and education 
facilities to the workers and their families. The 
union warned of dire consequences if its demands 
were not met within a week." So the genuine 
workers movement and its demands in the Nepali 
sweatshops controlled by Indian imperialists are extortions.

2. The prestigious International Federation of 
Journalists (IFJ) issued a media release on May 
19, where a subheading said - "Maoists attack 
radio station" (later "attack" was changed to 
"threaten"). It is obvious that many people who 
have the habit of reading just headlines will 
interpret -- Oh! These gun-trotting "polpotists" 
must have raided the radio station. But no! "The 
Maoist-aligned All Nepal Trade Union Federation 
issued a letter on May 12, 2006 accusing the two 
FM radio stations of exploiting their respective 
staffs, dismissing staff without reason, extreme 
excesses and mental torture of the staff, and 
called for the immediate termination of the 
Kalika FM station director, alleging him to be a 
pro-royalist." So, this was an attack!

In order to understand the impact of such 
unambiguous media reports, one needs to remember 
how even a great novelist from the Left Jose 
Saramago went on to dub the great guerrilla 
movement under the Frente Armada Revolucionaria 
de Colombia (FARC) as an "armed gang" dedicated 
"to kidnapping, murdering, violating human 
rights." One can only imagine what will happen in the case of Nepal.

The international left movement divided into 
innumerable sects is taking its toll on the 
Nepali movement too. So we find even sober 
Marxist analysts indulging in subjective analyses 
of the peasant movement in Nepal displaying their 
rich repertoire of inter-sect abuses ready for 
the Maoists just because they have learnt from 
the Chinese peasant movement and call themselves 
Maoists. The irresponsible reactive armchair 
leftism ever online enamored of the rights 
discourse and neutrality too in its efforts to 
justify its own passivity is increasingly 
involved in this media redbaiting. As James 
Petras noted in his open letter to Saramago (Counterpunch, December 22, 2004):

"[T]here are many types of "communists" today: 
Those who stole the public patrimony of Russia 
and became notable oligarchs; Those who 
collaborate with the US colonial regime in Iraq; 
Those who have struggled for forty years in the 
factories, jungles and countryside of Colombia 
for a society without classes; And those 
"communists" who fear the problem (imperialism) 
and fear the solution (popular revolution) and 
make it all a question of personal preferences."

All kinds of media and ideological manipulations 
are going on endeavoring to disrupt the New Phase 
of People's War in Nepal -- its extension to the 
urban streets with its own peculiarities, to the 
urban proletarian struggle - with the increased 
Maoist interventions in urban mobilization and 
trade union activities. We find rosy words being 
showered on the People, while denigrating their 
War. The rightists, "leftists" and imperialists 
are all united in this propaganda campaign.

Personalities who were never on the streets to 
suffer police beatings and face bullets were the 
first ones to declare victory of the People's 
Movement with the King's pronouncements. The 
desperate Indo-US imperialism and its media touts 
were booed when they prematurely partied after 
the King's April 21 invitation to the parties to 
name the prime minister, which every force in the 
movement duly rejected, including the nervous 
parliamentary leaders. However the panicky 
US-EU-India interests ultimately found loyal 
agency in this "responsible leadership" when it 
unilaterally accepted the April 24 declaration 
restoring the defunct parliament.

And thus started the sanitization program -- of 
talking about People's War vs. People's Movement, 
of the failure of the first against the successes 
of the latter as proof of the virtue of 
non-violence. The hidden agenda is very apparent, 
that is to restore the sanctified institutions of 
State Terror while disarming the People by 
preaching them non-violence. The neutral apostles 
of Human Rights do this by treating the State's 
offence at par with the Popular defense. 
Imperialisms do this via their "Community Faces" 
too - through well funded "Civil Society" groups 
and NGOs, who specialize in administering and 
selling the social agenda of Neoliberalism, 
providing "Social Cushion" in the face of the 
growing marginalization and social unrest. As 
perfect plainclothesmen, all these apostles of 
non-violence can be spotted here and there in the 
Nepali unrest with their clear job of policing 
the movement from within. After the so-called 
"victory" of April 24, their additional job has 
been to write anecdotes about their participation 
in the "Turn-the-other-cheek-Revolution" with the 
mainstream and "civil society" media ever ready 
to channel the processes of sanitization and betrayal.

In this regard, it suffices to quote Black 
revolutionary Malcolm X who was himself the 
epitome of Popular Suffering, Anger and Movement 
right in the belly of the beast:

"I don't go for anything that's non-violent and 
turn-the-other-cheekish. I don't see how any 
revolution-I've never heard of a non-violent 
revolution or a revolution that was brought about 
by turning the other cheek, and so I believe that 
it is a crime for anyone to teach a person who is 
being brutalized to continue to accept that 
brutality without doing something to defend 
himself. If this is what the Christian-Gandhian 
philosophy teaches then it is criminal-a criminal philosophy."

2. The Nepali Movement Beyond Sectism

There is far more to a movement than just its 
personalities and ideologico-cultural labels - 
Zapatistas, Chavistas and Maoists. However, there 
is always a mainstream tendency to relegate these 
movements to a few personalities, symbols and 
ideological lineages. This definitely benefits 
the status quo as the movements are effectively 
portrayed as sects with some innate pathological 
tendencies. The failures and problems of the 
older movements whose idioms the present 
movements have adopted and adapted to mobilize 
and organize the masses are extrapolated to 
vilify the latter. The fundamental issues of the 
changed conjuncture and the composition of the 
movements are effectively swept aside through 
this exercise, ideologically arming the status 
quo to contravene the 'subversive' forces.

Feeding to this is the widespread sectism 
prevalent within the Left, which aids the 
hegemonic forces in this regard. The leftist 
dissection, labeling and libeling are more 
effective than any repression and mainstream 
media propaganda in forming and deforming the 
opinion, as they can be projected as internal 
dissensions. Karl Marx while summarizing his 
experience in the First International rightly 
notes in his letter to Friedrich Bolte (November 23, 1871):

"The development of the system of Socialist sects 
and that of the real workers' movement always 
stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as 
the sects are (historically) justified, the 
working class is not yet ripe for an independent 
historic movement. As soon as it has attained 
this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary."

The recent upheaval in Nepal has once again 
brought this sectism to the center-stage as 
people everywhere are trying to cope up with the 
Maoist element in it. We find Mao's failures and 
Pol Pot's barbarism discussed more than what the 
Nepali Maoists have done in Nepal - how they have 
energized the issues of land, land reforms, 
decadent forms of gender, national and ethnic 
oppressions, neo-liberal commercialization, 
distress migration etc as their central concerns.

In the hands of the Maoists, the issue of the 
constituent assembly, which was forgotten by the 
democrats, became a rallying point for uniting 
the rural and urban downtrodden. It was the 
Maoists' strength with the growing influence of 
their slogans and radicalism on the lower 
leadership and the mass base of the petty 
bourgeois parliamentary parties that shattered 
the Nepali ruling machinery's ability to control 
the growing rage of the people's war. Eventually 
the 1990 historic "compromise" between the 
royalty and the democrats brokered by the 
imperialist interests in the region collapsed 
leading to the latter's historic alliance with the Maoists in 2005.

This alliance triggered the mass upsurge that we 
witnessed throughout April this year. The 
imperialist onlookers were awe-stricken by the 
response to the General Strike called by the 
Seven Party Alliance facilitated by the 
unilateral ceasefire declared by the Maoists in 
the Kathmandu region with an increased armed 
assault on the (then Royal) Nepalese Army in 
other regions. US Ambassador went on with his 
rumor mongering and presented the situation as 
"pre-revolutionary" in one of his interviews, 
which was correct but was meant to terrorize the 
Nepali petty bourgeois leaders and mobilize 
international opinion against the 
revolutionaries. India, who has the history of 
utilizing the unequal treaties with Nepal for 
changing the internal political arrangement that 
best suited India's interests that necessarily 
used to include a cosmetic democracy, this time 
was (and is) desperate to preserve the monarchy. 
However the Indian response has been moderated 
due to the immense mobilization within India in 
solidarity with the Nepali democracy movement.

The petty bourgeois leaders of the parliamentary 
parties feared direct action in the rocking 
streets and burning fields of Nepal destroying 
every institution that mothered them. Instead of 
the path of revolution, they chose the path of 
legislation, which allows manipulation and 
compromise. Afraid of the revolutionary 
'uncertainty' they found a ready opportunity to 
withdraw their support to the movement when the 
King restored their parliamentary privileges. But 
the movement continued as the Maoists and the 
grassroots of these parties rejected this 
compromise and sustained the spontaneous upsurge 
in popular consciousness, ever vigilant of the 
old leadership returning to its old habits and 
forcing some concrete progressive "concessions" 
that we hear in the news today.


3. Hands Off Nepal: Rebuff the possible 'Plan Nepal'

Today, most dangerously, all imperialist 
manipulations, media propaganda and the 
parliamentary drunkenness in Nepal might prepare 
the background for something like Plan Colombia, 
which derailed the similar process of 
overgrounding of the peasant and people's upsurge 
in Colombia under the leadership of the FARC. The 
FARC in 1999-2001 suspended their armed struggle 
and negotiated with the Pastrana regime, 
insisting on a demilitarized zone, putting forth 
"a political program of agrarian reform, national 
public control of strategic resources, and 
massive public works programs to generate jobs". 
All these radical measures were destined to 
destroy the reactionary political economic 
institutions that allowed the imperialist network 
to operate in the country, devastating the 
peasantry, indebting the economy and entrenching 
corruption in the state structure. Therefore, 
"with the backing of the US government the 
Pastrana regime abruptly broke off negotiations 
and launched an attack on the demilitarized zone" 
and restarted funding, training and arming the 
drug traffickers and private armies of the 
landlords as para-military forces to harass and destroy the people's movement.

There are well-documented evidences of the drug 
mafia network under the CIA of which "The King of 
Nepal" has been an important part. Last year 
there were reports that Crown Prince Paras "has 
been allegedly in the drug business for seven 
years, but his stakes and that of the Nepali 
royal family have grown by leaps and bounds in 
the last few years[T]he crown prince is now 
reported to be operating his network beyond South 
Asia." (Newsinsight.net, July 6, 2005) With the 
history of the linkages between the drug trade 
and the US' counter-insurgency drive, one cannot 
ignore the possibility of a Plan Nepal in the 
pipeline until and unless the revolutionary 
Nepali people are vigilant enough forcing the 
country's ever shaky "democratic" leadership to 
facilitate the 'overgrounding' of the Maoists and 
the crushing of the military leadership trained 
for imperialist wars, thus thwarting the danger 
of any imperialist manipulation.

Remember the US insists to keep the Maoists on 
their terror list, which allows it to intervene 
and manipulate regimes beyond the seven seas for 
their domestic security interests. The first 
thing that the US did after "welcoming" the April 
24 proclamation was to sit with the military 
leaders, not even with the King. The 
parliamentary forces might remove R(oyalty) from 
the name of every institution, might add Secular 
in the official name of Nepal, but the country 
needs the negation of the whole system nurtured 
by 200 years of semi-colonialism, that allowed 
the imperialist powers to use the Nepali people, 
army and resources as reserve for crushing 
liberation struggles internationally (in India, 
Afghanistan among others), as canon-fodder. And 
all these in exchange with a promise that the 
Nepali royalty and elite could handshake and dine 
with the White Royalty, while the Nepali people 
suffered dual exploitation, and later, in 
exchange with rents in the form of foreign aid.

In the age of neo-liberalism, when the Nepali 
soldiers are not sent for killing, they can be 
used as guinea pigs too for pharmaceutical 
researches. Recently, there was news about "the 
American government's exploitation of Nepali 
soldiers as human guinea pigs to find a Hepatitis 
vaccine." As Jason Andrews wrote in The American Journal of Bioethics:

"Noting the millions of dollars, military 
training, and arms that the State Department and 
Military have been giving to the RNA to help them 
put down the Maoist rebellion, it seems plausible 
that the resultant military and economic 
dependence of the host institution/population 
(RNA) upon the research sponsor (the U.S. 
Military) threatened the voluntary nature of the 
institutional and individual participation in the 
trial. That is, the RNA probably was not in a 
good position to say 'no' to the small request by their generous benefactor."

Servility and loyalty towards global imperialism 
entrenched in the Nepali state structure and 
elites can never be removed only by legislations 
-- it needs a complete structural transformation, 
it needs a revolution, which has just begun and 
can go anywhere from here. With the growing 
imperialist counseling to the newly formed Nepali 
government, and the consensual ideological 
campaign endeavoring to alienate the movement 
from its revolutionary leadership through 
'neutral' rights discourse and by media, any 
complacency on the part of the revolutionary 
masses of Nepal at this juncture will curb the 
process of democratization of the Nepali society and state.

Pratyush Chandra can be reached at: 
<mailto:ch.pratyush at gmail.com>ch.pratyush at gmail.com


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