Open Forum

New Delhi, 24 December 2009

Indian Communists’ Gift

A MONSTER CALLED PRACHANDA

By Prakash Nanda

The Indian Communists have always had an influence on the country’s polity and foreign policy that is inversely proportional to their real strength. Their pockets of strength have vastly eroded over the years. They have some strength left in only three States -- West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, though it is almost certain now that their governments in the former two will be overthrown in the next round of elections, not far away.

Yet the Communists wield considerable influence in many walks of life. They dominate totally in the education sector. No wonder why India’s record is so poor as far as fresh ideas, particularly in social sciences, are concerned. Indian media, specifically the English media, is virtually dictated by the Leftist elements. So is the case with non-government sectors.

Until recently, the Communists were the allies of the UPA government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. They parted company following the vexed nuclear deal that the Manmohan Singh government concluded with the US last year. However, by the time they left, they had done enough damage to India’s long-term interests in the realm of foreign policy.

The Communists literally threatened the then minority government of Singh to close its eyes on China’s various acts of omission and commission having deleterious impact on India, be it China’s claims on Indian territories, or Beijing’s anti-India policies in international organisations, or dubious and unfair business activities of the Chinese companies in and outside India hurting the country’s interests.     

But there is another Communist legacy that the Manmohan Singh government is regretting now. Under Communist pressure in 2007, the Ministry of External Affairs literally handed over its Nepal desk to the Communist leader Sitaram Yechuri, who, along with his comrades, facilitated the virtual Maoist-takeover of Nepal. Yechuri brokered a so-called peace deal in September 2007 between the seven-party democratic alliance and the Maoists who had been engaged in a 10-year insurgency in which nearly 13,000 people were killed. Under Yechuri’s dictation, New Delhi treated the then fugitive Prachanda, supreme leader of the Maoists in Nepal, as a son-in law, who, under Indian tradition, gets limitless pampering.

What was the Communist logic then? The anti-democratic King had to go and democracy to be ushered in. The King has gone for good, but Nepal is far from a being a democracy. And who has gained the most? It is Prachanda and his Maoists, who openly now say that they do not believe in democracy and simply cannot simply co-exist with it.  

When he was the Prime Minister last year, Prachanda could not take the rest of Nepal’s democratic forces with him. He wanted his so-called “People’s Liberation Army” to virtually take over the country’s Armed forces, a most unthinkable goal. Imagine a situation when Nepal is led by a non-Maoist but democratically elected Prime Minister or President, but the merged PLA, now legitimately a part of the Armed forces, defies the orders of the government.     

Obviously, that was not acceptable to the genuinely democratic forces of Nepal. Prachanda resigned in protest. Nepal now has an alternate government, whose main job is to ratify a new Constitution for the country following which fresh rounds of elections will be held. But Prachanda has virtually gone berserk. His armed goons have literally seized the capital Katmandu and many other cities.

Worse, on blatantly communal or ethnic lines, Prachanda’s goons are declaring autonomy in many areas. Over the past two weeks, they have unilaterally declared 13 new “states.” They are openly saying they will not allow a new Constitution to be written as suggested under 2007 plan and that from January they will not allow the present government to continue.

Prachanda’s theme is simple: Either you make me the supreme or be prepared for consequences.  Literally, the Nepali Maoists have declared a war on Nepal’s nascent democracy.  Prachanda’s deputies are openly saying that their earlier stand on supporting the Yechuri-brokered plan was only “tactical”. 

In other words, Prachanda wants to establish another monarchy in Nepal. And he wants to ensure that Nepal has no other effective political forces to oppose him. He wants the institution of the Chinese political system in Nepal – where none other than the Maoists can rule. 

In retrospect, it was a monumental blunder on New Delhi’s part that Yechuri, and through him the then beleaguered Manmohan Singh government, brought Prachanda to the centre stage of Nepal politics, though he never had a popular mandate; he was essentially a terrorist, supported and armed by China and Pakistan’s ISI. 

No wonder then that soon after Prachanda became the Prime Minister the two countries that benefited the most were China and Pakistan. Beijing has managed to get many sensitive projects, including the making of roads and infrastructures adjacent to the Indian border. Tibetans have been expelled and their offices have been forcibly closed down. A predominantly Hindu nation, Nepal has been made “secular” and thousands of mosques have been built with Pakistani and Saudi Arabian money on the Indo-Nepalese border.

Prachanda now says that his real enemy is India. He asserted on Tuesday (December 22) that after assuming office he would abrogate the India-Nepal Peace and Friendship Treaty and recaptures territories that were “illegally” lost to India, when the latter was under the British rule. Prachanda is also openly saying that his comrades have close links with Indian Maoists, who, in turn, now constitute India’s gravest internal security threat.        

One does not know what Yechuri and his comrades now think of a monster called Prachanda. But, given their history, they have no reasons to regret. After all, they had opposed India’s struggle for independence. They had openly sided with China when it attacked India in 1962. In fact, they had taken disciplinary action against a leading comrade of theirs when during the 62 war the concerned comrade (he is Chief Minister of Kerala) had donated blood for the fighting soldiers on the battlefront.

Coming back to Prachanda, what should India do if he manages to establish his fascist rule in Nepal? The best thing is to abrogate the 1950 treaty unilaterally. After all, this is a treaty that allows Nepal more transit points that are normally allowed to a landlocked country under international law. This is the treaty that keeps India-Nepal border open, a feature that helps the Nepalese thousand times more than the Indians. It is this treaty that allows Nepalese to take any number of jobs in India.

Let us see how a Nepal under Prachanda manages normally like an independent country, not under India’s benevolence as is the case now, with features that in reality do more harm than good to Indian interests. Let us ask Prachanda to take back millions of Nepalese working in India. Let every Nepali secure a visa to come to India. Let the open border between Nepal and India be closed. And let Prachanda export what he says is all his country’s abundant hydropower to China (through satellites?). --- INFA   

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)