Let me start with the second occasion first.
November 2008. Prachanda was visiting Delhi as the head of Nepal’s delegation to the second summit of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).
I had gone to the Oberoi to meet a visiting minister of Prachanda’s delegation. I called from the lobby and was asked to go to the floor where the minister was staying.
“Hurry,” the security person, who answered the phone, said.
Once off the elevator at the floor, the security screened me quickly, almost perfunctorily, and asked me to turn left into the hallway.
“Quickly, quickly,” he said, far less politely than he had been on the phone earlier.
As I turned into the hallway, I realized what the need for haste had been about. Prachanda was about to arrive. Security wanted the hallway clear.
REPUBLICA
Prachanda stepped off the elevator flanked by a posse of security and an aide carrying a large bouquet of flowers. For a man with an assumed title of ‘Fierce One,’ Prachanda had a surprisingly disarming visage, a charming smile and a radiance that was unmistakable even in the fluorescent lit hallway of the Oberoi. But I was distracted by the flowers.
Many years later, when recounting the story to a friend over a beer, I would jokingly remark, “All Nepali leaders invariably go to Delhi with great aspirations for this or that agreement and all they return home with is a bouquet of flowers. At least the flowers are damn nice and probably smell good for days.”
At the BIMSTEC summit in Delhi, Pranchanda’s address contained an invitation to invest in hydropower in Nepal. Two months earlier, during his first state visit to India, opportunities in Nepal’s hydro had also been his key message for Indian businesses. Within the next five years, Kathmandu would begin to post daily power cuts of 16 hours.
September 2008. I first saw Prachanda in person in Delhi during his state visit to India. I was on my way to work when I learned that Prachanda would be addressing Indian businesses in Hotel TajMansingh. I turned around, drove to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and finagled an invitation to the event.
The event started with speeches from several Indian and Nepali industry representatives. Nobody was listening. Everyone’s attention was on the man in the centre of the dais wearing a finely cut suit with a large double-knotted red silk tie, who sat there without distraction patiently waiting his turn at the podium. Will he speak in English or Nepali, I wondered.
“Nepal is in a very delicate and sensitive transition period,” Prachanda began in English when it was his turn to speak. From there he launched briefly into an attack on the old regime and how they were continuing to be an obstacle to Nepal’s transition, before focusing the rest of his speech on business issues.
The monarchy had been vanquished. Nepal had been declared a secular state. Prachanda was firmly in place as Prime Minister and head of the government. Who was this old regime that still kept tripping him up, I wondered.
I looked around the room. Every member of the Nepali business delegation that had accompanied the Prime Minister on his visit had benefited to some extent from dispensation from previous regimes. Should they be held liable for the follies of the old regime?
I looked at myself. I would be foolish to believe that I’ve not benefited somehow, directly or indirectly, from my relative position of privilege in the hierarchy of Nepal’s unequal society. Would I be held liable for the follies of the old regime?
I would never have slung a rifle and followed Prachanda in his war. I would never have condoned the violence he unleashed. I would never have joined the YCL. But I, and possibly many others like me, welcomed the socio-economic-political changes that Prachanda ushered in. Centuries of deeply entrenched inequality and injustice needed to be challenged. Prachanda, from his humble beginnings as a school teacher, had done what was unimaginable in Nepali society.
But as I listened to Prachanda highlight the challenges and factions that undermined his stewardship of the country, I saw a leader, who after having won a long and bitter struggle, hadn’t quite realized what he had accomplished. He was still looking back, not forward, caught up in the same grouses of the past that he had already overcome.
Prachanda sounded like a revolutionary in search of an enemy. Perhaps, it hadn’t occurred to him that he was already the victor.
That afternoon, while the world media reported about a Maoist Prime Minister seeking private sector investments for Nepal, I heard a man who disappointed many young Nepalis.
Over the next few years, Prachanda would squander the opportunity to build on the achievements of his struggle. Instead of emerging as a statesman, he would allow himself to be ensnared in the web of Kathmandu’s intrigue. Today, he is almost indistinguishable from the rest of the bickering political class.
Prachanda’s politics has changed. His party has formally discarded revolutionary methods and adopted “peace and constitution” (though many continue to doubt that intent). He has effectively lost his army. He’s more a champion of federalism based on ethnic identities, than a communist revolutionary.
But his narrative has failed to catch up.
Prachanda had a clear narrative for his war. It was based on one enemy that symbolized decades of accumulated injustice and inequality. The war is now over. The enemy has been vanquished.
Everyone’s attention was on the man in the dais wearing a finely cut suit with a red silk tie, patiently waiting for his turn.
Prachanda needs a different narrative, a healing narrative that is inclusive. He needs a narrative that builds on the equality he has promised, that guarantees peace and security for all, and offers a path to economic prosperity that meaningfully touches everyone.
Last year, Prachanda opened the Guerrilla Trek, which passes through several areas that witnessed the most intense fighting in central and western Nepal. Maybe the boots of time will eventually heal the wounds that those places suffered. But for the present, he needs a narrative to unite a fractured nation.
At the end of an outstandingly well scripted piece for Caravan in February 2013, Deepak Adhikari, the author, asks Prachanda how he would like to be remembered.
“As a person who played a role in ushering in an epochal change in Nepal,” Prachanda responds.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Nepal being bitter about the changes that Prachanda ushered in. Some 20,000 people died in the war. I would like to spend the rest of my life honoring and celebrating the sacrifices of all those who lost their lives to give us a better Nepal. I would like to spend the rest of my life celebrating Prachanda’s achievement for the better Nepal it gave us.
Please give me a narrative that I can believe.
The author is a consultant on energy and environment
bishal_thapa@hotmail.com
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