Bhakti Pandey, central committee member of the Maoist Party who is known for his untiring work and devotion, says they are pushing for a political system that is a synthesis of “bourgeois democracy” and “people’s democracy.”
The impact of the Maoist “People’s War” in Nepal is a complex phenomenon. Most academics say the growing income inequality, regional disparity, ethnic-and class-and
caste-based discriminations, unequal development, rampant corruption, and failure of democracy to deliver are the root causes of the Maoist insurgency, while others explain it in terms of insurgency-friendly
conditions that have long existed in the country.
For Pandey, it is the combination of all these multiple factors.
“You must take into account all factors if you want to understand the impact of the Peoples’ War in Nepal,” Pandey, who was entrusted with the task of supplying weapons to the insurgents during the war, told The Week.
“Sadly, these conditions still exist and we’re vulnerable to such wars. We haven’t yet addressed these problems,” a bemused Pandey said. “The existing political instability, weak local policing, inhospitable terrains, and the tenuous hold of the state in remote areas helped it spread in the hills and plains of Nepal in leaps and bounds and shook the foundations of the unitary state.”
Of course, there is danger of escalating violence here, but we can prevent it if we move ahead, addressing the grievances of the people and accomplish the mission of nation-building, for we are yet to become a nation-state, he argues. But it is unfortunate that the country is not moving in that direction.
A leader of the Mashal Party led by the leftist ideologue Mohan Bikram Singh, Pandey defected to the then underground Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). He was given the responsibility of supplying weapons to the insurgents, considering his experience in the field. He had acquired his military skills from retired Gorkha and Nepal Army soldiers.
“It’s not difficult to bring in arms to Nepal through the porous Nepal-India border points,” Pandey said. He had collected weapons in the past and worked as a commander in the Arghakhanchi district during a peasants’ revolt (the Harre-Barre Episode) in 1970, which was ruthlessly crushed by the then Panchayat regime.
According to him, arms dealers brought such weapons to Nepal from Manipur and Nagaland via Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. These arms, which included bullets, pistols and explosives, were hidden in the trucks carrying Indian coal to Nepal.
“We could easily hoodwink the security personnel in Nepal and India. We took advantage of the lax security checkpoints in Nepal; they had a very weak intelligence network. And the Indians, as they were only interested in receiving bribes, turned a blind eye to what we were doing,” Pandey, who received millions of Rupees from the party and continuously engaged in smuggling weapons, told The Week.
“We would bribe the policemen and easily escape,” he said, referring to the Bihar and UP police. “Had India been as strict as China and not let the Maoists import weapons, it would’ve been a great setback for the insurgency,” argued Pandey.
He is also the father of Bishwadeep Pandey, the aide to Maoist Vice Chairman Dr Baburam Bhattarai.
In 2002, Pandey sent Biswadeep to Bhattarai, who was in need of someone who had a proletarian outlook, was studious and had a good command of Marxism, English language, and IT as well as who could also maintain confidentiality. The district secretary interviewed Bishwadeep and agreed to send him to help Dr Bhhatari.
For himself, Bhakti Pandey, 56, turned Communist when he was in grade five. Back then, he heard that the communist party was the party of ordinary and poor people.
“I started sympathizing with the Communist Party and began reading Marxist literature when growing up,” he said. In time, he read The Class Struggle in France by Marx, and The State and Revolution by Lenin.
“I read a number of books and articles on Communism, and I felt my decision to join the party was right,” Pandey, who became a communist with a revolutionary zeal of changing the society, told The Week.
Pandey had assumed Marxism to be a science that explained the nature of society and why people should fight to implement its programs for the liberation of mankind from all kinds of subjugation and oppressions.
Meanwhile, he accepts the mistakes and shortcomings that surfaced in the Marxist movement in Nepal and abroad, and adds that they need to be corrected. Accordingly, self-centrism and personal attacks on leaders due to ideological differences are some of the negative aspects of the Marxist movement in Nepal and abroad.
“Despite many negative byproducts of the Marxist movements in Nepal and abroad, it’s Marxism which gives us the tools to understand and change the society. Marxism is a revolutionary doctrine, not a dogma. So Marxists should replace the existing political culture with a distinct revolutionary culture for the betterment of mankind, dismantling all forms of discriminations. If a communist party doesn’t grasp this fact, the self-professed harbingers will turn into a band of status quoists,” he says.
Achieving the revolutionary goals, however, is easier said than done. He says the Leftist movement in Nepal has come a long way, but has failed to achieve their goals for lack of correct visions and strategies. Nonetheless, he is optimistic that Nepali Communists will move ahead by learning from their own mistakes and by bridging the gap between theory and practice.
“Thus we’ve been fighting for the union of theory and practice, revolutionary line and revolutionary culture,” Pandey concludes.
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