In Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the color of politics has mostly been saffron of the Hindutva variety. Sikkim practices ethnic politics and promotes linguistic chauvinism with vigor. Bhutan does the exact thing in an extreme manner. The Thimpu regime takes its Dzongkha-speaking Drukpa identity so seriously that it had to ‘cleanse’ the kingdom of Nepali-speaking Lhotshampas through state-sponsored terror campaigns.
Eastwards in the seven sister states of India (Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura) beyond the Chicken’s Neck in West Bengal, there is great ethnic and religious diversity. However, their political economy is quite similar: Barring Tripura, this region has always been a bastion of regressive insurgencies, oppressive military and rightwing politics.
In Burma seeds of communism were uprooted before they could sprout in its jungles. For Tibetans too, be they the supporters of government-in-exile in Dharamshala or the subjects of Chinese administration in Lhasa, communism does not seem to hold much attraction.
In the foothills of Himalayas and the Ganga plains, tone and texture of political economy is not much different. In Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, two of the most backward and poorest states of India, politics of caste has always triumphed over class-consciousness. West Bengal has been an exception where Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) under quintessential Bengali Bhadralok Jyoti Basu (1914-2010) administered the state for over quarter of a century. However, once modernist Calcutta succumbed to the temptation becoming traditionalist Kolkata in 2001, populism began to gain strength and the state has now gone under a party of demagogues and rabble-rousers.
Saffron Apparatchiks
If a country were to be known by its neighbors and friends, Nepal should have remained a stronghold of rightists. After all, it has a ‘glorious history’ of having been founded as Asali Hindustana—the true land of Hindus—where an incarnate of Vishnu reigned and ruled from a serpent throne until he was thrown out by the Constituent Assembly as recently as three years ago.
The social structure is extremely hierarchical with priests at the top and the outcastes at the bottom. The absence of Vaishya trading castes cannot be claimed to be the reason for absence of strong commercial lobby with rightwing inclinations. The caste arrangement is similar in other Himalayan regions. Then why is it that communism, though of a Nepali variety, flourished within the territory of Nepal as if in a hothouse surrounded by frosty landscape? This is a question worthy of Winston Churchill’s depiction of Russia, “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…”
The key to the puzzle perhaps is hidden in the geopolitics of the region where US paranoia of communism helped breath life into its resistance in the 1960s. The irony of monarchy patronizing Maoists to undermine democratic movements could explain the rapid expansion of Jhapali ideologues all over the country. Finally, the enigma is hardly a paradox: Nepali communists are not Reds, but Orange. The leftwing politics in Nepal is mixture of traditionalist yellow conservatism and violent crimson of revolutionary ardour.
Be it the devout performer of yagya, havan and ritual sacrifice Chairman Jhalanath Khanal of CPM (UML) or fiery Maoist Supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal who found nothing wrong in worshipping a water-buffalo to ward off evil effects of Adhaiya Dasha, communists of Nepal are pragmatists. They venerate Marx as a prophet, respect Engels as an angel, idolize Lenin as a warrior-preacher, revere Stalin as a saint and worship Mao as a Mahatma. The Panch Devata divinity of communism decorates drawing rooms. But most Nepali communists realise that real power lies with the Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh trinity of Hindu society.
In the early 1950s, quack ‘Doctor’ K I Singh from western Nepal, had attempted an unsuccessful coup, escaped to China, and returned back after King Mahendra granted him amnesty. Americans were fearful of his communist designs. Jawaharlal Nehru met Singh in New Delhi and assured paranoid US interlocutors afterwards that the leader of the short-lived coup from Kathmandu was just a freebooter, not a Maoist.
The rumor is that US ambassador in New Delhi Peter Burleigh played a similar role prior to the ascendance of Dr Baburam Bhattarai to the thorny throne of premiership in Singh Durbar. An old Nepal-hand and experienced handler of South Asian politics, Ambassador Burleigh probably assured sceptical Indian minders of Nepali Maoists that Supremo Dahal would have to pay a heavy price if he failed to live up to the commitments made in the comprehensive peace agreement. If there is even a grain of truth in the gossip, it shows that the ‘sky neighbor’ of Nepal continues to be as influential as its two land neighbors in the politics of the country. Burleigh served in Nepal as a charge de affaires under Ambassador Carol Laise in the 1970s and can be characterised as one of the original Bunker’s Boys that was assigned to sanitize Nepal against the communist virus.
Bunker’s Boys
McCarthyism has now come to mean the practice of making accusations of disloyalty based on doubtful evidence. However, the word owes its origin to Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908-57) who ran a relentless campaign against alleged communist infiltration into the US government and is reported to have thundered, “Coexistence with communists is neither possible nor honorable nor desirable. Our long-term objective must be the eradication of communism from the face of the earth”. It remained the spirit of the US foreign policy throughout the Cold War decades but was most virulent in 1950s and 1960s.
Even though diplomatic relation between Nepal and USA was established in the late-1940s, it was during the decades of US fear of the Soviet Bear that the official engagement between two distant lands came closest. At a certain point of time, nearly 200 Peace Corps volunteers are reported to have served throughout the length and breadth of Nepal.
Hugh B Wood and his team from Oregon University helped reform Nepal’s education system. James B Hunt, a Ford Foundation Economic Advisor in 1964-66, assisted King Mahendra’s co-conspirators in designing supposedly foolproof plans against twin challenges of communists and socialists. Norman Uphoff was involved in the institutionalization of Centre for Economic Development and Administration at Tribhuvan University (CEDA) at the behest of Ford Foundation; he later became consultant to the USAID for Rapti Integrated Rural Development Project and APROSC. All of them were instrumental in laying the groundwork for what can best be termed as ‘progressive conservatism’. The expression is an oxymoron, yet an approximate description of the kind of political economy that Harvard´s Development Advisory Service (DAS), the Ford-funded modernization program, promoted in Pakistan, Greece, Argentina, Liberia, Colombia, Malaysia, and Ghana.
Analogous to Berkeley Mafia of General Suharto in Indonesia of the mid-sixties and the Chicago Boys of Augusto Pinochet in Chile in the early-seventies, a dedicated group of pro-US professionals in Nepal emerged in the 1960s and early 1970s that can be christened as Oregon Oligarchy, Columbia Mafia, Colombo Plan Platoon or the Ford Fundoos. They spouted egalitarian slogans, pretended to work for the downtrodden against forces of the status quo but remained dedicated to the cause of authoritarian rule of the absolute monarch. It is not even necessary to name names: Many of them are still active in academia, administration, journalism and politics. Perhaps Bunker’s Boys is the most appropriate appellation for once-bright youngsters that have grown old with the belief that communists could be made to serve the interests of monarchy.
Ellsworth Bunker (1894-1984) was resident ambassador in New Delhi in 1956-61 concurrently assigned to Nepal. Ambassador Bunker gained some notoriety for persuading Nehru to oust the first democratically elected communist government in the world in Kerala in 1959, help CIA-inspired coup in Indonesia in 1965 and wage US war against communists in Vietnam from 1967 to 1973. During the later period, after he married resident US ambassador in Nepal Carol Laise (1917-1991), that Bunker played an influential role in grooming progressive conservatives who would patronise orange sloganeers to counter purple socialists.
Newton’s Third Law that for every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction probably prompted Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China plan their own strategies. After President Richard Nixon made peace with the Chinese and began to see India as a Soviet stooge, geopolitics in South Asia took a different turn. Each of these developments has different explanations to offer for the popularity of communist ideology in Nepal. But the legacy of Bunker and Laise endures and Nepal is an orange country where every apparatchik is essentially an orthodox Hindu priest at heart. Perhaps Supremo Dahal has succeeded in conveying that message to the US establishment during his recent trip to New York. He must have been surprised to see how little it takes for a leader from a Third World country to be feted as a statesman.
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