So said Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal while summarizing the cadres´ views expressed during the recently concluded sixth plenum in Gorkha district (Lal Raskshyak, Issue 3). With their radical speeches, the top leaders tried to assure around 6,000 cadres that the party has not yet enmeshed in the dirty waters of parliamentary politics, and that they would move ahead united, as never before, and complete the "revolution". And while most cadres returned home convinced, the leaders have remained as divided over the party line as they were before the plenum.
In a major tactical shift, the Maoist Chunwang meeting had decided to forge an alliance with parliamentary political parties against the monarchy and push for a federal democratic republic in Nepal.
Disillusioned with monarchy after the royal putsch on Feb 1, 2005, Maoist Chairman Dahal, who was initially for joining hands with the monarchy against the parties and waging a "tunnel war" against India, reversed position and decided to go for a competitive political system under a federal democratic republic – the political line floated by Maoist party Vice-Chairman Dr Baburam Bhattarai.
Based on the mandate of the "historic meeting", the Maoists forged a 12-point agreement with the parties, and following the success of Janaandolan II, the former rebels joined the peace process, and subsequently became a dominant force in national politics.
Five years on, the Maoist Chunwang line has faltered before meeting its target, and the party is currently facing an ideological dilemma and indecisiveness, thanks to the assertive hard-line camp at the Palungtar plenum and the shifting balance of power within the party. The sixth plenum not only failed to pass any political line, but also witnessed growing factionalism and widening ideological rifts among the top three leaders: Dahal, Bhattarai and Senior Vice-Chairman Mohan Baidya.
With the Palungtar plenum fiasco, the peace process has fallen into a crisis also, and the progenitors of the Chunwang line will have to work really hard to save their brainchild. Party insiders say Dahal´s "dubious ideological posture", besides serious threats from the hard-line camp, has pushed the party into an ideological dilemma and the future of the country´s ongoing political process into jeopardy. The former rebel leaders are now a confused lot and remain sharply at odds over the party line.
DAHAL´S STRATEGY & IDEOLOGICAL DILEMMA
In the sixth plenum, Chairman Dahal attacked on two fronts simultaneously: Baidya´s organizational strength and Bhattarai´s political line.
In proposing to declare India the party´s principal enemy, Dahal tried to kill two birds with one stone: 1) gaining potential support from Baidya and cashing in on the cadres´ anti-India sentiments; and 2) projecting himself as a leader with a separate political line and vision by adding the India factor to the Chunwang line.
In Dahal´s own words, declaring India the principal enemy means making "preparations at national level for resistance against Indian interferences", something that obviously runs counter to the Chunwang line of peace and constitution. With that anti-India rhetoric, Dahal has reignited the pre-Chunwang intra-party conflict between himself and Dr Bhattarai. Back then, Dahal had not only suspended Bhattarai from the party for being "pro-Indian", but also kept him under house arrest and alerted the combatants against any "attempt by India to rescue him with helicopters". Later Dahal conceded his mistake and adopted the line of Dr Bhattarai. Now Dahal is using his old strategy in the changed political circumstances and intra-party dynamics.
Without consensus on key issues, the Maoist party will focus on the wording of its official document to make the party line acceptable to all the factions. But such a plan will not lead the Maoist party anywhere. It means reiterating the rhetoric of peace and constitution and doing the opposite in practice.
Party leaders say Dahal´s move served yet another important purpose: Maintaining his grip on the party by seeking confrontation with India. The Maoist leadership is getting alienated not only from the masses, but also from its own cadres. And turning the cadres´ attention toward India could be a good red-herring.
Due to serious objections from Bhattarai over the issue of naming the party´s principal enemy and sharp ideological differences with Baidya, Dahal was however pushed into a minority in the plenum and his synthesized document failed. The plenum could not take any clear political line, and ended in a fiasco.
The second serious threat to the Chungwang line comes from the hard-line camp led by Baidya, who has attacked Dahal for not launching a "people´s revolt" to achieve the goal of a "People´s Federal Democratic Republic", the line passed by the Kharipati national conclave two years back.
After the Kharipati meeting, both Dahal and Bhattarai downplayed the "People´s Federal Democratic Republic" line, arguing that it was not much different from the Chunwang line, and that they cannot go for radical communist line as they have already signed the peace deals. But the Palungtar plenum proved that it is not easy to ignore the Kharipati line as the Baidya camp, besides strongly pushing for its implementation, even threatened to revolt against the party. The hard-line camp sees the ongoing political process as a deviation from the communist ideological goals and wants to break it completely.
Party insiders say the Palungtar plenum clearly showed at least one thing: The Maoist party cannot afford to ride roughshod over the revolutionary zeal of indoctrinated cadres and complete the peace process without any possibility of achieving its ideological goals. "What we saw is that the party cannot shed its revolutionary spirit; it cannot follow the path of the CPN-UML; and it cannot be so easily dragged into dirty politics, forgetting its broad ideological goals," says a Maoist leader after participating in the plenum.
And not losing its "revolutionary spirit" obviously means not going for completion of the peace process and constitution-drafting – at least not on the terms and conditions set by the Nepali Congress (NC) or the CPN-UML.
MAOIST COURSE POST-PALUNGTAR
After their failure to pass any political line during the plenum, the Maoists have stated that they would formulate a common short-term "action plan". But the leaders are yet to agree on the contents of the action plan, which are directly related to the broad ideological differences including the assessment of the Chunwang line and naming the party´s principal enemy.
Failure to name the principal enemy means indecisiveness for the communists, who believe that "history moves forward through the process of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis" and that all they have to do is "intensify struggles against the principal enemy to effect revolutions and facilitate the movement of history." In the words of hard-line Maoist leader: "How can you go to the battlefield without knowing who is your enemy." And the fate of Chunwang line has been left in uncertainty due to Dahal´s changed position on India, Baidya´s push for its demolition.
Without consensus on these key issues, the party will focus on the wording of its official document to make the party line acceptable to all the factions, regardless of how ambiguous it looks or how well it works. But such a plan will not lead the Maoist party anywhere. It means reiterating the rhetoric of peace and constitution and doing the opposite in practice. It means holding secret talks with Indian agencies for government leadership, and intensifying struggle for "national sovereignty" at the same time. And it means telling the world that the party is ready for compromise for the sake of peace and constitution, and whipping up the party cadres to complete the "revolution" at the same time. Four years after it joined the peace process, the party is now completely at a loss. Fallout: The peace process and the new constitution are not likely to see the light of day before May 28 unless a miracle happens.
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