When all of those tactics failed, UCPN (M) shifted its focus to parliamentary procedures, with Dahal’s assurances that the peace process would reach its logical conclusion if the prime minister resigns. Dahal and his party calculated that after Nepal’s resignation, the Maoists would gain majority votes in the parliament and form the government. Finally, Nepal succumbed under the pressure of his own party chairman.
Now, after seven rounds of voting, Dahal has failed to win the confidence of parliament to lead the government. Alleging a “conspiracy to deny the Maoists power”, the UCPN (M) vice chairman, Mohan Baidya, declared that the Maoists will start preparing the country “to capture state power through a people’s revolt”. Historically, such revolts have been enacted over and over again, so a brief look back at communist movements since the ascendancy of the Communist Party of Russia provides some clues as to what such a revolt might mean for Nepal.
Soon after the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks began financial, diplomatic and ideological support to export ‘revolution’, that is, to support the communist movement’s fight against capitalism and struggle to establish communist governments. This initially seemed to be a worthy investment as 16 countries converted to communist dictatorships by 1944 while communist insurgency was rising in many others (India, Thailand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Angola, Columbia, El Salvador and Peru, among others). In 1949, China became communist with Soviet support, but they split in 1960, culminating nine years later in border clashes. This split weakened the solidarity of communist movements, which were already troubled by Soviet invasion in Hungary in 1956.
The Chinese, who were exporting their own brand of revolution, began to sense its futility and in the early seventies started making overtures to capitalist countries, leading to normalizing of relations with the United States in 1972. China, by the late seventies, had become extremely nationalistic and less interested in exporting the revolution.
By 1990, because of serious economic stagnation at home and challenges from non-communist countries, the Soviet Union also lost its wherewithal to prop up its satellite governments. As a result, the communist governments in Eastern Europe collapsed and the Soviet Union itself imploded in 1991.
By the end of the 1980s, with meager or no Soviet or Chinese support coupled with a lack of local support, most of the post-1940 insurgencies had fizzled out or crushed or the insurgents had accepted multiparty electoral democracy. But Marxist ideas of social justice continued to inspire some intellectuals and marginalized citizens of developing countries. The insurgency lead by UCPN (M) was one of those homegrown revolts, except for the tacit support it was receiving from the Indian government.
These nascent and surviving insurgencies, left to their own devices to secure funds, resorted to extreme brutality toward their own citizens and to nefarious trade for funds. The Shining Path, the Peruvian insurgency, which allegedly inspired the Nepali Maoists, was known for its extreme brutality. They have now been crushed. The Columbian movement, which is nearly 25 years old and is led by FARC, is reported to be running cocaine trade for sustenance. Its membership is down to about 11,000 from a peak of 18,000. The inhumane methods the communists employ to terrorize the same people they purport to care for exposes their hypocrisy and render them increasingly unpopular.
Unable to “capture power from the streets,” UCPN (M) signed the Peace Accord, the basis of which is the multiparty pluralist democracy as the foundation of our nation. Other diehard communists had done the some thing similar before, such as Jyoti Basu in India as well as the French, German and Italian communist parties. Unfortunately, in the case of the UCPN (M), their subsequent behavior, including attempts to “capture power from the street” showed that they had no intention to honoring the terms of the Peace Accord. They repeatedly remind us that their commitment to multiparty democracy was simply a strategy to establish their brand of the People’s Republic. Dahal disparagingly calls non-Maoist parties in the parliament as “parliamentary parties” regardless of the fact that his own party is the largest party in the parliament. These deceptions, the inhumanity in the conduct of the so-called people’s revolt and above all a lack of external support for such adventures, do not bode well for UCPN (M)’s ‘people revolt’.
Communist solidarity and big-power financial support have historically been the oxygen of a long-lasting communist insurgency. Without any of these in place, the threatened revolt will sooner or later go the same way as other insurgencies have gone. Until this revolt exhausts itself and the likes of Dahal or Baidya give up their dream of “People’s Republic”, Nepal’s aspirations for peace will remain elusive.
naresh1@shaw.ca
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