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Nepal: Freedom, Fluster And Fatalism

By Maila Baje

Viewed from a section of the south, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal's northern sojourn was a damp squib. That the Maoists', like their ideologically disparate forerunners in power, never intended to set off fireworks, was beside the point.

Beijing, according to the dominant Indian media storyline, did not shower financial largesse on Dahal suggestive of a patron-client relationship. The trust deficit, therefore, must still be too wide. By alienating Delhi, Dahal only contributed to shortening his tenure as premier. The last conclusion stems locally, from analysts allied to the opposition Nepali Congress known to reflect Indian opinion.

Yet the sting still seems to burn in other parts of New Delhi. The Manmohan Singh government is anxious to welcome Dahal on his way to the United Nations General Assembly. Landing in New York City is not tantamount to visiting the United States, but the Indians don't want to be downgraded another notch.

Dahal, upon return, immediately went into damage-control mode. He said he would make his first political visit to India. Why this sudden surge of obsequiousness? Did the Chinese really cold-shoulder him?

There's probably a very basic explanation. Dahal must have had ample time during his shadowy subterranean existence - before the People's War, if not during it - to study the range of India's capabilities in Nepal.

Shortly after his election as our first democratically elected premier in 1959, B.P. Koirala had rebutted his Indian counterpart's suggestion that Nepal fell within India's security perimeter. In response, Jawaharlal Nehru yielded to B.P.'s assertion of Nepali sovereignty. But he chose to make public the letters exchanged with the 1950 treaty. Mohan Shamsher Rana, the Nepali signatory, could afford to laugh off the time lag; history had ensured an irredeemable reputation for his clan.

B.P., on the other hand, wasn't going to be beholden to the Ranas eight years after their ouster. Certainly not when he was building bridges to Israel, one of Nehru's favorite whipping boys.

B.P.'s assertion was bold, but it would mark the beginning of his travails. After eight years' imprisonment in Sundarijal, B.P. went into exile in India to discover that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who had almost become nanny to his daughter Chetana during his official visit as premier, couldn't schedule a mutually convenient meeting for quite long.

A pattern of sorts emerged. In 1971, the Nepali Congress' arsenal for the second insurrection against the palace had to be redirected to Bangladesh. Amid the 1975 emergency in India, B.P. somehow concluded that Sundarijal had been more comfortable. (At least he could gauge the mood of the royal regime by the quality of the cheese it offered each day.) Clearly, he died ruing the capacity for greatness his Indian friends had squandered in Nepal.

Yet B.P. was lucky. Few can decouple UML leader Madan Bhandari's death in 1993 from his fierce opposition to the Tanakpur accord. Marx had enough space to live a life of influence in Nepal. He didn't have to hobnob with the commies in West Bengal in an effort to paint Bihar and Uttar Pradesh red.

It's hard to miss the connection between the Narayanhity carnage eight years later and King Birendra's refusal to sign that controversial citizenship bill. The struggle between the palace and Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala over the precise number of the treaties to be signed during Chinese premier Zhu Rongji's visit might seem like a footnote today. Could it be any coincidence that the ones that weren't would have integrated Nepal's economy closer to the north, leaving it less vulnerable to political manipulations from the south?

That ex-king Gyanendra owes his commoner's status to his effort to bring China into SAARC as an observer is well known. Until then, efforts by one section of the Indian establishment to create a Maoist-mainstream alliance against the palace were being ridiculed by the other end. Honestly, how many of us haven't wondered whether the last king could have avoided a fate worse than his brother's were it not for the dimness of the potentially expedient line of succession?

Clearly, Prime Minister Dahal took a great risk by boarding that flight to China. His subsequent clarifications should not substantially diminish its importance. It would be safe to say that his personal well-being is now intertwined with Nepal's.

Maila Baje writes about Nepal at http://nepalinetbook.blogspot.com