Maoist Electoral Coup in Nepal
By Seema Sengupta
KOLKATA, India ― The unexpected Maoist electoral victory in the recently held election for the Constituent Assembly in Nepal has put neighboring India in a tight spot.
Apart from the possibility of Indian leftwing extremist organizations seeking to take moral advantage of a landslide Maoist victory in Nepal across the length and breadth of India, a Communist growth in Nepalese and Indian philosophical motivation obviously wouldn't charm the Indian establishment.
In fact, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had gone on record asking for the convergence of Nepalese foreign policy with that of India.
Perhaps the most important worry for India is that Nepal's Maoists, in spite of changing their strategy and tactics, are loath to alter their goals permanently.
Though having accepted the reality of a multiparty democracy instead of a Mao type people's democracy and working alongside their former enemies, the mainstream parties in an interim legislature and coalition government, the Maoists continue to strive for evolving alternative plans for a more revolutionary change at an appropriate stage.
This of course will depend on both internal and external factors, as any Maoist strategy derives its origin in the struggle between ideological purity and pragmatism.
The Maoists will always stick to certain established principles though they might be willing to shift course midway on identification of strategic weaknesses.
Having identified the practical lacunas in their strategy of dislodging the monarchy, the Nepal Maoists cultivated formerly hostile forces both within and outside their country. For example, they went to the extent of courting the Indian government and the apparently staunch anti-Maoist forces like the Marxist Communist Party of India even at the cost of alienating their foreign allies like the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and Indian Maoists.
The Nepal Maoists have secured some lasting advantages which include their own dramatic rise to influence policymaking and reshaping the national political agenda, hardly imaginable until a decade ago.
Despite defining the peace process as a transitional phase in which they can destroy the old regime and restructure the state, Maoist leaders have all along presented a more moderate image, trying to balance the complex equations of domestic and international pulls and pressures.
The Indian Marxists who played a pivotal role behind the scenes in Nepal's peace process were able to influence the hardcore Maoists by making them realize that their acceptance of a bourgeois democratic republic is only a stepping-stone on the way to attaining a true people's republic like that of totalitarian China.
Just as the Marxists do in India, Maoist leaders in Nepal today put forth the argument that they can create a new form of peaceful revolution in consonance with their ideological goal, keeping in mind the present day political reality in Nepal.
But then for the Indian establishment, Nepal's relation with China in an altered scenario will remain the most intricate foreign policy issue. India has traditionally regarded Nepal's stability as an important ingredient in its own security due to a substantial movement of population across the porous Indo-Nepal border.
The Indian intelligence apparatus have long suspected the Pakistani and Chinese intelligence of stoking the embers of unrest in India by providing logistical support to ultra left and other terror groups.
Furthermore, any Maoist-led government in Nepal will always side with Beijing in crushing the Tibetan refugees fleeing Tibet due to Chinese highhandedness.
For the moment India will however wait and watch for the situation to evolve in Nepal and see whether the mainstream parties can soften the traditional anti-India stance of the Maoists or else would probably use its economic leverage with Nepal to prevent the country becoming another hub for anti-India activities.
India is in fact the largest investor in Nepal and Indian investment in Nepal amounts for 36 percent of its total foreign direct investment inflow in sectors such as tourism, consumer durables, garments and carpets.
Indian multinational companies like Dabur, Colgate and Hindustan Lever have set up factories in Nepal with the objective to export their finished products back to India.
Moreover, it will be impossible for the Maoist rulers to ignore the vital fact that Nepal with a high potential for developing hydroelectric power and a generating capacity of 83,000 megawatts is completely dependent on India as bilateral and multilateral donor agencies will fund hydroelectric projects only when they are assured of a durable market in India.
Under such circumstances, if the Maoists transform the push into shove, India might be disinclined to be dependent on such a vital source of energy outside its own borders and that too on an unreliable and hostile partner.
It is therefore natural that the Maoist's insistence on redefining the longstanding bilateral relationship with India by scrapping the Indo-Nepal bilateral treaty of 1950 along with China's decision to extend the Beijing-Lhasa railway track to Nepal will certainly raise hackles within the Indian security apparatus as the nation continues to loose its strategic depth vis-a-vis China.
Adding to the woes will be the possibility of the huge cache of arms and ammunitions remaining with a section of the Maoists in the interior districts falling into the hands of Indian insurgent groups.
Seema Sengupta is a journalist based in Kolkata, India. Her articles have been published by The Tribune, The Telegraph, The Pioneer, The Asian Age and other newspapers. She can be reached at seemasengupta@vsnl.net.