Militancy, violence and a low tolerance for dissent have been major features of Nepali politics. These tendencies have been at the fore of late.
Last week, Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda appealed to the Young Communist League to crush the monarchists. Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli, who heads the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), asked his party’s youth wing — Yuba Sangh — to resist those who want to transform Nepal back into a Hindu kingdom. Sher Bahadur Deuba, Chairman of the Nepali Congress, did not exhibit such militancy, but he was arguably more intolerant of dissent. “It was our goodwill that we let the former King stay in the republic of Nepal,” he said.
These expressions, by the leaders of the three biggest parties that have controlled the political system since 2006, have legitimised the use of violence as a means to bring about change. The Maoists, who had led a decade-long insurgency from 1996 to 2006 which claimed more than 17,000 lives, wants history to see them as the main contributor to Nepal’s switch to a secular republic from a Hindu kingdom. The Nepali Congress and the UML, too, want to be seen as revolutionary forces in the making of the Constitution.
Two days after Prachanda’s appeal, Young Communist League cadres pelted a crowd with stones as it assembled to pay homage to the late King Birendra and his family members on the 24th anniversary of the royal massacre. State security agencies were unprecedentedly ruthless in their response to the street rally, following the Prime Minister’s appeal that no protocol needed to be followed in dealing with the protest.
Kamal Thapa (70), once a Deputy Prime Minister under Oli, was pounded, knocked down and then dragged through the streets for a few feet before being pushed into a police van. While a coalition of the UML and Nepali Congress governs through the central secretariat (Singha Durbar), militant youth wings affiliated to political parties are vying to capture the streets.
A lack of clarity within the movement’s leadership has led its youth participants to resort to violence. As a compromise, the leadership has agreed to recruit more youth, build the movement at the local level and then march on Kathmandu. How far the movement led by conservative forces against militant and intolerant parties and the state will go is one thing, but the people unhappy with the current system and its leaders — both in the regime and the Opposition — far outnumber its supporters.
Prachanda calls Prime Minister Oli the “most corrupt”. The entire opposition, mainly the Maoists and Rastriya Prajatantra Party, paralysed the House of Representatives during the first week of its session, demanding that Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak resign and face a probe committee, after a huge immigration-related racket came to the fore — Nepalis travelling on a visit visa have to routinely pay bribes to immigration officials at the international airport. The demand has become more intense after the head of immigration, whom Lekhak had hand-picked, was arrested.
Oli knows that any action on corruption against senior leaders of the three major parties — UML, NC and Maoists — in general, and the first two in the ruling coalition in particular, could cause political disarray and hand a point to the monarchists. Despite the Maoists levelling allegations against Lekhak this time, the past has shown that parties often retreat in the face of corruption charges against their leaders. But the continued ruckus in Parliament may leave the government with two options — marshal the protesters out of the House or have the budget passed in disorder.
More than the adoption of the budget, the current political trend — the growing intolerance and culture of violence — endangers Nepal’s survival as a stable democracy.
The writer is the Kathmandu-based contributing editor for The Indian Express
