Of the tasks before the Government of Nepal to regain the confidence of its people, and before Kathmandu and New Delhi to bring mutual relations on an even keel.
BLOODY murders and dreadful massacres have shaped Nepal's history, but the horrendous events of June 1, which decimated King Birendra and his immediate family, are bound to have a lasting impact on the country's polity. In September 1846, when a large number of notables and Ministers of King Rajendra were killed in a massacre, General Jung Bahadur, who allegedly masterminded the operation, was able to extract from the King plenipotentiary powers. Shortly thereafter, he established his complete authority with the aid of his numerous brothers, beginning what was to be a 104-year rule of the Rana oligarchy, rendering the King a mere titular monarch.
In another incident, the Rana Prime Minister, Maharaja (for this was the title conferred on the Rana Prime Ministers by the King of Nepal, who enjoyed the title of Maharajadhiraj) Ranoddip Singh, was assassinated at the Narayanhiti Palace in November 1885 by his kith and kin. Another Maharaja, Dev Sumshere, was toppled in a coup in June 1901, again by his blood relations.
Therefore, it is not that coups and assassinations had not taken place in Nepal. But what makes the latest instance all the more monstrous is that the dastardly act was allegedly committed by a Crown Prince at his residence.
A high-level committee headed by the Chief Justice of Nepal and assisted by the presiding officer of the Pratinidhi Sabha (the Lower House of Parliament) has investigated the incident and submitted its report. The point is not what conclusions the report reached but whether the common person would accept its conclusion that it was Crown Prince Dipendra who perpetrated regicide, patricide and parricide, all in the course of a few minutes, and then killed himself. The people of Nepal have an ingrained sense of loyalty to their King and the royal family. It is therefore possible that they will accept the committee's findings in silence, perhaps sullen silence. Yet doubts could linger and whispers about "a conspiracy" could circulate.
What the Government of Nepal (this phrase is used here to include both the King as head of state and the Prime Minister as the executive head of government) urgently requires is to regain the confidence of the common person.
Its first and foremost task would be to restore normalcy in the urban and rural areas. In the medium term, the new King would do well to reaffirm the policies of King Birendra as a constitutional monarch and strengthen the multi-party government.
To say that the kingdom of Nepal is beset with numerous problems will be an understatement. The country's economy is primarily dependent on two sectors - agriculture and tourism. The former depends on the vagaries of the weather and the latter on the perception of outsiders about how stable the country is - both factors fraught with an element of uncertainty. There has been little progress in the industrial sector over the past several years. The power sector, the one sector that has the potential to pull Nepal's economy out of its current state of low development, has shown little sign of progress.
Bickerings inside the government have brought the business of governance to a standstill. Prime Minister G.P. Koirala faces challenges from members of the ruling Nepali Congress. Although he has a reputation for being a superb organiser and should have been able to command loyalty from his own party members, his age (he is past 70) has perhaps driven younger party members to position themselves as potential successors. The impression in the public mind is that some of the elected representatives and some members of the bureaucratic apparatus are more concerned about securing their financial future than with managing the affairs of state. This may not be the truth, but if this is the impression in the public mind, then it is bad enough.
Such adverse perceptions have provided ammunition to those who have raised the banner of armed revolt in the western districts of Nepal. The Maoist insurgents make no secret of their determination to wage a "people's war".
This could possibly pose a difficult problem for the Opposition in Parliament - the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist). As the ruling party-in-waiting, the CPN (UML) cannot be expected to support the Koirala government should it plan to take strong action, nor can it openly support the people's war programme of the Maoists, who are seeking to do away with the bourgeois parliamentary democracy and the monarchy. In brief, Nepal is in a state of flux and could well plunge into a longish spell of uncertainty at all levels - political, economic and social. Under these circumstances, Nepal could take the fullest advantage of its geographical location and historical connection with its neighbours - India and China to tide over its difficulties.
TO understand better Nepal's current policies it would be useful to recapitulate Nepal's evolution as a state. Nepal is a land-locked country and with the exception of a small chunk of trans-Himalayan land, is totally cis-Himalayan. Prithvi Narayan Shah, founder both of the Shah dynasty and the modern state of Nepal, termed Nepal "a yam caught between two stones". He was referring to the already flourishing Imperial China in the north and an emerging British Empire in India. This was not only a pithy description of geographical fact but also an expression of apprehension about the future of Nepal's polity, particularly in view of the presence of an Imperial China. Actually, China is Nepal's notional neighbour. The Himalayas have provided a geographical barrier.
The last quarter of the 18th century had witnessed the rapid decline of central authority in Delhi, which ruled, even if in nominal terms, the main landmass of India. A new power centre was emerging in Calcutta based on the mercantile activities of the East India Company. Seen from Calcutta's perspective, Nepal and Bhutan occupied a different place in the Company's scheme of commercial expansion and access to Tibet.
What offered natural protection to Nepal in the south was the thick jungles of the Terai, infested with malarial mosquitoes and a variety of wild beasts, including tigers. Nepal also offered no easily exploitable surplus wealth beyond elementary agricultural produce and a pool of manpower, short-statured but hardy fighters who were ready to fight for the East India Company as soldiers. The Ranas, who captured effective power, underpinned it through a policy of cooperation with the emerging British political and military order. Nepal's ethnic diversity comprises a mix of Caucasoid and Mongoloid stocks. The population is overwhelmingly Hindu and Buddhist, but in the past two decades a large number of Muslims have illegally entered the country from Bangladesh through India and have settled in the border areas.
The Rana rule was paternalistic and offered very little to the people by way of social or political reforms or industrial progress. Under the Rana, Nepal voluntarily chose to remain trapped in a time warp. Not only was there no popular movement for political power-sharing but there was an absence of religious reform movements, of the kind that impacted and transformed Hinduism in India. This has had a bearing on the way Nepal evolved in the second half of the 20th century.
Nepal's two major political parties, the Nepali Congress and the CPN (UML), have had close links with political leaders in India. Manmohan Adhikari, the CPN leader, was incarcerated in India during India's freedom struggle. Matrika Prasad Koirala, the first non-Rana Prime Minister after the fall of the Ranas, was closely associated in his youth with leaders of the Indian National Congress and had served as Dr. Rajendra Prasad's secretary at the Sadaqat Ashram. B.P. Koirala, who led the Nepali Congress and also headed the government of Nepal under King Mahendra until 1960, was a close associate of socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan and was himself a stalwart in the Socialist International. Thus India and Nepal have had a healthy tradition of close and positive political interaction in the 20th century, and neither has looked upon this as interference in each other's internal affairs. It might be pertinent to recall that in February 1990, when the pro-democracy movement gained momentum, Indian politicians addressed political meetings in Nepal.
Nepal has an open border with India and Nepalis can traverse it freely and without any formalities beyond routine identification. Nepal enjoys exceptional preferential trading arrangements with India and goods certified as of Nepali origin have barrier-free access to Indian markets. This arrangement, worked out in 1996 by India, has in practice worked to Indian traders' and industry's disadvantage in that goods from third countries have come into India without tariff barriers, customs duties or quota restrictions. The main purpose of the arrangement, which was to encourage Nepal to industrialise and generate employment and modern technical skills, has been frustrated. Only a handful of traders and others engaged in these unorthodox trading practices have profited.
Thus an open boundary has certain implications for the security of both countries. In recent years, Nepalese territory has been used by third-country elements hostile to India to destabilise India by infiltrating men and materials to aid and abet acts of terrorism. This includes smuggling of arms, explosives and narcotic substances. Anti-social elements engaged in criminal activities across this open border have also found a safe haven in Nepal's border areas contiguous with India.
That is why the recent events have an important bearing on Indo-Nepal relations. If Nepal is to accept the report of the probe committee, it will damage the very image of the monarchy in the minds of the common person. At least that is what political activists, to whom the very institution of monarchy is anathema, will try to propagate. The media in Nepal engage in the wildest of speculations and theories, although they have kept away from reporting on members of the royal family as much out of respect as out of fear. The publication of an article by a Maoist leader, Baburam Bhattarai, in the Kathmandu-based Kantipur daily is the first salvo of what could well become a media campaign. The Koirala government has given the impression of having acted in haste if not in panic by arresting the Editor Yubaraj Ghimire and two executives of the organisation.
Such high-handed actions were not uncommon during the partyless panchayat days (between 1980 and 1990, until the restoration of multi-party government) when a captive Parliament could hardly utter a squeak of protest. Today the situation on the ground is quite different. There is a great deal of interest in Nepal about what the media have to say. Indian media, both print and electronic, in audio and video versions, are accessible to the people of Nepal. They are no longer in the dark about what is happening in any country including their own. Unlike in the past, when a curtain of silence could be drawn on events in Nepal, Ghimire's arrest naturally evoked loud protests in Nepal and in India. Koirala, himself not averse to taking "tough actions", could well have received advice from "high quarters" to deal with Ghimire the way he did.
FOR the Maoists the crisis is a lucky break. They can now hope to garner support from every possible disaffected person in the country, whatever be the cause of disaffection.
India has assured Nepal every possible assistance in its hour of need. This offer needs to be accepted with an open heart and without prejudice. There has been little concrete cooperation between the two countries in recent years although a number of agreements have been reached.
Some of these, such as the Mahakali Agreement, have been caught in the crossfire of Nepal's domestic politics. Nepal, which has no mineral resources of any magnitude, is blessed by nature with the potential to generate hydro-electric power, which, if sold to India, could make Nepal rich beyond imagination. Nepal has an easily exploitable potential of 40,000 MW but its current production is hardly 500 MW. Over the last four decades there have been numerous rounds of discussions on developing a massive hydel power project on the Karnali river. From an initial proposal of generating a modest 3,000 mw, recent schemes have suggested generation of 10,000 MW. In reality, there has been no progress whatsoever. If even a medium-sized project of 4,000 to 5,000 MW is undertaken in the first instance, the entire project could offer gainful employment to millions of people over the next 20 years, which is what it would take to create the entire infrastructure and construct the dam and power stations. This is but one subject that has bedevilled Indo-Nepal relations.
Nepal's current population is almost 22 million and growing at a high rate of over 2.5 per cent annually. Population pressure will place burdens on Nepal's polity and could lead to social and political instability. The power elite in Nepal is at present limited to a few so-called upper castes and advanced ethnic groups. The challenge before the government in Kathmandu would be to empower all ethnic groups and extend to them the political and economic fruits of democracy. A constitutional monarch can guide the government with sagacity. Return to direct monarchic rule could hardly yield results because it would remove the only insulation that a democratic interface provides against people's discontent.
Stability in Nepal and a close understanding with its rulers and people is a sine qua non for India's security. New Delhi must make its security concerns clear to Kathmandu in gentle but unambiguous terms. India must also assure its neighbour that it has no hidden agenda in dealing with that country. A positive and constructive relationship based on mutual benefit would bring great dividends to both countries.
A.R. Deo is a former Indian Ambassador to Nepal.
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