Hinduism an Obstacle to Spread of Maoism

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THE MAOISTS OF NEPAL: Three perspectives

 

by B. Raman

"* The influence of the Hindu religion is also the weakest in that

area. The strong Hindu influence in other areas of Nepal acts as an

obstacle to the spread of the revolutionary fervour."

 

"Ultimately, we will have to fight with the Indian army. That is the

situation. Therefore, we have to take into account the Indian army.

When the Indian army comes in with thousands and thousands of

soldiers, it will be a very big thing. But we are not afraid of the

Indian Army."---Prachanda, leader of the Maoists of Nepal, in an

interview to a Maoist journalist of Latin America

 

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The Maoists of Nepal see their armed struggle, based on Marxism-

Leninism-Maoism, from three perspectives---the international, the

Nepalese and the Indian.

 

While analysing the international situation, they admit that the

proletarian movement all over the world has suffered a set-back,

which, however, they consider as temporary, and that China, the birth

place of Maoism, has been under the control of a counter-

revolutionary group since the death of Mao. They attribute the set-

back suffered by the international proletarian movement to

international revisionism, modern revisionism, revisionism in China

and Russian revisionism.

 

They are, at the same time, confident that the world would see in the

medium term a revival of revolutionary fervour. According to them,

the Shining Path guerillas of Peru sowed the seeds of this revival

and, though they have suffered a set-back at the hands of the

rightist opportunists, the spark of the revolutionary fire has since

spread to Nepal and India from where it would set off a new prairie

fire.

 

To quote Prachanda, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of

Nepal (Maoist): "Objectively, there is a dialectical relationship

between the People's War in Nepal and the whole international

situation and movement. And what we think, and I think, is that a

new wave of revolution, world revolution is beginning, because

imperialism is facing a great crisis. Some people are saying that

economically and culturally imperialism is in deeper crisis than

before the Second World War. There are so many symptoms of radical

change that the people's movements are seeing around the world. And

from an economic, cultural and political basis, we see that a new

wave of world revolution is beginning. This is a fact. We have to

grasp this question because just like Mao said, there will be 50 to

100 years of great turmoil and great transformation. From a

practical point of view, the People's War in Nepal is contributing to

making and accelerating this new wave of revolution. And it is

contributing to the organization of the international communist

movement on a Maoist basis."

 

They attribute the success so far achieved by them in Nepal to the

correct lessons drawn by them by studying the experiences of the

Maoist movements in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Philippines,

Iran, Turkey and Peru.

 

Prachanda describes the influence of the international proletariat on

their movement as follows: " In the whole process of this final

preparation...there was consistent international involvement. First

and foremost, there was the RIM Committee (Revolutionary

Internationalist Movement). There was important ideological and

political exchange. From the RIM Committee, we got the experience of

the PCP (Communist Party of Peru), the two-line struggle there, and

also the experience in Turkey, the experience in Iran, and the

experience in the Philippines. We learned from the experience in

Bangladesh and from some experience in Sri Lanka. And there was a

South Asian conference that we participated in. At the same time, we

were also having direct and continuous debate with the Indian

communists, mainly the People's War (PW) and Maoist Communist Center

(MCC) groups. And this helped in one way or another. It helped us to

understand the whole process of People's War.

 

"Therefore, what I want to say here is that one of the specific

things about our People's War, the initiation of our People's War, is

that there was international involvement right from the beginning.

Right from the time of preparation, up to the time of initiation, and

after the initiation, there was international involvement. Help,

debate and discussion was there. It was a big benefit for us. It

was a big help for the Nepalese masses. Theoretically we are clear,

and every time we insist, that the Nepalese revolution is part of the

world revolution and the Nepalese people's army is a detachment of

the whole international proletarian army. This is clear. But during

preparation for the initiation and after the initiation we came to

understand this, not only in a theoretical sense, but came to see the

practical implications of this proletarian internationalism, what

practical role it played. We made the point to the RIM Committee

that when the People's War in Nepal faces setbacks, then it will not

only be a question for the CPN (Maoist), but will directly be a

question for the RIM as a whole.

 

"People's War, Maoist Communist Center and others in the

revolutionary struggle in India have been involved in this process in

one way or another. We understood right from the beginning that we

should try to involve more and more sections of revolutionary masses

in the process of our initiation. Therefore, beforehand, we made

some investigation of Bihar in India. We went to Andhra Pradesh to

look at the struggle there and we tried to understand the practical

situation and practical problems of armed struggle."

 

>From the Nepalese perspective, they attribute their initial

concentration on Western Nepal like the Rolpa and Rukum districts and

the success achieved by them in building up revolutionary bases there

to the following reasons:

 

* It is a remote mountainous area with poor communications where the

control of the Karhmandu-based Government is the weakest. It is

ideal terrain for a revolutionary movement.

* The influence of the Hindu religion is also the weakest in that

area. The strong Hindu influence in other areas of Nepal acts as an

obstacle to the spread of the revolutionary fervour.

 

* In Western Nepal, the people mostly belong to the Mongolian ethnic

groups, which are free from the upper caste chauvinism of the Hindu-

dominant areas and the feudal influences of the Terai and other

areas. The people of Mongolian origin have generally been more

receptive to Marxist ideas than people of non-Mongolian origin.

Moreover, historically, they have made very good fighters.

 

At the same time, the Maoists realised that if they focussed only on

building their bases in West Nepal and did not start operating in

other parts of Nepal simultaneously, the security forces would easily

be able to encircle and crush them. Therefore, while concentrating

their initial efforts in the West, they simultaneously launched their

armed struggle in other parts in order to force the police to

disperse their strength all over the rural areas.

 

They see the success of their armed struggle as having to pass

through the following three stages:

 

* The armed struggle against the Nepalese police, which they claim to

have already defeated and de-moralised. They claim to be confident

that the Nepalese Police is no longer in a position to counter them

effectively.

* The armed struggle against the Royal Nepal Army which, according to

them, is yet to start because the Army, which is directly under the

King's control, is fighting shy of a confrontation with the Maoists.

Its role till now has been confined to helping the police in defusing

improvised explosive devices. It has not undertaken any search and

destroy or other counter-insurgency techniques. The Maoists do not

want to take the initiative in attacking the army. Instead, they

would prefer that the army comes into the rural/interior areas to

attack them so that they could confront and defeat it.

 

* The armed struggle against the Indian army. The Maoists apprehend

or even foresee that when they ultimately proclaim the establishment

of a People's Republic of Nepal either in the areas presently under

their control or in the whole of Nepal, if and when they capture

Kathmandu, India might not be a silent spectator of their success and

that its Army might intervene to crush the Maoists. They proclaim

themselves as confident of being able to take on the Indian Army,

with the back-up support of the Maoists of India in general and of

Bihar in particular. At the same time, they have been discussing how

to confront the Indian army if it intervenes to crush the Maoist

revolution in Nepal.

 

Prachanda says:

 

* "We decided that we should initiate People's War from different

parts of the country. We should centralize in mainly three areas-

East, Middle, West-and the capital. Cities should also be another

point, not for armed clashes, but for propaganda and such things.

And one other area where we should concentrate work is in India,

because more than seven million Nepalese live in India. Therefore

India should be the other point where we should make efforts to

resist the ruling classes. "

* "Ultimately, we will have to fight with the Indian army. That is

the situation. Therefore, we have to take into account the Indian

army. When the Indian army comes in with thousands and thousands of

soldiers, it will be a very big thing. But we are not afraid of the

Indian Army because, in one way, it will be a very good thing. They

will give us lots of guns. And lots of people will fight them. This

will be a national war. And it will be a very big thing. They will

have many difficulties intervening. It will not be so easy for

them. But if they stupidly dare...they will dare, they will be

compelled. They will do that stupidity. We have to prepare for

that. And for that reason we are saying we will also need a

particular international situation. And for us this has to do mainly

with India, Indian expansionism. When there is an unstable situation

in India and a strong mass base there in support of People's War in

Nepal and there are contradictions within the Indian ruling class-at

that point we can seize, we can establish and declare that we have

base areas, that we have a government."

 

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat,

Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical

studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde )

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