(1888PressRelease)
June 20, 2007 - The unthinkable has happened, according to a Nepal news organization which reported on May 27, 2007 that Prachanda, Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) had a forty five minute talk on telephone with the personal/private Secretary of King Gyanendra, Pashupati Bhakta Maharjan.
According to the website www.telegraphnepal.com, it was Prachanda who had taken the initiative to speak to the King's private secretary and not the other way about. What is more, when Prachanda asked Maharjan what the King thought about the Maoists, Maharjan is reported to have said that the King viewed the ex-rebels' political overtures as "normal.".
If true, this event might prove to be a watershed in Nepal's current political ambience which is marked by uncertainties, unrest and uncontrolled agitations by any number of organizations on various issues, with the administration looking helplessly on as the country is slipping helplessly towards anarchical conditions.
The Maoists contacting the King was considered absolutely impossible .Prachanda and his number two Baburam Bhattarai had never mentioned the King with the prefix His Majesty but always as "Gyanendra" or even less respectable names all through their ten-year long violent agitation against monarchy which has resulted in the death of 13,000 people of which 9000 are said to be Maoist "combatants".
Peace was restored in April 2006 largely with the involvement of India in the negotiations between the political parties and the Maoists with parleys held at undisclosed – but fairly well known – venues in and around New Delhi with Prachanda and Bhattarai ferried by aircraft from their hideouts in Nepal. The King had to restore the dissolved Pratinidhi Sabha, the lower House of the Nepalese Parliament, on April 24, 2006 which was considered a day of victory for the people's agitation ("Jana Andolan").
On the other hand, Mr.Girija Prasad Koirala, the 84-years old Nepali Congress president who has been steering Nepal back to the path of Parliamentary Democracy along with the mainstream political parties, is facing criticisms not only from his other friends in political parties but also from within the ranks of his own party.
An apparently simple matter like re-unification of the faction of the Nepali Congress called the Nepali Congress (Democratic) which had walked out of the parent body in 2002 could not be achieved although this is crucial for the votaries of parliamentary democracy on eve of the general elections for the Constituent Assembly, likely to be held by mid-November this year.
Although the Prime Minister has kept all his near-relatives out of the new Government that was formed on April 1, 2007, allegations and innuendos are hurled against him for favouring his daughter and nephews on party matters.
The "dhotiwalas", that is the people living in the southern plains of Nepal, somewhat contemptuously called the Madhesis (from Madhyadesh in Sanskrit) have also done the unthinkable – the docile people have now taken to guns in order to secure for themselves a place in the sun, as it were.
Apart from other demands, they want an autonomous State within the framework of a unified Nepal . (These people are mistakenly called people of Indian origin, creating an impression that they have come from India to Nepal. Actually their forefathers were living there since time immemorial and they became citizens of Nepal only after King Prithvinarayan Shah, who "Unified" Nepal in 1969 and thereafter had conquered these territories from the Mughals and partly from the British in the 18 th and 19th centuries. In fact the Pahadis, largely Brahmins and Kshatriyas could be called people of Indian origin because they had gone to today's Nepal from Rajputana and other areas of India in the 16 th and the 17the centuries).
Along with them, the Janajatis, the Tribals, have unified and are demanding separate States within the federation of Nepal from various tribal groups. The election process is in doldrums because delimitations of constituencies are yet to begin, and electoral rolls revised and updated.
The role of India has once again become important and hordes of Nepali leaders coming to New Delhi for "treatment" at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences call on Indian leaders frequently, sometimes with due announcements and sometimes not so. However, the United States and Britain in particular, and the United Nations through its various agencies, too are involved in Nepal for a plethora of purposes, politics not excluded.
While all these turmoil are an everyday occurrence in Nepal, and India directly or indirectly, is involved in Nepal in myriad ways, our political leadership is blissfully ignorant about the happenings in our immediately neighborhood and is hardly paying any attention to the possible threat to our internal and external security, ostrich-like.
###
