The Ideological Evolution of The Nepali Maoists

THE IDEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF THE NEPALI MAOISTS
Aditya Adhikari
Introduction This attempt to chart the ideological evolution of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) over the past two decades1 begins with a close look at how the party used Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory to analyze the nature of Nepali state and society and to identify the political forces that kept the country subjugated and at a low level of economic development. It will be shown that the Maoists justified their protracted peoples war by holding all existing political forces as not merely incapable of solving Nepals problems but actively responsible for their exacerbation. It was an inevitable corollary of this analysis that the Nepali people would escape exploitation and dependency only if the Maoists captured state power and established a Maoist New Democratic State. The first four sections of this essay will deal with these matters. With the realization that a total capture of state power was not possible through military means, the Maoists declared their openness to a negotiated settlement to the conflict in 2001. Changes in the Maoists conception of desirable state institutions began to appear in 2003 when a party convention adopted a document allowing for somewhat greater political freedoms than traditionally allowed for in the communist
The current Maoist party is descended from the Fourth Convention, which was founded in 1974. The core Maoist leadership participated in the Communist Party of Nepal (Masal), which was formed in 1983, but broke away to form a separate faction the CPN (Mashal) in 1985. After the 1990 movement, they united with some other communist factions to become the CPN (Unity Centre). The Unity Centre split in 1994. One of its factions renamed itself the CPN (Maoist) and went on to start their armed movement against the state. In 2009, having entered peaceful politics, the CPN (Maoist) united with a party called the Unity Centre the leadership of which consisted largely of those who had split from the original Unity Centre in 1994 and renamed the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M). For the sake of simplicity, the party is referred to as the Maoists throughout this paper, even when discussing periods when they had different names. For a chart detailing the various splits and mergers in the Nepali communist movement between 1949 and 2002, see Thapa with Sijapati (2007[2003]: 44).
Studies in Nepali History and Society 15(2): 217251 December 2010 Mandala Book Point
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regimes of the twentieth century. Sections five and six explain these ideological movements away from the Maoists original goal. Eventually, the party had abandoned armed struggle, participated in a popular movement in alliance with the older parliamentary parties against the monarchy, and entered a peace process. It was then that it began to pay detailed attention to the precise nature of state institutions that it felt should be established in Nepal. Various circumstances the necessity of working together with other parties, pressure from important international actors and the influence of the globally hegemonic conception of liberal democracy meant that the Maoists could no longer aspire to the creation of an authentically New Democratic State. Rather, they had to commit to basic democratic values, including regular elections and fundamental freedoms. The acceptance of liberal democracy, however, was partial. Although they no longer aspire to the immediate imposition of a New Democratic State, the new model of state that the Maoists have proposed in the Constituent Assembly is still meant as a cure to the ills of Nepal as diagnosed by the party two decades ago. It is thus in a number of respects closer to models of state of the communist tradition. Importantly, this model compromises on provisions for separation of powers and insists on those that will allow the state great autonomy so as to allow it to overcome political opposition and undertake swift and radical reform. Tensions, therefore, continue to exist between the Maoist model of state and that envisioned by the older parliamentary parties. These tensions are, in turn, reflected in tensions within the Maoist party. The rejection of the Maoist model of state by the other parties is taken by a section of the Maoists as an indication that they will never be able to implement their preferred model as long as they are in an alliance with the other parties. They call, therefore, for a decisive revolt to capture state power. The other section, on the other hand, rejects such a revolt as unfeasible and insists that a progressive constitution can be implemented even in a situation where the Maoists have to work together with the other parties. The seventh to tenth sections consist primarily of a demonstration of how the Maoists model of the ideal state involved uneasy negotiation with older parliamentary parties and the principles of liberal democracy. It should be mentioned at the outset that a significant component of the Maoists version of a model state consists of institutional provisions meant to liberate castes and ethnic groups that have been historically discriminated against by the state. Originating in a purely Leninist conception of the liberation of nationalities, its theoretical basis has
The Ideological Evolution of the Nepali Maoists 219
evolved in negotiations with other political groups, particularly those representing specific ethnic groups. The Maoists proposal for ethnicbased federalism that they have presented to the Constituent Assembly represents a culmination of this process. This essay, however, is not concerned with this aspect of Maoist theory and will refer to it only in passing.2 The Semi-Feudal Semi-Colony The Maoists have long regarded the institution of the monarchy and the Indian state as the primarily responsible for the oppression of the Nepali people. One stood at the helm of the feudal order, the other had forced Nepal to become its semi-colony; both exploited and extracted surplus from the Nepali population and hindered Nepals development from a feudal to a capitalist society.3 The period of feudalism is considered to have begun during the Licchavi period. Existing for centuries in a diffuse form, the Gorkha King Prithvi Narayan Shah was responsible for centralizing the feudal order through his annexation of territory that is now Nepal and the establishment of his capital in Kathmandu. The centralization of feudal power religious, political, economic and military is considered by the Maoists to be a historical necessity and an evolution in the relations of production. The vast network of the ruling classes that developed over the next two centuries, however, which had the purpose of extracting surplus from the population, became increasingly exploitative. The oppression faced by the Nepali population was on the one hand cultural: the people were classified into a rigid caste hierarchy and the languages and cultures of many groups were suppressed (Kiran 2065 v.s.: 5265). At its heart, however, the exploitation was economic. The tendency by the state elite to distribute land to members of their own class and other favorites led to the concentration of land ownership in the hands of the feudal class. This process had ramifications centuries later: Baburam Bhattarai claimed that in 1997 that, while 70 percent of poor peasants owned around 25 percent of land, 5 percent of rich
For an analysis of Maoist policies towards marginalized ethnic groups, see Tamang (2006). For an overview of the federalism debate post-2006, including a summary of Maoist proposals on federalism, see ICG (2011). This is to mentioned at the outset that this article was completed in January 2011. This section is largely drawn from Bhattarai (2003).
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peasants and semi-feudals owned 30 percent. The poor were thus forced to work the land of the rich under highly exploitative conditions:
The rights of the tenants are not secure, the rate of rent is high and the tenants are often bonded to the landlord through high interest rates charged on loans and other labour-service conditions, apart from the rent of land (Bhattarai 2003: 137).
In most of Nepal, however, particularly in the hills, the majority farmed plots of land that were self-owned. Given the tiny sizes of holdings and the low land productivity, these farmers too were subject to semi-feudal exploitation as pernicious as those faced by tenants. Primarily among these was moneylending:
Peasants are usually in need of loan for both production and consumption purposes; taking undue advantage of this situation, the feudal usurers provide credit to the peasants at high interest rates and under oppressive conditions, and by entrapping them in a vicious cycle of indebtedness they enforce and reinforce semi-feudal exploitation through the payment of interest and through labour-service payments (Bhattarai 2003: 138).
According to the Maoist argument, then, the exploitation that the peasantry faced has prevented it from investing in agriculture to a degree that would lead to a capitalist breakthrough. Thus, while Nepal has been in the stage of transition between feudalism and capitalism for at least a century (and was hence semi-feudal), the rate of transformation has been severely inhibited by the continued existence of productive relations from another era. The ruling elites did realize, particularly after 1950, that a transformation in Nepals social and economic structure was required for modernization and growth. And attempts were made to impose the required changes from above. But such efforts at reform were too superficial to make the required impact. For, modernization requires fundamental transformations in state and society that will inevitably erode the elites sources of power. The monarchy and its coterie were not prepared for this to happen. King Mahendras land reform effort of 1964, for instance, failed due to resistance by powerful landowners who formed a central component of the class base of his regime. The implication that only a revolution from below that sweeps away historically entrenched privilege is capable of the required transformation is hard to miss. Following Lenin, the Maoists argued that the world still existed in a period of semi-colonial oppression. As with radical leftists everywhere, the center of the imperialist order was considered to be the United States and the instruments of exploitation of the post-colonial era multilateral
organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The nature of imperialism, however, is a relatively neglected area of the Maoists theory. Developed in much greater detail and length, and commanding a much greater emotional response among the Nepali public, has been the theory of Nepals semi-colonial exploitation by India. The biggest direct manifestation of world imperialist oppression and exploitation in Nepal, wrote Bhattarai,
is Indian expansionism. Expansionism is the process of exploitation and oppression of a smaller and weaker economy by a stronger economy that has not itself developed to the level of imperialism but derives its strength from the backing of external imperialist forces and its own state. (Bhattarai 2003: 123)
The Maoists trace the beginnings of Indian expansionism to the signing of the Sugauli Treaty in 1816. Signed to conclude a short war between the Nepal government and the British Raj, the treaty mainly detailed the annexation of lands previously belonging to the Nepali state to British India. In the subsequent years, patron-client relationship developed between the British Raj and the Nepali ruling class. The Indian government imposed various treaties upon Nepal, primarily with a view towards using the latter as a captive market for goods. The Nepal-India trade agreement of 1923, for example, forced Nepal to accept a common market between the two countries. The 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship, among other provisions, allowed for national treatment of Indians in Nepal, thus further enabling Indians to dominate the Nepali economy. As Indians steadily encroached into Nepali markets, the latters indigenous industries which, before 1816 were producing goods such as cotton fabrics, copper and brass utensils and military armaments became unable to compete and gradually declined. New industry was stifled even before birth modern goods previously unknown to the Nepali people flooded Nepals markets. Later, in the twentieth century, the few industries based in Nepal and producing goods for exports such as woolen carpets and garments tended to be overtly or covertly controlled by Indian expansionists through their hegemonic control over raw materials, labour, capital and trade (Bhattarai 2003: 127). Nepal was thus eventually reduced to near-total economic dependency. Indian domination was also substantial in other spheres: Indian officialdom sought to expand political influence in Nepal to promote what it perceived to be its countrys national interest.
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The Indian state and capitalist class have steadily managed to expand influence over various sections of the dominant Nepali classes. The commercial elites of Nepal have been almost entirely co-opted by India to serve its economic interests. The national industrial bourgeoisie, a class that according to the Maoist definition promotes the development of domestic industry and the production of goods for domestic consumption is almost non-existent. In their place exists a comprador bourgeoisie with trade and finance as principal occupations. This domestic commercial class, engaged in the creation of markets for and the supply of Indian goods, has directly contributed to the erosion and stifling of domestic industry. Because of its comprador nature, the fledging Nepali bourgeoisie cannot, like in Western Europe, contribute to the development of domestic industry and lead the transition from feudalism to capitalism. In order for the capitalist revolution to take place, it is necessary for the communist party representing the proletariat to take over state power, protect the nation from external economic exploitation and guide and encourage the national industrial class in its efforts to achieve an economic breakthrough. Dictatorship of the Comprador Bourgeoisie The immediate aftermath of the 1990 Peoples Movement, which replaced the absolutist monarchical Panchayat regime with a democratic parliamentary one, was one of great national exuberance. Elected governments and the freedom to express ones opinions and organize interest groups were presented as the panacea to all of Nepals ills. On the fringes of the parliamentary system, however, stood the Maoists at that time organized under the party the Ekata Kendra (Unity Centre) and its parliamentary front the Samyukta Janamorcha (United Peoples Front) (see Maharjan 1993). Members of this group had participated in the 1990 movement as they wished to utilize the opportunity to defy the repressive Panchayat system and contribute to ending it.4 They also thought that the
The dissolution of the Panchayat system was the first of the 10-point list of demands put forward during the 1990 Jana ndolan by the Samyukta Rastriya Jana Andolan (United National Peoples Movement) or SRJA, the front of the radical Maoist parties. This was a demand shared by the Nepali Congress and the United Left Front. The SRJAs second demand was for the formation of an interim government, the drafting of an interim constitution and elections to a Constituent Assembly. Here the SRJA differed from the NC and the ULF. The
parliamentary system that was being demanded by the most important participants in the movement the Nepali Congress and a group of leftist parties called the United Left Front (in which, however, the Maoists were not included) was preferable to the old system as it would allow the Maoists greater political space to organize and spread propaganda than had existed previously (CPN-Mashal 2063 v.s.[2046 v.s.]: 4253). At heart, however, the Nepali Maoists continued to regard parliamentary democracy a sham. Like Marxists everywhere, they believed that a system could not be regarded as a democracy simply by the presence of institutional arrangements such as separation of powers and regular elections. Rather, all political systems were dictatorships of particular classes. The parliamentary system was considered the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie; its provisions for elections and various freedoms merely a faade to camouflage this fact. A political system could be declared democratic only if it was proletarian in nature; that is, if it was entirely controlled by the communist party representing the proletariat. Besides, the establishment of a parliamentary system would do nothing to address the problems arising from Nepals semi-feudal and semi-colonial situation. The Nepali Congress original leadership came from families that, owning land and property, were well off but lacked political power. The political system they desired was a parliamentary democracy existing under a constitutional monarchy. The Nepali communist parties, including the original Communist Party of Nepal formed in 1949, therefore viewed the Congress as the party representing primarily the bourgeoisie. While the Nepali Congress was firmly against royal absolutism, however, according to positions on the left, there was no clear distinction between bourgeois and feudal, and the Congress represented sections of the latter as well. In addition, a class existed the bureaucratic capitalists in which the interests of the bourgeoisie and feudals converged, which too was represented by the Congress. In the Maoist view, therefore, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie broadly meant a state dominated by the Nepali Congress (CPN-Mashal 2063 v.s.[2046 v.s.]). Political events that confirmed the Maoist contempt of the parliamentary system began to occur soon after the 1990 movement. Worried at their inability to control the intense agitations taking place on the streets of Kathmandu, the Congress rushed to reach an agreement with
latter groups simply demanded restoration of multi-party democracy (see SRJA 2046 v.s.).
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the monarchy. The Panchayat system was to be abolished, political parties unbanned and a parliamentary democracy established. A commission constituted of representatives from the parties and the palace was to draft a new constitution. The Maoists, like other communist parties, had long been demanding that a new constitution be drafted through an elected Constituent Assembly (CA), which, it was assumed would abolish the monarchy. The Congress agreement on a commission that would restrict popular participation in the constitution drafting process and allow the monarchy a significant political role, was perceived by the Maoists and others on the left as a betrayal and thus widely criticized (Brown 2010[1996]: 151). The Congress accommodation with the traditional state elite, in the view of the radical left, only intensified after the compact between the monarchy and the major political parties was codified in the new constitution. In the run-up to the parliamentary elections of 1991, for instance, recognizing the shift in the balance of power, many who occupied powerful positions in the Panchayat system defected to the Nepali Congress (Brown 2010[1996]: 156157). The party leadership welcomed this trend: Panchayat officials were often local notables with a great degree of power over the inhabitants of their areas; their influence could be used towards the electoral benefit of the Nepali Congress. For those on the radical left, it was precisely this class of people landed and upper-caste that was responsible for the tyranny over the subaltern, enforced through a combination of traditional legitimacy, economic power and access to the instruments of the state. In other words, this was the class that upheld the feudal order and against which social revolution in the countryside needed to be directed.5 That the leading party of the new democratic order had chosen to ally with this class ensured, in the Maoist view, that the traditional relations of production would continue more or less intact. A broad spectrum of the Nepali left found the actions of the Nepali Congress government that assumed office after the 1991 election to be
For evidence that Panchayat notables at the village level (pradhn pacas) were not universally oppressive but in certain cases worked for the benefit of the population and enjoyed popular respect, see Russell (2000). Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that in many areas local notables were considerably oppressive. For a typical leftist depiction of such a pradhn paca, see Ahutis novel Nay Ghar (2064 v.s.[2050 v.s.]). The transfer of an oppressive pradhn pacas loyalty to the Nepali Congress is depicted in Khagendra Sangraulas Jnkrko Sagt (2056 v.s.).
even more objectionable. The Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, though professing a strong commitment to democratic values, possessed an authoritarian streak, was contemptuous of communists (Brown 2010[1996]: 103) and peremptory towards rivals within and outside his party. The initial years of his prime ministership were marred by confrontations between the government and left parties, including both the Maoists and the CPN-UML.6 And during his initial years in power, Koirala oversaw the steady infiltration of state organs such as the bureaucracy and the police with Nepali Congress loyalists and the use of state security forces against political rivals.7 For Marxists, this could be viewed as a step in the process in the imposition of a bourgeois dictatorship. Despite their criticisms of the parliamentary system, the Maoists did consider the 1990 uprising a blow against the feudal elite. On the other hand, however, they considered the parliamentary system to have only further aided the cause of imperialism and Indian expansionism (Mishra 2004: 95). Nepals communists had long considered the Nepali Congress to be an instrument of Indian foreign policy. This was so, it was thought, first, because the bourgeoisie in Nepal, which the Congress represented, was primarily comprador in nature. Then, Congress leaders had spent many of their years in the political wilderness in India had cultivated close relationships with many in the Indian ruling class. Further, the preferred political system of the party was closely modeled on the Indian parliamentary system. These affinities, it was believed, made the Congress very susceptible to the influence of the Indians. Political developments in the 1990s confirmed to many on the radical left that the parliamentary system Nepal had adopted only enabled the increase of Indian dominance over Nepal. Despite the arbitrarily despotic nature of the monarchial regime that existed between 1960 and 1990, the political center possessed a degree of cohesion and was capable of
6 7
For details of the conflict between the Nepali Congress government and the left in the early 1990s, see K.C. (2065 v.s.: 512). This was a grievance held by many parties and one that continued to fester. In 2001 the UMLs Madhav Kumar Nepal stated that it was very important to bring an end to the Nepali Congress tendency to unilaterally capture and take control of state power (Nepal 2064 v.s.[2058 v.s]: 320). A Maoist supporter in Tansen in 2010 stated that the Congress had taken control of the administration, the UML had taken control of the NGOs and the Maoists now planned to take control of the cooperatives (interview with the author, July 2010).
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formulating foreign policy goals, implementing them and thus protecting the national interest. The state was capable of formulating foreign policy goals and implementing them. While India did possess great influence over Nepal during this as during other periods, under the leadership of King Mahendra in particular, the country had succeeded in establishing diplomatic relations with a range of countries and on occasion was even successful in using the threat of an alliance with the Chinese as leverage against the Indians (Muni 2009: 4143). With the establishment of the multi-party polity after 1990, intense rivalry between political parties, great factionalism within them, shifting parliamentary coalitions and the creation and collapse of short-lived governments became the norm. This enabled the Indian government, through its embassy in Kathmandu, to expand its influence into political parties, to play individual leaders and parties off each other. And it was widely and publicly felt, particularly by those on the left, that the Indians had been successful in manipulating Nepals political class into accepting agreements that would benefit them at the expense of the latter. Most controversial among these was the Mahakali Treaty that, in the Maoist view, allowed Indian imperialist monopoly over Nepals water resources (SJM 2063 v.s.[2052 v.s]: 4).8 In 1994, having failed to gain a majority in parliament on a vote on the governments policies and programs, Koirala went to the King to request the dissolution of the House of Representatives and the holding of fresh elections (Hoftun et al. 1999: 196). In a response to this event that was part interpretation of the events of the past few years and part an invitation to all political actors to join the Maoists in a planned armed
It is widely accepted in Nepal that India attempts to manipulate and coerce political parties. These efforts usually take place away from the public eye, however, with fragmentary incidents being reported in the press. For an attempt to document the underhanded efforts India employed to get the UML to support the Mahakali treaty, see K.C. (2065 v.s.: 6875). For a sober analysis of the treaty and its history, see Gyawali and Dixit (2000: 236304). Mishra (2007: 127) states that the single largest nationalist resistance in Nepal during the last decade manifested itself against the Tanakpur agreement and the Mahakali treaty signed between the GOI [Government of India] and the GON [Government of Nepal]. Sharad Poudels play MechiMahakali Express (1997) demonstrates the almost hysterical opposition towards the treaty by those on the Nepali left. The play opens to a scene where a number of people are beating a drum and shouting: Looted! Our country is looted! Mahakali gone! Mechi also gone! Oh, are you all listening? Looted, the dacoits looted the country! Indian dacoits looted our soil!
revolt, Prachanda accused the Koirala government (and the reactionary classes at whose behest it functioned) of plundering the nation, exploiting its inhabitants and causing a social and economic crisis of such grave proportions that the state could hope to contain the resulting unrest by the use of highly repressive measures. The decision to abruptly dissolve parliament and call for fresh elections, Prachanda wrote, was a conspiracy by Girija Prasad Koirala and the King to perpetuate their fascist rule. Repression had caused such great polarization in Nepali society that there was now space only for two political strands: for fascist reactionaries and armed revolutionaries. Everyone in Nepals political class had no option but to choose between the two sides (Prachanda 2063 v.s.[2051 v.s.]: 9098). The New Democratic Revolution As representatives of the sarvahr (a word that though in Marxist discussions sometimes specifically refers to the proletariat, is more often used in a more diffuse sense to mean something like the dispossessed), the Maoists claimed it was their responsibility to stage a revolution in Nepal and capture state power so as to free the nation from the clutches of bourgeois parliamentarism, feudalism, imperialism and expansionism. A New Democratic State would then be established under the aegis of the revolutionary party. As the goal of this state would be to complete the capitalist revolution, a necessary step before making the transition to socialism, the national industrial class would be encouraged and allowed to flourish.9 The New Democratic State was therefore not entirely socialist, but it was not bourgeois democratic either. It was clear that a bourgeois state would not be able to achieve a capitalist breakthrough in a nation like Nepal where almost the entire bourgeoisie was comprador in nature and thus stifled the development of capitalism. The New Democratic State would be controlled by the proletariat and would curtail the activities of the comprador and bureaucratic capitalists. When the productive base had been developed to an adequate level, steps would be taken to move towards socialism and gradually communism (Prachanda 2063 v.s.[2044 v.s.]: 1115).10
9 10
The Maoists believed that the following classes would act as the motivating forces of the armed struggle: the proletariat, the peasantry (poor, medium and rich), the petty bourgeoisie and national industrialists (CPNM 2051 v.s.: 78). On the New Democratic Revolution Mao wrote: In an era in which the world capitalist front has collapsed in one corner of the globeand has fully revealed its decadence everywhere else, in an era in which the remaining
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Whereas the communists in Russia had captured state power through an urban insurrection and had immediately moved onto the establishment of a socialist society, this was not possible in highly underdeveloped, semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries like Nepal. The exceedingly small capitalist industrial base meant that the size of the urban proletariat was tiny and their organization weak. The state, protected by expansionists and imperialists, was vastly more powerful than any revolutionary party. Any attempt by communists to mobilize the proletariat with the objective of overthrowing the state was therefore bound to fail. The strategy to be followed then, had to be borrowed from Mao, who had created and demonstrated the efficacy of the strategy of protracted peoples war. As in China, the Nepali revolutionary party needed to establish control over rural areas, mobilize the peasantry, engage the state in guerilla warfare, gradually built the revolutionary army to a level capable of conventional warfare, encircle the cities and capture them (CPNM 2063 v.s.[2051 v.s.]; CPN-UC 2004[1991]; Prachanda 2063 v.s.[2044 v.s.]: 1115;). Revisionisms of Various Kinds There were, of course, other communist factions in Nepal that claimed their goal to be the establishment of a New Democratic State. They differed from the Maoists, however, in their views regarding the immediate steps necessary to attain their goal. It was therefore necessary for the Maoists, intent on protracted peoples war, to justify their position
capitalist portions cannot survive without relying more than ever on the colonies and semi-coloniesin such an era, a revolution in any colony or semi-colony that is directed against imperialismno longer comes within the old category of the bourgeois-democratic world revolution, but within the new category. Although during its first stage or first step, such a revolution in a colonial and semi-colonial country is still fundamentally bourgeoisdemocratic in its social character, and although its objective demand is still fundamentally to clear the path for the development of capitalism, it is no longer a revolution of the old type, led entirely by the bourgeoisie, with the aim of establishing a capitalist society and a state under bourgeois dictatorship. It is rather a revolution of the new type, with the participation of the proletariat in the leadership, or led by the proletariat, and having as its aim, in the first stage, the establishment of a new-democratic society and a state under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes (quoted in Schram 1989: 7778, emphasis in the original).
as the correct one and those of the others as tainted by compromise, the adoption of the wrong ideology and political strategy. One faction that was vehemently criticized by the Maoists was of course the one that, going through various permutations, became in 1991 the CPN-UML. It had originally been militantly Maoist: in 1972, influenced by Indian Naxalites, its members had murdered a number of local landlords in Jhapa as part of a campaign of class annihilation (K.C. 2064 v.s.: 107). The Maoists, going on to start an armed movement against the state of their own, have acknowledged this movement as an inspiration (Gaurav 2064 v.s.[2053 v.s.]). The 1972 movement, however, was very quickly suppressed by the state. This setback forced to group to reevaluate their strategy. They moved to the cities and focused their activity around organizing students and laborers (Brown 2010[2006]: 100). After 1980 it began to focus on uniting with other communist factions and forming front organizations (Hachhethu 2002: 4950). After Mao died in China and with the ascent of Deng, these communists gradually abandoned hardline Maoism. The collapse of communism in Russia and the Eastern European countries in the later 1980s convinced them that orthodox communism had failed as a system (Maskey 2002: 274). In the early 1990s, the party revised its policy towards bourgeois parliamentarism. Instead of viewing it as a system that the communist party should participate in simply to expose it from within, it committed itself wholeheartedly to the competitive multi-party system and all of the values associated with liberal democracy. From the perspective of orthodox Marxism, of course, this was a revisionist move, and the Maoists adopted the polemics Lenin directed against the archrevisionist Carl Bernstein to describe the UML: like Bernstein, the Maoists maintained, the UML had abandoned basic Marxist tenets such as the belief that the state, regardless of its institutional arrangements, is always a dictatorship of the class that controls it (Bhattarai 2063 v.s.[2054 v.s.]; Prachanda 2063 v.s.[2049 v.s.]). Participation in the parliamentary process meant, according to the Maoists, that the UML was gradually becoming similar to the Nepali Congress. The increase in the degree of revisionism can only lead to a dissolution into naked reaction, wrote Prachanda (2063 v.s.[2050 v.s.]: 18). The UML is the prime example of this trend in Nepal. They say that the goal is a New Democratic State, but their tactics always lead to the full adoption of capitalism [and] into the embrace of feudals and imperialists.
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The Maoists also spent much of their energy in polemics against individuals and groups who were very close to them in ideology and with whom the former had participated in various factions and fronts over the years (including in the United National Peoples Movement of the 1990 uprising). The most vitriolic of polemics were directed against the Communist Party of Nepal (Masal) and its leader Mohan Bikram Singh. For much of the 1960s and 1970s, Singh was regarded as the most radical of the Nepali Maoists. By the time the leaders of what was to become the Maoist party became politically aware in their late teens and early twenties, Singh was already an established figure, and it was his faction that they were attracted to. Once having joined the party and learned Marxist doctrine from Singh, however, many including top Maoist leaders Prachanda and Kiran grew disillusioned with Masal and its leadership and left to form their own group. This was partially due to unhappiness with what was perceived to be Singhs tendency to treat the party as his personal fiefdom, to peremptorily issue orders while entirely ignoring the views of other people in the party (see, for example, Bhattarai 2063 v.s.[2047 v.s.]). The polemics exchanged between Singh and the Maoists, published in the Nepali leftist press, span decades and involve abstruse points of communist doctrine and history. By 1994, there were two ideological strands on the radical left, the first represented by what was then a faction of the Unity Centre (which was to become the Maoist party) and the second by a conglomeration of groups that included Singhs Masal and the other section of the Unity Centre which later united with Singhs faction to form CPN (Unity Centre-Masal) (Nepali Times 20002001). The sum of their disagreements was encapsulated in the rival doctrines of Maoism and Mao-thought respectively. While it is easy for the initiated reader to get lost in the esoteric polemics exchanged between proponents of the rival doctrines, the basic outlines of the disagreements are not difficult to delineate. By terming their doctrine Maoism, the Nepali Maoists asserted that Maos theoretical work was equivalent in stature and profundity to those of Marx and Lenin. Maoism, just as Marxism and Leninism in the past, was the scientific interpretation of society and provided the correct guide to action for communists in semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries. This being the case, a Mao-style protracted peoples war was absolutely necessary if Nepali society was to be liberated and move towards socialism (for an explication of this argument, see RIM 2009[1998]).
Singh and the other believers in Mao-thought, on the other hand, denied the absolute validity of Maoist doctrine. They recognized the importance of Maos contribution, but thought that the world had not essentially changed since Lenins time. As such, the latters tactics were still applicable to revolutionaries everywhere. An absolute focus on a prolonged armed insurgency against the state was misguided, especially in Nepal, where state was too powerful for the communist parties to take on by armed force. Until such a day when the objective and subjective conditions became conducive for armed struggle, other political means such as street protests, organization of the peasantry and proletariat and participation in elections should be used against the existing state (see CPN-Masal 2009[1992]; Maskey 2002). From the Maoist point of view, the entire ideology of Mao-thought was only an excuse to avoid the hardships of armed struggle and continue enjoying the perks afforded by participation in the existing system. In practice, they claimed, Singh and the other proponents of Mao-thought were indistinguishable from those revisionists who openly accepted parliamentary democracy (see Prachanda 2063 v.s.[2052 v.s.]). They were thus neo-revisionists those reactionary capitalists who recite ritually the mantras of Marxism but in reality murder the soul and essence of Marxist revolutionary thought (Bhattarai 2063 v.s.[2053 v.s.]: 92). A Change in Tactics The espousal of a hard ideological certainty that all political forces besides the communist party were inherently exploitative and that the only possible path to liberation was through a protracted peoples war perhaps helped the Maoists to cultivate steadfastness among a cadre base engaged in the dangerous task of armed struggle. At any rate, the Maoists constantly affirmed and reaffirmed their basic ideology throughout the course of the war. A comprehensive ideological synthesis was undertaken at the Maoists Second National Conference in 2001, when the mistakes and deviations made in the history of the international and domestic communist movements were identified and tenets that would keep the Maoists ideologically pure as well as tactically astute distilled. Summed up as Prachandapath the guiding principles of the party this distillation introduced two tactical modifications to the strategy of protracted peoples war (CPNM 2004[2001]). First, it was recognized that the strategy of protracted war the gradual encirclement of the cities from the countryside and the eventual assault and capture of the urban areas was unlikely to succeed. The
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great concentration of political and economic power and importantly of state security forces in Kathmandu meant that the decisive military strike on the city would likely fail even if all the countryside was brought under Maoist control. What was required was therefore the adoption of a Leninist-style insurrection into the strategy of protracted peoples war (CPNM 2004[2001]: 63). This meant that the Maoists needed to instigate a mass uprising in the capital similar to the one that led to the overthrow of the Panchayat system in 1990. Towards this end, greater efforts had to be put into tasks that had been considered secondary during the early years of the armed struggle: propaganda campaigns in urban areas, for example, or the use of fraternal organizations to organize strikes and demonstrations (ICG 2005: 23). Second, the Maoist leadership decided to put greater effort into seeking a negotiated settlement to the armed conflict. The Maoists decided at the Second National Conference that the
party needs to advance in a planned way the issues like organizing a conference of all political parties and peoples organizations of the country, conducting the election for an interim government by the conference and guaranteeing the formation of constitution by the people under the leadership of this elected interim government (CPNM 2004[2001]: 118).
The Maoists had been pushing for elements of this proposal, like the demand for a new constitution through an elected body, as early as the mass uprising of 1990 (see SRJA 2063 v.s.[2046 v.s.]), but this was the first time since the beginning of the war that they openly announced that they were open to negotiations. Many politicians and analysts welcomed the Maoists new focus on a negotiated, political resolution to the conflict (Nepal 2064 v.s.[2058 v.s.]; Roka 2064 v.s.[2057 v.s.]). Some thought that it indicated that the armed movement was failing and that the Maoists wanted a safe landing into mainstream politics. The Maoists, however, had greater ambitions. They envisaged negotiations as an instrument to create divisions between enemy forces and to achieve a greater degree of political penetration into Kathmandu (by, for instance, taking advantage of the open political environment during ceasefire periods to organize various political events in the city). At least a section of the Maoist leadership considered negotiations as a tactical step towards the goal of fomenting an armed insurrection. It was left unclear with which political forces the Maoists
wished to negotiate. 11 Only time would tell how precisely the mainstream political forces would become polarized and which of them would become open to dealings with the Maoists. Learning from Stalin Although the two tactical modifications made at the Second National Conference of 2001 were to have profound ramifications for the evolution of the Maoist party, they did not represent any ideological departure from its prior convictions regarding the ideal model for party, state and society. There was one area, however, where this conference did mark the beginning of an ideological modification in the direction of a somewhat greater political freedom. As the doctrine of the Nepali Maoists regarded Maoism the most profound development of revolutionary thought and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in Maoist jargon) the greatest revolutionary exercise in history, it was in aspects of these that the roots of the ideological departure were sought. The starting point was Maos analysis of Stalins mistakes. According to Maos well-known dictum, Stalin was 70 percent correct and 30 percent wrong. Among the mistakes that Stalin made and the Nepali Maoists had to learn from regarded his handling of the party organization. Mao stated that Stalin did not apply proletarian democratic centralism and, to some extent, violated it (CPNM 2004[2001]: 55). This meant that Stalin, instead of following Leninist principles of party organization and allowing for open debate on matters of policy until a resolution was reached (at which point of course the entire party would have to strictly adhere to the decision), considered the communist party a monolithic body that should always remain subservient to his command. Dissent was treated harshly. Stalins was a model of extreme bureaucratic centralism. The proper exercise of democratic centralism, according to Mao, should
11
As Madhav Nepal (2064 v.s.[2058 v.s.]: 319320) stated at the time: It is necessary for them [the Maoists] to clarify a number of issues. What is the meaning of a conference of all political parties and peoples organizations? What will be the role of the King and the Nepali Congress in that conference? What will be the situation of the 70 other parties in the parliament and registered at the election commission? Which of them can be allowed to participate in the conference?.Will it be the King or the Prime Minister who convenes the gathering? If differences arise at the conference what mechanisms will there be to resolve them? How many people will be included in the [interim] government?. According to which clause and subclause of the current constitution will the interim government be granted legitimacy?
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include the practice of the two-line struggle, where disagreements with the leadership are treated not as incipient factionalism that threaten the unity of the party, but rather as tendencies that exist in society that need to be treated with gravity. Members of the CPNM had been taking recourse to this argument when they felt that their leadership was ignoring their opinions years before the start of their armed struggle. In 1990, for instance, as a justification for quitting Mohan Bikram Singhs Masal, Baburam Bhattarai accused the old communist leader of bureaucratic and Hoxa-ite tendencies (after the Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxa, who rejected Maos criticism of Stalin and instead continued to regard the latter as the paragon of communist virtue) (Bhattarai 2063 v.s.[2047 v.s.]). To this day Bhattarai refers to the mistakes made by Stalin while arguing for collective leadership and against the excessive concentration of power in the hands of party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda (see Basnet 2011; Basnet and Pun 2011). Stalins mistakes in his social policies followed from the ones he made in the handling of the party. In Maos words, Stalin
confused two types of contradictions, which are different in nature: contradictions between the enemy and us and contradictions among the people, and also confused the different methods needed in handling them. In the work led by Stalin of suppressing the counter-revolution, many counter-revolutionaries deserving punishment were duly punished, but at the same time there were innocent people who were wrongly convicted (CPNM 2004[2001]: 55).
In other words, while Stalin was correct in suppressing the class enemy, the method he adopted while doing so, like his handling of the party, was peremptory and arbitrary. The communist party under him, with no checks to balance its absolute power, went far beyond the bounds of class struggle in its use of violence. These considerations were included in the political document of the Second National Convention, The Great Leap Forward: An Inevitable Need of History. But it was only two years later in June 2003 that the Nepali Maoists seriously addressed the fundamental questions posed by the experience of the communist regimes of the twentieth century: Why had movements that had sacrificed much in the struggle against injustice transformed into bureaucratic, revisionist and counter-revolutionary parties after ascending to state power? Why was it that in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union the capitalist-imperialist political system succeeded in projecting itself as a true democracy,
whereas the systems created by true proletarian democrats gained a reputation for being brutal and oppressive dictatorships? And how should the socialist party of the twentieth century structure the state under its control so as to avoid these pitfalls? The answer that the Nepali Maoists found enshrined in the party document The Development of Democracy (janavd) in the TwentyFirst Century (CPNM 2004[2003]: 129149) was that the communist parties of the twentieth century found themselves entirely unopposed once they came into power and became unreceptive to the needs of the wider population. In the absence of political competition that would have motivated them to stay connected with the people, the parties turned mechanistic and bureaucratic and granted themselves special privileges. Similarly, the masses became a victim of formal democracy and gradually their limitless energy, creativity and dynamism got sapped (CPNM 2004[2003]: 148149) A number of modifications, the Nepali Maoists argued, to the structure of the party, the army and the state would enable the new socialist party to remain committed and receptive to the needs of the people. First, it should be ensured that while a section of the party was involved in running the state machinery, another section should be involved in mass work so that close ties with the general population were maintained. At regular intervals, the responsibilities between the two should be switched, so that party members had continuous experience of both governing and of working amongst the people. This, it was thought, would keep party leaders and cadres sensitive to the needs of the population and encourage them to continue living, as according to communist principles, in an austere fashion. Second, it was argued, the revolutionary army should not be confined to barracks after the capture of state power but should continue its work as a torch-bearer of revolution engaged in the militarization of the masses and in the service of the masses (CPNM 2004[2003]: 146147). Third, the revolutionary party would compete with other parties politically, including in elections. The relations between the parties would not be like those prevailing in China, where the smaller parties simply mechanistically cooperate with the communist party. All parties would be allowed significant freedom and autonomy. This measure would keep the revolutionary party responsive to the population. However, as would be mentioned in the constitution, only anti-feudal and anti-imperialist forces would be allowed to compete in this state.
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The concepts of rotation between positions of authority and participation in mass work and the use of the army for the purpose of popular political mobilization were borrowed more or less wholesale from the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The Nepali Maoists conception of the model state differs somewhat from the Chinese model in its emphasis that there exists full and open competition between political parties. The provision for open competition, however, sits uneasily with the qualification that it exist only within the constitutional limits of the antifeudal and anti-democratic state, so that if anybodytransgresses the limits legally set by the democratic state, he would be subjected to democratic dictatorship (CPNM 2004[2003]: 149). It is implicit that the revolutionary party will be responsible for deciding which parties are anti-feudal or anti-imperialist, and thus for deciding which parties will be allowed to compete and which suppressed. The space for political competition is thus narrower than appears at first glance and there is ample room for the arbitrary exercise of power even in the Nepali Maoists model of state. The Maoists do genuinely appear to have come around to a belief in the importance of certain political rights and freedoms. While devising a political system that included these, however, it was necessary to avoid including provisions that would oppose certain ideological shibboleths that the party had long held dear. According to long-held tradition, the starting point had to be the Cultural Revolution, that most superior exercise of proletarian democracy in history. And the emphasis on political freedoms could not, at any cost, lead to the adoption of a system that resembled liberal or social democracy. This would, of course, place the Maoists in a tradition of revisionism that the partys ideological forbears had long vilified. (Euro-communism, runs a line in the political document of the 2001 National Convention, on the pretext of opposing Stalins concept of monolithic unity and bureaucracy, began opposing the unified dialectical materialist science of Marxism itself from a bourgeois, anarchist, pluralist angle (CPNM 2004[2001]: 54)). The Maoists attempt to include political freedoms within its framework can be regarded as an attempt to find a satisfactory compromise between the communist and the bourgeois-liberal conceptions of democracy. At root, however, they continued to conceptualize real democracy as a dictatorship of the proletariat. The failure to devise a political model that provided adequate checks on the arbitrary exercise of power by the revolutionary party was perhaps an
indication that irreconcilable.
the
two
political
models
were
fundamentally
New Constraints King Gyanendras takeover of 2005 made it possible for the Maoists, who had been seeking an entry into nonviolent politics, to form an alliance with the traditional parliamentary parties against the monarchy (CPNM 2063 v.s.[2062 v.s.]: 292309). Although most of the Maoists continued to regard the parliamentary parties the Nepali Congress in particular, but also sections of the UML as representatives of the comprador bourgeoisie that needed to be eliminated for the greater good of Nepal, it was possible to justify an alliance with them ideologically. Mao, himself, after all had on some occasions formed a united front against the Japanese with his staunch enemy Chiang-Kai Shek. And the Nepali Maoists had themselves consistently believed that the genuine communist policy is one whichtactically, concentrates the struggle against the one [either the monarchy or parliamentary parties] which has seized state-power and has been directly exploiting and suppressing the people (CPNM 2004[2001]: 71). In fact, the entire political process of late 2005 and 2006 could be seen as a concrete outcome of what the Maoists had envisaged in 2001. The success of the April 2006 mass uprising against the monarchy was perceived as the success of the Maoist decision to incorporate the strategies of armed insurrection into the protracted peoples war (CPNM 2004[2001]: 63). And the writing of the Interim Constitution, the formation of an elected government and the holding of elections to a Constituent Assembly could be perceived as the outcome of a Maoist plan charted in the political report of the 2001 National Convention. The Maoists felt further vindicated when the parties jointly agreed to declare Nepal secular, agreed to their demand for a forward-looking restructuring of the state to resolve the problems related to class, caste, gender, region and so on (SPA and CPNM 2005) and, later in 2008, when the elected Constituent Assembly (CA) voted to abolish the institution of the monarchy. In order for the parliamentary parties to take the Maoists on as partners, of course, the latter had to commit to democratic norms and values such as competitive multiparty system of governance, civil liberties, fundamental rights, human rights the principle of the rule of law etc. (SPA and CPNM 2005). This meant that, with a view towards the creation of a stable peace, the Maoists would, most immediately, cease
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attacking members of other parties and would let them engage in political activity in peace. In the longer term, the other parties expected that the Maoists, separated from their instruments of coercion, would become acculturated to the norms of liberal democracy. For the Maoists, however, such an acculturation would mean that their party had accepted the cardinal sin of class conciliation and thus had degenerated into revisionism. Privately, therefore, the Maoists continued to view the peace process negotiations, not as a process of compromise at all cost, but rather as another front to fight against the enemy (CPNM 2004[2003]: 137). In other words, this entry into competitive peaceful politics was but a stage in a process that would lead to the achievement of the Maoist partys ultimate goals. The nature of these goals was, however, by no means unambiguous. The more doctrinaire of Maoists, led by Mohan Baidya Kiran, believed that the entire peace process had to be viewed merely tactically. There was no question of committing wholeheartedly to the commitments made in the peace agreements. In fact, as he argued, the longer the Maoists stayed in the peace process, the more they would become corrupted by the privileges of power and lose their revolutionary edge. A continuation of the alliance with the older parliamentary parties was impossible; their ideology was irreconcilable with that of the Maoists. The other parties would in no circumstances agree to the promulgation of a constitution acceptable to the Maoists. Therefore, now that the monarchy had been abolished, it was time for the party to focus their struggles against the parliamentary parties, in particular on the organization of an armed urban insurrection that would enable the party to capture entire state power (Kiran 2065 v.s., 2067 v.s.).12 A violent seizure of state power, however, remained, under prevailing circumstances, impossible. For, the institutions of state in Kathmandu remained too powerful for the Maoists to take over by force, the party lacked the mass support required for an urban insurrection and there was no possibility that major foreign powers would accept an entirely Maoistdominated state. Besides, the Maoists had to a great extent become locked into the political process outlined in the political agreements of 2005 and
12
Kiran has a substantial base among the Maoists and the party leadership has found it difficult to disregard his line. There have been occasions when, in an attempt to placate him and his followers, the party chairman has had to incorporate aspects of these demands into party policy documents (see UCPNM 2008). This is one reason why the party leadership often seems to make contradictory statements from one day to the next.
2006. Whatever their theoretical objectives, on a day-to-day basis they had to identify challenges and formulate tactics within the framework of multi-party competition. Participation in the peace process necessitated Maoist participation in elections to a Constituent Assembly. And after they emerged as the party with the most number of seats in that body, pragmatism dictated that they should participate in deliberations within that body regarding the details of the constitution that was to be drafted. In their vision of the state system that Nepal should adopt that they presented in the CA, the Maoists were of course first and primarily influenced by their Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology. But 24 other parties were present in the CA, and none of them would agree to a traditional dictatorship of the proletariat. In particular, in consonance with the peace agreements, the older parliamentary parties insisted that the Maoists accept without reservations the inclusion of all political freedoms that form the cornerstone of liberal democracy in the new constitution. This was one factor that conditioned the content of the proposals that the Maoists brought to the CA. Although the other political parties continued to find many of their proposals objectionable, the Maoists from the very beginning agreed to include the bare minimum of political rights and freedoms in the new constitution: regular elections, the freedoms of expression and organization. Participation in a constitution building exercise with parties that the Maoists regarded as enemies required a strong ideological justification. And it was Baburam Bhattarai who provided the arguments regarding the historical necessity of Maoist participation in the CA and was chiefly responsible for the production of the Maoist draft constitution, titled Janatko Saghiya Gaatantra Neplko Sabidhn 2067 (UCPNM 2067 v.s.). Bhattarai had for years believed that the Maoists, once having gained control over the state, needed to allow for much greater political freedoms than had existed in the communist regimes of the twentieth century. Now that the Maoists were in fact participating in an open political environment, Bhattarai argued that the peace process should not be viewed merely as a tactical stage that the Maoists should break out of once the appropriate conditions for eliminating the other political parties arose. Rather, it should be recognized that the Peoples War and the 2006 Jana ndolan had led to major gains in the transformation of the Nepali polity.
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So far, Bhattarai argued, through the declaration of secularism and the abolition of the monarchy, there had been some movement toward eliminating Hindu chauvinism and feudalism. It was now necessary to draft a constitution that permanently protected and institutionalized these gains. In addition, efforts needed to be made to restructure the state so that Nepals various oppressed castes and communities were offered conditions of emancipation such as affirmative action and political autonomy in their historical homelands. Over a period of time, the remnants of feudalism would gradually be eroded through land reform and other measures, economic growth would take place and Nepal would become liberated from the chains of dependency. But for the nation to move in this direction, it was essential that the alliance between the Maoists and the older parliamentary parties remain intact and the letter of the peace agreements followed (Bhattarai 2067 v.s.). Bhattarai, in an attempt to fit his vision to his partys ideological mould, claimed that the state system he envisaged would be transitional in the path to the attainment of a full New Democratic State, then of socialism and eventually, of course, of communism. This was dubious to the more ideologically inclined sections of the party, accustomed as they were to thinking of any prolonged cooperation with the parliamentary parties as revisionist. And Bhattarai did come under repeated attack from others in the party during the years of the peace process on specifics of his political line. In the absence of any real political alternative, however, many of the more pragmatic among the Maoists adopted to a large extent Bhattarais analysis of the Maoist partys historical role and responsibilities. New Institutions for Old Problems The Maoist diagnosis of Nepals ills and the nature of the social and economic transformation necessary to overcome them remained consistent from the period before beginning their armed movement to the time when they were engaged in debates on the new state system to adopt in the CA. In their most comprehensive version of a draft constitution to date, the section on the Directive Principles of State identifies the liberation of Nepal from the clutches of semi-feudalism and semicolonialism as the chief tasks of the state. By undertaking wide-scale land reform (a process in which the state should not, according to the Maoists, have to recompense those from whom land is being confiscated a proposal that the Nepali Congress and UML vehemently oppose (CACDNRFRR 2066 v.s.: 4246)), the current feudal production system
is to be brought to an end, and the right and control of farmers and other labourers over natural resources ensured. Bureaucratic capital is to be controlled and eliminated and national industrial capital encouraged so as to lead to the establishment of a self-reliant, socialist-oriented national economy (UCPNM 2067 v.s.: Art. 54). The nature of the state that is to implement these goals, however, has changed. Private capital is to largely be allowed to continue to flourish, as are electoral and other kinds of competition between rival parties. It is clear, however, that the accomplishment of the goals above will require a significant intervention by the central state. It will be necessary to overcome significant opposition from powerful sections of society to redistribute land and stop the comprador class from, say, opening up Nepali markets to foreign goods. Similarly, the state will require immense bureaucratic capacity to properly implement the land reform effort and to, say, provide support to fledging industry meant to supply domestic markets. Thus, while accepting basic liberal democratic principles, the system that the Maoists propose also includes provisions that they believe will enable the accomplishment of the partys socio-economic goals. In a number of respects, these provisions differ substantially from those provided for in the 1990 constitution. First, the Maoists propose that Nepal adopt a presidential system, where the president will occupy the positions of both head of state and of government. The president is to be directly elected and select a council of ministers from all parties according to the proportion of seats they hold in the legislature (UCPNM 2067 v.s.: Art. 72, 73, 74, 82). The argument here is that the parliamentary system that has existed in Nepal for the past two decades is directly responsible for political instability and for the fact that no government has been able to act as an agent of change and to implement long-term policy. For most of Nepals recent history, no single party has commanded a majority in parliament and all governments, being elected through the legislature, have required coalitions of a number of parties. Rapidly shifting political alignments have meant that these coalitions last for very short periods of time. Government turnover is thus extraordinarily high. As a result, those who gain positions of power, understanding that their tenure in office is likely to be short, have spent most of their efforts on remaining in power for as long as possible and on enriching themselves. Further, the provision for separate heads of state and of government in a parliamentary system, by allowing for a division of supreme authority
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over the state, is also, according to the Maoists, problematic. For, in such a situation, the head of state is provided with the opportunity to expand his or her power over that of the elected government. This was seen very clearly when the monarch, constitutionally the head of state, exploited ambiguous provisions in the 1990 constitution to first dissolve parliament in 2002 and later directly take over executive power in 2005. In contrast, in a system where the president is liberated from the direct control of the legislature (though still accountable to it) and is instead directly elected from the population, it will not be easy to get rid of governments as easily as when the head of government is under the control of the legislature. The Maoists argue that this will bring an end to the instability that has existed so far, enable governments to undertake significant structural reform and, when needed, overcome political opposition. And by investing the president with the authority of both the head of state and of government, it will be possible to avoid problems arising from a division of supreme state authority. Second, the Maoists insist that the constitution mention that the legislature will be unicameral. In their opinion, a House of Representatives (HoR) should be allowed to draft and pass legislation unhindered as, consisting of directly elected lawmakers, it represents the will of the people. An upper house, which is expected in most democracies to moderate the more extreme urges of the lower house, in the Maoist view presumably can only act as an impediment in efforts to implement swift and rapid change. And, in the Maoist opinion, it is necessary to ensure that decisions are taken through consensus to avoid the partisan conflict that has plagued Nepali democracy and made it impossible for the government to take decisive action. Therefore, they maintain that there should be no provision for an opposition in the legislature. Rather, all parties should be represented in government in proportion to the number of seats they occupy in that body (UCPNM 2067 v.s.: Art. 82,112, 113). Third, the Maoists argue that so far in Nepals history, the judiciary has failed to provide justice and has been wholly unaccountable to the wider population. It is thus necessary to subject it to greater public control and scrutiny. For this purpose, they have recommended the formation of a Special Judicial Committee consisting of members of the legislature that will recommend appointments to positions of the chief justice and other judges of the Supreme Court (UCPNM 2067 v.s.: Art. 155). After the legislature approves the recommendation, the president is to ratify it. Further, the Special Judicial Committee is also to have the ultimate power
in interpreting the constitution and federal laws on matters of national importance, those directly concerning political issues, and in cases where the law contradicts the constitution (UCPNM 2067 v.s.: Art. 172(2)(a)). Fourth, in order to liberate the various marginalized caste, cultural, lingual, regional and ethnic groups of Nepal, the Maoists maintain, Nepal should be restructured along federal lines. As Lenin argued with reference to the countries in early twentieth-century Eastern Europe, the Maoists once believed that for a period of time all such oppressed groups (which they refer to as nationalities) need to be granted full autonomy, including the right to self-determination (Tamang 2006). The partys current position on federalism is a direct outgrowth of the Leninist position. As oppression historically took place along ethnic and cultural lines, it is argued, federalism is necessary to grant oppressed groups the rights they have not been allowed to exercise so far (UCPNM 2067 v.s.: Art. 60, 61, 62). These groups should be allowed certain preferential rights over others so that, for example, the top political leadership of the province will be afforded to members of the dominant ethnic/caste group in that area for the first 10 years after the constitution comes into operation (UCPNM 2067 v.s.: Art. 70). And each province should be granted the right to self-determination (according to the Maoists, however, in Nepal, this right will not include the right to secession) (UCPNM 2067 v.s.: Art. 69). The Expansion of Power The Maoists continue to believe in the validity of their original analysis and diagnosis of the ills of the Nepali state and society and perceive themselves to be the party of the revolutionary vanguard, the only one capable of leading the socio-economic transformation necessary in Nepal. In their view, therefore, there would be no point if the system they have devised comes into existence if their party will not lead it for a significant amount of time. One of the partys objectives thus is to gain a majority in elections held in the foreseeable future. In fact, when hardliners complain that their party is stuck in the parliamentary trap and a violent revolt is necessary in order to extricate itself, more pragmatic leaders such as Maoist Chairman Prachanda have argued that the revolt meant to capture all state power should be held after the Maoists have managed to accumulate a great deal of power through winning a majority in the general election that will take place after the constitution is drafted (Prachanda 2067 v.s.).
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In fact, significant changes have been made in the Maoist party organization since the end of the conflict in 2006 in line with its selfconception and ideology. During the war, ideological fervor and discipline were valued highly, as befitting a party mostly concentrated on waging a guerilla war against the state. During the years of the peace process, the objective became to recruit large numbers of people and thus rapidly expand the party organization. There were drawbacks to this effort: party leaders repeatedly expressed concern that many lumpen elements, young men with low levels ideological and political training, concerned only to gain some power and influence, were joining the partys Young Communist League (YCL). The process of rapid recruitment could not be stopped, however, for, no matter the quality of cadres, a significant increase in their quantity could only help the Maoist party consolidate power over all sections of society and help them, among other things, to win elections. In line with their desire to become the hegemonic communist party in the country, the Maoists also encouraged small communist factions to merge into the party. In January 2009 the faction calling itself the Unity Centre consisting largely of individuals who had split away from the Maoists in 1994 in opposition to their plan to start an armed movement decided to rejoin their former colleagues. During the process of negotiation that preceded the merger, there were discussions regarding what official ideology the party should adopt. In a reprise of the intense ideological disputes of the early 1990s, the Unity Centre insisted that the united partys ideology be Marxism, Leninism and Mao-thought. The Maoists argued that the ideology remain Marxism, Leninism, Maoism. Times had changed, however. Disagreements that had once provoked such deep rancor and had seemed essential to the development of the Nepali communist movement had become irrelevant. And so, the two groups, now a single party with the name of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), did something that would have been inconceivable two decades ago: they decided that their official ideology would hence on be Marxism, Leninism, Maoism and Mao-thought. A Peoples Democracy As the political system the Nepali Maoists have envisioned in their draft constitution has been designed in a manner that will, it is hoped, enable the party to realize its original goals, it is but natural that it bears structural similarities to the model of state that the party had held ideal before acknowledging the need for political freedoms. According to Mao
himself, grass-roots participatory democracy was desirable and necessary, but only within the context of a strong and centralized state (Schram 1989: 93). The Nepali Maoists too believe this: while they have been strong proponents of ethnic-based federalism, they envisage that the federal provinces will be kept under the control of the center.13 There are thus provisions for central control over provinces in their draft constitution. Most notably, each province is to have a provincial chief appointed by the president in consultation with the provincial chief minister. Most of the powers of the provincial chief are limited to performing tasks at the recommendation of the provincial council of ministers. In this, the range of their powers approximates those of state governors in India, who are mandated at the provincial level with tasks that at the center are the responsibility of the president (at least in political systems where the president is head of state and the prime minister is head of government, as in India or in Nepal during the currently-ongoing transitional period following the abolition of the monarchy). In India, governors of states have the discretionary power to recommend to the president that the center should take over the direct administration of the province in cases of severe misgovernance or other crises. The Nepali Maoists, however, seem to take a broader view of the provincial chiefs powers. A clause in their draft constitution mentions that: Notwithstanding anything contained in Clause (2) [which states that the provincial chief will exercise powers at the advice or consent of the Provincial Council of Ministers], the advice or consent of the Provincial Council of Ministers shall not be required while exercising powers on the recommendation of any other body or authority as allowed for by the constitution or laws (UCPNM 2067 v.s.: Art. 95(3)). The ambiguity here regarding the bodies or authorities that can exercise control over the provincial chief is perhaps indicative of the Maoist desire for greater central control over the provinces than in India. More importantly, there is also a tendency in the Maoist draft constitution to collectivize and universalize political participation in the manner of groups everywhere that have come to power after a violent revolt and are intent on radical change. The president, being directly elected, is taken to represent the will of the entire people. So is the
13
According to a Maoist supporter interviewed by the International Crisis Group (ICG 2011: 10), It must be clear that under any form of government, the centre would command the nation as a whole. That is true in many other examples. The father rules the family, the principle the school.
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legislature: the absence of any opposition and the provision that all decisions will be taken in consensus seems to assume the existence of a singular peoples will. In the absence of an upper house that in liberal democracies is tasked with the sober reconsideration of legislation passed by the lower, there will be few checks on attempts by the dominant faction in the legislature to implement the various aspects of their vision of rapid socio-economic transformation, even as the rights of certain minorities may be abrogated. Even the judiciary is to be brought under the control of the legislature, that body representing the collective will of the people. There are, of course, other measures in the draft constitution that, by allowing for various political freedoms, inhibit the dominant party from establishing total control over state and society as in Russian and Chinese communist regimes. However, it is clear that the provisions that seek to allow unhindered implementation of the collective peoples will, do so at the cost of the erosion of checks and balances that are accorded such importance in liberal democratic regimes. The model of the Nepali Maoists, if implemented, could well lead to majoritarian tyranny. But majoritarian tyranny, of course, is a not a problem that the Maoists really recognize. Their adoption of some political freedoms and electoral competition does not mean that they have come around to the liberal democratic belief that a political system is democratic if includes a specific set of institutional arrangements (the separation of powers, for example). Rather, as indicated by the continued insistence that a distinction be made between parliamentary democracy and a peoples democracy (the phrase used to describe their political system in the Maoist draft constitution is Peoples Federal Republic), the Maoists continue to hold on to the original Marxist notion that all state systems are dictatorships of particular classes. The only true democracy is one where the proletariat is in control of the state, for, goes the official Marxist point of view, only such a state can lead the transformations necessary for the establishment of a classless society. The new system that the Maoists envisage, in which the party of the majority will exercise hegemonic control, can be regarded thus as a version of the dictatorship of the proletariat (or a true proletarian democracy), for a time when liberal democracy is in a position of global supremacy, and accommodation with it is thus necessary.
Conclusion There is almost no possibility that the Maoist draft constitution will be adopted as the law of the land anytime in the foreseeable future. The Nepali Congress and the UML, prepared only to make a few modifications to the existing parliamentary system, believe that the Maoist model of state is fundamentally undemocratic and has been put forward with the objective of easing the path towards the imposition of a one-party state. Supported by the Indian establishment, they have thus opposed almost all of the provisions described above regarding the nature of the executive, judiciary and legislature, leading Baburam Bhattarai to state that the razing[sic] struggle between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy has been sharply manifested while drafting a new constitution (Bhattarai 2011). The parties have managed to resolve a number of differences. Notably, the Maoists withdrew their insistence on their provision that only anti-feudal and anti-imperialist forces would be allowed to politically compete in the face of vehement opposition by other political parties. By and large, however, the differences that have been resolved consist mostly of the more peripheral issues. The core disputes over the nature of state institutions remain unresolved. Indeed, it is difficult to see how they will be unless the Maoists are prepared to accept, among other things, more checks and balances and a weaker executive. There is a high possibility that Nepals Constituent Assembly will not be able to deliver a constitution by the scheduled deadline of May 28, 2011. There is some talk that the parties will produce a partial constitution and then extend the term of the CA to allow more time to discuss unresolved issues. Many maintain that agreement on the form and structure of government, which includes many of the issues referred to above, is imminent, that it is only over the nature of federalism that major differences persist. This, however, is too complacent a view: a closer look at the differences between the Maoists and non-Maoists regarding forms of governance are as in fact major. The debate will continue for some time. As it does, the precise nature of the institutions the Maoists envisage as ideal may well continue to evolve. And, at the heart of this evolution will continue to lie the negotiation between models of state that place primary value on immense authority and the capacity for radical reform on the one hand and the rights of and protections for individuals on the other.
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