Nepal, a tiny Himalayan state has attained an increased relevance in the last few decades due to the geographical importance, being sandwiched between the two Asian giants, China and India. The final results of last week’s election bequeathed a landslide victory for Nepal’s left alliance of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) and the Nepal Communist Party-Maoist Centre. The United Marxist Leninist (UML) communist party won 80 seats, in a federal parliament of 275 members (165 from direct contests and 110 from proportional representation). The Maoists have won 34 seats and were leading in two. The bourgeois Nepali Congress was routed with only 21 seats. These results in the electoral plane express resilience of the Nepalese people to fight back against the oppressive system.
Nepal’s centuries-old Hindu theocratic monarchy was abolished in aftermath of the mass uprising of 2006 and a pseudo-democratic rulership was installed. But instability and crisis have been unrelenting. However, the rotten Nepalese capitalism could bring no prosperity or improve living conditions of the oppressed classes of the country. Nepal has had 10 prime ministers in the past 11 years signalling the political instability emanating from the socioeconomic crisis. The UN estimates that 40 per cent of Nepalis’ live in absolute poverty. Food insecurity, poor housing, low soil quality, low literacy rates, natural disasters and ethnic discrimination plague the society. The oppressed masses brought the ‘communists’ to power in their quest for salvation.
The ‘Communist’ Alliance’s new Prime Minister KP Oli has had fraught relations with India for forging close links with China. India had backed the Nepalese Congress in these elections. Nepal will be the newest participant in China’s policy of strategic and economic expansionism and become a part of Xi Jinping’s ambitious ‘One Belt One Road’ (OBOR) project. In his previous stint in power as a Prime Minister in October 2015, Oli decided to diversify Nepal’s dependence on Indian fuel, medicines and other commodities by signing an agreement to purchase one-third of this land-locked country’s needs from China. Oli had also led the protests against the Indian blockade and declared that India’s blockade of Nepal was wreaking havoc in the aftermath of the earthquake devastation.
India had criticised Oli and even backed the Maoists led by Prachanda not long ago, in 2016. As the pro- India Nepali Congress has been routed, on the eve of this result India tried to make-up with Oli after UML’s power-sharing agreement with Prachanda. But Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-lauded foreign policy of ‘neighbourhood first’ seems to have hit the great wall of China. However, the harsh reality is that land-locked Nepal is heavily dependent on India for both its petroleum products and other essentials. Their bitter falling out in the past had hit the ordinary Nepalese masses that had to pay a heavy price for the Indian sanctions. Oli had turned to China for help and Beijing gladly obliged. But even after the agitation and blockade was over, Oli continued to play the China card. Kathmandu uses the same trick as most of India’s neighbours, using Beijing to fend off Delhi. The Nepalese monarchy also had a tradition of balancing India’s extensive hold by turning to China.
No Nepali ruler in the present setup based on a decayed capitalist system can challenge India’s imperialist hegemony. Therefore, even the ‘communist’ alliance government will be forced to continue the policy of playing a balancing act between the two Asian powers
It was Delhi’s unease with Oli’s pro-China stand that had led to the covert operation to dislodge him through the Nepali Congress’ leader Sher Bahadur Deuba in 2015. Now with Oli coming to power again, China will spread its wings further into India’s backyard. But India’s commercial and cultural domination will be hard to remove. Nepal has an easy road and land access for the New Delhi bosses to assert their hegemony. It’s an open border and thousands of Nepalese live and work across India. Strains in India-Nepal relations could adversely affect the livelihood of thousands of Nepali workers and remittances to their families that flow in from India could dry up.
The China-Nepal border covers difficult mountainous terrain. Poor connectivity and high costs of transportation through the rough Himalayan terrain would increase costs exponentially. As with petroleum products, all other imports from China will have to come through the Himalayan gorges. Hence no Nepali ruler in the present setup based on a decayed capitalist system can challenge India’s imperialist hegemony. Therefore, even this ‘communist’ alliance government will be forced to continue the policy of playing a balancing act between the two Asian powers.
The former armed rebels now in the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center), who fought the state between 1996 and 2006, in reality never embarked on a revolutionary policy of overthrowing Nepal’s degenerate capitalism. After a long guerrilla insurgency, they ended up in a rotten compromise through a face saving UN-monitored deal, accepting the status quo. The Maoists even went to the extent of forming an alliance with the Nepali bourgeois’ Congress party after their ‘surrender’. Pushpa Kamal Dahal, known as Prachanda, the Maoist ‘doctrinaire’ and leader of the guerrilla struggle, became Prime Minister of Nepal from 2008 to 2009 and again from 2016 to 2017 as a part of this coercive capitalist state. It is unsurprising, as history has witnessed so many times— ultra-leftist adventurists turning out to be the worst sort of opportunists. Neither is the UML a genuine ‘communist’ party. It is more of a social-democratic party with policies of reformism.
The UML-Maoist coalition has vowed to work for good relations with both India and China. This is a utopian dream. China and India will continue their proxy conflicts for their hegemonic designs over Nepal. This ‘communist’ coalition, at the most will try to enact some reforms to improve the lot of the Nepalese people. But with the debilitated and rotten condition of Nepal’s capitalism, such reformist of improving the society’s living conditions or abolishing the misery of the people are bound to fail. A genuine communist party would have overthrown Nepal’s oppressive system through a revolutionary policy. If this happens, India and China’s ruling elites would try to crush such a socialist socio-economic transformation. But such a change would spark revolutionary currents in the hearts of the youth and workers throughout the subcontinent — despite Nepal’s meagre population and size.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, December 18th 2017.