Prophets unarmed

Maoist leaders Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, recently in Delhi, broke through the clichés to push for peace and democracy in Nepal

Amit Sengupta Delhi

The underground becomes the overground. The armed rebel guerrilla becomes the statesman visionary. The revolutionary legend, branded as a ‘terrorist’ by the media and political establishments across the world, especially in the US and India, becomes a liberator and reformer. The unspoken becomes the spoken. Speech becomes action.

Comrade Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, unquestioned Maoist leader of Nepal, in a rugged tweed coat and with chaste Nepali-accented English, in his first visit to New Delhi - the capital of ‘big brother India’, marked an understated but historic landmark in the history of both nations, and perhaps South Asia and the world. Understated, because the chairperson of the ‘dreaded’ Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), humiliated and sidelined in the murky, brazenly opportunist and pro-monarchy ‘democratic’ politics of the Nepali mainstream (witness the dubious role of the Nepali Congress and its fragments), was once again in the decisive mainstream of the ‘alternative-mainstream’ discourse.

Understated but clearly understood - because his originality was based on original politics, pro-poor, pro-people, pro-republic, pro-Constituent assembly, pro-republic, pro-peace, pro the abolition of feudalism and monarchy; first overground, then underground, in one of the bloodiest, stoic and protracted armed guerrilla struggles in the history of revolutions in modern times, for ten long years. Bloody, because the Maoists took on State terrorism on their own terms, in village after village in the vast, rough, mountain terrain and terai plains of poverty-stricken and exploited Nepal. On the highways. And thus followed the spiral of tactical retaliations: in self-defence and counter-strikes, revenge attacks, strategic occupations of towns and villages, liberated zones, mass mobilisation, blockades, social and political enlightenment, and empowerment. This spiral moved in a constant circle of reason and unreason across the shadow lines of a brutish, bloated regime, fattened by illicit wealth and parasitic exploitation by ancient, entrenched, alienated pro-king lobbies calling the shots from Kathmandu, most often backed by the US, China, and of course, India. 

That is why when he spoke, with nuanced but lucid articulation, everyone listened in the power centre of Delhi. Here was a discourse that was engaging - with complex layers of theory and praxis, diplomacy and realpolitik, ideology and history, and metaphysics and philosophy. Also time-past moving into unique time-future, especially for little landlocked Nepal, which has witnessed a landmark transformation still in the wombs of unfolding; a country which can teach the world a lesson in the abcd of dialectics, of democracy and revolution, and which will stand as an epistemological rupture in the history of people’s struggle in the neo-liberal, globalised 21st century.

Those who are reinterpreting a co-option theory might become stereotyped victims of the typical ‘conspiracy theory’ which stalks the bourgeois liberal traps of the largest democracy. As Comrade Baburam Bhattarai, ideologue and  Prachanda’s shadow, said in as many words, surrounded by all the top left leaders of the Indian Left in Delhi: “Despite being a vibrant democracy, the Indian model is not what we would like to emulate. Because there is still so much poverty, discrimination and exploitation in India.”