Election results in Nepal should not come as a surprise to India when it first persists with kingship and then with a non-performing political party. New Delhi's failure is in not gauging the popular mood. This should be a point of concern because the span of thinking between India and Nepal turns out to be not a few months, but many years. People were changing and New Delhi was stuck in its wishful thinking of saving the monarchy and its old ally the Nepal Congress. The king is as good as gone.
To say officially that India would deal with the government which emerges in Kathmandu was to admit that it did not want what had happened and, now that it had happened, it would accept it. What else is New Delhi's choice? People may well have returned the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) in the election. Who are we to comment on their choice?
Big brother
In fact, the vote for Maoists is also a vote against India. Nepalis have seen New Delhi's excessive involvement in their affairs. The Maoists raised the Big Brother attitude of India at their poll meeting. The treaty we have with Nepal is not to their liking. We should have scrapped it long ago.
In the same way, I do not understand former US President Jimmy Carter's appeal to America to accept the change in Nepal. The most powerful democracy in the world as it is, the US should realise that however unpalatable, the outcome of the free and fair elections is final. It does not matter if one country does not like the government in the other. It is people's free will which counts and Carter, who supervised the polls, should know it better.
Still not many will understand or appreciate what the Nepalis have done. Theirs is a feudal society, which has lived for some 235 years under the king. Disparities are so entrenched in the country that any call to turn against the past finds a respondent chord. The hopes that their lot would improve begin to take shape. Maoist leader Prachanda has only utilised the atmosphere.
When the whole of Kathmandu came out in the streets in support of the demand for the abolition of kingship two years ago, it was an expression of the suppressed society to set itself free. The promise to switch over to a republican set-up gave them a hope of change. They have supported the change, pinning their faith in the betterment of people. The Maoists have been returned, not because the voters are impressed by the Marxist ideology but because they trust that those who have promised a different economic order will get them out of poverty in which they have been stuck for centuries.
True, the element of fear was there because the Maoists "ruled" the countryside for years through the gun. And it is an open secret that the Maoists have not surrendered all the weapons as agreed upon long before elections and have stacked them elsewhere. Yet people had no alternative. They had rejected the king. They did not want to go back to the Nepali Congress which they had tried again and again and had found it failing.
Part of mainstream
It was, however, amusing to see election posters showing a photo of Stalin along with the pictures of Karl Marx, Lenin and Engels. Stalin killed hundreds of thousands who dared to differ or speak out. But then Stalin's portrait hangs prominently also at the CPM headquarters in Kolkata. Still the CPM is part of the mainstream and puts its faith in a democratic system. The Maoists in Nepal will do the same when they assume power. The disillusionment against them would begin, as has happened against the CPM in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, if and when they fail to deliver. Who knows that the Maoists in Nepal may also come to rationalise that the establishment of a welfare state was not possible in a capitalist system, as the CPM is doing. I am vehemently opposed to what the Naxalites (also called Maoists) are doing in India, indulging in an orgy of bloodshed and crime. But then they make no secret of their opposition to the democratic system. They do not want to come into the mainstream because their faith is in coercion, not consensus. This is precisely the reason why the Maoists in Nepal and those in India may not join hands. One is a conformist and the other is against conformism.
Nepal is, however, an example which can teach the South Asian region a lesson if it is willing to learn. No doubt, poverty gives birth to desperate remedies. Feudal order negates democracy. But what makes people revolt is their feeling of despondency and helplessness that their plight can never change. They revolt when they are convinced that they have no way to escape the oppressive order except through violence. Democracy gives people a peaceful option to vote against those who oppress or do not perform. The Nepalis have done that. The question which the Maoists have to answer is whether they have the ability and determination to improve the lot of the people. The polls at which the Maoists have won are for the formation of the constituent assembly. The same people can throw them out if they do not see any promise in the constitution to be framed.
Kuldip Nayar is a former Indian High Commissioner to the UK and a former Rajya Sabha MP.
