In 1990, Indian leaders came to Kathmandu and expressed their whole-hearted support to the democratic movement that the Nepali Congress and the United Left Front were planning to launch soon. Indeed, India was encouraging the Nepalis to fight for democracy. Standing in favor of the Nepalis’ democratic movement was their contribution. With this Indian support for Nepal’s democratic movement, it became easy for the Nepalis to get European and American support too. Thus, the international support the Nepalis got for their democratic movement was a serious blow to the partyless Panchayat regime guided by the feudal monarchy (also known as autocracy). The regime collapsed in April 1990.
The Nepalis, in the phase of applying democracy at people’s levels, had expected the same type of cooperation from India and other friendly countries. Unfortunately, the Nepali leaderships, especially the Nepali Congress and the United Marxists-Leninist (UML) could not prove their statecraft for applying democracy at the people’s levels; As moral poverty was a major cause for their fragile statecraft. In absence of moral strength, will power cannot prevail. A ceremonial rule without will power cannot bring about changes in people’s lives. This was true in the context of the ruling forces that came to power after the 1990 constitutional changes in the country.
Since people’s aspirations reflected in the anti-Panchayat people’s movement in 1990 were seriously hurt by the ruling forces, people had high levels of frustrations. A major cause of the Maoist insurgency that emerged in 1996 has generally been attributed to the high level of explosive frustrations constructed by the political and moral bankruptcy of the Nepali Congress and the UML. In this context, the UML often argues that since the Congress was in power most of the times while the UML was in the Opposition, it took little responsibility for the consequences. But the UML, as documented information proves, has equally contributed to the promotion of corruption and nepotism-favoritism. The UML, though it frequently talked of ill-governance, never proposed any constructive suggestions for replacing ill-governance with good governance. Besides, they supported the Nepali Congress government.
The UML even played a decisive role in handing over Nepal’s original right to the Mahakali river to the Indian side in 1998. It joined hands with autocratic forces in forming governments. In essence, it could not play the role of a constructive Opposition. Instead, it played a confident role in maintaining the status quo. As a result, the Nepalis had to go on suffering even after the formal termination of the partyless Panchayat autocracy.
Surprisingly, the international community was not very aware about the deep-rooted feudal mechanism in Nepal. India, America and Europe supported the political forces that promoted corruption, nepotism-favoritism and ill-governance. The Nepalis’ sufferings remained overshadowed while the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank encouraged more loans, which were embezzled to a great extent by power-holders. Loan-givers often described as loan-embezzlers were seen as genuine democrats while they misunderstood change-seeking forces as instability-creating elements. This wrong mindset existed within the framework of international relations and has not done good to humanity.
If our practices in international relations are confined to the traditional power equations and polarizations dictated by self-centered national interests, loan-governed good governance advocacy alone is not going to produce better results. While feudal mechanisms are decisive in every sector in most under-developed nations, encouraging them and discouraging transformation concept and efforts would be counterproductive.
As far as the international community is concerned, it is their moral obligation to support the working class people’s struggles geared at the overall transformation of their society.
After a decade-long armed conflict, Nepal is on the way to conflict transformation. But the conflict transformation in Nepal is not that easy since incorporating diverse concerns into the state-restructuring strategy seems to be quite a big challenge. On the one hand, feudalist, rightist and status-quoist forces have been making every effort to keep all mechanisms under their traditional control and on the other, working class forces have been trying to change the status quo. To transform conflicts in Nepal, the working class people’s desire for changes should be respected.
The international community that lent their support to the Nepali movement for democracy and human rights cannot be expected to side with the regressive forces. The regressive mindset governing a number of the top-ranking Nepali Congress and the UML leaders is working as a chief barrier to the smooth transition from feudalism to full-fledged democracy.
Thus, the regressive mindset is the issue that the international community, should understand as a problem. They working class people’s change-seeking efforts must not be the headaches for the international community. This is the crux of the matter regarding whom to support to help Nepal’s peace process.