Home >> South Asia >> India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal

     Email   Print 

Testing India’s Democratic and Spiritual Legacies in Nepal

Lok Nath Bhusal, Ph.D. candidate - 2/5/2010

This article attempts to question and answer India’s role in Nepal in the deformation of the Maoist government and afterwards. The basic question is whether this role is consistent with India’s commitment to democratic and spiritual values, and the answer appears to be a huge NO. Embedding spiritualism into politics and diplomacy, I have argued for thinking beyond the conventional deceptive diplomatic and political mind by both the Indian establishment and Nepal’s Maoists in order to find a common policy space where both parties’ interests and aspirations are not dashed in Nepal.

What has been the role of India in deforming the Maoist government and afterwards in the last seven months? Is that role consistent with India’s long-term commitment to the democratic principles and its global supremacy over spiritual values? When the soul has to speak, the definite answer would be the outright ‘NO’ for all the educated and uneducated equally. While political scientists have noted that democracy could only serve as an ideal proposition for many of the developing countries, many spiritual scientists have argued that mind and speech are deceptive oftentimes in social life and quite often in political life. That could be the precise reason many of the clever people go into politics, but the wise ones venture into searching for higher spiritual values. It is largely a matter of personal choice in terms of undertaking one of these routes, but such a choice has significant implications towards framing politics and diplomacy. The ever increasing faith discourse in recent times (DFID, 2009) indicates that if the revival of the unity of religion and state is quite unlikely in an increasingly secularised world, an imminent possibility of the same between spiritualism and state would be unavoidable in the near future. Given its greatest spiritual tradition, as envisioned and portrayed by Aurobindo Ghose (1990), this unity would have to start from India, and this has been argued as the true destiny of India .
India has produced both sorts of people, and has demonstrated its supremacy, especially in terms of its rich spiritual traditions globally. For the clever ones, India is the largest democracy, and for the wisest ones, it is a noble land. Do these Indian virtues, derived from the great Hindu civilisation and awe-inspiring democracy, feature in its recent policy approach to Nepal? The above is the ideal articulation. Below I articulate the real Indian face in Nepal. India has its own democratic and spiritual deficits inside it, but its supramental deficit is its narrow vision, mission and goal towards Nepal, a continuation of its Raj policy of the radically defective tool articulated by the British material mind. While English colonialism has ended in India 63 years ago, Nepal still faces its legacy embedded in India’s deceptive diplomacy (Bhattarai, 2002 and 2005). Why such Tamas faculty prevails and dominates? Why India does not alters such legacy in Nepal? What recent evidence do we have to claim the existence of such semi/neo-colonial relations in all these treatments? How these evidences test with India’s own spiritual values? Why Maoists could not or did not like to gain Indian support? And can faith have some explanatory power in interpreting political and diplomatic issues, and provide some catholic policy resolutions for the conflicting parties? I have approached to answer all these philosophically political questions with this single counter-question: is it democratic and spiritual to goodbye the Maoists who have proved to be both bulletproof and ballot-proof within the Nepali territory? Although such a single episode may not be representative to gauge the depth and breadth of Indio-Nepal relations, I am confident that it would shed some insights on India’s twisted and kinked democratic and spiritual exposures in Nepal.
It would be very instructive to shed lights on India’s destiny and its recent test in Nepal. The story is rather long and grossly distorted, probably at the cost of risking life, both democratically and spiritually. The Buddha, Krishna, Rama, Jesus and Allah all said the same - to lie is a sin. More recently, Gandhi, Vivekananda, Sai Baba, Sri Aurobindo, Osho, Mahesh Yogi and numerous other India religious and spiritual leaders have not only ventured to persuade the same fact to the world but also argued that India’s destiny is not merely material advancement and political manipulation, rather it is the spiritual elevation of humankind. It appears that in Nepal, it is going just the opposite by effectively keeping the people-mandated Maoists away from the government and hampering the much-awaited and rather costly peace process. Intellectuals of all persuasions would probably be compelled to disagree with the recent pronouncements that the ‘current government is good for Nepal’ by the Indian prime minister and that the ‘Maoists’ armies should not be merged into the national army’ by the army chief. Failed though to fix his own Maoists, it has been learnt that Dr. Man Mohan Singh had assured Nepal PM stating that ‘when ever you have any problem in dealing with the Maoists in your country, talk to me instantly over telephone and I will try to fix them’. This also echoes in Prakash A. Raj’s (2010) writing: ‘some Indian strategic thinkers believe that NA containing ideologically-indoctrinated Maoists will represent a great security threat to India’. Hence, the Indian establishment treats its own Maoists and Nepal’s Maoists equally, and enforces its military-embedded supremacy in Nepal.
Then, such tall orders are nothing than anti-democratic and anti-spiritual Indian testimonies in Nepal, as all nationalists would agree with the fact that such remarks are nothing than naked meddling in Nepal’s internal affairs. Such remarks remind us of the operationalisation of the US ‘Monroe Doctrine’ (Malik, 2009, p. 1146) in a number of Latin American (LA) communist countries in the 1960s, 70s and 80s by establishing military juntas. Geo-strategically, while Latin America has been a backyard for the US, Nepal has been taken as the same for India under the RAJ framework of thinking, but the presence of India’s rival China, antagonist Pakistan and annoyed neighbours appear to offset the full working of the Indian version of the Monroe Doctrine. While the LA case can best be analysed as a by-product of the US diplomatically material mind, the recent Indian remarks in the same line should have been shameful for the Indian elevated mind. Precisely, such high profile personalities should not speak a lie, false and support any wrongheaded deed on account of their both democratic and spiritual credentials. Isn’t it ridiculous on the part of the largest democracy to opt for Nepali defence force undermining people’s democratic aspirations reflected through the CA elections? Isn’t it militarisation of Indian hegemony in Nepal? More fundamentally then, how the rich Indian spiritual tradition can inform its traditional politics and diplomacy? Indeed, democratic theorist Robert Dahl stresses the following two crucial democratic values for a democratic consolidation: ‘the armed forces and police must willingly submit to the control of democratically elected civilian authorities; and second, government and society [including the neighbouring and international] must tolerate and legally protect dissident political beliefs’ (Handelman, 2009, p. 42). Judged against these assertions, Nepal’s democracy appears at crossroads.
Such big brother instructions and judgements would have smelled a profoundly hegemonic intervention in Nepal’s internal affairs to all political scientists and diplomats if their minds have not been deceptive. Nepal’s one of the prominent political scientists Dhurba Kumar (2010) has argued that such naked Indian interventions have alerted China through its increasing strategic aid to Nepal’s economic, political and military management, taking stock of its Tibet tensions and one China assurance from the Nepali authorities. Moreover, when an earlier version of this article was presented to some diplomats at the embassy of Nepal, London, they suggested to expand this article covering the South Asian region, as, according to them, India has been troubling its every other South Asian neighbours. Analogously, a newspaper columnist in Nepal writes that if India has to fight a war with China in the future, it would also have to fight the same with three others simultaneously: Pakistan, its own Maoists and the ‘the annoyed neighbors with whom India shares worst relations’ (Aryal, 2010). Despite its notable sums of aid to Nepal over the years, similar anti-Indian sentiments are also found in social networking websites and media .
Then it appears largely justified to argue that while much of the outer world recognises India as shining and reemerging, its material shining has casts shadows in its relatively small neighbors.While India’s democratic and spiritual heritage has argued for creating harmony, in the last seven months India role appears to have inflicted acrimony in Nepal. Indian spiritual leaders would gauge this role as that of a Sakuni, and definitely not of that of a Bhishma, if their Mahabharat has to be a parameter for characterising India’s recent role in Nepal. It is not difficult to articulate that such animosity would derail Nepali people’s aspirations for peace and progress and resume their stride towards the Kurukchhetra or the decisive battle ground. Then, if India’s democracy and spirituality are peace-loving, it would not be premature to conclude that India might have lost its commitment to democracy and spiritual values in Nepal. It should have been instructive from India-trained Nepal’s largely spiritual leader K.P. Bhattarai’s recent pronouncement that ‘the Maoists should be provided with an equal level-playing field in Nepali politics’ although, as a norm, this was kept unhighlighted in the mainstream media in Nepal. It is particularly not uncommon on the part of the Nepali media to deliberately hide such profoundly harmonious statements.
With the outsider backing and sacking, the modern Mahabharat is here then. In May 2009, the army general’s row reached a breaking point when the then army general, with the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) and Nepali Congress (NC) encouragement, and United States and India’s backing, refused to follow government directives to resign, as the symbolic president ruled out the executive order. The NC and UML triggered the blame that the Maoists were and have been trying to capture the state by intervening into the army institution. However, UN diplomat Martin (2009) has argued that ‘some aspects of alleged Maoist state capture seem not so very different from the way in which each party in government has sought to have its supporters in the institutions of the state’. All the winners have captured state power in the past. Martin’s argument makes us to reflect objectively upon the extent of favouritism and patronage the NC and UML governments endured in the past (See Whelption, 2007). Indeed, ‘had the law [during the NC and UML periods of government] protected the people for common good, (meaning all have been accountable under the law, and none have been spared as Bahuns or kings or army generals, leaders or cadres or father or son) the Maoist insurgency had never been the inevitability (Bon, 2010). Furthermore, denying the allegations that Maoists aim to capture the state and become totalitarian, Nepal’s academic and columnist Kamal Raj Dhungel (2010) has argued that ‘many intellectuals have judged and opined that there is no room to suspect their commitment for an open and liberalised economic policy under the multiparty system after they proved their commitment during their tenure in government’. It is also true that such rightist’s allegations would not have been meaningful without Indian-US strategic backing.
Why such backing counts in Nepal? Interests guide all deed although all religions have taught us to be unselfish. Many strategic analysts have argued that while the Indian ruling elites were not particularly happy with the Maoists on account of the latter’s closeness with Communist China, the US has been seeking ways which ensures its strategic presence in Nepal to look at the regionally strategic China and India from Kathmandu. The US also maintains its ‘terrorist’ tag to the Maoists even though about 30 percent adult Nepali voted the Maoists in the democratic election and they also formed a government. Historically, India wished and managed to have a government in Kathmandu that accords special preference to it, often containing Chinese influence. Such government could be of any ideology ranging from oligarchy, monarchy, authoritarian to democratic although India itself is a huge fan and fanfare of democracy (Bhattarai, 2002 and Subedi, 1994 and 2005). Historically, the Indo-Nepal elite alliance embedded in Nepal’s excessive economic, political and cultural dependence upon India has been detrimental to Nepali common people’s aspirations for change.
Terming the Indian government’s foreign policy as neighbour unfriendly, Jacob and Layton (2009) has noted that ‘binary approaches in the pursuit of foreign policy can be counterproductive: this is precisely what India did when it assumed that the Nepali Maoists are pro-Chinese’, threatening its overweening influence in Nepal. The Indian mind’s conclusion is that being pro-Chinese is equal to being anti-Indian. This appears to be narrow conception to the detriment of Nepali people’s skyrocketing aspirations for peace and progress in the face of India’s rich spiritual heritage. Recently, a Delhi-based journalist questioned: ‘Why can’t India offer more help in our economic progress instead of trying to destabilise our political and government structure to counter the so-called growing Chinese influence’? (Wagle, 2009). However, back in 2004, Lecomte-Tilouine and Gellner (2004, p. 16) had identified the sociology of Maoists with China as thus: ‘today it [the Maoists] has nothing to do with China: the Chinese government condemns it and says it has nothing to do with Mao, while for their part the Nepali Maoists have long regarded the Chinese regime as renegade revisionists’. Even after forming their government, no such special Chinese treatments were received by the Maoists. Then, it appears that the Indian establishment has been ready to discredit its democratic and spiritual credentials by containing the Maoists in Nepal under the pretext of Chinese influence. The Indian diplomatic mind has become deceptive by thinking that such a policy would contain both Chinese influence in Nepal and a potential release of Indian stress from its own fast spreading tribalised Maoist protests against selling out of country’s natural resources to multi nationals at throwaway prices across its 200 districts out of the 600. But neither that could be India’s destiny nor its pragmatic anti-China strategy. A beyond the mind thinking would entail us to think that containing the Maoists in Nepal and containing China should not be understood in a linear fashion.
Such ‘disobedience of civilian supremacy’ led to the resignation of the Maoist-led government and the formation of the government of the ‘Democratic Alliance’ (DA) under the leadership of the CPN (UML) leader Madhav Kumar Nepal, a mild Communist son of a Hindu priest. While for the diplomatically deceptive mind the DA has been an ‘India-US Alliance’ (IUA), for the elevated Indian mind, the DA must have been an ‘Unholy Alliance’ (UA). Even to the laymen, it was simply an undemocratic replacement of a winner from two constituencies by a loser from the two; indeed democracy is only an ideal to Nepal. Scholars of some section have argued that the main aim of the 22-party coalition government was to ‘effectively keep the Maoists out of power’ and a betrayal of democracy in the country. Following this line of thinking, the tragic event of ganging up and killing of Abhimannu in the Mahabharat battle could be the best equivalent to how the Maoists were ousted from the government. Others took ‘the fall of the Maoist-led government, a mess largely of the Maoists’ own making, as a symptom of the deeper malaise underlying the political settlement’ (International Crisis Group, 2009), and observe the fall ‘as ending a protracted power struggle between the Maoist-led government and the conservative Nepal Army’ (Owen, 2009). A United Nations diplomat involved earlier in Nepal’s peace process has argued that ‘the Nepalese Army’s active lobbying against any integration of Maoist combatants into its ranks became a major element of the crisis which led to the downfall of the Maoist-led government, and today any progress is hostage to the overall absence of political cooperation’ (Martin, 2009). The DA, working on Indian interests, has failed to ‘recognise that recourse to dubious constitutional means to exclude the former rebels [the Maoists] from power is no way to strengthen democracy’ (Owen, 2009) in the country. Such a coalition and its alliance with the army may even have the danger of slipping back the country to monarchy. It should be reminded here that the Maoist have been the single largest party in the Constitutional Assembly (CA), as it won 239 seats (40 percent) whereas the NC and UML parties, being the second and third largest in the CA, have 115 and 108 seats, respectively. Under the current political equation, Madhav Nepal has the support of only 350 CA members in the 601-member assembly, marginally above what the Maoists have alone. All in all, Indian elites’ disingenuous grace clearly outweighs all election arithmetic, however, and thus the DA has mortgaged people’s aspirations as if to please its Indian masters.
While the Maoists committed a mistake by not being able to include the Nepali Congress in their cabinet, the DA not only undermined the people’s verdict, it also perpetuated class politics. As the government changes, the delayed schedule for drafting the new constitution is in the process of its seventh amendment. And behind all these developments India looms large: ‘the manipulations of the Indian establishment in the internal affairs of Nepal and the regressive behaviours of Nepal’s political parties are truly a curse’ (Navlakha, 2009) to Nepal’s persistent underdevelopment (Blaikie et al., 2002) and political crisis. The crux of the matter is that India has largely forgotten its destiny. May be a new spiritual soul, such as an afresh Rama, should be in the offing there by now to teach the fact that its destiny is to respect people’s mandate and aspirations (in Nepal), but not to be afraid with a potential aggressive force (China). India cannot pursue its foreign policy with Nepal based on its two thousand years ago written Arstashastra, which postulated that a king’s neighbour is his natural enemy while the king beyond his neighbour is his natural ally (Malik, 2009).

Amidst the ongoing strong and strategic protests of the ballot-proof and bullet-proof Maoists on the one hand, and the paranoidingly hallucinated pro-rightist, anti-national and money-minded mainstream media supported strategically by Indian and domestic elites (Sharma, 2010), on the other, it would be premature to conclude what is going to happen in Nepal. Perhaps, this is the first time in Nepal’s history that the media houses as the pillars of democracy have become pathetically undemocratic – an educated unwise and unconscious act of Himalayan height. The media slander has been intensifying disharmony, and splitting the political parties up. It should be understood the fact that, now all the four state organs have been against the Maoists – they have been ousted from the government (executive), not allowed to have a debate over the president’s overruling in the CA (legislative), the supreme court reinstated the eight generals sacked by the then Maoists’ government (judiciary) and almost all the mainstream media houses have been targeting them (mass media). This is a chaotic situation of total exclusion and isolation of almost 40 percent people, if election results deserve some meaning. As a consequence, however, a distinctive class-face has featured in Nepal’s political landscape – the Maoists and the anti-Maoists. Until this divide concretely institutionalises, it is not going to give a way out for consensus for ending feudalism what many developed countries gave a huge goodbye long-ago. Then, there would be more acrimony than harmony in Nepal’s politics if the historical necessity of overthrowing feudalism has to be completed. The latest political and diplomatic developments suggest that, owing to its egoistic impulses, the politically and spiritually corrupt India establishment appears to hinder than help this process, seriously undermining the fragile peace process, constitution writing and the overall socio-economic transformation in Nepal. However, India must have to be constructively engaged with the Maoists if it has to wash off its undemocratic and unspiritual face in Nepal.

Indeed, following the fall of Maoist government and the formation of India-supported ragbag of 22-party coalition government, an India-based scholarly publication commented the following in its editorial: ‘the feudal monarchy at the centre of that order is gone, but the rest of the structure of the state and the economic base remains - Nepali capital continues to play second fiddle to Indian capital; the semi-feudal satraps retain their power and privileges, while social discrimination and economic deprivation continue to be rife’ (EPW, 2009, p. 6). In the same line, Nepal’s prominent civil society leader and development scholar Devendra Raj Pandey (2009) has observed the recent political stand-off as thus: ‘the real polarisation today is, therefore, between the social forces that seek change, and those who would shamelessly do anything to prevent it. These two forces have their distinct class character and a caste, ethnic and regional face; but they cut across the simplistic Maoist--non-Maoist dichotomy’. This is certainly adverse path dependence. Spiritually speaking, Pandey’s contested categorisation represents the struggle between forces of truth and light and those of falsehood and darkness. The rightists argue that the Maoist extremism has invited the current crisis, but their deceptive minds render them unable to think on what invited the Maoist extremism if at all. Apparently, the Maoist party is not only a party of Mao’s radicalised fans, it is also a social formation of the poor and the oppressed fighting against economic and political injustices –the darkness. They account for more than 75 percent of Nepal’s population, if the extent of deprivation has to be measured non-conventionally (Saith, 2005, 2006 and 2007). Even before the proliferation of modern sociologists and economists the Buddha argued that ‘any society in which the material needs of certain section of society are not adequately met, and they are oppressed, exploited and marginalised, they tend to restore to criminal [radicalised] behaviour’ (Premashiri, 1999, p. 5). Karl Marx perceived such a society as that of the haves and have nots, and argued for establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat as a way out from all forms of exploitations.

Where would this divide going to take Nepal? Starting with the formation of the Delhi-designed DA government, such divide has already institutionalised on the right side. On the left, Maoists are so far alone, but it is understandably clear that quite a number of UML people implicitly agree with the broader political agenda of the Maoists, and particularly that of the recent issue of civilian supremacy. Obviously, this is the precise reason why the Maoists have not been allowed to discuss and hold a voting on the issue of president’s overruling in the CA; the president has become a ‘holy cow’ like that of the previous monarchs about whom no debate is allowed (Khatry, 2010). Another columnist (Adhikari, 2010) argues that ‘the penchant to bypass the CA which doubles as the legislative body - elected in historic elections and representative of the diversity of Nepal’s population - in favour of backroom dealings has led to the re-emergence of old, discredited forms of politics’. Then, the formation of high level political mechanism and other taskforces outside the jurisdiction of the CA and the interim constitution itself is nothing than a ridiculous act. On the other, if such mechanisms do not acknowledge the fact that there is a need for a proportional national government, it would be nothing than another deception and illusion. Hence, political instability and struggle are inevitable until this divide further institutionalises on the left. This would only happen when some UML leaders would enter into the Maoists like Dharmadatta Devkota, and this would certainly occur as a basic principle of politics and the evolutionary law of nature. Devkota’s move should be instructive to all UML supporters as a release from rightwing domination within their party. Such a strong leftist force would only be able to tear the so-called DA apart. Critics have reported that the UML party, caught in two extremes –right and left, ‘is now bogged down in factionalism that has vertically torn it apart from village level to the centre’ (Subedi, 2010), and thus decelerating its identity. It has been argued that having only two strong political forces (one rightist and another leftist) is likely to the way out not only from political stability point of view, but also from not have to suffer frequently from Indian intervention. For the undemocratic and unspiritual Indian face in Nepal, that is going to be another surprise like that of the CA election results. Definitely, this would occur, but it would have to go through tacit Indian scrutiny. It is not difficult to understand the fact that Indian deceptive diplomacy has been lingering the polarization process by establishing a government under UML leadership. It is nothing than following the secret tactic of divide and rule diplomacy, as for the awakened Nepali minds (Muni, 2009) such tall wall of the secret and deceptive diplomatic moves are crystal clear.

This emerging class politics, may lead another people’s uprising what some of the revolutionaries term as ‘a component of the final insurrection’ (Rosin, 2009) that has been believed to be a remedy for Nepal’s geo-strategically contained development. The Maoists are already out in the streets demanding for ‘civilian supremacy’ against the disobedience of the army chief and the over ruling of the symbolic president. They blocked the legislative parliament for a long-time, but very responsibly allowed the budget passage and opened up the parliament unilaterally although their protests continue. In the third phase of their protest, they declared thirteen autonomous federal states although even some leftist scholars have opposed this idea as being fatal for the geographically tiny but strategically vulnerable Nepal (Seddon, 2009), entirely undermining the multi-ethnic formation of Nepali state. Politicians ranging from the communist Chitra Bahadur KC to congress Sujata Koirala join in the anti-federalism discourse. However, it appears that this is the only way of uprooting the multiple dimensions of feudalism in Nepal despite some resistance at home and abroad. Portraying Sujata as naysayer elite, Prakash Bom (2010) argues in his American Chronicle column: ‘the most of all, federalism is indispensable for Nepal to strengthen national integrity with the political identity of diverse ethnicity in respect to diverse culture. Nepalis should be proud of its diverse ethnicity and culture unique in the world. The nation should not let diversity disappear for the dignity of Nepali nationhood’. Maoists argue that the declaration was only symbolic towards empowering the oppressed, and federalism would thwart the ongoing buying out of few politicians of the unitary state by the foreign powers (Dahal, 2010). After the Indian unholy big push to the current government and the army, the Maoists protest for civilian supremacy would also be painted with nationalist colour. In his ironic smile, Maoist chairman Prachanda recently declared to directly hold talks with the master (India) to break the political stand-still in Kathmandu before his huge number of supporters ahead of his party’s forthcoming ‘awareness and expose’ campaign, as the Maoists consider the current government as puppet or robot remote controlled from Delhi (Dahal, 2010). Clearly, his statement has challenged the legitimacy of the DA government. Moreover, the Maoist protests reflected its continuing political footholds (Baral, 2009). The expose campaign has also been set against the Indian expansionism which has kept Nepal under its security umbrella, as many leftists hold this view. Indeed, the theoretical assertion that, deprivation and the intensification and expansion of political radicalization have linear relationship, seem empirically grounded both in Nepal and India.

Are Maoists going back to wage a war again? This seems very unlikely, as they have already proved to be both ballot-proof and bullet-proof. Their only limitation now is that they are not India-proof. While Nepal’s persistent underdevelopment and continuous isolation of the Maoists may easily lead to such a revolution, sustaining the outcomes of the revolution would be an extremely difficult political undertaking in the presence of an ever-stronger global capitalism and imperialism of which the security-concerned Indian establishment has continued to be an active member. It is this membership which carries the undemocratic and unspiritual Indian face in Nepal although the current era has been argued as an epoch for imperialism and proletariat revolution. Indicating at such socialist revolution, leftist scholar Samir Amin (2010) argues that ‘for humanity as a whole will only commit itself fully to the socialist road - the only humane alternative to chaos - once the powers of the oligarchies, their allies, and their servants, have been broken, both in the countries of the South and those in the North’. However, such revolutions need to be framed under specific local contemporary and historical conditions, as Amin (ibid) has admitted that ‘the possible radicalization of the struggles is not an improbable hypothesis, even if the obstacles remain formidable’. In Nepal, one such obstacle has been India’s meddling in the internal affairs.

Perhaps, recognising this reality, the Maoists have reassured that they are not going to tilt towards the economically, politically, socio-culturally and linguistically difficult China and undermine Nepal’s unavoidable dependency upon India. Moreover, quoting Fedrick Angles, Bhattarai (2010) has argued that, taking stock of the global and regional power balances, achieving the most with the minimum loss would be the best strategy for the real communist revolutionaries. He has also argued that protesting from the government and parliament (from above), and from the street (from below) with strong favour from at least one neighbouring country would be the best strategy at this stage of the bourgeois revolution. Although he has not mentioned the particular neighbouring country’s favour, from his other recent statements it is not difficult to guess that it is India, and that the Maoists are now legitimately willing to join the government and respect the people’s verdict. Indeed, in principle, many learnt people in Nepal and India would agree with the fact that India has not only provided Nepal with the ways to the third world in terms of commerce and trade (although it is very unfair and unequal), but it has also provided the divine way to the ‘fourth world’ through its spiritual teachings. Everyone in Nepal would love India if these opportunities and legacies are fine-tuned towards greater fairness, equality and compassion in practice. Then, the following has to be accepted: ‘If the Maoists had some magic to relocate Nepal geographically, then probably their anti-India rhetoric would have been sensible, even credible. Changing the geographic map of Nepal is, of course, not possible and then the next best alternative for Maoists or other claimants to political power in Nepal would be to try to live with India and accept its larger presence - even dominance - as gracefully and as honorably as possible’ (Shah, 2010). Hence, India is a necessary evil for Nepal, and thus the challenge is to transform it into a necessary good. Quite pragmatically, Maoist ideologue Dr. Baburam Bhattarai in his recent The Telegraph-Kolkata (2009) interview has reaffirmed that:

If India stops supplying us salt for one week, we will begin to suffer as a nation, that is how dependent we are, and that is the stark truth of this relationship. It is foolish to say or believe we can take Nepal away from India or act against Indian interests. Look at how deeply dependent we are on India as a people and as a nation. It is the rightwing vested interests in Nepal who have always used anti-India feelings in Nepal to secure themselves politically, not us. We have been courageous enough to recognise the reality that we cannot wish India away, we have to work with it, all we want is a few democratic corrections, a more equal relationship, and none of that to favour China.

The main agenda now is to explore a space or an equilibrium point where egos of both the Maoists and Indian establishment could be transformed into catholicity. Mutual understanding through constructive engagements between India and the Maoists appears to be a distinct possibility in the near future. In the light of the above Maoists assurance, is it not stupid and shameful on the part of India to continue showing an undemocratic and unspiritual face in Nepal by suggesting not to integrate the armies and judging the current government as to be good for Nepal? Doesn’t this ground Nepal’s fragile peace process into halt? Why does India continue delving into risking its stakes in Nepal by intensifying anti-India feelings among the scholars and laypersons of Nepal? (Muni, 2009). Why India fails to acknowledge the aspirations and sentiments of the educated politically conscious peoples of a sovereign country? And, equally is it not the Maoists’ weakness to fail to take India into confidence despite their strong position in Nepal? How beautiful and promising would that be if the Nepali people-beloved Maoists also secure love from Delhi without compromising national interests contrary to that of the other parties in the past?

How such harmony of interests be founded and grounded? Truly, that dynamism would be a defining and an all-embracing manifestation towards creating a harmonious environment corollary to what the great Indian freedom fighter, metaphysist and spiritual leader Aurobindo Ghose (1990) has articulated as the descend of divine grace and ascend of human aspirations for human Enlightenment in his Integral Yoga. While Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga portrays a patron-client relationship between the God and human beings in the pursuit of the ultimate goal, the future Indo-Nepal relations must be based on equality, and mutual understanding and respect. Certainly, the current relationships are disharmonious, asymmetric, self-serving, egoistic and bounded up by a number of deceptive, superficial and outward conventional theories of politics and diplomacy, but largely uninformed of our own harmonious and all-embracing spiritual legacies. In his essay entitled India and the New Millennium, Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual follower Deshpande (2010) examines India’s diluted spiritual identity thus:

But what about today? Are we awake? Maybe we are just emerging out of the distasteful sleep of history. But we have not yet shed dullness of the night which is still weighing pretty heavily on our souls. We have not recovered our true national identity. We are still slaves of habit that has no business to persist. In every field of our current activity we want to be a la mode by following ideas and manners of the industrially advanced societies. We are apish. We are copyists, twice removed from reality; we are a copy of copy.

Indeed, it is striking to note here that while the West is importing India’s spiritual affluences for greater harmony in their part of the world, Indians are imitating the mechanistically oversimplified theories from there and celebrating the mastery over those theories as a success. A deliberate fusion of the above two types of knowledge can only create harmony in our politics and diplomacy, and thus in our public life. Asserting harmony and not strife as the law of spiritual living, Aurobindo Ghose (1933) in his Letters on Yoga has argued the following harmony:

For the spiritual life the harmony with others must be founded not on mental and vital affinities, but on the divine consciousness and the union with the Divine. When one feels the Divine and feels others in the Divine, then the real harmony comes. Meanwhile what there can be is the goodwill and unity founded on the feeling of a common divine goal and the sense of being all children of the Mother... Real harmony can come only from a psychic or a spiritual basis.

Then, isn’t it possible to derive some lights from our own infinitely imperishable and profoundest spiritual tradition in designing our politics and diplomacy? In other word, can spiritual values in Sri Aurobindo’s metaphysics challenge the recent challenges in Indo-Nepal relations? What a terrible situation is this for the Maoists: they can not form a government even if internally they have the mandate to do so. Is this a curse of land-lockedness or having a badly incompatible neighbour! (See Collier, 2007). Indeed, ‘Nepal shares the common fate of countries overshadowed by large and powerful neighbours, which they believe to be as risky as having to sleep beside an elephant. It is just the nature of things juxtaposed together that makes the smaller country uncomfortable either getting too close to or staying too far from the powerful neighbour—there is always this dilemma of finding a safe distance and avoiding any action that can wake up the elephant or, worse, make it unfriendly and hostile’ (Shah, 2010). And the deceptive mind of the Indian establishment is scared with the growing Chinese influence over its presumed satellite Nepal. As the Indian leadership and the Maoists appear not to have the divine consciousness, it is crucial to spiritualise politics and diplomacy by the both actors for the all-encompassing harmony. Aurobindo Ghose (ibid) further argues that ‘all jealousy, strife, hatred, aversion, rancour and other evil vital feelings should be abandoned, for they can be no part of the spiritual life’. He has also extended this for public life. Certainly, performing certain rituals in private life is not going to lead towards purification and divine perfection in the body, mind and life, as argued by the Buddha and Sri Aurobindo. Then, beyond the academic discourse on faith, and the preaching of ethical and moral rituals and spiritual values in private realms, now the time has arrived to transmit and crystallise these informal institutions into the formal institutions of politics, diplomacy and economic development. On the issue of India’s delayed development, he further argues that ‘if the majority of Indians had indeed made the whole of their lives religion [spiritual] in the true sense of the word, we should not be where we are now; it was because their public life became most irreligious, egoistic, self-seeking, materialistic that they fell’ (cited in Reddy, 2010). Indeed, these evil deeds are reflected in the pursuits of politics and diplomacy. Hence, lets think now beyond the black box to facilitate a non-dashing of Nepali aspirations and Indian interests.

The time has come to inform our politics and diplomacy by such spiritual values. In an age of human awakening, the beauty and brilliance of politics and diplomacy are not tested against the conventional tacit, dictating and deceptive parameters, rather they should be tested based on their ability to bring about harmony, peace and just order in individuals, societies and nations. Shah (2010) has argued that ‘after the repeated failures of past administrations and erosion of public trust in old-fashioned leadership, [Nepali] people are now prepared to take a chance with Maoists, provided that they tone down their ideology and suggest realistic solutions to problems people face in their daily lives and remain unsolved for generations. Unfortunately, there is no evidence yet that Maoists are ready to make this transition’. However, the rich Indian spiritual tradition embedded in Nepali peoples’ mind, body and life is likely to facilitate such a transition. Then, for the Maoists, the challenge is to embed spiritualism into Marxism, and it would be equally a tribute to Marx and Mao as well as to the great Nepali personalities such as the Buddha, Sita, Araniko and Bhirkuti who demonstrated greatest harmony in their lifetimes. And for the Indian establishment, the challenge is to inform its deceptive diplomacy with its own spiritual values, and it would be an honor to its numerous spiritual ideologues who argued for holistic thinking beyond material and deceptive mind, and translate this into public life. As argued by Reddy above, the challenge for the Indian elites is whether they are ready to refine their public life. Interestingly, however, these challenges are challengeable, as many have argued that Marxism is itself a semi-religion (Whelption, 2007) or semi-spiritualism, and India’s destiny is spiritual awakening of the humankind. Hence, in the deep down, there appears to have the unity of purpose and mission, and hence a transdisciplinary approach to politics and diplomacy is highly soughed for. Then, are the Indian elites capable enough to rise above their deceptive material mind and to recognise that their and Nepal’s Maoists might be Shivagand or Pandavasena or Ram’s Sena fighting against the injustices in India and Nepal?

However, on the both side, some beyond dogmatic stances are crucial for such holy dynamism to occur. Then, instead of unproductively wasting time unwittingly engaging into responding the yellow journalism and making India angry, the best strategy for the Maoists now is to relentlessly strive to take the overbearing Indian establishment into confidence that they are the most trusted political actor in Nepal. As a matter of fact, they have to show that they truly defend Indian interests in Nepal. In an email correspondence, a Kathmandu-based political right editor of an online news website, who rejected my article, wrote: ‘I would also advise chairman Prachanda not to whip up the anti-India feelings and rhetoric to the extent of provoking this neighbour with whom we have to live in peace and harmony as far as possible’. In the meantime, they also need to understand the ongoing anti-national media slander which has been paramount in intensifying discord and undermining any emerging harmony between the Indian establishment and the Maoists. It should be noted here that the mainstream Nepali media houses have been presenting bundle of lies quite convincingly. Such adaptive function must have to be worked out by the both sides.

Ultimately, the enlightened Indian establishment must have to be comfortable with the Maoists, given the fact that Maoists would have to ensure that they nicely save Indian face in Nepal by offsetting some of the anti-India feelings in Nepal and often fallacious growing Chinese influence syndrome in Delhi. This is both the divine and democratic work India must have to accomplish if it has to comply with its destiny; it has been preached that the divine work undone is punishable. To its pride, India needs to resume its all-encompassing spiritual mind abandoning the nasty material brain in the pursuit of its Nepal policy. The conventional Indian diplomacy of dictation and tacit influence is no more relevant now. Indeed, it should be understood that neither China needs to have Maoists’ shoulder to get into India nor China has the vitality even to touch India’s democratic and spiritual affluences. Invader Alexander had realised that India was very powerful spiritually, and China appears to be committed to its claim that its rise has been by peaceful means and not by plunder like that of the rise of western countries (Bijian, 2005) – a new global order without hegemony (Amin, 2010). However, two recent books published in India, namely, ‘The Dragon’s Fire’ on Chinese military strategy written by Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan and ‘Arming the Indian Arsenal’ on India’s defence planning by Deba R Mohanty are clear testimonies of potential hostilities between India and China, and its acute fear in Indian establishment. Eventually, however, the people-loved Maoists and elite-loved Indian establishment will come to terms with each other as their mutual containment policies start yielding diminishing returns in the face of their realisation of the great Indian legacies of spiritual values.

Recognising this fact, the best strategy for India would be to wash-off its undemocratic and unspiritual face by complying with the Maoist’s demand for a proportionally represented national government in Nepal under the leadership of the largest party in the CA. It would be ignorance of the highest order to think of logically concluding the peace process without such power sharing arrangement. This is the best opportunity India has to make the most desired genetic transformation in its RAJ policy towards Nepal, and not to crowd-out its democratic and spiritual legacies. Indeed, the RAJ policy was a deceptive trick of British material mind. The time has come to think beyond the conventional deceptive mind and bookish idealism to find out feasible realism with the true and fruitful wisdom. The question is whether the Indian establishment remains persistently deaf and illusionist to any such reflection on its own kinked diplomatic dogma!

References

Endnotes