Midnight's Descendants

by John Keay

  With the protesters focusing their ire not just on India but on the panchayat system and its royal sponsor, Birendra had opted for damage limitation. He re-authorised political parties and offered constitutional talks. These talks, though protracted enough, short-circuited the usually contentious workings of a Constituent Assembly. Instead, the participants simply agreed a Constitution in which Nepal was declared ‘a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, democratic, independent, indivisible, sovereign, Hindu, constitutional monarchical kingdom’. The catch-all phrasing pointed up the deep divisions it was designed to accommodate. A parliamentary system was reinstated and elections scheduled, whereupon the short-lived consensus of protest dissolved into a seething mass of ‘multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, independent etc.’ contenders. Democratic freedoms did encourage wider participation in the political process, and produced healthy election turnouts. But this was largely thanks to the politicising of tribal and low-caste minorities who held the ‘Hindu monarchical kingdom’ and its upper-caste bureaucracy responsible for their plight.

  Over the next twelve years Nepal had twelve governments. A Nepali Congress ministry led by Girija Prasad Koirala managed three and a half turbulent years (1991–94), but at the cost of abandoning its more radical policies and operating within ‘the politics of patronage’; all the other ministries came and went in a matter of months. They included several coalitions led by the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist), itself an amalgam of numerous ultra-left splinter groups. At a moment in history when the hammers and sickles were being binned just about everywhere else, the ballot-box victory of Marxist-Leninists under a monarchical dispensation looked to be another Himalayan anomaly.

  It was also self-defeating. In power the Communists, too, ‘came to be viewed as the party of the establishment’, and quickly alienated some of their grassroots cadres.18 Nor did they fare much better out of power. Brutal police repression of revolutionary communes by the Nepal Congress government in 1995 further divided the Communist faithful, and provoked much heart-searching as to the ideologically correct response. Some Communist groups stepped up their efforts to present a credible parliamentary challenge; others, led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias ‘Comrade Prachanda’, turned their backs on Katmandu and opted for a ‘people’s war’ under the banner of the ‘Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)’. Weapons were acquired, study groups set up, and social betterment programmes promoted. Among the minority peoples of the Rukun and Rolpa districts in the mid-west, the insurgency took root.

  The war began in earnest when in early 1996 a forty-point memorandum of Communist demands went unanswered by the government. The demands were designed to be as inclusive as possible. They called for a revision of the Indo–Nepal treaties by way of curtailing ‘Indian expansionism’, the creation of a Constituent Assembly, and a radical redistribution of power aimed at ending royal control of the army, replacing the specifically Hindu complexion of the state with secular ideals, ensuring local autonomy, and introducing a predictable package of land reforms and social provisions. Nothing was said about overthrowing the monarchy. The revolutionary tactics that the Maoists were already employing in their ‘liberated areas’ were barely mentioned, nor was the mix of indoctrination and intimidation that accompanied them.

  From 1996 till 2001 the insurgents concentrated on eliminating such vestiges of the central administration as remained in these ‘liberated’ districts – police posts were especially targeted – and on replacing them with the apparatus of ‘people’s governments’. Operating through an elaborate chain of local cells, district politbureaux and standing committees, the new governments were designed to widen support for the Party by educating and empowering Dalits (‘Untouchables’), tribal groups, bonded labourers, women in general and other marginalised elements in society. Skills were taught, public health and education promoted, land redistributed. Female participation was especially impressive at every level, including the military. And though discipline was strict and taxation common, such things seemed a small price to pay for dedicated service to the common good.

  In effect, the Maoists were constructing a ‘parallel state’ of their own; and they were doing so partly by addressing grievances and promoting causes that elsewhere in Nepal were becoming the preserve of NGOs. Until the restoration of democracy in 1990, NGO activity had been restricted. Royal approval had been needed to set up any voluntary scheme, and had mostly been withheld lest such schemes unsettle the panchayat system. Post-1990, these constraints no longer applied. In fact, something of a free-for-all ensued. Government supervision now being minimal, competition between NGOs was fierce, and coordination suffered. Although the definition of an NGO was problematic – in Nepal it could be anything from a sports club to Oxfam – the number operating in the country suddenly grew from a few hundred to tens of thousands.

  To cynics it looked like another case of the flies finding the sugar – of non-governmental agencies being drawn to un-governmental nations. But NGO activity could also be seen as a useful antidote to Maoist contagion. With aid accounting for around 20 per cent of the nation’s GDP, most NGOs relied on foreign or international funding. The preferred arrangement saw foreign donors, typically US-, UK- or India-based, working in tandem with Nepali-run NGOs and channelling funds through them. Thus NGO activity, besides redressing many social ills and filling the void left by government, served to alert the international community to the Maoist threat, and to afford some reassurance to the Nepal government.

  All of which was of course grist to the Maoists’ mill. The government was blamed for betraying the people’s trust by outsourcing its responsibilities to unaccountable foreign enterprises, many supposedly with neo-colonial or ‘neo-con’ agendas. Aid workers were said to be overpaid parasites; official misappropriation was said to account for up to 90 per cent of their funds. In particular, India and the US were accused of using NGOs to subvert Nepali sovereignty.

  But the Maoist propaganda was not indiscriminate; it seldom targeted individual aid workers and it held the government to account rather than the sovereign. Indeed, the King, who had yet to be reconciled to his supposedly constitutional role, appeared just as keen to discredit the elected governments as were the Maoists. Hence the abolition of the monarchy and the creation of a republic, which should have been fundamental to the Maoist manifesto, were not pressed. Instead, all such constitutional issues were subsumed in the demand for a Constituent Assembly.

  There is even evidence of an unholy alliance between the politbureaux and the palace. By 2001 the Maoists controlled about a quarter of the countryside. But the government, which was again that of the Nepal Congress, could tackle the insurgents only by deploying the police. For despite repeated requests, the Royal Nepalese Army remained in barracks on the orders of its royal Commander-in-Chief. In other words, while castigating the government’s failure to roll back the insurgency, King Birendra steadfastly declined to engage his own troops. Comrade Prachanda would himself later acknowledge his movement’s gratitude for this forbearance. He applauded what he dubbed the King’s ‘soft policy toward the Maoist People’s War’, and recalled Maoist hopes ‘that Birendra would play the role of [Prince] Sihanouk’ (he being the Cambodian monarch who had thrown in his lot with the Khmer Rouge).19

  It seems, then, highly improbable that the Maoists played any part in the imminent mass murder of Nepal’s royal family. Nor does the Maoist charge that it was India and the US that were behind the regicide seem any more probable. Around that scene of carnage, which would define Nepal’s crisis to the wider world, conspiracy theories abound as wantonly as they do around the horrors, three months later, of 9/11. The more improbable the outrage, the more outrageous the conjecture – indeed, so much so that the originally improbable becomes plausible.

  The Katmandu massacre occurred within the King’s residence in the grounds of the Narayanhithi Palace. On the warm summer’s evening of 1 June 2001 the royals had gathered for the customary monthly audience. Greetings w
ere exchanged and drinks served as the formally attired guests emerged from the adjoining billiard room. According to later testimony, the proceedings were then interrupted when the Crown Prince Dipendra made his entry dressed in military fatigues. Heavily armed, certainly drunk and possibly drugged, the Prince began shooting immediately. He then withdrew, only to return for more of the same. By the time he reportedly turned one of his guns on himself, King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya lay dead, as did seven other princes and princesses. The survivors were few. They included the dead King’s unpopular brother Gyanendra, who happened to be absent that day, Gyanendra’s even more unloved son, who was only slightly wounded, and the demented Crown Prince Dipendra, whose attempt at suicide had left him in a deep coma but still breathing.

  Hitherto an uncontroversial figure, the burly Dipendra is supposed to have been mentally deranged by his mother’s refusal to let him marry the girl he loved. But assuming that he was indeed solely responsible for the massacre, it is hard to understand the sequence of events that followed. At first it was claimed that the whole affair had been accidental: a gun had gone off by mistake. Then, after several eyewitnesses had pinned the blame squarely on Dipendra, it emerged that none of them had actually seen the Prince shooting himself. Moreover, next day, while the regicidal Dipendra still lay comatose, he was officially recognised as King, with his uncle Gyanendra being appointed as temporary Regent. Only when, three days later, the now King Dipendra did indeed expire, presumably of his wounds, was Gyanendra elevated to the throne.

  Meanwhile, the bodies of all the slain were cremated before autopsies could be conducted; King Gyanendra somehow failed to attend the obsequies; and a later inquiry, whose impartiality was itself questionable, only fuelled the uncertainty by presenting self-contradictory findings. So much confusion argues strongly against the idea of premeditation. On the other hand, suspicion would inevitably attach to Gyanendra and his son – for surviving as much as anything. More certainly, after three kings in four days, Nepal’s monarchy was looking decidedly shaky.

  Gyanendra, a stern-faced sixty-three-year-old, was not one to shirk his new responsibilities. ‘The days of the monarchy being seen … but not heard’ were, he declared, over.20 Prime Minister G.P. Koirala promptly resigned. His replacement opened talks with the Maoists, and when these failed, the new King suspended the political process and declared a state of emergency. Parliament was dismissed, the army finally emerged from barracks, and on doubtful legal grounds Gyanendra formed a ministry of his own. A new crackdown backed by powers of summary arrest was justified on the grounds of combating terrorism, although the shootings and bombings continued. In the country at large the Maoists now fielded some 15,000 troops, and the total death toll was approaching 10,000.

  In this worsening situation, yet another ceasefire and more talks lasted through the first half of 2003. Gyanendra, though under both international and donor pressure to settle with the Maoists, first baulked at their demand for an elected Constituent Assembly, which he rightly feared would lead to the abolition of the monarchy, then scuppered the ceasefire with an army operation in which ‘nearly nineteen Maoists’ lost their lives.21

  Mass protests by the political parties brought a short-lived restoration of democracy in 2004. Long-overdue elections were promised, although without Maoist approval they could scarcely be held. The politicians fell an easy prey to palace intrigue; and the stalemate, combined with the war’s mounting death toll, emboldened Gyanendra to take a second bite at the cherry. In yet another royal coup, on 1 February 2005 a new state of emergency was declared. The King usurped all executive powers, imprisoned or detained many parliamentarians and clamped down hard on the press. He also predicted defeat for the Maoists within six months. In what would prove to be the endgame for Nepal’s embattled monarchy, Gyanendra had embraced the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’.

  As with General Musharraf in Pakistan, the conventional wisdom about failed states providing a haven-cum-breeding-ground for cross-national terrorists persuaded some foreign governments to overlook Gyanendra’s constitutional shortcomings. The George W. Bush administration in the US was at first sympathetic. So was a now notably un-Maoist China. And the Indian government, confronted by a revival of Maoist (or Naxalite) insurgency within its own borders, was positively supportive. But as the strength of Nepali opposition to the crackdown became clear, such sentiments cooled. Gyanendra’s six months came and went with no let-up in the war. The country teetered on the edge of complete collapse. Aid receipts fell, and some NGOs pulled out. ‘Tourism, the second largest foreign-exchange earner, on which 100,000 Nepalese depend, has dropped by 40 per cent,’ reported the Guardian in early 2006, ‘and the economy – one of the poorest in Asia – is sinking under the weight of diminished revenues and increased military spending.’22

  Meanwhile the political parties, with their backs against the wall, had rediscovered a common purpose in resisting the King’s authoritarian rule. A Seven Party Alliance was formed to fight for a revival of Parliament, and an appeal was issued to the Maoists to join it. This they did, but only after another ceasefire had come to nothing, and only on the understanding that a revived Parliament would convene a Constituent Assembly whose deliberations would result in a Constitution that put an end to royal interventions. Evidently the new King’s aggressive tactics had snuffed out Comrade Prachanda’s soft spot for the monarchy.

  Gyanendra responded to the multi-party challenge by announcing elections for February 2006. But the elections were to be at the municipal level only, and were to be conducted under his emergency regime. This meant that the palace would have a veto on the candidates, and an excellent chance of managing the result in its favour. Presumably Gyanendra reasoned that if the Maoists let the poll go ahead, he would be credited with having won a mandate, and if they prevented it, he would be credited with having given democracy a try. What he didn’t reckon on was universal condemnation. As never before, all sections of Nepali society – rural Maoists, urbane Congress-men, students, intellectuals, traders and minorities – united in decrying the elections as the cynical ploy they undoubtedly were. In a land where kings staged coups and Maoists made common cause with monarchists, a spokesman for the European Union detected a new anomaly: elections would be ‘a backward step for democracy’. The Indian government agreed. Despite its distaste for the Maoist presence at the barricades, it threw its weight behind the democratic movement and looked to its erstwhile allies in the Nepal Congress.

  In Katmandu the multi-party alliance called a general strike. It was met with erratic curfews and indiscriminate shooting by the army. When this claimed at least thirteen civilian lives, the whole country erupted in the greatest mass uprising in its history. ‘Hordes of Nepalese defy shoot-on-sight curfew orders and have brought the capital to a virtual standstill,’ reported a New York Times correspondent.23 As transport backed up at the border, fuel supplies ran low and the price of tomatoes trebled. But the strike went on. The Maoists held their fire and the multi-party alliance held together. The King’s ploy had spectacularly misfired. On 22 April 2006, faced with a threatened occupation of the capital’s governmental district, an ‘ashen-faced’ Gyanendra went on television to concede demands for the reinstatement of Parliament. ‘Within minutes of his appearance the streets of Katmandu exploded in jubilation.’24

  It was not the end of the monarchy. That took another two years, during which the King was progressively stripped of his powers, his perquisites and his palaces. He nevertheless stayed on as a private citizen with extensive business interests. Indeed, in 2012 he made it clear that he was still available. Claiming that the abolition of the monarchy had been unconstitutional, he pretended that his status as a constitutional ruler was still valid, and might yet be reactivated.

  Nor was this the end of the interminable search for political stability in the now ‘Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal’. With the Maoists having aligned themselves with the Seven Party Alliance in the mass uprising and agreed
to participate in the subsequent political process, the ten-year war had effectively ended. An immediate ceasefire was followed by a peace agreement in late 2006. But contentious issues like the disbandment of the people’s governments, the disarmament of the Maoist guerrillas and the release of prisoners had yet to be addressed. There was also the outstanding matter of a Constituent Assembly and the new Constitution it would draft.

  Following Gyanendra’s climbdown, G.P. Koirala had for the umpteenth time shouldered the burden of Prime Minister in the recalled lower house of Parliament. Under his stewardship, and with the help of UNMIN (a United Nations Mission in Nepal), disarmament made some progress and a Constituent Assembly was elected. The election unexpectedly gave the Maoists a slim majority. Accordingly, in 2008 the new Assembly formally abolished the monarchy and installed a President, to whom the now eighty-three-year-old Koirala tendered his resignation. Comrade Prachanda succeeded him. But Prachanda’s term of office lasted only a year. He resigned in 2009, when the President countermanded his dismissal of the army Chief of Staff. The latter, supposedly with encouragement from New Delhi, had refused to incorporate the Maoists’ 18,000 fighters into the regular army.