<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->India's folly lets Maobadis win
Kancha Gupta (Pioneer column)
Switching on the television set in my hotel room in Kasaragod early Tuesday morning to catch up with the news, I was greeted by a newsreader on a 24x7 channel informing the world how "people's power" had won in Nepal. The ecstatic look on her face made it seem as if she had just rushed to the newsroom from the barricades after celebrating King Gyanendra's near-abject surrender to the hoodlums, most of them Maobadis from the districts adjoining Kathmandu, who had laid siege to Singhadwar in a pre-meditated putsch for capturing power and hoisting the Red banner aloft Narayanhity Palace.
Tragically, going by the week-kneed response of the UPA Government which refused to stand by the King during his most difficult hours this past fortnight, choosing instead to let events "take their own course" and allow the Maobadis to dictate the course of politics, and the amazing absence of any reaction among the chattering classes to such abhorrent policy, it would seem most of India has signalled solidarity with Nepal's Red terrorists.
It is immaterial whether the UPA Government's decision to abandon the King even while claiming that India believes that both constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy are needed to ensure stability in Nepal enjoys popular approval. Just like it is of little consequence that the seven-party alliance has agreed to form a Government and nominated Mr GP Koirala as Prime Minister after the King offered to revive the Pratinidihi Sabha.
The message that has been successfully conveyed to the King, politicians and people of Nepal by the UPA Government is clear to all: India lacks the integrity to make tough choices and the courage to take difficult decisions. Those who have wrecked India's Nepal policy with gay abandon, including senior bureaucrats in the Ministry of External Affairs and the Prime Minister's Office who need not be named since they have unabashedly associated themselves with anti-palace forces and broken bread with Comrade Prachanda and other Maobadis who have blood on their hands, may now seek to seize the moral high ground by pretending solidarity with the people.
But the simple fact of the matter is that the establishment in New Delhi behaved the way it did - isolating the King, ignoring urgent appeals for military supplies to fight the Maobadis, and hatching conspiracies with those who have been waging a murderous and rapacious campaign of Red terror - simply because unlike his brother King Birendra, King Gyanendra is nobody's fool and endowed with sharp intelligence. Had he chosen to be a doormat and offered to do New Delhi's bidding, as was expected by our politicians and bureaucrats, perhaps Kathmandu would not have witnessed the hooliganism of the past fortnight.
Worse, New Delhi's slighted establishment aggressively lobbied with the US and European Governments to mould opinion against King Gyanendra. If the Prime Minister and his advisers, including National Security Adviser KR Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, had truly believed in what they now say - that Nepal cannot do without the twin pillars of constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy - then they would not have played such a negative, debilitating role ever since the palace coup of February 1, 2004.
Steeped with duplicity, they may, however, have overplayed their game to destabilise King Gyanendra. By allowing an individual's presumed arrogance and hauteur to overwhelm their sense of judgement and distract their attention from India's national interest, they have allowed the institution of monarchy that has served as a bulwark against forces inimical to India for ages to be weakened to a point where the Maobadis have the gumption to repudiate even the most craven offer of reconciliation as was made by King Gyanendra on Monday night.
Comrade Prachanda, who has led a campaign of anarchy, loot and murder for the past decade with the singular purpose of demolishing all institutions of the state, such as they exist in Nepal, and has threatened to train his guns on India after humbling the monarch, in a statement issued on Tuesday has rubbished the King's offer as a "ploy to break Nepali people and save his anarchist Monarchy". He has also declared that the Maobadis will continue with their blockade of Kathmandu and other major towns.
It is laughable that a man who has relentlessly waged war against all semblance of parliamentary democracy should denounce the King for "starting a new precedence of constituting Parliament illegally" which, according to him, is a "gross insult of the parliamentary system". The seven-party alliance's positive response has been described as a "blunder" and "betrayal".
But more than feeling betrayed by Mr Koirala and other discredited politicians who are solely to blame for the political mess in Nepal, Prachanda and his ilk should feel let down by their friends in the New Delhi establishment. In the end, they could not carry out the counter-coup they had plotted with high officials of the UPA regime - the Maobadis' seizure of power must wait for another day; for the moment, the wily King appears to have outmanoeuvred them.
Meanwhile, a sense of déjà vu permeates Narayanhity Palace. In another palace coup more than half-a-century ago, on November 7, 1950, when Prince Gyanendra was placed on the throne of Nepal by Prime Minister Mohan Shumshere Jang Bahadur Rana, it was part of an elaborate conspiracy to oust his grandfather King Tribhuvan who had fallen out with the all-powerful Ranas and taken refuge in New Delhi.
For a while, it seemed, the Ranas would, yet again, have their way. But Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru nipped that conspiracy in the bud. With India's full, unequivocal and firm backing, King Tribhuvan returned to Kathmandu and resumed his role as the kingdom's absolute monarch and Mohan Shumshere Jang Bahadur Rana slipped into history books as the last hereditary Prime Minister of Nepal.
Destiny, the defeated conspirators would later say, favoured King Tribhuvan. Destiny did not abandon Prince Gyanendra either. The famed pearl-and-plume crown he wore for a few days as a four-year-old child in 1950, is now rightfully his. Tragically, unlike King Tribhuvan, it is his destiny to be denied support by a crafty Government in New Delhi that has chosen to ignore history and for whose folly both Nepal and India shall pay a terrible price.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Kancha Gupta (Pioneer column)
Switching on the television set in my hotel room in Kasaragod early Tuesday morning to catch up with the news, I was greeted by a newsreader on a 24x7 channel informing the world how "people's power" had won in Nepal. The ecstatic look on her face made it seem as if she had just rushed to the newsroom from the barricades after celebrating King Gyanendra's near-abject surrender to the hoodlums, most of them Maobadis from the districts adjoining Kathmandu, who had laid siege to Singhadwar in a pre-meditated putsch for capturing power and hoisting the Red banner aloft Narayanhity Palace.
Tragically, going by the week-kneed response of the UPA Government which refused to stand by the King during his most difficult hours this past fortnight, choosing instead to let events "take their own course" and allow the Maobadis to dictate the course of politics, and the amazing absence of any reaction among the chattering classes to such abhorrent policy, it would seem most of India has signalled solidarity with Nepal's Red terrorists.
It is immaterial whether the UPA Government's decision to abandon the King even while claiming that India believes that both constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy are needed to ensure stability in Nepal enjoys popular approval. Just like it is of little consequence that the seven-party alliance has agreed to form a Government and nominated Mr GP Koirala as Prime Minister after the King offered to revive the Pratinidihi Sabha.
The message that has been successfully conveyed to the King, politicians and people of Nepal by the UPA Government is clear to all: India lacks the integrity to make tough choices and the courage to take difficult decisions. Those who have wrecked India's Nepal policy with gay abandon, including senior bureaucrats in the Ministry of External Affairs and the Prime Minister's Office who need not be named since they have unabashedly associated themselves with anti-palace forces and broken bread with Comrade Prachanda and other Maobadis who have blood on their hands, may now seek to seize the moral high ground by pretending solidarity with the people.
But the simple fact of the matter is that the establishment in New Delhi behaved the way it did - isolating the King, ignoring urgent appeals for military supplies to fight the Maobadis, and hatching conspiracies with those who have been waging a murderous and rapacious campaign of Red terror - simply because unlike his brother King Birendra, King Gyanendra is nobody's fool and endowed with sharp intelligence. Had he chosen to be a doormat and offered to do New Delhi's bidding, as was expected by our politicians and bureaucrats, perhaps Kathmandu would not have witnessed the hooliganism of the past fortnight.
Worse, New Delhi's slighted establishment aggressively lobbied with the US and European Governments to mould opinion against King Gyanendra. If the Prime Minister and his advisers, including National Security Adviser KR Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, had truly believed in what they now say - that Nepal cannot do without the twin pillars of constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy - then they would not have played such a negative, debilitating role ever since the palace coup of February 1, 2004.
Steeped with duplicity, they may, however, have overplayed their game to destabilise King Gyanendra. By allowing an individual's presumed arrogance and hauteur to overwhelm their sense of judgement and distract their attention from India's national interest, they have allowed the institution of monarchy that has served as a bulwark against forces inimical to India for ages to be weakened to a point where the Maobadis have the gumption to repudiate even the most craven offer of reconciliation as was made by King Gyanendra on Monday night.
Comrade Prachanda, who has led a campaign of anarchy, loot and murder for the past decade with the singular purpose of demolishing all institutions of the state, such as they exist in Nepal, and has threatened to train his guns on India after humbling the monarch, in a statement issued on Tuesday has rubbished the King's offer as a "ploy to break Nepali people and save his anarchist Monarchy". He has also declared that the Maobadis will continue with their blockade of Kathmandu and other major towns.
It is laughable that a man who has relentlessly waged war against all semblance of parliamentary democracy should denounce the King for "starting a new precedence of constituting Parliament illegally" which, according to him, is a "gross insult of the parliamentary system". The seven-party alliance's positive response has been described as a "blunder" and "betrayal".
But more than feeling betrayed by Mr Koirala and other discredited politicians who are solely to blame for the political mess in Nepal, Prachanda and his ilk should feel let down by their friends in the New Delhi establishment. In the end, they could not carry out the counter-coup they had plotted with high officials of the UPA regime - the Maobadis' seizure of power must wait for another day; for the moment, the wily King appears to have outmanoeuvred them.
Meanwhile, a sense of déjà vu permeates Narayanhity Palace. In another palace coup more than half-a-century ago, on November 7, 1950, when Prince Gyanendra was placed on the throne of Nepal by Prime Minister Mohan Shumshere Jang Bahadur Rana, it was part of an elaborate conspiracy to oust his grandfather King Tribhuvan who had fallen out with the all-powerful Ranas and taken refuge in New Delhi.
For a while, it seemed, the Ranas would, yet again, have their way. But Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru nipped that conspiracy in the bud. With India's full, unequivocal and firm backing, King Tribhuvan returned to Kathmandu and resumed his role as the kingdom's absolute monarch and Mohan Shumshere Jang Bahadur Rana slipped into history books as the last hereditary Prime Minister of Nepal.
Destiny, the defeated conspirators would later say, favoured King Tribhuvan. Destiny did not abandon Prince Gyanendra either. The famed pearl-and-plume crown he wore for a few days as a four-year-old child in 1950, is now rightfully his. Tragically, unlike King Tribhuvan, it is his destiny to be denied support by a crafty Government in New Delhi that has chosen to ignore history and for whose folly both Nepal and India shall pay a terrible price.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->