Abstract
Nepal is firmly rooted in the imagination of many in the West. It is the location of Mount Everest and its sister peaks across the Himalayas, the birthplace of the Buddha or even the image of the faithful Gurkha soldier serving his former colonial master. However, the political history of the modern state of Nepal is anything but romantic.
Prashant Jha, a journalist of considerable note and associate editor at the Hindustan Times, writes in Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal about the many and various political machinations that have challenged this landlocked nation on its fractured path from absolute monarchy to republic. He charts in fine detail the fraught and often violent conditions that have bedevilled this nation’s struggle for ‘generational transformation’. That moment arrived in 2008 when Nepal’s last king, Gyanendra Shah, stood aside and with the end of the 240-year royal epoch heralded the infancy of the new republic.
Battles of the New Republic perfectly illustrates how cataclysmic events tend to result in outcomes unimagined. On 1 June 2001, Gyanendra’s brother Dipendra took a machine gun and killed King Birendra and most of his family, before turning the weapon on himself. Prashant Jha writes that soon after Gyanendra assumed power as the nation’s new king, many viewed him to be tainted by regicide, viewing him to have some role in the grand design to wrest control of the monarchy. Seven years later saw another tectonic-like shift occur in the nation’s political history. Gyanendra, the 12th and final king, stood aside and ended the Kingdom of Nepal and giving birth to the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal.
Prashant Jha provides the insights of a well-connected observer. He writes how that the nation’s impoverishment, lack of infrastructure and communications came from the extractive nature of its former monarchical rulers over preceding decades provided fertile ground for groups such as the Nepali Maoists to exploit such conditions. He quotes how the Nepali Maoists launched ‘their battles against “royal feudalism, Indian expansionism and American imperialism” after the obituary of communism had been written’ (p. 29).
Nepal is geographically wedged between the Chinese superpower to the north and India to its south. Both powers have wielded varying levels of influence over the affairs of Nepal, such as Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1951 ‘Delhi Compromise’ to end Nepal’s Rana rule. That example of influence by a neighbouring power into the affairs of this mountainous state proved but one of many elements which conspired to make Nepal’s transition to a republic long but none more so than the king’s broken promise of 1951 that there would be ‘an elected Constituent Assembly where representatives of the Nepal people would draft a Constitution’ (p. 295).
Jha has covered Nepal’s political events for many years. He imparts his knowledge and insights in a manner that is both engaging and deeply informative. The odd impact of rumour and innuendo on the Nepali political scene is given an airing, tapping into that powerful adage that in politics, perception equals reality. His studious observations as a working journalist of the turbulent and troubled political machinations of his home country are interspersed with his own vivid personal recollections from a young age.
The timeline provided at the front of the book is a welcome accompaniment to the political history of this nation. The ambition of achieving a republic, however, saw the nation endure a decade-long, low-intensity Maoist insurgency from 1996 before becoming a fully blown guerrilla war. Jha states that according to the Maoists, the Nepalese ‘were victims of a centralized patriarchal, elite-led, hill upper-caste dominated, Hindu, and India-backed state operating out of Kathmandu’ (p. 23). In November 2005, the Maoists formed an alliance with other anti-royalist political parties and that too was short-lived. Just two months later, the nation slipped back into civil war.
In April 2006, King Gyanendra conceded ‘that sovereignty rests with the people’, moving the centralized monarchy aside and giving direction to a state that would embody multi-cultural nationalism and federalism. The reinstatement of the parliament, which had been dissolved in 2002, saw the creation of a new government under Girija Prasad Koirala as Prime Minister was quickly heralded as a victory for the nation’s political diversity. Under a general agreement, an interim administration was installed in June 2006 that included Maoist rebels. In November 2006, Prime Minister Koirala and Maoist leader Puspha Kamal Dahal Prachanda signed an agreement that brought closure to the civil war and firmed the politics of ‘inclusive nationalism’. By 2009, elections had been held, the monarchy was abolished and it was decided that Nepal would have a Federal Democratic Republican Commission.
The pursuit for the new republic identified ‘viewing the old state structure as a common enemy’ writes Jha (p. 304). He also speaks of the courage and loss of many who pursue the ambitions of a freer, fuller representative nation. One particular story is that of Uma Singh, a forthright journalist working in radio, whose ‘line of questioning indicated that she had no such dilemmas—she felt that Madhesi leaders must answer for their use and abuse of power’ (pp. 250–251). Despite limited opportunities for women journalists, Uma pursued the hard questions until her murder on 11 January 2011. A dozen men stormed into Uma’s room late in the night and stabbed her multiple times, causing her to die from the injures the following day. Despite Cabinet declaring Uma a martyr, compensating the family and promising freedom of the press, Jha writes that while his friend’s murderers were alleged to be Maoist cadres, ‘subsequent events were to show that accusing the Maoists for every crime, in a knee-jerk reaction, would not be right’ (p. 253). A murder investigation and resultant trial convicted Uma’s sister-in-law, Lalita Singh, who had organized the murder over property. For Jha, this murder was symptomatic of something more than just the tragic loss of a friend and colleague. For him, it is the
breakdown of relations over land and property; the presence of man, many young men ready to take life, and to do so brutally for a quick buck; the utter absence of the state and its inability or unwillingness to stamp out the culture of impunity that bred these killings. (p. 254)
November 2011 saw the signing of a seven-point peace deal between the Maoists and major Nepali parties such as the Nepali Congress, Communist Party of Nepal and the United Democratic Madhesi Front. Jha forensically explores this process and the subsequent events of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. This included the ‘uncoupling’ of the Nepalese Army (NA) from the control and influence of the palace, a move towards the ‘democratization’ of its armed forces and a transition process to integrate into the state’s security forces former Maoists. Nepal remains one of the world’s economically poorest nations and since 2001, the state has become heavy militarized. By 2006, it had more than doubled in size to 95,000 service personnel; however, when the peace arrangement came into effect late that year, the armed forces no longer faced an internal threat to state security. An external threat did not exist either. The structure of its security forces underwent changes that sought to incorporate its former Maoist foes into the NA. The United Nations Mission in Nepal calculated that there were 19,602 former Maoist combatants although only 1,500 were eventually incorporated into the NA. While done in the interests of national reconciliation and force restructuring, this process proved complex and not without a degree of controversy.
The book provides a postscript, written in 2014, to counter his concluding pessimistic statement that ‘the dream was dead’ (p. 334). After the loss of 16,000 people to internal conflict over many troubled years, Jha reflects that ‘the process of political change takes generations’ (p. 343). The uneven advancement of Nepal becoming a republic and the pursuit of drafting their constitution are shown as having been no easy trek. The battles that the Nepalese people have undertaken in this journey are un-romanticized and unadorned. As Nepal heads closer towards its post-monarchy goal of the drafting and acceptance of a new constitution, the struggles, hopes and fortitude of its people clearly show that many seek to achieve a new republic that is replete with ‘republicanism, secularism, federalism, inclusion and democracy’. This first-person narrative account from Jha is a perfect entrée for those seeking to understand the recent history and contemporary issues in Nepal.