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Nepal’s Maoists make the world sit up
News Analysis by Shastri Ramachandaran

The stunning election victory of Nepal’s Maoists has caught India and much of the world unawares. Neither New Delhi nor the international community had reckoned with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) turning out to be so adept at winning the battle of the ballot. That is not surprising, for few in Nepal, including the Maoist party itself, had foreseen such a development.

In the event, the spectacular electoral performance of the Maoists requires India and the international community to jettison their pre-election assumptions, revise their policy premises and prepare to engage with the new reality: that the Maoists are in command of Nepal. This is a unique democratic accomplishment, a Maoist revolution through the ballot box, accomplished in a remarkably short time, with a rebel organisation reinventing itself to emerge at the helm of parliamentary politics. It is a first in South Asia and, perhaps, a global landmark.

Regardless of the final results, it can be said with certainty that Nepal is in the throes of a tectonic political shift. The 240-year-old monarchy is all but cast on the dung heap of history. Only the formal rite of the new Constituent Assembly abolishing the monarchy remains to be performed. The Himalayan spring thunder has put in the shade every other political party, including the grand old Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist).

The NC and CPN (UML) have not only been routed but their stalwarts swept off their feet by relatively unknown challengers who were fighting their first election. These two mainstream parties are now on the margins and they can, at best, expect to be junior partners in government if the Maoists opt for a coalition. In the normal course, nothing can now stop the Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Prachanda, from becoming Nepal’s first executive president after the Constituent Assembly completes its task.

Ironically, the Maoist party was least confident of winning so many of the 240 seats in the first-past-the-post system. Hence, their insistence on proportional representation; and, the 335 seats decided on this basis will now be to the greater advantage of those worsted by the Maoists.

New Delhi will have to rework its equations with the Maoist leadership. It has to accept that the monarchy as well as the multiparty system, with which it was comfortable, has collapsed. India can look to building on its proximity to the Maoist leadership. It brokered the mainstreaming of the Maoists, their joining the interim Seven-Party Alliance Government and their participation in the elections.

However, it may not be able to prevail as it did hitherto in the dramatically changed political conditions given the anti-India platform of the Maoists. The Maoist assertions of making Nepal a “truly independent republic” are bound to acquire a sharper anti-India edge. While it would be premature to speculate on the fate of the many agreements between India and Nepal, the Maoists are certain to demand that the 1950 treaty of peace and friendship should be revised, if not scrapped.

New Delhi will have to tread cautiously. It has to do a lot of thinking, and re-thinking, to evolve its policy towards Nepal under Prachanda, although he has said Kathmandu would maintain equidistance between India and China.