Ethnic politics is the big glue that holds the Maoists and the Madhesis together. It will be a challenge for their leaders to sustain the camaraderie when things stumble, or when the immediate goal is achieved
In politics, yesterday’s foes can be today’s allies. Often, the enemy-turned-friend not just bolsters electoral numbers but also becomes the oxygen for a new deal. The flip side is that its decisive leverage can become a millstone round the neck of the partner, and at some point in time the relationship becomes hostage to unsavoury expectations rather than be driven by the sweetness of shared ideals.
When things begin to go wrong, the fractured past gets invoked more assertively, both as a reminder that the future can be as bad and a threat that the present can be shattered. This is the danger that Nepal’s principal Opposition, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), and its allies — six prominent Madhesi parties — need to guard against. One of the best ways to keep the partnership going strong, is for the Maoists and the Madhesis to achieve success in their ongoing battle for a Constitution that quenches their demand for ethnic-driven federalism.
The Madhesi parties and the UCPN(M) even together stand outnumbered in the Constituent Assembly which is dominated by the ruling combine of the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-leninist). Since the Government is determined to use its large majority to push through a Constitution which satisfies neither the Madhesis nor the Maoists, the only way left out for the Opposition is to remain intact.
The point is: How long will this unity last if the Madhesis begin to feel that they are getting nowhereIJ Of course, there is as yet no indication of a break-up, and conventional wisdom says that the Opposition alliance will get strengthened the more the ruling coalition is adamant on its railroading of the Constitution. But desperation can make people and parties to behave in unconventional ways. This is the reason why the Maoists are determined to block — if not so effectively in the Constituent Assembly, certainly on the streets of Nepal with large protest rallies — the present structure of the Constitution.
They do not want to lose the Madhesi support and return to the acrimonious days of some eight years past, when the rivalry between the Madhesis and the Maoists was as bitter and as violent as that between the Maoists and the Rest during the decade-long People’s War. Had the UCPN(M) not to win the 2008 election, even if by a small margin, and had it not to form a coalition Government, perhaps the battle between the Madhesis and the Maoists would have sustained and assumed graver proportions.
It must be remembered that even soon after that victory, the Maoists led by Mr Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ had tied up with the CPN(UMl) to form a Government, and their affinity with the Madhesis genuinely scaled up only subsequently, and more so after the CPN(UMl) broke away from the alliance — although it is true that one prominent ethnic outfit was nominally part of the coalition regime. The situation this time is a little more complex. As many as six Madhesi parties — the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (loktantrik), the Madhesi Jana Adhikar Forum-Nepal, the Terai Madhes loktantrik Party, the Sadbhawana Party, the Terai Madhes Sadbhawana Party and the Federal Socialist Party — are in alliance with the UCPN(M).
Since each one of these outfits is jostling for the same political space, they can be said to also be competing against one another while joining hands against common enemies. It’s a heady cocktail, and one wrong move or one failure (in this case, over the tussle for an acceptable Constitution) can disrupt the fragile coalition.
The year 2007 will not be easily forgotten in Nepal’s political history. It will also serve as a reminder to all those who believe, given the present bonhomie between the two, that the Maoists and the Madhesis have always been made for each other. During that year, they had indulged in several serious violent clashes.
Nobody had then imagined that the bitter rivals, so intensely engaged in mutual bloodshed, would become allies ever, let alone so soon; and that both would be claiming in toto that they want a “new Constitution that ensures a progressive restructuring of the States, and incorporates identity-based federalism”. An encapsulated string of events should set the perspective right.
Towards the middle of January 2007, Maoists attacked a rally of the Madhesi Jana Adhikar Forum-Nepal after activists of the latter stopped vehicles belonging to the Maoists in a bid to enforce a chakka-jam. A 16-year-old Madhesi sympathiser, Ramesh Mahato, was killed in the Maoist firing. More died in the coming hours in retaliatory violence.
Nearly a month later, a 14-year-old school boy lost his life during a clash between the supporters of the MJF-N and the Maoists. Similar fights continued to break out right through March, leading Maoist leader ‘Prachanda’ to compare the Madhesi outfit with the Contras of Nicaragua and allege that the MJF was being used by “imperialists” to “derail” the people’s movement in Nepal. There is no reward for guessing which ‘imperialist’ the charismatic leader was referring to!
All through 2007, from the first major clashes in January to the end of that year, the Madhesi organisations and the Maoists led by future Prime Minister ‘Prachanda’ continued to clash. But there were also efforts at a rapprochement, with a worried Government wanting an end to the tussle since the unrest was straining at its resources and its political credibility, although it suited the Kathmandu regime headed by the veteran and wily Nepali Congress leader GP Koirala to allow its rivals to be at each other’s throats.
Internal differences over the terms and conditions for peace led to splits in the Madhesi outfit — with many new entities taking shape. This was to further complicate Madhesi politics in the months to come. It would take a while and the dexterity and cunningness of the Maoist party helmed by ‘Prachanda’ and another would-be Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai to bring prominent Madhesi parties on a common platform and persuade them to align with the UCPN(M), once the Madhesis’ sworn enemy.
As of now, ethnic politics is one of the two glues that hold the Maoists and the Madhesis together; the other being their distrust of both the Nepali Congress and the shifting-as-the-sand Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-leninist). But the glue has a shelf-life. Comrades-in-arm can become comrades-at-war in quickly changed circumstances.
Nepal may not return to the era when Madhesi influence was in absolute check because its prominent leaders were too thinly spread out across various parties to be able to mount a unified challenge. The Nepali Congress, the communists and the monarchy-backed institutions had sprinklings of the ethnic group. Today, the Madhesis are united. If this unity is a strength to be leveraged, it is also a challenge to be effectively sustained.