King Gyanendra's Coup and its Implications for 's Future

MICHAEL HUTT Professor of Nepali and Himalayan Studies London School of Oriental and African Studies

"Nepal's independence, national unity, and sovereignty are best safeguarded by the intimate relationship between the king and people. An institution of ever devoted to the country and a people with an innate love for their land is the glorious history of the , its present and also its future."" - Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, , 1 February 2005

'A brief recapitulation of the incessant struggle between the monarchy and democracy since the 1950s in the country should leave no one in any doubt that without the complete abolition of the archaic institution of feudal monarchy and its puppet RNA [Royal Nepalese Army] no form of democracy can be secure and institutional in Nepal. "^ - , (Maoist), 15 March 2005

Two VIEWS OF NEPAL'S PAST, present, and future now confront one another. For the king, the very existence of Nepal depends upon the relationship between the monarchy and the people. The king knows what is best for his people, who are simple, humble, loyal subjects. He ensures that all things in his realm are conducive to the maintenance oidharma (religion, righteousness) and a proper social order.'The people acknowledge and honor the role of the king and do not question or oppose it. On the other hand, for the Maoist ideologue—and, since the royal coup of 1 February 2005, an increasing number of Nepali politicians and thinkers—the monar- chy stands as the main barrier between the people and their achievement of freedom, justice, peace, and prosperity. MICHAEL HUTT is a professor of Nepali and Himalayan Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Copyright © 2005 by the Brown Joumal of World Affairs

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THE "PEOPLE'S WAR" AND THE ROYAL COUP

The "People's War," waged under the leadership of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) since February 1996, poses a direct and increasingly potent challenge to the continued existence of monarchy in Nepal. To date, the conflict has claimed approxi- mately 11,000 lives."* As it continues, the middle ground occupied by parliamentary democracy and has been progressively squeezed. The major- ity of Nepalis find themselves standing on shrinking political ground.' In May 2002, Many such people regard the ^^e House ofRepresentatives was dissolved, and in August, elections to local government bodies monarchy as the natural savior, were cancelled, in a semi-coup that October, while others favor the iVIaOiStS. ^^^ ^"S dismissed the prime minister for his inability to conduct general elections. During the next 28 months, he appointed three different governments while most of the major parties took to the streets in protest of this "regression." Finally, on 1 February 2005, King Gyanendra took all executive power for himself, declared a national emergency, placed Nepal's leading politicians under house arrest; shut down the country's phone system, internet servers, and FM radio stations; diverted international flights, and im- posed strong press censorship. He assumed the chair of a handpicked ten-member Council of Ministers and announced that he would produce a plan for restoring basic freedoms within 100 days but would exercise direct rule for three years.^ The Royal Nepalese Army carried out the coup and now faces the task of main- taining a royal hold on power. That the coup had been planned for months was evident in the way the army cut Nepal off from the world even as the king delivered his speech on Nepal television.

PARTY POUTICS

Many members of Nepal's upper social strata believe that a politically active monarchy is the only reliable guarantor of Nepal's sovereignty and political stability. They view commoner politicians as upstarts who must be admitted some rights to prevent their disrupting the royally ordained order of things, but whose activities must remain con- trolled and circumscribed. For others, the blatantly self-serving conduct of Nepali poli- ticians in office has confirmed a belief in politicians' inherent corruption. Many such people regard the monarchy as the natural savior, while others favor the Maoists. Mean- while, a third sector of Nepali society sees democracy, human rights, and individual

THE BROWN JOURNAL OF WORLD AFFAIRS King Gyanendra's Coup and its Implications for Nepal's Future civic freedoms as the only means by which Nepal can further the interests of all its citizens. This third view has been inculcated by growing levels of education and politi- cal awareness as well as increasing exposure to the world beyond Nepal. While it, too, is often sharply critical of commoner politicians for their perceived duplicity, egotism, and venality, it sees no alternative to democratic politics. Baburam Bhattarai^ is right when he says that the master narrative of Nepal's political history since 1950 has been the struggle between democrats (very broadly defmed) and monarchists. However, most of the democratic forces, including even the more moderate communist parties, have historically accepted the need for a constitutional monarchy and, in fact, have often turned to the palace for support and patronage as they compete with one another. The bulk of King Gyanendra's 1 February 2005 proclamation consisted of strong criticisms of the performance and behavior of Nepal's commoner politicians:

"Democracy and progress always complement each other. But Nepal's bitter experiences over the past few years tend to show that democracy and progress contradict one another. Multiparty democracy was discredited by focusing solely on power politics. Parliament witnessed many aberrations in the name of retaining and ousting governments. Not a single House of Representatives was allowed to complete its tenure. Continuous confusion and disorder resulted in the obstruction of the democratic process. While the people's aspirations continued to be shattered and their trust trampled on, they 113 became increasingly disenchanted with democracy itself..."

These comments clearly refer to political developments since democracy was reinstated in Nepal in 1990, though surely not to the two and a half years during which the king himself has been in charge. Thus, they can be taken as the expression of a royal view that dates from at least as early as 2002. Read in this light, the proclamation can be interpreted as an expression of intent to suspend multi-party democracy in Nepal, or at least impose constraints upon it, and to strengthen the role of the palace—not just until the Maoist insurgency has been quelled militarily or resolved politically, but for the foreseeable ftiture. King Gyanendra's criticisms of party leaders are not unfounded, and the main parties can certainly be blamed for allowing, even actively participating in, the discred- iting and dismantling of democracy in Nepal during the 1990s. However, party politi- cal activity has been legal in Nepal for only 25 of the 54 years since the end of the family and for only 21 years in the case of the Communist Party of Nepal. For 29 of those 54 years, the palace has been the overwhelmingly dominant political force in the land. If Nepal is descending into chaos and state failure, the palace bears a share of responsibility for that state of affairs.

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If attitudes continue to harden into the view that democracy and monarchy are mutually exclusive, it may be true, as Bhattarai suggests, that there is little prospect of the emergence of a political system that can accommodate both democracy and mon- archy in Nepal. What, then, is the future of democracy in Nepal?

A HISTORICAL TRAJECTORY: THE MONARCHY

King Drabya Shah seized the throne of the tiny hill kingdom of Gorkha in the mid- sixteenth century, and his successors, are generally credited with having created the modern nation-state now known as Nepal. In a campaign of military conquest during the second half of the eighteenth century, overran most of the other petty states of the central and eastern Himalaya and incorporated them into his own territory. The Gorkhali expansion This accommodation also strength- ended after a series ofbattles with the armed ened the traditional order in Nepal ^'''^'' °f *^ ^""^^ ^^^ ^"""^'^ ^"'"P^"^' and 30 years later the Shah kings' power against the forces of change un- ^^, ecUpsed by a courtly family that leashed hy British rule in , adopted title of/2a«^.TheRanas pursued a program of Hinduization that system- atized the incorporation of Nepal's many disparate ethno-linguistic groups into a na- tional hierarchy of castes and ethnic groups headed by the Khas (later called Chetri) and () of the Gorkhali elite. Between 1846 and 1951, when it was displaced, the Rana regime achieved an accommodation with the British that suited both sides. But this accommodation also strengthened the traditional order in Nepal against the forces of change unleashed by British rule in India. The extractive nature of the Nepali state thus remained very deeply ingrained, and the ruling elite continued to regard the mass of the population as revenue-producing subjects rather than citizens with rights. Over the course of these 105 years, the Shahs and Ranas intermarried on a regu- lar basis, and their genealogies became closely intertwined, forming what remains a distinct and often wealthy class of Nepali society. A disdainful view of commoner politicians and a belief in the natural authority of the Shah-Rana elite is still endemic to this class, which also predominates in the upper echelons of the Royal Nepalese Army. However, the monarchy emerged from the trauma of the 1 June 2001 palace massacre with its legitimacy severely damaged. Although there is no evidence to support their view, many Nepalis still believe that Gyanendra had some hand in the murder of Birendra and his family; the Maoists' bulletins and press releases regularly refer to him as "fratri- cidal" and "regicidal." Gyanendra knows that the Shah kings are not known for their

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longevity and that the Nepali public has no love for his son Paras, who will succeed him. Military support may become even more vital for the monarchy in the future.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE GROWTH OF CIVIL SOCIETY

The contest for political power in Nepal was largely confined to elite and aristocratic circles through the whole of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twen- tieth. However, during the 1930s, a new, educated urban class began to emerge. Its most visible members were predominantly male and or Newar.* This class emerged first among those who depended upon the ancestral elites, but by the 1940s it had begun to organize in political opposition to the Rana government. Members of this class came together in two parties: the Party, a moderate, left of center party modelled on the Indian Nationalist Congress, and the Communist Party of Nepal.' Although regular schisms and endemic factionalism have marred the elec- toral achievements of the communist movement in Nepal, the total number of votes cast for communist parties in the first two of the three post-1990 elections roughly equalled those cast for Congress, while in 1999 the Left as a whole was four percent ahead of Congress. As one Indian journalist recently stated, "Nepal is emerging as a left-wing society by choice."'" Since the 1960s, the urban literate classes have burgeoned in size, but the severe material poverty of the majority of Nepal's people has not been tangibly ameliorated, nor has the profound inequality of Nepali society been redressed.'' For two genera- tions, Nepal's relatively educated people have formed a significant and geographically concentrated minority, but most have found little in the way of opportunities for so- cial, material, or professional advancement.'^ A few have gone on to become politi- cians, journalists, bureaucrats, or activists, and others have found employment with the numerous NGOs and INGOs that operate in Nepal. Many of the new politicians have used their positions since 1990 to enrich themselves and their families, leading to the emergence of a new, propertied elite viewed with contempt by those who obtained their status through birth. But the majority of young, literate Nepalis remain under- employed and frustrated. Many see emigration as the only means of bettering their lot; the rest are easily persuaded that Nepal needs radical change: most Maoists are younger than 30.

THE FIRST ROYAL COUP

King Gyanendra's 1 February 2005 proclamation may well go down in history as Nepal's

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second royal coup. The first was enacted by Gyanendra's father, Mahendra, in Decem- ber I960. In 1951, in the aftermath of the British departure from India, a coalition between King Tribhuvan, the new political parties, and a disgruntled faction within the Rana family succeeded in restoring full powers to King Tribhuvan with the help of Nehru's government in New Delhi. Tribhuvan promised to establish a on the Westminster model, but general elections were not held until February 1959. The Nepali Congress Party won 14 of the 109 seats in the lower house in these elections and its leader, B.P. Koirala, became prime minister. His government initiated three major reforms: the abolition of the birta system of tax-free landholdings, of which the Ranas and their favorites had been the All of Nepal's political parties main beneficiaries; the abolition of the were hanned the following month, '"^y"''^'' "y'^^"" ^^^''^'°^"""^ °^*^ formerly independent rulers of western and central Nepal had maintained local control of their territory in return for a fixed annual trib- ute to ; and the nationalization of Nepal's forests, some of which had been the private property of the king's brothers. King Mahendra, who had succeeded his father in 1955, found himself facing a strong-willed prime minister bent on reforms on the one hand and an alarmed elite on Ilfi the other. Citing the pretext of localized clashes between Congress cadres and support- ers of the Gorkha Parishad, the primary opposition party, and other incidents during which aggrieved Tamang farmers, with Congress's backing, drove landlords and mon- eylenders out of their villages, Mahendra invoked his emergency powers and arrested Prime Minister Koirala and his colleagues on 15 December I960. King Mahendra charged Congress with failing to maintain law and order and endangering Nepal's national sovereignty. For King Mahendra, "Nepal was an idea and none but he could realise what it was destined to be."''All of Nepal's political parties were banned the following month.

THE TWO COUPS COMPARED

The events of this first coup bear obvious similarities to those that took place half a century later in February 2005, even in terms of the rationale offered by the involved monarchs. In 1960, Nehru saw Mahendra's move as a recipe for instability in Nepal. With India's backing, the Nepali Congress and the Gorkha Parishad joined forces to launch a guerilla war from across the Indian border; in the first year, approximately 130 people died. India imposed an economic blockade against Nepal in September 1962, but

THE BROWN JOURNAL OF WORLD AFFAIRS King Gyanendra's Coup and its Implications for Nepal's Euture Mahendra was rescued by the outbreak of the India- war in October: India now needed the king's cooperation and called oiiFthe armed campaign. India soon accepted the reality of royal rule in Nepal and maintained its levels of development aid to Nepal. In 2005, Gyanendra is said to have been surprised by the international community's negative reaction to the coup, particularly by the hostile reception his move received in India. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pulled out of a South Asian Associa- tion for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit meeting that was scheduled for early February in Dhaka; the meeting was duly cancelled. The chief of the . General J.J. Singh, turned down an invitation to Kathmandu. Gyanendra is hoping that early Indian protestations will soon fade as they did in 1962, and that India will accept this new political reality in Nepal. If so, it is likely that the Americans and the British will also soften their stances.

A NEW SYSTEM?

Gyanendra knows that in 1962, having weathered the brief storm of Indian oppro- brium, Mahendra set about building a system that included individual commoner politicians on certain terms but excluded political parties. The 1962 constitution en- shrined this system of guided Panchayat democracy, which lasted until 1990. The Panchayat system provided for direcdy elected village or town councils (gaunpanchayat, nagarpanchayai) whose members then elected both the district councils {jillapanchayat) as well as the majority of the national council {) members. The re- mainder of the members of the Rastriya Panchayat were either royal nominees or mem- bers of state-sponsored "class organizations." Although the increasingly elaborate Panchayat ideology had few dedicated ad- herents, no serious challenge was mounted to the system until 1979. This was partly because only a small, middle class minority was truly committed to democratic party politics and pardy because in its early years the system successfully delivered some of the reforms promised by the Congress government. While the expression of dissent in private was largely tolerated, and it was widely known that the excluded parties contin- ued activity underground, public opponents of the system were still sometimes treated brutally. Though the Panchayat system was dismantled in 1990, Gyanendra has now in- cluded three men in his Council of Ministers who were hardliner zonal governors during the Panchayat period. More recently he has appointed two elderly ex-premiers from the same period as the deputy chairmen of his Council of Ministers.

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A NEW NATIONAL EMERGENCY

The current emergency in Nepal is the second Gyanendra has declared since he as- cended the throne in June 2001. The first was declared on 26 November 2001. In July 2001, the veteran Congress leader, G.P. Koirala, was replaced as prime minister by the younger, more emollient . The Maoist leadership quickly agreed to enter into a dialogue with the government, and three rounds of talks were conducted that autumn. The Maoists put three core political demands on the table: an interim government, the election of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, and the re-designation of Nepal as a republican state. The talks ground to a halt after the Maoists' demand for a constituent assembly was rejected, and on 21 November the CPN (Maoist) leader , also known as "Prachanda," declared that there was no longer any point in continuing. On 23 November, the Moaists launched attacks in various parts of the country. For the first time, the Maoists attacked the Royal Nepalese Army, killing 18 soldiers and 50 policemen in the districts of Dang and Solu. The Maoists also raided banks and captured a large quantity of arms and ammunition. On 26 November 2001, Gyanendra declared a national and mobilized the Royal Nepalese Army against the Maoists. The king invoked Clause 1 of Article 115 of the 1990 Constitution'"^ to suspend the rights to freedom of thought, expression, peaceful assembly, movement, information, property, privacy, and consti- tutional remedy and to permit censorship and preventive detention. Guidelines were issued to newspaper publishers regarding what they could and could not report. All major political parties voiced their support for the three-month state of emergency, which was renewed on 22 February 2002 with majority support in parliament and again, more controversially, on 27 May the same year. The official death toll during the first three-month period of the 2001-2002 emergency was 1,045 (including 769 Maoists and 229 members of the security forces), and by June 2002 it had risen to 2,850 Maoists, 335 police, 148 soldiers, and 194 civilians. However, a retired Indian general claimed that these official figures were highly unreliable, alleging that the Royal Nepalese Army was not only shooting to kill, but also shooting first.'^Th e Nepali media began to express grave concerns about the army's apparently indiscriminate manner of operation and treatment of Nepali journalists, one of whom is widely believed to have died in custody in May 2002. The February 2005 coup has been welcomed in some quarters as a necessary step in the face of the growing menace of the Maoist insurgency. The king's supporters point to the fact that a ceasefire was achieved within three months of the October 2002 semi-coup and believe that a royal government is better placed to resolve the crisis than a fractious democratic one. It might logically be assumed that the purpose of the new

THE BROWN JOURNAL OF WORLD AFFAIRS King Gyanendra's Coup and its Implications for Nepal's Future state of emergency, which in constitutional terms is identical to the first, is to again allow the army to pursue the Maoists without the impediment of adverse press cover- age and criticism. However, there are few indications to date that this is happening. Instead, there are reports of the army's withdrawing from rural areas and becoming increasingly present on urban streets where active opposition to the king has now begun to emerge. Instead of pursuing Maoist insurgents, the army is acting against politicians, journalists, hu- man rights activists, and academics by arresting them, censoring them, preventing them from leaving the capital, and generally harassing them. On 18 February, despite the fact that a civil commission (the Commis- sion for the Investigation of Abuses of Au- The army's first target is not the thority) already exists, Gyanendra ordered |y|aoistS bUt the poNtiCianS and the establishment of a Corruption Con- trol Royal Commission to investigate not leading memherS Of the Civil SOCi" oniy political leaders but also Supreme ety that has emerged since 1990. Court judges and oflPice bearers of all con- stitutional bodies. Thus, many commentators have drawn the conclusion that the army's first target is not the Maoists but the politicians and leading members of the civil society that has emerged since 1990, and that the coup is more than just an attempt to establish authoritarian rule on a temporary basis. Instead, they argue, it is nothing less than an attempt to return the country (or at least those parts of it that remain under government control) to the political conditions of 1962.

THE DEMAND FOR A CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

The monarchical view of Nepal takes it as axiomatic that any constitution must be a gift from the king to the people. The opposing view is that the constitution must be drafted by representatives of the people who will themselves decide on the place of the monarchy in the national government. A demand for a constituent assembly has sur- faced at each and every turning point of Nepal's modern political history, and the demand has always come most loudly from the Left. In 1951, King Tribhuvan promised that there would be elections for a constitu- ent assembly to frame a new constitution and that general elections would be held under this constitution. His son, Mahendra, saw this as a threat to the monarchy. Thus, when elections did eventually take place in 1959, they were for a new parliament rather than a constituent assembly. The constitution under which these elections were held was drafted by a British constitutional laywer in accordance with King Mahendra's wishes only six days before the general elections took place. The constitution stated

SUMMER / FALL 2005 • VOLUME XII, ISSUE 1 MICHAEL HUTT that executive authority rested with the king and that it would be "exercised by him either directly or through ministers or other officers subordinate to him." It also con- tained articles that entitled the king to declare a state of emergency and override all organs of government except the Supreme Court. In 1990, after the collapse of the Panchayat system, an interim government was appointed, and immediately there were calls for the establishment of a constituent assembly. However, the Congress leadership, along with that of the more moderate left parties, decided that this establishment would produce an unwelcome delay during which the palace would try to manipulate affairs to serve its own interests. Thus, a drafting commission was appointed and a new constitution was promulgated in No- vember 1990. Throughout the drafting process, the palace attempted to secure conces- sions and even produced its own alternative draft constitution. As a result, the final constitution represented a compromise. The king retained some powers of discretion with regard to the dissolution of parliament and the declaration of a state of emergency and also retained effective control of the Royal Nepalese Army. Against the wishes of religious minorities and many urban intellectuals who pressed for Nepal to be declared a , Nepal retained its identity as a Hindu kingdom.'^ Elections to a constituent assembly appear to be the Maoists' one non-negotiable demand. This issue has now acquired enormous symbolic value. The negotiations that took place between the government and Maoist leaders in autumn 2001 and summer 2003 both foundered on this question.'^Given the 's view of Nepal, this is the one demand the palace is unlikely ever to concede.

THE CONTROL OF THE ROYAL NEPALESE ARMY

Article 119 of the 1990 Constitution identifies the king as the Supreme Commander of the Royal Nepalese Army and provides for him to appoint the Commander-in- Chief on the recommendation of the prime minister. Article 118 provides for the es- tablishment of a three-member National Defense Council consisting of the prime min- ister, the defense minister, and the Commander-in-Chief Between 1990 and 1999, however, the prime minister held the defense portfolio, so the National Defense Coun- cil was comprised of only two men: the prime minister and the royally appointed Commander-in-Chief This arrangement, plus the fact that members of the old elite occupied senior positions in the army establishment, meant that parliament had very little say in the command and control of the army and was incapable of deploying it against the Maoists. Both parliament and the palace were probably quite unwilling to do so in any case: on the one hand, there was the spectre of a national army inflicting casualties among its own citizens; on the other, the specter of a strongly pro-palace

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institution becoming a powerful political force within the country. Both of these have now become realities. Amending the constitution to provide for civilian control ofthe army must now be a minimum precondition for the re-establishment of democratic politics in Nepal. There is very little possibility ofthe Royal Nepalese Army defeating the Maoists by military means. Although they are relatively poorly equipped, the Maoists are self- sustaining and their style of combat is advantageous in the terrain in which they oper- ate. Similarly, the Maoists know that they could not achieve a military victory over the Royal Nepalese Army even if India, the , and the de- cided to freeze military aid on a long term basis. What they seek is a political victory over the monarchy. The king's actions against civil society and political parties will certainly make it easier for the Maoists to persuade others to sign on to their republican agenda.

CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY IN NEPAL

Three different conceptions of democracy currently compete for primacy in Nepal. The standard Nepali term for democracy is prajatantra, literally "subject-rule," which assumes the existence of a constitutional monarch. This is the term used by the king in 101 his proclamation, and is also the term used by the Nepali Congress party and all parties to its right on the political spectrum. The main parties on the left have taken exception to this term and have introduced their own, janbaad, literally "peopleism" or, more elegantly, "people's democracy." This is sometimes qualified by the adjective bahudaliya, "multi-party" or naulo, "new." This concept of democracy does not depend on the continued presence of a king. Finally, there is a Nepali Maoist concept of democracy. This has not been articulated with any great clarity or consistency to date, but may be assumed to share much with the idea oi naulo janbaad on the extreme left. In this form of democracy, other parties would be allowed to exist, but only to operate within guide- lines established by the ruling communist party. "Reactionaries" would not be allowed to organize, and the "people" would decide who the "reactionaries" were. Elections would take place but would be preceded by a redistribution of wealth to ensure that electoral competition took place between equals. In the Kantipur daily on 20 March 2005, Shyam Shrestha, the editor ofthe left- wing political magazine Mulyankan, placed the blame for 1 February 2005 squarely on the shoulders ofthe senior leadership of Nepal's main political parties:

"We must end this excruciating q^cle of struggling for democracy and having it taken away. In 1950, we got a sort of democracy, in 1953 it was taken

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away. In 1959, democracy was restored and in I960 it was abolished. In 1990 we reinstated democracy and within 10 years it was gone again. Does every generation have to fight for democracy all over again? We must make democracy sustainable so that no one can ever take it away. It must be the kind of democracy that makes the people completely sovereign. Only that will remove the excuse some people have for taking up arms."

Is it possible for democracy as prajatantra to retain any meaning in Nepal, let alone flourish and deliver its promises, while a monarchy backed by a royalist army remains the dominant force in the land? The historical evidence suggests not. Unless King Gyanendra can deliver peace, security, and some hope of prosperity to Nepal within the timeframe he has set, the political and politicized classes of his kingdom will turn increasingly to janbaad, or democracy without a king.'* ^

NOTES

1. Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, King of Nepal, 1 February 2005 2. Baburam Bhattarai, Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), 15 March 2005 3. See Richard Burghart, "The Formation ofthe Concept of Nation-State in Nepal," Journal of Asian Studies 44, no. 1, (1984). The basic chronology of Nepal's modern political history is as follows: 1950-1 overthrow ofthe Rana family autocracy established in 1846; 1959 general elections won by Nepali Con- 122 gress Party; 1960 dismissal of Congress government by King Mahendra; 1962 establishment of partyless Panchayat system of government; 1990 re-establishment of multi-party democracy in the wake of a "People's Movement"; 1991 Congress victory in general elections; 1994-5 minority government led by Commu- nist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist); 1995-9 coalition governments; 1996 outbreak of Maoist insurgency; 1999 Congress victory in general elections; June 2001 royal palace massacre; November 2001 national emergency and army deployed against Maoists; 2002 dissolution of parliament. 4. In early January 2005, the Informal Sector Service Centre, a Nepali human rights organization, reported that a total of 10,985 people had died in the nine years of conflict to date. Of these, 7,175 had been killed by state security forces and 3,810 by the Maoists. More than 6,000 ofthe total had died since 2002 (www.insec.org). 5. The International Crisis Group reports the results of two nationwide opinion surveys conducted in Nepal during 2004. These found that more than 28 percent of the people were willing to say that they were "close to a political party" and that 60 percent favored democracy with a constitutional monarchy as the political system best suited to Nepal (ICG 2005: 9, 10 notes 61, 61). International Crisis Group, "Nepal's Royal Coup: Making a Bad Situation Worse," Asia Repon 9, No. 91, http://www.icg.org, (2005). 6. Telephone landlines and internet servers were restored after seven days. However, mobile phone networks remain suspended at the time of writing. All news media remained under strict censorship and local FM radio stations were prohibited from broadcasting news bulletins. 7. Bhattarai's writings tend to present the Maoist ideological position in its most accessible form, and he is therefore more widely quoted than the party leader Prachanda. However, unconfirmed reports re- ceived in late March 2005 suggested that Bhattarai had fallen foul of an internal putsch and no longer wielded much influence within the party. Baburam Bhattarai, "The Royal Regression and the Question of Democratic Republic," Krishna Sen News Agency Online, http://insn.org/?p=678, (15 March 2005). 8. The Newars are the ethno-linguistic group with the best claim to indigenous status in the Kathmandu valley. They are heavily represented in the bureaucracy and the intelligentsia. 9. Krishna Hachhethu, Party Building in Nepal: Organization, Leadership and People (Kathmandu:

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Mandela Book Point, 2002). 10. Bharat Bhushan, "For a hammer, every problem is a nail," The Telegraph (Calcutta), 7 February, 2005. 11. This is in spite of Nepal's receiving the highest level of development aid per capita of any South Asian state (by 2000 the country was receiving $5.2 billion per annum). John Whelpton, A (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Rapid population growth has been an important contributory factor: a population of 8.4 million in 1954 grew to over 20 million by 2001. 12. By 1990, half a million students were enrolled in higher secondary or tertiary education, compared with a mere 2,000 in 1950. The national rate increased from 5 percent to 40 percent over the same period (Whelpton 2005: 137). 13. Chatterji 1967, quoted in Whelpton 2005: 99. 14. This reads: "If a grave emergency arises in regard to the sovereignty or integrity of the Kingdom of Nepal or the security of any part thereof, whether by war, external aggression, armed rebellion or extreme economic disarray. His may by Proclamation, declare or order a State of Emergency in respect of the whole of the Kingdom of Nepal or of any specified part thereof." 15. Ashok K. Mehta, "Shooting to Kill in Nepal," Himat South Asia 15, no.7 (2002): 4-5. 16. Michael Hutt, ed., Nepal in the Nineties: Versions of the Past, Visions of the Future (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994); Krishna Hachhethu, "Transition to Democracy: Negotiations Behind Constitution Making, 1990," Contributions to Nepalese Studies 21, no.l, http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/ collections/journals/contributions, (January 1994). 17. The summary execution of 21 Maoists and suspected Maoists by the security forces at Doramba on the day that negotiations resumed in August 2003 is seen by many as an act of deliberate political sabotage on the part of the army. For a detailed report on this incident by Nepal's National Human Rights Com- mission, see http://insn.org/?p=303. 18. For further reading see Michael Hutt, ed., Himalayan People's War: Nepal's Maoist Rebellion (Lon- don: Christopher Hurst, 2004). 123

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