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'Rejoinders: Himalayan People's War: Nepal's Maoist Rebellion' Edited by Michael Hutt

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'Rejoinders: Himalayan People's War: Nepal's Maoist Rebellion' Edited by Michael Hutt HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 23 Number 2 Himalaya; The Journal of the Article 10 Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies 2003 Book review of 'Rejoinders: Himalayan People's War: Nepal's Maoist Rebellion' edited by Michael Hutt John Metz Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Metz, John. 2003. Book review of 'Rejoinders: Himalayan People's War: Nepal's Maoist Rebellion' edited by Michael Hutt. HIMALAYA 23(2). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol23/iss2/10 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HIMALAYAN PEOPLE's WAR: NEPAL's MAOIST REBELLION It see ms lihely that US I support may convince MICHAEL H UTT, EDITOR the Nepali state that it can win the war 1;.,rithout negotiations . REVIEWED BY JoHN METZ If this proves true, the war is likely to If you can figure out the full causes, career, and and his postponement of the November 2002 elec­ consume many more consequences of the Maoist movement in Nepal, tions. of Nepal's citizens. you have mastered knowledge about contemporary Editor Hutt has organized the papers into four Nepali history and society. groups: So notes Pratyoush Onta (p.l37) in his contribu­ PART I: THE POLITICAL CONTEXT tion to this detailed and wide-ranging assessment l. Radicalism and the Emergence of the Maoists, of the Maoist civil war in Nepal. Onta admits, as by Deepak Thapa would the other authors, that he has not yet at­ 2. The Maoist Movement: An Evolutionary Per­ tained such expertise. None of us has, but this spective, by Sudheer Sharma volume provides the reader with a broad and deep 3. The Nepali State and the Maoist Insurgency, set of insights into the numerous political, social, 1996-2001, by Krishna Hachhethu economic, and geographic processes that have in­ PART ll: THE MAOISTS AND THE PEOPLE terwoven to create Nepal's current crisis. 4. The Path to Jan Sarkar in Dolakha District: The book consists of an Introduction by editor Towards an Ethnography of the Maoist Movement, Michael Hutt and 12 revised papers that were ini­ by Sara Shneiderman and Mark Turin tially presented at a conference on 2-3 November 5. Ethnic Demands within Maoism: Questions 2001 at the University of London's School of Ori­ of Magar Territorial Autonomy, Nationality, and ental and African Studies. Hence, except for some Class, by Marie Lecomte-Tilouine updating footnotes from the end of 2002, as the 6. Democracy and Duplicity: The Maoists and book went to print, the articles are based on in­ their Interlocutors in Nepal, by Pratyoush Onta formation gathered by the middle of 2002. A lot 7. Gender Dimensions of the People's War: some has occurred since then, but these papers still pro­ Reflections on the Experiences of Rural ·women, by vide important background information as well as Mandira Sharma and Dinesh Prasain descriptions of conditions up to that stage of the PART lll: GEOPOLITICAL AND COMPARATIVE Maoist rebellion. PERSPECTIVES Himalayan People's The main strength that I see in the book is the 8. High Expectations, Deep Disappointments: War: Nepal's breadth of perspectives the papers include and Politics, State, and Society in Nepal after 1990, by Maoist Rebellion the high level of detail that they provide. Illustrat­ Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka ing the thoroughness of the volume are its three 9. A Himalayan Red Herring? Maoist Revolution Michael Hutt, ed. appendices: Baburam Bhattarai's Forty Point De­ in the Shadow of the Legacy Raj, by Saubhagya Bloomington, Indiana: mands of the United People's Front released just Shah before the Communist Party of Nepal (Maois~) 10. Maoism in Nepal: Towards a Comparative Indiana University [CPN-Maoist] initiated its civil vvar in February Perspective, by Philippe Ramirez Press 2004 1996; Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's mes­ PART IV: AFTERWARDS sage to the nation following the King's declaring an ll. The Emergency and the Army in Rural Ne­ Emergency on 26 November 2001; and the address pal, by Hari Roka King Gyanendra made to his subjects· on 4 October 12 . Living Between the Maoists and the Army in 2002, following his suspension of Deuba's govern­ Rural Nepal, by Judith Pettigrew ment, his appointment of his own Prime Minister, As I read the papers, I see several areas of con- ' I • I ' cern emerging repeatedly from them, so l will organize this the Maoists have created a People's Government in Dolakha review around these issues. district, just east of Kathmandu. Here a history of police op­ l. Evolution of Communist Politics, leading to the CPN pression and radical politics made many open to the Mao­ Clvlaoist) and its revolution (papers by Hutt, Thapa, Sharma, ists' message. The policies of seizing and redistributing the Ramirez). land and wealth of class enemies, of using cultural symbols 2. The failures of the post 1990 Democratic State (Sharma, and elements in revolutionary mass meetings and traditional Hachhethu, Onto, Pfaff-Czarnecka). festivals has won significant local support. 3. The dilemmas the Maoist civil war creates for uncom­ mitted citizens and for ethnic and gender activists (Shneider­ Failures of the Democratic State man/Turin, Lecomte-Tillouine, Sharma/Prasain, Pettigrew). Many papers condemn the post 1990 state for its cor­ 4. Political duplicity in the interactions between the Ne­ ruption and ineptitude. Krishna Hachhethu condemns the pal's three contending groups (Palace, Politicians, Maoists) elected governments for considering the Maoist insurgency and in the actions of the Indian state (Sharma, Hachhethu, simply a "law and order" issue rather than a political one. Shah, Roka). The government relied on the ill equipped and poorly paid Underlying virtually all these papers is the question: how police to fight the Maobadi, and when the police were de­ did the Maobadi become such a threat? feated the governments withdrew from contested areas, creating a vacuum which the Maoists were only too will­ Evolution of Maoist Politics ing to fill . Like Sharma, Hachhethu provides summarizing Michael Hutt's Introduction provides an historical over­ Tables which clearly arrange complicated information about view of Nepal since it emerged in the 18th century, with a the State Responses to Maoist Violence (Table l) and about focus on the events connected to the recent emergence of the "The Parties' Prescriptions for the Resolution of the Maoist Maoists. This sets the stage for Deepak Thapa's detailed ac­ Problem" (Table 2). count of the ideological and personal antagonisms that cre­ The most penetrating study of the Democratic State is ated the many splits, alliances, and occasional reunifications that of joanna Pffaf-Czarnecka. Despite its ultimate failure, within Nepal's leftist parties. Knowing the details of this the 1990 Movement for the Restoration of Democracy made complicated history is necessary to understand Ramirez's significant advances: the King became a constitutional mon­ explanation of why the revolution began in Rolpa/Rukum. arch; free and fair elections were held; basic human rights of One of the persistently most radical leaders of Nepal's com­ speech and assembly were guaranteed. Nevertheless, funda­ munists, Mohan Bikram Singh, was from Pyuthan, but spent mental failures blocked effective action. The state has come years as a young man working with farmers in neighbor­ to be the main source of financial resources and services to ing Rukum and Rolpa to develop a communist base. When the people because the market is so poorly developed. State the government indiscriminately oppressed these dissident functionaries, therefore, become gatekeepers who withhold fanners, it consolidated their commitment to radical politics. these resources from citizens, creating scarcities. Citizens This became the base area of the revolution when one of the therefore gain access to resources by making personal con­ last splits veered away from Mohan Bikram and led to the tributions to the officials. ln addition, political leaders gain CPN (Maoist). An improvement I would have liked Thapa to control over resource flows into their districts. Political lead­ include is a flow diagram (which I eventually constructed for ers have "dense webs" of kinship, friendship, patron-client myself) of the emergence, divisions, and subdivision of the relationships with local populations. "Simultaneously they many left wing parties. form alliances with political superiors" and others who are The paper by Sudheer Sharma clearly presents the orga­ outside the local arena (pp.lRl-83). The result is distribu­ nizational structure of the Maoist movement. Three arms tional coalitions whose goal is to divert resources from their of the People's War move it forward: the party, the People's rightful recipients. All this is possible because no horizontal Army, and the United Front, vvhich operates above ground or vertical systems of accountability exist. Horizontal ac­ to make propaganda and win friends for the party. Sharma countability can come from "governmental agencies exerting describes the organization of the party, of the army, and of control over each other" or from professional standards. Ver­ the Front. He also describes conditions within the Maoist tical accountability should come from superiors supervising base areas, including the ways they are organizing their their underlings and from the courts. These systems of ac­ People's Governments at the village, region, and district countability, Pfaff-Czarnecka notes, are essential elements levels. Finally, Sharma describes the sequence of strategies of operating democracies, and so are further evidence that the Maoists have adopted through the first 6 years of their Nepal's democratic failure .
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