Opinion - News Analysis

India and the Nepali peace process

— Photo: AP

Pranab Mukherjee should underscore India’s commitment to both the peace process and the democratic process in Nepal.

As External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee embarks on the first Indian high-level political visit to Nepal in almost two years, he will have his hands full. The public focus may be on the bilateral relationship. But in private meetings, Mr. Mukherjee will have to deploy his well-known political troubleshooting skills to help get the Nepali peace process back on track.

Some in New Delhi see the peace process, which the Indian establishment had a key role in orchestrating and at times micro-managing, as a done deal. With the king out and the war over, key officials are patting themselves on the back for having achieved the core Indian aim of veering Nepal’s politics towards a relatively stable system.

But this is an excessively complacent assessment for within Nepal, the stability looks elusive. Yes, there is an elected government. The state has recovered a degree of legitimacy and strength that had eroded during the war and then the royal rule. The democratic space has opened up with regional and ethnic aspirations asserting themselves. And an inclusive constituent assembly has a mandate to draft a new statute, which would include overhauling the state structure. But growing inter-party and intra-party differences threaten to derail the process.

The core challenge comes from the growing trust deficit between the Nepali Congress and the Maoists. The politics of consensus between these two forces has got the process so far, but this gave way to the politics of numbers after the elections. Girija Prasad Koirala first tried to be president, then clung on to being the prime minister, and is now entertaining hopes of ousting the Maoist government. According to the Maoists, the problem is the NC’s failure to come to terms with its election loss and Mr. Koirala’s ambitions while the NC holds that the Maoist arrogance in power-sharing negotiations and hegemonic aspirations have caused the alliance break-up.

The result of the embittering relations between the NC and the Maoists is the absence of movement on the issue of army integration and management. Two years after a peace agreement was signed, Nepal still has two armies — a bloated and expensive Nepal Army and the Maoist Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) of 19,000 U.N.-verified soldiers in cantonments.

There are differing interpretations of the ambiguously-phrased peace accord which talks of integration in security forces, but leaves out the details. The Maoists demand that their soldiers be integrated into the national army to ‘democratise’ the erstwhile royal army. The NC and others feel this would ‘politicise’ the Nepal Army. Maoist dogmatists are pushing for full-scale integration. NC right wing leaders are opposing the integration process totally.

It is clear that neither of these extreme schools will prevail. There will be a need for compromise where a certain number of PLA soldiers — 5,000-7,000 is the figure floating around town — gets into the national army after meeting the criteria, possibly scattered across regions and divisions so that they cannot regroup. Some others will be integrated in other security forces; and there will be a comprehensive rehabilitation of the rest. But for this to happen, the NC and the Maoists need to sit and talk.

The army issue has become complex because of an added geo-political dimension. There are unconfirmed reports of China inviting the PLA commander, Nand Kishore Pun ’Pasang’ to attend a military course. Opposition leaders see this as a precursor to Maoist efforts to infiltrate the army command structure. If true, it is also a sign of China, whose interest in Nepal has grown in recent years, of cosying up to the Maoists — a fact that has worried sections of the Indian establishment.

The Indians seem to be waiting and watching. They promised the Nepal Army that its interests would be protected in exchange for the army’s cooperation during the peace process. But India realises that a degree of integration is necessary to prevent instability and inevitable given the balance of power. While the decision on integration will finally be a national decision, India will have a role given the enormous leverage it has with all sides. Sources suggest that New Delhi may push the army to be open to integration of PLA soldiers, ask the Maoists to be flexible on numbers, and oppose command-level entry to reassure the non-Maoist parties that the army will not become a Maoist instrument.

Rifts within the Maoists have complicated the plot further. There has been a history of differences going back to 2004 when Baburam Bhattarai advocated an alliance with the parties and India against the king with the goal of republicanism. Senior leader and Prachanda’s ideological guru Mohan Vaidya ‘Kiran’ advocated a tie-up with the king against India to strengthen ‘nationalism’. The Baburam line prevailed after the king took over in 2005 and the peace process is a result of that. But with the election victory, Mr. Kiran and other dogmatists have begun asserting themselves and this time, Mr. Prachanda himself is in the line of fire.

The Prachanda-Baburam duo emphasises on the need to ‘institutionalise the federal democratic republic,’ which means continuing on this path of constitution writing, engaging with other forces, bringing the peace process to a ‘logical conclusion’ and using the state to build an even stronger multi-class coalition-based party. Mr. Kiran stresses that the aim of federal republic has already been achieved, the transition phase has ended, and favours the immediate adoption of “People’s Republic” through popular revolt. This translates into confrontation with other forces and ‘class enemies’ in a quest to build a hegemonic party and push state control of all sectors.

The Maoists will not split but these different perspectives which are being discussed at the party’s national cadres conference presently will have a bearing on the future direction. The challenge to Mr. Prachanda’s leadership within reduces his space to negotiate on issues like integration with other parties like the NC. The debates also make the other non-Maoist parties suspicious of the Maoist commitment to pluralistic democracy.

As Nepalis discuss, debate and negotiate a new social contract and political understanding, India must not be actively interventionist but it has a key supportive role. In public, Pranab Mukherjee should underscore India’s commitment to both the peace process and the democratic process in Nepal. In private, he can tell NC leaders to behave like a constructive opposition till the constitution is written. He must also encourage the Maoists to reach out to the NC instead of taking unilateral decisions, and respect pluralism. Helping Nepal get back on a more consensual path could be a major contribution of the UPA government as its heads towards the end of its tenure.

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