(Courtesy: Dr. Thomas A. Marks)
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
-The Great Gatsby
Nepal, like Gatsby, must feel a bit like the lead in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Such extraordinary hope, even as days pass, so much drift back to the discredited utopian solutions of the past century.
“But you can’t relive the past,” exclaimed Nick Carraway one day to Gatsby. “Oh, but you can, old sport,” said Gatsby. And in the book, he ends up floating dead in his pool, a bullet in his back.
In the Eight Point Agreement we see an agreement that the Maoists feel can be exploited to give them power. Power will be divided in ways they are unwilling to put on the table, precisely because they have been shown, time and again, universally, to lead to tragedy.
If you understand "democracy" in Iran, you have a good idea of what the Maoists mean by the term. Only the correct people get to run, so the correct people win, so the correct outcome is assured, thus the will of the people has triumphed.
At heart, the bedrock for Maoist thought is dividing the world into groups. This is clearly visible in the interviews which Maoist luminaries have been giving fast and furious. They ascribe motives, actions, and outcomes not to individuals but to "sectors."
Thus "(R)NA" consists of an officer corps not of individual, thinking persons but of a mass that mindlessly marches to the dictates of the palace. Likewise, democratic politicians, to the Maoists, represent no one, because democracy of the "secret ballot" type is only a facade behind which slavery continues. Marx called democratic capitalism the most perfect form of slavery ever devised, because it creates false consciousness -- the slaves think they are free, they think they have choice.
Therefore, in the Marxist-Leninist world, only with the ouster of the old-order, ancien regime, can man be free. What the Maoists mean is that the "structure of oppression" must end. Thus their conception of "democracy" or even "equality" are not ours.
In point of fact, they are not sure what they mean. In proceeding, they are first and foremost typical Nepali politicians, in that their strategic plan is simple: "give us power, and then things will be better."
All the parties of Nepal function that way. None have actual platforms that can be implemented.
What is decidedly dangerous is that this political trait is accompanied by a second, also shared by all parties: a position is legitimate simply because it has been advanced. Simply observe Kathmandu traffic, and you understand.
As traffic backs up, vehicles invariably move out into the opposing lane. They are clearly in the wrong, especially the motorcycles on the sidewalks.
Yet having established position, the interlopers claim legitimacy. Should anyone have the unmitigated gall to collide with them -- which is inevitable, since they are now in the wrong lane -- conflict results.
The willingness to defend to the last Nepali perfectly illogical position once claimed may make splendid Gurkhas, but it makes for horrid politics, all the more so when the perpetrators, like the Maoists, are armed.
To the above two traits, let us add the third, a corker in the case at hand: the realities of personality. Koirala, for instance, is in such poor health it's problematic he will be able to see this business through. Opposite him, the top two Maoists are arguably, clinically paranoid types.
As for the NC ally, the UML, it is headed by a radical wannabe, who can't get himself to rise above his leftwing claptrap to statesmanship. Each time circumstances call for rational, reasoned discourse, he takes the low road, as though compelled to descend to nastiness, simply because no one else has reached that spot for the moment.
As if this were not enough, all major figures of all parties are surrounded by what amount to male groupies. Even when they disagree, they say nothing, because to do so would be to lose their place in the que.
These are not exactly promising midwives for the birth of a new Nepali world.
It is the Maoists who are the most dangerous, because they have come to believe their radical, left-wing drivel. What to think of people who make school children begin the day by "praying" to the martyrs of the revolution? Who themselves make saints of bearded, dead white guys (and one very evil, disgusting Chinese fellow)?
Still, such actions should surprise no one. The fourth element in the equation is that Nepal has always been a society shaped by the hardball nature of the struggle for existence. The zero-sum existence is much like that in the colonial Massachusetts in America that produced the Salem witch trials of Daniel Day-Lewis and “The Crucible.”
As a wag might put it, seldom does good come from believing in witches and goblins, and fervently proclaiming that UFOs and aliens are real makes for deadly courses of action when lunacy becomes social policy. We seem to have all too few prepared to grapple with Maoist ideology on its demerits.
In Nepal, it was only a matter of time before the witch-hunters, the Maoists, found their demons and convinced a mass base that exorcism would deliver to them Paradise. What they have in mind, then, is not pretty -- if you are a rational individual.
So are the Maoists irrational? Not at all. Bin Laden, to cite an analogy, is perfectly rational within his framework of logic. It is his framework that is cracked.
There is a difficulty confronting the Maoists. The more people know about them, the less influence they have. Their way around this conundrum is classic Lenin. It is not a clash of ideas which is taking place -- it is a clash of rival mobilization efforts.
And in this, the Maoists are much ahead of the game.
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