prawin, it’s always a joy to read your writings, but additional thanks for writing this one.

i guess the years of struggle are the most formative ones, and those you have identified as the neo-urbanite Nepal seem, to me, to be at the forefront of bearing this weighty struggle. and with nothing of too much significance to add, i’m only going to share the difference between hope and optimism i was recently reminded of by someone (you know who).

cornell west says, on hope:

“I use the language of decline, decay and despair rather than doom, gloom and no possibility because I think any talk about despair is not where you end but where you start. And then the courage and the sacrifice come in, but at the level of hope, not optimism. Optimism and hope are different.

Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there’s enough evidence out there that allows us to think that things are going to better, much more rationale, deeply secular. Whereas hope looks at the evidence and says it doesn’t look good at all, says it doesnt look good at all, says we’re going to make a leap of faith, go beyond the evidence and attempt to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow us to engage in heroic actions, always against the odds, no guarantees whatsoever. That’s hope. That’s hope.”

Now, the Nepal population will reach 30 million over night from the current 23 million after the passage of the citizenship act and in the process will be a province of Indian Special Administrative Zone under Chief Minister Tripathi.

Long live the revolution.
Vande Mahataram > India’s case of Tibet> Soooo sorry la.
Sabai lai Chetana Bhaya!
And la, long live Yachuri!

not because we felt isolated between two fortifacations. why we came out in the streets: it was InThing you know like HipHop. for us politics is lame and politicians are losers. we thrive on money sent by our brothers, hang out, do pot and constantly fill in those DV forms. burning rubber keeps us high, we like to dissent over any form that has an atomic-resemblance of authority. sometimes because we have an ego inflated to the size of tundikhel, othertimes it’s cool, you know. we know stuff, you know. And you don’t know shit.

Man I haven’t been here for a while but I see alot of changes.
Sarahana, I see you have upgraded your website and now I have to go through a series of steps to post a comment. I suppose you are the webmaster so you know what you are doing but I’ll tell you that it’s a hassel!

Anyway, Nepal is a mess. It looks like the Maoists are not serious about peace negotiations. Either that or Prachanda does not have a handle on his militias. I constantly hear of the Maoists orchestrating some Kathmandu revolution in October. If you still see hope, maybe its not optimism… maybe its just delusion.

A good analysis indeed, but now to the fun part of scrutinizing just for the hell of it.

In my damn snobbish opinion, the creation of ‘neo-urbanite’- as the author calls it, has to be looked in the context of Nepali class hierarchy. And in tradition of name dropping — typical of pseudo-intellectuals who then turn around and scorn the “rag tag bunch of third world intellectuals”, let me not lose this opportunity to drop da bomb!

Class consciousness — according to Marx, generally gets defined in two ways: either as ‘class in itself’, which gets created out of economic conditions, or, ‘class for itself’, which is created — almost consciously/intentionally I think - as a product of change in realization of class consciousness. For the sake of argument, I am willing to identify the latter as the ‘self-created’ class of neo-urbanite Nepalis who, in the essay above, are distinctly identified as instrumental ‘agents’ of April revolution.

In my opinion, although the author makes an attempt to deconstruct the April narrative and give us ‘true heirs’ of quasi-revolution, which very few columnists are able to do with such poetic sway and political assertiveness, still, I believe that he is vague in truly portraying the distinction between ‘agency’ and ‘catalyst’.

The neo-urbanites by themselves, as I believe, are more catalysts of change rather than agents of revolution. The distinction is not merely etymological but theoretical as well. While catalysts are agents in some form, they are only a short-lived reaction to a larger expression — whether rural, urban or in-between. If you accept that neo-urbanites are a result of the irreversible identity-process, it then suffices to say that they become an intermediary or agent of expression — not theirs, but of two categorically different classes — urban and rural Nepal. Implicit in such expression is every bit of disowning the rural and absorbing the urban. The complexity of third-world urban life is not only a local phenomenon but a global one where political and physical barriers vanish in expectation of economic and material gain.

Viewed in that context, it is far-fetched to conclude that neo-urbanites are the sole heirs of April revolution. They are the synthesis of naturally opposing thesis of rural-urban dichotomy; they were instrumental in inciting the movement but one that had already a strong undercurrent of revolutionary fervor prior to their creation. Make sense? It damn well better!

Prawinji and your new Nepal and the follow up and the appendices

About the citizenship act (re above and Tripathi, Yechuri,&…), what seems to have changed in the interregnum is that the Maoist insurgency (hail) provided the momentum to the lurch towards en masse citizenship rights in the Tarai in Nepal. That, it did, among other things, by encouraging political groupings in the Tarai for an autonomous region.

The government of Nepal, GOON as somebody earlier cited, it would now appear, has attempted to pull the rug from under the Maoist’s feet by being more revolutionary than the insurgents.

Jai Hind.
Jai Shiv Shankar.

Yeah, citizenship act for the South Block.
Prawin’s Dasain gift.

This Terai Liberation Front who has owned the responsibility for assassinating several politicians is the creation of the southern border (and which is also credited for creating the most dreaded separatist outfit LTTE in Sri Lanka). Delhi is actively involved in separating the Terai region from Nepal and have it for very well known reasons.

It has been totally under the control of RAW which has managed to assemble communal and separatist groups in one platform. And also Sadhvawna Party has common objectives and they have a secret working alliance.

It is sheer irony that India is taking all the benefit. The politicians in Nepal are prepared to make it a part of India by allowing the Indian population to outnumber the Nepalese in Nepal itself. The citizenship bill. This has been tailored to facilitate the Indians to have Nepalese citizenship without hindrance.

This article doesn’t concern itself with Terai or the citizenship issue. Yet, somebody thinks I want to hand over a part of Nepal to India.

People let their imagination run wild — and I am one such person myself. But, this is ridiculous.

If the Madhesi political outfits, mainstream political parties and the Maoists are, somehow, a part of a grand-design to cut Nepal into pieces, who is the fervent “patriot” who wants to “save Nepal?”

When Nepalis in India are trying to carve an independent state for themselves, when there are separatist insurgents in numerous fronts, do you really imagine India wants twenty-odd million enemies within its borders? Because that’s what would happen, if this RAW-sponsored, Sadbhavana tailored scheme worked, no?

I would, if I could, give a dashain gift of citizenship to every Nepali who deserves it, but hasn’t recieved it. If they happen to be a different ethnicity than you, speaking a language different than yours, and if that scares you witless, that is your problem.

I can’t not speak for the Madhesis — I am one of them. I can’t not speak for the janajatis — I am one of them. I can’t not speak for the women — I am one of them. And I can’t not speak what is known to be as the obvious truth: because I am not one of the xenophobic liars who won’t let the course of New Nepal be a just one.

Yah, yah, second baton of the relay race. Jai Hind.

Jai long live…….. Jai…

Ya.. another Lendup (G)… for the race
Jai Prawin..
Jai Tamrat/ Martin (soon to be replaced)……..

…the road ahead to the Grand New People’s Revolutionary Republic of Nepal…..

Similarities, indeed.

The ‘April theses’, written in 1917, after Lenin’s return to a revolutionary Russia made clear Lenin’s opposition to the provisional government of Prince Lvov and other moderates. He advocated moving to a new stage in the revolution, one that emphasized the proletariat, as manifested by the workers’ soviets, or councils. In this text, Lenin attacked various former allies whom he then saw as too moderate, such as Georgy Plekhanov.

He manifested that the class conscious proletariat could give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: (a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and not in word; (c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests.

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accepted the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they were being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it was necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it was impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.

Not a parliamentary republic- to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step- but a Revolutionary Republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom. Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy. The salaries of all officials, all of whom were elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker. Confiscation of all landed estates. Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Revolutionary Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The organisation of separate Revolutionary Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines, according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Revolutionary Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies and for the public account.

The immediate amalgamation of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Revolutionary Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.

Lenin stated ‘We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and against the ‘Centre’. We have planted the banner of civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy’.

Isn’t it a gem?

Lenin, who had gone underground in July, 1917, after he had been accused as a ‘German agent’ by Kerensky’s government, now decided that the time was ripe to seize power. He decided that the party must immediately begin preparations for an armed uprising to depose the Provisional Government and transfer state power to the soviets, now headed by a Bolshevik majority.

Lenin’s decision to establish soviet power derived from his belief that the proletarian revolution must smash the existing state machinery and introduce a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’; that is, direct rule by the armed workers and peasants which would eventually ‘wither away’ into a non-coercive, classless, stateless, Communist society. He expounded this view most trenchantly in his brochure ‘The State and Revolution’.

The Russian Revolution had brought forth something new, the soviets. Created by workers, soldiers, and peasants and excluding the propertied classes, the soviets infinitely surpassed the most democratic of parliaments in democracy, because parliaments everywhere virtually excluded workers and peasants. The choice before Russia in September 1917, as Lenin saw it, was either a soviet republic — a dictatorship of the propertyless majority — or a parliamentary republic — as he saw it, a dictatorship of the propertied minority.

Lenin therefore raised the slogan, ‘All power to the Soviets!’, even though he had willingly conceded in the spring of 1917 that revolutionary Russia was the ‘freest of all the belligerent countries.’ To Lenin, however, the Provisional Government was merely a ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’ that kept Russia in the imperialist war.

On November, 1917, the Bolshevik-led Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers and sailors deposed the Provisional Government and proclaimed that state power had passed into the hands of the Soviets.

Maoism has clearly represented a revolutionary method based on a distinct revolutionary outlook not necessarily dependent on a Chinese or Marxist-Leninist context.

The first political attitudes of Mao took shape against a background of profound crisis in China in the early 20th century. The nation was weak and divided, and the major national problems were the reunification of China and the expulsion of foreign occupiers.

Mao’s political ideas crystallized slowly. He had a mentality that was opportunistic and wary of ideological niceties. The Marxist-Leninist tradition regarded peasants as incapable of revolutionary initiative and only marginally useful in backing urban proletarian efforts. Yet Mao gradually decided to base his revolution on the dormant power of China’s hundreds of millions of peasants, for he saw potential energy in them by the very fact that they were ‘poor and blank’; strength and violence were, he thought, inherent in their condition. Proceeding from this, he proposed to instill in them a proletarian consciousness and make their force alone suffice for revolution. There was no significant Chinese proletariat, but by the 1940s Mao had ‘revolutionized’ and
‘proletarianized’ the peasantry.

A classic case study.

Led by Mao, with the aid of Madam Mao, the ‘Cultural Revolution’, aimed to purge the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese society as a whole of capitalist and bourgeois elements. The movement affected every aspect of life and contributed to the establishment of totalitarian government and administration. Ultimately, the ‘Cultural Revolution’ was to inflict serious damage on China’s cultural, political, social, and industrial heritage and development.

The deification of Mao: an interim directive on China’s great ‘cultural revolution’ had been made public by the ruling group in the party’s central committee, after ‘scientific investigation under the personal supervision of Mao’. And to secure the personal obsessions of his old age, to emerge the victor in what he saw as a struggle for the soul of China, there were no limits to the intensification of his personality cult.

The central committee’s directive admitted that the first task of the revolution was still to ‘strike down those powerful figures in the party who had taken the path of capitalism’.

Nevertheless Mao did remain the leader, he still retained the respect of these men who had worked with him for so long, and for a time the development of the Sino-Soviet dispute diverted his obsessions into a sphere where his colleagues could share his feelings, from nationalist if not from communist conviction. The relaxation on the home front in the early sixties was in part a response to the straitened conditions caused by agricultural setbacks and in part an assertion of common sense by those moderate elements who were now in danger of being accused as “bourgeois” or “capitalist” infiltrators.

Such had been Mao’s fear of ‘revisionism’ (anti-Marxist socialist movement: a socialist movement arguing against revolutionary Marxist theory and believing in the peaceful achievement of social progress through reforms) that he had been carried away by the jargon of his own formulations. At the same time he remained the revolutionary strategist. The technique of circumventing and outflanking the opposition within the party was the same as was used once to out-manoeuvre and defeat Chiang Kai Shek’s vastly superior armies.

Dear Prawin

Madheshis are not a minority ethnic oppressed, but a majority oppressed.

The population of six major nationalities of Nepal are as follows.

Nationality Population (2001)

Madheshi 31.53%
MangolKirat 23.05%
Chetri 19.82%
Bahun 11.07%
Dalit 7.87%
Newar 5.48%
Unclassified 1.18%

As in 1994 Rwandan genocide, the world is just watching silently, while the Nepalese predominantly Bahun government with their dubious Maoist alliance has been clearing-off Madheshi ethnics.

Keep up your good work.

The ‘great’ leader Baburam Bhattarai is on record saying in a recent TV interview in Kathmandu that the Madheshis are all ‘kachada’ and by-products, something produced as a secondary result of the manufacture or production of something else.

Today, the great comrade Prachanda said in Biratnagar that any bhagauda Madheshi can call for a Nepal bandh.

The best way to keep slaves is let them never know they are ones. The same is true about Madheshis. The ruling class people, i.e. the bahuns, have essentially made Madheshis slaves for last two hundred years, they snatched lands of Madheshis and forced them to be Kamaiyas (read slaves).

Not to speak of other basic human rights, they have been treating Madheshis as second-class citizens, and even keeping four to six millions of Madheshis deprived of citizenship rights.

Yet, by forcing to rant their slogans through their teaching system, media and newspapers they have created such a matrix that many of Madheshis have even forgotten that they are human beings with some rights and with own history, culture, place in society, and are plugged to the system and have been exploited for just generating energy (77 percent of total GDP of Nepal).

Bloody f… those bahuns!

“When it becomes no longer tenable to use the crutch of one myth to perpetrate and justify an endless line of inheritable injustices, a new material order is forced into existence: immediately, the mapping between material resources and their human exploiters is redrawn. Everything else follows.” —  — -

Why curse the bahuns as a whole? There are many, many poor bahuns who have suffered just as much — in the pahad, or in the Terai. Or, are you so short-sighted that you’ll claim bahuns in the Terai are recent immigrants from the pahad? Anyone would be a fool to make that claim and also claim aboriginality vis-a-vis the Terai.

Curse Bahunbaad — but that has nothing to do with bahuns: Bahunbaad exists within every ethnic group in Nepal, and any new revolution inevitably gives rise to another Bahunbaadi group.

Many normal Nepalese are still unknown about the fact that why PLA is attacking continuously on such peaceful demonstrations? Why Maoist is allowed to carry weapons and arms illegally against the peace agreement? Why Sitaula still provides continuous protection to the illegal weapons, arms and terrorist activities of the Maoist cadres vultures e.g. Udaypur,Chisapani, and Singh Durbar Gate etc?

The overwhelming majority of Nepalese people are actively involved in this revolutionary struggle because they see in it their own liberation. Today the entire countryside in Nepal is emerging as a new world where the oppression of man by man, and have-nots by haves are the things of past. Caste, religious, gender and regional domination and discrimination no longer exists. This new society of Nepal is a beacon light for the oppressed people all over the world.

It is well known that no movement or revolution in the world, be it national liberation movement or new democratic revolution, cannot succeed without confrontation with the U.S. imperialism, the most despicable enemy of world people. It is equally noteworthy that in South Asia, the Indian expansionism is the biggest bully and roadblock not only for the new democratic revolution in Nepal, but also for the revolutionary as well as movements of various nationalities in India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan etc. Annexation of Sikkim in 1975, Indianisation of Bhutan and sending Indian ‘Peace’ Keeping Forces to Sri Lanka are a few examples how the Indian expansionism is serving the interests of Indian big capitalists and landlords.

The international reactionary forces, particularly the U.S. imperialism is fiercely opposing the revolutionary struggle in Nepal, waged under the leadership of Communist Party of Nepal( Maoist)- a just and genuine struggle aimed at establishing a republican state. Indian government, which claims itself a largest republic and democratic country of the world is sparing no chance to help the present bourgeoisie system. which has resulted in the escalation of conflicts- civil war and large scale killings of unarmed people.

This is so because the people of the world have learnt this bitter lesson of history that perpetrator of this oppression based system cannot save the lives of people, they only know how to kill the people. The science and technology developed by mankind is not utilized in this ‘system’ to save the lives, rather it is used in how to kill the people better. The technology in their hand is not used to predict tsunami like catastrophe, it is used and diverted to numerous deadly as well as nonsense researches and inventions !

We call upon all the revolutionary, democratic, secular, justice and peace and freedom loving people of India and Nepal to strongly oppose the U.S.- the common enemy of the world people and Indian government’s intervention into the internal affair of Nepal. We also call upon all the people to build up solidarity with the heroic struggle of Nepalese people.

DOWN WITH FASCISM IN NEPAL!
LONG LIVE PEOPLE’S WAR!
LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONISM!
LONG LIVE PRACHANDAPATH!