-By Jogendra Ghimire
KATHMANDU, April 26 -Moments after his CPN (Marxist) merged with Madan Bhandari’s “militant” and widely feared CPN (ML) in early 1991, Manmohan Adhikari was justifying the merger between the two apparently disparate political forces.
“Our maturity, and militancy of our young friends from the CPN (ML) must come together. The combination can make a major contribution to the country’s Communist movement,” Adhikari told reporters.
The leftist leader couldn’t have been more right.
As the 1991 elections proved, CPN (UML), the party that came into being after combining “maturity and militancy,” surprised the world by electing 68 of its candidates to the 205-seat House of Representatives.
“In Nepal Karl Marx lives,” proclaimed an American news magazine carrying an interview of Adhikari’s general secretary, Madan Bhandari. Adhikari, irrespective of his influence in the party ranks, was the natural choice to lead the party in parliament as the country’s first leader of the opposition in over 30 years.
The gain of the merger was mutual. In Adhikari, the “militant” CPN (ML) found a reliable and presentable face to cap its organisation with, and enhance its public standing. The genial and fatherly Adhikari too was happy to join hands with the CPN (ML), a much stronger political outfit compared to his CPN (Marxist).
The benefit of the coming together of the two left parties did not stop there. The unification, and Adhikari’s presence, also established the CPN (UML) as the mainstream left party in the country’s fractured left politics.
The outcome of the 1991 elections was only the tip of the iceberg, for Adhikari as also for his party, as events that unfurled less than four years later revealed. The 1994 mid-term elections returned a hung parliament, but established the CPN (UML) as the largest party in parliament, surprising the world once again.
Adhikari became the first Communist prime minister elected to office in a constitutional monarchy.
His less than nine months in office during 1994-95 will be remembered for more reasons than just being an elected Communist government, however. It was during Adhikari’s tenure that some of the most visible welfare schemes were initiated in the post-democracy Nepal.
Be it the monthly allowances to senior citizens or to widows and the “build your village yourself” campaign, the effects of the welfare and development programmes of the CPN (UML) government were more psychological. The outcome: his government’s “populist” initiatives frightened the opposition which succeeded in unseating him after a protracted politico-legal battle.
One of the few remaining “first generation” leaders of Nepali politics who had his first taste of politics during the Quit India movement, Adhikari was jailed for three years in India during the movement against the British raj.
Not very high in the list of ideologues in Nepal’s Communist movement, Adhikari, then a proponent of the new people’s democracy philosophy became the general secretary of the undivided Communist Party of Nepal in 1953, the year the first general convention of the party was held. The key post went to Dr Keshar Jung Rayamajhi when Adhikari left for China for an extended medical treatment.
Back from the People’s Republic after a couple of years, Adhikari was jailed along with many Nepali Congress leaders after the royal coup of 1960. He was destined to remain behind bars for the next ten years.
An active leader of the great revolt of 1950, and a key figure in the United Left Front which aligned with the Nepali Congress during the 1990 movement, Adhikari remained a supporter of a joint NC-left alliance to root out the Panchayat system even during the unpopular system’s thirty years. Unlike other left leaders, he was an active supporter of the multi-party system during the national referendum.
His failure to prevent the split in the CPN (UML) early last year and a number of inconsistent pronouncements on issues of national importance in recent times notwithstanding, Adhikari’s stock of credibility remained full to the brim till his last working day. And his mere presence among the younger comrades provided to the newer breed the legitimacy they lacked.
With Adhikari gone, and with no visible leader of his stature to fill the void, the CPN (UML) could again require to work hard to maintain its legitimacy and credibility the way it did in 1991, the year “maturity and militancy” merged.