India must learn a firm lesson from the increasing Maoist threat to Nepal and to its own vulnerable population in its northern states
By Dr. Pravin Rajbahak
The Maoists have executed another horrible attack- killing people, adducting civil servants and setting government offices ablaze. This time the attack was not in the mid-west or a “remote village far-flung from Kathmandu” but in Malangawa of Sarlahi district in the Terai. The three districts of Mahottari, Sarlahi and Rautahat districts in eastern Nepal, border Sitamadi district of Bihar, the poorest Indian state. Sarlahi is also near to major Bihari towns such as Madhubani, Muzzaffarpur and Darbhanga-all of which have witnessed considerable increase in Naxal violence in the last few years. This is the area that independent and democratic India is at its weakest and poorest and human life hasn’t changed much in this place in the last 100 years. Among the 37 districts in Bihar, 30 of them are already infected with Naxal violence and Sitamadi town which is the administrative headquarter of Tirhaut division is one of the heavily infested Naxal area in the full of India.
The Bihar para military force just last year busted several Maoist training camps in Piparimath village in Bairgania near to Sitamadi. In June last year, more than 300 Maoist guerrillas attacked Madhuban bazaar in east champaran district, looted cash from various banks, set the police posts and block office ablaze and fled well before reinforcements could reach there. IG of Police R.R Verma had said that a large number of Maoists from Nepal had participated in the attack. Even Bihar Police Chief Ashish Ranjan Sinha was reported as saying that he knows of increasing number of criss-cross flows of Indian and Nepali Naxalites for coordinated attacks in the area. But by the time these reports from senior police officers reached Delhi, they were already tampered to tell to the audience “there was little proof of actual involvement of Nepali Maoists.”
Growing linkage of the Naxalites in India with Maoist insurgents in Nepal had been responsible, for unification of Maoist parties and resultant expansion of their activities in Bihar.. The linkage between these two groups has been largely seen as a pre-requisite for further unification, consolidation and expansion of Maoism in different parts of the country stretching across Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Bihar, to Nepal. Expansion of Naxal activity in Bihar is an important part of this strategy and the prevailing situation in Bihar and Nepal helps these outfits. The porous Bihar-Nepal border, the general breakdown of rule of law, poor governance and incapacity of the security forces provides a context for these left extremist groups to operate with ease. They attack in Bihar and cross to Nepal and vice versa.
This is where sanity is tricked by reality and assessment betrayed by experience. Why is India insensible to mounting Naxal activity and violence even though Naxalites today control about 30 percent of the Indian territory? More than 15 percent of Indian forests are totally under the grips of the Maoists. The Indian Army in its annual report has stated that “Naxal violence could get out of hand like in Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast,” but the report has gone into the dustbins. The Bihar state government has requested New Delhi to beef up security along its 735 km stretch of border with Nepal, but nothing much has been done. The Union Home Ministry of India has asked the Intelligence Bureau (I&B) to open an operations wing for anti-Naxal operations. This was about a year ago. Not the well-trained BSF but the ill-equipped SSB guards the Indo-Nepal border.
It is not surprising therefore that well-coordinated attacks have been rising in the Terai. In spite of all these, India is engrossed with the idea of bringing the Maoists into the political mainstream through a 12-point understanding reached at its command a few months ago in Delhi. Its own Prime Minister says that “talks with the Naxalites is not possible before they lay down their arms” yet his policy towards the Nepali rebels is governed with empathy, unstated approval and guardianship. That the Baburam Bhattarai faction of the Nepali Maoists has special relations with India is an open secret, made public through the voice of Prachanda himself. But the entire Maoist movement somehow being the creation of India is now a dead hypothesis. It could have been true yesterday but has clearly gone out of the Indian grips today. This is exactly what happened to the Akali Takht, which was Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s creation coming around and assassinating Mrs. Gandhi herself or the LTTE which was primarily financed, equipped and trained by the Indian security agencies eventually assassinating Mr. Rajiv Gandhi.
The same stupidity has been repeated in Nepal by providing the Maoists a safe haven in New Delhi, allowing clandestine flows of armory into the Maoist hands and facilitating talks with the mainstream political parties. Not even a single Maoist cadre of some status has been arrested by India since Feb. 1st last year. Instead, what all this has done is that states of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Andra are now under the Maoist mercy. They can strike anywhere at will. For the governments of Nepal and India, there is a long international border and sovereignty is at question. For the Maoists, it is essentially a seamless world.
This is exactly what happened to the Akali Takht, which was Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s creation coming around and assassinating Mrs. Gandhi herself or the LTTE which was primarily financed, equipped and trained by the Indian security agencies eventually assassinating Mr. Rajiv Gandhi.
India must learn a firm lesson from the increasing Maoist threat to Nepal and to its own vulnerable population in its northern states, as it is a rising power of this century. It must realize, shoving aside its sharp ego, that stopping lethal arms to the Royal Nepal Army; on the contrary gifting some ambulances to a few NGOs in Sarlahi by its ambassador in Nepal was an unfortunate decision for which it will have to regret for a long time to come. None but Mrs. Indira Gandhi herself smashed the Naxalbari movement in the ‘70s with an iron fist; what type of “democracy” is it talking about while dealing with the same brand of ideological whims in Nepal?
A Maoist takeover of Nepal will switch even the pro-Indian faction inside the Maoists to a fiercely nationalistic radical group that will in no time invite their comrades from all the Indian states for a similar revolution in India. Only then will the government of India realize the importance of the RNA and the monarchy that have been giving an assertive and uncompromising resistance to those elements that are inimical not only to Nepal but also to India. It is indeed a sad story to relate that the arms and ammunition now being brought from Beijing is being used to punish those that have been termed as “terrorists” by India.
Transit Treaty Renewal:
After three months of nail-biting suspense, India agreed to renew the transit treaty for a period of seven years. The high hopes of seven agitating parties that New Delhi would shoulder them once again so as to ease them to come back to power has been harshly shattered. Furthermore, Delhi’s expectation from the parties too have become more “realistic” given their poor track record of the last 14 years during which the Maoist insurgency began and anti-Indianism became the order of the day. A retired Indian diplomat was reported as saying, “the political leaders forgot what we had done to usher democracy in Nepal as soon as they sat on the chair in Singha Durbar and India bashing became the gong–ho from day one. Nepali political leaders are the most ungrateful race that I have ever seen in my life.”
India could have messed up the already troubled waters of Kathmandu had it not renewed the treaty and the current government should be grateful for that. At least the royal palace and the RNA are not akin to political party leaders and are by culture appreciative of the good things done which are reciprocated in deeds if not in words. A week before, the UTL was allowed to operate its wireless local loop and the Indian joint venture company has already taken the Nepali telecom market by storm. On the very first day of sale, there were thousands of applicants to purchase the new UTL phone connections.
Indo-Nepal relations marred by frequent upheavals and snagged by Delhi’s absurd policy of promoting democracy in Nepal while simultaneously backing absolute monarchy in Bhutan will heed towards a positive direction once its fallacy of mainstreaming the Maoists meets a dead end. Its emotional weakness towards the political leaders has left it betrayed, shattered and hapless not once or twice but three times without a miss since 1950.
All other gambles have failed. While Kathmandu must abandon unnecessary and ill-timed anti-Indian rhetoric; Delhi needs to fully support the current dispensation in Kathmandu, which by any analysis is the best bet for the long-term security of India.
(Dr. Rajbahak is a pediatrician and can be reached at [email protected] Whether you agree with the views expressed by the author or not, please send your comments to [email protected]–Ed.)
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