Nepal: Monarchy is Still the Answer

By Preeti Koirala
http://telegraphnepal.com/news_det.php?news_id=4066

By all indications, it seems that India is fastly getting frustrated with the new dispensation in Kathmandu. The UPA government with the nudges from the Left had hoped that the Maoists would come to the mainstream and dance to its tunes which is why from 2002 onwards there is ample evidence that India's intelligence agencies were actively trying to bring Koirala and the Maoists together.

Shyam Saran who had close contacts with King Gyanendra resided in Kathmandu with a single purpose:- somehow pressure the King to sideline the parties so that he would naturally fall into the trap. Surya Bahadur Thapa was made Prime Minister precisely because of Saran's lobbying in 2003 despite of Madhav Nepal's natural contestation. Thapa became more loyal to Delhi than to the palace and he agreed to grant the Indian Embassy which no other foreign embassy had got from the Nepal government. It could now select, fund, implement 'development works' all along the Tarai belt without taking permissions from the National Planning Commission or the Finance Ministry.

No one knows how much money went to actually building schools and hospitals and how much was used for other sinister activities but this certainly provided the main basis for the Tarai agitation three years later. Saran's successor Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, toed Saran's line in ditto and despite of the King's repeated information to him that he was about to do what he did on Feb. 1st 2005; Mukherjee did not object to it during his audiences with the King because he too wanted the King to fall into the trap. The rest is history.

But why was India so desperately wanting to get rid of the world's only Hindu monarchy since such a long time? Nothing can explain this except for the fact that having achieved an average of 7-8 percent economic growth rate and having built a sizeable military, Delhi now wants to conduct a major operation in Tibet and take a revenge of 1962 with China. For this, Nepal is a natural launching pad as it has a virtual open border both with itself and with Tibet. A puppet regime, weak army and the police seemingly under its grip and all pro-Chinese institutions gone out of the scene, Delhi also influenced the U.S. to go in tandem on the 'Nepal Policy' that it had devised. Everything seemed to go well so much so that anti-China protests were witnessed on a daily basis in Kathmandu just before the Olympics.

But as soon as the anti-Hindi riots erupted in all major cities in Nepal, did Delhi suddenly got a rude shock? Nepalese people, staunchly nationalist as they are had acquired this new "craze" in the last two years of Koirala's hated rule to be anti-Indian. In fact, previous anti-Indian demos had also taken place during the time of Koirala's Prime Ministership. Then the Maoists who formed the government, all of a sudden forgot whatever India had done to them during their underground days and instead cozied up with Beijing. Prachanda's Beijing trip was indeed a tight slap on Man Mohan Singh's face and this was taken very seriously by the South Block.

Thirdly, it now looks likely that nobody will side with India in the Nepali political spectrum as Delhi is left with no constituency inside Nepal. Everyone likes to join the bandwagon and anti-Indian phobia will be the politics of the country for some time to come. Even supposedly pro-Indian Upendra Yadav says that Nepal's foreign policy will be guided by equi-distance and it is now almost a consensus that Kathmandu wants to dump the 1950 treaty into the bins. Defence Minister Badal will be visiting Beijing and will be receiving a guard of honour from the real PLA thereby thwarting all efforts of the U.S., India and Britain for some role in the security sector reforms that the Prachanda government is likely to embark on. The new Home Minister, a famous anti-Indian at heart, whose son studied in China has in a single masterstroke massacred all pro-Indian police officers and hand-picked an IGP that is to retire in just over four months. This effectively means that the Indian influence even inside the Police is now on the wane. With anti-Indian fervor on the rise in the terai because of the Koshi floods and the Nepali Congress on the verge of a vertical split, New Delhi is worried of not only its Tibet operation but Nepal policy as a whole. The UPA government is no more tied with the Left parties and with the general elections just round the corner, the BJP too is furious with the disastrous handling of Nepal by the UPA government.

With Kathmandu on the lap of the Chinese, every major power is desperately seeking an alternate. But who can disturb this powerful coalition of left parties who have not only street presence but also the support of the peasants, the poor people, the youths of Kathmandu and now probably also the army and the police? The President cannot rock the boat, the Constitution is not even drafted, Koirala is too old while no other leader of courage has been groomed within the NC. This leaves the world's only Hindu monarch as the lone person able to balance all powers in Nepal and thereby steer the country out of the mess that it is in. He is a nationalist but his own daughter in law is a princess from Rajasthan. He has friendly ties with China but he is not anti-American. The monarchy can always be the emergency light while also the main backbone of democracy and stability of the country. Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood who inherited a completely chaotic Nepal policy from his two short-sighted predecessors will have to remember what he learnt in Afghanistan where the country is raging in a civil war ever since getting rid of King Zaheer Shah. It is no fault of his to face a public that hates India so much only because two ambassadors before him had kept the hay dry enough to be lighted by a single match-stick. Instead, both of them were rewarded with plum assignments which it is hoped will be 'comprehensively analyzed' by the new BJP government when it assumes office. But King Gyanendra will prove all the soothsayers right by being crowned for the third time and this is already written on the walls. If Delhi and Washington do not want to believe it, they can wait for the final outcome of the Defence Minister's official visit to China.

Ms. Koirala is an insurance executive based in Minnesota, USA and can be reached at preeti72koirala@hotmail.com2008-09-16 08:02:44