Karan Varma
On 29th December, Nepalese applicants for jobs in South Korea had gathered in front of the Korean Employment Permit System office in Kathmandu's Balkumari to protest against a recent decision that barred them from taking the Korean language test. The protest turned violent and the police attacked the protesting applicants with batons and rubber bullets. Two applicants died in the attacks and several got injured.
South Korea is hardly a dream land for the Nepalese workers. The working conditions, including hard work for long hours, are so devastating for the souls of migrant workers in the country that work site related accidents and suicide have become endemic. Data available for 2011-2019 shows that 143 Nepalese workers died in South Korea, including 43 by suicide. The 31 per cent suicide rate among the Nepalese migrant is higher than workers from other nationalities in South Korea.
While Nepal’s economic crisis, along with its social crisis, has been worsening for many years, its impoverished people, mainly the youth, are getting so desperate that they are ready to go anywhere to earn their livelihood. In recent days, many Nepalese have even enrolled to fight alongside the Russian army in its war against Ukraine. Nepal's Foreign Minister NP Saud told the media on 26th December 2023 that by then around one hundred Nepalese have joined the Russian Army.
A headline in Nepal's most circulated daily, Kantipur, on 19th January 2024, said that by that day the number of Nepalese dying in the Russia-Ukraine war had reached 11. The newspaper also said that the men who had died were mostly former security personnel and former Maoist fighters.
In the past one and a half decades, according to the data of the Foreign Employment Board, about 12,000 Nepalese who sought foreign employment lost their lives. Currently there are over 3.5 million Nepalese working abroad, which is 14 per cent of the total population of the country.
Meanwhile, the successive governments in Nepal have done little or nothing to address the crises, even though most of the time the communists have been in power since the end of the monarchy in 2006.
There is no denying that Nepal's Maoist movement was a watershed event in its history. The Maoists promised to establish a new democracy in one of the poorest countries in the world and to do away with all the exigencies which had caused underdevelopment and poverty in Nepal. In 2006, Nepal's Maoists signed an agreement with the parliamentary parties, which led to a mass movement culminating in the end of the autocratic monarchy. But the hope of a Nepal devoid of exploitation and hunger was soon shattered as the Maoists, in their hunger for power and money, began flirting with their former nemeses: imperialism and expansionism externally; and the feudal and comprador classes internally.
Now it is as clear as day that the end of monarchy was attained through a compromise between the Maoists and the ruling classes of Nepal. The change in the system of governance did not change the then existing property relationship, instead it gave it "democratic" legitimacy. Ever since then the trajectory of Nepal's Maoists has been one of kowtowing to the demands of its feudal and comprador bourgeois class to serve the expansionist and imperialist powers of India and America.
A major chapter of the Maoists' capitulation concluded in March, 2022, when Nepal's parliament ratified the Millennium Corporation Compact (MCC), a part of America's Indo-Pacific Strategy. In doing so they completely ignored the people's resentment.
Since its signing in 2017, people in Nepal have been protesting against it. The protests were so widespread that even Prachanda, the current prime minister whose Maoist party was part of the government when it was signed, developed cold feet and declared that his party would quit the government if it were to table the MCC in its current form. In a meeting of the party on 16th February 2022, a month before the party supported the ratification of the MCC, a Maoist Centre leader told the media that, "We will start protests in the House and in the streets if it is tabled without revision." The party's stand on the MCC was based on its June, 2020, task force report which categorically stated that the MCC was part of America's Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) focused on curtailing China's growing interest in the region.
The IPS is America's blueprint to expand its influence in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific region. In February 2022, America released a document titled, "Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States". In it, America stated, "The United States has long recognized the Indo-Pacific as vital to our security and prosperity." According to the document, "more members of the U.S. military are based in the region than in any other outside the United States. It supports more than three million American jobs and is the source of nearly 900 billion US dollars in foreign direct investment in the United States."
The document further states, "This intensifying American focus is due in part to the fact that the Indo-Pacific faces mounting challenges, particularly from the People's Republic of China (PRC). The PRC is combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological might as it pursues a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and seeks to become the world’s most influential power. The PRC’s coercion and aggression spans the globe, but it is most acute in the Indo-Pacific…. Our collective efforts over the next decade will determine whether the PRC succeeds in transforming the rules and norms that have benefitted the Indo-Pacific and the world. For our part, the United States is investing in the foundations of our strength at home, aligning our approach with those of our allies and partners abroad, and competing with the PRC to defend the interests and vision for the future that we share with others."
The capitulation of Nepalese communist parties and the unprecedented corruption amongst their cadres and leaders, who are involved in gold smuggling and human trafficking, have created a situation where the old ruling classes, who had to surrender some of their privileges at the time of the Maoist movement, have now become confident enough to assert themselves for complete political power. This has led to a situation in which Nepal today is heading towards a collision of two ideas, both regressive in their core: liberalism/neoliberalism and Hindu conservatism. Both blame the communists for everything that is wrong in the country.
To add to this, the rot in Prachanda's Maoist Party is so great that in a meeting held after Prachanda's visit to India last year, in which he offered prayers in a Hindu temple wearing a saffron shawl, one of its prominent leaders, a woman, had the audacity to suggest that the party accept in principle the idea of making Nepal a Hindu Rashtra again in future.
The tragic reality is that both these forces have developed great influence among the desperate people of Nepal. This development is risking even the small gains made during the period/government of the Maoist movement and the subsequent Jan Andolan Two (People's Movement Two) such as federalism, inclusiveness, democracy and secularism.
In September 2023, Nepal saw a series of mobilizations in different parts of the country's plains by the extremist Hindutva groups. These groups in Nepal are backed by India's ruling party and its parent organization Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS). RSS's semi armed wing, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), was at the forefront of these mobilizations. According to a report in the Nepalese language website Nepal Readers, "its reporters have found a connection between Nepal's Hindu organizations and the RSS behind the anti-Muslim violence." The connection is so deep that one of the WhatsApp groups guiding the violence was administered by the VHP's former International Working President, Pravin Togadia.
According to media reports, the violence began during the Hindu festival of Krishna Janmashtami. On that day, a religious procession went through Muslim-dominated areas. During the procession, anti-Muslim songs and speeches were played through loudspeakers. Soon the riots began. The police intervened and controlled the situation. On the 21st of August, another procession went along the same route during another Hindu festival, of Ganesh Chaturthi, playing anti-Muslim songs and speeches through loudspeakers. This time the violence was so overwhelming that the local administration had to impose a curfew to control it, but not before several houses and businesses belonging to Muslims in the area were looted and burnt down.
These incidents of violence are part of a series of violence by Hindu forces which had begun earlier. According to a 2021 report in India's The Caravan Magazine, "since November last year, protests have erupted throughout Nepal, including in the cities of Butwal, Biratnagar, Dhangadhi, Pokhara, Janakpur and Kathmandu…. These recent developments assume significance because of the coming together of various fringe groups on two broad demands: the restoration of the monarchy and the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra." The report adds, "these demands are not novel—the country has seen sporadic protests of this kind over the past decade, but they have been few and far between. This time, however, the protests have drawn larger numbers than before and not been limited only to the usual suspects. Journalists have noted the presence of not just traditional royalist parties, such as the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, but also supporters of the Nepal Communist Party—the unified ruling party until its recent split into the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist–Leninist) and the CPN (Maoist Centre)—and the opposition Nepali Congress. The daily Naya Patrika has reported that the protests have received financial support from Hindu organisations in Nepal such as Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Vishwa Hindu Mahasangh Nepal and the Hindu Jagaran Samaj."
The lack of
determination by Nepal's communists to address the country's
deteriorating economic condition by taking the country on the
path of people’s democracy and socialism, which is still
possible given the Nepalese people strong support for
sovereignty, nationalism and progressive ideas, has had helped
the regressive forces of all hues to unite and attack the small,
albeit important gains won by its people by great sacrifices
over decades. Today, the country stands at a crossroads where
its secular, federal and democratic future rests in the victory,
not of its progressive forces, communists and democratic, but of
the imperialist powers of Europe and America, with their
well-known history of supporting autocratic and fascist forces
to further their imperialist interests.
Click here to return to the April
2024 index.