The Himalayan kingdom of Nepal is witnessing
a heightened popular surge for democracy. King
Gyanendra cowers as relentless waves of people
battle uniformed protectors of royalty in the
bloodstained streets of picturesque Kathmandu,
the country’s capital. A conspiracy is on,
however, to convert the battle into a part of a
so-called “war for democracy” that the world has
come to dread.

The people of the tiny nation, particularly
the youth free from the feudal tradition of
loyalty to the King, continue their heroic
struggle despite the mortar bombs dropped from
military helicopters on agitating crowds
including women and children. Hardly concealed,
meanwhile, are attempts to hijack the struggle
into the holy war on “terror,” unleashed by the
George Bush administration of the USA.

The Bush regime has long been engaged in a
war on “terror” in Nepal - but on the King’s
side. It is now pretending to an initiative on
the people’s side through a new-found regional
proxy - but may end up bailing Gyanendra out of
his grave predicament.

The dangers of such disorientation facing the
struggle find illustration in the impact of the
Nepal events in India.

It was about two months before 9/11 that
Gyanendra made his gory ascent to the throne. His
anointment as king after a massacre of King
Birendra and the rest of the entire royal family
by Crown Prince Dipendra is an oft-recounted
piece of recent history. Not so well recorded is
the post-9/11 story of an increasingly intimate
Washington-Kathmandu alliance.

It was “terrorism” of the Communist Party of
Nepal (Maoist), or CPNM, popularly called
Maoists, that supplied the rationale of the
alliance. It was the same “threat” that also
provided the King a rationale for his subsequent
assaults on a parliamentary democracy that
co-existed with a constitutional monarchy and
that the people had won after years of struggle.

India’s stand has similarly been one of
support for democracy as also for constitutional
monarchy in Nepal (the two being described as
“the twin pillars” of a desirable order in Nepal)
along with anti-Maoist solidarity with Kathmandu.
The similarity has acquired a new significance
ever since the birth and growth of a USA-India
“strategic partnership.”

Promoters of this “partnership” are busy
pleading for intervention in Nepal by India as an
ally of Bush in “the war on terror.”

In January 2002, Colin Powell, at the time US
Secretary of State, paid an unprecedented visit
to Kathmandu to announce open and total support
for the monarchy in crushing the Maoists. "You
have a Maoist insurgency that’s trying to
overthrow the government and this really is the
kind of thing that we are fighting against
throughout the world," Powell declared. The
then-US ambassador to Nepal James Francis
Moriarty made no secret of America’s "strategic
interest" in the region.

The partnership had grown to menacing
proportions by February 2005, when Gyanendra
sacked the elected government of Prime Minister
Sher Bahadur Deuba and declared an emergency.
Wrote US journalist Conn Hallinan: "The Bush
Administration has concluded that the civil war
threatens to make Nepal a “failed state” and a
haven for international terrorists, leading it to
place the CPNM on the State Department’s ’Watch
List,’ along with organizations like al Qaeda,
Abu Sayyaf, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah." Then US
Ambassador to Nepal Michael E. Malinowski waxed
enthusiastic in his endorsement of the King’s
line.

As I wrote in these columns then, the result
was "the heavy influx into South Asia’s poorest
nation of US weaponry and military equipment,
along with British helicopters and American
advisers, to aggravate a civil war that has taken
a toll of thousands of Nepali lives."

India, for its part, had been extending
anti-terror military assistance of 4.5 billion
Indian rupees to Nepal per year. New Delhi did
discontinue this assistance in February 2005, but
it took only a few face-saving measures by the
King for it to resume its military supplies.

In the current context, staunch Indian
lobbyists for the “strategic partnership” are
asking New Delhi to play the role of the super
power’s regional proxy in this matter. One of
them, C. Raja Mohan, for example, writes: "In the
last few years much of the world, including the
United States and the European Union have waited
for India to take the lead on Nepal and agreed to
coordinate their policies with those of New
Delhi. If India holds back, other powers would
soon begin to act on their own." The other powers
presumably include China, which has played an
unabashedly pro-monarchy role thus far and has
just started recognizing parliamentary parties in
Nepal.

Warns Raja Mohan : "If India does not act
immediately, the ground situation - worsening by
the day - would compel India to consider more
drastic remedies in the future. That could
include military intervention to prevent state
failure in Nepal."

Ironically, the main opposition to such a
course come from the far right which, during the
term of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, had set the “strategic partnership” in
motion. The ground for their opposition would be
the special place for Nepal in their as the
“world’s only Hindu kingdom.” Apologists for the
king in these quarters have even advocated
absolute monarchy.

This opposition can conceivably be overcome
if the US-India partnership over Nepal is
projected as a possible precedent for a similarly
combined role with regard to Pakistan and Kashmir
in particular. The Vajpayee government, it may be
recalled, spoke in significant approval of the
right of nations to pre-emptive anti-terror
strikes and pressed for extension of such a right
to India.

Needless to add, such an extension of the
“war on terror” to Nepal can do no good at all to
the cause of peace in South Asia.