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Nepalese People’s Appeal to Friends in India

Dear Friends‚

     Gyanendra Shah‚ the hated double murderer of‚ firstly‚ his own brother King Birendra and his entire family on June 1st ‚ 2001 and‚ secondly‚ the nascent parliamentary democracy in Nepal on May 22‚ 2002‚ is on a state visit of India from June 23rd to 28th‚ 2002. In whatever diplomatic niceties this visit may be clothed‚ it is obvious to all discernible eyes that it is primarily designed to gain overt and covert military‚ economic and political assistance from India to crush the ever-raging people’s democratic movement in Nepal and provide legitimacy to and bolster the illegitimate and unpopular royal military dictatorship thrust upon the Nepalese people. It is‚ therefore‚ imperative that the great Indian people with a glorious republican and democratic tradition may be foretold and forewarned in time about the dark conspiracy being hatched by certain Western imperialist powers in connivance with their allies in India to raise despotic rulers like Gyanendra Shah for their own ulterior motives and that this conspiracy may be thwarted jointly by the democratic and progressive forces of Nepal and India.

     It is by now universally accepted in Nepal that Gyanendra‚ his criminally-inclined son‚ Paras‚ and the royal army chief‚ Prajjwal Rana‚ were the ringleaders of the bloody palace coup d’tat of June 1st‚ 2001‚ even though they have craftily managed to put the blame on the slain Crown Prince Deependra. Gyanendra’s recent‚ inadvertent though‚admission with Indian journalist‚ Dileep Padgaonkar that his “enthronement was preordained” (The Times of India‚ June 18‚ 2002) also hints towards the ‘pre-planned’ nature of the whole bloody affair. What is more significant and dangerous about Gyanendra’s enthronement through the military coup d’tat is his long and impeccable anti-democratic and fascistic credentials since the days of the pre-1990 autocratic Panchayati era‚ when he was openly branded as the ring-leader of an ‘underground criminal gang’ ( ‘bhoomigat giroha’ ) even within the ruling class circles.  The chain of political events that have systematically unfolded since the June 1st palace massacre‚ through the proclamation of nationwide emergency and imposition of virtual royal military rule since November 26 last‚ to the dissolution of parliament at mid-night on May 22 last month and the split engineered in  the ruling Nepali Congress Party this week‚ eloquently speak of Gyanendra’s anti-democratic agenda and plan for restoration of autocratic monarchy; of course‚on the condition of firm backing of most important foreign powers‚ viz. USA‚ India‚ China‚ the EU and others. Hence this India visit‚ to be followed by another to China immediately after. He has already sent his stooge Sher Bahadur Deuba to the USA and UK to canvass support for his fascistic agenda.

    What the international community‚ in general‚ and our most important neighbour India and its friendly people‚ in particular‚ ought to grasp correctly‚ however‚ is that Gyanendra and his despotic gang is consolidating absolute powers by systematically destroying the limited democratic institutions and marginalising the parliamentary forces in the pretext of fighting Maoist communist revolutionaries. The recent act of dissolution of parliament when all the parliamentary political parties refused to extend the state of emergency in the country‚ amply proves this. Though PM Deuba was made to exercise his so-called prerogative in dissolving the parliament against the wishes of his own party and overwhelming members of parliament‚ everybody knows that Gyanendra and his royal army had exercised their real ‘prerogatives’ from behind the curtains. The message is now absolutely clear that Gyanendra and his gang will henceforth not tolerate any representative institution that refuses to act as his rubber-stamp. What is the use of any election or a parliament in such a situation? This only validates our long-standing contention that until and unless the people’s representatives have the right to make the country’s constitution and exercise effective control over the armed forces‚ so far monopolised by the monarchy‚ no form of democracy would be complete and secure in the country. The latest attempt of Gyanendra and Co. to coopt Deuba and split the ruling Nepali Congress party and similarly coopt a section of the parliamentary Left‚ proves total antipathy of this gang for the democratic system and political parties.

     Hence‚ contrary to the motivated propaganda of the feudal autocratic forces and their foreign masters‚ the real fight in the country is between monarchy and democracy. After a long suffering from the ‘divide and rule’ policy of the autocratic monarchy‚ a realisation has now dawned upon the major parliamentary and non-parliamentary parties to fight unitedly against the monarchy. The questions of the republic and muti-party democracy are emerging as the immediate common minimum agenda for the democratic revolution. Our Party has accordingly advanced the slogans of an interim government‚ election to a constituent assembly and institutionalisation of the republic for the immediate political solution to the problem. When the entire country of different political spectrum was increasingly veering around this common minimum programme and was clamouring for a negotiated settlement‚ the Gyanendra clique got mortally scared with it and hatched the conspiracy to sabotage the move through the dissolution of parliament and split in the ruling Party. Should not the great Indian people who have a strong republican tradition and have abolished even the privy purses of the ex-kings and princes way back in 1969‚ empathise with the neighbourly Nepalese people in their just struggle to abolish the antiquated monarchy and create a democratic republic? We definitely expect an emphatic affirmative answer.

     Having been totally isolated from the people at home‚ the feudal autocratic Gyanendra clique has now sought external military help to trample upon the people’s armed resistance movement raging all over the country. Unable to cope with the real armed encounters with the heroic fighters of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)‚ the arch-reactionary royal army has been butchering unarmed masses and political activists in fake encounters by the dozens every day. More than three thousand have been killed in the last six months of the so-called emergency rule alone. Gross human rights abuses and war crimes by the royal army in the form of genocide‚ arson‚ rape‚ torture have surpassed all bounds. But in the real battles the PLA has been handing crushing defeats on the reactionary royal army‚ viz. the battles of Mangalsain‚ Satbariya-Lamahi‚ Lisne-Gam‚ Sallyan etc. in the last several months. The exaggerated claims of high casualties on the side of the PLA‚ deliberately floated by the royal army to hide its shameful defeats‚ have all been found baseless and mischievous. To cover-up its own horrendous war crimes and human rights abuses and to hoodwink the international community‚ the royal army has been conducting wild disinformation campaigns against the revolutionary forces by branding us as ‘terrorists’‚ ‘anti-development’ etc.‚ which Gyanendra has parroted even in his interview to the Doordarshan on June 20‚ 2002. We are confident that the international community is fully aware or our democratic‚ progressive political credentials and would easily see through the evil designs of the likes of fratricidal and regicidal Gyanendra.

    As is the case with all the anti-people and autocratic rulers‚ specially presiding over a rapidly collapsing regime‚ Gyanendra may be inclined to mortgage vital national and people’s interests to willing foreign powers in order to save his own skin. The USA and UK have already displayed their overenthusiasm to coopt the Gyanendra-Deuba duo for their imperialist designs in the Himalayan region. It is not difficult to surmise that the sole superpower USA wants to cultivate the despots like Gyanendra et al and gain a military foothold in the Nepal Himalayas to oversee its long-term imperialist interests over China and India. The so-called anti-terrorist crusade of the USA in the aftermath of September 11 is basically designed to create its new military bases in the strategic zones from Central Asia and Afghanistan to East Asia via the Nepal Himalayas. It is in this context that Gyanendra-Deuba gang has been pampered by western imperialism to act as their loyal stooges and Gyanendra has now been sent to India and China to hoodwink these Asian giants by doing a strategic balancing act between the two traditional rivals.

     It is quite disturbing to note that a section of the Indian ruling classes is oblivious of this grand imperialist designs and is bent upon to appease the little despot by flattering him as “Nepal’s far-sighted monarch” so as to further its own expansionist ambitions as a junior partner to US imperialism. Every layman in Nepal knows that there is nothing ‘far-sighted’ about Gyanendra‚ except for the common eye disease which he may have carried! It is high time that the Indian ruling classes change their old strategic perception over Nepal and stop seeing the medieval monarchy as a factor of ‘peace and stability’ in the geo-strategically sensitive region. In the present era of enlightenment and democracy only the goodwill of the Nepalese people can safeguard genuine security and other interests of India in Nepal‚ and not any despotic monarch. It would be pertinent for the Indian ruling classes to remember that their short-sighted policies of appeasing the anti-people rulers in Nepal has created a strong anti-Indian sentiment among the masses there‚ and the sweeping people’s democratic movement now has created a strong objective basis for reshaping a mutually beneficial Indo-Nepal relations on an entirely new basis.

     We‚ therefore‚ appeal to the friendly people of India to put pressure on their rulers not to trample upon the genuine democratic aspirations of the Nepalese masses by arming a feudal despot and imperialist stooge like Gyanendra. We also appeal to all democratic and progressive forces in India to protest against the visit of Gyanendra‚ the hated butcher of parliament and thousands of Nepalese patriots and democrats‚ and express solidarity with the ongoing people’s democratic movement in Nepal.

June 22,2002.
International Department.
Central Committee,
Cmmunist Party of Nepal (Maoist)