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Oli-led Government-9
Madheshi Leaders for Face Saving
Siddhi B Ranjitkar
Two out of the four Madheshi leaders came back to Nepal from their India visit. Apparently they had gone to India for having more support for their protest movement in Nepal from the Indian rulers. Unfortunately, they could not have the audience of the undeclared Indian emperor Narendra Modi. Madheshi leaders also could not secure anything more than the support for an inclusive constitution in Nepal from the Foreign Minister of Modi. Modi wanted to save his face using Madheshi leaders as his tools. Now, Madheshi leaders had nothing left except for saving their heavily tainted faces. Modi must have thought that he could treat the democratically elected Nepalese Prime Minister as one of the past dynastic rulers of Nepal as his predecessor did in the past. Unluckily, Modi lost his disgusting game played with the Nepalese politicians losing many other things in the process.
Upon return from India at the international airport in Kathmandu on December 10, 2015, Madheshi leaders Upendra Yadav and Mahanta Thakur had shown how deeply they had been upset visiting India. They had been wearing the faces of the mourners that had just returned from the cremation. Yadav spoke for more than six minutes briefing the reporters on their India visit. He did not have anything to say about the gains of their India visit rather he repeated the same old story of how the constitution was made inconclusive and they would continue their struggle for bettering the constitution. Mahanta Thakur held his head low not showing his face to the TV cameras throughout the speech of Mr. Yadav.
Later on, Mahanta Thakur had complained that the Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister holding the portfolio of the foreign ministry Kamal Thapa turned over the document to the Indian foreign minister rather than to the Madheshi leaders, according to the media reports. The document contained the agenda on how the government was dealing with the amendment to the constitution to meet the demands of the Madheshi leaders. However, Mr. Thakur failed to say why along with his three colleagues he went to New Delhi refusing to talk to Thapa in Kathmandu on resolving the burning issues for the Madheshis. Probably, his colleagues and Mr. Thakur had anticipated that they could secure more concessions for the Madheshi leaders seeking the favor from the Indian rulers.
Another media report has it that the four Madheshi leaders that had visited India apparently for resolving the dispute over how the constitution to be made inclusive had fought against each other even in the presence of the Indian leaders. They had gone to India with the highest possible expectation but the Indian leaders were not for taking any further hits from the opposition and the media and the world community for continuing the unofficial blockade on Nepal.
At the meeting with the Madheshi leaders visiting New Delhi on Tuesday, December 8, 2015, India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval urged the Madheshi leaders to find a solution to the crisis through dialogue in Nepal at the earliest, as the bilateral security and transit issues had been in jeopardy. Doval also advised the Madheshi leaders to use the negotiating table to get their concerns addressed, the news on online Kathmandiu post stated on December 9, 2015. Doval also said that restrictions on the movement of supplies trucks due to the ongoing protests in the Tarai region have created a humanitarian crisis in Nepal. While meeting with Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, the Madheshi leaders received the same message.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had lost the hard earned reputation, goodwill and the political credibility. He lost the goodwill of the entire Nepalese living elsewhere in the world. He had faced the greatest protest against his visit to UK not far from the place he was holding a meeting with his British counterpart. It was at the hearing distance. So, he ordered his secrete service people to find out how come the Nepalese had been protesting against him and his sanction on Nepal in the UK. Nepalese had held the protests against the Indian blockade on Nepal in other European countries, Australia and the United States of America.
Mr. Modi also lost the chance of being the ‘Person Of the Year’ of the ‘Time’ weekly magazine, and missed the chance of having his portrait on the cover page of the ‘Time’ magazine. Nepalese on the social media had actively engaged in defeating the Modi in the opinion polls the ‘Time’ magazine had held for the person of the year. Not only Nepalese en mass did not vote for Mr. Modi but also all the entire Nepal lovers did not, too. Consequently, he not only lost the ‘Time’ polls but also the reputation as one of the influential leaders of the world. Ma’am, Angela Merkel: chancellor of Germany became the winner.
Probably, Madheshi leaders had been traumatized by the India visit. Obviously, Indian leaders had been for supporting the blocking of the supplies trucks to Nepal anymore causing the unbelievable torture to the Nepalese people for more than three months already. The world opinions had been against Nepalese people going through the torture of not having fuels, foods, and medicines. Without the support of Modi what the Madheshi leaders would do not being able to feed their cadres at least two square meals a day across the border to block the supplies trucks on the Nepalese side of the border. Their protest had not popular support. So, they needed to keep their cadres working at the border with a tremendous cost. The Madheshi leaders would not be able to hold on to their protest for long. That Oli and his colleagues in the cabinet knew it.
Mr. Modi held a grudge against Muslims and Christians, as they had together ruled over the Hindus for one thousand years. Muslim rulers came from Afghanistan. Akbar: the ruler in Kabul managed to reach Delhi and ruled over the Hindus. Then his Muslim descendents extended the Muslim rule as far as Bengal to the east. Muslim rulers called Hindustan: the land of Hindus, and Bharat was the name by which Hindus loved to call it. Many Hindu royalties converted into Islam to stay in power during the Mughal period. Some fanatic Muslim rulers tore down the Hindu temples and planted Mosques on them. Muslims ruled over Hindus for about 700 years. Then, came the Christians over Hindustan to rule the Hindus and Muslims. The East Indian Company having the mandate from the British Queen to take up any administration of any country took over from the Muslim rulers in Hindustan. The British could not properly pronounce the Hindustan. So, they started calling ‘Indu’ in short for Hindustan and later on it became India. The British moved on from Bengal to west and managed to unite all the Rajput rulers into a current single India during the period of 150 years. The British had ruled over the Hindus and Muslims in India from 300 years in Bengal to 150 years in the western States.
Now, Modi wanted to reverse the rule. He wanted to see the Muslims and Christians go from India. He must have thinking to change India into ‘Bharat’: the old Hindu name for the northern India that stretched from the current Khandhar in Afghanistan to Bengal to the east the Hindu zealots had ruled over in the ancient time. Modi’s cadres had been enforcing the law of Manu: the ancient Hindu ruler that enforced the caste system absolutely, and they had been intimidating the Muslims. Hindu zealots including the Bollywood star Anupam Kher came out strongly against the fear the Muslims had expressed of India being more and more intolerable.
The Modi’s undeclared war on the Indians other than the so-called high caste Hindus had been gradually going the downhill. We would see how much Modi’s performances had damaged his Hindu party called Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could be seen and felt only after the general elections for the house of representatives in the coming years. If the recently held elections for the State assemblies in Delhi and Bihar were any indication of the damage Modi had done to his BJP then it was a horrifying loss to the BJP. I could see that Muslims, Christians, and Hindus for the rule of law would abstain from voting for the BJP in the next election. The Indian congress would certainly try to cash in the unfair rule of Modi, and recover the power loss to the Modi’s party.
Modi must have thought that the Nepalese rulers starting from the Jung Bahadur Rana that had grabbed the power from the then impotent Shah king and ending with the Shah dynastic ruler Mahendra had heavily depended on the then Indian rulers for retaining their positions in Nepal. Jung Rana had himself gone with the Nepalese army to help the then British India rulers to repress the uprising against the British rule in India. Then Mahendra fired the overwhelmingly democratically elected Prime Minister BP Koirala in 1960 because Koirala wanted to be on a par with his Indian counterpart Jawaharlal Nehru. Then, Mahendra quietly accepted the Indian occupation of the Nepalese land called Lipu Lekh in 1962 when China invaded India. Later on, Mahendra negotiated with the Chinese giving away the northern portion of the Mt. Everest to China. Thus, Mahendra kept his crown.
The dynastic Rana rule set up by Jung Rana kept not only Nepalese in perpetual poverty and starvation but also even the king Tribhuvan, too. Poor Tribhuvan had to sell the crown returned by the last Rana dynastic ruler Mohan Shumsher at nine million rupees in the United States of American for his medical treatment in Switzerland in the mid 1950s. So, anybody could imagine how much blood the Rana rulers had sucked in from the Nepalese for their unbelievably lavish life style. The Shah-Rana dynastic rule stopped the development of the people absolutely for 240 years making Nepal currently one of the poorest countries in the world. About two and a half century ago, Nepal had been more prosperous and culturally far ahead of any European and American countries of that time. The tourism companies have been selling the scenic relics of the historical monuments of the same culture today.
Modi must have thought that he could do the same thing with the duly elected Prime Minister KP Oli in 2015 as his predecessors had done with the dynastic autocratic rulers of Nepal. Mind it we are in the 21st century not under any dynastic ruler. Unfortunately for Modi, Nepalese people and rulers had been not only for not making the Indian rulers their bosses but also for not bowing down to their wishes. Consequently, Modi lost his chance of being one of the regional leaders and also one of the leaders of the world. His favorites such as the Madheshi leaders not only lost their faces but also the ethics of being the Nepalese. How could these Madheshi leaders proudly say that they are Nepalese when they go to India for resolving their Nepalese problems?
Modi put forward his pawn Mr. Sushil Koirala as a candidate for a prime minister of Nepal. Mr. Koirala accepted it shamelessly disregarding how much shame he had brought on his party and the country. The patriotic lawmakers did not vote for the foreign agent such as Koirala but voted for KP Oli whereas the Madheshi leaders came back from the protest ground to vote for Koirala at the behest of the Indian ambassador Ranjit Rae in Katmandu. Thus, Modi had demeaned to the Madheshi leaders to the extent possible. Most probably, the Madheshi leaders would come soon to their senses, and save their faces from further smearing with black soot already blackened by following the instructions of Modi and his ambassador in Kathmandu.
Sushil Koirala was not only one Indian agent in his party called Nepali Congress: probably, the sister organization of the Indian Congress as one of the Indian media wrote but also many visible and invisible agents in his party. For example, Bimalendra Nidhi: one of the leaders of the NC had openly told the public that he favored Indians. In 2009 when Prachanda was the prime minister his minister for culture replaced the Indian priests serving at the Pashupati: one of the holiest temple in the Hindu world with the Nepalese priests, leaders of NC such as Ram Chandra Poudel: current vice-president of NC and Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat took a long march from the Nayabaneswore to Pashupati protesting the replacement of Indian priests by the Nepalese. How royal those Nepalese leaders had been to Indians they had utterly openly demonstrated. Ultimately, those NC leaders devoted to Indians succeeded in reinstating the Indian priests at Pashupati. How could Nepal benefit when such not patriotic people ruled over the country? They did not feel like serving the motherland.
The NC leaders had the mindset that they could not run the country independently rather they needed someone patronizing them. When the monarchy was there; they looked at it as their patron. They believed that they could not rule the country without the monarchy. So, they fought only for democracy with the constitutional monarchy even though the monarchy had been the perpetual foe of democracy. Former Prime Minister BP Koirala found his neck conjoined with the then king Mahendra a few years after the death of Mahendra. Now, the NC senior leaders had been seeking the Indian leaders’ patronage for running the Nepalese administration. Nothing could be so antinational than such behavior of the NC leaders.
December 13, 2015
