Prachanda-led Government-5

Prachanda-led Government-5: Some Tips for Prachanda

Siddhi B Ranjitkar

Prime Minister Prachanda has been consulting with his ministers, colleagues, and subject-matter experts, and the common folks in general in preparation for his India trip starting on September 15, 2016 and ending on September 18, 2016. Taking this opportunity the author has publicly presented the following some tips for Prime Minister Prachanda to take with him to India.

1. Prime Minister Prachanda needs to take the message of the Nepalese people that Nepalese people demand the apology of the Indian prime minister for sufferings Prime Minster Narendra Modi has caused for more than five months imposing the blockade on Nepal and totally stopping the flow of goods and fuels from India to Nepal for no faults of the Nepalese people. Nepalese also want the commitment of the Indian prime minister that such fault will not let happen in the future respecting the rights of Nepalese to the cross-border transport, movement and trade. Nepalese want India to respect the international law of the rights of the people to free movement.

2. Prime Minister Prachanda in turn needs to accept the fact that the previous Oli government did nothing for easing the diplomatic tension between the two countries and even recalled the Nepalese ambassador to India further deteriorating the relations between the two countries, and assure Prime Minster Narendra Modi of improving the relations between two neighbors. Probably, Prime Minister Oli naively let his Foreign Minister Kamal Thapa worsen the relations with India. Thapa must have the grudge against India for not saving the monarchy. So, he wanted to take revenge on India in all possible way. He got the chance to do so when he got the portfolio of the foreign minister. Prime Minister Oli naively followed the advice of Thapa causing so much trouble to Nepalese.

Those political leaders and rulers of the corrupt panchayat could make a comeback even in the republican setup, and cause a stir putting back the statue of Birendra in Nepalgunj because the democratic political leaders have been so generous they just did not take any actions against those pancha culprits for the crimes they had committed while in power. Those monarchists have been emboldened because of the not so right actions of former Prime Minister KP Oli giving so much importance to Kamal Thapa. If those guys were to be in Bangladesh today everybody would have seen them joining their forefathers in heaven.

3. Prime Minister Prachanda must stand on an equal footing with his Indian counterpart. Nepal has been independent throughout its history whereas the British had ruled over India for about three centuries. Nepalese fought against the marching British army for two years from 1814 to 1816 checking every advance the British army made.

Prime Minister Prachanda might even apologize to the Prime Minister Modi and the Indian people for the then cruel and not so politically intelligent crusader: the then Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana helping the British rulers (British East India Company) to suppress the politically right uprising of the Indian people against the British Company rule in India in 1857. Thereafter the British rulers had killed more than six million Indians to keep up their unjust rule over the more civilized people than the British.

4. Prime Minister Prachanda needs to negotiate with the Indian counterpart to remove certain clauses of the Nepal-India Friendship Treaty done in 1950. The then Nepalese Prime Minister Mohan Shumsher signed off the unequal treaty in the hope of saving his rule. A letter later on sent to Nepal and added to this main treaty has made it even a hidden unequal treaty. The prominent groups of Nepal and India have been going through the treaty and other treaties to review and possibly revise them but it might be a long process. The immediate need is only to remove certain undesirable clauses for Nepal from the Nepal-India Friendship Treaty of 1950.

5. Prime Minister Prachanda also needs to inform the Indian establishments that Nepal is very close to India but it also close to Tibet in China, too. Nepal had been the bridge between China and India in the past. Only the then Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana broke it down believing the trade routes going through Nepal might expose Nepalese to the outside world and create political awareness among the people and would be threat to his rule.

6. Prime Minister Prachanda needs to say very politely to his Indian counterpart that India needs to send not very arrogant diplomats to Nepal. In the past, some diplomats had been so arrogant they had to face the public displeasure. Such incidents are not in the interest of both countries. Indian people would not certainly like if Nepalese ambassador were to be so bigheaded.

7. Another fact Prime Minister Prachanda needs to remind the Indian establishments is that Nepal buys 70% of its need from India; it will go up when India develops technology and produces high quality machines, equipment, and other gadgets, as Nepal will buys those things in India.

So, India needs to keep the trade open rather than whimsically snapping the buying of certain things from Nepal. The recent trade-snap has been India stopping the import of ginger, as the local media report. The Indian border checkpoint people have different excuses for stopping the trucks carrying the Nepalese ginger to India. However, some Nepalese traders say that Indian farmers have been producing ginger in a large quantity; so, the custom officials have been saying that Nepalese have been mixing the Chinese ginger with Nepalese and sending them to India.

8. Prime Minister Prachanda needs to let know the honorable Indian Prime Minister Modi that Nepalese have had suffered a lot from the Indian blockades in the past, and such blockade should not repeat in the future no matter how many differences Nepalese and Indians would have. Prime Minister Prachanda needs to thank Prime minister Modi for lifting the blockade and smoothing the supplies deliveries to Nepal.

9. Another request Prime Minister Prachanda needs to make is for helping the hydropower development in Nepal not only directly investing in constructing hydropower plants but also buying the power from Nepal. In the past, India had never been for developing the large power projects in Nepal believing that those power projects will ultimately fall in the hands of India. So, India did not want to buy the power from the Australian power company (Snowy Mountains?) in 1996 making the company unable to develop power project in Nepal after a large investment in the feasibility studies. India needs to stop thinking that India could do what India did in Bhutan for developing hydropower plants.

10. Prime Minister Prachanda needs to take up the issues of the Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. US Assistant Secretary of State for South And Central Asian Affairs Nisha Desai Biswal separately called on Prime Minister Prachanda and Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Prakash Sharan Mahat at the respective offices on Sunday, September 4, 2016, the news on therisingnepal.org.np stated on September 5, 2016. At the meeting with the foreign minister Ms Biswal asked whether Nepal would absorb the remaining 10,000 Bhutanese. In reply Dr Mahat has said that Nepal has given the shelter to the Bhutanese refugees on the humanitarian ground, and Nepal has been for the unconditional and respectful return to their homeland, and the Nepalese foreign minister has asked for the international community’s support for it, according to the news.

India had gladly opened up the door to the Bhutanese refugees to go to Nepal in 1990.  Hundreds of thousands of Bhutanese had to rush out of Bhutan immediately leaving behind their livestock, orchards, vegetable farms, plowed land for sowing, and surely their houses when the Bhutanese king ordered them to leave at short notice for their no faults. Unfortunately and suddenly, a half of the Bhutanese population became out of their homeland. Some of them had demanded the basic human rights but the king had taken it as the threat to his rule. When the Bhutanese refuges wanted to go back home even for facing the tyranny of the king then India closed the door, and India forced them back to Nepal.

The remaining 10,000 Bhutanese in Nepal have been waiting for going back home. Unlike other hundreds of thousands of Bhutanese refuges settled in western countries and Australia, they wanted to go back home no matter what they would need to face in their homeland. India needs to keep its door open for the Bhutanese to go back home.

So, Prime Minister Prachanda needs to take this issue with his Indian counterpart seriously and pave the way for the Bhutanese refugees to return home with honor and with the fundamental rights to live like humans in their home country: Bhutan

11. Prime Minister Prachanda needs to remind the Indian establishments, and the Indian people in general that Nepal has contributed to the two major religions: such as Hinduism and Buddhism of the world. To Hinduism, Nepal has given the super Hindu deity called Shiva, and his spouse Parvati. Parvati is the daughter of the Himal: the mythical king of the Himalayan Mountains. Lord Shiva permanently resides in the snow-capped mountain. Both Parvati and Shiva are the natives of Nepal. Dolesvore Mahadev in Bhaktapur is the head of Kedarnath in India, the Indian super Guru Shankaracharya publicly said a few years ago. Pashupati and Muktinath are the two major Hindu shrines in Nepal. Sita: another Hindu demigoddess is the Nepalese daughter of mythical King Janak.

Buddha was born in Lumbini of Nepal more than two-and-a-half centuries ago. India needs to honor this fact not distorting the truth in the Indian textbooks for school children and not wrongly informing the international community.

12. Prime Minister Prachanda might proudly inform the Indian establishments that Nepal has developed its own unique culture such as the recent event popularly known as ‘Teej.’ Nepal has such unique culture among its culturally diverse people. It is only an example out of hundreds of such cultural events prevailing in Nepal. Probably, not only the South Asia but also any other continent in this world has rarely such a unique culture Nepal has.

Nepal has its own unique temple and other architecture. Some western diplomats had some years ago commented that Nepal has the world-class architecture. The five-storey temple standing above the five-layered plinth, and the fifty-window palace in Bhaktapur, the famous Krishna Mandir made of entirely stones, and the golden temple called Suvarna Mahabihar in Patan, and the nine-storey palace the quakes had damaged in 2015 and the Taleju temple in Kathmandu are only a few examples of the world-class architecture Nepal has developed.

September 6, 2016