Revolution at the Roof of the World: New Freedom Road Pamphlet on Nepal

Freedom Road Socialist Organization has released a new pamphlet on Nepal. There is a screen viewable and printable pdf and a pamplet layout pdf. The pamphlet contains articles and analysis on the revolution in Nepal. Here is the introduction from the pamphlet:

The people of Nepal have stood up.

The people of Nepal have swept the despised monarchy into the dustbin of history and are proceeding with their revolution. A decade long people’s war led to fair elections and the construction of a Constituent Assembly. Now led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), Nepal stands on the verge of becoming the first new socialist country of the 21st Century. Nepal, sandwiched between China and India, is one of the poorest countries in the world, but is now on the road to building a new society in which the working people have power.

The core of the CPN (Maoist) strategy was people’s war in the countryside. Beginning in 1996, they progressively grew stronger as they engaged police outposts with hunting rifles. Later they challenged the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) with the full force of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). This was accompanied by preparing students and workers in the cities for general strikes and insurrection.

The war ended in 2006 when a peace deal was signed to form an interim government. This government elected a body to draft a new constitution, abolish the monarchy, and establish Nepal as a republic. The Maoists swept the elections to the Constituent Assembly, winning the most seats, but not quite a majority.

The major question since the election of the Constituent Assembly revolved around the control of the military. The CPN (Maoist), based on Mao Zedong’s statement that "without a people’s army the people have nothing," demanded the merger of the PLA and the Nepal Army. The Nepali Congress Party (NCP), the major bourgeois party in the Assembly, worked diligently to stop revolutionary changes. For instance, the Congress Party demanded the Maoists dissolve the people’s power structures in the countryside and disband the PLA. The Maoists have stood firm and after considerable struggle, the Congress Party Prime Minister Koirala stepped down.

Through all of this, the hand of U.S. imperialism has been present. The CPN (Maoist) is designated a terrorist organization by the White House. Furthermore, the U.S. trained and equipped the RNA since the people’s war began. The U.S. wants nothing more than to build and maintain an empire all over the world, and sees Nepal as a part of that. But like others all over the world, the people of Nepal have a thirst for independence and liberation.

The CPN (Maoist) bases its practice on the theories of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. They have applied Marxism to conditions in Nepal and call this "Prachanda Path" after the founder of their party. They work to fight against slave-like labor conditions in the countryside and fight diligently for the rights of oppressed nationalities in Nepal. Additionally, they are making considerable strides towards women’s liberation and the emancipation of the dalits (‘untouchables’). Bringing these oppressed groups into the political life of the country is instrumental to the continuing successes of the revolution.

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization, in our meetings with representatives of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), expressed solidarity with the Nepali people in their continuing struggle against feudalism and imperialism. We are proud to release this pamphlet, highlighting some of our analysis of the revolution in Nepal.

Freedom Road Socialist Organization

More pamphlets from Freedom Road can be found here: http://www.frso.org/about/literature.htm

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Video: Interview with Dr. Baburam Bhattarai of CPN (Maoist)

This is reposted here from Revolution in South Asia.

Apparently this video, in which Bhattarai discusses proletarian internationalism, New Democracy, the peace process following the decade-long people's war, and so on, is from shortly before the Constituent Assembly elections which the Maoists won by a landslide.

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Freedom Road on Maoist Revolution in Nepal

Maoists Sweep Constituent Assembly Elections in Nepal
Commentary by Josh Sykes

A new day had dawned in Nepal. After fighting a decade-long people’s war, which led to a coalition government replacing martial law imposed by the King of Nepal, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is leading the Constituent Assembly elections in Nepal. The vote counting is not completely finished, but at the time of this writing the CPN (Maoist) has won a total of 120 seats, with the opposition Nepali Congress Party coming in a distant second at 37 seats. The Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) won 33 seats, but following the their election defeat their ministers have resigned from the coalition government cabinet.

A total of 601 seats are up for grabs in a complex voting system. According to the Interim Constitution of Nepal adopted in 2006, a ‘mixed system’ must be utilized for elections to the Constituent Assembly. The ‘first past the post’ system determines 240 members of the Constituent Assembly while a proportional representation system determines the other 335 directly elected members. With 120 of the total 240 first past the post election seats, the Maoists should win at least 100 more seats through proportional representation emerging as the single largest party, much to the surprise of the western media who expected the CPN (Maoist) to come in third, behind the Congress Party and CPN-UML.

The purpose of the Constituent Assembly is to draft a new constitution for Nepal following the ouster of the monarchy as a result of the people’s war led by the Maoists. According to the CPN (Maoist), the elections represent the beginning of the New Democratic process for Nepal. This refers to a two-stage revolutionary process, wherein a bloc of progressive classes, led by the CPN (Maoist), first intend to move through a ‘New Democratic’ phase of the revolution, build a People’s Republic of Nepal and eliminate the vestiges of feudalism and imperialism before moving on to the construction of socialism.

According to Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, one of the main leaders of the Maoists, the victory of the CPN (Maoist) in the constituent assembly election is the direct result of the protracted people’s war. “The people were looking for total change. We advanced the political agenda for total change during the decade-long people’s war. We have people from different castes, ethnicities, genders and people from different regions. The main agenda of the people’s war was to restructure the state. It took ten years of the people’s war to establish our political agenda. The people felt that the country’s socio-political and economic structure needed a complete overhaul. So we couldn’t look at things through our old lenses. The media and the elite missed the picture. As a result, the CA results surprised many. The ground realities had changed and they helped us to emerge as the largest party."

The CPN (Maoist) waged armed struggle against the Nepali government from 1996 to 2006 based on the military theories developed by Mao Zedong through the course of the Chinese Revolution. The Nepali’s strategy for people’s war, called Prachanda Path, after the founder and Chairman of the CPN (Maoist), Prachanda, involved combining the strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside with insurrectionary actions in the urban centers. During this process, the CPN (Maoist) established its immense popularity among the masses of workers and peasants of Nepal through radical agrarian reform, fighting with determination for the rights of women and oppressed nationalities, labor organizing and student mobilizations. (For more information about the people’s war in Nepal, see Movement fights poverty and oppression in Nepal, September/October 2005.)

The people’s war was able to advance relatively quickly because the U.S. has been tied down elsewhere, most notably by the resistance in Iraq, and has been unable to intervene to the degree that it has against similar struggles in the Philippines and Colombia. The U.S. has given some military aid to Nepal’s monarchy but has not been able to commit a sizable number of troops. Because of the U.S.’s overextension, these and other movements, such as the people’s war being led by the communists in neighboring India, have been able to make advances.

Following King Gyanendra’s dissolution of the parliament and seizure of absolute power in early 2005, the CPN (Maoist) joined with other parties in an alliance to oust the king and establish the constituent assembly elections that are now taking place. The CPN (Maoist)’s People’s Liberation Army grouped their military forces and arms into ‘cantons’ under the supervision of U.N. monitors, in 2006 as part of the peace process.

The repressive measures instituted by Gyanendra were very unpopular and at this time only a handful of Hindu fundamentalists tied to the old feudal system still support the king.

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center has been observing the elections, said that he hopes the United States will drop the CPN (Maoist) from its terrorist list and recognize the Maoist government.

The U.S. is driven by its own interests however - the maintenance of an empire in service of a corporate elite - and it is possible that it may attempt to intervene against the democratically elected Maoist government, as it did when Hamas was similarly elected in Palestine.

The elections paint a very different picture of the Maoists than a group of ‘terrorists’ as the U.S. government insists. The elections demonstrate that the CPN (Maoist) has been very popular in Nepal throughout the difficult period of the people’s war, and additionally gives the lie to claims that the guerrillas ruled the countryside through terror and intimidation. It demonstrates clearly that there is a call from the people of Nepal to end imperialism and feudalism and to work toward the possibility of a socialist future.

Josh Sykes is a member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

(Originally posted on the FRSO website: http://www.frso.org/about/statements/2008/nepal.htm)

Also from FRSO:
Resolution in Solidarity with the Revolutionary Movement in Nepal and Against U.S. Intervention (May 2007)

From Fight Back! News:
Movement Fights Poverty and Oppression in Nepal (July 2005)
On the Verge of Revolution in Nepal (April 2006)

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CPN (Maoist) Sweeping Constituent Assembly Elections

See the "History in the Making" sidebar (on the main page) for updates and info as things develop with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the historic elections there. The official information from the Elections commission is here. The info from the Nepal Elections Portal should also prove helpful.

What is basically clear is this:

1.) The CPN (Maoist) controlled basically the entire rural portion of the country during the decade-long protracted people's war. The communist movement has been a leading force in Nepal for some time. The Maoists established themselves through the people's war by building dual power in the rural areas, where they acted as a popular government. Through a combination of radical land reform, student organizing, and labor work, they were able to build a strong base among workers and peasants of Nepal. The U.S., tied down in its losing battle with the national resistance in Iraq, has been unable to directly intervene militarily thus far.


2.) Now that the initial vote counting is underway for the constituent assembly elections, it is very clear that the Maoists are sweeping an overwhelming majority. Of the two other major parties, the Nepali Congress Party has won significantly less then they had expected, and the CPN (Unified Marxist-Leninist) has dropped out altogether. It would take a huge upset for the Maoists to come out shy of tremendous control of the constituent assembly and parliament. This gives the lie to all of the nonsense about the Maoists ruling the countryside through terror and shows that they are immensely popular among the Nepalese workers and peasants. Jimmy Carter is calling for the U.S. to drop the "terrorist" label form the CPN (Maoist) and recogize their democratically elected government. From here the Maoists say they will build a New Democratic Republic.


3.) King Gyanendra is now completely isolated and nobody but a handful of Royalists, a few big landlords and Hindu fundamentalists, still support him since his seizure of power in 2005 and the repressive crackdowns since. He and the monarchy he represents will never be a force in Nepal again. The future of Nepal is not certain, but one thing that is certain is this: The Monarchy is finished and feudalism is on the way out.



So what happens next?

Maoist leader, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai gave an excellent interview following his election in his constituency. Asked to assess the election results, Bhattarai said, "The people were looking for total change. We advanced the political agenda for total change during the decade-long people’s war. We have people from different castes, ethnicities, genders and people from different regions. The main agenda of the people’s war was to restructure the state. It took 10 years of the people’s war to establish our political agenda. The people felt that the country’s socio-political and economic structure needed a complete overhaul. So we couldn’t look at things through our old lenses. The media and the elite missed the picture. As a result, the CA results surprised many. The ground realities had changed and they helped us to emerge as the largest party."

This is what Comrade Gaurav of the CPN (Maoist) said would happen back in July 2007:

"In Nepal we are making New Democratic Revolution and according to the three stage of the People’s War it is in the concluding stage of ‘strategic offensive’. In order to achieve the countrywide victory, further preparation was felt necessary and the revolution had to take a new course. It was necessary to enter into the process of negotiation with the seven political parties to launch a strong mass movement whose immediate aim was to overthrow the monarchy, which is the representative institution of feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism and comprador bourgeoisie and establish democratic republic. It is true that the term ‘republic’ represents only a system without monarchy. There are many types of republic. What type of republic will be established and institutionalized in Nepal depends on who wins the majority in the election of the constituent assembly. If the left force gets majority in the assembly, there will be ‘People’s Democratic Republic’ in place and the constitution will be written and promulgated accordingly. In this context, it is definitely a new experiment based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and risk is involved into it. This new experiment should bring the desired result. If there is indication that the experiment is not going to deliver acceptable results, we should dare to deter such experiment and should be prepared for other experiments which can deliver the desired results. If we feel that the new experiment is not going to deliver the desired result, no body can compel us to be sticking into the same. In that case, the revolution will take a new course and further new experiment will be required that can help revolution to succeed." ("New Tactics: challenges and opportunities", The Worker, #11, July 2007, pp. 11-14.)


To get a better understanding of the events in Nepal, interested persons should also check out some of the CPN (Maoist)'s writings at the Single Spark Collective's Learn from Nepal project, as well as some of the analysis there. Check out Mao Zedong's On New Democracy as well.

Freedom Road Socialist Organization put out a resolution in solidarity with the Nepalese Revolution and against U.S. intervention at its Fifth Congress in 2007.

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