After fighting a guerilla war in the rural areas of Nepal for more than a decade, Maoist rebels have achieved a shockingly genteel brand of coup: as of April 15, they have won more than half of the seats in the nation’s Constituent Assembly elections. The massive electoral win means that the Maoists (also known as the Communist Party of Nepal–Maoist, or CPN-M) will wield enough power to achieve much of their neo-Marxist agenda in Congress and heavily influence the drafting of the nation’s new constitution. As this organization is reported to have killed over 13,000 people in its protracted insurgency and is currently classified as a terrorist organization by the US government, this victory has less outraged the international community than left it bewildered.

The answer to how the Maoists transformed themselves from guerilla army to governing body in such a short time lies in the complex cultural forces at play in the formerly feudalistic, monarchistic, heavily stratified Hindu kingdom. The most fascinating aspect of the Maoists’ strange saga is the manner in which they managed to position themselves as an answer to the very problems they had helped create; after weakening the Nepalese economy and inducing political turmoil through military means, they were able to win widespread support by offering to resolve these very problems in the political sphere. To provide a cinematic analogy: in Batman Returns, the Penguin is able to justly claim that he is the only man who can put an end to the crime wave sweeping Gotham city, but only because he is, in fact, the one who has been orchestrating it all along.

Sendero ominoso

The Maoist movement in Nepal was founded in 1994 by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a man known more commonly by his nom de guerre, Prachanda (“the Fierce One”). Four years earlier, Prachanda quietly began collecting a cadre of young CPN-M members around himself, training them for military operations and rallying them around the newly-coined (and very catchy) slogan, “let us march ahead on the path of struggle toward establishing the people’s rule by wrecking the reactionary ruling system of state.”

In 1996, Prachanda issued the constitutional monarchy a list of 40 demands, including the redistribution of feudally-held lands to the homeless, the eradication of the foreign-owned monopoly on industrial businesses, the dissolution of all farming debt and an embargo on the importation of “vulgar” Bollywood films and celebrity magazines. When the demands were not met, Prachanda and his followers began storming villages and ousting whatever scant government forces were stationed there.

The BBC reports that Prachanda is enamored with the example set by Peru’s Sendero Luminoso (“Shining Path”) rebels. The influence is apparent; while rural dissenters were often dispatched with a bullet to the back of the head, those villagers who welcomed the Maoists were treated with increased food stipends and medical supplies. Fence-sitters were persuaded by a squadron of specially trained soldiers who spread Maoist propaganda through a series of musical vignettes that denounced caste oppression, feudalism, imperialism and gender discrimination. In these rural areas, where farmers had long been chafing under the yolk of the feudal caste system, the Maoist ranks quickly swelled.

Mao Mao rebellion

After securing many of the rural municipalities, Prachanda began what could be called a ‘revolution of attrition.’ Rather than marching into Kathmandu and taking the palace by storm (which would have been impossible), he and his followers sat on their easily won and easily defended land and watched as the largely tourist-dependent economy nosedived as international fears about the Maoist rebellion surged. They further spread the rot by inciting sporadic work stoppages (bandh, “to close”) in Kathmandu, compounding both economic loss and international anxiety. On February 1, 2005, King Gyendra seized full executive control of the government to crush the Maoist rebellion. The ceasefire negotiations following this highly unpopular act paved the way to both the incorporation of the Maoists into the 2008 elections and to their eventual victory.

Since their electoral upset with Prachanda as party head (and thus the likely pick for president), the Maoists have softened their vision for a ‘People’s Nepal.’ Prachanda has vowed to work multilaterally with the other elected parties, as well as with neighboring countries China and India. He also promised to repair the economy and energy infrastructures, both of which are in ruins. Many in Nepal have welcomed the Maoist victory, since at least it promises to bring swift results.

This second coming of Mao seems to promise a softer, gentler alternative to Marxist authoritarianism, without losing the core tenets of economic equality and secularism. Whether those promises are met could spell the difference between a long-needed resurgence of the beleaguered Himalayan nation and its regression into some very dark times.

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Robert Moor B’08 needs to stop looking at Warhol paintings and start looking for a job.