20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK

An op-ed titled ‘What the Left Can Right’ by Pitambar Sharma 20 years ago this week in Nepali Times at the height of Maoist insurgency is instructive even today as the NCP splits in two.

Sharma called out the organised left with its root in civil society to go beyond rhetoric, and outline an alternative political and economic agenda and actions to achieve equity and social justice — issues raised by the rebels.

This week, two decades later, with the Nepal Communist Party officially split to pre-unification status (UML and CPN Maoists) following the Supreme Court decision, two things are clear. First, there is too much alpha maledom in Nepali politics for a unification to ever work. Second, leaders blinded by power struggles have long abandoned the very issues of equity and social justice they once fought, and killed, for. 

Excerpts of Pitambar Sharma’s report, Nepali Times #33, 9-15 March 2001:

Unfortunately, it is the response of the moderate left to the Maoist People’s War that has been the most enigmatic. It has consistently called for ‘structural changes in the political and economic system’, and, at least in theory, the left has remained vocal in the struggle for a society free of exploitation, and in championing the cause of the underclass, the poor, the deprived and the dispossessed. But all these points are central also to the Maoist agenda, and one would have expected a fitting response to Maoist extremism from the political left. Instead, the left political parties have proved to be dumb, confused spectators caught between friend and foe.

If any political formation in Nepal has the capability to pull the carpet from under the feet of the Maoists, it is the organised left with its roots in civil society. That capability has to derive from a clear understanding of the possibilities of structural change within a democratic system. Such a political, economic and social agenda and programme would provide the basis for political action both within and outside parliament. This would, of course, demand a return to a politics based on ideology, a commodity rare in Nepali left politics today.

The Maoist People’s War has fundamentally questioned the credibility of Nepal’s mainstream left. It is doubtful whether a dialogue devoid of an economic and political agenda would really contribute much to the resolution of the Maoist insurrection, and it would be up to the left political parties to make a singular contribution by negotiating such an agenda, and bringing the nation back from the brink of a civil war in which there would be no winners.

From the archives of Nepali Times of the past 20 years, site search:  www.nepalitimes.com 

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