NOT so long ago Nepal’s Maoists, representing one of the world’s most impoverished people, were disowned or maligned by every state surrounding their landlocked nation. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, a worried Bhutan, not to forget the overarching presence of the world’s super-cop from the other side of the globe. Even China, at least, on the face of it, though with their inscrutable ways you can never tell for sure. Name them. Each one of them was overtly or covertly jockeying for the Maoists’ rout. And what did they prefer instead? A tyrannical monarchy that masqueraded as reincarnated Vishnu, the Hindu god of sustenance, a monarchy that ruled over its poorest subjects with untold brutality.

It’s also worth remembering that in the last days of Nepal’s imploding regime, the great democracy of India had sent a former prince of Jammu and Kashmir, of all the people, to explore how the king could yet retain his job. The RSS-led religious right tried every trick in the trade to shore up King Gyanendra whose obscurantist role it idolises, and they nearly succeeded in their nefarious mission.

China’s approach was a bit of a puzzle. It had repatriated the few Maoist activists, who made the mistake of seeking sanctuary in Tibet, back to Kathmandu evidently to indulge Beijing’s royal allies, quite unmindful of the cruel fate that inevitably awaited the hapless fugitives. Chairman Mao’s embalmed body must have winced in its glass casket at the Great Hall of the People. As for Pakistan’s former prime minister Shaukat Aziz, in an amazing betrayal of the Nepali people, he had offered on a visit to Kathmandu military help, believe it or not, to keep the king secure from the surging popular will that rejected any role for the palace in their daily lives. The mainstream media in India continued to voice as it usually does the state’s anxieties over the possibility of a Maoist victory in last week’s elections. The stunned headlines on Saturday reflected surprise and grudge alike. For the Indian media getting the sums wrong is an old habit. They often predict the outcome of polls even at home as they want it to be, not as it is going to be.

Maoist leader Prachanda’s remarks after the results showed his party surging ahead of others were a lesson in statesmanship. He spoke of even-handed diplomatic ties with all countries and good relations with India under a Maoist-led government. He spoke of fulfilling the dreams of Nepal’s poor under a progressive republic. And that was one operative word that was not going to change in its emphasis, a Nepali republic instead of a monarchy. What are the lessons in this for India where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has declared Naxalites, an Indian description for Maoist rebels, as the biggest threat to the nation?

This was not too different from how the Nepali palace saw the Maoists and this is how the international corporate media and their Indian counterparts had painted the former armed rebels. The danger in Prime Minister Singh’s somewhat extremist description of a problem that is essentially one about the poorest Indians, including mostly Dalits and tribes people, is that it resembles a militarist approach to thwart the aspirations of its own citizens. Another problem is the propensity of the state’s militarist approach to turn large swathes of the country into perpetual military and paramilitary garrisons.

These precise issues were discussed at two well-attended symposiums in Delhi earlier this month as they focused on the problems thrown up by an increasingly policed and militarised state, partly to hunt Maoists but largely to clamp down anything that the state wishes to describe as terrorist. Needless to say, the media did not attend either of these discussions, which is not surprising. This is after all how most of the mainstream newspapers in Delhi went silent on Sunday after the shock verdict from Kathmandu rendered them speechless. The Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners set up on April 2 has the active participation of notable rights activists like Gurusharan Singh, Surendra Mohan, Prof Amit Bhattacharya and Jagmohan Singh (a scholar and freedom martyr Bhagat Singh’s nephew). The Forum for Democratic Initiatives, on the other hand, organised a citizens’ convention last week against the increasing use of Special Security Acts to crack down on democratic dissent. The convention titled, Undeclared Emergency? : Special Security Legislations and the Making of a Police State, was held against the backdrop of various state governments colluding with the police and administration to clamour for special security-related laws. Both these meetings were eye-openers as they drew wide participation from far away states, including those affected by Naxalite activity.

One of the methods used by the Indian state to combat peaceful and armed dissent is to seek to divide the ranks of the adversary, a technique it has virtually inherited from a colonial past. Under the garb of the so-called war against terror, the state has resorted to vigilante gangs like the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh where tribes people are pitted against their own. The Sulfa in Assam opposed to Ulfa, the death squads of Punjab, the Ikwan-ul-Muslimoon in Jammu & Kashmir, the Green Tigers, Narsa Cobras in Andhra Pradesh, the Nagrik Suraksha Dal in Jharkhand and the Harmad in West Bengal are some of the examples of divide and rule technique used by the state. The convention also spoke up against the use of capital punishment as a deterrent. “Already more than 230 countries of the world community have put an end to capital punishment. But in India death penalty is synonymous with a ‘strong state’. It is often equated to the national security and integrity of the country, the only way to deal with all kinds of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ ‘threats’ as has been claimed by government after government at the centre…But experience has shown that death penalty has become a tool of political vendetta indulged in by the powers that be and has hardly contributed in improving the law and order or preventing the social evils from repeating.”

In a statement that might resemble in its language and scope ideas once promoted by Nepal’s underground Maoists, the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners described the war against terror in India as “an alibi to crush all forms of protests against the anti-people policies facilitated through the process of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation…Under the garb of the war against terror, the government is using all possible legislations to crush the genuine protests of the vast sections of the masses. Each state within India is given the authority to enact their own internal security legislations. All punitive measures are used to rein in the rising people’s discontent with the pro-market policies of the government that have made a few pockets rich while the vast majority of people remain impoverished, driven to subhuman existence.” Now this could be dismissed as familiar communist gibberish as the media is wont to do, or the truth of the claim could be verified by holding talks with the various groups thus affected.

The alternative to talks appears even more forbidding. At last week’s seminar, writer Arundhati Roy reflected on the clauses in the dreaded Unlawful Activities Prevention Act passed by the present government and other similar laws and how they make it possible to arrest just about anyone on suspicion with detention going up to seven years. Reading out a clause she explained the predisposition of the police and judiciary to interpret it according to political convenience so that “even a convention like this one could be declared illegal. Such laws meant that along with activists, writers, teachers, students, just about anyone could be arrested and detained up to seven years.” Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan told the convention that even the ordinary liberal foundation of Indian democracy was being undermined and that these legislations posed a threat to whatever was promised within the Constitution. Clearly much of India is in ferment. And not unlike the failed strategy of the monarchy in Nepal, the Indian state is trying to use the religious right to battle the poor. Its media describes the rebellious poor as some kind of ogres, forgetting the fact that these very people offer the best hope for the survival of Indian democracy as enshrined in the country’s Constitution. Look at Nepal where its most impoverished lot have just shown what democracy is all about.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com