King Gyanendra of Nepal visits India today and is expected to discuss ways to contain the Maoists in his country. NALIN VERMA analyses the reasons why they have found ready supporters among the Naxalites



THE arrest of nine reported Nepalese Maoist leaders in a month from Patna suggests the Himalayan kingdom’s rebels enjoy support in Bihar and Jharkhand and have fraternal ties with MCC and the People’s War.

Special Task Force sleuths arrested eight Naxalites - five Nepalese Maoists and three MCC activists - on 25 February from an ‘‘innocuous’’ looking computer training centre in Patna which served as MCC’s nerve centre. Two days later, STF arrested four more Nepalese Maoists from another MCC hide-out in Patna’s Gandhi Maidan area. Those arrested include Dilip Kumar Sah, Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) central committee member, and Jeetan Marandi, MCC’s Jharkhand ‘‘zonal commander’’.

“There’s now enough evidence to say MCC and PW operating in Bihar and Jharkhand are extending all sorts of support to their Nepalese counterparts,” said a senior police officer, when the Indian government is providing military hardware and training to Nepal’s army to help it fight the Maoists.

“Yes, we’re giving military hardware and training to Nepal’s army to equip it counter the insurgency,” defence minister George Fernandes said recently. “India is committed to helping Nepal root out insurgency.’’

King Gyanendra will be in new Delhi on 20 March on a two-day diplomatic visit during which he’s expected to meet President APJ Abdul Kalam, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and some senior ministers. The visit comes before the Nepal government is scheduled to begin talks with the Maoists, who have called a temporary truce now. Needless to say the king would expect more cooperation from India in fighting the Maoists of his country.

But has the Indian government been able to control the rise of ultra-Left politics in its own states? Senior MCC leader Vijay Kumar Arya told this correspondent that his outfit and PW “are extending all cooperation to the revolutionaries in Nepal to replace the monarchy by people’s power.’’ He said: “The goal of Indian revolutionaries and their Nepal counterparts is common. Both of us are fighting a revolutionary battle to end the repressive rule based on the philosophy of a Hindu rashtra and replace it by the rule of the people… And people’s power comes out of the barrel of the gun… as simple as that.”

People’s War (which the CPI-ML Party Unity and Andhra Pradesh’s PW merged to form in Bihar) and MCC are on a merger course which may be effected by November. MCC and PW leaders held their first joint congress in a Jharkhand jungle in December 2001 and resolved to “cooperate” with the Maoist movement in Nepal, the ‘‘war of liberation’’ in Jammu and Kashmir and the NSCN (I-M)-led separatist movement in Nagaland.

But MCC and PW are concentrating more on the Nepalese Maoist, especially because the Himalayan kingdom shares a 745-km porous border with India. Several north Bihar districts including Kishenganj, Araria, Madhepura, East and West Champaran, Madhubani and Sitamarhi share a border with Nepal. The reason for the “close cooperation” between ultra-Left groups in Bihar and Jharkhand and Nepal is the easy movement of extremists, illegal arms and contrabands from both sides of the border and the parallel administration run by the Naxalites in large parts of Bihar and Jharkhand.

Moreover, the Naxalites, particularly MCC and PW which earlier were active in central and south Bihar (now Jharkhand) only, have now expanded their operations to north Bihar districts bordering Nepal. Intelligence reports show that East and West Champaran, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Madhepura, Saharsa and Madhubani are new areas where MCC and PW have become active since the past two years. Almost 80 per cent of the people in these north Bihar districts depend on agriculture and most of them are exploited by the ruling and landed class - a fertile ground for Naxalites to indoctrinate the masses. What has made the Naxalites’ task easier is that 60 per cent of the people here are from the Backward Classes or Scheduled Castes, 80-90 per cent of who own less than five acres of land each.

The region has a history of a strong peasant movement. After Naxalbari in north Bengal, Musahari in north Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district was the most volatile region during the height of the Naxalite movement in the late Sixties and early Seventies. It was from here that the Naxalite philosophy spread to other parts of Bihar. But Jaiprakash Narayan’s and Karpoori Thakur’s movement in the mid-Seventies, in which many BCs and STs participated, thwarted the growth of Naxalism in north Bihar. The rise of Laloo Prasad Yadav was a dream come true for many a BC. But the Laloo-Rabri regime has hardly brought about any fundamental change in the material condition of the Dalits and BCs. For Laloo Yadav has not yet implemented his promised land reforms which could have bettered the condition of the downtrodden. Instead of keeping his promise, Laloo Yadav used the permutation and combination of castes to stay in power, thus increasing the frustration of the landless Backward Classes and the Dalits populace. Banned ultra-Left outfits such as MCC and PW have been using the failures of the ruling parties to draw people to their fold. And they have succeeded in a big way, for this region borders Nepal where too people live in poverty and deprivation under a “repressive” system. “We don’t differentiate between the people of Nepal and those of India for they are suffering at the hands of the same exploitative regime,’’ said Santosh, PW central committee member. Liberating Nepal from the “anarchy of monarchy” and establishing the rule of the proletariat is the “first goal of the revolutionaries.”

The Special Service Bureau has deployed six battalions along the Indo-Nepal border to prevent arms and and ammunition and extremists from slipping across into either country. Each battalion comprises 1,100 jawans. “But their number is hardly enough to man the long border,” an SSB senior officer said. “Moreover, police have their limitation in dealing with such problems. For, they demand a bigger political and economic intervention to be solved.”

Nalin Verma
The author is the Statesman’s Patna-based Special Representative