–A World to Win
The twelfth anniversary of the launching of the people’s war by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) on 13 February 1996 will see the country involved in intense preparations for countrywide elections to elect a Constituent Assembly, which is to implement the end of the monarchy and establish a new regime.
These elections had been scheduled and then delayed several times before. The question of a constituent assembly to decide a new form of government came onto the agenda in 2006, when in the wake of weeks of enormous anti-monarchy street protests, the CPN(M) and the parliamentary parties signed an agreement that led to a cease-fire in the revolutionary war and an interim government, which the Maoist party joined in April 2007. The country’s political institutions fell into a deadlock when the party left that government last September. It rejoined that government at the end of 2007, with five junior ministers, clearing the way for the elections to be reset for 10 April.
The basic question at stake now is what kind of state power will be consolidated and what socio-economic system will prevail. Will Nepal be ruled by a radically different kind of state, where the people are led by the working class and a genuine vanguard communist party to break out of the world imperialist system and build a completely different type of society? Or will it be ruled by a state controlled by the reactionary classes and dominated by India and the imperialist powers? Concerned friends and supporters of the revolution in Nepal throughout the world have been watching these developments and seeking to understand them in light of the whole revolutionary process begun in 1996.
A background review
When CPN(M) members and supporters among the youth carried out simultaneous military attacks across the whole country and began the people’s war, it was a daring expression of the party’s intention to liberate the people of Nepal as part of the worldwide struggle against the imperialist system and for the ultimate achievement of communism.
The original fighters had only a few weapons. They had little military experience and were not yet organised into an army. Nevertheless they dared to call on the people of the whole country to fight for a new regime that would do away with the semi-feudal system in the country headed by a centuries-old monarchy and break Nepal’s dependence and subordination to the world imperialist powers and neighbouring India. Although the initial actions were small, the reactionary state hit back with a fury, pursuing party members in the cities and sending the militarised police to carry out widespread murder and terror in the countryside. Despite these savage attacks, the insurgency quickly took root in the hilly region in the western part of the country, in between the fertile plains to the south along the Indian border and the inhospitable Himalayan mountain range to the north along the Chinese border. The backward rural districts of Rokum and Rolpa, each with a population of a few hundred thousand overwhelmingly poor peasants mainly belonging to one of Nepal’s many minority nationalities, became a stronghold of resistance and a symbol of revolution throughout the country and increasingly the world…. Read the rest of this entry »
