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Maoists unsure who ‘main enemy’ is
AUG 19 -
Any party in transition is fraught with contradictions. The UCPN (Maoist) seems particularly so the past one year or so. One serious issue that’s brewing in the party in recent times is defining who its “principal enemy” is, which at least in its official policy documents remains unclear. Still as a deeply ideological party, its leaders believe that it should have a clearly identified “principal enemy” to rally its cadre and politics against,
without which its revolution would not be possible and that the party would “lose its direction”. Since the abolition of monarchy—which used to be the Maoist party’s principal enemy until 2008—the Maoist leadership has not been able to articulate its new enemy. There are multiple and contradictory perceptions about the principal enemy in the party.
One reason the party has not been able to take a call on this issue is because the top leadership remains deeply divided on the same. A faction led by party’s Vice Chairman Baburam Bhattarai says the main enemy is the “domestic regressive and reactionary forces” (Bhattarai constantly refers to the group as “our dogmatic friends inside the party”),
while a hard-line faction led by Senior Vice Chairman Mohan Baidya says it is mainly India.
More often than not, Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal vacillates but he has increasingly come to be seen as subscribing to the school of thought that India is the principal enemy. And there is a third group—the middle-of-the-road school, which considers both India and the party’s internal structure as the principal enemy.
Party insiders say this ideological debate will be one of the most contentious issue in the upcoming “Extended Committee” meeting slated for the third week of September.
The committee is equivalent to the party’s General Convention in authority.
“Any decision of the extended committee would be a final word and that would, naturally, impact the party’s relations with India,” says a party leader.
The contentious issue was debated extensively in the party’s 10-day long Politburo meeting (June 15-25). When it failed to find the common language to define the principal enemy due to deep differences among the top leaders, the authority to take the final call was passed over to the Extended Committee.
The Politburo meeting, however, concluded that the nature of “principal contradiction (enemy)” is “changing” rapidly because the domestic and external contradictions have become so intertwined that it is hard to separate them.
In its August edition the Lalrakshak, a Maoist monthly, wrote: “There are debates inside the party on which force is the major impediment—the domestic regressive force or the expansionist (read India)—to accomplish the revolution.”
The article also claims that India wants to split the Maoist party in the name of finding an alternative to Dahal’s candidacy in the prime ministerial race. And, therefore, if the party fails to pinpoint the proper “contradictory forces” it would water down the entire “revolution”.
The hardline faction (led by Baidya; Dahal’s role is unclear), which has taken India as the principle enemy, believes that the constitution writing process and integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants has not been possible “due to the direct intervention of India”.
“It is all clear. We should first launch a movement against India,” said a Maoist leader close to Dahal. Maoist Central Committee member Bhupendra Nepane said India is the principal enemy as the other political parties are gradually “becoming compradors of India”.
The debate over identifying an enemy has further intensified inside the party after the visit of Indian prime minister’s special envoy Shyam Saran, which the party leaders have openly dubbed as “an instance of Indian intervention”.
“Given the increasing intervention from the Indian side, India is likely to be identified as the principal contradictory force by the party,” says Politburo member Lokendra Bista. The Bhattarai faction, on the other hand, says that even if the party identifies India as the “principal enemy, it would be impossible to fight against it without unifying the domestic forces and drafting a “compromise” constitution because the major “domestic forces” are acting on India’s direction.
A Politburo member close to Bhattarai said it would not be appropriate to declare India as a “principal enemy” at this point. “What we should do now is to expose Indian interference,” he said. Given the deep differences in the party, it is still too early to tell whether the upcoming Extended Meeting will sort out the “define-the-enemy row,” say party insiders.
Posted on: 2010-08-20 08:14
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