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Two of our members had been on the 2^nd International Road Brigade in April 2006, but its fair to say Nepal looked like a different country than it did back then. No longer underground and fighting a People’s War, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has now opened offices and operates legally in every village in the country. The monarchy is a relic of the past, abolished in 2008, and the Maoists, after having led the government for nine months, are now leading a popular protest movement against the current government with the aim of creating a third Jana Andolan – People’s Movement.But similar to 2006, party leaders and supporters alike were keen to welcome us to Nepal, help us with whatever we needed and talk to us at great length about the situation. With huge smiles, warm shakes of the hand and the constant raised clenched fist of lal salam, red salute, we were able to see much in our one month visit. We travelled to the districts of Rolpa, Dang and Banke in the mid-west, Kailali in the far-west, and Dolakha in the east as well as Kathmandu. We met with leaders and cadres of the UCPN(M), especially members of the Young Communist League (YCL) and various Cultural Groups. In Kailali we visited the cantonment of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 7^th Division, and in Dolakha we visited a model school. Along the way we spoke to many party supporters and ordinary masses about their thoughts and experiences of the struggle in Nepal.

Through our communication with party leaders and supporters it was easy to forget how impoverished Nepal is. Materially speaking, Nepal is a semi-feudal, semi-colonial country which has suffered for centuries under feudal monarchical rule, and especially under the control of Indian expansionism, a localised form of imperialism. Yet for all its material poverty, the UCPN(M) has taken up the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and applied it creatively to the concrete conditions of Nepal, the results of which are there for all to see. Nepal is materially poor but ideologically perhaps the richest place in the world today. The success of the UCPN(M) in fighting the People’s War (PW) and building up people’s power in the countryside showed the firm grasp of MLM by the party. In the changed situation since 2006, the Maoists seem to be increasing their strength, and we aimed to investigate how much this is still based on their firm grasp of ideology.

For people who think communism and revolution are historical relics, the Maoists in Nepal have turned history upside down and shown the continued relevance of this ideology, possibly greater than ever before because of the deeper level of imperialist exploitation existing around the world. But the history of revolution in the twentieth century and before is not forgotten. Instead the UCPN(M) aim to synthesise this experience in order to apply MLM at a greater level in the twenty-first century. In this synthesis they have placed special emphasis on the question of democracy, on how a New Democratic and Socialist society can be run while exposing and opposing revisionism from within and imperialist from without.Our visit was inspired by the need to investigate the objective situation in Nepal in order to gain a better understanding of the unfolding revolution there. Since April 2006 the voices in opposition to the UCPN(M) have grown stronger. In general it seems that the mood which was once euphoric in its support of the Nepalese Maoists fighting the PW has considerably waned, to the point where the party is openly condemned by some. Support for the legitimate struggle of the Nepali people has therefore been withdrawn, at exactly the time it is needed most. Through various discussions and meetings we had had in Britain and Ireland, as well as certain published documents from around the world on different stances towards the revolution in Nepal, we felt that there were many issues to investigate. The first issue relates to issues of strategy and tactics and the question as to why the UCPN(M) shifted from the strategic offensive in the PW to the political struggle centred on the Constituent Assembly (CA) and the new constitution. Particular concerns surround the supposed disarming of the PLA, demobilisation of the YCL and scrapping of the people’s power in the old base areas. The second important issue is on the question of the state and relating points on the democratic republic as a sub-stage of the New Democratic Revolution (NDR) and crucially whether the Maoists have abandoned the idea that the old state needs to be smashed but can instead be reformed. The third main issue centres on the role of elections, specifically in the future New Democratic and socialist states, and the role of Cultural Revolution. Further to this we wanted to gain a deeper insight into the practice of two-line struggle within the party. Following is our report of the situation there.

War and Politics

The issue of the PLA in the revolution in Nepal is a fundamental question and one which has led to great differences of opinion among supporters of the Nepalese revolution internationally. This is the army which grew out of the PW, winning glorious victories against the reactionary forces in the rural areas, showing people – and women, dalits and oppressed minorities in particular – that the people’s destiny can be taken up in their own hands. During the PW the PLA was the key link in the mobilisation of the masses and the practice of the mass line. By 2006 the PLA had proven itself on the battlefield and also within the hearts of the people. As we all know, Mao said that “without a people’s army the people have nothing.” There have therefore been concerns on the apparent disarming of the PLA after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). According to the CPA, the PLA has been confined to seven cantonments across the country, with its guns under lock and key and monitored by the UN. There is thus a worry that not only does the PLA therefore not have ready access to its weapons, it is also the fish plucked from the water, unable to maintain its links with the people. Now it awaits the fate of integration with the army it once fought, supposedly based on the need to ‘professionalise the PLA and democratise the Nepalese Army (NA)’. While the NA certainly needs democratisation, whether the PLA is in need of professionalisation is a different matter. Furthermore, the conditions in the cantonments were at first dire, and now still not suitable to look after the needs of the thousands of revolutionary soldiers around the country.One of our primary objectives was to visit a cantonment, and very early in our trip we were able to spend some time in the cantonment of the 7^th Division of the PLA in Kailali district, far-western Nepal. Certain preliminary points are important. While the PLA has been placed in the cantonments they have not been disarmed, as the key to the weapons is firmly within the hands of the respective division commander, as the 7^th Division acting commander Comrade Jeevan reiterated to us.

Also, the process of army integration is a complicated process. What is certainly not happening is the wholesale dismantling of the PLA to be placed within the NA as it now stands. Instead the Maoists emphasise the need to create a new national army which is anti-feudal and anti-colonial in character, taking into account the concrete conditions of Nepal. For Nepal its small size and open border with its giant neighbours India and China make a standing army capable of defending its sovereignty an unrealistic dream. Instead, the Maoists have emphasised arming the population in general while keeping a relatively small national army that can be used for security but also for development purposes. In this situation the idea that the PLA needs ‘professionalised’ is of course ridiculous, a fact pointed out to us frequently by various leaders and soldiers when we were inside the cantonment. As it has proven on the battlefield, the PLA is already a professional army.

The Maoists are also trying to wrestle with the fact that in the USSR and China, the revolutionary armies were transformed from being amongst the most advanced sections of society to being bastions of revisionism, a process which mainly occurred through the destruction of their links with the masses and their barracks lifestyle. With this in mind, the PLA soldiers stressed the need to deepen the relationship between the revolutionary army and the people to prevent its sliding into revisionism, and this would be an important component of the future army. In the cantonments the practice of the mass line is very difficult for the PLA. Whereas before it was second nature, now there is a physical barrier between the soldiers and the masses. However, we could see signs in the cantonment that even this physical barrier was not so firm. Most impressive was the healthcare facilities run by the soldiers, not only for their own needs but for those of the local population too, which has poor facilities and is far from the nearest hospital in Danghadi. We were told that people come from quite far to seek health service inside the PLA cantonment. This demonstrated to us that the PLA is still trying to maintain its links with the people, however hard it is in this present time.

Lastly, the UCPN(M) has put forward a fluid concept of the dialectic between war and politics. PW does not advance in a straight line, or even a general progression through the various stages marching ever onward to the smashing of central state power and the victory of NDR. In fact, from the beginning the Maoists have emphasised the dialectic between war and politics. Before the launching of the PW in February 1996 the party went through line-struggle on this question, a struggle which eventually ended in a split and the formation of the CPN(M) in 1995. The line led by Prachanda took up the position that the PW was necessary in the concrete conditions of Nepal, a line since proven correct by history. But they were careful in 1996 to present the launching of the PW as a strategy forced on the people. Through presenting the 40-point demand to the government, the party showed that it was compelled to launch the armed struggle in the face of the corrupt nature of the semi-feudal, semi-colonial regime. People do not like war, and they should not be forced to take part in war. But the correct Maoist position is to “fight war to end war.” Peace cannot exist in class society, which is based on exploitation and oppression. However, during the PW the party did not concern itself only with military strategy. Great emphasis was put on the two sets of peace talks which were held with the government under a general ceasefire. Each time the party demonstrated the weakness of the government and its fundamental inertia in the face of a revolutionary struggle. Again, the masses realised that the party was compelled to fight.By 2005 the situation had changed. The PW had developed rapidly and the Maoists were in control of the vast majority of the country. Its influence in urban areas, and with the industrial proletariat – a quantitatively small class – in particular, was however not high. Because of the situation stemming from the royal massacre and the coup carried out by King Gyanendra earlier that year, the Maoists were presented an opportunity for uniting with the parliamentary parties in order to force the King to accede to CA elections. This laid the basis for the eventual overthrow of the monarchy. On the back of the PW, the People’s Movement of April 2006 showed the great unity amongst the people against the monarchy. While the bourgeois media stressed the role of the Seven Party Alliance (SPA), it was evident to members of the 2^nd International Road-Building Brigade who were in mid-western Nepal at the time, that the real strength of the People’s Movement was the revolutionary people from the countryside, who poured into the cities to take leading parts in the protests. The role of the parliamentary parties within the SPA meanwhile was making sure the fury of the people did not go too far, a role which was seen clearly by the unilateral acceptance of the King’s offer to reinstall parliament after 21 days of protest.

This situation seems now far removed from the life of the soldiers in the cantonments. But frequently we heard about the link between war and politics. Since the CPA the Maoists have been using political means to pursue their goal of exerting a greater influence in urban areas. The fact that their influence had risen greatly lay in the results of the election in 2008, when the Maoists even won the majority of constituencies in Kathmandu itself. In the cantonments however the PLA soldiers we held discussions with, and the acting division commander Comrade Jeevan, all explained to us that this period in the cantonments is “one of waiting”. That they will be needed in the future is self-evident to the soldiers. But that will only come about if they are once again compelled by the reactionary nature of the bourgeois parties or by imperialist or expansionist influence to take up arms in defence of the revolution. For Full Article Please Visit  http://www.wprmbritain.org/