After Maoist Protests, Nepal Faces a Murky Future

Not long ago, unprecedented change seemed to be sweeping the mountainous nation of Nepal. Following the end of a violent civil war in 2006 and a historic election in 2008, the Himalayan kingdom, ruled for decades by the almost divine right of its monarchs, became a secular republic. Maoist rebels, who once preached armed struggle and proletarian revolution, donned suits and went about promoting capitalist industry. But since then, Nepal's fortunes have hardly improved. Indeed, for many Nepalis, the country's dream of transformation has turned into an interminable nightmare.

Last week, traffic in Kathmandu was bullied off the streets as tens of thousands of Maoist protesters hoping to topple the current government barricaded stretches of the capital's main road on May 4. Countless businesses were forced to shutter, costing Nepal's meager economy an estimated $300 million over the six days of the demonstrations. The strike was only lifted on the night of May 7 after widespread anger and counter-protests — as well as reports of dysentery and diarrhea among tired Maoist activists — apparently convinced the Maoist leadership to back down.

But the way forward is as uncertain as ever. After waging a decade-long war against the royalist state that saw the deaths of over 13,000 people, the Maoists became the driving force of a peace process meant to usher in a new democratic era for Nepal. In a landmark April 2008 election, they won the majority of seats and formed the government that would, in theory, draft a new constitution and steer Nepal away from the great inequities of its monarchical past. Yet little was achieved in a country riven by political factions and feudal enmities; last May, the Maoists backed away from power when their firing of the country's army chief, a longtime foe, was blocked by other parties in government.

Opponents have questioned the Maoists' ability to truly renounce their militant past — a fear made all the more real by recent fiery proclamations of Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the Maoist leader better known by his nom de guerre, Prachanda, meaning the "fierce one." On Saturday, the day after lifting the general strike, he thundered to a mass rally in Kathmandu that the strike that had crippled the nation for a week "was only a dress rehearsal... We will put on the real show in the days to come." Since the strike has been called off, there have been reports of fresh protests and disturbances.

The Maoists have refused recent overtures to sit down to talks with the government, an ungainly coalition of 22 parties patched together to replace the Maoist-dominated administration. Critics, the Maoists chief among them, say the present regime is weak, corrupt and lacks a popular mandate. Dinanath Sharma, a Maoist spokesman, calls it "unnaturally formed. It's undemocratic and against the spirit of the peace process." Many Maoist supporters who flocked to the capital to participate in last week's lockdown have no intention of disbanding. "I will stay in Kathmandu as long as the movement continues," says Ashok Shrestha, a Maoist party worker from the west of the country, now camped out with colleagues in the corridors of a shopping complex in the capital.

Key to the conflict has been the fate of thousands of Maoist soldiers still housed in U.N.-monitored cantonments across the country — according to various agreements, they are expected to integrate with the same Nepali Army they once bitterly opposed. The deadline for the process has passed and it has yet to happen. Both sides accuse the other of having their own agendas for delaying this vital step toward political unity: the Maoists see themselves arrayed against an old guard eager to return to the royalist era; opponents think the Maoists ultimately do not want to shed their fatigues for civilian life and democratic politics. Pradeep Gyawali, a prominent politician within the government, speaks darkly of the Maoists' intentions. "This strike was a trial run for an urban uprising," Gyawali says, adding that Prachanda's cadres received inspiration from the success of the recent mass agitations in Thailand and Kyrgyzstan that convulsed the politics of both countries.

Meanwhile, the country teeters toward a precipice. Nepal's elected assembly was supposed to have ratified a new constitution by May 28. But the parties, including the Maoists, are nowhere close to an agreement by that date, after which the interim charter that in essence underpins the whole state of affairs in the fragile nation will expire. It's a surreal and unsettling prospect for most Nepalis, who had high hopes for the much-vaunted peace process. "The political parties are steeped in petty interest," says Lokraj Baral, a leading Kathmandu-based commentator. "They have all forgotten the crucial task of drafting a constitution. They lack commitment to the larger interest of the country."

Nepal is in desperate need of broad-mindedness. Sandwiched between rising economic giants in India and China, the country is one of the poorest and worst performing in the world, with chronic food and power shortages and a steady drip of its 28 million population departing for menial jobs in the Gulf countries and Southeast Asia. It's not surprising that, with such entrenched poverty and political dysfunction, the grandstanding Maoists have attracted so vociferous a following. "None of the political parties looked after us, but the Maoists seemed honest," says Tilak Sirali, a 42-year-old laborer who left behind six children in his destitute village in the east to join the strikers in Kathmandu. "I came here with the hope that poor people like me will not have to suffer anymore."

But the Maoists' actions have only deepened the sense of crisis gripping Nepal. Krishna Sitaula, a party elder of the centrist Nepali Congress, hopes that last ditch talks in the coming weeks "can bring back the country from the brink." Foreign governments, a host of international organizations and NGOs as well as Kathmandu's civil society are all applying pressure on the various parties. If this fails, darker days loom. Says Sitaula: "A full-fledged confrontation is very likely."

Source: Time Magazine

Dragon to succeed where Delhi failed in Nepal?

KATHMANDU: Three years ago, when Nepal’s King Gyanendra angered India by staging a coup and seizing absolute power, New Delhi brought the king’s arch enemy, the Maoist guerrillas, and the opposition parties together for a united pro-democracy movement that toppled the Himalayan kingdom’s 239-year-old institution of monarchy.

Three years later, is Nepal’s northern neighbour China going to play a similar role and end a political impasse in the nascent republic that New Delhi has failed to resolve?

Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, who created a controversy last year when he chose to visit China first after becoming republic Nepal’s first premier, is set to trigger a fresh controversy. According to his aides, the former revolutionary will leave for China Sunday for a week-long visit during which he is scheduled to hold talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Prachanda will be accompanied by Maoist lawmakers Krishna Bahadur Mahara, who was former information and communications minister and is current chief of the party’s foreign affairs, and senior member Mohan Vaidya Kiran, who has been posing leadership challenges to Prachanda from time to time.

This will be Prachanda’s second visit to China since last year. After touring the neighbouring country in August 2008 to attend the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing, Prachanda was scheduled for a follow-up visit this summer. However, he postponed it when his government became embroiled in a fight with its coalition partners over sacking the chief of the army, Gen Rookmangud Katawal. Soon after the postponement, his eight-month-old government collapsed in May and the second state visit had to be shelved.

This time however, as the leader of the chief opposition party, he is going on the invitation of Hu himself, who heads the Communist Party of China. Ironically, Prachanda’s successor, current Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, is yet to go on an official visit to China since assuming office. Last month, his Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala went to visit Beijing to lay the ground for the prime ministerial visit. However, till now, no date has been finalised for Nepal’s China trip.

China is concerned about Nepal’s peace process having hit a snag. Beijing has asked the communist parties to work in tandem and also address the issue of the rehabilitation of the over 19,500 guerrillas of the Maoists’ People’s Liberation Army. It remains to be seen if the Chinese government will be able to propel the peace process forward. Prachanda last month avoided meeting the emissary sent by New Delhi to Kathmandu, Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, by going on an unexpected trip to Hong Kong.

The Maoists however declined to comment immediately on Prachanda’s upcoming trip. Mahara told TNN that it was yet to be fully confirmed.

Mr Nepal lucks out

But his country, of the same name, is struggling

ON MAY 23rd Madhav Kumar Nepal, the communist son of a Hindu priest, became Nepal’s new prime minister. He succeeds Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the country’s former Maoist leader—the main protagonist in a decade-long guerrilla war—who resigned on May 4th, leaving the government in limbo. Mr Nepal has the support of 21 of the 24 political parties in Nepal’s assembly; but this is scarcely democratic progress. The Maoists, who won 38% of the assembly’s seats in the country’s first post-conflict election last year, do not support him. Nor did Mr Nepal win either of the two seats he contested in the poll.

Among many threats to his new government, the Maoists loom large. Mr Dahal, who resigned after he was foiled in an effort to sack an old enemy, Nepal’s army chief, General Rookmangud Katawal, has said they remain committed to democracy. Yet the Maoists had until last week stopped the assembly functioning since their chief’s resignation. And they still demand that the president, Ram Baran Yadav, should reverse his decision to veto General Katawal’s sacking. Backed by Mr Nepal and his allies, who consider the army a last defence against the Maoists, Mr Yadav will not do this. On May 24th the Maoists spurned an invitation to join the new government.

With luck, it may survive for a while. It might even try easing the country’s severe power and fuel shortages. That would quell some of the growing discontent at the failure of any party to deliver on its election promises. But the early signs are not promising, with Mr Nepal’s coalition partners bitterly feuding over the division of cabinet spoils.

More important, there seems little prospect of this government making much progress on the assembly’s two main tasks—shepherding a complicated peace process and drafting a new constitution. Under Mr Dahal’s more solid government, including the Maoists, Mr Nepal’s UML (for Unified Marxist-Leninist) and other parties, these were daunting: the thorniest issue of the peace process, the fate of 23,000-odd former Maoist fighters, led indirectly to its demise. (Some of these fighters are to be recruited into the army; but General Katawal, to the Maoists’ fury, has resisted this.) And if Mr Nepal’s government cannot resolve these issues, it had better make way for one that can.

UN mired in deepening Nepal row

By Navin Singh Khadka 
BBC Nepali service

A fresh dispute over the true number of Nepal's former Maoist combatants - which was supposed to have been verified by the United Nations - has cast a deepening shadow over the entire peace process.

The dispute began earlier this month when a video emerged in which the Maoist leader, Prachanda, admitted that he had exaggerated the strength of his forces 18 months ago to have more bargaining power during peace negotiations.

His comments are damaging for the UN because it verified Maoist fighters who are sheltered in a number of camps and are to be either rehabilitated into civilian society or recruited into the security forces.

Prachanda's recent resignation as prime minister following a row with the president over the sacking of the head of the army - combined with the row over the video tape - have made Nepal's rocky journey to a fully-fledged constitutional republic even more fraught.

'Deliberately inflated'

For the UN, that is a worry - because its peace mission in Nepal, UNMIN, might not be able to leave the country as quickly as it wanted to.

In the video footage Prachanda said that 35,000 former fighters were registered with the UN - while the actual figure was 7,000-8,000.

"Had we revealed the real figure then, today we would have only around 4,000 of our fighters verified by the UN," he said in the video.

"Since we deliberately inflated the registration figure to 35,000, we [made a compromise and] managed to get around 20,000 of them verified."

The video was recorded in one of the UN-supervised camps where Prachanda was addressing his military commanders.

Under the peace agreement signed in 2006 at the end of Maoist insurgency, UNMIN has been monitoring the camps sheltering former Maoist fighters and supervising their arms.

Given that it had registered and verified all Maoist ex-combatants, the release of the video became an immediate cause of concern - and no doubt some embarrassment - for the UN.

UNMIN chief, Karin Landgren, has sought an explanation from Prachanda.

"When I spoke to him about it, he said he was speaking to his cadres at a time of extreme uncertainty in the peace process and that it was necessary to boost their morale," she said.

After the leak, Prachanda held a press conference to say whatever he had said in the video was in a "different context" and the figures of the ex-combatants mentioned did not include all the levels within the Maoist ranks and file.

'Look forward'

Regardless of its happiness or otherwise with Prachanda's explanation, the UN does not seem eager to allow the controversy to fester.

"Given that this process - the verification of combatants - was accepted by all sides in 2007, you really have to ask yourself if the best use of time now is to reopen the process the parties were all satisfied with," Ms Landgren told the BBC.

"Is it productive to reopen it now? People have been sitting in the cantonments for over two years now and UNMIN is not going to be here for ever, this exercise must look forward."

That UNMIN needs to pack up as soon as possible is something UN officials including Secretary General Ban Ki Moon have been repeatedly stressing.

At its inception in 2007, UNMIN's mandate was for a year. But that mandate has already been extended three times by six months.

With the current term expiring in the last week of July, UN officials had hoped that the most important part of the peace process - the integration and rehabilitation of Maoist ex-fighters - would be over by then.

But some major parties in the country do not see it that way and have expressed concern over Maoist "dissembling" in relation to the number of ex-combatants.

Leaders of the main opposition Nepali Congress have demanded that the former fighters be re-verified in the wake of the leaked video.

The centrist party's sister organisations have also submitted memorandums to UNMIN demanding re-verification.

Ms Landgren argues that if they want to do that, they will have to work through a committee formed to integrate former Maoist combatants into the national security forces or to rehabilitate them.

The committee has the representation of all the major parties.

But even when the Maoists were in government the committee hardly ever met - and things were much more stable then.

Now that the Maoists have quit the government following the controversy over army chief Gen Katawal - who was sacked by Prachanda but reinstated by the president - they have resorted to street protests, meaning that there is little chance of the committee reaching a consensus in the immediate future.

The eager-to-depart UN was already concerned about the delay in the peace process after the Maoists walked out of the government.

Now that the number of Maoist ex-fighters it verified is in dispute, it has many reasons to believe that departure will not happen in the immediate future.

How fierce will the Maoists be now?

Frustrated by an unbiddable general, the Maoists quit the government, and Nepal’s hopes for peace recede

IF NEPAL’S mainstream politicians, army and Big Brother, India did not like Maoists in government, it is hard to imagine how the scrubbed-up guerrillas will be improved out of it. The resignation of the Maoist prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, or Prachanda (“fierce”), on May 4th offers a chance to find out. Mr Dahal was protesting against a move by the president, egged on by the aforementioned critics, to reverse his sacking of the country’s army chief, General Rookmangud Katawal. Unless President Ram Baran Yadav relents, the Maoists say they will not rejoin the government. The debacle has jeopardised an already flagging peace process.

General Katawal deserved the boot. A devotee of Nepal’s deposed king, Gyanendra, whose office was abolished last year to draw the Maoists into Nepal’s first post-war election, he has never hidden his hatred for his former foes in a decade-long conflict. In December, he refused to curtail a recruitment drive, which the UN called a violation of the 2006 peace agreement. When the government then refused his request to extend the service of eight brigadier-generals, he again resisted. After he forbade the army to take part in an athletics contest last month because the Maoists’ former army, currently corralled under UN supervision, was also to take part, the government asked General Katawal to explain himself on all three issues. His haughty response prompted Mr Dahal’s action.

The general’s insubordination conceals a more serious disagreement: over how to dispose of the Maoists’ former fighters. Under the terms of the peace agreement, negotiated between the Maoists and their political opponents under India’s aegis, some of the 23,000-odd corralled must be recruited into the army. The instrument of a power grab by Gyanendra in 2005, the army must meanwhile be made less elitist and more accountable. But General Katawal, with India’s blessing, has resisted these reforms. Pointing to the Maoists’ continuing revolutionary rhetoric, his backers argue that only an unreformed army can defend Nepal from its elected government. Kumar Madhav Nepal, a leader of a mainstream leftist party known as the UML, and touted as the next prime minister, says they “clearly want to capture power”.

The Maoists’ rhetoric is certainly worrying. So is the thuggery of their storm-trooping youth wing. Yet Maoist leaders also hint that their virulent rhetoric is to placate their frustrated rank-and-file. On May 6th, Mr Dahal said he would not join a national-unity government, as his opponents say they want, unless Mr Yadav reversed his decision; but the Maoists’ democratic commitment was unchanged.

No doubt, he has given reason to doubt this. Yet worries about how easily the army might be corrupted by Maoist recruitment may be overblown. And the peace process, which should also entail accounting for the war’s atrocities, is on hold. So is work on a drafting a new constitution, with which Nepal’s elected assembly is primarily entrusted. With almost half its two-year term gone, little progress has been made, and, needing a two-thirds majority, is unlikely while the Maoists, who control 38% of the house, are in opposition.

Even with more goodwill, this exercise would be contested. The Maoists, in a draft constitution released in March, demand an executive presidency and extreme devolution of powers from the centre to 13 ethnically-based provinces. The UML wants a ceremonial president, a directly elected prime minister and a similar devolution, but to less ethnically-tinged states. The Nepali Congress, the third main party, advocates a Westminster-style parliamentary system, and less devolution.

While squabbling continues in Kathmandu, organic devolution is taking place in many mutinous places. It is most extreme in the southern Terai region, where a 2006 insurrection by ethnic Madhesis has sparked agitations by their neighbours. A militant group of Tharus, who claim to be the region’s original inhabitants and 42% of its population (or double the government’s estimate), rose up this year in protest against their official classification as Madhesis, and to demand Tharu control of an autonomous Terai.

This week, in response to Mr Dahal’s resignation, the group ended its second two-week blockade of Kathmandu, which has worsened the capital’s existing fuel shortage. Asked when this agitation might resume, the group’s leader, a 34-year-old former Maoist fighter called Laxmi Tharu, replies cheerily: “As soon as the next government is formed."

The Economist

Nepal's Palace Massacre: Skeletons Still in the Closet?

By Ishaan Tharoor for Time

It's a story worthy of Shakespearean tragedy, populated by characters plucked from a farce. There is the beloved monarch, magnanimous and complacent. There is the moody crown prince. There is the prince's cousin — a "playboy" with a belly and a ponytail — who, after years of silence, professes alone to know the truth of his royal family's demise. And in the background are the Maoists, once guerrillas, now rulers, keen to spin this whole set piece to their political advantage.

Nepal's palace massacre in 2001 — when the Crown Prince Dipendra allegedly gunned down 10 members of his own family, including his father, King Birendra Shah, before shooting himself — has, for the most part, receded into memory in this impoverished Himalayan nation. Since then, a Maoist rebellion found its way into power, transformed the kingdom into a republican democracy and abolished the institution of the monarchy altogether last year. Yet the current government, headed by the former rebels, still indulges in periodic bouts of royal-bashing, often to paper over the increasingly apparent shortcomings of their own rule. As fuel lines in Kathmandu stretch more than two kilometers and power cuts ravage the country, the Maoists announced last month their intention to form a commission to revisit the massacre eight years after it happened, tightening the screw on the lingering survivors of the 250-year-old monarchy.

That decision has put some of the chief remaining royals on the defensive. Though investigations in the immediate aftermath of the attack closed the case, pinning the blame on an emotional Prince Dipendra, most Nepalis never quite accepted the accession of Birendra's businessman brother, Gyanendra, to the throne, and balked at his son Paras becoming crown prince. Paras is known chiefly for his penchant for fast cars and liquor, often in combination. But last week he titillated the nation by leaking to a tabloid in Singapore — where he now lives in a luxury home — alleged proof of how his cousin Dipendra had secretly plotted the murder for years, in what could shape up to be a bid to distance himself from the government's renewed scrutiny of the incident and any possible arrest, now that he is no longer royalty.

The established narrative of the tragedy suggests Dipendra was in a drunken fury, irate that his father and family continued to disapprove of his relationship with a woman from a rival clan of nobles. It was supposedly a crime of passion and intoxication — but Paras told Singapore's New Paper: "There was no smell of alcohol on [Dipendra]." According to Paras, the crown prince had intended to take down his popular father ever since Birendra relinquished absolute power after pro-democracy protests in 1990. The loss of that political mandate was made worse for Dipendra after his father scuttled an arms deal with a German rifle maker that could have yielded the prince a windfall of over $1 million. "That was the real trigger," claimed Paras, though former aides to the monarchy have denied such a transaction was ever in the works.

In yet another new twist, Paras also told the New Paper he may return to Nepal and participate in electoral politics, heading up a party of "young professionals and bankers" — but it seems unlikely the deeply unpopular 37-year-old — an embodiment, for many, of royal excess — would gain much from such a venture. "That's what everyone in Nepal is laughing about," says Kunda Dixit, editor of the Nepali Times, a Kathmandu-based weekly. "It's remarkable how quickly people here have otherwise forgotten the monarchy," he says.

The Maoists, though, who waged a decade-long war against the royal army, have not forgotten so easily. A recent trip to India by Gyanendra, who lives quietly in a private residence in the capital, prompted howls of outrage from members of government, wary of his dealings with Nepal's influential southern neighbor. The Maoists, observers say, need to raise the specter of royalist nefariousness to boost their own flagging support. "They need to create a sense of threat, of a larger enemy, to distract the people from their failings," says Dixit.

Those failings include the nine-month-old government's inability to provide much-needed development, from infrastructure to energy. This year, Kathmandu has suffered routine 17-hour power cuts, which has led to a drying up of foreign investment. Enduring fuel shortages have sent commodities' prices soaring and the financial downturn has led to thousands of overseas workers — whose remittances comprise some 16% of the national GDP —returning home, unemployed. National security has also deteriorated, partially as a consequence of the government's failure to integrate the roughly 30,000-strong Maoist rebel army, still quartered in remote camps throughout the country, with the formerly royalist state forces. Some frustrated Maoist commanders have even called for the overthrow of their own democratic government.

In the face of this, few in Kathmandu expect much from the inquiry into the royal family's murder. Many other questions remain unanswered from Nepal's decade-long civil war. Over 13,000 died, many of whom were civilians, both at the hands of rebel and government soldiers. But neither the ruling Maoists nor elements of the old royalist regime have heeded calls to investigate charges of war crimes. "Not a single case has been prosecuted so far," says Manjushree Thapa, author of Forget Kathmandu, an award-winning history of the conflict. "As ever," she says, "we Nepalis are not used to finding out the truth."

Nepal’s minorities find their voice

By Harry Sanna

In the rocky savannahs of Nepal’s southern Terai plains, a people long-silenced by a centuries-old Hindu monarchy are beginning to make themselves heard.

Since the country’s democratic end to a decade-long civil war, Nepal’s minorities, including more than one million Muslims, are gaining a political voice for the first time in the Himalayan nation’s history.

With the constitution currently being redrafted by Nepal’s new federal republic, a swathe of minority groups, many from the poor districts in the south, are pressuring the government to include articles legitimising their own identities.

In early March, Tharus, one of the ethnic minority groups living along the 1,700km Indo-Nepal Terai border region, held a two-week strike to demand recognition. Several days later, a prominent Muslim group made the same move.

The government signed an agreement with the group a day before the strikes were scheduled to begin, promising inclusion in the new constitution.

Among their demands are a Muslim Commission with connections to the government, an autonomous Madrasa Board, a Haj Committee and greater legitimacy for Islamic law.

“This is the most opportune time Muslims have ever had for ensuring greater rights,” said Bhaskar Gautam, a political analyst specialising in the matter. “Getting their place in the constitution is very important for them, as it is for all Nepal’s minorities.”

According to a census published by the government in 2006, Muslims make up 4.2 per cent of the country’s 30 million population, and Birganj, a border town and trade link between Nepal and the Indian state of Bihar, is fast becoming the epicentre for Muslim politicisation and progress.

“In the coming days, we will start our mighty struggle,” said Mohammed Lal Babu, a Muslim activist. “Nothing comes without agitation, procession and protest. We will be taking it to the streets very soon.”

A key fighting point is identity. In early 2007, the ethnic Madhesi in Terai started their demands for recognition. While many Muslims are currently trying to separate themselves from the Madhesi’s demands, others in the community see the struggle as a united front.

Mr Babu, 41, is one such activist and a member of the Madhesi Muslim Forum. His beliefs, different from some of his peers, lie in the connections between Madhesis and Muslims.

“Madhesis are a very disenfranchised community, but Muslims are marginalised for being both Madhesi and Muslim. They are the most marginalised in all of Nepal.”

The history of Muslims in Nepal sheds light on the complexity of their current identity crisis. Academic sources claim that Islam was introduced to the Himalayan kingdom via Arab traders, who established a route into Tibet. The majority, however, are Indian Muslims, with a large portion settling there after fleeing to the foothills from the British Raj after the Sepoy rebellion of 1857.

The economic situation for a majority of the Muslim population is grim. Many working in traditional jobs such as tailoring and watch repairing are being forced out by growing industrialisation. Others farm, living hand to mouth. Bashir Harwari, 51, runs a laundry in Birganj.

“The lack of education is a big problem for us. We have been oppressed for so longer under a Hindu monarchy, and now we have very little.”

To try to better their conditions, many have moved to Middle Eastern countries in search of work.

“Some of them are doing OK, but most of them are living in the very worst of conditions,” Mr Gautam, the political analyst, said.

Another key grievance the Muslims have is the state of madrasas, which first began to spring up in Nepal after multiparty democratisation in 1990. Today, there are several thousand.

Most of the funding for madrasas comes through zakas, localised Islamic community funds. But with a lack of investment, many are unable to fulfil their duties by preparing young Muslims for higher and college education.

“Under the terms of zakas, the madrasas rely on the funding by the community,” said Mohammed Habiburrahman, the vice principal of a madrasa in Birganj.

“We are a very poor community, so how much funding do you think we can provide? We need madrasas guaranteed and constituted by the government.”

In rural areas, many still practise elements of Islamic law, however, there is no legal legitimacy for this in Nepal. The taking of multiple wives and the talaq, where a man can divorce his wife without any justification, is still considered illegal under the country’s laws; which pressure groups are now pushing to have legitimised on a localised level.

After the democracy movement of 2006 and abolition of the monarchy in 2008, Nepal officially announced its position as a secular state, ousting a Hindu monarchy that had been in place for 240 years. Since then, tension has simmered over religious issues in the small nation.

Aside from its position as unofficial headquarters for many Muslim groups, the Terai has been a flashpoint for communal attacks between Hindus and Muslims. After the announcement of secularism in 2006, Hindu nationalists rioted in Birganj, closing the city down for days. Last year, there were two separate incidents of mosques being bombed in which two people died.

“For the most part, we are in social harmony here,” said Babujan Ali, a recognisable face among Birganj’s 30,000 Muslims.

“However, nowadays there are some radical groups who want to disturb the peace. There are some Hindu fundamentalists who come [to the Terai] make trouble, then flee again back to Kathmandu.”

Mr Ali, 60, is a member of Nepal’s Haj committee. In his work with hajis, he has become a figurehead in the push for more rights for Nepal’s would-be pilgrims. Currently, the home ministry is in charge of deciding who may, or may not, make the journey. This, Mr Ali believes, is unacceptable.

“We want independence and autonomy from the government,” said Mr Ali, who recently returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca, along with 476 other Nepalis. “While the government’s funding for my trip was adequate, there must be more for the community.”

Further clouding decision-making over such demands have been periodic reports of Islamic fundamentalist infiltration across the belt, fed primarily by the Indian media. The claims, ranging from Pakistan’s secret intelligence and al Qa’eda funding to exiled Kashmiri separatists, remain unsubstantiated.

Modern history in Nepal has shown that political grievances, such as that of the country’s Muslims, can lead to extended periods of conflict. Aggravating this further is the weak presence of representatives currently – only 17 MPs, out of a 601-seat assembly, are Muslim.
However, the current climate undeniably shows that the time has never been better for Nepal’s Muslims to fight for their rights.

Whether the government, already burdened with crippling power shortages and an ongoing peace process, will address those demands, remains to be seen.


* The National