Dilip Simeon's blog

A perception that India is supporting ongoing instability in Nepal is likely to alienate its people and political parties. Media reports in India indicate that “political and government sources” prefer mid-term general elections in Nepal.  The current political turmoil in Nepal has grown out of a leadership challenge to Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli from within his own party, the Nepal Communist Party (NCP). He has converted it into a larger institutional crisis by dissolving Parliament. However, Nepal’s constitutionally elected Pratinidhi Sabha or Parliament can legally continue for its full five-year term. A new government can yet be formed by either the majority of a single party or through a coalition of parties. Neither alternative has been exhausted. The Supreme Court could still uphold the sanctity of the present Parliament. Most importantly, there is no mass uprising demanding fresh polls. On the contrary, people on the streets are protesting against Oli’s subve...

Kathmandu: In an unprecedented move, Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli recommended on Sunday the  dissolution of the House of Representatives  and that mid-term elections should be held on April 30 and May 10, 2021. Oli came to power in 2018  with two-thirds support  in parliament, becoming the first prime minister in the last three the decade to receive such a historic mandate. Despite objections from some cabinet colleagues, PM Oli took the decision unilaterally and convinced President Bidya Bhandari to endorse his recommendation. To the surprise of many, Bhandari immediately endorsed the PM’s move without taking time to examine the constitutionality of the move. There was neither a no-confidence motion against Oli in parliament nor had the Nepali Communist Party officials asked him to quit. The prime minister took the step with the assumption that sooner or later, his own party would remove him from power. PM Oli’s move is a serious blow to Nepal’s newfo...

NB:  A calamity caused solely by the negligence and corruption of the Nepali authorities.  DS An experienced mountaineer has described the “death, carnage and chaos” at the top of  Mount Everest  as climbers pushed past bodies to reach the world’s highest summit. The death toll on the mountain grew to 11 in the past day after an  American doctor was killed  while descending from the peak. It emerged also that an Australian climber was discovered unconscious   but had survived after being transported downhill on the back of a yak. Elia Saikaly, a film-maker, reached Hillary Step, the final stage before the summit, on the morning of 23 May, where he said the sunrise revealed the lifeless body of another climber. With little choice at that altitude but to keep moving, his team – including Joyce Azzam, the first Lebanese woman to climb the world’s “Seven Summits” – made it to the peak a short time later. “I cannot believe what I saw up there,”...

NB : In the eyes of the RSS/BJP government, human rights advocacy is criminal activity. And they talk about their resistance to the Emergency! DS On December 20, 2017,  a Bangkok-based Nepali national, who is also a human rights activist, was denied entry into India and deported after being detained for 20 hours at Tiruchirapalli airport in Tamil Nadu.  Here’s his account of the events. At midnight on December 20, 2017, I reached Trichy Airport from Bangkok by Air Asia Flight FD-110. I was on a holiday to Madurai (Tamil Nadu) and Adoor (Kerala) to participate in a few family get-togethers and celebrate Christmas with friends and colleagues. At around 0040, I reached the immigration desk. The lady officer on duty signalled that there was something wrong as soon as she keyed in my passport number. She had a surprised look and asked me to spell my name. I did so like an obedient child. She keyed in something again and with the same look, left the counter.  Withi...

Every political actor and power centre seems to agree that the country needs to be rescued from the mess it is in. And each one has a cure ready, but for the others. No one seems willing to introspect. Narayankaji Shrestha, vice-chairman of the ruling CPN (Maoist Centre), met several Indian leaders in Delhi - Ram Madhav (BJP) to Sitaram Yechury (CPM) - last week to tell them that “Indian interference in Nepal’s internal politics must stop, and let Nepalis run their own politics”. In a way, he was blaming India for the prolonged transition towards a constitutional republic and most things - from politics to the economy - going wrong in Nepal. But he also subtly warned Indian “friends” that more political mess ups will bring the monarchy back. The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists, a splinter group of the Maoist movement, led by Netra Bikram Chand aka “Biplab” is currently holding its “secret national convention” in far-west Rolpa, which is likely to announce a “parallel” government ...

Murky politics in Nepal and a personal vendetta appear to have combined to close down a liberal, pan-regional news and analysis magazine that has been in business for 29 years. Last month, Kathmandu-based  Himal Southasian   announced  that it will suspend publication from November. The August 24 announcement by the Southasia Trust, which publishes the quarterly magazine, said “suspension was the only option” because of “non-cooperation by regulatory state agencies”. Grants meant for  Himal Southasian  were not being approved, work permits for non-Nepalese editorial staff were not renewed, and there were unreasonable delays in processing payments for international contributors. The announcement came four months after the magazine’s founding editor, Kanak Mani Dixit, was  arrested  by the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority – Nepal’s apex constitutional body for corruption control – on charges of “irregularities” related to a...

All of Us in Our Own Lives   by Manjushree Thapa Reviewed by ROSS ADKIN IT WAS NOT UNTIL  the second decade of the twentieth century that Tri Chandra College, in Kathmandu, became the first institution in Nepal to offer degrees in English. This was arranged through an affiliation with the University of Patna, but Nepal’s rulers—the Ranas, hereditary prime ministers who exercised power in the name of an ostensibly sovereign Hindu monarch—made sure that students took their exams in Kathmandu, and did not allow them to travel to Patna. The arrangement was in keeping with a long-standing policy of restrictions on higher education, partly aimed to insulate young Nepalis from the nationalist and political ferment then sweeping Indian campuses. The Ranas were overthrown in 1951, inaugurating a brief experiment with democracy that ended with Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah, the king of Nepal, imposing royal rule in 1960. Mahendra took on a nation-building project to unite his...

 Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa is visiting to assure New Delhi that the time is ripe to "normalise" the Indo-Nepal relationship. Political realities, however, haven't changed since the signing of the 16-point pact that took Kathmandu's power elite closer to Beijing. While the survivors of the earthquake that devastated Nepal last June were still reeling, key leaders of four major parties met surreptitiously to seal the 16-point deal that paved the way for "fast track" promulgation of a unitary constitution without public consultation. Like aftershocks, the unintended consequences of the divisive statute continue to threaten a fragile polity. Nepal has become a Hindu State through the backdoor Madhesis and Janjatis are still agitating for constitutional amendments to ensure equality in citizenship rights; population-based representation in both houses of the parliament; proportionate inclusion in institutions of the state; and demarcation of fe...

Ah Nepal. Proud, sovereign, never conquered. Landlocked yet a feisty yam despite two massive grinding boulders, China to the north, India in all other directions. A good Nepali looks around him with distrust. He knows that since British times – even Mughal times – others have coveted his territory and his natural resources. Hell, he is even taught that his forebears fought the British East Company and won in the early nineteenth century. He – and it is almost always a “he” – is ready to fight and fulminate at the merest questioning of Nepali sovereignty and independence. Britain’s successors, who run today’s Indian state, are – he believes – even more rapacious. Why, I was once told by a Nepali writer who should have known better, India has even developed ways to drain Himalayan rivers, some nefarious downstream technology that magically sucks up water as it approaches the border. I encountered this anti-India mindset very early in my time as BBC Nepal ...

The contrived controversy over the so-called blockade of the India-Nepal border has obscured the perilous path on which the current ruling elite in Nepal is taking the country. A deliberate and risky political and social polarisation is being engendered in order to camouflage a brazen attempt to entrench the privileged status of a high-caste elite with an arrogant sense of entitlement. As has happened a number of times in the past, ultra-nationalism in the form of anti-Indianism is being assiduously peddled to deflect attention from a more sinister domestic agenda. This carries the risk of reversing some of the historic gains made by the democracy movement, which all sections of Nepal's diverse population made sacrifices for - and which won the support of India. There are a number of misperceptions in India about Nepal. We appear to have tacitly accepted the Pahari-Plains dichotomy and the associated perception that the latter are "Indian-origin" and thus enjoying the ...

The expanding hiatus between the governments of Nepal and India seems to be replicating itself at various levels of the society on both sides. Last week, school children waving placards– mostly appeals to  Narendra Modi  to the end humanitarian crisis in Nepal– formed a human chain in as 17-km perimeter ring road in Kathmandu. While the students paraded on the streets, the government framed a protest letter against the Seema Suraksha Bal (SSB) for shooting at four Nepali citizens in the eastern Nepalese Sunsari district, from within Nepal territory allegedly as part of the drive against fertiliser smuggling. A similar incident took place on Sunday as 13 SSB personnel, six of them armed, entered another district in the east, allegedly in hot-pursuit of dacoits. Security agencies of Nepal took them in custody for few hours, and then released them after the Indian side said such incidents will not recur. However, with trust deficit increasing on both sides, motives are b...

NB: Those who imagined the Maoist armed struggle and the revolution of 2006 to be a harbinger of fundamental change in Nepal may now consider what has prompted the various Marxist-Leninists to compromise with traditional caste and political elites and even ally with reactionary politicians in order to crush Madhesi aspirations. Madhesis were ardent supporters of the revolution, but are now treated as 'anti-national' - a term of abuse we are familiar with in India. What happened to proletarian internationalism comrades? To workers solidarity across ethnic divisions? You should hang your heads in shame. DS Monday marked the 100th day of the Madhesi-Tharu mass movement in Nepal’s southern plains -- right across India’s border. The struggle, which began in mid-August to prevent a ‘discriminatory constitution’, has transitioned into seeking substantial amendments in the statute and revision of federal boundaries once it was promulgated. But with Kathmandu’s establishment u...

They fired teargas shells, scared the children. Everyone here is very scared, scared of the police. The women and children don’t want to go out of the house. We are being treated inhumanely , like second-class citizens. Like we are not Nepalis, like we’re criminals or terrorists.  –A witness of police violence in Mahottari district, September 2015 If an APF [Armed Police Force] personnel is obstructed from discharging his duties or is physically attacked, he may use necessary or final force in order to defend self, maintain law and order and to arrest the attacker.  –Section 8, article 58(3) of the Nepali government's July 7 Armed Police Force regulation  On September 11, 2015, police used teargas and opened fire on a group of protesters who were walking through the Mills Area neighborhood on their way toward the center of Janakpur, a town in southern Nepal. Bullet marks on the houses testify to the use of live ammunition. ...