Manushi Yami Bhattarai was in a jeep up in Gharwal on Saturday
afternoon when she got a call from her father, the Maoist ideologue and
Nepal’s former Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai. He told her did not
want her to get a shock after hearing from other sources - and broke the
news. He would, in a few hours, quit the Maoist party and resign from
parliament.
Manushi was stunned. The Maoist party was not just a regular party for the Bhattarai family - it was their life. The family was underground through the years of the Maoist insurgency, moving around small towns and big cities in India and sporadically spending time in base areas in Nepal, living separately to avoid to being spotted. Her mother, Hisila Yami, was a prominent leader and a former minister. Manushi herself took on other identities when she went to small schools in the Indian hills, and college in Delhi and had been active in student politics. This was a big moment.
Bhattarai called a press conference on Saturday afternoon and announced he was quitting the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), a force he had helped build, as well as resigning from Parliament. He said an era had ended with the Constitution, but he was deeply regretful that Madhesi and Tharu concerns had not been addressed. A Constitution through the CA had been a political line he had pushed but the fact that half the country was not celebrating the promulgation had dampened the occasion.
An academic revolutionary
Bhattarai is one of the most striking figures of Nepali politics; his story is the story of the last twenty years of Nepali history.
Bhattarai got increasingly radicalised during his time in India, while studying in Chandigarh and later in Delhi’s JNU, when he saw the state of Nepali workers in India. He organised the students and working class, got involved with Nepali extreme left platforms back home against an autocratic monarchy, even as he finished a PhD on Nepal’s underdevelopment in the 80s.
While Bhattarai participated in the 1990 movement for the restoration of democracy, he and his then party objected to the Constitution that emerged as a compromise between the king and democratic parties. Instead, they demanded that the Constitution must be drafted by a Constituent Assembly and monarchy be given no space.
Subsequently, Bhattarai joined another radical left party led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’. The two men together decided to launch a People’s War in 1996. Its political and economic rationale was laid out by Bhattarai in a seminal text where he documented how Nepal was ‘semi colonial’- under the political and economic grip of India - and ‘semi feudal’, and only a revolution could liberate the oppressed.
Such a political project was dismissed as a fantasy in a post Cold War World but it came rather close to fruition.
Prachanda was undoubtedly the mass charismatic figure, the organisation builder, the supreme leader and the man who commanded the loyalty of the Maoist fighters on the ground. But Bhattarai was the political mind who drew up the party documents, conceived of the need to expand the party base by including the issues of oppressed ‘nationalities’ or ethnic minorities and Madhesi, and build relationships with those outside the party fold in the media, civil society and international community. The two men had more than their share of tensions, but recognised they complemented each other.
Manushi was stunned. The Maoist party was not just a regular party for the Bhattarai family - it was their life. The family was underground through the years of the Maoist insurgency, moving around small towns and big cities in India and sporadically spending time in base areas in Nepal, living separately to avoid to being spotted. Her mother, Hisila Yami, was a prominent leader and a former minister. Manushi herself took on other identities when she went to small schools in the Indian hills, and college in Delhi and had been active in student politics. This was a big moment.
Bhattarai called a press conference on Saturday afternoon and announced he was quitting the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), a force he had helped build, as well as resigning from Parliament. He said an era had ended with the Constitution, but he was deeply regretful that Madhesi and Tharu concerns had not been addressed. A Constitution through the CA had been a political line he had pushed but the fact that half the country was not celebrating the promulgation had dampened the occasion.
An academic revolutionary
Bhattarai is one of the most striking figures of Nepali politics; his story is the story of the last twenty years of Nepali history.
Bhattarai got increasingly radicalised during his time in India, while studying in Chandigarh and later in Delhi’s JNU, when he saw the state of Nepali workers in India. He organised the students and working class, got involved with Nepali extreme left platforms back home against an autocratic monarchy, even as he finished a PhD on Nepal’s underdevelopment in the 80s.
While Bhattarai participated in the 1990 movement for the restoration of democracy, he and his then party objected to the Constitution that emerged as a compromise between the king and democratic parties. Instead, they demanded that the Constitution must be drafted by a Constituent Assembly and monarchy be given no space.
Subsequently, Bhattarai joined another radical left party led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’. The two men together decided to launch a People’s War in 1996. Its political and economic rationale was laid out by Bhattarai in a seminal text where he documented how Nepal was ‘semi colonial’- under the political and economic grip of India - and ‘semi feudal’, and only a revolution could liberate the oppressed.
Such a political project was dismissed as a fantasy in a post Cold War World but it came rather close to fruition.
Prachanda was undoubtedly the mass charismatic figure, the organisation builder, the supreme leader and the man who commanded the loyalty of the Maoist fighters on the ground. But Bhattarai was the political mind who drew up the party documents, conceived of the need to expand the party base by including the issues of oppressed ‘nationalities’ or ethnic minorities and Madhesi, and build relationships with those outside the party fold in the media, civil society and international community. The two men had more than their share of tensions, but recognised they complemented each other.
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