Nepal Coverage: Revolution and Constituent Assembly

by Mike Ely

Post and discuss Nepal coverage in this thread

The eyes of the world are on Nepal, as a nodal point of their revolution has emerged around the elections for the CA gathering that will debate restructing the society and government.

One way or another things may come a head: Nepal is a country with two armies, one revolutionary Maoist and the other monarchist-oppressive. It is a country where millions of people are determined the old order must go, and are now engaged in a huge fierce debate and struggle over WHAT should replace that old hated order. And in the mix is a creative, massive revolutionary Maoist force (that is also divided into visible wings over direction and goals).

and it is a country with the massive modern Indian army posed at its border — not far from the camps where the Nepali Maoist guerrilla armies have been gathered.

Nepalese society is going through a much belated and popular “bourgeois democratic revolution” (against feudalism) — while this Maoist force is fighting to open a road to socialism by leading that democratic revolution toward the establishment of a revolutionary power of the oppressed.

It is a source of real bitterness and shame, that we revolutionaries in the U.S. are not in a position to reach out broadly to the people around us here — to help politically explain to them the stakes and lessons of this important struggle. The previous organized Maoist forces (centered on the RCP) have simply refused to conduct such work. And we at our Kasama project are still too new-born and primitive to have gotten a serious campaign off the ground (yet!)

Our model must break with the whole legacy of “support” movements — that too often offered a public face of uncritical cheerleading. We need to put all the possibilities and controversies of this moment into peoples hands: the dangers, the conflicts, the controversial actions of this revolution. We need to encourage debate over the living way revolutions pose themselves and the real riptides they face

It has been many decades since a revolutionary force stood at the doorway of nationwide state power. Many revolutionaries don’t even know what a revolution looks like — what the riptides of approach unleash. they don’t appreciate what Lenin and Mao experienced when they talked about the maneuvering and pivoting needed to gather forces, neutralize enemies, probe openings, weigh risks, challenge stronger military forces, prepare for foreign intervention, work through internal line struggles, train gathering revolutionary forces, and more.

This is a living laboratory of revolution unfolding before us — and has been unfolding for a decade and more.

It may fail. Most revolutions fail. Most attempts at revolution fail. It may seize power. It may attempt power and be broken. It may flinch at the doorway of power and lose strategic nerve. That history is unwritten.

But we should watch these events as students and internationalist comrades. We should not assume the best, but we should learn from whatever happens. and we should learn from the ways they brought themselves to this moment. (Not to imitate, like Trekkers dressing up as their favorite characters) but to really learn the methods of applying and developing revolutionary theory in a living moment in the course of class struggle and line struggle. Let’s urge those around us to watch and debate with us.

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Our previous notes on this election:

In Nepal, the anti-monarchy struggle and the peoples war has produced a situation where a broad range of parties have agreed to a “Constituent Assembly” — an extra-ordinary gathering outside the ordinary parliamentary framework to decide the future framework of Nepali society and government.

There are powerful forces that have repeatedly opposed the creation of such a body — for the obvious reasons that they know that results from the popular process may well be sharply opposed to the status quo. There is struggle both over whether to hold the elections for the Constituent Assembly, and over what kind of society and state this Assembly will approve. We will of course give special attention to the politics and program of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) who, after over a decade of peoples war is pushing (within this framework of the Constituent Assembly) to prepare themselves, the people and the country as a whole for a revolutionary transition to a new state and for the socialist road. As news unfolds from these events we will post them here.

Please be aware that reports from the mainstream press are often very misleading. We will post such accounts anyway, and trust the ability of our readers (and our collective discussion) to sort things through.

Previous Kasama posts on Nepal’s revolution

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