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People's Nepal vs Royal Nepal: there is far more to the struggle in the mountain kingdom than a simple tale of Maoists versus Kathmandu.

Article Excerpt
To label as Maoists the rural revolutionaries steadily wresting Nepal from the grip of feudal monarchy conceals as much as it reveals. The revolutionaries proudly call themselves Maoists, short for the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist or CPN-M. Their website (www.insof.org) parades Marx, Engels, Stalin and Mao in iconic array, a new pantheon of deities challenging the divine power of the world's last Hindu monarch, an incarnation of the deity Vishnu.

In the post-9/11 world, a Maoist guerilla insurgency of rural bandits steadily surrounding the cities seems like an echo from another era. Yet the Maoists do conform to the guerilla logic that seventy years ago enabled the small but utterly determined Chinese Communist Party to win over a peasantry exhausted by the predations of a corrupt state. Like the People's Liberation Army generations ago, they hide out in the mountains, strike fast and hard against outposts of state power, and steadily extend their control over entire districts.

The Mao they worship is a Mao all but forgotten--even in today's China, where a popular cult worshipping Mao the 'terrible emperor' persists. The earlier bandit Mao of the 1930s, in the mountains, on the Long March, is the Mao of today's Nepali mimesis. This Mao is man of the people, incarnation of the will of the masses, teaching the exploited peasantry to speak bitterness, to denounce their oppressors and join the revolution. The later Mao who exploited the peasants ruthlessly to finance heavy industry is not to be seen.

Like Mao, these revolutionaries also write a lot, long manifestos in impeccable Marxist jargon, downloadable in English. Unlike the world's remaining Communist parties in power--China, Vietnam, West Bengal, South Africa--the rhetoric is undiluted, a classic blast from a past long since past. There is no accommodation with the market, no newfound enthusiasm for capitalism here. CPN-M issues regular Maoist Information Bulletins updating military victories and issuing the latest slogans for painting on banners.

The Maoists had plenty of pent-up popular grievances to...

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