New Darshan Bhet In Town: Prachanda Visits Indian Embassy

Plus: American ambassador returns from New Delhi trip

So the news of the day is pretty much surprising. Not so surprising perhaps. Prachanda, the leader of the Maoist ‘revolution’ in Nepal, went to see the Indian ambassador in Lainchaur. Reactions given to media by Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, second in command after Prachanda, are also interesting. According to Dr. Bhattarai, the ambassador told the Maoist leaders: ‘[The peace process] is your internal matter. We have nothing to say except that we are always eager to help” Nepal in its bid to establish peace in society. Ha, ha. It’s actually waste of words to talk about the Indian intervention in Nepali politics. We all know where Prachanda operated his movement against feudal force of Nepal. And here Dr. Bhattarai claims that Indian ambassador feels whatever happening in Npela is ‘it’s interal matter.’

A few months ago Dr. Baburam Bhattarai had met the Indian envoy. Some observers in Kathmandu were a bit surprised about how Prachanda maintained protocol! Yes, that’s not an important issue but it would have been better, same folks believe, if the meeting was held in location other than the Indian embassy itself. We have seen ambassadors, most recently James F Moriarty of America, visiting CPN UML General Secretary in the Balkhu headquarters of UML. Talking about Moriarity, the American envoy returned to Kathmandu today visiting New Delhi and, news reports say, discussing Nepal peace process with Indian leadership. There are no details of this visit but it has already been publicized that both India and the US want Maoists to be ‘disarmed’ before the rebels join an interim government that will hold the election of Constituent Assembly.

Just in case if you have forgotten, Maoists are still ‘terrorists’ for the Indian government and it will be interesting to see how India will react, officially that is, when Prachanda goes New Delhi to address Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in November. Leave that for future. What happened in today’s darshan bhet (audience)? We are not told what the Maoists duo ‘briefed’ the Indian ambassador today but we know about the assurance they got from Shiv Shankar Mukharjee: Maoist leader CP Gajurel ‘Gaurav’, who is in a jail in Chennai, southern India, will be released soon.