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The new constitution commits to protecting the “freedom of expression and opinion”. But in the next breath, it talks about “reasonable restrictions” that may be placed on free speech and dissenting opinion if such acts are deemed to impinge on some national interest. Is such qualification of free speech warranted in a democratic society? As sovereign citizens, shouldn’t we be able to say and write anything, with no restrictions at all?

“Principally, free speech should not be restricted under any condition,” says Bipin Adhikari, an expert on constitutional law. “But it is much easier to advocate for absolute freedom of speech in developed countries. Perhaps it is unrealistic to apply the same standards to developing countries where freedom of expression is but one of the many citizen rights that need state protection.”

Others are not convinced. In the view of writer CK Lal, the ‘Hindu caste elite’ is getting more and more entrenched in the higher state apparatus, which in turn has led to the sidelining of dissenting views, especially those of the marginalized communities. He thinks a society built on the foundation of a single religion is bound to be intolerant.  

The situation can be even worse for women. “When a woman speaks, people still feel the need to ‘correct’ her. So engaging in equal terms in public forums or having a productive debate is close to impossible,” says Rubeena Mahato, a writer and newspaper columnist.  

They may have a point. But at least there is now an open and healthy debate on the issue. A good start perhaps.

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There is no point crying over spilled milk, right? Perhaps. But what does it say about the mindset of the seemingly all-pow­erful Prime Minister KP Oli, and his equally strong counterpart, Nar­endra Modi, that the head of govern­ment in Nepal was once again forced to make New Delhi his first foreign stop, sorry, pilgrimage?It suggests that much of PM Oli’s talk of pursuing an independent foreign policy course is bluster. His hasty visit to New Delhi is an indica­tion that he too subscribes firmly to the view that Nepal’s leader should always toe India’s line, nay, try to obey the old master even before he has made his wish public. The hush-hush one-on-one between the two leaders in New Delhi, for an hour and a half, fans this speculation.

On the other hand, India’s eagerness to welcome Oli before he ‘escaped’ to any other country betrayed a colonial mindset and an inferiority complex vis-à-vis China on Modi’s part. But in retrospect Modi was perhaps confi­dent that he could use his charms to get Oli to turn his back on China.

If a Nepali prime minister could first go to, say, Beijing instead of New Delhi, it would kill two birds with one stone. One, it would dispel the widespread perception that Nepali leaders are always beholden to India and cannot act independently. Had Oli dared to venture to China first, he would have poked a big hole in this self-defeating narrative. And it would also be a credible proof of his nation­alist credentials.

Two, it would also benefit India, whether the current Indian establishment realizes it or not. India could then perhaps deal with Nepal as a rising global power, which it is, rather than as an insecure regional bully that likes to scare its small neigh­bors into submission.

Were Indian leaders and bureau­crats more relaxed in their role as rep­resentatives of a rising global power, they would see that India enjoys nat­ural advantages in South Asia that is hard to emulate for any other power, including China. The allure of the largest democracy in the world, with such potent soft power tools as cricket and Bollywood, would be virtually impossible to match.

PM Oli seems to be in a mood for a bluff. By going to India first, he, some way, wanted to show his allegiance to Modi. He would then be free to pursue his pet agenda of closer ties with Beijing. (Or perhaps it is China he is bluffing.) But why does a strong prime minister like him, perhaps the strongest in the history of dem­ocratic Nepal, need to resort to such chicanery, and one which would likely backfire when he eventually plays his hand? If he was so sure of himself, and so keen to protect the national interest, as he professes, why could he not take India into con­fidence into breaking a useless and self-defeating tradition?

Again, it is a ridiculous tradition, sustained by fear (in Nepal) and insecurity (in India). With such anx­ieties and apprehensions guiding bilateral relations, Nepal-India ties are unlikely to come to an even keel. If there was one person who could have changed this hoary script, it was Oli—that dogged bulwark against the Indian blockade.

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli wanted to complete the merger between CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Center) before he left for India on April 6 for two main reasons, those close to him say. One, he wanted to negotiate with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, in the capacity of perhaps the strongest prime minister in Nepal’s democratic history. He has not forgotten his rather forgettable first state visit to India as prime minister in February 2016, just after the lifting of the nearly five-month-long border blockade. Although the blockade had been lifted, there was still a lot of mistrust between Oli and Modi, so much so that they could not even agree on a final joint statement. Oli feels the rude behavior of the Indian establishment back then primar­ily owed to his weak position in Nepal, as he led a wobbly coalition with the (unreliable) Maoists and the (opportunis­tic) monarchists. India, in other words, could find ways to remove him from office. “It would have been a different story had he gone to India as the undisputed leader of a political party that alone enjoyed a two-third majority in the national legislature,” says a close Oli aide.

Two, Oli wanted to wrap up the formal unification pro­cess with the Maoists before embarking on his second visit to India as he was afraid that his old friends in New Delhi— and despite the blockade still he has legions of them, carefully cultivated over the years—could try to talk him out of the left merger. Many senior government officials and security types in India, and who have at one time or the other worked closely with Oli, still harbor suspicions about the democratic credentials of the Maoists and their leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Pra­chanda’. With the merger locked in, Oli would not be in the awkward position of trying to placate his suspicious Indian friends. In the event, he had to settle for the second-best option: announcement of a date of the merger. Barring a list-minute hiccup, the formal merger will be announced on April 22, the birthday of Vladimir Lenin and the day the Communist Party of Nepal was born in 1949. Among the merger issues that are yet to be resolved: whether to incor­porate ‘people’s war’ in the new party statute, distribution of portfolios at district and provincial levels and the division of seats between the two merging parties in the 299-member central committee.

“Yes, there are a few differences between us. But rest assured a formal merger will be announced on April 22,” says senior UML leader Rajan Bhattarai. “Remaining differences can be settled even after the merger.”

With the left unity now all but guaranteed, PM Oli will feel he can negotiate from a position of strength during his India trip—and the subsequent one to China.

All kinds of questions are being asked about Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s upcoming trip to India (April 6-8), in what will be his first foreign visit after assuming office. If he is determined to maintain a balance between India and China, as he has consistently done in recent times, why is he blindly following the ritual of a Nepali prime min­ister always making New Delhi his first foreign stop? Why couldn’t he make a strong statement by, for instance, going to China first? Is he afraid of India? Or does it indicate that mending frayed ties with New Delhi will be his top foreign policy priority? “I have a feeling that Oli’s India trip is a bluff,” says Khadga KC, head of the Tribhuvan University’s Masters in Interna­tional Relations and Diplomacy (MIRD) program. “I think PM Oli wants to gain India’s confidence to the extent that he can then freely pursue his pet agenda—enhancing Nepal’s relations with China.”

KC makes an interesting suggestion. “The best-case sce­nario would be for the prime minister to first fly to New Delhi and from there directly go to Beijing,” he says. “In fact, if you follow interna­tional relations, you will see that foreign leaders routinely make such back-to-back visits to two rival countries to show that these leaders value both equally.” Such smart diplo­macy, KC reckons, would place PM Oli in good stead with Nepal’s two neighbors, whether or not he is bluffing India right now.

Indra Adhikari, deputy executive director at the Institute of Foreign Affairs, has a slightly different reading. “Whether we like it or not, the depth of relations between Nepal and India is incomparable to Nepal’s relations with any other country, including China,” she says. “I think by making New Delhi his first foreign stop, the prime minister is acknowledging this indubitable fact and doing what is in the national interest.”

That is how it should be, says Adhikari, as “India’s per­ception towards Nepal has also changed markedly since the time of the blockade.” There is no need to provoke India unnecessarily, she adds, when we have repeatedly paid the high costs of doing so.

Those close to Prime Minister Oli say the visit will focus on economic issues and steer well clear of any contentious polit­ical ones, as this is a ‘confidence-building’ trip. We may have to wait for PM Oli’s subsequent visit to Beijing, whenever that happens, to find out who is bluffing whom.

When she first became the country’s president in Octo­ber 2015, Bidya Devi Bhandari was the vice-chairman of CPN-UML and the head of its women’s wing. Bhandari has risen steadily up the party hierarchy ever since she defeated Nepali Congress heavyweight, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, in a 1993 by-election. The by-election was held to fill the seat vacated by her husband, the charismatic UML general secretary Madan Bhandari, who had died in a jeep accident earlier that year. Bidya Devi Bhandari, née Pandey, had started her polit­ical career as a student leader in the 1970s, before joining what was then CPN-ML in 1980. Two years later, Bidya Devi married CPN-ML General Secretary Madan Bhandari. Used to living in the long shadow of her husband, she set about carving out her own space in the party after his abrupt death.

As her political stature grew, so did her ambitions. In 2009, she got the defense portfolio in the Madav Nepal government. Her term as defense minister is perhaps best remembered for her cozy relations with the Nepal Army high command.

Her two-year first term as president was also checkered. She had a knack of making headlines for all the wrong rea­sons: her rather lavish spending, ‘needless’ foreign trips and for causing infernal traffic jams in the already congested roads of the capital. Then, near the end of her first term, she caused a stir by holding up the Sher Bahadur Deuba govern­ment’s three nominees for the federal upper house. But when her party chief, KP Sharma Oli, who in his later capacity as prime minister named his own set of three national assembly members, she quickly approved the new nominees.

Many say Bhandari did not deserve a second term. Suppos­edly, her only qualification was that party chief Oli had taken her under his wing. This is why, as Oli now enjoys near-abso­lute powers with a three-fourth majority in the federal lower house, as well as effective control over all seven provinces, Bhandari’s next five years as the country’s ceremonial head will be closely watched. Oli could easily use her office to cement his control over all levers of government.

“Oli now has effective control over all state organs, includ­ing the presidency,” says Radheshyam Adhikari, a Nepali Congress MP in National Assembly, the federal upper house. “If you look at Bhandari’s actions during her first term, for instance her unconstitutional blocking of important ordi­nances, there are signs she cannot rise above party interests.”

But others may contend it would be wrong to judge Bhan­dari-the-president so harshly when she is just a small part of Nepal’s patronage-driven politics.

It was the first democratic prime minister of Nepal, BP Koirala, who took the initiative to establish diplomatic relations with Pakistan. Nepal’s outreach to Pakistan was in line with Koirala’s stated policy of strict neutrality in foreign policy conduct, or ‘non-alignment’. Some even speculate that Koirala’s decision to establish diplomatic ties with China and Pakistan, both in 1960, led to his ouster in a royal coup later in that year. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in this reading, lent his full support to the dictatorial ambitions of King Mahendra, the coup plotter, to make Koirala pay for the ultimate crime of cozying up to India’s ‘enemies’. It is a dif­ferent story that King Mahendra would himself later cultivate Pakistan (and China) in order to balance Indian influence in Nepal. This is why, soon after usurping all executive powers, King Mahendra made an official visit in 1961 to Pakistan, where he was widely hailed as a “sagacious statesman”.

Such is the brief history of Nepal-Pakistan relations. With the SAARC in a coma and bilateral trade minimal, Nepal and Pakistan have not had much to discuss in recent times. “This is why the [recent Nepal] visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi so troubles me,” says Keshab Bhatta­rai, a geopolitical analyst. “What other purpose will it serve save for antagonizing India?”

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli may have his own calcula­tions in playing host to Abbasi, says Bhattarai, but it is a “risky strategy that could easily backfire”.

But in the view of CPN-UML’s Rajan Bhattarai, who is also the proposed foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Oli, Abbasi’s trip was a simple case of a friend of Nepal wanting to visit and the host government obliging him. In the high-level talks between the two governments during the visit, “we discussed ways to revive SAARC,” he says.

India has not taken kindly to past suggestion of both Nepal and Pakistan that China be inducted as a full SAARC member. Abbasi’s visit, supposedly centered on SAARC, could thus make India suspect Oli’s intent.

There is no reason for such suspicions, argues Bhattarai, the UML leader. “Yes, regional issues were discussed, but we also discussed bilateral matters like boosting trade and exchange of students.” Abbasi invited Oli to visit Pakistan and the Nepali prime minister promised to visit “at a mutually con­venient time”, according to Bhattarai. That, in his view, is the long and short of it.

That however won’t stop tongues from wagging long after Abbasi has left Nepal.

Two events this past week could have lasting impact on Nepal’s foreign relations, the first more so than the second. First, the two sets of Eminent Persons Groups (EPGs) formed to suggest changes to old Indo-Nepal treaties and to review bilateral ties, are reportedly close to a final deal. If India does indeed agree to amend the 1950 treaty, long decried as ‘unequal’ in Nepal, it will be a watershed in Indo-Nepal ties.

Second, the Communist Party of China (CCP) is amending the national constitution to abolish the two-term limit for China’s President and to incorporate the ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ in the charter. With this Xi Jinping, the CCP chief and the reigning President, would arguably have more power than any of the previous leaders of modern China, including Mao.

The ‘Thought’ envisages, among other things, ‘common destiny’ of China and other countries in a ‘peaceful international environ­ment’, particularly its immediate neighborhood.

Based on Indian media reports and my recent (and extensive) con­versations with two representa­tives of the four-man Nepali EPG team, the Indian change of heart is undoubtedly a result of ‘grow­ing Chinese activism’ in Nepal. Its blockade-time Nepal policy, New Delhi has come to realize, was mis­guided, and India needs an urgent ‘course-correction’ if Nepal is not to be forever lost to China.

Ready for love

India is now open to ‘regulating’ the Indo-Nepal border, such that people can cross over only thor­ough select points and only after registration. The Nepali side has also proposed that Nepal be allowed to import arms from a third country after ‘informing’ India. Nepal has, moreover, clarified that considering the vast differences in the two coun­tries’ area and population, a recip­rocal treatment for Indian nationals in Nepal is impractical. That their Indian interlocutors are even ready to discuss these issues, which had until recently been no-go areas, is a big surprise to the Nepali EPG quad.

If Modi worries about Chinese penetration into Nepal, he is right to do so. The Chinese influence in Nepal—be it in terms of the number of Chinese tourists, investments or political clout—is at an all-time high post-blockade. Xi’s consolidation of power at home will only make him more ambitious abroad.

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli knows he cannot afford to antag­onize India if he hopes to stick around. However great the Chinese influence in Nepal, he is also aware, China cannot match the extensive people-to-people contacts and the geographical proximity between Nepal and India. Yet Oli is not in a position to make a clean break with the Chinese, as the Indians perhaps expect of him.

It will be hard for Oli to abandon the popular agenda of closer ties with China, having endlessly cham­pioned it on the campaign trail—and with such success. Near the end of his political career (and perhaps, the 66-year-old sickly prime minis­ter reckons, even his life) Oli also seems keen to leave behind a strong legacy: he wants to be remembered as the first Nepali leader who dared to openly question—and do some­thing about—India’s stranglehold over Nepal.

Gujral Doctrine 2.0

Separately, Chinese President Xi has made no secret of his ambition to restore China’s past glory. To achieve this, the Chinese probably feel they have to limit the role of the US, the world’s sole military super­power, in the Asia-Pacific.

As the strategic links between India and the US multiply—the Cold War-era suspicions subdued—China is starting to eye Indian activism in the subcontinent suspiciously. China under Xi will try doubly hard to sell to immediate neighbors China’s alluring agenda of mutual prosper­ity in a ‘peaceful international envi­ronment’. Otherwise, the Chinese fear, these countries risk fall under the sway of the Americans, who are increasingly happy to use India as their smokescreen in South Asia.

In its dealings in the subcontinent, China, it can be said, has rather par­adoxically come to champion the ‘Gujral doctrine’: the former Indian prime minister’s mantra of helping India’s smaller neighbors without expecting much in return. Reality however is seldom this ideal; there really is no free lunch in interstate relations. China nonetheless has been able to convince South Asian strongmen and democrats alike of the foolishness of not trying to ben­efit from China’s stellar rise.

The inconvenient truth for India is that its cumbersome bureaucra­cy-driven decision-making is no match for the zippy trickle down authoritarian model China has per­fected. As Robert Kaplan would perhaps put it: Geography is destiny, until a strongman like Xi with inter­national imagination digs a tunnel under it.

Any lingering doubts over the sustainability of the left alli­ance, and with it the longevity of the new left government, have been removed with the new sev­en-point agreement between CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli and his CPN (Maoist Center) counterpart Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Or have they? The February 19 agreement com­mits to the formal unification of the two parties, with all outstanding ideological issues to be settled in the next general convention, whenever it is held.

Political analyst Bishnu Sapkota does not buy the argument that the two parties have now united. “There is no ideological coherence between them, and without it, there can be no true unity,” he says. “In my view this is a purely power-sharing agree­ment, nothing more.”

Sapkota says he would have been more convinced had the unification happened “bottom-up rather than top-down”. Otherwise, he ques­tions, “How is it possible that Oli and Dahal could settle everything between them without consulting party colleagues?”

Sapkota also thinks that Dahal and the Mao­ists, by agreeing to abide by the principle of multi­party democracy, as stipulated in the seven-point deal, have in a roundabout way accepted UML’s official line of “people’s multiparty democracy”. Otherwise, “there is no place for multiparty democracy in Maoism”.

Ideology aside, party unification was endorsed after Oli had already become prime minister. What, then, was the signif­icance of the new deal?

“With this agreement, the two main communist forces of the country have formally accepted that there is no alternative to mul­tiparty democracy,” says Nilamber Acharya, former chairman of the Constitutional Committee of the first Constituent Assembly elected in 2008. “This means they fully accept the new constitution, which is most definitely not a communist document.”

In Acharya’s view, consolidation of the two communist forces could pave the way for a “strong two-par­ty system” that in the long run will strengthen democracy. But Acharya too has misgivings.

“How can we be assured that so many ambitious political personas can remain under the same roof for any length of time, particularly when there is no shortage of forces that want the left unity to unravel?” he asks.

Political commentator CK Lal also suspects the longevity of this “unnatural” unity. “It represents the consolidation of the traditional power structure. The ‘Permanent Establishment of Nepal’ now has a potent political front,” he says. “It was the pressure from PEON that brought them together. But in time the differences among PEON will be more and more pronounced, which in turn could imperil the left unity.”

When the two communist parties had announced an electoral alliance on the eve of the provincial and federal elections, China, it was suspected in some quarters, had encouraged, if not abetted, the left bonhomie.

In Lal’s reading, the February 19 agreement is in part a result of “Chi­na breathing down the neck of Oli and Dahal”. Lal predicts that with the left united and Oli-led govern­ment firmly in place the “anti-India and anti-West lobby will be strength­ened while the pro-China lobby will get a boost”.

Irrespective of the degree of Chi­nese involvement, another pub­lic intellectual, Hari Sharma, also doubts the two communist parties have ‘unified’ rather than ‘merged’. “A merger takes place between two unequal forces, when one is clearly dominant,” Sharma says. “A uni­fication, on the other hand, hap­pens between two equal forces”. In this reading, too, the Maoists have agreed to be subsumed under the UML fold.

Sharma also sees some troubling signs for the new government. “If Oli was the prime minister of the left alliance, why wasn’t a single Mao­ist leader present at his swear­ing-in? In coalition politics, such absence is highly symbolic.”

Nonetheless, if the two parties are serious about future unification, it is a positive development for a country like Nepal, Sharma adds. “Social science literature suggests that a fragmented polity leads to radicalization of society. Strong, consolidated political parties miti­gate against such a danger”.

But strong parties have strong ideological bases. Does the new out­fit have such a robust base? “This is something that worries me. Accord­ing to the seven-point agreement, the new party will have Marxism-Le­ninism as its guiding principle. If so, we have to assume they adhere to the principle of democratic cen­tralism, the bedrock of Leninist philosophy,” Sharma says.

In its essence, democratic cen­tralism believes in a strong central political leadership whose deci­sions are binding on those lower down the party chain. Democratic centralism, for instance, is a constitu­tionally-man­dated governing policy of China. “Do the leaders of the new party have Chinese leadership in mind, then?” Sharma asks.

Such ideological and leadership questions have always bedeviled the communist movement in Nepal that started with the birth of the Com­munist Party of Nepal in Calcutta in 1949. Formed with the intent of overthrowing the Rana autocracy in Nepal, the movement became mired in controversy right from its incep­tion. When power was transferred from the Ranas to the monarchs, a faction of the communist party decided to coopt the monarchy, while the other faction pursued a strident republican line, leading to the first formal split in 1962.

This started the seemingly endless process of periodic breakdown and consolidation of Nepali communist forces. Given this checkered history, the doubts now being raised about the long-term viability of the new communist outfit, which is now in control of virtually the entire state apparatus, are perhaps valid. Even the two communist parties in the ongoing unification process have seen many mergers and splits.

If history is any guide, we may not have to wait for long to find out whether the February 19 agree­ment is a purely power-sharing deal. Or if Messrs Oli and Dahal (and their party rank and file) are committed to an ideologically strong left force and a vibrant two-party democracy.

There is no denying the wish of the majority of Nepalis though. They heartily endorsed the common ‘prosperity and sta­bility’ platform of the left alliance.