Despite using the word “we” (middle class) to describe yourself, now you complain that you resent my assumption that your description of yourself was accurate. Your comments do not strike me as those of a “mindless fool” or “complacent and conservative” (unlike some others here). But you do say “we chose them to run the country because we believed in their power to change. we voted for them because we wanted a voice for the poor, the disadvantaged, the marginalised.” That seems consistent with my earlier comments describing what I understood to be your attitude.

The reason you ga e may be the reason why many middle class people also voted for the Maoists, hence the disappointed expectations of some. But like it or not it is not the reason they won. The Maoists are not a party that seeks merely a “voice” for the poor, the disadvantaged, the marginalised and they would be betraying most of the people who support them and fought for them if they settled for that. The Maoist party intends for the poor, the disadvantaged and the marginalised to actually take power and change the existing reality. This means abolishing the poor more than abolishing the middle class and it certainly will need middle lass people who are willing to use their skills in helping to actually change Nepal’s situation (not just those already leading the Maoist party but all those who really want to do something useful with their lives regardless of their political views). A “voice” for the poor has already been achieved, but as you know that has not resulted in much else changing, and in particular the essential preconditions of such change, spelled out in the peace agreement, have still not been met. There has been no land reform, no restructuring of the state and no integration of the two armies. Instead we get this continual bleating about Maoist”violence and looting” while the actual looting by the elite still goes on and reports of Maoists being murdered by their opponents are still much more frequent than the opposite (which was also true throughout the People’s War). PS May has a reasonable point about Bista’s “outdated” book seeming to provide a neat catch-all situation. Its uncanny how one keeps being reminded of it when reading the english language press and seeing discussions in which the fact that most Nepalese still live on less than $2 per day and have to seek work in other poor countries is treated as though it was simply “fate”. Unfortunately I doubt whether donors have already drawn my conclusion that there is no point trying to “do good” until a different class actually holds power.

maybe you’re right in saying that i had expectations from the maoists to act more like a mainstream party. maybe that was expecting too much. and i agree with every thing you say needs to be done: land reform, army integration etc etc. these are important issues that need to be addressed. i’m not debating that there is need for drastic change in a lot of things. but you seem to be missing my main point. my main complaint is not with all that needs to be done. i agree with all of the maoists’ goals, i only object to their methods. there is a time for war and a time for peace. all that has been accomplished through armed struggle, i dont deny. but i dont understand what you have against the middle-class. is it your wish that there be no middle-class? that only the lower-class and the peasantry be “good” and progressive while the middle-class, always caught between the upper and lower, are bourgeois and only serve to prolong the status quo. the middle-class has always been primed for revolt, for protest simply because they have the means and the education for it. you vastly underestimate the role of the middle-class. and you seem to forget that the leaders of the maoist party itself: pushpa kamal dahal, baburam bhattarai, both were middle-class. they did not rise out of unimaginable poverty brandishing the hammer and sickle of communism. they were well-to-do middle-class who read, learned and understood that things weren’t right and that it was time for a change.
but to come back to my main point, i disagree with the maoists’ methods. they went to war for a cause and ultimately, were successful. they were able to get rid of the monarchy and establish themselves in power. is there really need for the looting and killing? the old political parties may have been corrupt and unreliable but at least they didn’t stoop to murder and killing. you seem to think that the death of a few people is necessary for the good of the many. you seem to espouse the popular maxim: the ends justify the means. they never do. violence only leads to more violence. as a revolutionary party, they did what they started out to do. nepal has turned into a federal democracy and i understand that much still needs to be done. nothing much has changed in the lives of the poor and the disadvantaged. but it is precisely at this time, now that nepal’s and the world’s eyes are on them, for the maoists to show that violence is only the last resort. the absolutely last resort. war, murder, rape and looting cannot be justified, no matter how noble the cause may be. the cause is simply sullied by the means.
mandela gave up violence once he saw what needed to be done. the maoists have fallen in everyone’s eyes, even all those of us who voted for them in the CA elections, as they chose to go the base, evil way. they have shown us that they will always rule by the gun, or the stick, or the stone. there is no space in their vocabulary for peaceful politics. we chose them to run the country because we believed in their power to change. we voted for them because we wanted a voice for the poor, the disadvantaged, the marginalised.
lastly, please don’t lump me in with your very broad understanding of what the middle-class represents in nepal. i resent the assumptions you have made about me. despite my attempts at articulating my ideas and structuring this debate, you seem to have some preconceived notions about what the middle-class is. throughout my life, i have struggled to come to terms with the vast inequality that is present in nepal and i realised that there is no coming to terms with it. it is a reality that needs to be changed. and i am going to be part of that process of change. i am just a student now but when my time comes, i intend to make it count. i am not a mindless fool who is complacent and conservative, wishing only to perpetuate my own privileged existence. nepal needs to change, i know that. and it is us, the next generation, who are going to accomplish that change. and it is not going to be through violence. it is not going to be through murder.

this is all i have to say. i think i’ve made my points pretty clear here, although i might have rambled more than necessary. but this debate has gone on for far too long.

Because the Communism with all its sisters ‘isms’ are dead and buried when the Berlin Wall fell throwing all their hypocrisies on the trash heap of history.

Why are there still the ‘morons’ in Nepal who go on lapping up the rhetoric thousand and one times harped back by the purported zombies of Communism in the past century? Those who know all the ropes of this dead ideology, do you still remember anything good done to humanity by it other than millions and millions of victims of its atrocities perpetrated all over the world? This is proclaimed to be the failed ideology of the 20th century, maybe soon followed by the next a high roller cultivated cut-throat capitalism inspired by Adam Smith but largely deviated and practiced by present China.

A rough rule of thumb, in order to prove our worth it is high time that we had promoted holistic approach to fixing to go ahead with determination paying no heed to the well trained rhetoric of Communism like feudal, status quo, old regime, elite bourgeois, and whatnot. These are the words finely honed by commies to destabilize the middle class people to make them feel guilty of just being good citizens who pay taxes to promote democracy in the country where although it is impossible to be born all equal yet with prompt goodwill we try to promote equality of opportunity by propping up maximum of opportunities to the less favored until now to allow them to get access to higher knowledge and education.

If there are still those mentally retarded zombies of Communism who go on uttering these meaningless words means they remained stuck in the vortex of a time warp. It falls to other inhabitants of Nepal to understand the need to not paying the slightest heed to the story tales of these zombies of the past 20th century of some ancient communist countries coming over to Nepal with malicious intent to make Nepal their experimental ground of political hazards. Those new brand of zombie-sermonizers who are all tinged with self-interest must not get chance to spread their malign influence by any ways and means in this country.

As of now, we are on a firm footing with the facts and are on a straight line. All political parties have signed together the new memorandum in order to draft the Constitution with the precious helps from those countries which have already certain experiences of dealing with the Constitution drafting.

I am aware of the fact that I don’t really sympathize with the communist ideology of this incumbent government but what really counts for me is that this government follows the accurate path to draft the Constitution by the stipulated deadline date, and then follow the democratic polity with multiparty agenda to establish rule of law in this country.

By the deadline date of May 28, 2010 people of Nepal will definitely possess the ad hoc committee’s consent to the Constitution making and will follow suit with the backing of the 2/3 rd of majority votes of the members of the constituent assembly the New Constitution of Federal Republic of Nepal shall be promulgated for the better good of Nepal and its inhabitants.

I’d have preferred a referendum but they haven’t as yet mapped out the definite contour of the aforesaid draft.

Which is why no siren of panic should hinder the smooth resolve of Constitution drafting process.

What will it take for Nepal’s intellectuals to realize that GPK is just an opportunist? In 1990 he aligned with the royals and buttkicked the (then) Maoists, because the monarchy was more powerful then, and it offered him the power. In 2005, he did the exact opposite because Maoists offered him the Presidency (but did not give it to him later, haha). The man has no capacity to rise over petty interest and make peace for the benefit of everyone. He only thinks of himself. Mandela and GPK, hahaha…