By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS,
Kathmandu : As Nepal’s first president, Ram Baran Yadav, begins his 10-day visit to India from Thursday, the 63-year-old former physician, who has deep ties with the southern neighbour, can’t help mulling over the strange coincidence that made him witness three armed insurrections in two nations.
Yadav, who obtained his MBBS degree from the then Calcutta Medical College, followed by a diploma in clinical pathology from the School of Tropical Medicines in Kolkata, saw the Maoist insurgency in West Bengal – called the Naxalite movement – grow and reach its peak in the decade he spent in the city from 1968.
“Some of my best and worst memories are from Kolkata,” Nepal’s head of state told IANS.
“Kolkata and Nepal enjoyed very close ties as Kolkata and Benaras were the centres of higher education for Nepalis at that time. Also, most of Nepal’s democratic leaders took part in India’s struggle for independence and during the pro-democracy movement in Nepal in the 1950, many of them were exiled to Kolkata.”
Yadav, a commoner who replaced Nepal’s King Gyanendra in 2008 as the head of the nascent republic of Nepal, was also moved by Kolkata’s “cosmopolitan” and egalitarian culture.
“There was no caste divide,” he recalls. “Muslims and Hindus ate at the same table.”
Among his most terrible memories, the former health minister recalls the killing of Gopal Sen, the vice-chancellor of Jadavpur University, who was gunned down in December 1970 on the premises of the university in Kolkata.
“It was an assassination in broad daylight,” he says. “The movement also saw a large number of students killed. It was terribly sad.”
Yadav witnessed the spectre of insurgency once more in the 1980s when he went to the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh to do his Masters.
“Though the Khalistan movement (to create a separate homeland for Sikhs) was then subsiding, during my stay from 1982-85, there was the army operation at the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984, followed by the assassination of (Indian prime minister) Indira Gandhi.”
After his return to Nepal and his decision to take part in the second pro-democracy movement of 1990 – for which he was jailed – and plunge into politics full-time, the Nepali Congress leader began to witness the rise of a Maoist insurrection in his own country from 1996.
“It has been a strange coincidence,” he says. “Despite the turmoil in the region, India, which became independent in 1947, has been able to protect democracy with 15 parliamentary elections held periodically.
“But in Nepal, though we fought for democracy in 1950, 1990, and from 2002 to 2006, we still have not been able to establish it, which is why we are suffering still.”
Yadav, who was elected to parliament in the last polls in 2008, says the consolidation of democracy needs both time and continuous interaction with the people.
“It is a slow process,” he says. “Also, you need to go to the people and be educated by them. Democracy needs the consolidation of human rights, fundamental rights, press freedom and economic development.”
As India celebrates its 62nd Republic Day Wednesday, Nepal is awaiting the formation of a new government after remaining under a caretaker coalition for nearly seven months.
It is also awaiting the promulgation of a new constitution by May 28 that will establish it as a secular federal republic.