By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS,
Kathmandu : With the formal abolition of Nepal’s monarchy Wednesday and newly elected lawmakers asking dethroned king Gyanendra to vacate the royal palace within 15 days, India has lost a friend and would one day have to pay dearly, a royalist said.
“India has lost a friend (with the abolition of monarchy) and will have to pay a dear price one day,” an official of the doomed royal secretariat in the Narayanhity palace, who pledged to speak out once the 15-day deadline expired, said.
“The king was never anti-India nor undertook any measures to harm Indian interests. Both Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi knew that.
“They could have annexed Nepal in two minutes had they wanted. Instead, they chose to have close ties with Nepal’s kings because they realised that under monarchy, Nepal could be a buffer state between India and China. Would you say they were fools?”
The official, who was privy to many important palace decisions, predicted that the rise of the former Maoist guerrillas in Nepal with Indian backing would pave the way for a similar situation in the sub-continent.
“In the 2014 election, India will see (Indian Naxalite leader) Ganapati come to power,” he said. “He is a close friend of (Nepal Maoist supremo) Prachanda and Nepal’s Chure Bhawar region (a mountainous terrain in southern Nepal that is clamouring for autonomy) will be turned into training camps for Indian Maoists.”
“Will India, where 40 percent of the populace is affected by the Naxalite movement, accept that with equanimity?”
By having “nurtured” the Maoists during the 10-year “People’s War” waged by the Maoists to end monarchy in Nepal, India, he said, was repeating its Sri Lanka strategy of helping the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) militants.
“The Nepal Maoists are aware that India helped them to retain its control over Nepal,” he said. “In the end, India will not have a single friend left in the neighbourhood. Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal – all of them have been alienated.”
The official said that India and the Indian media had a sole mission: to demolish the monarchy.
“It is not the king who was feudal or a dictator,” he said. “Who is more feudal than Prachanda, who nominated his own daughter to the constituent assembly, or (prime minister) Girija Prasad Koirala, who had 11 family members fighting the election? Yet India chose to support them.”
The official said that the king, obeying the voice of the people, had stepped down as head of government in 2006 after 19 people were killed in the pro-democracy movement.
“But after that, there were the Rautahat and Kapilavastu massacres in a democratic Nepal (in which dozens of people were killed) and the government (of Koirala and the Maoists) acknowledged no responsibility,” he said.
The official also flayed the “unconstitutional” measures forced on the country by the Maoists.
“Parliament was held hostage and forced to declare Nepal a republic,” he said, referring to the Maoists turning their guns on the peace pact in which they had pledged to hold a constituent assembly election to decide the king’s fate and instead, announcing the abolition of monarchy through a parliamentary proclamation.
“On Wednesday too, they went against the law of the land by holding the first meeting of the constituent assembly (that formally abolished monarchy) with 566 members instead of the full 601.