Red Flag Flying on the Roof of the World
Inside the Revolution in Nepal: Interview with Comrade Prachanda
RW reporter Li Onesto interviews Comrade Prachanda, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
(This text is reproduced from the Revolutionary Worker #1043, February 20, 2000, on the occasion of fifth anniversary of the People's War)
Li Onesto, Revolutionary Worker: There are revolutionary people all over theworld who want to hear about the People's War in Nepal. So it would be of great interest if you could give a basic picture of the objective situation and what the material basis in Nepal is for initiating People's War. Why does the party think it is possible to wage protracted People's War, to organize the masses through armed struggle? Why is this the correct strategy given the situation in Nepal? And why does the party feel it is possible to win with this strategy?
Comrade Prachanda: First of all, I want to explain this question in ideological terms. Nepal is a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. And MLM (Marxism-Leninism-Maoism) says that in oppressed countries like this, semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries, in general, a revolutionary objective situation prevails. This is the ideological basis from where we started to study the concrete situation, because the main thing is ideological clarity. And through the course of class struggle, mass movements, mass struggle, and mainly the ideological struggle inside the communist movement, we came to the conclusion that a situation prevails for initiating the People's War.
We see that Nepal is a small and poor country. More than 85 percent of the population lives in the rural areas, and the people are very poor-they are very oppressed. The feudal relations-the feudal forms of exploitation-are very severe in the rural areas. Industrial development is very poor, and the kinds of industrial bases that are there are all in the hands of a comprador bourgeois class-mainly the Indian expansionist bourgeoisie. Therefore, there are sharp class distinctions, and people have been struggling for reforms, for independence, and for the livelihood of the people, for a long time. There has been continuous mass struggle. But due to the lack of revolutionary leadership, due to revisionism in the communist movement, due to a crisis of leadership: every time when there has been mass struggle, this leadership has been able to confuse the masses, to make compromises with the ruling classes and to get some concessions for this revisionist group.
I want to mention that in 1815 there was a big struggle with British India. Nepalese people fought heroically against British India but ultimately they did not succeed-they failed. This was armed struggle, this war with British India, and people participated in this war in different ways. Different kinds of guerrilla warfare were used. And, in that war, the British ruling class saw that the Nepalese people were very heroic and brave-and that they fought heroically against British India. For more than one year they fought and fought, and in many places they defeated the British army. Hundreds and hundreds of masses, including women and old men, all fought in that war. But the Nepalese ruling class, mainly the monarchy, the king, surrendered to India.
There was a negotiation in Sugali, and they made a compromise. And after that, more Nepalese territory was taken by India. Before this, geographically, Nepal was more or less three times larger. But all this land was taken by India with the Sugali Treaty. From that very point Nepal became a semi-colonial country, and when the British left India, Nepal became a semi-colony of Indian expansionism. After that, there came the Rana government clique, and the great comrade Karl Marx called this Jang Bahadur Rana a British puppet and dog. People suffered very much from different kinds of oppression and exploitation, and from that point, Nepal changed to a semi-feudal country.
In 1949 when the Nepalese Communist Party was established, it was a great and far-reaching historical event. That party was established when the great Chinese revolution had been won and socialism was developing in the USSR.
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