Most of the country knew Prachanda only through his statements and some grainy photographs. Some even doubted his existence. Nonetheless, his name evoked fear. Although most Maoist cadres had never met or seen Prachanda, they felt awe and reverence for him. Some worried that they would never meet him. Others remembered the pride and elation they had felt as they shook his hand at a party convention.
From the earliest days of the rebellion, Prachanda had enjoyed uncontested power over the party. His authority only increased over the years. Other senior Maoist leaders in the standing committee and the politburo could certainly challenge him on policy matters, but never once did they consider replacing him. The histories of the Soviet Union and China had convinced them that a leader with charismatic authority was necessary for the success of the revolutionary party.
The party made various efforts to buttress Prachanda’s position as supreme leader. In 2001, his title was changed from ‘general secretary’ to ‘chairman’, a term that reflected the power concentrated in his person. That same year, the party undertook a comprehensive re-evaluation of its ideology, its strategy and its official view of the history of the communist movement in Nepal. These ‘guiding principles of the party’ were collectively termed ‘Prachandapath’. The doctrine contained specific features such as the strategy of fomenting a popular uprising and demanding elections to a Constituent Assembly. Over time, however, the term lost its specificity and came to represent the Maoist struggle in general. If the Maoists destroyed an army position, for example, cadres would refer to it as a ‘victory of Prachandapath’.
In person, Prachanda exuded restlessness, often manifested in the way he jerked his shoulders while talking. He had boundless enthusiasm for meeting party members of all ranks. He usually convinced those he met that he had complete trust in them. But he constantly probed party members on their colleagues’ strengths and weaknesses, and used this information to reassign responsibilities. He was known to keep a close watch over the party’s finances. Prachanda was the party’s most effective public speaker. He had an acute sense of political theatre, and could project a variety of emotions depending on the mood of the crowd he was addressing. He would use fiery, even incendiary rhetoric to arouse passionate anger and hatred among the cadre. If necessary he would not hesitate to publicly criticize his own failings, thus dousing the potential resentment of his audience. He was also prone to sentimentality, shedding uninhibited tears if the occasion demanded it, as when addressing the families of party members killed during the conflict or while watching musicals depicting the suffering and martyrdom of Maoist fighters.
Prachanda’s power also derived from his role as one of the party’s chief military strategists and the supreme commander of the Maoists’ People’s Liberation Army. Although he never participated in battle, he had studied the strategies and tactics of guerrilla war for decades and had personally trained many of the party’s field commanders. He had helped draft battle plans on a number of occasions. He commanded the fierce loyalty of some of the most important Maoist commanders, such as Pasang and Ananta.
In matters of ideology, Prachanda was a pragmatist. He was rarely the one to initiate the long debates on ideology and its relation to strategy during politburo or central committee meetings; instead he would listen carefully to all the views put forward, often for days on end. Sometimes he mediated disputes. His strategic choices were not constrained by a rigid ideology or by precedent. Rather, he would choose one of the available options based on how effectively it might increase the energy and commitment of the rank and file, the rebels’ power in relation to the state, and his own control over the party. Once he took a decision, he stuck to it with great confidence and tenacity, winning enthusiastic support and commitment from the entire party. But if circumstances changed, he shifted course without qualms or nostalgia for the older policy.
In 1991, for example, some of the radical Maoists argued that their party, at that time called the Unity Centre, should not compete in elections as that would entrench them in parliamentary politics and inhibit them from starting an armed rebellion. It was Prachanda, along with Baburam Bhattarai and some others, who advocated that the party should field a front organization that would participate in the parliamentary process. Only three years later, however, Prachanda pulled the party out of the parliamentary process and began serious preparations for the rebellion. Similarly, until 2001, the Maoists viewed the parliamentary parties as their chief enemy. After the massacre at the royal palace, they shifted their attack to the monarchy. Although a number of leaders, including Bhattarai, were in favour of this move, others felt misgivings about the new policy. Such a decisive policy shift would not have been possible without Prachanda’s firm backing.
When asked to evaluate the nature of his leadership, Prachanda once said, ‘I have never been firmly committed to any fixed position.’ He obviously considered this a strength. When Baburam Bhattarai was asked about Prachanda, he said something similar: ‘He has the ability to make swift decisions for the benefit of the party, even taking risks if necessary.’ According to Bhattarai, these were the qualities that enabled Lenin to steer the Russian revolution toward success. Prachanda would have appreciated this assessment. Lenin was, after all, his great personal hero.
But the same characteristics were also deplored within the party. Party members occasionally said that Prachanda showed dangerous signs of ‘instability’. This criticism came mostly from Maoist leaders who felt betrayed when Prachanda abandoned a particular line which they themselves were wedded to. It was also a more general criticism of Prachanda’s seeming lack of ideological commitment.
~~The Bullet And The Ballot Box : The Story of Nepal’s Maoist Revolution -by- Aditya Adhikari
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