Thaindian News

Kathmandu, May 13 (IANS) Chastened by the rout of neighbouring West Bengal’s communist party that had ruled the Indian state for over three decades, Nepal’s ruling left alliance said communists all over South Asia should heed the lesson taught by the debacle.

Despite a general strike paralysing the country Friday and an explosion in Pakistan that killed nearly 70 people, the election result in West Bengal, with whom eastern Nepal shares a border, continued to grip the headlines after Mamata Banerjee swept out the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) with her Trinamool Congress heading for a landslide victory in the state assembly election.

“People want a change,” said former minister Pradip Gyawali, whose Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist has been ruling Nepal since 2009. “When a party is in power for a long time, people’s grievances start to mount. There were complaints of misrule against the Indian communists and people expressed their opinion through the ballot.”

Gyawali said the left’s defeat in Bengal left his own party saddened since the ties between the two went deep.

“We had links with them when we were an underground, banned party,” the communist MP said. “They supported our pro-democracy struggle in 1990. Jyoti Basu had come to Nepal and Harkishen Singh Surjeet was a frequent visitor. He attended the 5th congress of our party in Nepal in 1992.

“Communists should learn a lesson from the West Bengal election result.”

Maoist leader Ram Karki, who had been nominated as Nepal’s ambassador to India in the past and remained underground for some time in West Bengal’s Darjeeling and Siliguri towns during his party’s 10-year armed uprising, said it was a lesson that the age of empty rhetoric was over.

“In the 1970s, the CPM grew in strength by taking over the land of the zamindars and distributing it among the landless,” he said. “But then they began to grab the same land on the behest of corporate houses. That’s how they destroyed their image among the peasants, who were the party’s support base.

“Adivasis, Maoists and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool opposed the land grab and the Maoists’ vote bank too went against the communists. The party was routed wherever Maoists have a stronghold - in southern Bengal, close to the border with Bihar.”

Karki, who was arrested in New Delhi during the Maoists’ People’s War and handed over to the Nepalese authorities, said his party had branded the CPM revisionist.

“Their deeds did not match their words,” he said. “Communist parties in South Asia have to be aware that the age of phrase-mongering is over. People have become aware and if your performance is not satisfactory, will give you the boot.”

The Maoists, who were invited to West Bengal by outgoing chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, will be watching Mamata Banerjee’s performance very closely.

“We will watch how Banerjee treats the peasants, especially in Lalgarh,” Karki said. “If she follows the policies of her predecessor, she won’t be able to last.”

(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)