~ On the issue of sacking General Katawal, India publicly urged the government to take a decision only on the basis of consensus. It was an interesting postulation, since Delhi privately urged the other parties not to back Katawal’s sacking—thus reducing the chances of any domestic consensus. But to be fair, Delhi was not playing a double game in this. The Indians had consistently warned Prachanda that if he went ahead, the fine balance of power on which the peace process rested would collapse. Indian embassy officials told me that they had advised the Maoists to let Katawal off with a warning and defuse the issue. Two months earlier, on a visit to Kathmandu, the foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon had pushed a message along similar lines to the Maoists, and had urged them to focus on completing the peace process instead.Wikileaks (Cable: 09 KATHMANDU 137_a) has now shown that Sood met his US interlocutors in Kathmandu and told them what Menon had conveyed to Prachanda, particularly on the need to respect the army. During his remarkably successful visit to Delhi soon after becoming prime minister in September 2008, Prachanda had promised that he would not take any action regarding the army without a political consensus. Shyam Saran, who was then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s special envoy and knew Nepal extraordinarily well, later told me, ‘The Maoists shifted goalposts. We did not say do not touch the army. All we told them was that if you take any step on a sensitive issue, it must be based on the broadest political consensus among all of Nepal’s main forces.’ Politics of Partial Sovereignty
Soon after the elections, but before the Maoists were sworn into office, I had made the rounds of South Block, which houses the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the MEA, to understand India’s policy approach. A top Indian official, who had been involved in the Nepali peace process since its inception, had said then, ‘If the Maoists play by multiparty democratic rules, we will not have a problem. But they must not disturb the Nepal Army’s chain of command and hurt its institutional interests. That will invite a backlash.’ Another official said that the fact that the Maoists still retained the PLA could not be forgotten while judging their moves on the NA. ‘They already have their own army, and because of elections, have also got charge of the state army. This is a very unusual situation, an uneven playing field and their actions must be carefully scrutinized.’ Over coffee at the Illy café, close to the Indian embassy in Lazimpat, an officer of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external intelligence agency, told me as the crisis over the Maoists’ attempt to dismiss the army chief peaked in April 2009, ‘We are doing this for the institution, not for General Katawal. We cannot let the Nepal Army fall. It is time for the Maoists to engineer a course correction. They have made a blunder.’ When I put to him the Maoists’ argument that this was the only way for them to push the peace process forward, he dismissed it. ‘They should have told us if General Katawal was being an obstacle on integration. They should have conveyed their concerns. We would have worked something out. The truth is they were not serious about the integration of their combatants at all. This is about consolidating power. Prachanda has failed as a leader.’ Earlier in the year, when reports had first surfaced about the Maoists seeking to increase their control over the state apparatus, the same official had defended the Maoists, arguing that each party sought to do so when in power. ‘Didn’t Girijababu do it? Didn’t Nepali Congress put its own people in the bureaucracy and police?’ But his, and by extension, RAW’s position had shifted when it came to the question of the army. So what made the Indians bat for the NA? Delhi’s logic was simple—they saw the army as a ‘silent partner’ Battles of the New Republic
in the peace process. Indian officials often recalled that the RNA, at India’s insistence, had urged Gyanendra to surrender power when popular protests swelled on the streets of Kathmandu in April 2006. They pointed out that the army had cooperated in the transition; it had even cut off its ties with the Palace and had not obstructed the declaration of the republic. The army had played along because India had assured that its chain of command, structure, privileges and interests would be protected. India also viewed the NA as the final bulwark which would resist any attempt by the Maoists to grab power. A joint secretary heading the northern desk of South Block—which tracks Nepal and Bhutan—had remarked in December 2007, ‘This is the only state institution that remains intact; everything else has been dismantled. We will never allow the Maoists to mess with the army.’ India was also deeply uncomfortable with the idea of former Maoist fighters being integrated into the national army. Soon after the peace pact was signed, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee had told visiting NC leaders that they had made a major mistake by agreeing to the integration. He, like many others in the Indian establishment, cited the example of how the Indian National Army was never accommodated within the Indian Army after Independence, despite the proven patriotism and nationalism of the Subhas Chandra Bose-led troops. The idea, Indian officials argued, was to maintain the ‘sanctity, the professionalism, and the apolitical character of any state army’. For Delhi, the NA was an extension of its own security architecture. The NA and the Indian Army share deep fraternal ties. In fact, in the final days of the People’s Movement, when the end of the monarchy became imminent, senior officers of the NA had told India that they did not want their relationship with the Indian Army affected in any way because of the political change. India was quick to put those apprehensions to rest, and assured the officers that the ties were equally important for them. The Indian Army chief’s first bilateral visit, after taking office, is to Nepal where, in a formal investiture ceremony, the head of state awards him the rank of honorary general of the Nepal Army. The NA chief makes his first visit to Delhi, and India reciprocates the Politics of Partial Sovereignty
gesture. Nepali citizens serve in the Gorkha regiments in the Indian Army, and over 100,000 retired personnel are paid pension by the government of India in Nepal. Nepali cadets and officers are trained in India in all key military institutions—the National Defence Academy at Khadakvasla, the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun, and the Defence Services Staff College for midranking officers. Indian officers training at the Staff College visit Nepal on an academic programme every year. India remains, by treaty, Nepal’s primary supplier of weapons and is known to have been concerned when the NA diversified acquisitions during the war. While unstated, the close ties with the Nepali state’s strongest institution is also important for Delhi to ensure that they have a position of strategic advantage vis-à-vis China south of the Himalayas. All of this meant that India took a close interest in Nepal’s military. It sought predictability and prior information in its operations and acquisitions. It was keen to maintain excellent relations with those in NA’s higher echelons. And it was wary of an uncertain shuffling of personnel that could adversely impact its comfort level with the institution. The institutional ties often find reflection in the close personal bonds between officers of the two countries. In 2009, this assumed political significance as General Katawal had a firm supporter in the chief of the Indian Army, Deepak Kapoor—the two had attended the IMA in Dehradun together. General Kapoor is reported to have put his foot down when reports of the Maoists’ attempt to dismiss Katawal emerged. So here was a rare moment of policy convergence in Delhi. In April and May of 2009, all agencies handing Nepal policy in India—the MEA, the Ministry of Defence and the Indian Army, RAW, and the political leadership—decided that they had to ‘save the institution, the Nepal Army’. And when a firm, unanimous decision is taken on Nepal in Delhi’s otherwise heterogeneous bureaucracy with conflicting agendas, India usually has its way. The government, led by the Maoists, would pay a high price for refusing to heed India’s advice on how to deal with its own army. ~ Battles of the New Republic