Dear Masses of the People,
Today Nepalese society is in a state of grave crisis, whether
economically, politically, culturally or otherwise. Where has the
present state that has been harping about development and construction
for the last fifty years landed Nepal economically? It has landed Nepal
in the position of second poorest country in the world after Ethiopia.
This state that does not manufacture even a needle in the name of a
self-reliant and national economy has handed over the whole economy of
the country to a dozen families of the foreign comprador and bureaucrat
capitalists. Whereas this handful of plunderers have become
billionaires, the real masters of this country and the national
property, the toiling masses of Nepal, are forced to eke out a meager
existence of deprivation and poverty. The sons and daughters of Nepalese
peasants and workers reeling under unemployment and poverty are
compelled to lead a miserable life of dishonour and neglect in India and
different parts of the world to earn their daily bread. After piling a
massive foreign debt burden even on the future generations of the
Nepalese people, the feudal and comprador and bureaucrat capitalist
rulers are making merry on it. In the name of privatization and
liberalization under the guidance and for the benefit of the foreign
capitalists, the process of mortgaging the whole country to the
comprador and bureaucrat capitalists is now in full swing.
The burden of this economic degradation
has to be basically borne by the peasantry, which constitute ninety
percent of the population. That every new government formed under this
state structure pushes and will push the country economically into a
further state of bankruptcy has been historically verified.
To maintain hegemony of one religion
(Hinduism), language (Nepalese) and nationality (Khas), this state has
for centuries exercised discrimination, exploitation and oppression
against other religions, languages and nationalities and has conspired
to fragment the force of national unity that is vital for the proper
development and security of the country. On the contrary, it has been
prostrating itself before the foreign imperialists and expansionists and
repeatedly mortgaging Nepal’s national honour and sovereignty to them.
The present state has been shamelessly permitting the foreign plunderers
to grab the natural water resources of Nepal and to trample upon our
motherland. If this process is allowed to continue in the future, the
patriotic, conscious and self-esteemed Nepalese have no doubt that the
very existence of Nepal will be in jeopardy.
The present state has declared war
against the development of the national culture of the Nepalese people
by flooding the country with corrupt, licentious and distorted
imperialist culture. The feudal and imperialist forces are doing their
utmost to replace the democratic cultural values and ideals with
Freudian, nihilist and anarchic values. This is a sequel to the
conspiracy of the reactionary classes to corrupt the people culturally
and preserve their own heaven of plunder. This corrupt cultural value is
no less responsible for the burgeoning of drug-trafficking, smuggling,
thievery, black marketeering, looting, murder and rape in the society
today.
Within this moribund state structure, a
coalition government of Panchas (royalists) and Nepali Congress, defamed
in Nepalese history for their anti-national and genocidal deeds, is
ruling right now. This government has forced not only the peasants and
workers of Nepal but also the people of different categories and
professions to live in a state of scarcity, injustice and terror.
Whereas this state has been treating women as second-class citizens for a
long time, now it has intensified rape, trafficking and the process of
commoditization through advertisements against them. The whole
educational system is tuned to produce slaves for this state and there
is rampant anarchy in it. Thus, be they workers, peasants, women,
teachers, students, small traders, lower-ranking civil servants,
doctors, professors, or people of different classes including the
national bourgeoisie, all are victims of this state of feudals and
comprador and bureaucrat capitalists. Except for radical change in all
spheres, any possibility of reform has now become a mere chimera.
Reactionary ruling classes, forever
swearing by democracy, have been repeatedly using their guns against the
political activists or the ordinary masses who hold political beliefs
counter to the interests of the rulers. This state which regards itself
as the custodian of “democracy” has been surviving on the blood of
innumerable sons and daughters of mother Nepal, ranging from infants to
the aged, whenever the people have professed and spoken in favour of
nationalism, democracy and livelihood. Hundreds of thousands of Nepalese
people fighting for justice have been subjected to inhuman physical
torture, confinement in jails and mental torture. Not only during the
partyless panchayat (absolute monarchy) period but even in the present
monarchal parliamentary period, the fascist genocidal and repressive
acts have been on the increase rather than decreasing. This is a bitter
truth experienced by the Nepalese people in their real life. This
process has now developed into an armed repression campaign against
innocent people favouring truth and justice. The recent armed operation
and state terror let loose in Western Nepal and different parts of the
country has testified beyond doubt that the ruling classes have openly
embarked upon an unjust war against the people. The heinous game of the
reactionary state of enroling the sons and daughters of the poor
peasants and workers into the police and the army as mercenaries and
forcing them to use arms against their own parents, brothers and
sisters, is now crystal clear. With the passage of time those in the
police and the army will also come to know the realities. There is no
alternative for the people other than to raise the banner of just war
against this unjust war.
How did we reach this stage of the
critical condition of nationalism, democracy and livelihood and a
situation of open warfare of the state against the people? What is clear
on the basis of historical and scientific materialism is that the seeds
of this state of affairs were sown in Nepalese history a long time
back. With the advent of the era of imperialism and proletarian
revolution, as in almost all the oppressed nations, in Nepal too, a
semi-feudal and semi-colonial socio-economic structure based on the
alliance of feudalism and imperialism was established. This gave rise to
a process of feudalism prostrating before imperialism and imperialism
plundering the masses while protecting feudalism. In Nepal, this process
was initiated in concrete form after the conclusion of the Sugauli
Treaty of 1815-16 with British India. The inevitable consequence of this
process was that it obstructed the development of national capitalism
and instead opened the path to the development of bureaucrat capital in
the interests of both landlords and imperialism. This long historical
period has in fact been the period of the process of the birth, rise and
demise of the same bureaucrat capital.
In Nepalese society, the 104 year period
of Rana autocracy (between 1846-1950) existed under the same formation
as the later partyless panchayat autocracy (between 1960-1990), and the
current so-called monarchical multi-party system (since 1990) also
continued and continues under the same dispensation. As a result of the
struggle of the Nepalese people against this socio-economic structure,
principally, and due to the changes in the international political
situation, secondarily, the names of the system and the government have
been changing, sometimes liberal and at other times conservative, to
make a redistribution of the spoils of power. But the basic structure of
the state has remained unchanged. The political developments of 1951,
1960, 1979 and 1990 can only be understood in this way. Looking at
history just since 1951, it is amply evident that an ever greater crisis
for the country and the people has been sprouting from within the womb
of the petty reforms carried out within the reactionary state.
The Nepalese people have been constantly
struggling against this state of affairs. In the process of such
struggles, the Nepalese people have been a victim of not only the
repeated repression and intrigues of the reactionaries but also of the
betrayal and treachery of the reformists. Today the biggest traitors of
the people have been those so-called communists, the revisionists, who
have gone after crumbs of reactionary state power by licking the boots
of feudalism and imperialism. The Nepalese people and Nepalese history
will never forgive those traitors who have sat on the chairs of the
reactionaries by betraying the people’s faith in radical change and the
Communist Party and by stepping on the blood of thousands of martyrs.
Again if one talks of limiting oneself to the reformist struggle within
the reactionary state, that will be merely another process of treachery.
This has now been a historically verified truth.
The other aspect which should not be
forgotten at this point is that the negative recurrence of the
reactionary repression and intrigue and reformist betrayal and treachery
has given rise to the positive conditions of enhancing the political
consciousness of the general masses of the people and of their attaining
the sole revolutionary ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism for their
liberation, amidst the people’s class struggle and a long and intense
ideological struggle against such reformism. Today, the
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Party guided by this all-powerful revolutionary
ideology has developed like a beautiful and blossoming flower, through
the long struggle of the labouring masses of Nepal, irrigated by the
blood of thousands of martyrs. Whereas all kinds of reactionaries and
revisionists are madly after it to nip it in the bud, the revolutionary
masses are taking care of its preservation and development.
Dear Masses of the People,
What is clear from the above historical
and current facts is that the present crisis-ridden condition of the
country is the result of the development of contradictions between the
exploitation and oppression of the people by the state power of the
feudals and comprador and bureaucrat capitalist classes, on the one
hand, and the relentless struggle carried out by the people against it,
on the other. To defend their moribund and crisis-ridden reactionary
state, feudalism and imperialism have openly imposed an unjust war on
the Nepalese people. If the Nepalese people cannot raise the banner of a
just people’s war against this unjust war and become victorious in it,
the Nepalese people and the Nepalese nation will be doomed to a
prolonged darkness.
Conscious of one’s duty towards this
historical necessity, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the
proletarian party of the sons and daughters of the masses of the people,
has resolved to initiate the process of forcibly smashing this
reactionary state and establishing a New Democratic state. This resolve
of ours is based on the feeling of service and devotion toward the
people, on the commitment to the lofty ideology of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to free humanity forever from the yoke of class
exploitation, and on the study of the history of Nepalese society in
that light. We are fully conscious that this war to break the shackles
of thousands of years of slavery and to establish a New Democratic state
will be quite uphill, full of twists and turns and of a protracted
nature. But this and this alone is the path of people’s liberation and a
great and bright future. This path will unfold by making use of all
forms of struggle in keeping with the historical stage of development of
Nepal and principally, as we have been saying all along, according to
the strategy of encircling the city from the countryside, with agrarian
revolution as the axis and from the midst of and in conjunction with the
rural class struggle. This process of people’s war in the context of
the present balance of forces will move forward through the process of
people’s guerilla war within the stage of strategic defence. We are
confident that the masses of the people of all classes and categories
will extend active support and help to this revolutionary process and
that it will be victorious. Besides this, we are conscious and confident
that this struggle will win support and help from the communist
revolutionaries and struggling masses the world over, and that this will
in turn assist all those revolutionaries. Because this struggle of ours
will be part and parcel of the world proletarian revolution undertaken
with a view to ending exploitation and oppression of man by man and to
ending war itself forever. In this context we would like to make special
mention of the ongoing people’s revolution in Peru based on
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
(RIM) and revolutionary movements the world over based on the same.
Finally, we appeal to the workers,
peasants, women, students, teachers, intellectuals and the masses of the
people of all categories and trades to march along in the process of
people’s war for establishing a people’s New Democratic state and to
extend to it all forms of support and help.
It is Right to Rebel!
Long Live the People’s War!
Down With the Reactionary State!
Long Live the New Democratic Revolution!
Glory to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
13 February 1996
