A communist revolution in the post communist era : the rise of Maoism in Nepal :an honors thesis (HONRS 499)

In 1996, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) began an insurgency that, to date, has claimed more than 3,000 lives in the landlocked kingdom of Nepal. The voiceless and exploited people are locked in a system that began centuries ago, under various principalities and polities, including local lords, British imperialists, a hereditary prime ministership, constitutional monarchs, and, finally, elected officials who gained power during the 1990 Jana Andolan. The many minority ethnic groups of Nepal, long discounted by these rulers, are attempting to maintain the integrity of their cultures in a rapidly changing modern world. The success of the Jana Andolan or Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) relied on the collaborative efforts of the coalition of Nepal's communist factions, the United Left Front (ULF), in conjunction with the Nepal Congress Party. The movement seemed to indicate the longstanding failure of the monarchy, like previous ruling powers, to address the concerns of the people-many Nepali groups have embraced communism as a viable alternative. Public awareness of the widening disparity between the wealthy and the bulk of the Nepali people has been heightened by the affluent tourists who pay exorbitantly to see and trek the Himalayas. After many attempts to achieve representation for their individual economic and ethnic interests, the Nepali people have been disappointed by the inefficacy and corruption of the latest representative system. As the fledgling Nepali democracy, characterized by a round robin rotation of 10 prime ministers in twelve years, struggles to establish its legitimacy, the Maoist guerilla movement is gaining popularity. Revolutionary communism has appeared to answer the many hopes of the people with the CPN (Maoist) working at the grassroots level to overthrow the parliamentary democracy and create a communist republic. Since 1996, insurgent communism has spread from the rural villages where it gained popularity as the "People's War," across the seventy-five provinces of the Himalayan Kingdom. This all begs the question: will there be a communist revolution in the post-Soviet Union era?Honors CollegeThesis (B.U.P.D.