The combination of a ten-year long "people's war" waged by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and a pro-democracy uprising in 2006 overthrew the centuries-old Nepalese monarchy and paved the way for elections to a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. Elected last year, the largest number of seats are held by the United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, which is aligned with the PLA and currently heads a coalition government.
Ben Peterson, a member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective in Australia, visited a PLA camp in March. The account below is abridged from his blog.
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Chitwan is famous around the world for its national park. Within the midst of the jungle there are rare animals, such as rhinos, elephants and tigers, that Western tourists flock to see.
In jungles of Chitwan, there is something equally unique, but largely ignored by the tourists — the People's Liberation Army that helped overthrow a semi-feudal monarchy.
The mainstream media often refer to this army as one consisting of child soldiers and human rights abusers — with a dictatorial leadership that manipulates the insecurities of the poor and uneducated peasantry.
At any rate, the PLA proved themselves to be a formidable fighting force, repeatedly driving back the Royal Nepalese Army, funded, armed and trained by foreign powers such as the US, Britain and India.
Given this, I wasn't sure what to expect.
Despite the claims, I didn't meet any child soldiers — starving and home sick — and I didn't meet indoctrinated and brainwashed drones, blindly following their party.
This is a people's army — and what I found were people.
The Nepalese people have had enough of the grinding poverty in their society — while the royalist elite lives in luxury. They have had enough of men forced overseas for work and women sold into the sex trade.
The idea that these people, who brought down the king, are ignorant and manipulated is insulting to the sacrifices they have made. The whole PLA camp I visited functions as a school. People who either left school early to fight, or never had the opportunity to study in the first place, are now studying.
Nothing I saw indicated the PLA is blindly and dogmatically politicised. The dreams of the people I met were for development, democracy and equality. Their dreams were that Nepal would be developed and that their children could study and work without the crushing poverty — and without discrimination against ethnic minorities, women, and people of low caste.
In the PLA camp, people of all castes had equal standing. There were inter-caste marriages that would never have been possible before the "people's war". There was little distinction between the officers and the rank and file. Everyone ate and cleaned in common.
Importantly women enjoyed a high level of participation and involvement. Men could often be seen caring for the children and cleaning the home, while the women used their time to study or go off, axe in hand, to chop wood.
A week with the PLA is a painfully short time. I only heard a fraction of people's stories. However, if the sort of hard work and sacrifices of the people I spoke to are allowed to go towards developing this nation, then the future of Nepal will one that is radically different from the one that currently exists.