The Bullet and the Ballot Box

September 1, 2014
Journalist Adhikari explores the unlikely rise of Nepal’s high-caste Maoist revolutionaries whose rural-based movement, supported mainly by lower-caste peasants and ethnic outsiders, managed to win power democratically in 2008. After participating in a popular 1990 cross-party uprising against the monarchy, the Communist Party (Maoist) waged a guerrilla campaign throughout the 1990s during the country’s rocky transition to parliamentary democracy. As Adhikari reveals, the party leadership faced not only all-out war with the state but also serious contradictions between its egalitarian principles and the traditional class, gender, and ethnic divides in its membership. But by the early 2000s, the Maoists had solidified into a highly organized armed cohort. Ironically, as they gained power, they fell victim to the same corruptions and failed promises of reform against which they had so successfully fought. Adhikari rightly notes that this story takes place in a country torn between India and China’s competing influence—a point frequently made in other literature on Nepalese politics. However, his access to a wealth of primary sources—including interviews with individual Nepalese Maoists—sets his analysis apart. Adhikari’s exploration of how the Maoists have dealt with the demands of power and the divisions among their constituents should interest any citizen or scholar of the modern nation state.