With malice to none
UML leaders forget their own leaders, Madan and Jivraj!

I don’t recall the year but yet I do remember that the momentous day we all the Nepalese heard of Comrade Madan Bhandari’s untimely demise in DASDHUNGA in Chitwan district, the Americans were celebrating their National day celebration on July the 4th at the official residence of the then US Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch in Kamaladi.

I still remember the news of Bhandari’s death was given to me by a Congress Parliamentarian Dr. Dhruba Prashad Sharma who too was attending the American celebration.. Being a journalist, I then passed on the sad news first to my professional colleagues attending the reception which later spread like a wild fire among the galaxy of VVIPs who had been attending the reception at Kamaladi.

I recall, the present US Ambassador Michael E Malinowski was then here as the second man at the embassy. This should mean that Ambassador Malinowski is well abreast with all the rumors spread against his country for the killing of the two communist veterans.

Various theories and rumors swept afterwards regarding the death of the two communist veterans, Madan and Jivraj. Some, as is usual in Nepal, instantly blamed the RAW- Research Analysis Wing, India, and then CIA- Central Intelligence Agency of the United States for this mysterious killing.

Scathing criticisms were made against Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch and the then Indian Ambassador. The United States was criticized simply because of the handy assumption that since the US disliked the spread of communism in the world and hence, it was given to understand then, might have engineered the idea to kill the very staunch communist personality who could have multiplied the number of supporters of communism in Nepal had they been alive for some years more to come.

The UML, then a militant outfit one, created havoc in the country then and the poor Americans were frightened to the extent that they could not be seen on the roads of Kathmandu for long time to come.

Later, it was turn of the Indian embassy to be suspected of Madan Bhandari’s killing. Here too the readymade assumption was that since Bhandari talked too much for the preservation of the national interests which warranted some blistering attacks on neighboring India and hence the Indian establishment used its (in)famous RAW instrument and did away with one of the brilliant sons of the soil. The Indian embassy staffs too remained scared as they felt that the wrath could any moment befall upon them and hence opted to remain in their own compounds. This was a fact.

However, this was not the end of the story. Yet another theory propagated. This had it that since Koirala hated communists to the hilt and had been supposedly very close to India, politically speaking, and hence Koirala might have received the supports from the US and India as well for this what they preferred to called gruesome murder of their charismatic leader(s). The underlying fact in this assumption was that Koirala might have received supports from the two staunch communist haters- the US and India. The UML at that time used to exhibited herself as number one India- hater party. It is no surprise that the UML bagged votes at times of the general election hurling blistering attacks on India. However, this appear to have changed. Perhaps it is the UML which today could be one of the nearest and dearest friend of India for all understandable and practical political reasons. Thanks Madhav Nepal that India no more is an "expansionist" country.

To come back to the point, the sum total of the UML’s oral finding was that Koirala-US-India nexus remained instrumental in the murder of Madan and Ashrit.

The aftermath of such rumors were that national properties worth crores and crores were destroyed by the agitating fans and the supporters of the two top hats of the Communist Party. This, however, was also supported then by common men who simply loved this charismatic leader, Madan Bhandari in particular not because the people had become communists overnight but because Madan was really a genuine nationalist and possessed a vision for Nepal. Madan’s lectures are still being considered to be very powerful and appealing and the late leader’s fans in hundreds and hundreds still listen to his taped lectures and draw inspirations. I doubt now that the same prevails anymore even in the late leaders’s own political paraphernalia. Could be the communists have started thinking in a capitalist way.

Poor Koirala- the then Prime Minister, could do little to assure the bereaved communists that he was not behind the murder.

Later to every body’s surprise, when the UML come to power for a shortwhile, it did little to uncover the "plot" of their leaders’ murder. Most surprisingly, later Bhandari’s widow, Bidhya Bhandari, who herself became minister twice, exhibited practically no wish to uncover the facets regarding the death of her own husband. Albeit, when the Communist government was brought down unceremoniously, they spoke for the public consumption that since they were toppled yet they would continue their "efforts" aimed at exposing the culprits albeit when they came to power again. Question now arises as to why Ms. Bhandari did not exhibit interest in beginning a probe ? Was it that she knew the killers but could not divulge for obvious dogmatic communist disciplines? Why the fans of late Bhandari did not press the matter when their own government was in power? Many more questions still remain to be answers. Perhaps all have forgotten late Bhandari. But who could be the killers after all?

Since then much water has flown down the Bagmati and the Narayani river. The UML perhaps has forgotten that they have yet to expose the killer of their leader Madan and Jivraj. As the luck would have it, the UML supposedly now enjoys perhaps the best of the relations with its previous declared enemies- the US and India much more than what the Congress’ perhaps enjoys the same at the moment with those two countries. Yet for election purposes perhaps, the UML has been saying that they would spare no efforts to uncover and expose the conspiracy of the "reactionaries" within and without who killed Madan and Ashrit. Similarly, the ML led by Gautam too vowed the same priuor to reunification wuith the UML. The driver of the ill fated Jeep, Amar Lama, had sided with the then ML for reasons unknown to us and perhaps to many of us. It is generally believed among the communist circles that Amar Lama knows some thing more than the general Nepalese about the death of his own leaders- Madan and Ashrit. These days no body talks of Amar Lama. Currently he has been sidelined apparently.

It is relly very difficult to understand whether the US and India have in tandem softened their stances against the Communist UML or the UML itself "revised" its angle of seeing the two countries. Gone are the days when the UML used to call India and the US respectively as "expansionist" and "imperialist". Perhaps a research needs to be conducted to find out the truth as to what changed the hearts of……

Politics not for anything has been described by the political scientists as the art of the possible.

Thanks to Madhav Nepal’s Himalayan efforts that the two countries no longer remain as their declared enemies. It’s time that newly elected GS of the UML, Mr. Nepal, initiates actions that changed the very name of the UML to some other suitable nomenclature which could be accepted both by the communist and the non-communist world.

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