Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Is it all with a free lunch?

Our attention has naturally been drawn towards the fresh agreement that the Maoists and the Nepal's major political parties have agreed for what they call would bring peace in the country.

We stand for any move that restores peace and tranquility. This is our commitment and we stick to this principle laid down by our own colleagues at time of the very inception of this newspaper some two decades ago. This is so because we understand the need and the value of peace. It is only peace that can ensure freedom, free movement and development of any society or for that matter of a country. We also understand the need for peace this country needs at the moment. We have suffered a lot in the absence of peace since long. We have suffered or say each and every strata of the nepali social life or community has suffered from the non-prevalence of peace. The fact is that not only peace disappeared from this Himalayan Kingdom but the development efforts that should have been done or were being accomplished through the use of donor aided money and internal resources too have had a tremendous negative impact thereby pushing the nation to the brink of a total collapse to the extent that a large section of the international community had begun dubbing Nepal as a definite case of a failed state if things were not controlled on time.

Undoubtedly, efforts from our own soil and through the kind courtesy of some of our international friends had been done in the past to convince the rebels residing in the jungles to come to terms with the establishment. However, those efforts went to the dogs for a variety of political reasons. The fact is that both the warring rivals, read the state and the rebels, tried their best to come to terms applying the established theory of give and take but every time when the deal was about to be struck in between the two, some extraneous forces intervened and the entire process collapsed many a times in the past. It is time that the state and the rebels must determine as to which notorious forces on earth had been trying their hard to manage a perpetual infighting in between the Nepalese people. The fact is that those who were being killed on both the sides were sons of this soil. It is time that the academia, intellectuals and men of letters both in the political sector and those who are at the moment in the other camp other than the state should delve on this matter and expose the nasty forces which played upon our sentiments and made us to fight with each other and managed to get served their political interests.

Now that the Maoists too have felt the need to go i9n for peace is a welcome sign. Those who have managed them to come to the nation's mainstream politics deserve deep appreciation. However, what is boggling the minds of the Nepali academia as to how the rebels could trust such a force that in effect pushed them to the jungles? This is surprising indeed. Unbelievable is the fact that those who while in power pushed them, read the rebels, to the wall and in turn the latter have had to go on in for weapons to pounce upon the former are now seen embracing each other as if nothing untoward have had happened in the years that laspsed in between theirs being in the parliament and going to the jungles? This is a miracle. A phenomenon that politics might not have encountered any where in the world.

Let's then presume that both those who have inked the twelve point agreement could have realized that enough had been enough and that it was time to reconcile. Fine.

But then one more question that pinches the Nepali brains is after all which force on earth brought these adherents of two diametrically opposing political doctrines to come to a platform that is common and ink and agreement in order to restore peace.

Our concern is whether it is the same force that more often than not pokes its nose in our exclusive political affairs and manages divisions in the Nepali political paraphernalia and wants to see a completely unstable Nepal so that she could reap benefits from such divisions and infighting in between the Nepalese? Perhaps yes!

It is time that the Nepali academia must investigate the dirty hands if any that under the garb of true friendship has been playing yet another political game in order to exhibit the innocent Nepalese and the world that look we have come to your rescue!

Let's presume that comrade Prachanda and those leaders who are jumping with joy for what they have accomplished in the recent past will give priority to the preservation of national independence, nation's integrity and sovereignty and the prestige of the country and finalize any deal with the state in a friendly manner that once again allows Nepal stand high among the comity of nations.

However, if some dirty hands have managed this agreement then let's frankly admit that there would be no free lunch. What the invisible one that is maneuvering our politics will demand from us at a later stage will have to be carefully watched. Let's hope that our leaders have agreed for a free lunch, which doesn't demand reciprocal treatment.

By and by, any overtures for peace should be a matter of welcome. It is high time that Prachanda and Babu Ram Bhattarai could win the hearts of their own brethren by becoming flexible and that too in the name of the nation.

That's all.