Asia's Unknown Uprisings Volume 2 by George Katsiaficas

Author:George Katsiaficas [Katsiaficas, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, General, Political Science, World, Asian
ISBN: 9781604868562
Google: YbVHEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2013-04-01T04:09:13+00:00

Jana Andolan 2—The 2006 Loktantra Andolan

On April 6, exactly sixteen years after the first jana andolan according to the Nepali Calendar, the leadership of the democracy movement again mobilized massively. Although they did not initially call for another prolonged popular uprising, autonomous grassroots initiatives transformed their planned four-day countrywide general strike into Jana Andolan 2—a nineteen-day uprising that finally drove the monarchy from power. As in 1990, people courageously took the streets despite great danger, and many were beaten and arrested—twenty-one were killed. Once again, ordinary people’s visions for what was needed were more radical—and accurate—than that of the leading parties. This time the Maoist armed struggle supplemented the unarmed insurgency. More than any other factor, thousands of people’s stubborn refusals to submit to overwhelming state power carried the day. A nationwide bandh brought traffic to a standstill and transformed the entire country. At its high point, five million people were involved, while millions more watched with passionate hope.116 On the monarchy’s side, there was no lack of will to employ violence to maintain the king’s rule. All together, alongside the 21 martyrs of Jana Andolan 2, 18 others disappeared, more than 3,723 were wounded, and 2,979 arrested.117

During the first days of the protests, only a few thousand people appeared in the streets, but their numbers grew rapidly as the uprising unfolded. On April 5, security forces rounded up nearly all major party leaders—some fifty in all—and government forces killed Darsan Lal Yadav as he peacefully protested in Saptari. The next day, the first in the planned general strike, over 450 people—including at least 17 journalists—were arrested in Kathmandu. Where mass arrests failed to deter protests, police used clubs and mercilessly beat unarmed people. When beatings failed to quiet the streets, bullets were used—but nothing could contain people’s yearnings for freedom.

Unlike the 1990 uprising, when the unarmed people’s movement faced the army alone, the 2006 jana andolan intimately intertwined the Maoist-led armed struggle in the countryside with vibrant popular mobilizations. The unity of these two disparate strands of opposition gave the Nepalese movement strength and resiliency unknown in countries where social movements remain bitterly divided (and sometimes even antagonistically pitted against each other). On April 3, Maoists announced a unilateral ceasefire in the Kathmandu valley. Enforcing a blockade of roads leading into the capital, elsewhere they launched a military offensive. During the night of April 6, they overran the town of Malangawa and freed 197 prisoners. A government helicopter equipped with special night vision capability crashed—the RNA claimed technical problems, while Maoists insisted they had shot it down. On April 8, thousands of guerrillas attacked in Butwal and Kapilvastu, freed more prisoners, and destroyed police posts as well as army barracks. “Without the armed struggle, there would have been no victory in 2006,” Maoist leader Shalik Ram Jamkattel told me in Kathmandu.118

The movement’s coordinated military offensive and general strike presented the monarchy with a qualitatively higher order of threat—and the king responded with a greater level of violence against street assemblies.

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