Word: gyanendra
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...Maoists have long claimed, most famously in a fiery speech by Prachanda in December, that India backs the Nepal army and wants to restore the monarchy. Ironically, the influence of India is the one point on which the former King and the Maoist former Prime Minister agree. When Gyanendra was on the throne, he too chafed at any hint of excessive Indian influence. It may be an inevitable dilemma for a small country squeezed between two giants - and one that Nepal has less than three months to resolve...
...capita income in South Asia. But the jockeying for influence between China and India may be undermining Nepal's fragile democracy, as the country's 24 political parties trade charges of being pawns of one or the other. Even a tiny royalist party, supporters of Nepal's deposed King Gyanendra, have gotten into the act, staging a rally in Kathmandu on Feb. 22 that shut down the capital for a day. Meanwhile, the parties are debating complex constitutional issues, including a proposed federal system of 14 ethnicity-based states. Nepal's interim constitution will expire...
...with Nepal based on its shared cultural ties. Both countries have a majority Hindu population, and they share millions of cross-border migrant workers. But the character of that relationship has changed. India used to engage Nepal only at the highest levels, in meetings between bureaucrats, ministers and - until Gyanendra stepped down in 2008 - representatives of the King. That has changed dramatically over the last few years, since Nepal's Maoists came to power in a 2006 peace agreement that ended the monarchy, halted a decade-long insurgency and set the country on the road to democracy. The Maoist leader...
...Indeed, the current army chief, Rookmangud Katawal, has a reputation for being a strident royalist and Maoist baiter. Katawal had been adopted by Mahendra, the father of King Gyanendra, whom the Maoists fought hard to bring down in their aim to abolish the monarchy. The army chief has long resisted the induction of the PLA into the Nepal army, and he courted trouble last November by beginning recruitment of 3,000 new soldiers before any former PLA guerrillas had been folded in - a move made without permission from the Ministry of Defense and against the provisions of the peace agreement...
...Maoists, though, who waged a decade-long war against the royal army, have not forgotten so easily. A recent trip to India by Gyanendra, who lives quietly in a private residence in the capital, prompted howls of outrage from members of the government who are wary of his dealings with Nepal's influential southern neighbor. The Maoists, observers say, need to raise the specter of royalist nefariousness to boost their own flagging support. "They need to create a sense of threat, of a larger enemy, to distract the people from their failings," says Dixit...