The landlocked country of Nepal led by its communist Prime Minister KP Oli is on a hara-kiri spree. Heavily inebriated under Chinese ‘communist’ influence, the Himalayan neighbor of India is looking to sabotage the centuries-old relationship with India that traverses religious, cultural, and familial ties.
The Indian government up until now has been silent and looking at the developments from afar but there is one trump card in the Modi government’s bag that can turn the entire situation on its head. And there is no better time to unleash it than now. The Yogi-Adityanath card.
Nepal has pre-dominantly been a Hindu country with over 80 percent of its population identifying itself as a Hindu. Its transition to a secular country is a rather recent phenomenon that came at the cost of a hardcore leftist Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist joining the Nepalese politics after a decade long insurgency which caused all sorts of mayhem in the country.
The communist party was the reason for over 13,000 deaths in the country. Partly the blame lies with UPA for allowing red-militancy to take the political center stage in Nepal and thus starting the domino effect which has led to KP Oli and his appalling government. The decision to make Nepal a secular country in 2007 ended its centuries-old identity as the world’s only Hindu kingdom.
Even if Nepal is no longer a Hindu country, CM Yogi Adityanath and his Gorakhnath Mutt have always enjoyed a special connection and substantial following with the Hindus in Nepal and its erstwhile royal family.
The erstwhile royal family of Nepal are Gorkhas who trace their origin to Guru Gorakshanath or Gorakhnath, the founder of the Nath monastic movement in the Himalayan belt.
King Birendra who was assassinated by his own son in 2001 was a symbol of tradition for this Mutt and for many years launched the Makar Sankranti festival in Nepal by visiting the Mutt. Birendra looked up to Mahant Avaidyanath (mentor of Adityanath), former religious and temporal head of the Gorakhnath monastery, as his guru. Interestingly, Yogi Adityanath succeeded as the head of the Gorakhpur Mutt in 2014.
And he has been vocal and critical in his views of Nepal government’s move to declare the country a secular state ever since then. He had demanded to roll back the decision in 2015 when the decision was being promulgated in the constitution.
It is a fact out in the open that communists and secularists run amuck with tails between their legs when Yogi is around. The Hindu nationalist Yogi has made his political career by wearing his religion on his sleeve proudly.
It’s one of the reasons why pseudo-seculars and communists have a heartburn every time they look at Yogi and see how far he has come.
The closeted communists that masquerade as intellectuals have had to often eat up their own words since Yogi came to power three years ago.
When he was made the CM of the country’s most populous state—calls were raised from the opposition that such Hindu-leader would polarise the state and push the state into anarchy and the minorities will be living in a constant state of fear and paranoia.
Fast forward three years, UP has shown a gargantuan change in mind-set and is treading on the path of development with law and order back on track.
Even in the wake of a global pandemic, the performance of the UP government has been better than most metropolitan cities. Battling coronavirus at one side, the Yogi administration is going all out with its reformist moves (Read; Labour laws) on the other side to make UP the next ‘World Factory’. It seems like the monk CM is hell-bent on snatching the title from China.
Yogi has conflated religion and government into one and proved that an effective and efficient government need not compromise on its ideals. As long as the best interests of the citizens are in mind without any twisted belief, a region can prosper.
It is a shining example for Nepal that a Hindi-heartland state in its neighbor with a devout Hindu politician can provide good governance. A living example of the fight of Hindus against the unholy trifecta of Communist-Missionary-Islamist nexus which is pushing hard to uproot the Hindus from their land, culture, and history.
Modi government should push Yogi Adityanath at the forefront of this fiasco. Let the Nepalese people look at the example of a proud Hindu making long strides in politics and leading the state. Giving them the hope that it does not need a communist regime which compromises with its ingrained Hindu ideology and submits itself to the whimsies of a foreign power, which by all means is using it to get back at India.
The word ‘secular’ sounds good to add in the constitution but it is often used unilaterally to institutionalize minority communalism and push Hindus into the corner. Something we have already seen in India and something very similar that is happening in Nepal.
China is looking to topple Nepal from inside. Oli short-sighted by his misplaced beliefs about communism is playing into the hands of Beijing. It is not in the interest of Nepal to become China’s client state, especially because nearly 6 million Nepalese citizens live and work in India, bringing huge remittances for the Himalayan country.
The Himalayan country which is supposed to play the role of a buffer zone between two Asian giants- India and China, is fast reducing itself into a stooge of China. Consequently, jeopardizing the balance of power in the region.
Some communists were beaten because they were trying to go and hoist Nepalese flags in the Indian Territory and it proves that the Hindus of the region do not want any altercation with India. It is the Nepalese Communists that have sold off their fickle loyalties to Beijing.
Therefore it’s time that Yogi jumps in the fray and talks down Nepal for its recklessness and misadventure in the region.