Among the enduring mysteries surrounding the collapse of King Gyanendra’s direct rule two years ago is the precise content of Indian emissary Karan Singh’s road map. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh endured much criticism at home – as well as from the opposition alliance agitating against palace rule – by dispatching a former Indian royal related to King Gyanendra to restore the democratic process.
Emerging from his talks at the palace, Karan Singh seemed sanguine to reporters. The monarch, he asserted, would speak to the nation soon. The king did, inviting the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) to form an interim government. The rest of the democratic world was ecstatic. But that approach didn’t work with the Nepalese people.
After King Gyanendra reinstated the House of Representatives, Karan Singh claimed that the transfer of power to the SPA was precisely in keeping with his initiative.
Now we are told that India had engaged in hectic bargaining with the palace during those tumultuous days. “Give us control of your foreign and defense policies and we’ll put an end to the violent street protests,” the trade-off purportedly went. Din Bandhu Aryal, a former Nepali Congress minister turned palace supporter, made the revelation at a public program the other day. Actually, it was hardly a revelation. Every Nepalese ruler since Padma Shamsher Rana has received such a proposal from independent India.
What makes Aryal’s disclosure interesting is King Gyanendra’s purported response. “I can’t agree to those terms. Get whatever concessions you want from Girija, Madhav and Prachanda,” Aryal quoted the monarch as saying. “They claim to represent the people and have brought out millions to the street to prove it.”
Aryal obviously is not a disinterested communicator here. He was among the most active supporters of King Gyanendra’s takeover of executive powers in October 2002. Before that, he was an assistant minister in Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s cabinet in 1991. (Yes, the one he reconstituted after sacking those Ganesh Man Singh and Krishna Prasad Bhattarai loyalists upon returning from his visit to India.)
The fact that Koirala had entrusted Aryal with the Ministry of General Administration at a time when the premier was reinvent the bureaucracy in his own image surely meant something. But, then, Aryal wasn’t the only Nepali Congress leader to break with the premier.
Aryal’s disclosure – made at a talk program on how the ruling alliance had become pawns of foreign powers – forced Maila Baje to ponder a bit deeper into the Karan Singh mission. Another princely Singh – the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Jaswant – had already announced plans to visit Kathmandu. Prime Minister Singh evidently couldn’t let Saffron Brigade subvert the 12-point accord the Reds had helped his government pull off in New Delhi.
The prevailing view was that India had dispatched someone who the king would listen to attentively. In retrospect, that seemed true, but perhaps not for the reason we were led to believe. Karan Singh arrived primarily as the former regent of Kashmir. In that capacity, he could most easily sweeten Delhi’s proposal. Six decades after India absorbed Kashmir, people still blame Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Ballabh Bhai Patel for the massive drain on the nation’s resources. No matter how hard India tries to convince the world that Maharaja Hari Singh – Karan’s father – had signed the instrument of accession, there are woefully few takers.
And Karan Singh? Well, he embarked on a political life that far outweighed his stature as heir apparent of a landlocked Himalayan state. And, yes, Kashmir conceded – at least theoretically – only defense and foreign affairs to the Indian Union.
Prime Minister Singh’s public persona doesn’t quite permit us to conclude that he is relishing some historical justice here. Many Sikhs, after all, do resent Nepal for keeping Rani Jindan Kaur – Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s widow and political successor who sought asylum here after an abortive uprising – under virtual house arrest, thereby snuffing out the last hope of regaining Punjab’s independence from British rule.
Of course, it ceases to matter, in our current political climate, that King Gyanendra’s forebears were hardly freer than Rani Jindan was under the Rana rulers of the time.

Another one about Girija...

RAW advised us to hijack plane: PM Koirala

Thursday, 10 January 2008

Indian Prime Minister Dr. Man Mohan Singh has named G.P. Koirala as "a statesman of South Asia." BY OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT In what is coming out to be brand new revelations of the involvement of India's spy agency into the domestics of neighbouring countries, Prime Minister G.P. Koirala has for the first time revealed that the RNAC airplane that everyone till today thinks that the Nepali Congress hijacked in 1973 was actually a RAW mastermind. During his weekly interview in the Kantipur television, Koirala said that it was RAW chief Kao who had suggested to Koirala to hijack the plane carrying loads of money for Nepal's central bank and land it in some village in Bihar. With RAW's advice and instructions, Koirala ordered Chakra Bastola and others to get the air-ticket un-used by C.P. Lohani and hijack the plane. In another instance, Koirala recalled how a few people in India had come to him promising to make fake Indian currency notes for the cause of "democracy". Koirala quickly arranged whatever they needed and they instantly made thousands of fake IC notes right in front of him. "The only problem was how to inscribe numbers in those notes", recalls Koirala. After copying the same numbers, Koirala took those fake notes to his elder brother B.P. Koirala who then ordered him to deposit it in a bank and withdraw them the next day. When the bank in India gave him new notes the next day, the two brothers immediately filled their gas tanks in their jeeps. It is an irony that if it was Nepal's to be Prime Minister who was manufacturing fake IC notes, then why does New Delhi occasionally grumble of the flow of fake IC notes to India from Nepal? More interesting is the revelation of Koirala when he said that there came a man who gave him a small pouch inside which he said there was enriched uranium. Uranium is used to make nuclear bombs so he said that the Nepali Congress and mainly G.P. Koirala could make huge sum of money if he could sell this product. G.P. Koirala then took that pouch to India to show it to his elder brother who just couldn't believe it. He told G.P. to secretly take it to the lab of Benaras Hindu University (BHU) and ask someone there to secretly test it. The lab assistant told G.P. that it was indeed uranium and nothing else. After hearing this good news, G.P. told it to B.P who ordered G.P. not to involve in these kind of "dangerous business". He even warned that G.P could be killed by these types of people. All this proves what kind of people were surrounding Nepal's current Prime Minister when he was in the opposition. His own memoir being telecast every week is proving that he was surrounded by spies, arms smugglers, goons, drunkards, fake currency makers, and dacoits. And what a greater irony it is that Indian Prime Minister Dr. Man Mohan Singh has named G.P. Koirala as "a statesman of South Asia."