One person who dominated and polarised Nepal’s politics during the past few months is General Rookmangud Katawal. The General retired on September 11 as the chief of the Nepal Army after a four-decade long service.
On May 4, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, the chief of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists, resigned as the Prime Minister less than 24 hours after President Rambaran Yadav asked Katawal to ignore the PM’s dismissal order and continue in office. Katawal has since retired, but Maoists and the other 18 parties are at loggerheads on the Maoists’ demand that President Yadav apologise for having accepted the joint suggestion of the 18 parties not to honour the PM’s order pertaining to Katawal’s dismissal.
Katawal had firmly stood against the Maoists’ move to sack him and thereby divide the Army, which, in Maoists’ assessment, remains the biggest hurdle in realising their ambition of capturing power. On May 3, Katawal was summoned to the PM’s office. For 40 minutes, Prachanda’s press secretary Om Sharma asked him provocative questions: “I hear you have invested a huge sum in Kantipur Publications?”, he asked. Katawal responded with sarcasm: “Yes, I had looted 63 banks,” in an apparent reference to the alleged looting of banks by the Maoists. Defence Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa Badal handed over an envelope to Katawal. “It’s a letter of thanks and appreciation for all you have done,” he said. Katawal rushed to the Army headquarters, asking the minister to have the letter delivered at his office. His concern was not to let Lt Gen K B Khadka, appointed by the Maoists, take over as the Army chief.
Prachanda had 32 meetings with Katawal. But these meetings hardly helped in building the trust between the two sides. In Trishuli, Katawal told jawans to be ready to fight extremists, attracting criticism from the Maoists, who thought of getting rid of him. Prachanda was trying to introduce a scheme to retire Army personnel who have completed 30 years in service. That would have left only two Colonels in the service.
The Maoists wanted to integrate their combatants in the Army and get its leadership to its commandants. For the Maoists, Katawal was also ‘a stooge of India’.
The current slogan of the Maoists is ‘Civilian supremacy’, implying that the President and the 18 parties have been guided by an Army General. “It’s mockery of democracy that a PM cannot remove an Army chief,” said Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai.
“I would not have spoken as an Army chief had the Army got the patronage of the political parties. The human rights groups vilified soldiers as human rights violators, condoning Maoists’ act of killing. For my people I would stick my neck out,” Katawal said.
As a boy, Katawal first saw King Mahendra, when he was 10. The King, “charmed by the boy”, asked the Education Ministry to pay for his school fees.
“Nepal’s Army has stood by the legitimate government of the day,” he said, adding that the Army stood firmly in favour of democracy. During his farewell speech, Katawal said the integration of the Maoist combatants into the army was unacceptable and that the question of downsizing the Army is not for this government or the Maoists to decide. “That is something only an elected government under the new constitution can do after the due assessment of the security situation in the country,” he said. What he said sounds like guidelines for the Army as there are speculations that it may have to play a much bigger role in Nepal in the not too distant future.
- Yubaraj Ghimire (Indian Express)
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