Vive la difference

“We are not interested in exporting our own ideology," the Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said, adding, "This is for every country to decide for itself."

Minister Mukherjee was on a trip to recently to Myanmar- the country with a track record of suppressing democracy and extreme human rights violations. Mukherjee also said the issue of democracy and human rights was that country's internal affairs.

Coming to the point straight, King Gyanendra’s regime in Nepal as it was responsible for taming the democratic minded men alleged as corrupts, was also responsible for severe human rights violation while fighting with the Maoists rebels who also matched the government led forces in taking innocent lives.

The King himself has accepted in his much criticized D-Day message straight that his repeated efforts to restore peace first and then reestablish democracy failed miserably.

There are some facts such as the Maoists had approached the King to find an impasse of the decade old rebellion and that Girija Prasad Koirala-who finally became the lone crusader of democracy in Nepal, was also in line to meet the monarch. Had there been no coup staged by King Gyanendra, Prachanda was to meet the King four days later in the Rolpa jungles. This is Prachanda’s own admission.

Now the question is if the King had any plans to find a way out of the deteriorating situation then, given these above facts, how his plans failed? Did he fail or forced to fail? The answer is obvious and any body’s guess.

Further, the King’s regime that lasted merely fifteen months seems to be unluckier than the dictatorial regime in Myanmar that is in place since two decades. Thanks to the Indian regime that they have come to the rescue of the tyrannical regime, terming internal flaws as internal matters, be it human rights violation or shutting mouths of the people. Poor Ang Saan Su Kyi!

In the Nepali case the Indian establishment had obviously different modalities meant for Nepal’s internal flaws, democracy and human rights violation their top visible priorities finally, became a matter of international concern.

India is obviously being thanked by all to their efforts in bringing the Maoists and the Political Parties in a table to forge an alliance to fight against the Royal Regime in Nepal. The result is here before all of us that the King had to bow down to the political parties in Nepal to restore democracy. Or is it that the King had to bow down to the Indian pressure that became unbearable for him? Who else better knows than the King himself?

Unfortunately for Nepal, the Indian foreign policy that keeps on varying according to their benefit from country to country and time to time has different objectives, which means dealing with Myanmar it has to take a different form that suits to their own interest.

As Siddarth Vardaraajan says in his own words writing for the International Herald Tribune, “more than the symbolism of the highly publicized visit (sic DHR), however, it was the business Mukherjee transacted that is likely to raise eyebrows in the West. Among the items on his agenda: an offer to sell military hardware to the Myanmar military. India, whose national oil and gas companies own a stake in a couple of lucrative offshore gas fields off the Rakhine coast of Burma, also wants to construct a 2,000-kilometer, or 1,250-mile, pipeline to feed the energy needs of its eastern states.”

Perhaps these notes will put the things in order.

DHR: Democracy and Human Rights.

Posted on : 2007-03-13 21:32:38

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