: Opinion: Watch out New Delhi #IndiaNEWS #News By Amitava Mukherjee Hyderabad: It is not Prachanda, the Prime Minister of Nepal, but Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, the Chairman of the Communist Party of

Opinion: Watch out New Delhi #IndiaNEWS #News
By Amitava Mukherjee
Hyderabad: It is not Prachanda, the Prime Minister of Nepal, but Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, the Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), who may turn out to be India’s nemesis in Kathmandu. Although the media in India has busied itself with the future moves of Prachanda, the focus should be on Oli, an avowed anti-India political figure in Nepal who is now the kingmaker in his country.
As Nepal’s strategic value to India is immense, with both New Delhi and Beijing involved in a tug-of-war for establishing respective supremacies there, Oli is certainly the deciding factor for both Asian giants.
South Block’s Mistake
In the latest chessboard game, Oli has comprehensively defeated the amateurs in New Delhi’s South Block. The Government of India was certain that Sher Bahadur Deuba, the Nepali Congress leader, was going to form the government as his party had come out to be the largest block in the election result with 89 seats. Deuba had also assured New Delhi about it. But South Block had committed a terrible mistake. The polity in Nepal has turned towards the Left after the abolition of the monarchical system and both the CPI(UML) of Oli and the CPI(Maoist Centre) are now forces to reckon with. At a time when the need of the hour was to cultivate all the political stakeholders in Kathmandu, New Delhi put all its eggs in the Nepali Congress basket.
But Oli was not anti-Indian all the time. He was active behind the signing of the Mahakali river water sharing agreement between Nepal and India even though a section of the Nepali elite had castigated it as a sell-out to India. But in the 2017 election, he unleashed a vitriolic anti-India campaign. The bitterness stems from a belief that India had acted from behind the scenes in destabilising a government that he was leading in 2016. But more than that, Oli has a distrust for the Indian ruling elite which also comes from his social and political background.
Moving Away
Oli comes from a middle-class background. His baptization in politics in the 1960s coincides with the rise of the Naxalite movement in India and there are sufficient grounds to believe that he was influenced by it. He actively participated in the Jhapa, situated in eastern Nepal, rebellion where poor peasants had risen in revolts against landlords. He was arrested time and again for his political belief and spent 14 years in jail. His distance with India is quite natural as the Naxalite movement in India gradually fizzled out and almost no relationship grew between him and the Indian Left comprising the CPI and the CPM.
Let us examine how the Oli-Prachanda combination, where the latter will be a less important player, can spell harried moments for New Delhi.

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