The tragedy of Nepal continues to reverberate across mind space, landscape, as well as time zones across the world. Its scale is far bigger than a mere Himalayan flood, glacier collapse, or the toll of thousands dead and missing. It is the latest symptom of a far larger global problem, one that makes its presence felt periodically, largely through water-borne excesses. Ironic, since the spectre of a warming earth is supposed to create water shortages across continents. Doubly ironic that despite a terrible tragedy, base human actions come to be repeated, even in Nepal.
Despite heroic stories of rescues and recoveries, there have been reports of people stealing jewellery and other valuables from the dead. While this is not new, at least not in a global context, a keen Nepal observer has squarely placed the blame for this “moral decay” on armed conflict and an ideology skewed from basic human principles. He wrote on X: “This level of inhumanity was taught by the Maoist ‘people’s war’.”
Nepal was engulfed by a brutal Maoist insurgency for over a decade, and atrocities were committed. This post recounted two ghastly incidents involving ambushed security forces.
On 28 February 2006, a Royal Nepal Army force was caught in an ambush by armed Maoist militants in the Chhahara Tingire area of western Palpa district. A number of army soldiers died in the action, and many Maoists were killed as well. A couple of months later, another ambush claimed the lives of more soldiers in eastern Nepal, when an improvised explosive device was used to launch an attack on security forces in Surunga in Jhapa district on 5 April 2006. The force was escorting school examination papers. What followed the 2006 Maoist ambushes seems to have a 2026 replica.
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Not a fight for ‘freedom’
During the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, there were reported cases of deliberately brutal desecration of the bodies of fallen soldiers. And this was echoed later in the jungles of India by their fellow ideological travellers.
On 29 June 2010, for instance, Maoists ambushed a CRPF patrol in Narayanpur, Chhattisgarh, killing 27 personnel. Not only were the men shot, some were brutally mutilated. Days later, Maoists also left pressure bombs under the bodies of police informers they had killed, so that even their recovery could become a death trap.
Such depravities are not the sole preserve of armed groups inspired by Maoist ideology, but have been reported from other parts of the world as well, particularly West Asia.
Extremist ideology inspires various armed groups, but what sets some of them apart is their complete exclusion from the current structures of the State as it exists in a modern sense. It isn’t simply a matter of challenging the Union of India, as in the case of Kashmiri or Naga militants, but of completely replacing the functioning state structure. Freedom is not the aspiration; destroying the state and dominating society is.
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The long shadow of warped ideologies
After the Maoist-Naxal excesses in Nepal and India, another force appeared on the battlefield of ideas which sought to replace State and society with its version of utopia. While the threat posed by left-wing extremism remained largely an Indo-Nepali problem, this supposed reincarnation of utopia presented a clear and present danger to the world.
On the first day of Ramadan in 2014, a Caliphate was announced by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. This was an extraordinary event in an exceptional part of the world. The ensuing reign of mass killings, genocide and slavery, and its subsequent dismantling by a global alliance, is well known.
ISIS, or Daesh, as the group is called in Arabic, was particularly brutal toward opponents from the armed forces during its decade-long brutalities. In sharp contrast to the Maoist-Naxal reluctance to accept brutalities committed, Daesh excesses were extraordinary in being widely telecast and vividly shared across the world. And none more so than the caged immolation of Jordanian Air Force pilot Muath Safi Yousef al-Kasasbeh on 3 January 2015. The anti-Islamic act committed by an avowedly Islamist group created an uproar across the world, especially among learned Arab jurists. It also proved to be a veritable magnet for some young people, including in the West.
In the era of digital communication, where real and fake information travels faster than a clearly enunciated sentence, attraction to ideologically inspired violence is a convenient escape from a reality that isn’t always congenial. An imagined utopia, Maoist or Islamist, preys on such minds to recruit or re-orient them over time.
Even as both ideologies face their sunset days, their social impact remains a long-term issue that state and society will need to address. Dehumanised minds, devoid of social responsibility, are a matter of concern. Sprung from excess against the armed forces, they remain perpetually predatory.
Manvendra Singh is a BJP leader, Editor-in-Chief of Defence & Security Alert and Chairman, Soldier Welfare Advisory Committee, Rajasthan. He tweets @ManvendraJasol. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)