Free Republic

<p>Baburam Bhattarai, ideological head and No. 2 leader of the Maoist rebels in Nepal, recently surfaced in public for the first time in seven years to lead the Maoist negotiating team at talks last Sunday with the government in Katmandu. This was his first live interview with a foreign reporter, Washington Times special correspondent Campbell Spencer of Australia.</p>

Although it would not be entirely false to suggest that Maoists have managed to capture the imagination of a large section of Nepalese society because of the widespread poverty and continued neglect by successive monarchs and political leadership, there are quite a few other, equally valid, reasons why Maoists have had a run of the Nepalese countryside. It is, therefore, important to trace the genesis of he Maoist phenomenon to the Communist movement in Nepal, especially during the early 1970s whenthe Chinese cultural revolution and rise ofNaxalites in West Bengal inspired several young leaders to lean towards adopting an extremist...