Free Republic

An astonishing feature of India's bumpy ride to great power status is the near-total absence of public discourse on the country's foreign policy. There may be occasional bouts of interest in matters relating to Pakistan and, maybe, China, but these are linked to internal security concerns and questions of territory. In eastern India, Bangladesh, too, features on the mental horizon, but again as a part of the ongoing debate on demographic changes. However, larger questions are invariably subsumed under a grand foreign policy consensus forged by South Block. It is simply not done for either the political parties or the...

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...