Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06KATHMANDU2518
2006-09-15 10:23:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Kathmandu
Cable title:  

STUDENT POLITICS IN NEPAL: NOT YOUR COLLEGE

Tags:  PGOV PTER PINR NP 
pdf how-to read a cable
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C O N F I D E N T I A L KATHMANDU 002518 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/15/2016
TAGS: PGOV PTER PINR NP
SUBJECT: STUDENT POLITICS IN NEPAL: NOT YOUR COLLEGE
COUNCIL

REF: A. KATHMANDU 1966


B. KATHMANDU 1976

Classified By: Ambassador James F. Moriarty. Reasons 1.4 (b/d).

SUMMARY AND INTRODUCTION
------------------------

C O N F I D E N T I A L KATHMANDU 002518

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/15/2016
TAGS: PGOV PTER PINR NP
SUBJECT: STUDENT POLITICS IN NEPAL: NOT YOUR COLLEGE
COUNCIL

REF: A. KATHMANDU 1966


B. KATHMANDU 1976

Classified By: Ambassador James F. Moriarty. Reasons 1.4 (b/d).

SUMMARY AND INTRODUCTION
--------------


1. (C) Student organizations - the starting point for many
Nepalese leaders - have been instrumental in stimulating
political change during the past 60 years. Students have
been able to operate when and where mainstream politicians
could not. Student organizations were the legal arms of
political parties when multi-party politics was illegal.
They organized mass demonstrations and protested for
democracy. After the 1990 pro-democracy movement, student
politics became a de facto career option. Today, student
politicians are focused on provoking change from the
grassroots level. Our young interlocutors expressed
frustration with roadblocks to change, including apathy among
youth and nepotism among political leaders and their
student-wing lackeys. They noted their disagreements with
the policies of the parties with which they were affiliated,
and stated a desire to alert the Nepalese people that
alternatives existed. Progressive student leaders often have
a finger on the pulse of popular sentiments and are willing
to use all resources regardless of risk. Therefore, over
time, they could become a major challenge to the mainstream
political parties, drastically changing the dynamics of the
fledgling democracy. End Summary.

AN HISTORICAL, SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP
--------------


2. (SBU) Student organizations play an important role in
agitating the masses to pay attention to Nepalese politics,
and many national leaders came into prominence while involved
in student efforts. Both Deputy Prime Ministers KP Oli and
Amik Sherchan began their careers in leftist student
politics. Former Prime Minister and Nepali Congress -
Democratic President Sher Bahadur Deuba was President of the
Nepal Students Union (NSU) in 1971. Political parties and
their sister student organizations have a symbiotic
relationship with roots in the pro-democracy revolution of

1950. Many of the people who rebelled against the Rana
regime were students who had been exiled to India in 1947 for

participating in the Jayatu Sanksritam ("Victory to
Sanskrit") movement to expand the university curriculum. The
students in exile, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's Quit India
movement, returned to Nepal to push for democracy. During
the following decade of pseudo-multi-party democracy,
university students turned their attention toward campus
well-being. They created student federations to raise
awareness about student rights. The new organizations
represented students from different regions rather than
different ideologies. The rulers of the one-party Panchayat
system that King Mahendra constructed in 1960 viewed the
student federations as officially non-partisan, and allowed
them to continue their activities.

POLITICIZATION OF STUDENT FEDERATIONS
--------------


3. (SBU) Oppression during the Panchayat era led to the
politicization of student federations. Movements that began
to improve the quality of education quickly took on
ideological stances against the Panchayat. In 1970, the
Nepali Congress Party (NC) formed the NSU in response to the
All-Nepal National Free Students' Union (ANNFSU),which had
become a Communist stronghold. The NSU and ANNFSU, along
with other student organizations, held elections for a Free
Student Union (FSU),a national student government and a
proxy for democracy that could not occur at a state level.
(Note: Currently, the FSU consists of students at Nepal's
two state-owned universities - Tribhuvan and Mahendra
Sanskrit - and their affiliated colleges and institutes
spread throughout the country. The three private
universities in Nepal - Poorvanchal, Pokhara, and Kathmandu -
have only non-political student councils that serve as campus
advocacy organizations, much like student governments at
American schools. End note.)


STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS GIVE UP AUTONOMY
--------------


4. (SBU) In 1971, the Supreme Court declared an attempted
Panchayat ban on student organizations unconstitutional, on
the grounds that the organizations were not political. This
solidified the relationship between the banned political
parties and the student affiliates, with the latter serving
as the legal wings of the former. By 1990, the student
organizations had given up much of their autonomy and become
firm limbs of parent parties, vehicles through which the
parties exercised influence. In return, the students
piggy-backed on the underground parties' clout to organize
political dissent.

TWO PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENTS: 1990
--------------


5. (SBU) Student organizations played an important role in
the 1990 pro-democracy movement by carrying out the work that
detained political party leaders were unable to do - namely,
getting people onto the streets. The student organizations,
committed to their parties' ideals, gained situational
autonomy to coordinate protests. For the first time since
1950, students secured the possibility for positions of power
in the multi-party government that followed. From 1990
onwards, they invested themselves not only in political
ideology but also in legitimate political careers.

2006
--------------


6. (C) Student organizations again urged people onto the
streets in the pro-democracy movement that culminated in mass
demonstrations in April 2006. Gagan Thapa, a former NSU
General Secretary who now represents a Kathmandu constituency
in the NC, told Emboff that the political parties would not
have been able to assemble crowds alone. The Nepalese
distrusted the feckless politicians, Thapa said. He
explained that the student leaders worked to persuade the
people that youth who were unburdened by the power-hungry
priorities of the old guard could foment change. Thapa, a
28-year-old prominent rabble-rouser, had spearheaded the
NSU's pro-democracy campaign that gained initial momentum in

2003. He was imprisoned several times following the King's
2005 royal takeover.

A CAREER IN STUDENT POLITICS?
--------------


7. (C) The length of time that one can be involved in
student politics has led some to create virtual careers out
of it, and a photograph of middle-aged men identified as
student protesters is not an uncommon image in Nepalese
media. Young idealists become active in political
organizations as early as the equivalent of junior high
school, and can remain a member of the student wings as long
as they are enrolled in an academic institution. Central
committee members who find themselves on the payroll of
mainline party leaders - but who perhaps do not have a future
in the main party - appear able to keep their positions
indefinitely, regardless of student status.

TEACH THEM WELL AND LET THEM LEAD THE WAY
--------------

--Adhikari--


8. (C) Srijana Adhikari, Joint Secretary General of the NSU,
joined her party at age 13. A decade later, she balances
intermittent classwork with leading the NSU's grassroots
education and women's empowerment campaigns. Adhikari is
preparing to run for the NSU presidency and has her sight set
on a seat in Parliament. She described growing up in Chitwan
(a Terai district) during the Panchayat era and feeling
dissatisfied that power rested in the hands of elite men.
She noted that in the current democracy movement, many people
were spouting slogans that they did not fully understand,
such as calling for constituent assembly elections without
knowing exactly what these elections entailed. Adhikari
E

stated that people needed to be taught their rights so that
they would not settle for less than equal opportunity.

--Thapa--


9. (C) Former NSU General Secretary Gagan Thapa separately
described his own goal for grassroots campaigns: to convince
potential voters to usher in a new, progressive generation of
leaders. He opined that the 1990 pro-democracy movement
failed to ingrain lasting change to Nepal's "broken"
political system. Thapa told Emboff that his voter education
program targeted youth between the ages of 15 and 25 - people
who were too young to vote during the last national elections
held in 1999. He expressed hope that increased youth and
grassroots participation would allow ideologues to gain a
solid footing in the parties and force current political
leaders to listen to their constituents.

NSU: DISSENT AMONG THE RANKS
--------------


10. (C) Srijana Adhikari and Gagan Thapa share common goals
of grassroots development and the empowerment of a new
generation, but represent two extremes of NSU leadership.
Adhikari is a Nepali Congress loyalist who seems willing to
turn the other cheek to the nepotistic party. She condemned
the obstacles that women faced in Nepalese politics, but
seemed content to fight through hard work rather than rage.
Thapa, on the other hand, has been a vocal critic of NC
shortfalls. He explained to Emboff how student leaders spent
much of the day visiting political leaders for favors and
funding. He recounted how he personally had asked NC
President GP Koirala to abolish this practice and alleged
that his request had greatly angered Koirala. Thapa claimed
that his attempts to transform NC and NSU politics led to his
dismissal as NSU General Secretary in August 2004. He said
that the NC postponed the NSU's 2005 convention because the
party leaders feared that students would elect Thapa and
other revolutionaries. The convention was put on hold
indefinitely because, Thapa maintained, the NSU leadership
was content with receiving privileges from the NC leadership,
and NC leaders wanted to maintain the status quo of having
pliable "students" do their bidding.

A VOID IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
--------------


11. (C) Thapa complained to Emboff that only Maoists were
willing to work in rural areas, while the political parties
frolicked in the relative safety of the Kathmandu Valley. He
noted that the Maoists outnumbered each of the largest
political parties at the student level, approximately 35,000
young Maoists compared to 20-25,000 students each in the NSU
and ANNFSU-UML. Thapa expressed concern that the Maoists
would succeed in taking over the country if political party
and student leaders did not recommence activity in the
districts. He said that he had recently visited 18 districts
to encourage youth to become politically active. He lamented
that he was one of the few leaders willing to travel to
potentially unsafe areas. Thapa asserted that leaders were
supposed to serve the people, not other politicians, and thus
had the responsibility to take risks for their constituents.

DIVERGENT AGENDAS
--------------

--The View From NC's Student Wing--


12. (C) Thapa stated that a political apathy stemmed in
large part from the perception that student organizations
mirrored the main parties in stale ideology and limited
effectiveness. He stressed the need to inform people that,
at least in the NSU, students had different visions than the
older politicians. Thapa cited the monarchy as an example.
He claimed that the NSU supported what the majority of
Nepalese allegedly want, a republic, but the NC politicians
wanted to toy with the idea of a constitutional monarchy. He
also contended that the NSU advocated - and the NC shot down
- constituent assembly elections before the Seven-Party
Alliance reached an agreement to hold them. Thapa speculated
that the creation of an all-youth mainstream political party

could give the other parties a run for their money, and
bemoaned the lack of interest among people he had approached
with the idea.

--The View From UML--


13. (C) Khim Lal Bhattarai, the ANNFSU-UML President, also
had ideas that differed from his party's official policy. In
contrast to CPN-UML interlocutors who urged party unity,
caution against the Maoists, and thoroughness in the draft
constitution for the way forward (reftels),Bhattarai
suggested to Emboff that the GON needed to keep up the
momentum of political change and not get caught up in
details, such as issues of representation, that could slow
the peace process. He was optimistic that the Maoists could
be trusted and declared that they should be included in the
government even before the possible dissolution of
Parliament. Bhattarai, a thirty-something veteran of both
the 1990 and 2006 pro-democracy movements, has been in
student politics for 18 years. He conveyed a desire to learn
from his experience and ensure that April's People's Movement
succeeded where previous uprisings had not.

COMMENT
--------------


14. (C) The ability to mobilize support at the grassroots
level has given student organizations a vital role in
Nepalese politics, enabling them to reach communities that
the traditional politicians perched in Kathmandu cannot. Our
interlocutors are insightful and dynamic, but they risk
losing their idealism and becoming jaded in the face of
old-fashioned resistance to change. Disgruntled youth like
Gagan Thapa, willing to use all resources regardless of
physical risk and political censure, are a force that
political parties cannot ignore. These young dissenters
could over time become a major challenge to the mainstream
parties, drastically changing the dynamics of the fledgling
democracy. The parties need to pay closer attention to their
youngest members, who have the potential one day to become
great national leaders.
MORIARTY