Himalayan People's War: Nepal's Maoist Rebellion by Michael Hutt (Editor)

From the Publisher

"This is a readable and high-quality book. It provides more information and insight on the most successful Marxist rebellion in South Asia's history than has previously been found within one set of covers." — David Gellner

The eruption of a violent Maoist insurgency in Nepal in the late 1990s was met with bewilderment even among many who claimed to know the country well. The so-called "people's war" was launched in 1996 by the Communist Party of Nepal to overthrow the political establishment, including the monarchy. Tactics have included killing members of rival parties as well as attacks on police stations, banks, and power installations. The indiscriminate nature of the government's military response has been widely criticized. In 2001, Nepal's political situation came to the attention of Western news media with the murders of members of the royal family. This book provides historical, social, and political background on the movement and related events in this ongoing struggle. The contributors examine the war's origins and antecedents, provide ethnographic accounts from rural and urban perspectives, and draw comparisons with other Maoist movements elsewhere in the world. Includes full text of key documents by the rebels and government.

Foreign Affairs

As the rest of the world moves toward democracy, Nepal has had a hard time keeping up. Its politics are pervaded by duplicity and dominated by a rickety monarchy, which has survived in spite of a royal massacre in which the crown prince, in what appears to have been a drunken rage, shot most of the extended royal family before putting a bullet in his own head. The countryside supports a Maoist guerrilla movement that has taken to uninhibited violence as a way of life. The chapters in this informative book originated as papers at a conference organized by the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. The authors examine Nepal's developments from a variety of angles as they seek to explain the most successful Marxist rebellion in South Asian history. The book greatly benefits from the contributions of several anthropologists. Judith Pettigrew, in her chapter, "Living Between the Maoists and the Army in Rural Nepal," provides an extraordinarily vivid account of what people will do to survive in an environment dominated by terrorism. The Maoists have stepped up their attacks on the government, encircling the capital of Katmandu since the book went to press, but it is still the best available background study of Nepal's problems.

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• Table of Contents

Table of Contents