The Making of Cash Maoism' in Nepal A Thabangi Perspective

After examining the historical trajectories of Nepali Maoism (1996-2006), this study observes that People's War as a form of political movement attracted widespread mass support in the rural heartland of Nepal. By drawing ethnographic data from Thabang village of Rolpa district, once known as the "yenan of Nepal", this work concludes that from the very beginning, CPN (M) did not adhere to Maoist principles of protracted guerrilla warfare. Therefore it ended up as 'Cash Maoism' by toeing a political line of quick victory. Although the centuries old Hindu monarchy was dethroned in 2008 after the election of the first constituent assembly, the so-called Maoist revolution concluded without accomplishing even a single demand from their basket of "forty point demands" concerning nationality, people's democracy and people's livelihood. The struggle that was supposed to culminate in a socialist project in Nepal was turned out to be only a ladder to enter into bourgeois parliamentary democracy.