Bhattarai is his country’s fourth prime minister in five years, and like those before him, he understands that his position is precarious. To remain in power and fulfill his promises, he must sell himself as much as his Marxist ideology. So there was no better time than the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly to tell the world who he is and try to garner the support he needs to run an almost failed state.
On his New York trip, Bhattarai fit in meetings with several foreign delegations and had a photo op with President Obama and the first lady at the New York Public Library. But a key purpose of the visit was to woo New York’s relatively large Nepali population, which includes lots of Ivy League graduates working as academics, doctors, lawyers and financiers. Bhattarai addressed this audience in a Manhattan lecture hall at the New School university, speaking about “The Relevance of Marxism in the 21st Century.”
The crowd — mostly New York-based Nepalis, joined by a few sympathetic Americans — was eager to listen to the man who had waged a revolution and overthrown a monarchy, and was now an elected leader.
“Marxism is alive and kicking,” Bhattarai said. “By end of this century, it will again be the leading philosophy to guide this world.” He sprinkled the talk with his favorite wisdom from Mao and Lenin — “It is more pleasant and useful to go through the experience of revolution than to write about it” — and told the crowd about the challenges of applying for a visa to visit the United States when you are a sometimes-violent revolutionary.
But there he was, in a city where protesters are seeking to occupy Wall Street and questioning the relationship between politics and capitalism, lecturing Americans on revolution and Marxism.
“In Nepal we tried to be creative. We followed the basic tenets of Marxism and then re-created it. That is why in 10 years, we rose as the biggest political force in the country,” he said.
The prime minister, a member of Nepal’s Maoist party, didn’t sugarcoat his experience. He was the architect of the Maoist insurgency that began with a handful of ideologues who had read Marx, memorized Sun Tzu and brandished guns. They inspired thousands of marginalized Nepalis, mostly peasants who lived in the far-flung regions. This led to a brutal and long war that killed more than 12,000 people and shifted the course of the country. Three years ago, Bhattarai and his comrades got what they had fought for: The monarchy was abolished, and they won the popular election.
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