Champions of Hindutva might go into sackcloth and ashes and ageing parlour pinks croak with delight, but the Maoist victory in Nepal is almost as exaggerated as Mark Twain’s death. The outcome of the two-phase election, which commentators, whose wishful thinking runs away with reason, hailed as “stunning” and “stupendous”, “epoch-making” and “extraordinary”, is by no means as conclusive as is made out.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) secured only 29.3 per cent of the vote. Given Nepal’s anguish during ten years of insurgency when 13,000 people perished, contrasts between poverty and wealth, royal autocracy, political chicanery and harsh social divisions, one would have expected a landslide in favour of the one party that flaunting its classless, casteless revolutionary zeal, vowed to sweep away the inequalities of centuries and usher in the idyllic millennium. Clearly, voters were not convinced that Pushpa Kamal Dahal, aka Comrade Prachanda, is indeed the Redeemer. That does not stop him from airing his presidential ambition and treating the prime ministership as a foregone conclusion.

The CPN(M) captured 120 out of 240 seats in the direct election. Its 29.3 per cent vote gave it another 102 from the 335 seats filled by proportional representation. Prachanda thus has a total of 222 (possibly one less) out of 575 parliamentary seats. That excludes the 26 nominated members who are expected to make up for representational lacunae and bridge gaps between different groups. If the CPN(M) gets half these, it will have only 235 members in a house of 601. That is certainly an impressive showing for a first-time contestant and gives the Maoists a better claim to office than other contenders. But theirs will still be a minority government, which is why Prachanda is fishing for support from the Nepali Congress and Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) and even the three Madhesi parties. The need for this horse-trading explains why the “supreme commander” who used to swear by the inevitability of war with India now talks reasonably of “a new dimension” in relations, while his deputy, Baburam Bhattarai, compliments New Delhi on its “positive role”, confirms that the CPN(M) “wants to maintain (its) relations with the Indian government” and even hints that offending Maoists may be punished.

Precisely because of these hotchpotch results with no clear winner, India faces an even more difficult and delicate challenge in the landlocked Himalayan kingdom. How difficult and delicate will not be fully revealed until a coalition emerges. Suspicion of India is probably the only factor that unites monarchists and Maoists, not because of India’s sins of omission or commission — though there have been plenty of both — but because of the unalterable logic of geography of which J.R. Jayawardene warned when the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation was launched in Dhaka. India’s strongest card is that anyone with any sense knows that Nepal just cannot survive without its generosity. First evident when King Mahendra foolishly tried to turn his back on his southern neighbour and divert trade to the northern Kodari road, this was confirmed during the 1988 partial blockade. A fanciful scheme to import oil through Karachi and over the Karakoram Highway through Tibet would have meant using 50 litres of fuel for every litre of kerosene.

If Nepal cannot do without India, India cannot do without Nepal. Mutual need should create a cooperative bond, not generate competitive one-upmanship in which the bigger partner is inevitably accused of bullying. If that is again allowed to happen, Prachanda will be tempted to go on the rampage against India’s perceived hegemony. It’s not just the 1950 peace and friendship treaty that is being questioned. Prachanda’s statement that he wants “to review all other treaties signed between Nepal and India” must be read in the context of Bhattarai’s criticism of the 1816 treaty of Segauli which forced Bhim Sen Thapa’s expansionist regime to cede one-third of the territory that then comprised Nepal. Kumaon and Garhwal in the west and large tracts of the Terai in the south were incorporated in India while Darjeeling district in the east was restored to Sikkim. Bhattarai argues that Nepal’s economic fortune plunged after Segauli.

Such issues that straddle domestic and foreign affairs and can be said to have a high emotional content assume additional importance in the face of daunting problems at home. A decade of civil war’s toll of agriculture, exploding population, the rising price of foodgrains and the increasing global cost of oil would have challenged the resourcefulness of an experienced government with an unassailable mandate. Prachanda’s insistence that his People’s Liberation Army with a nucleus of 3,000 ideologically committed cadres must be “integrated with the state army” is bitterly resented by the nearly 290 MPs of the Nepali Congress, CPN(UML) and the three Madhesi groups. So, at another level, will abolition of the monarchy. For the throne is revered even if its occupant is detested.

A February opinion poll conducted by Britain’s department for international development and the Asia Foundation found that 49.3 per cent of Nepalese want a king against 38 per cent who don’t. It is revealing that 60 per cent of respondents were anti-monarchy in a similar poll last June. Clearly, the anti- incumbency factor works fast in Nepal, and some people are already beginning to lose patience with the shenanigans of politicians. That might explain the uncharacteristic courtesy of Prachanda’s promise that “the king will not be removed forcefully or dishonorably”, and the meeting he and Bhattarai had with Kamal Thapa, president of the royalist Rashtriya Prajatantra Party. The same survey showed that while 59 per cent of Nepalese want their country’s Hindu status to continue, only 31 per cent seek the secular label. Nepalese society is inherently conservative. It follows tradition. If the Maoists ban recruitment by the Indian army, Gorkha lads will simply slip across the 1,700 kilometres of unguarded border to join up. Closure of the border would not only violate the 1950 treaty but — far more to the point — would seriously affect Nepal’s trade and employment.

A World Bank directors visit, which promised help with hydroelectric projects, indicates that the CPN(M) is no longer at war with the rich and powerful. The meeting with Nancy Powell, the American ambassador, who also promised continued assistance, is another straw in the wind of change. Though last year the state department did not regard the CPN(M) important enough to be branded a full-blooded terrorist organization, it did lump the Maoists with 42 rag-bag organizations — including our Communist Party of India (Maoist), Japan’s Red Army and sundry Irish and Islamic outfits — in the Group of Concern category. Even last Wednesday’s American announcement says that “the Maoists continued to engage in violence, extortion, and abductions, and tensions remained high” throughout 2007 “as crime, abductions, and general lawlessness were evident throughout Nepal”. No doubt Prachanda will play his cards more carefully for the 2008 report.

India must deal fairly with a Maoist-dominated government, but will have to remain wary of any gulf between its professions, intentions and actions on the ground. There is a danger, too, that the Maoist minority might, through sabotage or subversion, try to upstage coalition partners, seize total control and wreak its will on Nepal and the Nepalese. That was how communist members of East Europe’s post-war united fronts established one-party control. But today’s China is no hegemonic Soviet Union. India also enjoys some leverage although it can easily become counter-productive. But the real hope lies in the self-serving temperament of Kathmandu’s top comrades who are not so unlike their counterparts in Calcutta and Delhi. Their god need not fail, for while the rank and file believe, the leaders only calculate as they yearn for the loaves and fishes of bourgeois respectability. Revolutions devour their children in France; here, they nibble away at credibility. Ultimately, only bombastic rhetoric remains.