Even as the 10th round of ministerial level talks to resolve the decade-long refugee dispute between Nepal and Bhutan moved towards an encouraging consensus, Nepal's peace was shattered at year-end by civil strife and violence in parts of the country. Protests against Indian establishments and movie halls screening films featuring Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan, animated by rumours of unspecified origin, provoked a police firing which killed five people, while retaliatory mob violence and arson caused extensive damage to property. There was an organised flavour to the uncharacteristic turn of events in a country that has been relatively free of the kind of social conflicts that have proliferated among its neighbours. There is latent bigotry and an undercurrent of racism and intolerance in every society and, in this instance, there were foot soldiers of various causes readily at hand to exploit the circumstances. In the feast of street politics that ensued, Nepal suffered, and its reputation took a beating.
There is no shortage of those who would have benefitted by cashing in on the frustra-tion of the public over the incompetence of successive elected governments in the past 10 years. Democracy has just not been able to deliver development, rather it has institution-alised corruption. Joblessness and inflation have gone out of control. In the general climate of despondency, particularly among the youth, there were many who cynically cashed in: the Congress factions, the nine leftists, the ultra-right, the Maoists, communal chauvinists.
The chain of events point to well orchestra-ted mischief. The programme on which Hrithik Roshan was supposed to have expressed anti-Nepal sentiments was aired on 14 December, but the rumour itself surfaced more than 10 days later. And as events progressed, the rumour and all that it represented, lost its salience as other grievances and complaints came to be ventilated.
In the subsequent political encashment of the situation, neither India nor Indians figured even remotely on the agendas of the various parties. Within the ruling Nepali Congress,
the anti-Koirala faction found it to be an appropriate moment to initiate no-trust procee-dings against the prime minister, who in turn, engrossed himself in thwarting the challenge to his leadership. Meanwhile, the nation's calamity so troubled the nine-party left combine that it called a two-day strike to coincide with a lucrative phase in the tourist calendar, in the immediate aftermath of fairly severe economic dislocation.