The Bullet and the Ballot Box offers a rich and sweeping account of a decade of revolutionary upheaval. When Nepal’s Maoists launched their armed rebellion in the nineties, they had limited public support and many argued that their ideology was obsolete. Twelve years later they were in power, and their ambitious plan of social transformation dominated the national agenda. How did this become possible? Adhikari’s narrative draws on a broad range of sources – including novels, letters and diaries – to illuminate the history and human drama of the Maoist revolution. An indispensible account of Nepal’s recent history, the book offers a fascinating case study of how communist ideology has been reinterpreted and translated into political action in the twenty-first century.

By providing a rich ethnography of wartime social processes in the former Maoist heartland of Nepal, this book explores how the Maoist People's War (1996–2006) transformed Nepali society. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with people who were located at the epicentre of the conflict, including both ardent Maoist supporters and 'reluctant rebels', it explores how a remote Himalayan village was forged as the centre of the Maoist rebellion, how its inhabitants coped with the situation of war and the Maoist regime of governance, and how they came to embrace the Maoist project and maintain ordinary life amidst the war while living in a guerilla enclave. By focusing on people's everyday lives, the book illuminates how the everyday became a primary site of revolution of crafting new subjectivities, introducing 'new' social practices and displacing the 'old' ones, and reconfiguring the ways that people act in and think about the world through the process of 'embodied change'.

Based on ethnographic research, this book provides insights on the Maoist insurgency from 1996 to 2006, the impact of the war on every day life in the villages and the effect the conflict had on the area even after the war ended.

This fast-paced and comprehensive account of Nepal today traces the recent past and the present of Nepali politics and geopolitics from the vantage point of an insider who had a ringside view of the developments of the last two decades. This was a turbulent, eventful era which had a transformative impact on the country. In this short span, Nepal experienced the Maoist revolt, the palace massacre, the state of emergency, the royal coup, the people's movement, the republic, the Madhes uprising, the Constituent Assembly, federalism and the new Constitution. Looking back at these developments, Sudheer Sharma argues that poverty, unemployment and oppression drove the Maoist revolt, and despite its ultimate failure, it played a decisive role in the socio-political transformation of Nepal. Furthermore, the relationship between the Maoists, the monarchy (Durbar) and the Indian establishment (Delhi) is absolutely critical to the understanding of the trajectory of the changes. The Nepal Nexus examines the impact of each of these three strands and tracks the complex interplay between them.

This volume analyzes the context, dynamics and key players shaping Nepal's ongoing peace process.

Why are Maoist, Naxalite and Left extremist movements taking root in the most backward and underdeveloped regions of South Asia? This book examines this multi-layered question in democracies such as India and Nepal through an analysis of these movements as well as their leaderships and ideologies. Through a series of detailed interviews and dialogues, it sheds fresh light into the minds and actions of people who have critically defined the nature of Maoism and related movements in the region. Weaving together diverse narratives, voices, and streams of dissent, this first-of-its-kind volume brings cohesion to the seemingly fragmented but formidable Maoist politics in South Asia. It also highlights how such ‘civil wars’ are embedded into the larger politics of the region. Perceptive and lucid, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, sociology, peace and conflict studies, and security studies, especially those concerned with Maoism and social movements. It will also be useful to government institutions and policy-makers.

The book deals with the dynamics and growth of a violent 21st century communist rebellion initiated by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), explaining the different causes, factors that contributed to its growth, strategies employed by the rebels and the state, and the consequences of the insurgency.

Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal is a story of Nepal's transformation from war to peace, monarchy to republic, a Hindu kingdom to a secular state, and a unitary to a potentially federal state. Part-reportage, part-history, part-analysis, part-memoir, and part-biography of the key characters, the book breaks new ground in political writing from the region. With access to the most powerful leaders in the country as well as diplomats, it gives an unprecedented glimpse into Kathmandu's high politics. But this is coupled with ground-level reportage on the lives of ordinary citizens of the hills and the plains, striving for a democratic, just and equitable society. It tracks the hard grind of political negotiations at the heart of the instability in Nepal. It traces the rise of a popular rebellion, its integration into the mainstream, and its steady decline. It investigates Nepal's status as a partly-sovereign country, and reveals India's overwhelming role. It examines the angst of having to prove one's loyalties to one's own country, and exposes the Hindu hill upper-caste dominated power structures. Battles of the New Republic is a story of the deepening of democracy, of the death of a dream, and of that fundamental political dilemma - who exercises power, to what end, and for whose benefit.

This book is about the death of the garment industry in Nepal and the Maoist-led labour uprising that followed.

It has been 14 years since the armed conflict between Maoist insurgents and government forces ended in Nepal. Tens of thousands became victims of enforced disappearances, torture, rape, and unlawful killings in the decade of fighting between 1996 and 2006. They are still waiting for truth and justice. There have been hardly any successful prosecutions since the end of the conflict for severe violations. Resistance to address past abuses has entrenched impunity in the present and, combined with a failure to ensure security sector reform, has led to repeated lack of punishment in cases of serious human rights violations which still occur in Nepal. In a mounting number of alleged extrajudicial killings by the police, custodial deaths allegedly resulting from torture, and shootings of unarmed protesters in recent years, the authorities refused to take action despite strong evidence. We conclude that failure to provide justice for past crimes creates direct and tangible harms in the present: families who lost loved ones years ago continue to seek justice and are forced to live without closure. And as new cases of abuse by the police show, impunity for past crimes means that unaccountable and abusive individuals and institutions continue to claim new victims in post-conflict Nepal.