1 September 2004. The day after television news showed the brutal murders of 12 Nepalis by an Iraqi terrorist group, Kathmandu erupted in an unprecedented outbreak of communal violence. On Saturday it will be three years since that day when hundreds of labour recruiting agencies were systematically targeted. There were organised assaults on mosques and the homes and businesses of Nepali businesses, Arab airline offices were set ablaze and two media offices were attacked.

The reason we have to remember this shameful anniversary is to remind ourselves about how easy it is for this country's seeming ethnic harmony to disintegrate in a matter of hours. Although there was spontaneous anger on the streets on 1 September (just as there was on 1 June three years previously) much of the violence we witnessed in that day was politically orchestrated, and carried out by hired goons.

Remember this was during king Gyanendra's rule, the hopelessly disunited political parties were struggling to mount a pro-democracy movement. There is evidence the parties were trying to play with fire so it would escalate and bring the king down. The palace, for its part, let the fires spread to see if it could use the violence as a pretext to stage a royal-military coup it had been planning all along.

The curfew was only announced at 2PM but by then the damage had been done. The other lesson of September First now, as the state tries to come to grips with tarai militancy, is to keep politics out of ethno-religious issues. We need to address ethnic grievances early through concessions on representation, and not let them fester.

The simultaneous outbreak of demands from janajatis and indigenous people, dalits, madhesis, women, the people of the Karnali, the Limbuwan may look intractable, but an inclusive state must make space for all. The agitating groups must also desist from playing politics to extract maximum concessions from a weak state because one set of demands will always shortchange the demand of another group.

No excuses

It now looks like Pushpa Kamal Dahal's embarrassing backtrack on his proposal to postpone elections will do his party good. The Maoists were rewarded for their role in the April Uprising with 83 seats in the interim parliament and five ministries in government. Dahal is obviously nervous his party will break apart if it fares poorly in the polls, which looks likely. Hence his hush-hush proposal to get the big parties to guarantee a fig-leaf representation in the constituent assembly.

Dahal probably knows that the biggest impediment to his party's performance in elections is the continued violent behaviour of his cadre and the tenor of his apocaplytic speeches. But if he can hold out and show some patience, the Maoists can differentiate themselves from other parties by being the true champions of Nepal's poor and disenfranchised. They can emerge as a pivotal political force with vision and a can-do approach which the others lack. The kindest explanation for Dahal's about turn is that poll postponement was just a threat and the 22-point demand is not an ultimatum but an election manifesto.

Now that the NC unification is also imminent, it looks like we are finally coming around the last lap for elections. What remains to be done is to wrap up the discussions with janajati and various madhesi factions with the assurance that the sticking points can be sorted out in the constituent assembly. There can be no excuses now.