KIRAN PANDAY

It took only a week after the Maoists fell from power for them to unleash their affiliated ethnic groups and set them on the warpath against the new coalition government. They are playing with fire.

Nepal's Maoists copied the notion of ethnic autonomous state councils from Mao who copied it from Lenin. They turned descendent Maoism into an ascendant force in Nepal by grafting Maoist dogma to post-modern identity politics.

The combustible mixture of denial of national identity and assertion of ethnicity was originally prepared by donor-funded NGOs in the countryside.

The Maoists just lit the fuse. Not because they really wanted to emancipate those left out, but because it would get them to Year Zero with a bang. The fact that communism and communalism can never co-exist was papered over.

Within few years, Maoist-backed ethnic identity acquired legitimacy by default as revolving door governments of the late-nineties failed to address genuine concerns of marginalised communities. They used the grievances for recruitment during the war, and one of the factors leading to the Maoist victory in last year's elections was to use ethnic vote banks.

It's now payback time. The whole thing has started to unravel. Warlords in the Madhesi, Tharu, Limbuwan and Khambuwan movements are all ex-guerrillas. The Maoists can't meet the competing identity demands they helped establish, and can't put the genie back in the bottle. Driven out of government and running out of options, the Maoists are now unleashing the ethnic and ultra-nationalist (read: anti-Indian) card. They have found a new use for old accomplices, and the Valley shutdown on Monday was the first salvo of this new strategy.

As in the past, identity politics will ultimately weaken the Maoists as they try to reconcile the competing demands of the ethnic causes they champion. The Maoists need to realise that they are no longer a fringe force that can afford to stoke fires of hatred and leave it to others to fight the inferno. Once lit, the conflagration will consume us all, including those who started it.

In this space, we have consistently called for a consensus government, however unrealistic it may seem. The reason was precisely this: to ensure that the Maoists didn't go and do something as foolhardy as use the ethnic card. Now that they have, all we can wish is for better sense to prevail in the constituent assembly so that maximum flexibility is exercised to address the genuine grievances of Nepal's excluded ethnicities in writing the new constitution.

But there should be zero tolerance for incitement of ethnic intolerance and hatred for short-term political gain.