Very interesting article on Prachanda by Yubaraj Ghimire. Excerpts below: Raise The Red Lantern Ex-USAID worker and Maoist rebel supremo? Deconstructing the myth that is Prachanda. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Source : http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20050613&fname=Nepal+%28F%29&sid=1 (you will have to login - registration is free) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " From all this nurturing on, presumably, 'US values', Prachanda has emerged to lead the Maoist insurgents in a bloody war to convert the world's only Hindu kingdom into a model 'republican state'. And in the last 10 years of this war, the myth has only grown: he's feared, hated and reviled; he's also revered as "Comrade Prachanda" by thousands of followers. He is blamed for an insurgency which has claimed 12,000 lives and destroyed infrastructure worth billions. And he's the leader whom Nepal, India and the US have branded a terrorist. Yet, it remains a mystery why people sharing similar socio-economic conditions behave differently; why one man picks up the gun and others prefer to quiescently live with the system. In his childhood, though, Prachanda showed few symptoms of alienation or even bellicosity. His parents, Muktinath and Bhawani Dahal, took the government offer to migrate to Chitwan, a forest tract 160 km south west of Kathmandu which Nepal and the US were together developing as a model district with educational facilities and healthcare centres. This lure was a compelling one for thousands of families such as the Dahals, a lower middle-class Brahmin family from Kaski in western Nepal, in an era in which an average Nepali's life expectation was just 35 years. " -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " His father Muktinath last saw Prachanda in 1995. Already underground, he had come to the village to visit his ailing mother who eventually died of cancer that year ....Muktinath even took his son's horoscope to astrologers. And they, without exception, have said that the planetary configurations in Prachanda's horoscope suggests he is blessed with "rajayoga". In other words, he's destined to occupy positions of power. " ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ " Prachanda's life and politics has been shrouded in mystery. Very few have seen him in flesh and blood; his photographs too are extremely rare. The first photo was obtained by the government from the UAAH files. His sheer elusiveness prompted many to believe that Prachanda was a fictional figure the wily Maoists had created to hoodwink the security forces. In the initial years of Prachanda the myth, politicians of all hues tended to dub rivals whom they loathed and feared as the "real Prachanda". For the political parties, the king was the "real Prachanda". " ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- " Those who know the real Prachanda say he has endearing qualities. "He is a leader...he listens, he acts, and he changes himself whenever necessary," says Durga Subedi, an ex-revolutionary who in 1973 hijacked a Nepal Airlines plane and decamped with Rs 40 lakh to start an armed revolution. Subsequently, Subedi abjured violence and became a Gandhian. "Prachanda is a jovial and open person, always concerned for his comrades' grievances," he says. "