Haude_ko_bhai and sd_man, Thank you for your kind words to me. I think, information-wise, my knowledge about Nepal's politics is rather poor. However, I meditate a lot on whatever I get to know. Unfortunately or fortunately, most of my meditation has remained with myself. In Sajha, I have been busy either dealing with petty issues or keep answering to very basic political questions again and again and again. Elsewhere, I have yet to gain a self-confidence to be a good communicator and a self-credibility to gain the self-confidence. :-) I am really glad to have someone ask me the questions, on which I have spent countless sleepless nights too. However, since I can neither put all my thoughts in readable words nor have I organized whatever I can, here are some quick and random thoughts. 1. Constituent Assembly: CA is indeed a magic stick for contemporary political discourse in Nepal. And It is so not for CA or, if it ever happens, for it's outcome per se, but for the discussion or rather the height, depth, width and quality of the discussion it is generating. It might shock many to hear this politically incorrect statement from me, but I think Pre Asoj-tantra era was a dark age of our history. It was violently stagnant, intellectually sterile, full of political andhavishwas, taboos, witch-hunts, jadoo-toona and a lot of witch-doctors. A total middle age of our democracy. People were perplexed, intellectuals were clueless, politicians were helpless. Intellectuals were hysteric about peace, but they had no idea about the shape, size and fortitude of it. Baburam Bhattarai used to ridicule them by saying they are only talking about ABSTRACT peace. It was indeed so. Politicians were sure that they are in a quagmire and there is no key to unlock it. They had to talk about peace to kill their time somehow. If you look at our government's presentation during first two peace talks, you will throw up to see lack of authority, ideas, confidence and self-respect with them. I was in Kathmandu, when the preparation for the first talk with the Maoists was going on. There was an euphoria in the air. May be hysteria is a better word to describe it. Because nobody was really caring about the details. In the entire population of Kathmandu, I found only one man thinking coolly and thinking real hard. He was my professor, Prof. Agrawal. He was surprised with the hysteria and people's blindness not see that the government did not have the 'key'. His exact words were- "why can't they see that it is the King not the government who has the 'key' to the success of the peace talk ? But nobody is talking about the King at all !" Peace talk came and went. Went it violently. Among the first casualty was a brother-in-law of a friend of mine living together with me. That's was my first up-close with the Maoist war. Anyway, to make long story short, today our intellectuals are not talking about peace in ABSTRACT form, but in real shape, size and durability. And this change came riding the slogan of CA. CA liberated the nation from it's quagmire with every taboos and denials. Now, peace, democracy and nation building is no more reduced to a matter of a "negotiated settlement" among so called three political powers, but has become a process initiated, participated and approved by the fourth power that had been forgotten- we the people. The discussion on CA is educating all Nepalis, from ordinary people to political pundits, about this very aspect of democracy. So it is the educating discussion that the slogan of CA has brought rather than the CA itself is what will enable us to find a way to end the war, establish and nurture democracy and engage all of us in the nation building. In my older communication, I have plainly promoted CA itself as a means to solve the conflict and to establish democracy. However, I was banking on it more as a PROCESS than an EVENT. Frankly speaking, a national resolve on the major political issue/s must already be in place before we form CA. If CA is formed before we have a national resolve on fundamental issues, then it might take another 10 years long physical fight among honorable members of CA to finally come up with a draft of the constitution. So CA makes more sense as a post-revolution event than as a revolution itself. And thanks to Gyanendra's utter greed for power, we are on the way to that revolution. I doubt Gyanendra will ever agree to the give up power voluntarily (I mean just under gentleman's moral pressure ), because what he did on Feb 2 is essentially to decide to ride a tiger. Now, the minute he blinks, the minute he gets off, he will be eaten raw and mercilessly. He knows it. However, if he agreed for/announced things like National Referendum on monarchy or even CA to take a chance before things get out of control, what will happen ? I am sure everybody will welcome it. If it is Referendum, it is going to be equivalent of a revolution. If it is CA, the campaigning period is going to be very eventful and in one way or the other, some level of national resolve on fundamental political issue/s will be there before drafting of the constitution starts. Events might take some unpredicted turns too. However, they will have to come eventually to the point of revolution. *** *** *** *** 2. Now about the Maoists. Who are they ? Someday (hopefully soon), the Maoists are going to be a history and we will see tons and tons of literature on the Maoists by researchers and litt?rateurs. So I will leave it for then. I think the important question for us for now is: are the Maoists domesticable in democratic (republic) Nepal ? My answer is Yes. And I see at least two strong points of basis for that. First, ideological. Maoists' literature is full of ambiguity, instead of outright denial, about the failure of the communist movement from the world. And there is enough room for ideological adjustment to 'democracy' (multi-party system). As a matter of fact, their model of '21st Sataabdi ko Janabad' does incorporate this idea or rather ambiguity in it. I believe that, under a positive and strong pressure, of course, this ambiguity can provide an ideological way out for the Maoists to integrate into the mainstream democracy. I mean the Maoists are in no ideological prerogative, so to speak, to continue their journey to one party communist republic at any rate. Second, the cause of the multiparty democratic republic of Nepal, as we all know, was raised and brought to this point by nobody else but the Maoists, albeit as a 'minimum agenda', but with full acknowledgement that Nepali population is never ready to go beyond that. Now, when there will be a choice between owning the glory of a successful revolution rightfully by nurturing it and choosing to throw oneself to an uncertain and lonely future by being an enemy to upalabdhi of the revolution, what will Maoists do ? My hope/fear is as good as anybody else's. So, the most critical part of domestication of the Maoists is a strong and positive (pro-democracy) pressure on them. Our civil society and political parties need to be very careful and determined about that. I do not see them being sufficiently so. That is not good. Nepe