[Despite its contribution to the anti-Rana struggle,
the Mukti Sena still lives in the shadows.]
By Deepak Thapa
Despite its contribution to the
anti-Rana struggle and to the modernisation of the Nepal Police, the story of
the Mukti Sena still lives in the shadows. It is a fascinating one though.
Consisting of Nepalis who had served mainly in the British Indian military and
inspired to take up arms against a regime that many saw as responsible for
their or their family’s having to leave home in the first place, it nowadays
finds mention mainly in the context of the many Mukti Sena-turned-Nepal Police
officers like Yakthumba who went on to become IGPs. That was the case a few
months ago with the death of another Mukti Sena veteran and former IGP, Khadga
Jit Baral.
Three anecdotes
Those were legendary figures, and I
share anecdotes about three of them that I have picked up over the years. The
first concerns Yakthumba himself. It was the late 1970s, and the Hindi
blockbuster Sholay had spawned a whole new industry of an entire film’s
dialogues being sold on cassette tape. One could not escape the lines from
Sholay blaring from shops while walking around. Among the most well-known lines
was the villain, dacoit Gabbar Singh, bragging about kids being put to bed with
himself as the bogeyman. It was in this context that I was informed by an older
relative that long before the appearance of the fictional Gabbar Singh,
children in the eastern hills of Nepal would be told to go to sleep or else
“Yakthumba aunchha” (Yakthumba will come). Such was the fear Yakthumba
inspired.
The second story is about Pahal
Singh Lama, and it was recounted to me by his son and noted conservationist,
the late Pralhad Singh Yonzon. When Lama was IGP during the first half of the
1960s, Yonzon was a student at Padmodaya High School, Putali Sadak. He recalled
that he had to walk to school every day, and never once got a lift from his
father even though the police headquarters at the time was literally next door.
When he had first hung around the IGP’s official transport, his father had
bellowed, “Pralhad, this is not your father’s vehicle; it belongs to the
country’s IGP.” I cannot but remember this story when reading about the misuse
of official vehicles by our politicians and officials, and wonder at how things
have changed under a government that people like Lama helped bring to power.
The third was told to me by Peter
Burleigh, a retired American diplomat who had served in Nepal as well. Given
his credentials as a former Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, and having joined
the US Foreign Service by then, Burleigh was seconded as official escort to Rom
Bahadur Thapa, Lama’s successor, when he had arrived in Washington, DC. Among
the visits involved one to the FBI training centers. It was while doing the
rounds of the gymnasium that, to Burleigh’s surprise, the visiting dignitary
took off his jacket and tie and asked him to inform the gym instructor to
choose his strongest man to compete in shimmying up a rope—with only one hand.
According to Burleigh, the FBI trainee did not stand a chance.
It does not appear to be that
pronounced nowadays; but till the 1980s, there used to be an unnatural level of
antagonism, albeit never acknowledged, between the Nepali Army and the Nepal
Police. One cannot but wonder how much of that was due to the Nepal Police’s
legacy of the Mukti Sena, a force that had once fought against the national
army and in a sense prevailed over it. One also wonders what role the social
identity of the Mukti Sena personnel who went to become ranking officers in the
police played in the mutual dislike. For an army that remained in the grip of
the Ranas and their courtiers to have to learn to live with and socialise with
another force led by people from backgrounds they had been conditioned all
their lives to look down upon must have been excruciating. For their part, it
is highly probable that among the new police leadership, with many having seen
action in World War II, there must have been more than an element of bravado
when strutting in front of colonels and generals who were born into such titles.
A former Mukti Sena fighter and one
of those who escorted king Tribhuvan on the flight back from Delhi following the
end of Rana rule was Shyam Kumar Tamang, who passed away last year. In an interview,
Tamang rues the fact that the official history of the Nepal Police had
distorted the role of the Mukti Sena, including by labelling them as emigrants
with no social ties to Nepali society. Tamang appears to hint that it was a
deliberate attempt to sully the names of his former comrades since the project
was coordinated by a Rana police official now retired.
Glaring omission
Tamang came up with his own
publication, Janamukti Sena: Euta Nalekhieko Itihaas, seemingly to right the
record. What riled Tamang
the most is that there has been no recognition of the 30 men who fell in the
fight against the Ranas. In his words: “Till now, the government has not
declared the 30 martyrs. Even those who died in road accidents have become
martyrs, but those who died fighting to relieve Nepal from the hands of the Ranas
did not.”
That the primary beneficiary of
their sacrifice, the Nepali Congress, has been in and out of power over the
years has not changed that glaring omission. Perhaps a hint of the Congress’s
souring with the Mukti Sena can be found in Nepal’s article on Yakthumba. When
towards the end of his life, Yakthumba was undergoing treatment at AIIMS in New
Delhi, he learnt that BP Koirala, too, had been admitted in the same hospital.
Excited beyond belief, he had gone down to meet Koirala, but promptly returned
thoroughly dejected because the latter declined to meet him. Koirala probably
viewed Yakthumba as a royalist for his long service under the king. Politics
may have taken a different turn in 1960, but the soldiers of the former Mukti
Sena remained steadfast in their new duty stations under an arrangement that
Koirala himself had been instrumental in facilitating. And for that, they seem
to have been shunned by the party for which they laid their lives on the line.
