Labels
- Article (43)
- Interview (4)
- Kapilvastu Day Movement (6)
- Miscellaneous (2)
- News (195)
- Own Pen (41)
- Science and Technology (7)
- Visual (2)
- अन्तरबार्ता (2)
- कथा/लघु कथा (1)
- गीत/कबिता (17)
- नियात्रा (2)
- लेख/निबन्ध/बिचार (37)
- समाचार (17)
Monday, February 28, 2011
Telescope team plans to track the whole sky
The Tango of Ego and Soul
NEUROSCIENCE CASES: THE MAN WHO COULD NOT FORGET
Sri Lanka Rising Star Of Asian Economy
ढुंगे युगमा बाँचेर ब्रायन सुन्नुपर्दा
Images and sacred texts Buddhism across Asia
14 October 2010 –3 April 2011
Room 91
The little Nepal in Aldershot
Friday, February 25, 2011
Scientists working on thought-controlled vehicles
Man with 39 Wives
Italian Internet gurus claim credit for Mideast revolutions
Culture: GUPHA-caving girls under 12 for 12 days
It is conducted before girls strait menstruation. Girls in a group or alone are kept in a room with windows draped with thick clothes and door always locked so that not a single ray of sun can enter the room. She can’t see boys nor hear their voice. Twelve days- she lives a solitary life as if she were a prisoner in solitary consignment. This is how we or I, not belonging to newar clan think or may think. But for Newars it’s a time for celebration. A step taken by woman towards her womanhood.
Bel Bibaha – Securing a Woman’s Future
India Sliding, China Rising In Maoist Nepal
विगतको समीक्षा गर्ने बेला भयो
दीपक गजुरेल
ब्रेन एट्याक तुरुन्त उपचारले निको हुन्छ
Credit the Egyptian People for the Egyptian Revolution
By Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and Chair of Mid-Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco
While there will undoubtedly have to be additional popular struggle in Egypt to ensure that the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak leads to real democracy, the ouster of the dictator is by any measure a major triumph for the Egyptian people and yet another example of the power of nonviolent action. Indeed, Egypt joins such diverse countries as the Philippines, Poland, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Nepal, Serbia, Bolivia, Indonesia, and others whose authoritarian regimes were replaced by democratic governance as a result of such unarmed civil insurrections.
Unfortunately, there are already those who are trying to put the credit (or blame) for the Egyptian Revolution on anybody but the literally millions of ordinary Egyptians — men and women, Christian and Muslim, young and old, workers and intellectuals, poor and middle class, secular and religious — who faced down the truncheons, tear gas, water cannons, bullets and goon squads for their freedom.
It was not the military that was responsible for Mubarak’s downfall. While some top army officers belatedly eased Mubarak aside on February 11, it was more of a coup de grace and than a coup d’état. It was clear to the military brass, watching the popular reaction following his nonresignation speech the previous day, who recognized that if they did not ease him out, they would be taken down with him. The army’s refusal to engage in a Tienanmen Square-style massacre in Tahrir Square came not because the generals were on the protesters’ side — indeed, they had long been the bedrock of Mubarak’s regime — but because they could not trust their own soldiers, disproportionately from the poor and disenfranchised sectors of society, to obey orders to fire on their own people.
It was not the United States, long the primary foreign backer of the Mubarak regime. The Obama administration played catch-up for most of the 18-day uprising, initially calling only for reforms within the regime. To Obama’s credit, he did push for an end to attacks on protesters and the shutting down of the Internet, and reportedly threatened a cutoff of military aid and strategic cooperation if US weapons were used in a massacre or other major repression. Though Obama eventually called for a speedy transition to democracy, however, he never explicitly called on Mubarak to step down. His strongest and most eloquent words in support for the pro-democracy struggle came only after Mubarak’s departure, giving a sense that it came more from a desire to not be on the wrong side of history than his desire to play the role as a catalyst.
Some US Embassy staffers had sporadic contacts with pro-democracy activists in recent years and, through such Congressionally-funded foundations as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), there was some limited financial assistance to a number of civil society organizations. This small amount of US “democracy” assistance did not include any support for training in strategic nonviolent action or other kinds of grassroots mobilization that proved decisive in the struggle, and the key groups that organized the protests resisted US funding on principle. In any case, the amount of US funding for NED and related programs in Egypt paled in comparison with the billions of dollars worth of military and economic assistance to the Mubarak regime and the close and regular interaction among US officials and leading Egyptian political and military leaders. In addition, most of this limited “pro-democracy” funding was eliminated altogether a couple of years ago, following Obama’s inauguration.
Nor was it the Internet. Social media helped expose the abuses of the regime and get around censorship prior to the uprising and, during the revolt, at times helped with tactical coordination for the protests. It is important to note, however, that less than 15 percent of the Egyptian population had access to the Internet (mostly through cafes heavily policed by the regime) and, for a number of key days early in the struggle, it was shut down completely. (Ironically, it may have helped the movement in some cases, as a number of residents in Cairo, Alexandria, and other cities decided to come out onto the streets to see what was happening first hand since they could not learn from the Internet.) While, on balance, the Internet was certainly helpful, it was probably not necessary for the movement’s success. The Eastern European revolutions of 1989 and other successful pro-democracy civil insurrections in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa took place without access to Internet technology. In Mali — an impoverished landlocked West African nation — word of the eventually victorious 1991 pro-democracy struggle against the Traore dictatorship was spread through griots, the traditionally singing storytellers, who would wander from village to village. When a people are committed to a struggle, they will find ways to communicate.
And neither the Tunisian nor the Egyptian revolutions were a result of WikiLeaks. While the leaked cables exposed how US diplomats were well aware of the corruption and repression of the respective regimes and their propensity to deliberately exaggerate the influence of radical Islamists among the opposition, such malfeasance by their governments was certainly nothing new to the citizens of those countries.
It certainly wasn’t the Islamists. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood had been playing more the role of informal loyal opposition to the Mubarak regime in recent years. They refused to endorse the initial protests until the last minute and then only half-heartedly. Not only did their higher level of support as the movement later took off smack of opportunism, the conservative Brotherhood and its aging leadership had been increasingly seen by the young secular activists who spearheaded the movement as being almost as out of touch with their day-to-day realities as the regime. The chants, signs, and other outward manifestations of the protesters were decidedly secular with liberal democratic and leftist themes.
Nor was the successful, large-scale application of nonviolent tactics that succeeded in bringing down the dictator a result of assistance or training by outsiders. There were a couple of seminars organized by Egyptian pro-democracy groups which brought in veterans of popular unarmed insurrections in Serbia, South Africa, Palestine, and other countries along with some Western academics who have studied the phenomenon, but these seminars focused on generic information about the history and dynamics of strategic nonviolent action, not on how to overthrow Mubarak. Neither the foreign speakers nor their affiliated institutions provided any training, advice, money, or anything tangible to the small number of Egyptian activists that attended. As one of the academics who lectured at one of these seminars, I can vouch that the Egyptians present were already very knowledgeable and sophisticated in terms of strategic thinking about their struggle. None of us foreigners can take credit for what later transpired.
Nor was it a spontaneous reaction to the Tunisian Revolution, which had emerged victorious in its largely nonviolent uprising against the Ben Ali dictatorship two weeks earlier. While the unarmed insurrection in Tunisia certainly inspired and empowered many Egyptians who had long been sunk in fear, cynicism and apathy, the Egyptian revolution had been a long time coming. There had been a dramatic growth in Egyptian civil society during the preceding years, with an increasing number of labor strikes and small, but ever-larger, demonstrations led by such youthful, secular pro-democracy groups as Kefaya (meaning “Enough!”) and the April 6 Movement (named after a nationwide strike and protest on that date in 2008.) Increasing government repression, worsening economic conditions and parliamentary elections this past November that were even more transparently fraudulent than most, led many of us to suspect that it was only a matter of time before Mubarak would be ousted in a popular uprising. Indeed, my visits to Egypt and meetings with pro-democracy activists led me to predict in an article posted in early December that “Egypt could very well be where the next unarmed popular pro-democracy insurrection takes place of the kind that brought down Marcos in the Philippines, Milosevic in Serbia and scores of other autocratic regimes in recent decades.” (Little did I know the Tunisians would beat them to it.)
It is, therefore, critical, particularly for those of us in the United States and other Western countries, not to deny agency to an Arab people who had the courage and smarts to organize and fight their own nonviolent revolution.
Indeed, this revolution strikes a blow to the two extremes in the nearly decade-long battle between Islamist extremists and US imperialists. Al-Qaeda’s first attack against US interests was in 1995 against a residential compound in Riyadh used by US soldiers responsible for training the Saudi National Guard, the branch of the Saudi military used primarily for internal repression. The line put forward by Osama bin Laden and like-minded self-styled jihadists has long been that US-backed dictatorships can only be defeated through terrorism and adherence to a reactionary and chauvinistic interpretation of Islam. On the other extreme, the line put forward by American neoconservatives and their supporters has long been that democracy could only come to the Middle East through US military intervention, as with the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The people of Egypt and Tunisia have powerfully demonstrated that both of these violent militaristic ideologies are wrong.
These are hardly the first countries to have seen dictators overthrown through nonviolent action. Its power has even been acknowledged even by such groups as Freedom House, a Washington-based organization with close ties to the foreign policy establishment. Its 2005 study observed that, of the nearly 70 countries that had made the transition from dictatorship to varying degrees of democracy in the previous 30 years, only a small minority did so through armed struggle from below or reform instigated from above. Hardly any new democracies resulted from foreign invasion. In nearly three-quarters of the transitions, change was rooted in democratic civil-society organizations that employed nonviolent methods. In addition, the study noted that countries where nonviolent, civil resistance movements played a major role tend to have freer and more stable democratic systems.
A different study, published in 2007 in the journal International Security, used an expanded database and analyzed 323 major insurrections in support of self-determination and democratic rule since 1900. It found that violent resistance was successful only 26 percent of the time, whereas nonviolent campaigns had a 53 percent rate of success.
From the poorest nations of Africa to the relatively affluent countries of Eastern Europe; from communist regimes to right-wing military dictatorships; from across the cultural, geographic and ideological spectrum, democratic and progressive forces have recognized the power of nonviolent action to free them from oppression. This has not come, in most cases, from a moral or spiritual commitment to nonviolence, but simply because it works.
As noted in such books as “Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization and Governance in the Middle East,” there is a long history of nonviolent resistance in the Middle East, including Egypt’s 1919 independence struggle against the British. Iran has a long history of such uprisings, including the Tobacco Strike of the 1890s, the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 and the aborted Green Revolution of 2009. Palestine has witnessed the general strike of the 1930s, the first intifada in the late 1980 and more recent campaigns against the separation wall and settlement expansion in the West Bank. In Sudan, unarmed insurrections ousted military dictatorships in both 1964 and 1985 (though the democratic governments that followed were eventually overthrown in military coups.) The 2006 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon ended years of Syrian domination of that country. There has also been an ongoing nonviolent resistance campaign in the nation of Western Sahara against the illegal Moroccan occupation. And, in recent weeks, pro-democracy protests have broken out in Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Algeria, Iran, and other countries.
This rich history, mostly dramatically played out on the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities in recent weeks, demonstrates a critical point: Democracy will not come to the Middle East through foreign intervention, sanctimonious statements from Washington, voluntary reforms by autocrats, or armed struggle by a self-selected vanguard. It will only come through the power of massive non-cooperation with illegitimate authority and the strategic application of nonviolent action by Middle Eastern peoples themselves.
@Huffington Post
Friday, February 18, 2011
Why is Darjeeling Burning?
To answer this question I’ll have to tell you a little about Darjeeling’s history and its inhabitants who are essentially an indigenous people called the Gorkhas or Gurkhas as the Brits would like to spell it. In the beginning, they happened to be the most formidable adversary for the British during their campaign to conquer the world as it were, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After having taken much of India, now their eyes fell upon a smallish hill kingdom known as Nepal which had a record of not having been under foreign rule ever and it is still true today as it had been then. This makes the Nepalese a proud people. During one of the British campaigns to subdue the Nepalese, the latter with a force of just two hundred soldiers and their families, are known to have held the fort of Nala Pani, near today’s Dehradun in India, for two years. It was during this siege, the British General Gillespie was killed. After cutting off the fort’s water supply, the British waited some more time for the Nepalese to surrender. When no such thing happened, they stormed the fort to find everyone had disappeared without a trace. It was a moral victory for the Nepalese. There were no more wars between the British and the Nepalese but only truces during which Nepal had to concede much of its territories to the British Empire. The British Raj in turn left them at peace and being impressed by their fighting skills, they began to induct able bodied men into their army. Thus was born the British Gurkha Regiment.
DARJEELING IS BORN
I’m no historian or a political analyst so whatever I write will be from a common man’s perspective. There are no dates or corroborative references to show so correct me if I am wrong. To get a bigger picture, we must go back even before The British East India Company had got a stranglehold of much of India. There was no such country as Nepal then. A Raput clan, which later became the Shah dynasty, after having been harassed relentlessly by the Mughal armies, escaped to the hills of Gorkha, now in western Nepal. Today’s Nepal consisted of small principalities divided along ethnic and linguistic lines. Prithivi Narayan Shah, one of the chieftains of the principality of Gorkha had expansionist designs which led him and his army to finally conquer all these hill states including the Kathmandu valley which under his kingship came to be called Nepal. Thus was established the Shah Dynasty and the country of Nepal. Gurkha or Gorkha was a name given to the Nepalese people by the British. Much of the Nepalese people being martial in nature continued to conquer more land towards the east and the west. When they took stock finally, they had under them much of Sikkim in the east and up to Himachal Pradesh in the west. Thanks to the British treaties, they are now left with a miserable piece of land which we call Nepal. [It is a beautiful country, no doubt].
My concern is with the eastern part of what then belonged to Nepal. Thanks again to the Brits, this tract of land between the rivers Mechi and Teesta, changed hands and was returned to Sikkim. The Rajah of Sikkim was beyond himself by the favour done to them by the British and being generous to a fault signed away the same tract of land to them because the British Sahibs found the climate suitable for their mem sahibs to live during the long Indian summers. What went on between the mem sahibs and the few sahibs left to take care of them in the hills is a topic for another story. The plains of India were too hot for them during the summers and so they began building small new townships in the hills which they called ‘hill stations’. Thus began the history of Darjeeling which in the early 1800’s was sparsely populated by the indigenous Lepcha people and a few hundred families of the Gorkha soldiers who had opted to stay back when Nepal conceded these tracts of land to the British. One important point to note about the Gorkha soldiers was that in their unique way of warfare they brought their families along so everywhere they conquered they would have readymade families to settle down with. This was true in Himachal Pradesh, the hills of Uttar Pradesh and even Sikkim and Darjeeling. So, giving a foreign tag to the Indian Gorkhas by some communities is like calling the Indian Prime Minister, Man Mohan Singh, who was born in Pakistan, a foreigner. Even Sonia Gandhi is of Italian ancestry and the father of the CPM party, the late Jyoti Basu, also came to West Bengal from Bangladesh. It is said up to three million Bengali refugees entered India after the Indo-Pak war of 1971. Hundreds of thousands of them pour into North Bengal every year along the almost porous border. They form a readymade vote bank for the CPM party and they have no difficulty in obtaining ration cards or voter’s ID cards, issued by the Election Commission. Thus, these Bengalees from Bangladesh become pucca Indian citizens by nefarious means while the Gorkhas who came to India with the land have always been treated as outsiders and atrocities against them in most of the North Eastern states have become a regular affair. This is the only reason why the Indian Gorkhas aspire for a separate land for themselves inside the Indian union.
As the British sahibs were preparing themselves to beat the heat building hill stations, they needed labour to build roads, buildings and other infrastructure. The Gorkhas from the eastern parts of Nepal came in droves looking for work and there seemed to be plenty for all those who came because the Brits had a bright idea planting tea in the hill tracts and the adaptable Gorkha community made themselves at home working in these plantations. By their sweat and blood, today after almost two centuries, Darjeeling tea has become the best tea in the world.
STRIFE
Time passes and the Gorkha community becomes sizable. They sent countless deputations to the British Indian Government asking them to give them a separate identity as a people within India. All this fell to deaf ears. Sometimes, the Darjeeling district would be clubbed together with Darbhanga in Bihar and at other times with some other areas seemingly for administrative suitability. It appears that at the time of independence, the people of Darjeeling were so confused and frustrated that as a form of protest, they hoisted the Pakistani flag from the town hall. Darjeeling had to stay as a district within the state of West Bengal.
Discontentment remained as an undercurrent amongst the people of Darjeeling for decades because they were behind in every aspect such as education, employment, economy etc… There weren’t enough educational institutions to study or enough jobs in this very backward tract of land. Whatever infrastructure the British had built became either defunct from lack of maintenance or disgracefully inadequate. As the decades passed, the population swelled as is the case in the rest of India but the quality of life worsened for the Gorkha community while it has improved considerably for most parts of India after the so called economic reforms. The tea gardens began to close down while the fat owners themselves invested their money elsewhere in the new upcoming Indian economy. We have read many times of tea garden workers of the closed gardens starving to death while the owners have been eating cake.
Having had it up to their necks, the discontentment amongst the Indian Gorkhas erupts into a violent agitation which lasted for a couple of years during which several thousand people were ruthlessly killed by the paramilitary forces sent by the Federal Government of India. Thousands of people were rendered homeless and most shameful of all was the use of rape as a weapon of war. The Gorkha leaders were brought to the table for talks but naivety took its toll again. Darjeeling was given the status of an autonomous council which supposedly had powers just a little more than a municipality. But the funds they were promised were many fold. This so called DGHC accord was supposed to be the full and final agreement and the demand for Gorkhaland was a closed chapter. The man who was supposed to have pulled it off believed himself to be the uncrowned king of the Gorkhas.There was dancing and singing in the streets of Darjeeling and other smaller towns across the hills and the night sky was lit up by fire works.
Time passes. To be precise, twenty two years passed and the children of the ‘revolution’ became adults. At the end of the day they had little to show in terms of development and any kind of upliftment of the economy. The precious little the ‘king’ and his men had done was build a few roads leading to nowhere and some grotesque looking buildings popularly called ‘community halls’ where people gathered to celebrate weddings and mourn deaths. The skyline of Darjeeling changed in a bizarre way in that many high rise buildings came up; all of them belong to a handful of people close to the ‘king’. The common man was short changed once more. The millions which came as development funds were unaccounted for. It so happened that one fine morning the ‘king of the Gorkhas’ was hounded out of the hills of Darjeeling and accompanying him were his councilors. Another Gorkha leader took charge under a new banner and a new improved philosophy of Gandhian non-violence. While the idea is excellent but my own personal view is that Gandhi and Gorkha are as different as chalk is from cheese because the Gorkha, though peaceful at most times, is a fighting man and on the other hand any kind of violence would make Gandhi’s head swim. If this new party’s belief in non-violence comes from the heart, instead of being a gimmick, I believe they will be able to achieve what they have set out to do, finally; no matter what the odds are. Because Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence and truth has brought down the hated Apartheid regime in South Africa and Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement based along Gandhian principles brought freedom to the black people of America.
This new movement in Darjeeling seems to be more or less following the Gandhian path except for a few killings and burning of houses which their cadres vehemently deny. If they are following the path of truth from their hearts, they must know. One extremely sad episode was the brutal murder of another Gorkha leader who believed in Gorkhaland from his heart and was all the time telling people he knew the secret to achieve it. Till date no one knows who killed him but federal investigations are on and one day the truth may come out and justice will be served. Killing this man was equivalent toshooting the messenger.
The movement is continuing with sporadic instances of violence and hunger strikes, rallies, bandhs etc… Now only time will tell what turn the movement will take next and whether the Gorkha people will get their justice. At this point in time Darjeeling must feel like Cinderella just after that stroke of the mid night hour and she has just lost her slipper.
By Rajan Pradhan |
Nepal profile
A chronology of key events:
1768 – Gurkha ruler Prithvi Narayan Shah conquers Kathmandu and lays foundations for unified kingdom.
1792 – Nepalese expansion halted by defeat at hands of Chinese in Tibet.
1814-16 – Anglo-Nepalese War; culminates in treaty which establishes Nepal’s current boundaries.
1846 – Nepal falls under sway of hereditary chief ministers known as Ranas, who dominate the monarchy and cut off country from outside world.
1923 – Treaty with Britain affirms Nepal’s sovereignty.
Absolute monarchy
1950 – Anti-Rana forces based in India form alliance with monarch.
1951 – End of Rana rule. Sovereignty of crown restored and anti-Rana rebels in Nepalese Congress Party form government.
1953 New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepal’s Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
1955 – Nepal joins the United Nations.
1955 – King Tribhuwan dies, King Mahendra ascends throne.
1959 – Multi-party constitution adopted.
1960 – King Mahendra seizes control and suspends parliament, constitution and party politics after Nepali Congress Party (NCP) wins elections with B. P. Koirala as premier.
1962 – New constitution provides for non-party system of councils known as “panchayat” under which king exercises sole power. First elections to Rastrya Panchayat held in 1963.
1972 – King Mahendra dies, succeeded by Birendra.
Multi-party politics
1980 – Constitutional referendum follows agitation for reform. Small majority favours keeping existing panchayat system. King agrees to allow direct elections to national assembly – but on a non-party basis.
1985 – NCP begins civil disobedience campaign for restoration of multi-party system.
1986 – New elections boycotted by NCP.
1989 – Trade and transit dispute with India leads to border blockade by Delhi resulting in worsening economic situation.
1990 – Pro-democracy agitation co-ordinated by NCP and leftist groups. Street protests suppressed by security forces resulting in deaths and mass arrests. King Birendra eventually bows to pressure and agrees to new democratic constitution.
1991 – Nepali Congress Party wins first democratic elections. Girija Prasad Koirala becomes prime minister.
Political instability
1994 – Koirala’s government defeated in no-confidence motion. New elections lead to formation of Communist government.
1995 – Communist government dissolved.
1995 – Start of Maoist revolt which drags on for more than a decade and kills thousands. The rebels want the monarchy to be abolished.
1997 – Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba loses no-confidence vote, ushering in period of increased political instability, with frequent changes of prime minister.
2000 – GP Koirala returns as prime minister, heading the ninth government in 10 years.
Palace killings
2001 1 June – King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and other close relatives killed in shooting spree by drunken Crown Prince Dipendra, who then shoots himself.
2001 – Prince Gyanendra crowned King.
2001 July – Maoist rebels step up campaign of violence. Prime Minister GP Koirala quits over the violence; succeeded by Sher Bahadur Deuba.
2001 November – Maoists end four-month old truce with government, declare peace talks with government failed. Launch coordinated attacks on army and police posts.
Emergency
2001 November – State of emergency declared after more than 100 people are killed in four days of violence. King Gyanendra orders army to crush the Maoist rebels. Many hundreds are killed in rebel and government operations in the following months.
2002 May – Parliament dissolved, fresh elections called amid political confrontation over extending the state of emergency. Sher Bahadur Deuba heads interim government, renews emergency.
2002 October – King Gyanendra dismisses Deuba and indefinitely puts off elections set for November.
2003 January – Rebels, government declare ceasefire.
End of truce
2003 August – Rebels pull out of peace talks with government and end seven-month truce. The following months see resurgence of violence and frequent clashes between students/activists and police.
2004 April – Nepal joins the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
2004 May – Street protests by opposition groups demanding a return to democracy. Royalist Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa quits.
Direct royal rule
2005 February – King Gyanendra assumes direct control and dismisses the government. He declares a state of emergency, citing the need to defeat Maoist rebels.
2005 April – King lifts the state of emergency amid international pressure.
2005 November – Maoist rebels and main opposition parties agree on a programme intended to restore democracy.
2006 April – King Gyanendra agrees to reinstate parliament following weeks of violent strikes and protests against direct royal rule. Maoist rebels call a three-month ceasefire.
2006 May – Parliament votes unanimously to curtail the king’s political powers.
The government and Maoist rebels begin peace talks, the first in nearly three years.
Peace deal
2006 November – Government and Maoists sign a peace accord – the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) – declaring a formal end to a 10-year rebel insurgency.
2007 January – Maoist leaders enter parliament under the terms of a temporary constitution.
Maoists join government
2007 April – Maoists join interim government, a move that takes them into the political mainstream.
2007 September – Three bombs hit Kathmandu in the first attack in the capital since the end of the Maoist insurgency.
Maoists quit interim government to press demand for monarchy to be scrapped. This forces the postponement of November’s constituent assembly elections.
End of monarchy
2007 December – Parliament approves abolition of monarchy as part of peace deal with Maoists, who agree to re-join government.
2008 January – A series of bomb blasts kill and injure dozens in the southern Terai plains, where activists have been demanding regional autonomy.
2008 April – Former Maoist rebels win the largest bloc of seats in elections to the new constituent assembly, but fail to achieve an outright majority.
2008 May – Nepal becomes a republic.
2008 June – Maoist ministers resign from the cabinet in a row over who should be the next head of state.
2008 July – Ram Baran Yadav becomes Nepal’s first president.
2008 August – Maoist leader Prachanda forms coalition government, with Nepali Congress going into opposition.
Maoists leave government
2009 May – Prime Minister Prachanda resigns in a row with President Yadav. Maoists leave government after other parties oppose integration of former rebel fighters into national army.
Veteran Communist leader Madhav Kumar Nepal named new prime minister.
Gurkha veterans with at least four years’ service in the British army are given permission to settle in the UK.
2009 December – Four people are killed during clashes triggered by Maoist-led land grab in far west of country, giving rise to fears over future of peace process.
2010 May – Governing coalition and Maoist opposition agree to extend deadline for drafting of new constitution to May 2011.
2010 June – PM Madhav Kumar Nepal quits under Maoist pressure.
2010 December – WikiLeaks website publishes US diplomatic cables alleging that police were bribed by Chinese authorities into handing over Tibetan refugees trying to flee China. They deny the charges.
2011 January – UN peace monitoring mission ends.
2011 February – Jhalnath Khanal elected premier, ending a seven-month stalemate during which Nepal had no effective government.
@BBC