What about the other MCC, Comrade?

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) uproar won’t undo the ruling coalition, Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ proclaimed the other day. But isn’t it the other MCC he should be worried about? Or at least the thought of that Bihar-based outfit that subsequently went on to form half of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)?

That Dahal & Co. have been able to engage in parliamentary whatchamacallits while still flaunting their purported revolutionary credentials is an old story. Why his erstwhile allies abroad feign indifference at this dilution of revolutionary fervor is an equally antiquated one.

The enigma endures, nonetheless. Have our Maoists’ one-time foreign allies emulated the Islamic radicals’ notion of taqqiya as a core tenet of their ‘people’s war’? Or they are still revolutionaries simply because they haven’t had the opportunity to wield state power and lick their fingers?

The American compact won’t get legislative endorsement in its current state, Dahal also informs us, a refrain from the ruling alliance’s more leftish hue. Yet the ruse has been exposed. Maybe the whole issue of legislative endorsement was contrived to conceal the implementation the MCC would undergo as a regular agreement. As one mask comes off, Dahal feels compelled to wear another. ‘Storm the citadel, and we will back you’, he exhorted his youth cadre. So what’s with the vacillation here? Or is the seeming equivocation concealing something stiffer here?

Clearly, the Prachanda myth has rested on its ability to give everyone the kind of meaning they sought. While indigenizing Maoism, Dahal perfected the practice of ‘permanent convolution’. That way, he caters to the Indo-West, Chinese and global radical left at the same time.

The subterfuge is wearing thin but still seems to work for now. Yet here the mask fails: the creases on Dahal’s face contradict his spoken expressions.