What’s in a name?

Maoist Centre has bigger worries than delegitimisation of the term ‘janayuddha’.

The Maoist party, which joined mainstream politics by signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2006, has always had a peculiar relation with semantics. In the insurgency days, the top Maoist leaders were not known by their real names but their noms de guerre . Partly, this was done to hide their identity, and partly, it was their way of overcoming individualism and pursuing a larger cause. Thus Pushpa Kamal Dahal became ‘Prachanda’, Baburam Bhattarai ‘Laldhoj’, Barsha Man Pun ‘Ananta’ and so on. The party has itself undergone various name changes to arrive at its current avatar of CPN (Maoist Centre). There are often rumours of the party leaders mulling removing the ‘Maoist’ tag. Despite this seeming flexibility, it must hurt all those involved in the decade-long war when the country’s top court repeatedly rejects their attempts to recognise the janayuddha (‘people’s war’). Most recently, the apex court ruled that it is unconstitutional to use the term in official documents. A year ago, it had rejected the-then Maoist-led government’s efforts to declare a public holiday on ‘People’s War Day’.