ABSTRACT
The year 2007 began for Nepal amidst hope as well as despair. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in November 2006 between the Maoists and the government signaled the end of the decade-long Maoist insurgency. On 15 January 2007, the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists (SPA-M) announced an Interim Constitution to facilitate Constituent Assembly elections. The very next day, SPAM leaders were confronted with a largely unexpected Madhesi protest against the Interim Constitution. Spearheaded by a little-known group calling itself the Madhesi People’s Rights Forum (MPRF), the campaign against the Interim Constitution turned immediately into a standoff with the Madhesis engulfing most parts of Nepal’s southern plains in an escalating cycle of protests, violence, terror and anarchy. The more the Maoists and the government sought to suppress the Madhesi movement, the larger it grew. By churning “a sea of discontent,” and rendering the government unable to suppress “overt opposition,” the Madhesi agitation of 2007-8 did the unexpected. It drastically altered the political landscape in the Tarai in what proved to be a radical departure from Gaige’s summation of oppositional Tarai politics made three decades earlier.
