Kathmandu, Jan. 26 -- Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli claims to be a communist. Until May 2018, his party's name was CPN-UML (Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist), which preached dialectical materialism. Like any other leader who claimed to be a communist, Oli too believed in Marx's celebrated dictum: religion is the opium of the people.

The 69-year-old prime minister today seems to have shed all his communist characteristics. There was a time when he was hauled to jail where he spent 14 years for opposing the Panchayat regime under the now-abolished monarchy in the 1970s and 1980s. He, however, faces charges of acting like a monarch these days, 12 years after the country deposed Gyanendra, consigning him to history as the las...