Whelpton - A History of Nepal
Whelpton - A History of Nepal
Whelpton - A History of Nepal
Nepal emerged as a unified state over 200 years ago, centred on the
Kathmandu Valley with its 2000 years of urban civilisation. While
John Whelpton’s history focuses on the period since the overthrow of
the Rana family autocracy in 1950–1, the early chapters are devoted to
the origins of the kingdom and the evolving relations of its diverse peo-
ples. By drawing on recent research on Nepal’s environment, society
and political institutions from the earliest times, the author portrays a
country of extraordinary contrasts, which has been constantly buffeted
through history by its neighbours, the two Asian giants, China and
India. Economic and political turmoil over the last fifty years came to
a climax in the massacre of the royal family in 2001, when the country
erupted into civil war. The book represents the first widely available
one-volume treatment in English of the whole span of Nepalese his-
tory to appear for over a generation. Its comprehensive and accessible
approach will appeal to students, professionals and those visiting the
region for the first time.
JO H N W H E L P T O N
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Contents
Introduction 1
1 Environment, state and society in the central
Himalayas to 1743 6
The physical arena 6
Peoples and migrations 8
Hunters, herders and farmers 15
State formation in the ancient and medieval periods 18
The control of resources: land, trade and manpower 26
Social structure 28
v
vi Contents
4 The monarchy in ascendance: domestic politics and foreign
relations, 1951–1991 86
The first multi-party experiment: 1951–1960 87
The monarchy in full control: 1961–1979 99
The system under challenge: 1979–1988 107
The ‘People’s Movement’ and the restoration of democracy: 1989–1991 113
Genealogical tables
The Shah dynasty 236
The Rana (Kunwar) family 237
Biographical notes 238
Notes 252
Glossary 259
Bibliography 268
Index 283
Key events
BC
130,000? Hand-axe man in Dang and Satpati
c. 1700? Beginning of Indo-Aryan movement into the
Indian subcontinent
c. 400? Birth of the Buddha at Lumbini
AD
465 Changu Narayan inscription of King Manadeva
647 Nepalese troops assist Chinese envoy in punitive
expedition against an Indian state
879 Beginning of Nepal Era
1097 Nanyadeva of Karnataka takes control of Mithila
c. 1100 Establishment of Khasa empire in western Nepal
1200 Commencement of Malla period in Kathmandu
Valley
1349 Shams ud-din Ilyas Shah of Bengal raids
Kathmandu Valley
1382 Jayasthiti Malla gains control of Kathmandu Valley
1482 Death of Yaksha Malla, last sole king of Kathmandu
Valley
c. 1533 Migration of Sherpas from Kham (Tibet) into
Solukhumbu
1559 Drabya Shah seizes Gorkha
1628 Jesuit John Cabral is first European to visit the
Nepal Valley
1650 (or earlier) Treaty with Tibet gives Kathmandu joint control
over the Kuti and Kirong Passes, the right to mint
Tibet’s coinage and permission for Newars to open
trading houses in Lhasa
1715 Establishment of Capuchin mission in Kathmandu
x
Key events xi
1743 Prithvi Narayan Shah crowned king of Gorkha
1768–9 Gorkhali conquest of Kathmandu Valley
1786 First Nepal–Tibet War
1791 Second Nepal–Tibet War
1792 Chinese invasion of Nepal
1793 Kirkpatrick mission to Kathmandu
1802–3 East India Company’s envoy Captain Knox in
Kathmandu
1806 April Assassination of Rana Bahadur Shah and beginning
of Bhimsen Thapa’s predominance
1809–10 Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh halts Gorkhali expansion in
the west
1814–16 Anglo-Gorkha War
1837 July Dismissal of Bhimsen Thapa
1840 Appointment of ‘British ministry’
1842 ‘National Movement’ of courtiers and army press
King Rajendra to grant powers to his junior
queen
1846 September Jang Bahadur Rana becomes prime minister after
Kot Massacre
1850 Jang Bahadur Rana’s visit to Europe
1855–56 Third Nepal–Tibet War
1856 Jang Bahadur Rana becomes maharaja of Kaski and
Lamjung
1857–8 Nepal assists British in suppression of Indian
Mutiny
1877 Death of Jang Bahadur Rana
1885 November Shamsher Ranas seize power
1904 Chandra Shamsher Rana assists the Younghusband
expedition to Tibet
1914–18 Around 100,000 Nepalese involved in support of
Britain in First World War
1919 Opening of Trichandra College in Kathmandu
1923 Britain recognises Nepal’s complete independence
1924 November Chandra Shamsher Rana’s speech calling for
abolition of slavery
1934 January Major earthquake destroys many buildings in
Kathmandu Valley
March Removal of C-Class Ranas from the Roll of
Succession
xii Key events
1939–45 Mobilisation of Nepal’s resources in support of
Britain in Second World War
1941 January Execution of ‘Four martyrs’
November Abdication of Juddha and accession of Maharaja
Padma Shamsher Rana
1947 January Formation of Nepali National Congress
August India becomes independent
November Tripartite agreement gives India twelve and UK
eight of existing Gurkha battalions
1948 January Padma Shamsher Rana promulgates constitution
April Following Padma Shamsher Rana’s resignation,
Mohan Shamsher Rana becomes prime minister
and maharaja
August Formation of Nepali Democratic Congress
1950 April Merger of Nepali National Congress and Nepal
Democratic Congress to form Nepali Congress
November King Tribhuvan’s flight to the Indian embassy
1951 February Formal end of Rana regime and establishment of
coalition government (now celebrated annually as
Democracy Day) under restored King Tribhuvan
April Bir Gorkha Dal revolt in Kathmandu
November M. P. Koirala forms Congress government after
collapse of coalition
1952 January Raksha Dal mutiny, leading to banning of
Communist Party
1953 June Second M. P. Koirala government
1955 March Death of King Tribhuvan in Switzerland
1956 January Tanka Prasad Acharya appointed prime minister
with cabinet of Praja Parishad and independent
ministers
July K. I. Singh becomes prime minister with cabinet of
United Democratic Party members plus royal
nominees
November K. I. Singh government dismissed
1958 February Mahendra announces appointment of Constitution
Drafting Commission, government without a prime
minister, and a nominated Advisory Assembly
1959 February Promulgation of constitution
February– Voting in general election
April
May B. P. Koirala becomes prime minister
Key events xiii
1960 December Mahendra removes Congress government and
imposes direct royal rule
1962 November Subarna Shamsher Rana calls off Congress armed
resistance to Mahendra after outbreak of war
between China and India
December Promulgation of Nepal’s new constitution
1963 April New Civil Code (Muluki Ain)
1964 Land Reform Act
1965 January Secret agreement for Nepal to use other sources for
arms only if India unable to meet its requirements
1968 May Subarna Shamsher Rana pledges ‘loyal
co-operation’ with King Mahendra
October Release of B. P. Koirala and Ganesh Man Singh
from prison
1969 June Kirtinidhi Bista, prime minister, denounces defence
agreements with India
1972 January Death of King Mahendra and accession of King
Birendra
August Congress launches armed raid from India on
Haripur (Sarlahi district)
1973 Suppression of Jhapeli communist group’s
Naxalite-style campaign of violence
1974 Three-month army operation to clear out
Khampas using northern Nepal as base for raids
into Tibet
March Biratnagar bomb attempt on Birendra’s life
1975 February Birendra makes Zone of Peace Proposal
June Indira Gandhi declares emergency rule in India
1976 December B. P. Koirala and Ganesh Man Singh return to
Kathmandu from India and are immediately
arrested
1979 May Birendra announces referendum on future of
Panchayat system
June Surya Bahadur Thapa becomes prime minister
1980 May Referendum decides in favour of reformed
Panchayat system rather than return to multi-party
democracy
December Third amendment to constitution provides for
direct election of Rastriya Panchayat
1985 May Congress launch civil disobedience campaign
June Bomb explosions in Kathmandu
xiv Key events
1986 May Start of Gorkha National Liberation Front agitation
in Darjeeling
May Second general election under the reformed
Panchayat system
1987 December End of Gorkha National Liberation Front campaign
in Darjeeling
1989 March India imposes semi-blockade of Nepal
November Janata Party wins Indian elections, Rajiv Gandhi
replaced by V. P. Singh
1990 February Start of ‘People’s Movement’
March Start of nightly ‘light-outs’
March Patan ‘uprising’ begins
April Dismissal of Marichman Singh Shrestha’s
government, appointment of Lokendra Bahadur
Chand as prime minister and Darbar Marg
shootings
April King meets opposition leaders and lifts ban on
political parties
April Dissolution of Rastriya Panchayat and Krishna
Prasad Bhattarai appointed prime minister
November/ People claiming to be refugees from Bhutan set up
December makeshift camps in Jhapa
November Promulgation of constitution
November CPN (Unity Centre) established
1991 January Merger of CPN (M) and CPN (ML) to form
Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-
Leninist)
January Establishment of United People’s Front as electoral
vehicle for the far-left Unity Centre
May General election and formation of Girija Prashad
Koiral’s Congress government
December Girija Koirala’s cabinet reshuffle intensifies conflict
within Congress
1992 Recognition of Nepali as one of India’s national
languages
February Thapa and Chand factions amalgamate to form
United National Democratic Party
April Police shooting of left-wing demonstrators in
Kathmandu
1993 May Death of Madan Bhandari and Jivraj Ashrit in jeep
accident at Dasdhunga
Key events xv
1994 May United People’s Front splits into Baburam Bhattarai
and Nirajan Vaidya factions
July Girija Koirala requests dissolution of parliament
November Man Mohan Adhikari appointed prime minister
following elections giving CPN (UML) a
plurality
1995 March Prachanda’s faction of Unity Centre renames itself
CPN (Maoist)
September Central committee of CPN (Maoist) adopts ‘Plan
for the historic initiation of the People’s War’
September UML government leaves office after parliament
passes a no-confidence motion
September Sher Bahadur Deuba becomes prime minister
heading Congress-National Democratic
Party-Sadbhavana coalition
November Police launch Operation Romeo against Maoist
supporters in Rolpa
1996 February Commencement of ‘People’s War’
May Girija Koirala is elected president of Nepali
Congress
September Joint meeting of both Houses of parliament
approves the Mahakali treaty by a two-thirds’
majority
December New trade and transit treaty with India
1997 March Deuba fails to gain vote of confidence
March Swearing-in of NDP-UML-Sadbhavana coalition
under Lokendra Bahadur Chand
October Chand government loses no-confidence vote
October Surya Bahadur Thapa becomes prime minister
heading NDP-Congress-Sadbhavana coalition
1998 January Formal split of NDP into separate Chand and
Thapa parties
March Dissidents formally split from UML to form the
CPN (Marxist-Leninist)
April Thapa resigns in accordance with original
agreement with Congress
April Girija Koirala sworn in as prime minister of a
Congress minority government
May Beginning of Kilo Sierra 2 police operation against
the Maoist insurgents
August CPN (ML) ministers join Koirala government
xvi Key events
December CPN (ML) ministers resign from government
December Formation of new Congress-UML-Sadbhavana-
Independent cabinet
1999 April Death of Man Mohan Adhikari
May Elections held in two main phases
May Krishna Prasad Bhattarai appointed prime minister
September Seven policeman killed and an inspector taken
prisoner at post in Rukum
December Bhattarai sets up commission under Deuba to make
recommendations on Maoist problem
December Thapa and Chand factions of the National
Democratic Party announce they will re-unite
2000 February Police burn down houses in Rukum following death
of nineteen police in bomb explosion
May Girija Koirala replaces Krishna Prasad Bhattarai as
prime minister
July Government declares kamaiyas (bonded labourers)
free
August Death of musician Praveen Gurung in collision
with vehicle allegedly driven by an inebriated Prince
Paras
September Maoists attack Dunai, district headquarters of
Dolpo, killing fourteen policemen and destroying
government buildings
December Five die in police firing in Kathmandu in rioting
over alleged anti-Nepalese remarks by Indian film
star Hritik Roshan
2001 January Birendra approves ordinances setting up Armed
Police Force and system of regional governors
February Adoption of ‘Prachanda Path’ as party doctrine at
Maoists’ second national conference which also
elected Prachanda as party chairman
April Maoists kill seventy policemen in attacks at
Rukumkot (Rukum) and Naumule (Dailekh);
government announces plans for Integrated
Security and Development Programme involving
key role for army
June Crown Prince Dipendra shoots dead king, queen
and seven other members of royal family before
apparently committing suicide
Key events xvii
June Raj Parishad proclaims Dipendra (now on life
support) king and Gyanendra regent
June Death of Dipendra and accession of King
Gyanendra
June Koirala’s resignation after army’s failure to engage
with rebels holding captured policemen
June Sher Bahadur Deuba appointed prime minister and
declares ceasefire
August Leaders of constitutional leftist parties meet
Prachanda at Siliguri in West Bengal
August Talks begin between government and rebels
November Prachanda announces withdrawal from negotiations
over government’s refusal to concede demand for
constituent assembly
November Rebels break ceasefire with attacks on police and
(for the first time) an army barracks in Dang
November Declaration of state of emergency throughout
country and full mobilisation of army against
rebels
2002 February Bamdev Gautam and most CPN (ML) members
rejoin UML
February Rebel attacks on Mangalsen, district headquarters
of Acham, and on nearby airfield kill around 150
soldiers and police as well as the local chief district
officer
May Deuba obtains dissolution of parliament after
clashing with Koirala over extension of state of
emergency
June Formal split in Congress
July Unity Centre and Masal merge and their electoral
vehicles (United People’s Front and National
People’s Front) combine to form People’s Front,
Nepal
September Forty-nine police killed in attack on post in
Sindhuli
September Rebels overrun Sandhikharka, district headquarters
of Arghakhanchi, killing sixty security personnel
October Following discussions amongst political parties,
Deuba formally requests king to approve
postponement of the elections until November 2003
xviii Key events
October Gyanendra announces dismissal of Deuba,
postponement of elections and his own assumption
of executive powers
October Appointment of Lokendra Bahadur Chand as prime
minister
2003 January Maoist gunmen assassinate head of Armed Police
Force
January Announcement of ceasefire between rebels and
government
May Commencement of five-party agitation for ending
of royal rule
June Appointment of Surya Bahadur Thapa as prime
minister
August Maoists announce withdrawal ‘for the time being’
from negotiations and ceasefire
November Government announces plan to form civilian
militias
2004 March Maoist attack on Bhojpur bazaar kills twenty-nine
security personnel
March Maoist attack on Beni
c ha p t e r 1
th e physical a re na
The history of the Himalayas began with the slow collision of what is
now the Indian subcontinent with Central Asia. About 70 million years
ago, this forced rock strata upwards to form the mountains along Tibet’s
southern rim, which are still today the watershed between the Ganges and
Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river systems.1 Between 16 and 10 million years ago,
further movements produced to the south the main Himalayan range and,
to their south, the middle hills – a confusion of interrupted ridges and
spurs, which in Nepal still form the cultural and political heart of the
country. At around the same time the Tibetan mountains rose further
and then, between 800,000 and 500,000 years ago, the main Himalayan
peaks were again uplifted to tower far above them. Subsequent movements
produced the Mahabharat hills along the southern edge of the middle hills
and the Siwalik (or Chure) range slightly further south along the edge
of the Gangetic plain. This shifting of the earth’s crust continues today
and different sections of the Himalayas are still rising at rates of between
5 millimetres and 1 centimetre per year.
The rise of the Mahabharats and the Siwaliks temporarily dammed some
of the rivers flowing south towards the Ganges, forming lakes in the valleys
between the two ranges and also in the Kathmandu Valley. The Kath-
mandu lake may have dried up only 100,000 years ago, by which time its
shores were almost certainly inhabited. The mythical account of the drain-
ing of the Valley by Manjushri (Buddhist version) or Pradyumna (Hindu
version), like the similar myths encountered all along the Himalayas, could
just conceivably represent an oral tradition dating back more than 3000
generations. It is, though, more likely that the myth-makers simply drew
their conclusion from the lie of the land. By way of comparison, there is
a Chinese folk story about a land link between Taiwan and the mainland,
which were in fact joined until around 8000 bc, but no folk memory of
6
H
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MA
HA M G
SI BH
WA
L IK AR H
TA S/C AT I
R A HUR
I IA
D H
SI MA
WA HA D I
L IK BH
S/C AR
TA HU
RI
AT
L M
R A A
A
I MA E L
HA
BH A
SIW A R AT
ALIKS
/CH U RI A
Y A
INNER TARAI H S
(DANG) TA R A I
Kathmandu
MA
I
S I WA HA
BH
L
LIK L
S/C ARA Darjeeling
HU
RIA T S
INNER TARAI TA
(CHITWAN) RA
I SIW MAH
ALI A B H A R AT
KS/C
HURI
TA R A
AI
TA R A I
0 50 100 150 km INNER TARAI
(SINDHULI/UDAYPUR)
0 25 50 75 100 miles
Notes and sources: Based on data in the 1991 census (Nepal, Central Bureau of Statistics
1993: ii, part vii, tab. 25) and analyses by Harka Gurung (Gurung 1994: tab. 1; Salter and
Gurung 1996: tab. 1) and Mark Gaborieau (1978). The largest and/or most important groups
are shown in bold. The table excludes the 1.0 per cent of the population who were native
to the hills but not placed in any specific category in the census. The subtotal of 32.0 per
cent for Madheshis (section 4) includes 3.6 per cent of the population who were recorded
as Tarai natives but were similarty left unclassified. There are other small discrepancies in
subtotal because of roundings and because groups constituting less than 0.1 per cent of the
population have been omitted.
a
Harka Gurung treats the Newars as a single group. Figures for the main subdivisions are
taken from Gaborieau 1978: 198–206.
b
Shown in parallel columns because there are separate blocks of Hindu (l.) and Buddhist
(r.) upper castes, neither of which recognises the other’s superior status. See also p. 31.
around 1000 bc and moved through the hills to reach the Karnali basin
early in the first millennium ad, displacing or assimilating the existing
population. In the centuries after ad 1000, they were joined by a small
number of Rajputs, ruling clans from Rajasthan in western India, who
fled into the hills to escape the Muslim invaders. The Rajputs were the
descendants of the Gurjaras, who had risen to power in India just before
the arrival of the Muslims and may have in fact originally come from
the hill country. By late medieval times, the ruling families in the hills
of central and western Nepal, known as Thakuris, were claiming descent
from these Rajput refugees, usually from the dynasty controlling Mewar,
whose fortress at Chittaur fell to Muslim besiegers in 1303 and again in 1568.
Environment, state and society 11
Although a considerable amount of immigration from the plains did occur,
in many cases Khasa rulers and also perhaps members of Tibeto-Burman
groups dominant in a particular area had simply provided themselves with
a suitably prestigious ancestry, as happened frequently throughout South
Asia. Rajput blood, real or imagined, was to remain an important status
symbol and this may even have been a factor in Crown Prince Dipendra’s
murder of his family in 2001: Queen Aishwarya is said by some to have
thought the woman he wanted to marry was not a true Rajput.
The rulers’ suspect genealogies were generally composed by Brahman
priests who also claimed plains origins. Brahman immigration did occur,
but many present-day Nepalese Brahman surnames point rather to local ori-
gin. Genuine medieval migrants also include the Churautes, a North Indian
caste whose members entered the foothills between the fourteenth and
eighteenth centuries after converting to Islam. Quite possibly the Doms,
as the Untouchable hill castes are known in western Nepal and in the
Indian Himalayas across the border, are also later arrivals, rather than the
descendants of a conquered, pre-Khasa population.
Many, though not all, of the other ethnic groups in the Nepal hills were
there before the Khasas, but it is difficult to date their arrival. In some cases
it may be very early, given the archaeological evidence discussed below.
Recent genetic research suggests that in general the bearers of new cul-
tures and languages tend to assimilate rather than totally displace earlier
populations, and so Nepalese from many different ethnic groups will be at
least partly descended from those earliest inhabitants. If we simply look for
groups who have preserved their own distinct culture on Nepalese soil for
the longest time, the obvious candidates must be among the very small num-
bers who still live as hunter-gatherers on the margins of an overwhelmingly
agricultural society. One such people, the Kusundas, a handful of whom
survive in the Mahabharat hills, have borrowed many words from their
Tibeto-Burman-speaking neighbours, but the core of their language may
still represent the oldest linguistic stratum in Nepal. Most scholars regard
Kusunda as a linguistic isolate like Basque in Europe, unrelated to any
other known language, but it is possibly a distant relation of languages now
spoken in Papua New Guinea and the Andaman Islands.2 Another hunter-
gatherer group, the better-known Rautes, now speak a recognisably Tibeto-
Burman language but are probably also the continuation of a distinct
pre-Tibeto-Burman population. The Tharus of the Tarai are now agricul-
turalists and their speech has almost totally converged with local Indo-Aryan
dialects, even though language activists often claim to speak ‘Tharu’. Never-
theless their speech does show traces of a pre-Tibeto-Burman language.
12 A History of Nepal
Other possible forerunners of Tibeto-Burman in Nepal are Munda, the
western branch of the Austroasiatic family, and Dravidian, the family to
which the major languages of South India belong. Munda and Dravidian
are now represented in Nepal only by the small and dwindling number
of persons in the eastern Tarai speaking Sant(h)ali/Satar and Kurukh (also
known as Dhangar or Jhangar) respectively, but there is evidence that related
languages were once spoken widely in northern India. Most Austroasiatic
languages (including the best-known, Vietnamese) are nowadays found in
South-east Asia, so Munda-speaking peoples presumably spread towards the
west from north-eastern India. Dravidian languages, which show evidence
of contact with ancient Mesopotamian languages, probably spread into
South Asia from the north-west.
Tibeto-Burman-speaking peoples are the largest linguistic grouping in
the Nepalese hills after the Parbatiyas. Tibeto-Burman forms one branch
of the Sino-Tibetan family which probably originated in western China.
Members of this branch who speak Tibetan dialects are known in Nepal
as Bhotiyas (from the Nepali word for Tibet), and they clearly reached
their present homes over the high passes directly from the north. One such
group, the Sherpas of the Solukhumbu region beneath Everest, possesses
written records of their migration in 1531–3. The Sherpas’ own oral traditions
suggest that they displaced the Rais, who still occupy the hills further south.
In any case Solukhumbu had already been inhabited for many centuries:
2000-year-old cereal pollen has been discovered there, as well as evidence
that much of the region’s present-day open grassland was cleared of forest
cover at least 400 to 800 years ago.
Earlier arrivals from Tibet were the Tamangs, the largest ethnic group in
the hills surrounding the Kathmandu Valley; the Gurungs, mainly found
in Lamjung, Kaski and Gorkha districts; and the Thakalis who live along
the Kali Gandaki Valley south of Jomosom. The languages of these peoples
are clearly closely related to one another and, while not actually varieties
of Tibetan, are closer to it than are most other Nepalese Tibeto-Burman
languages. This similarity later helped many individual Tamangs ‘pass’ as
Gurungs, an advantage as the latter group enjoyed greater prestige and was
considered fit for military employment. All three peoples were probably
once a single ethnic group and the split has been dated on rather speculative
linguistic grounds to the fourth century ad. One recent theory is that the
common ancestors of this group and the Tibetans had much earlier travelled
eastwards along the north side of the Himalayas from Kashmir, where the
‘northern neolithic’ culture which developed from 3000 bc onwards had
some similarities with the northern Chinese neolithic.
Environment, state and society 13
According to an account drawing on Gurung oral tradition, their ances-
tors settled about 2000 years ago in Mustang and crossed to the south
side of the Himalayas around ad 500.3 This would coincide with a gen-
eral expansion of speakers of Tibetan at about this time. Kohla Sombre,
a ruined village remembered as the site of the first Gurung settlement on
the south side of Annapurna was probably inhabited for between 70 and
150 years in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The buildings seemingly
had flat roofs, the standard design in arid areas to the north of the Himalayan
peaks.
With other Tibeto-Burman peoples the picture is less clear. They may
have come from either the east or, less likely, the west. Those found in eastern
Nepal, where the Tibeto-Burman proportion is highest, are collectively
known as ‘Kiranti’. They include the well-known Rais and Limbus as well
as smaller groups such as the Sunuwars and Chepangs, and their own myths
show their acknowledgement of a common origin. ‘Kiranti’ derives from
the Sanskrit ‘Kirata’, the name applied in the classical Indian texts to the
Tibeto-Burman hill peoples generally. The vamshavalis (chronicles) of the
Kathmandu Valley claim that Kiratas ruled there before the Indianised
Licchavis came to power early in the first millennium ad.
Kiranti legends suggest that eastern Nepal was mainly populated by
a series of expansions from Assam, and that the different groups moved
west along the Tarai before penetrating the Arun Valley and other routes
into the hills. There are similarities in culture between the two regions
and also strong resemblances between Kiranti languages and the Rung
languages found in Yunnan and Burma. There could thus have been a
migration (or series of migrations) from south-west China through the
Tsangpo/Brahmaputra gorge into Assam with some of the migrants then
moving on into Nepal. Although it is much less likely that the Kiranti or
other Tibeto-Burman speakers originally came from the west, the flow of
people does seem to have turned eastwards at one time. The evidence of
river names suggests that both Rai and Magar dialects were once spoken in
areas of western Nepal that are now exclusively Nepali-speaking; there are
also oral traditions among some Rai groups of migration from the Karnali
basin. Eastward movement may have occurred under pressure from the
advancing Khasas, or for climatic reasons: although there are wide micro-
regional variations, rainfall generally increases towards the south-east and,
in periods of drought, it would have been the logical direction to move.
Many ethnic groups in the hills could actually have been formed by
the fusion of groups entering the area from different directions. The Rais
are particularly heterogeneous and the term ‘Rai’ itself seems to have been
14 A History of Nepal
applied by Nepali-speakers to Kiranti groups that could not fit into a more
specific category. In the mid-western hills, origin myths of the northern (or
Kham) Magars, the ethnic group who formed much of the support base
for Nepal’s Maoists, tell of a merger between one clan originating locally
and others from ‘Mongolia’. Multiple origin is even more obvious for the
Magars as a whole. The Kham Magar language itself is very different from
that of most southern Magars, while other Magar groups speak dialects very
close to Gurung. The term ‘Magar’ was perhaps once simply a prestigious
title that was adopted by numerous otherwise unconnected groups.
Although the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley speak a Tibeto-Burman
language, they are usually treated separately from the various hill groups
because of their long tradition of urbanisation and because, like the Par-
batiyas, they have a caste system. Linguists argue about whether their lan-
guage is more closely related to Kiranti or to Gurung-Tamang-Thakali and,
while most scholars see Newar society as a continuation of that of the Kiratas
who once dominated the Valley, the Newars, too, are an amalgamation of
different peoples. The largest Newar caste, the Maharjan agriculturalists,
nowadays regard themselves as indigenous, but many other castes have tra-
ditions of migration, some of which will be genuine. The word ‘Newar’
itself is related to the Newar ‘Nepa’ and the Sanskrit ‘Nepala’, which origi-
nally designated just the Kathmandu Valley.4 The Newars were thus simply
the ‘people of the Valley’, wherever they had originally come from.
The final major population category of the country is the Madheshis –
the people of the plains. The term is reserved for those whose ancestors
have long lived in the Tarai and who share language and culture with those
living south of the Indian border, thus excluding the hill Nepalese who
have settled in large numbers in the Tarai in recent decades. Although the
Madheshis are often regarded by the hillmen as a single group, the Tarai has
traditionally been home to caste Hindus, to a substantial Muslim minority
(especially in the western districts) and to various ethnic groups (‘tribes’).
The largest of the latter, the Tharus, are of particularly diverse origin and
probably had no sense of collective identity until very recently. They were
regarded as a single group by outsiders because of their association with
the Tarai jungles and particularly because of their immunity to the aul, a
virulent form of malaria prevalent there until the 1950s and often preventing
year-round settlement by other groups.
The Indo-Aryan dialects spoken by the Madheshis were brought into
North India from the north-west. The main wave of migration down
the Ganges Valley commenced probably towards the end of the second
millennium bc, and one of the principal routes lay along the base of the
Environment, state and society 15
hills on the northern edge of the Tarai, probably because it was easier to
clear forest for agriculture there than nearer the Ganges itself. For caste
Hindus, and now also for most of the ‘tribals’, the Tarai forms a dialect
continuum with speech changing gradually from one village to the next,
and no sharp divisions between one language and another. However, it is
usual to recognise three main varieties: from west to east, Awadhi, Bhojpuri
and Maithili, the last of which has the largest number of speakers in Nepal
after Nepali itself.
The Tarai became less important later on as the focus moved nearer to the
Ganges itself. There is a widespread oral tradition among both Hindus and
Muslims living there today that their ancestors moved into the area only
about 200 years ago, which was around the time of the Gorkhali conquest
of the Kathmandu Valley. However, the region was certainly affected by
the waves of Muslim invaders from ad 1000 onwards. States based in the
plains came under Muslim control while, at least from the fifteenth century
onwards, hill rajas with land holdings in the plains were required to pay
tribute. Muslims who settled as cultivators were, however, overwhelmingly
the descendants of Hindu converts rather than Turks, Afghans or Arabs.
out of fear it might cause a famine. In the nineteenth century, maize was
regarded by upper-caste Newars as food for animals, but it was often eaten
by the lower castes.
The main techniques of agricultural production employed in the Tarai
and in the more fertile parts of the hills had evolved on the Ganges plain
around the middle of the first millennium bc. At about this time iron
implements began to be used extensively for forest clearance and particu-
larly for ploughshares. This enabled the heavier soils to be exploited more
efficiently, while the introduction of new varieties of rice and of improve-
ments in transplanting techniques allowed substantial growth in popula-
tion. Maximum productivity could be achieved in the most favourable
areas by growing two or three crops in a single year in one field, a practice
18 A History of Nepal
known in India even in Vedic times (c. 1500–800 bc). In the hills, low
population levels meant that multiple-cropping was not necessary and it
did not become general there until the late twentieth century. The more
intensive method was, however, probably adopted early on in the Kath-
mandu Valley, where there was a greater density of settlement, although
population growth was restrained by natural calamities.
The Newar Maharjans, who were the principal cultivators of the Kath-
mandu Valley, did not generally adopt the plough but continued to rely
chiefly on their traditional hoe-like ku. This was generally more effective
than the Indian scratch plough for breaking up heavy clay soil before plant-
ing, and it is mainly for this reason that the plough was not used in most
parts of the Valley. However, Maharjans themselves now generally claim
that they avoid ploughing because it is sinful to use the bullock in this way,
and in places such as the Banepa Valley where it would be advantageous to
use the plough, they refrain from doing so.
2. A statue of Garuda, the mythical man-bird who carried the god Vishnu. The face may
be that of Manadeva, the Licchavi ruler whose inscription of 465 ad begins the recorded
history of the Kathmandu Valley.
Environment, state and society 21
motorcycle rally around the Kathmandu Valley. The Valley’s main centres,
Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur, emerged as urban settlements through
the amalgamation of existing villages in the early medieval centuries. In
1200, a new king, Ari Malla, was the first to adopt the suffix ‘Malla’, an
honorific title which was probably initially used by the Pallava dynasty of
southern India. The 600 years to Prithvi Narayan’s conquest of the Valley
in 1768–9 are consequently referred to as the ‘Malla period’.
Throughout the Licchavi and medieval period, the kings had to reckon
with powerful subordinates who might become a threat to royal power. In
Licchavi times these were principally the samantas, a term which originally
meant a neighbouring ruler but then came to be used for a subordinate
one, normally a ruler in a peripheral region that had been brought under
the king’s control. The title then seems to have been extended to powerful
courtiers even if they had never ruled a separate territory of their own.
Amsuvarman, who became co-ruler with a Licchavi king at the end of the
sixth century and finally sole ruler, is first referred to in inscriptions as the
mahasamanta (great samanta). The samantas are commemorated in modern
Nepali by the word for ‘feudalism’ (samantabad), but during the medieval
period the title dropped out of use and nobles outside the main cities were
most commonly known as bharos, a title first recorded at the beginning
of the eleventh century. At the top of the social order in Kathmandu and
Patan, though seemingly not Bhaktapur, were the pradhans or (maha)patras.
It has been argued that both country and city nobles were a court aristocracy
owing their position to royal favour rather than the independent local power
base that some of the samantas had possessed. This was probably not true
of the pradhans: in particular at Patan they were immensely influential and
acting as kingmakers as early as 1099. They may have been successors to
the headmen of the smaller settlements that had been merged to form the
cities. Whatever their origins, the bharos also could be a powerful force.
They were certainly a numerous class: 1700 of them assembled to swear
fealty to Jayasthiti Malla in 1383.
From 1255, politics were dominated by the rivalry of two important bharo
families associated respectively with the Tripura Palace in Bhaktapur and
with the Banepa region (Bhonta). Strife between them was accompanied by
attacks from outside. For half a century from 1288 the Valley was frequently
raided by the Nepali-speaking Khasas from the Karnali basin and Maithili-
speaking Doyas from the Tarai. There was finally a short but highly destruc-
tive incursion by Shams ud-din Ilyas, Muslim ruler of Bengal, in 1349. In
1311 the Bhonta family had actually called in the Doyas as a means of putting
pressure on their Tripura rivals, and there may have been other occasions
22 A History of Nepal
when the raiders acted in collusion with a faction within the Valley.
The pattern foreshadowed what was to happen during Prithvi Narayan’s
siege of the Valley in the eighteenth century, and, to a lesser extent, during
the Maoist ‘People’s War’ in the twentieth.
Although the Doyas seemed at this point to have been Bhonta’s allies,
a few years later Rudra Malla, head of the Tripura family and de facto
ruler of the Valley, arranged the marriage of his sister, Devaladevi, to the
Doya ruler, Harisimha. In 1336, threatened by the forces of the Delhi
Sultanate, Harisimha fled into the hills where he died before reaching
the Valley. Devaladevi assumed leadership of Tripura and married her
granddaughter to Jayasthiti Malla, probably a Maithil nobleman. Jayasthiti
Malla’s acknowledgement as ruler of the Valley in 1382 restored strong cen-
tral control, but, following the death of his grandson Yaksha in 1482, an
arrangement for his sons and nephews to rule collectively broke down and
Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur eventually emerged as independent city-
states.
Within the Valley states, politics in the later medieval period was as
intrigue-ridden as before and frequently entangled with inter-state relations
given the proximity of the three cities to each other and the family ties
between rulers. Power was frequently in the hands of queen regents or
ministers. The most famous of the latter was Lakshminarayan Joshi of
Kathmandu, who at the climax of his career came close to dominating the
whole Valley. According to his enemies (whose version of events is preserved
in the surviving sources), Joshi poisoned King Parthivendra (ruled 1680–7),
seduced his queen and arranged at least two other murders before his own
assassination in 1690.
Although the wealth and sophistication of the Valley was unrivalled in
the hills, it was nevertheless part of a wider network of states. The Khasas,
whose raids into the Valley have already been noted, had established an
empire which at its greatest extent covered some 142,000 square kilometres,
compared to the 200,000 that would be included in the later Gorkhali
empire. Centred in the Karnali basin, it also included south-eastern Tibet
and parts of Kumaon. Because Khasa rulers adopted the Malla title in
imitation of its use in the Valley, their state is sometimes referred to as the
Malla empire, although they were not related to the Newar Malla kings. The
Khasa state’s economy rested on the development of wet-rice cultivation
in the main river valleys. It has been argued that this was possible on a
large scale only because the Khasa rulers were strong enough to conscript
labour for the construction of irrigation facilities. The state’s role here was
Environment, state and society 23
certainly important but in some cases the cultivators probably organised
this among themselves without government intervention.
After the Khasa empire fragmented around the beginning of the fifteenth
century, a network of statelets emerged in the western and central hills.
There are slight variations in the lists in the various sources but those in the
Karnali basin were conventionally known as the baisi (‘twenty-two’) and in
the Gandaki basin as the chaubisi (‘twenty-four’). While some of the new
rulers were genuine refugees from the plains, others were really of Khasa
or Magar origin, though claims and counterclaims make it impossible to
be sure of the true origins of any particular family. The Sen rulers of Palpa
and Makwanpur are referred to as Magars in documents from the Kath-
mandu Valley and from Sikkim. The Shahs of Gorkha were also sometimes
described as Magars and the names Kancha and Micha, which occur in the
genealogy linking the dynasty to the brother of a Chittaur ruler perhaps
support this. The ruler of Baldeng (near present-day Butwal), overthrown
by Palpa and other chaubisi states around 1700, was also supposedly a
Magar.
Genuine Rajput newcomers were not necessarily simply fleeing Muslim
wrath. The traditional dates for the foundation of many Rajput states
both in Nepal and India are around the end of the fifteenth century – the
kingdom of Palpa, for example, is said to have been established in 1493. This
period saw a general agrarian expansion in South Asia as a whole, together
with a progressive monetisation of the economy. Against this background,
individuals failing to find a niche in plains areas immediately south of Nepal
may have decided to carve out lordships for themselves in the foothills. The
founder of Palpa’s Sen dynasty may be an example of this: according to one
version of the story, he moved north from Allahabad into the Tarai and
then into the hills rather than directly from Rajasthan.
Newcomers from the plains sometimes established themselves by
outright conquest but often more by a process of infiltration, offering their
services to one section of the existing population in quarrels with another.
Drabya Shah, younger brother of the king of the chaubisi state of Lamjung
and ancestor of Nepal’s ruling dynasty, took control of Gorkha in 1559 by
the violent removal of the existing chieftain, who was either a Khasa or a
member of one of the Tibeto-Burman groups. In contrast, further west in
Musikot, there was probably a split between Magar lineages, one of which
turned to the newcomers for military assistance.
The kingdom of Palpa, the largest of the states in the central hills,
broke up on the death of Mukunda Sen in 1553. One of his sons received
24 A History of Nepal
Amritsar
Lahore
tla
Sa
j R.
Satlaj R. Simla Kailas
6714
G A R H WA L
Dehra Dun
Hu
m la
R.
BAISI Sinja
Pancheshwor
li
n ali
Jumla
haka
Mangalsen DOLPA
ar
Tanakpur K KINGDOMS Dunai
Ma
Gange
eri
RUKUM
Bh
Delhi SURKHET
CHAUBISI
s Ri ROLPA
MYAGDI
ver
MUSIKOT
Nepalganj GULMI
Sandhikharka
HA
DANG G
AR
Ra KHANCHI
pti Lumbini
Mathura O U D H
(until 1857)
Jum
n aR
i Lucknow Gogra
River
ver
Faizabad
Gwalior
Area returned to Nepal in 1860
Makwanpur to the south of the Kathmandu Valley, and then seized control
of Vijaypur, a kingdom centred near Dharan. Although he was thus master
of the entire eastern Tarai, by the middle of the eighteenth century ‘greater
Makwanpur’ had again fragmented into four states. In Vijaypur, Sen power
depended on Maithil Brahman administrators but even more on support
from the Limbus of the eastern hills. The Limbus provided military man-
power and also a hereditary chief minister, while remaining autonomous
in their own lands. Vijaypur clashed from time to time with neighbouring
Environment, state and society 25
T I B E T Lhasa
Brahmaputra River
(Tsangpo)
Mustang
Dhaulagiri
8172 Annapurna Kirong Pass
8078 i Shisa Pangma
KASKI NG
sul
(Gosainthan)
Gandaki
R.
Palpa KATHMANDU Bhaktapur SIKKIM B H U T A N
U
n
r
Butwal
ma
Banepa Jiri
Aru
Rapt Patan
Bhairahawa
dh
u
.
Ta
CHIT i
iR
D s
W Hetaura Ko Bhojpur
Ramnagar AN Makwanpur Sun K
Amlekhganj osi R. Dhankuta Darjeeling
MAH
ta
G UT Biratnagar
Ri
Ba Darbhanga
ver
an
gm
.
Mechi R
daki
ati
Vaisali Purnea
B I H A R
B E N G A L
Jamuna
Patna
Gan
ges R
Gaya
.
Map 2. (cont.)
Sikkim, where a Tibetan prince (the first Chogyal) had established himself
in 1640. The boundary between the two states was not a clear line even in
the Tarai and the situation was still more fluid in the hills. Sikkim’s rulers
claimed sovereignty as far west as the Arun, and Bhotiya gowas (chiefs)
collected taxes in some areas on their behalf.
Like Gorkha, Makwanpur and Vijaypur intermittently allied or clashed
with the kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley. Alignments were continually
shifting, though the hill states did make some attempt to help the Sens to
resist pressure from the Mughal rulers of the plains in the late seventeenth
century.
26 A History of Nepal
soci al structure
Religion played a key role in social organisation throughout the Himalayas.
At the simplest level these were ‘tribal’ animistic beliefs, but they were
Environment, state and society 29
increasingly overlaid by the influence of Hinduism and Buddhism. The
different systems were not seen as mutually exclusive at grassroots level:
contemporary records from Licchavi times onwards show rulers making
donations to both Buddhist monks and Brahmans. However, the powerful
and wealthy tended to favour one side or another, and the religious spe-
cialists definitely saw themselves as competing for patronage. Stories in the
vamshavalis of a shankaracharya (head of a South Indian Shaivite sect) vio-
lently suppressing Buddhism on a visit to Nepal are doubtless exaggerated
but do reflect a very real tension.
Although there were many viharas (Buddhist monasteries) in the Valley
in Licchavi times, the kings appear to have been primarily devotees of
Hinduism, with particular emphasis on Shiva, worshipped as Pashupatinath
(‘Lord of the Beasts’) in what is still Nepal’s most important shrine. The
importance of Buddhism increased in the post-Licchavi centuries, possibly
because of a decline in the power of the monarchy, but also probably
because of the influence of the strongly Buddhist Pala dynasty in Bengal.
At this time Nepal served as a channel of communication between Tibet and
centres of Buddhist learning in northern India, in particular the university
city of Nalanda. Nepalese Buddhists also played an important role in the
rebuilding of Tibetan Buddhism in the tenth century after the collapse
of the Tibetan empire had weakened it there. Buddhism continued in a
stronger position within the Valley until the end of the thirteenth century.
By this time, however, a process of decline had already begun. The major
cause was probably the renewed prestige of Hindu kingship in the wake
of the South Indian Chalukya dynasty’s forays into the north. As well as
direct South Indian cultural influence on the Valley, this development led
to the replacement of the Buddhist Palas by the Hindu Sen dynasty in
Bengal and, most importantly, Nanyadeva’s establishment in 1097 of the
kingdom of Tirhut in the Maithili-speaking region. Nanyadeva’s invasion
of the hills in 1111 was a failure and the subsequent raids by the Maithils
(known in the Valley as Doyas) were short-lived affairs, but their ideol-
ogy was more successful. The accession in 1382 of Jayasthiti Malla, whose
Maithil connections have already been noted, marked the culmination of
a thorough re-Hinduisation of the state. Buddhism in the Kathmandu
Valley found itself under continuing pressure, while the religious connec-
tion with South India was maintained: South Indian priests were brought
in by Yaksha Malla in the fifteenth century to take charge of the shrine of
Pashupatinath. The majority of ordinary Newars remained predominantly
Buddhist in orientation, but in political terms the religion was in a strongly
subordinate position.
30 A History of Nepal
During the medieval centuries, Newar Buddhism also saw major changes
in its organisation. Celibacy by Buddhist monks was gradually abandoned,
although ‘monasteries’ survived as institutions, providing homes to mem-
bers of the Vajracharya and Shakya castes, descendants of the monks who
made the transition to householders in the medieval period. The change,
largely complete by the middle of the thirteenth century, was perhaps con-
nected primarily with the adoption of the Vajryana (Diamond Way) school
of Buddhism, which involved the use of sex (even if only at a symbolic level)
at its highest ritual level. Non-celibate religious practitioners had become
increasingly important throughout the Vajryana area (mainly North India,
the Himalayas and Tibet) but it was only in the Kathmandu Valley that
celibacy disappeared completely. Whatever the causes underlying it, this
change, together with the adoption of new canonical texts in the fifteenth
century, established Newar Buddhism as a unique form of the religion.
Vajracharyas and Shakyas served as priests for the Buddhist laity and con-
tinued to regard themselves as monks, holding ordination ceremonies for
each succeeding generation.
In the western hills, the Khasa empire had been primarily Buddhist in
orientation, but there was also state patronage of Hinduism. The baisi and
chaubisi states were, in contrast, strongly Hindu, whatever the relative con-
tribution of immigration from the south or acculturation. Hindu settlers,
particularly Brahmans, might help an adventurer claiming Rajput status to
establish military control and also provide him with religious legitimation.
A similar function was probably played by ascetics of the Kanphata Yogi
sect, who are associated with the early history of many of the hill kingships.
Particularly in the north, however, and among groups least integrated into
the new state structures, Buddhism remained an important element of the
religious mix, with Tibetan lamaism a strong influence, while in the Khasa
heartland the egalitarian cult of the god Masta remained as a counter-weight
to Brahmanism.
In all the Hindu kingdoms, caste played a vital role. In the Kathmandu
Valley the nineteenth-century vamshavalis generally credit King Jayasthiti
Malla with organising Newar society into castes in the fourteenth cen-
tury. There is no contemporary evidence for this, however, and the story
may have originated simply because sthiti in Nepali can mean ‘system’ or
‘arrangements’. The composers of the vamshavali probably chose to high-
light the king’s role simply to make Newar institutions seem worthy of
respect in the eyes of the Gorkhali conquerors.
Nevertheless, the Newar caste system did assume its present shape dur-
ing the medieval period, and it was the existence of the ‘ex-monks’ that
Environment, state and society 31
produced its ‘double-headed’ structure (see table 1.1). The Vajracharyas
and Shakyas formed the head of the Buddhist hierarchy with the Uray, the
Buddhist lay patrons, who were most typically involved in trade, beneath
them. On the Hindu side, the Brahmans had formal precedence with Ksha-
triyas, including the royal family and the various groups now known as
Shresthas, coming next. Below this level the Buddhist/Hindu distinction
was not really relevant and there was a single hierarchy of occupational
castes. This was headed by the largest group, the Jyapus or Maharjans,
followed by groups such as the Khadgis (butchers), from whom the upper
castes could not accept water, and finally outright Untouchables such as
the Pode (sweeper) caste.
In the hills to the west the bulk of the Khasas acquired upper-caste (‘twice-
born’) status, ranking below beneath the supposedly Rajput ruling elite,
who called themselves Thakuris. Like the Thakuris, they were regarded as
Kshatriyas, the warrior/ruler class within the classical, four-fold varna hier-
archy. They adopted this as their caste name and the Chetri caste (Nepali
chetri from Sanskrit kshatriya) are today 16 per cent of Nepal’s total popula-
tion. Their key position was strengthened because the offspring of a Chetri
father and a mother from one of the Tibeto-Burman-speaking hill tribes
or the children of a Brahman father and Chetri mother themselves became
Chetris. Early descriptions of this process by European observers made the
Brahmans the agents of the transformation but, while the Brahmans did
play a vital role as legitimators of the system, it was the Thakuri rulers who
made the crucial decision. The elimination or emasculation of royal power
in India itself by British colonialism has obscured the vital role of the king
in sustaining and regulating a caste system.
The division between ‘plains Kshatriyas’ (the Thakuris) and ‘hill Ksha-
triyas’ (the Chetris) is also found west of the present-day Nepalese border
in Kumaon and Garhwal. However, in comparison with the situation in
what was to become Nepal, the subordination of the Khasas to the immi-
grants from the plains was always much stronger in the North-west Indian
Himalayan districts. It has been suggested that the Khasas in Nepal were
more able to hold their own because of the strong position they had held
under the Malla empire and also because in Nepal, but not in Kumaon
and Garhwal, they were supported by a relatively large Magar and Gurung
population.
When the whole system was codified in the nineteenth century, Magars,
Gurungs and some other Tibeto-Burman groups were allocated a position
clearly below the high, twice-born castes but were not regarded as ritually
unclean. A Brahman, Thakuri or Chetri could accept water or food other
32 A History of Nepal
than boiled rice from their hands, and, most crucially, a high-caste male
could have sexual relations with them. They thus ranked above the Nepali-
speaking occupational castes, who formed the base of the hierarchy. This
had certainly been the position of the bulk of Magars and Gurungs in
the medieval period, but until the eighteenth century the situation was
complicated by a fairly fluid boundary between Magars and Khasas. The
former might also receive Kshatriya status and this happened on such a
scale that a British officer who visited Nepal in 1793 could refer to the
‘Khus and Mungur tribes of the Chetree class’.9 Consequently, many of
the same clan names, such as ‘Thapa’, are equally common among both
Chetris and Magars.
Despite being Nepali-speakers like the upper Parbatiya castes, the arti-
san castes were mostly Untouchables, ranking below the Tibeto-Burman
groups in the hierarchy. Chief among these groups were the Kamis (black-
smiths), Sarkis (cobblers) and Damais (tailors) who probably amounted to
around 20 per cent of the total Parbatiya population. The existence of the
high caste/Untouchable divide within Parbatiya society arguably dictated
the incorporation of the Tibeto-Burman groups in their intermediate posi-
tion. A non-caste people coming into contact with high-caste Hindus and
Untouchables could associate with the former only if they joined them in
avoiding physical contact with the latter.
The eastward drift of the Parbatiyas, whether high caste or low, contin-
ued. The Khasa raids in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had not
led to any extensive settlement in the Kathmandu Valley, any invaders who
had remained there appear to have been assimilated into the existing popu-
lation. From the sixteenth century onwards, however, there appears to have
been a growing Parbatiya presence in the Valley. In 1580/1, land-transfer
documents preserved in the Rudravarna Mahavira (ex-monastery) begin to
employ the Nepali/Hindi forms of numerals rather than Sanskrit or Newar,
which suggests these were in frequent use. In the seventeenth century an
increasing number of inscriptions in the Valley began to have sections in
Nepali. By the end of the century Khasas and Magars were becoming an
important factor in the court politics of the three kingdoms, particularly
when physical force was employed. In 1703 an agreement between Patan
and Bhaktapur provided that if either party broke its terms they might
be plundered with impunity by the ‘Khas and Magar Omraos’ (chiefs,
headmen).10
There is no sign that these trends were seen as a real danger by the Newar
population, presumably because the Khasas seemed just one more group
to fit into the elaborate set of divisions already established in the Valley.
Environment, state and society 33
Those with any contact with the royal courts were in any case used to
their employment of Maithili as the preferred literary language and to the
presence of specialists from the plains. There was, however, some tension
when Muslims were first settled in Kathmandu under King Ratna Malla in
the fifteenth century and also after Capuchin friars established a Catholic
mission in 1715. These newcomers were more difficult to fit into the existing
scheme of things, but the king of Bhaktapur did actually at one point offer
some of his subjects to the Capuchins to be converted.
While not subject to the indignities suffered by the Untouchables, the
bulk of the population in the different kingdoms had little influence over
the conduct of the political elite. There are, however, examples of crowd
action in the Valley cities affecting the course of events. In 1697 the young
King Bhupalendra was brought back by the people of Kathmandu when he
had withdrawn from the city after a quarrel; a few years earlier the citizens
of Bhaktapur had forced King Jitamitra to dismiss a trusted minister. The
role of the crowd became important at certain critical moments, usually
when rivalry within the elite had reached a particularly high level.
A tradition of localism and of ritual confrontation between different
areas in the Valley probably facilitated citizens’ participation in quarrels
between the rulers. Ritualism served, however, to limit the destructiveness
of inter-state warfare, as can be seen from the comments of Fr Desideri,
who visited the Valley in 1721:
When two armies meet they launch every sort of abuse at one another, and if
few shots are fired, and no one is hurt, the attacked army retires to a fortress, of
which there are many, resembling our country dovecots. But if a man is killed or
wounded, the army which has suffered begs for peace, and sends a dishevelled and
half-clothed woman who weeps, beats her breast and implores mercy, the cession
of such carnage, and such shedding of human blood.11
Serious fighting was increasingly left to mercenaries from the hills or the
Tarai, who were first employed in Kathmandu in the reign of Ratna Malla
(1482–1521).
Competition between the Valley states often took non-military forms
and is perhaps best understood in terms of the notion of a ‘theatre state’.12
Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur vied with one another in the splendour
of their architecture and of their festivals, religious performances that one
nineteenth-century observer estimated took up about a third of the time of
the cities’ inhabitants. Pratap Malla of Kathmandu, a successful practitioner
of Realpolitik in his policy towards Tibet, was also one of the Valley’s most
theatrical characters. He himself participated in dance performances for
34 A History of Nepal
the gods, staged within the royal palace but probably with large sections of
the population admitted as spectators. In an inscription on a 1673 statue
of Vishnu within the Hanuman Dhoka palace, the king himself explains
how he had been possessed by the god after impersonating him in ritual
performance and been told to construct the statue as a form of exorcism.
Pratap Malla was also the builder of Rani Pokhari (‘Queen’s Pond’) and set
the trend for Valley rulers to erect statues of themselves on a pillar facing a
temple of Taleju, the Mallas’ patron goddess.
Both inside and outside the Valley, kings also competed as exemplars of
traditional Hindu kingship, as men of letters who wrote some of the plays
they themselves performed in and also as consumers of the new trends in
luxury set by the Mughal rulers to the south. Although the Mughals were
non-Hindus, they were the greatest power in South Asia and so association
with them brought prestige. The stories of Mahendra Malla of Kathmandu
obtaining permission to mint coins from the emperor in Delhi and of Rama
Shah of Gorkha similarly receiving a new formal title must be understood
in this sense, whether or not they are strictly historical.
To an observer in the early eighteenth century, it must have seemed that
the performance of the Himalayan state could continue much as it had
done before, with only minor fluctuations in the cast of mini-states which
occupied the hills. The accession of a new king in Gorkha in 1743 was,
however, to lead to fundamental change.
c h a pt e r 2
35
36 A History of Nepal
3. Statue of Prithvi Narayan Shah, the creator of modern Nepal, outside the Singha
Durbar (Government Secretariat) in Kathmandu.
Unification and sanskritisation 37
previous centuries. Consequently, apart from a brief period of united resis-
tance in 1757, Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur strove to reach separate
accommodations with the Gorkhalis.
On top of the lack of unity between the city-states, Jaya Prakash Malla
was also engaged in a constant battle to maintain his own control over
Kathmandu. He had always been unpopular with his Khasa officers, and in
1746 his execution of one of them for failing to recapture Nuwakot led to
the dead man’s brother’s defection to Prithvi Narayan Shah. Afterwards Jaya
Prakash relied more on soldiers from the Tarai and from the far western
hills. Help from India was provided in 1763 by Mir Kasim of Bengal,
angered at Prithvi’s conquest of his vassal, the king of Makwanpur, while
the British East India Company, alarmed at the disruption to their trade
with the Valley, intervened in 1767. However, these small expeditionary
forces were easily defeated by the Gorkhalis. The real wonder is perhaps
that Jaya Prakash Malla managed to keep up the fight for so long rather
than that the Mallas finally succumbed.
Prithvi’s establishment of his new kingdom formed part of a pattern
of state-building and expansion across a wide area of Asia. New regional
powers were emerging, in particular the East India Company, which gained
control of Bengal in 1757. To the north, China had completed the conquest
of Sinkiang in 1759, just nine years after strengthening its supervisory role
in Tibet. In his political testament, the Dibya Upadesh, dictated a few
months before his death, Prithvi famously described his kingdom as ‘a
yam between two rocks’ and recommended a defensive stance against both
China and the British. His particular apprehension of the southern threat
probably stemmed mainly from the abortive British attempt to assist the
Mallas. Many Nepalese today believe that the British had a central place
in Prithvi’s thinking from much earlier and that the Gorkhali conquests
were primarily designed to forestall the advance of colonialism into the
Himalayas. There is no real evidence to support this view, which in any
case ignores the fact that from the classical Hindu perspective a Hindu
ruler’s wars of expansion were viewed as legitimate in their own right. They
did not need to be presented as defensive moves against possible aggression
from elsewhere.
Both early British sources and the writings of the Capuchin missionaries
stress Prithvi’s ruthlessness, whereas mainstream Nepalese historians have
often tried to discredit accounts of Gorkhali cruelty as biased. The British
had initially seen the Gorkhalis as barbarians from the hills threatening
their Newar trading partners, while the Capuchins, who had once enjoyed
cordial relations with Prithvi, were later barred from the kingdom in the
38 A History of Nepal
4. The old palace of the Shah dynasty at Gorkha, eighty miles west of Kathmandu.
belief that they had encouraged British intervention. Both parties thus had
reason to dislike the king, but it is still unlikely that the Capuchins in
particular would have fabricated what they present as eyewitness accounts
of atrocities.1 Most notorious was the order to cut off the lips and noses of
the inhabitants of Kirtipur after its surrender in 1766, a story corroborated
in at least two Nepali sources.2 Prithvi Narayan also enforced his blockade
of the Valley by hanging at the roadside anyone caught trying to smuggle
in supplies. It can be said in Prithvi’s defence, however, that Jaya Prakash
Malla had also often acted ruthlessly and that applying current human rights
standards would turn many nations’ heroes into war criminals: England’s
Henry V, who massacred prisoners at Agincourt, is just one example.
While the Gorkhalis’ ultimate goal was probably conquest of the range as
far west as Kashmir, Prithvi was anxious not to provoke major powers out-
side the hills. In 1771 he obtained from the Mughal emperor, who had been
deprived of real authority by the British in 1764, the title bahadur shamsher
jung. This nominal acknowledgement of Mughal superiority had no effect
on Prithvi’s freedom of action but, in contemporary eyes, strengthened his
legitimacy. At the same time Prithvi also advocated a policy of economic self-
sufficiency, and the encouragement of local rather than Indian merchants.
Unification and sanskritisation 39
The gosain (Indian ascetic) merchants, whom Prithvi had cultivated during
his campaign against the Valley states, were expelled and British attempts to
establish trading relations and access to Tibet were rebuffed. This approach
is in accord with present-day resentment of Indian economic dominance
and has earned Prithvi some appreciation from the Nepalese left, even
though in other respects they regard him as a feudal oppressor.
The accession to the throne of Prithvi’s son Pratap Singh in January 1775
marked the beginning of serious factionalism within the court. After Pratap
Shah’s death in 1777 his widow, regent for the infant King Rana Bahadur,
contested for power with Pratap’s brother, Bahadur Shah, until he himself
assumed the regency on the queen’s death in 1785. By then the precedent
of losers in the power struggle paying with their lives had been set: Pratap’s
influential Newar concubine had been compelled to commit sati and in
1778 the queen regent’s minister and alleged lover had been executed.
Under Bahadur Shah, the Gorkhalis annexed not only the hill states of
the Gandaki and Karnali basin but also Kumaon and Garhwal, now part
of the Indian state of Uttaranchal (until 2000 part of Uttar Pradesh). The
westward drive had to be halted when an aggressive policy towards Tibet
over trade and border issues triggered a Chinese invasion. Crossing the
border pass at Kirong in 1792, the Chinese advanced down the Trisuli Valley
towards Nuwakot. They withdrew after Nepal had agreed to surrender the
recent gains negotiated with Tibet and to send five-yearly tribute missions
to Beijing. The defeat was not, however, a crushing one, as the submission
to the emperor was again nominal, and Nepalese troops had inflicted a
reverse on the Chinese in the final engagement of the campaign.3
In autumn 1791, when the Chinese attack was already anticipated,
Bahadur Shah had concluded a trade treaty with the British, despite con-
tinuing misgivings among the bharadars (courtiers). Faced with appeals
for help from both Beijing and Kathmandu, the governor-general delayed
action as long as possible, dispatching Colonel William Kirkpatrick to
Kathmandu in 1793, some months after the Chinese withdrawal. Finding
that his presence was proving a political embarrassment to Bahadur Shah,
Kirkpatrick soon retreated to India. Association with the firangis had indeed
helped weaken the regent and the following year King Rana Bahadur Shah
took the government into his own hands. After Bahadur Shah had unsuc-
cessfully solicited Chinese help to regain his position, he was imprisoned
until his death (natural or otherwise) in 1797 at the age of thirty-nine.
In 1799, Rana Bahadur abdicated in favour of Girvana Yuddha, his two-
year-old son by an illicit union with Kantivati, a Maithil Brahman widow.
His intention was to dedicate himself to religious devotions to save the life
40 A History of Nepal
5. Betrawati on the Trisuli River below Nuwakot. This was the furthest point reached by
the Chinese invasion force in 1792.
of the mother, who had contracted smallpox, and also to ensure that the
boy was not pushed aside despite his irregular birth. Rana Bahadur secured
signatures of almost all the bharadars on a document recognising the boy
as king, but shortly afterwards Kantivati died. Rana Bahadur reacted with
violence against the Brahmans and against the temples of the gods, who he
thought had betrayed him. He also attempted to reassert control over the
government, but this was resisted by his son’s ministers. He was compelled
in 1800 to seek refuge in Benares in East India Company territory. On
one interpretation of Rana Bahadur’s subsequent actions, he now deliber-
ately gave his Nepalese opponents the false impression that he was seeking
British support, thus frightening them into reaching an agreement with the
Unification and sanskritisation 41
6. Bhimsen Thapa, the statesman who dominated Nepalese politics in the early decades
of the nineteenth century. Painted by Dirgha Man Chitrakar.
7. Jang Bahadur Rana (seated) with his brother Jagat Shamsher (left) and son Babar
(standing behind him) in camp in 1871.
Jang’s ultimate aim may well have been to move up from maharaja to
maharajadhiraj, and supplant the Shah dynasty completely, but in this he
was thwarted by the British, who refused to recognise any authority in
Nepal other than that deriving from the king and the prime minister. Jang
was thus frustrated in his attempt to continue to manage British–Nepalese
relations after his resignation. Presumably for this reason he resumed the
post of prime minister in 1857, after the death of Bam Bahadur, when the
start of the Indian Mutiny crisis made it vital for him to gather the reins of
control fully into his own hands.
Jang’s plan for the office of maharaja to pass to his own eldest son was
not fulfilled. When he died, on a hunting expedition in 1877, his surviving
brothers acted quickly to ensure that the eldest among them, Ranoddip,
was invested simultaneously as both prime minister and maharaja. Jang’s
sons believed themselves cheated and subsequently became involved in a
conspiracy against the new maharaja. The plot was foiled and Jang’s oldest
son, Jagat Jang, was removed from the Roll of Succession to the premiership.
Nevertheless, after the death of Dhir Shamsher, Jang’s youngest brother,
his sons became apprehensive that Ranoddip, under the influence of his
Unification and sanskritisation 49
second wife, would restore Jagat Jang to favour and make him his heir. This
would have put their own lives in danger, since Jagat Jang was known to
be eager for revenge against the Shamshers.
In 1885, Bir Shamser, Dhir Shamsher’s oldest son, together with the rest
of his brothers, decided to forestall the restoration of Jagat Jang with a
coup of their own, which involved the cold-blooded killing of their uncle
Ranoddip and of Jagat Jang himself. Other members of Jang Bahadur’s
family escaped to take refuge with the British residency; safe passage to
India was subsequently negotiated for them. The exiles, with covert support
from the maharaja of Darbhanga, later attempted to launch an armed attack
against the new rulers, but they were completely unsuccessful and several
were then put under supervision by the authorities in India. Nepal was now
firmly in the hands of the Shamsher Ranas.
state a nd s ocie t y
Despite the difference of scale, the political system established by Prithvi
Narayan’s conquests was a continuation of that of Gorkha and the other
hill states west of the Valley. Hindu kingship was central but institutions
and cultural practices in many ways followed the example of Mughal India,
as was now the case in South Asia generally. Mughal administration could,
very loosely, be termed ‘feudal’ but the most appropriate term is perhaps
‘patrimonial’, meaning that the state was organised as an extension of the
ruler’s household. Three features of the system of particular importance in
Nepal both before and after 1768 were: the need for personal attendance on
the king, the pajani under which all appointments were subject to annual
review, and frequent changes in the location of an individual’s jagir, the
land assigned to a state servant in lieu of salary. Though the system of
payment by land assignment has long been discontinued, the word jagir
continues in use in modern Nepali as the term for a salaried government
post.
Traditionally, the king’s chief minister was a member of a collateral
branch of the royal family or chautaria, a title reflecting the intimate nature
of government in the pre-unification states. The word derives from the
name of the stone platforms found throughout the hills where porters could
easily set down the loads from their back or villagers could gather for dis-
cussion. At Gorkha other posts in the administration went traditionally to
members of Khas–Chetri and Brahman families who were believed to have
helped Drabya Shah found his kingdom in 1559. During the wars of expan-
sion and the accompanying factional struggles, however, other families
50 A History of Nepal
gained influence. Success as a military commander, or at least popularity
with the army, was a major factor and here the Khas–Chetris had an advan-
tage. They were the major military force, even though Magars and Gurungs
provided around half of the ordinary soldiers and, initially, also some of
the senior officers. The military rank and file normally had little influence,
but Prithvi Narayan’s policy of providing them with their own land assign-
ments raised their status and Bhimsen’s concentration of the main units
in Kathmandu after 1816 gave them a potential political role. During the
instability of the 1840s they verged on becoming an independent force, but
in the end always followed their patrons among the bharadari elite.
Although Brahmans formed a major part of the East India Company’s
Bengal Army, hill Brahmans were normally not employed as soldiers. They
did, however, possess influence as providers of legitimation for the ruler,
as interpreters of the traditional Hindu law codes (dharmashastras), as
astrologers and as gurus both to members of the royal family and to other
Thakuri or Chetri families. In addition, the connections of the three rajguru
(‘royal guru’) families with the plains, and especially to Benares, gave them
an edge over most other bharadars in connections to the world beyond
the hills. They were therefore important as negotiators with the British;
the Poudyal family were especially prominent during the period of active
British intervention in Nepalese politics in 1840–2. Vijay Raj Pande, who
was already the dharmadhikar (chief religious judge) in 1846 became a close
ally of Jang Bahadur’s and was rewarded with appointment as chief rajguru.
The political system as a whole depended on a strong individual at the
centre for everything to work. The inability of Prithvi Narayan’s successors
to play this role resulted in instability until first Bhimsen Thapa and then
Jang Bahadur Rana were able to fill the gap. The Rana regime is often por-
trayed in Nepal today as an interlude of autocracy between the supposedly
people-orientated rule of the Shah dynasty before 1846 and the advent of
democracy under royal sponsorship in 1950/1. This version owes its origin
to the collaboration between the monarchy and the activists of the Nepali
Congress Party which brought down the Rana system. However, for the
bulk of the population, 1846 did not represent a radical break with the
past, but was rather the institutionalisation of one family’s dominance at
the expense of the Shahs and other leading families within the traditional
elite. The Ranas did strengthen central control, but this was a tendency
already operating under Bhimsen and changes such as the strengthening of
caste barriers (see p. 59) or the weakening of local autonomy were already
well under way. The shift from tactical co-operation with the British to
full-hearted identification of the ruling family’s interests with those of the
British Raj came in 1885 rather than 1846.
Unification and sanskritisation 51
As had always been the case in both the hills and the Tarai, the state’s eco-
nomic base was the taxation of agricultural production. There were other
sources, such as customs duties, payment in return for monopoly supply
contracts which both Bhimsen Thapa and Jang Bahadur awarded to trusted
adherents and, later on, the supply of timber for the construction of Indian
railways. However, revenue from land provided around three-quarters of
the government’s income in the middle of the nineteenth century and must
have been even more important earlier. The proceeds could go directly to
the government, whether through its own employees or by the allocation of
tax-farming contracts. Alternatively, as explained in the previous chapter,
the state’s rights on particular plots could be assigned temporarily as jagir to
one of its own employees or permanently to individuals or to religious insti-
tutions. Assignments under the latter two systems were known in Nepali as
birta or guthi; the second type is still recognised under Nepalese law today.
In cases where a pre-unification ruler had reached an early accommodation
with the Gorkhalis, he continued to collect some or all of the revenue from
his own previous domain and submit a proportion to Kathmandu annually,
an arrangement which persisted until 1961.
Whatever the system, locally based individuals (for example, village
headmen or mukhiyas) were normally at the bottom of the pyramid and
their connection with the state tended to buttress their authority compared
with the situation before unification. The Limbu chieftains, known by the
Nepali/Mughal term subba, were one example, becoming more like local
landowners than simply the representative of their clan. In the case of a
smaller Kiranti group, the Jirels of Dolakha district, one clan probably
boosted its status at the cost of the others, being recognised in 1795 as
owners of the entire Jiri Valley, though they later lost control of much of
the land to Parbatiya settlers. In many cases throughout Nepal the wealthiest
individuals at local levels are very often still those whose ancestors obtained
revenue-collection rights during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Jang Bahadur sought to strengthen control of the revenue-collection
machinery, continuing a trend already noticeable in the 1830s away from
the appointment of contractors and towards greater reliance on the gov-
ernment’s own salaried agents. In the Tarai he introduced a new category
of official known as jimidars to take charge of each mauja, as the smallest
revenue-collection unit was known. They did not evolve into a class of
‘improving landlords’, as Jang may originally have wanted. They did, how-
ever, eventually become a network of locally based individuals closely tied to
the Ranas themselves, depressing the status of the older-established chaud-
huris and also of the individual peasants who had formerly dealt directly
with them.
52 A History of Nepal
As was seen in the previous chapter, land grants to Brahmans or to
religious institutions were a means of boosting a Hindu ruler’s legitimacy
and thus particularly attractive when that legitimacy was in question. It was
probably for this reason that Hindu ascetic communities were able to obtain
extensive grants in Janakpur in the second half of the eighteenth century,
when states in the region worried about their survival as Gorkha relent-
lessly expanded. Similarly, shortly after coming to power, Jang Bahadur
announced that he would restore birta grants to Brahmans that had been
rescinded at the beginning of the century by Rana Bahadur in a drive to
build up Nepal’s military strength. Jang let the project drop once he felt
himself securely in power, but it was revived after 1877 by his more pious
brother and successor, Ranoddip.
Religious practitioners were also patronised because they could supply
an organisational framework in areas where the state was relatively weak.
This had long been the case both in South Asia and in many other parts
of the world. In the last decades of the eighteenth century, in much of
northern India monastic orders of bairagis and gosains, ascetics devoted
to Vishnu and Shiva respectively, had become a major military force as
well as prominent entrepreneurs. In Nepal, as well as land grants to the
Vaishnavite communities in Janakpur and the Chaughera Yogi Shaivite
monastery in the Dang Valley, individual gosains were assigned land in dif-
ferent parts of the Tarai. While a strong egalitarian trend developed within
the Indian Vaishnavite communities and was a factor in later movements
for the ‘upliftment’ of lower castes, the ascetics in Nepal were content to
work within the hierarchical structures of the Hindu state.
In the middle of the nineteenth century the normal revenue demand,
whether going into the state treasury or assigned to a jagirdar or other
grantee, was on average about one-third of the crop in the western hills
and Tarai and one-half in the eastern hills. However, where the lower rate
prevailed, the person liable for the payment would frequently choose to
sub-let at least part of the land, so that the amount paid by the actual
cultivator was usually around half the main crop throughout the country.
In many parts of the country, land was in surplus and did not acquire a
capital value until towards the end of the period covered by this chapter.
There was therefore always the danger that peasants might abandon the land
and move elsewhere, or that revenue-collectors in the Tarai would abscond
across the border with their entire takings. The latter was a particular worry
of Jang Bahadur’s during his early years in power: one of the issues he tried
unsuccessfully to discuss with the British authorities in London in 1850 was
the extension of extradition arrangements to cover this situation.
Unification and sanskritisation 53
Governments had to conciliate intermediaries between themselves and
the peasantry but also not let them acquire too much leeway. The principle
was laid down in identical wording in government orders of 1781 and 1807:
‘The money of the people must either remain with them or be paid to us;
it cannot be appropriated by cunning people.’5 Jang Bahadur was, at least
in theory, particularly concerned to check unreasonable exactions, writing
to his brother Bam Bahadur from London in 1850 that ‘God put us where
we are to protect the common people.’6 Statements of good intention
were sometimes given practical effect. A British traveller returning from
Kathmandu in 1851 was told by his guide that he had moved into Nepal from
East India Company territory after hearing of Jang’s punishment of one
oppressive official. In 1883 Ranoddip Singh blocked a proposed tax increase
in Rautahat in the eastern Tarai after just eighteen peasants had submitted
a petition against it. However, strict supervision of every official or revenue-
contractor’s conduct was impossible, especially when letters regularly took
a month to reach the western border from Kathmandu. The actual burden
imposed on the taxpayer must have varied greatly in different locations and
at different times.
In addition to the revenue demand, the state could requisition the labour
of its subjects. In some cases, peasants were given permanent responsibility
for specific tasks like the carrying of government mail and supplies along
the foot trails and were allocated small, rent-free plots of land in return. For
others, the labour requirement was less, but it was in addition to normal
taxation. There was a particularly heavy burden on the Tamang commu-
nities in the hills around Kathmandu, including tending the state cattle
herds and carrying farm produce to the royal palace. The system remained
in operation until 1952 and the recollections of older Tamangs recently
gathered and published are probably representative for the earlier period
also.7 Slavery and bonded labour were also commonplace, particularly in
the western hills from where people were frequently sold as slaves to India.8
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the authorities were worried
that even Brahmans and Chetris were being reduced to slave status, and in
1803 an order was issued banning high-caste enslavement throughout the
empire. Later in the century, a number of other groups similarly had their
liability to enslavement removed, but, as in the case of the Magars of the
mid-western hills, they might have to pay an additional tax for the privi-
lege. For many of the lower castes, enslavement remained a possibility until
its abolition in 1921, while bonded labour was only finally ended in 2001.
Although it was not sudden or dramatic, the early Rana period did see
the beginning of a significant change in the state’s relation to the land.
54 A History of Nepal
Under Jang Bahadur’s Muluki Ain (Civil Code) of 1854, cultivators on land
other than birta holdings could not be evicted simply for refusing to pay an
increased rent. Following elaborate land surveys in 1854 to 1868, the 1870
edition of the Ain allowed for the person paying tax on any plot of land to
be registered as its holder. Although actual practice did not always follow
the letter of the law, these legal changes paved the way for the development
in the eastern hills of a de facto market in land, which was already saleable in
the western hills and the Tarai. The process was accelerated by the decline
in the supply of new land that could easily be cleared for cultivation and
also by the government’s leaving largely unchanged the revenue rates fixed
in 1854–68.
The Ranas could easily forego any increases in the percentage of total
agricultural production paid in taxation because total production was itself
expanding. From Prithvi Narayan’s time onwards, the state had always
sought to encourage such expansion through tax concessions but had still
faced continuous revenue problems. Financing military expansion in the
early years had created a vicious cycle as the conquest of new land required
more soldiers, and more soldiers then needed more land to support them.
The problem continued with squabbles over a shrunken resource base in
the post-Sagauli period. However, the Ranas secured a steady rise in state
revenue, which rose from around 1.4 million rupees in 1850 to perhaps
12 million in 1900, a substantial rise even allowing for inflation.9 Pressure
was relieved initially by a short-term reduction in the competition for jagir
assignments at the top with the expulsion of Jang’s political opponents, but
then by the continuing expansion of the area under cultivation. Particularly
important was the return to Nepal in 1860 of the western Tarai districts,
which were initially very sparsely populated. A substantial proportion of
the new area was appropriated as birta (permanent, tax-free holdings) by
the Ranas themselves but the state coffers still profited substantially.
The majority of the cultivators brought into the Tarai by the jimidars were
from India since the plains were an alien environment to most of the hill
people, and the heat and endemic malaria made them particularly unwilling
to remain there during the hot weather. Attracting peasants was easier
because of the harsh conditions in the British territory to the south, where,
in contrast to Nepal, landlords could evict tenants at will. The problem was
admitted by British officials themselves in the 1850s and 1860s and was in
ironic contrast with William Kirkpatrick’s confident prediction at the end
of the nineteenth century that the blessings of the East India Company’s
Permanent Settlement would soon have Nepalese peasants flocking into
India.
Unification and sanskritisation 55
Once political stability was restored, the nineteenth-century Nepalese
state was quite effective in meeting the traditional objectives of maintaining
law and order and collecting revenue. Its success was achieved, however,
only by encouraging production within the limits of existing techniques.
Although Jang Bahadur did at one point toy with the idea of importing
British irrigation equipment and he and later maharajas experimented on
a small scale with plantation agriculture, there was no sustained attempt
to improve agricultural productivity. At the same time, resource depletion
was already occurring. Much of the deforestation in the hills which is
sometimes attributed to population pressure in the twentieth century is
actually a result of land clearance during Gorkha’s period of expansion.
Copper deposits in the Gulmi–Baglung area and iron in Sindhupalchok
had enabled Nepal from about 1790 to manufacture almost all its own
munitions, but the low level of mining technology meant that many mines
soon had to be abandoned and by the 1860s iron and copper were being
imported from India. At the same time Nepal was also slowly beginning to
be more dependent on India not just for luxury products for the Kathmandu
elite but for more items of everyday use.
questi on s of i d e nti t y
A key question for historians, and also a live issue in present-day politics, is
how far the territories brought under Gorkhali control achieved a sense of
common identity and how far they remained simply conquered territory.
It must be said in any case that belonging to the same state did normally
not provide people with their primary identity. Family, clan, village and
perhaps also caste or ethnic group, as these categories are now understood,
were all more important. When people did think of themselves as subjects
of a single king or a single state, it was not ‘Nepal’ they thought of. This
word retained its original meaning of the Kathmandu Valley and did not
begin to replace ‘Gorkha’ or ‘Gorkhali’ in official use until early in the
twentieth century.
There was nevertheless a basis on which some sense of unity could
develop. Most obvious was the sense of being ‘Paharis’, people of the hills:
during Prithvi Narayan’s 1743 journey to Benares he was told by the king
of another chaubisi state that on the plains only their common status as
hillmen mattered.10 Among the Paharis, the Parbatiyas were linked together
both by language and by a brand of Hinduism somewhat less rigid than
that on the plains. The Nepalese hills also differed from Kumaon and
Garhwal in the higher standing enjoyed by ‘indigenous’ Brahmans and
56 A History of Nepal
Chetris. It is questionable, however, if this was a psychological reality for
the Untouchable Parbatiya castes, who suffered greater exclusion than most
Tibeto-Burmans.
Hindu monarchy itself could be regarded as another bond. In the Dibya
Upadesh, Prithvi Narayan had envisaged his kingdom as a land for Hindus,
contrasting with Mughlana (India), the land polluted by the rule of the
Mughals and their British successors. It was the king’s responsibility to sus-
tain the Hindu moral order for his subjects throughout his realm. Until the
middle of the nineteenth century the king’s realm in this religious sense was
probably not seen as including the entire area that he physically controlled
but as a smaller, ritually significant core territory. For the Shah kings as suc-
cessors to the Newar monarchies, this area was primarily the Kathmandu
Valley. It was, however, still necessary that the king try to enforce certain
Hindu values throughout all of his possessions, in particular the banning
of cow-slaughter, and the distinction between realm (desa) and possessions
(muluk) was narrowed further with the promulgation of the Muluki Ain
in 1854. The main significance of the code was to commit the state to the
enforcement of a uniform caste-based moral order throughout the coun-
try. The country’s borders, which had already lost their former fluidity
with the Treaty of Sagauli in 1816, now became of increased psychological
importance.
At least for those closely associated with it, the state itself was another
focus of identity. Among the Parbatiya elite there was from early on a
concept of the dhunga (literally ‘stone’) or state as something separate from
the person of the reigning monarch; this was reinforced by the idea that, in
extreme circumstances, the bharadari as a whole had the right and duty to
act as a check on the king’s conduct. Shared memories of a common armed
struggle to build the state formed an additional bond and in principle
could extend to humbler members of the army and to their families. Such
a community of feeling was certainly detected by British observers, such as
Brian Hodgson, who wrote of the ‘eminent nationality’ (i.e. national spirit)
of the Nepalese.
Among this whole complex of values and cultural practices, assimilation
to those of high-caste Hindus, a process known as sanskritisation, continued
slowly throughout the period. Hinduism itself had always been flexible
enough to accommodate local religious traditions, so those who wished
for patronage from the Gorkhali state did not have to abandon their own
previous belief system. At least in externals, they did, however, need to
demonstrate their allegiance; one way in which this was done was through
the autumn Dasain festival, which renewed the bond between king and
Unification and sanskritisation 57
subject: for precisely this reason, those in Nepal today who reject both
monarchy and Hinduism often call for a boycott of Dasain rituals. Another
example was the trend for Khasas in the western hills who had not already
done so to adopt the sacred thread and become Chetris,11 while everywhere
non-Parbatiyas were more likely to take Sanskrit personal names and to
invite Brahmans to perform some of their rituals. External observance did
not, however, necessarily mean full internal acquiescence, particularly lower
down the state-sanctioned caste hierarchy, and many remained wedded to
alternative values. The cult of the Masta in the western hills, for example,
still presented an egalitarian counter to the dominant Brahmanical order.
Naturally enough, identification with the new state was strongest in the
central hills where the political and social structure were most similar to
those of Gorkha. The Gorkhalis were a more alien presence in the Kiranti
areas east of the Dudh Kosi River and west of the Bheri River, regions
where one of Nepal’s leading historians has described their rule as essen-
tially colonial.12 The Kirantis had been under nominal control of the Sen
kingdoms based in the Tarai but in practice had largely been left to their
own devices. Many of them rose in rebellion when the Chinese invaded
in 1792. By mid-century doubts about their loyalty had lessened, and Jang
Bahadur in 1847 made them eligible for recruitment into the army and in
1863 removed their liability to enslavement. However, throughout the nine-
teenth century, increasing tension was caused by the movement of Parbatiya
settlers into their territories. The Kirantis had been allowed to keep pos-
session of their communally owned kipat land and the new arrivals were
initially simply their tenants. Nonetheless, the Parbatiyas’ greater famil-
iarity with the legal system and with a partially monetized economy led
to their gradually gaining control of an increasing proportion of Kiranti
land.
An alternative to revolt was simply to move further east along the
Himalayas. There was still virgin land to be cleared for settlement and the
establishment of Darjeeling as a hill station in 1839 and subsequent growth
of tea estates, covering 700,000 acres by 1871, also created a huge demand
for labour. One estimate is that 12 to 15 per cent of the Kiranti popula-
tion in the eastern hills moved across the border between 1840 and 1860.13
Ironically enough, in mixing here with other ethnic groups from Nepal,
the emigrants’ need for Nepali as a lingua franca was higher than at home;
this in turn affected their own languages. A sample of the Thangmi lan-
guage collected by Brian Hodgson in Darjeeling in 1847 shows more Nepali
influence than is found in the Thangmi spoken today in the Dolakha and
Sindhupalchok districts of Nepal itself.
58 A History of Nepal
In the Karnali basin and further west, the Shah dynasty’s newly acquired
subjects were Parbatiyas but still found it difficult to adjust to the new
rulers. The state of Jumla, once the seat of the great Khasa empire, fought
doggedly to preserve its independence and then, like neighbouring Acham
and Doti, also rebelled in 1792. Repression and high revenue demands
produced substantial out-migration. A study of tax records suggests that
Jumla’s population had declined from around 125,000 before annexation to
under 80,000 by 1860. The higher level was not regained until the 1930s.14
During the twenty-five years of Gorkhali rule beyond the Mahakali River,
the situation was if anything worse, particularly in Kumaon. The British
rule that succeeded it was far from perfect but, in contrast to Jumla, the
population expanded steadily throughout the nineteenth century.
The Tarai was also in many ways a colony, although a better-managed
one. The great bulk of the cultivators were always from the plains and, in
the pre-Rana period, so were many of those in intermediate positions in the
revenue-extraction hierarchy. However, Madheshis were never part of the
inner core of the bharadari and when the jimidar system for tax collection
was introduced by Jang Bahadur those appointed were predominantly from
the hills.15 The superior status of hillmen in the Nepalese state was made
clear in the Muluki Ain, which ranked Parbatiya Brahmans higher than
Madheshi ones. Since a common sense of separation from the plains was
the main thing that hill Nepalese shared, Madheshis were naturally felt to
be outsiders. Conversely, even though they might appreciate the Nepalese
government’s land-tenure policy, few Madheshis can have felt any strong
sense of identity with the Gorkhali state.
Within the central hills, the Tamangs, known at this time as Murmis,
had also rebelled in large numbers in 1792. After the Chinese withdrawal,
they served the new state as porters and labourers but were not recruited
as ordinary soldiers. They remained less assimilated to Parbatiya culture
than many Magar communities; still today a larger proportion retain their
original language than any other major Tibeto-Burman minority. They,
too, felt little identity with the state, but their sense of a common Tamang
identity was also still very weak. Membership of a particular clan was more
important and some clan names overlapped with those of the Gurungs
or Sherpas. There was no clear linguistic boundary between Gurung and
Tamang while, as lamaistic Buddhists, the Tamangs were also frequently
included with Tibetan dialect speakers under the rather pejorative ‘Bhotiya’
label. It was arguably the state’s own definition of the Murmis/Tamangs as
a distinct group which helped turn them in upon themselves and provided
a foundation for Tamang ethnicity. They were, however, certainly aware
Unification and sanskritisation 59
of the divide between themselves and the jarti, as they referred to the
high-caste Parbatiyas. A well-known Tamang myth (also current among
the Sherpas) tells how the ancestor of the Brahmans tricked his brother, the
first Tamang, into eating the flesh of their cow-mother and how the cow’s
intestine then became the Brahmans’ sacred thread.
In contrast, Magars and Gurungs had long been part of the military
forces of Gorkha as of other chaubisi states; Magars in particular could
until the eighteenth century be ‘promoted’ to Chetri status. This seems to
have happened on a reduced scale with the Gurungs: Narsingh Gurung was
among the bharadars executed in Bhimsen Thapa’s 1806 purge. Caste lines
hardened not, as often supposed, with the coming of the Ranas but rather
with the ending of territorial expansion. By the 1830s British observers were
reporting that the officer corps was completely Parbatiya. There were still
some important Magar bharadars, including Abhiman Singh Rana, one of
the victims at the Kot but these seemed to be regarded as ‘honorary Par-
batiyas’, and ‘Magar’ and ‘Chetri’ were normally exclusive categories. Nev-
ertheless many Magars could still regard themselves as ‘Gorkhalis’. It was
significant that the abandonment of their own language by many (mostly
southern) Magars for Parbatiya (Nepali) had probably been underway since
before the Gorkhali conquests,16 and that people Francis Hamilton spoke
to in 1801–4 thought that the Magars would eventually become a Parbatiya
caste.17 Shortly before Jang Bahadur’s death, a Magar proclaimed himself
an incarnation of the god Lakhan Thapa and led a brief revolt before being
captured and killed. Some sympathy with the rebel survives in local folk
tradition but, interestingly, the villain in this version of the story is not Jang
Bahadur but rather the local twice-born Parbatiyas who prevented Jang’s
order for a reprieve reaching the local authorities in time. Thus tension
between Magars and their immediate neighbours did not exclude some
sense of belonging to the more distant state itself.
There was finally the complex case of the Newars of the Kathmandu
Valley, who after 1769 seem definitely to have accepted the new rulers:
they were described by a British visitor in 1793 as ‘tolerably reconciled to
the chains imposed upon them by their conquerors’.18 The predominant
feeling seems to have been simply relief that the long war was over and
Newar traders, who had even before Prithvi Narayan’s time begun to settle
on a small scale in the hills, now spread out in greater numbers.19 In the
Valley itself there is no evidence of any attempted revolt. When the Newar
mir munshi (foreign secretary) Lakshmi Das told the British residency just
after Jang’s 1846 seizure of power that the Newars would rise at his com-
mand, the British rightly assumed that he was merely acting as an agent
60 A History of Nepal
provocateur, testing on Jang’s behalf whether the residency’s professions of
non-intervention were genuine.
At the same time, however, there remained a strong gulf between
Gorkhali and Newar. One prominent Newar bharadar, Tribhuvan Pradhan,
was among Bhimsen’s victims in 1806; thereafter a small number of Newars
were appointed to government posts or receiving lucrative contracts, but
they were never at the centre of power. There was little social integration
either. Prithvi Narayan Shah himself is said to have praised the charms
of Newar women, and his son had an influential Newar mistress as well
as an interest in the tantricism which was an important feature of Newar
religion, but regular marriage between Parbatiyas and Newars was not per-
mitted. The Parbatiyas seem to have been particularly disdainful of the
banre, the Vajracharyas and Shakyas: Kirkpatrick records a conversation
with a ‘Rajpoot’ (i.e. Thakuri or perhaps Chetri), who was eager to point
out that none of his caste ever visited the Buddhist temple of Swaymbhu-
nath, normally frequented by these castes and by Tibeto-Burmans from the
hills.20 This attitude served, of course, to strengthen Newar identity rather
than encourage full identification with the state. The Newars did, however,
have a strong sense of belonging to the Kathmandu Valley and, as kings of
the Valley, the Shah dynasty could expect a degree of loyalty.
During the nineteenth century, assimilative forces in Nepalese society,
strongest when the state was expanding rapidly, slowed. If Hamilton had
visited Nepal in Ranoddip Singh’s time he would have been unlikely to
describe Parbatiya as ‘rapidly extinguishing the aboriginal dialects of the
mountains’,21 but change was still occurring. The power of social and eco-
nomic change to transform group boundaries is illustrated by the growth
of the Chantel people in the mining districts of Baglung and Myagdi in the
central hills. The core of the ethnic group was probably a single clan speak-
ing a dialect closely related to Thakali.22 They seem to have entered the
area around 1800 and, after they had acquired the exclusive right to copper
mining in the district, another eleven or twelve clans formed, as outsiders
(probably Magars and low-caste Parbatiyas) joined the group. The pace of
change was slower for most Nepalese but would begin to quicken over the
following century.
c ha p te r 3
The Shamsher Ranas ruled Nepal for sixty-six years from 1885. It was a
period that saw the beginnings of the takeoff in population growth and,
consequently, increasing pressure on land in the hills. These years also
brought the tightening of the economic bonds between the Nepalese and
Indian economies and the slowly increasing exposure of Nepal’s people to
new ways of thinking from India and the world beyond. These were, how-
ever, long-term processes and, particularly in the earlier part of the period,
they did not make a strong impact on political developments. Here the
important factors were the jockeying for power within the Rana family itself
and also the regime’s relationship with British India. Co-operation with the
British had been the norm since even before Jang Bahadur’s takeover, but it
was strengthened by the accession to power of a new generation of Ranas.
All had been educated to some level in English and, while still a little wary
of British intentions, they did not feel the deep suspicion of firangis which
Jang had shared with all Nepalese statesmen before him. The new atti-
tude was also helped by a major change in British policy in India after the
Mutiny crisis of 1857. Whereas before they had seemed intent on elbowing
aside traditional rulers and substituting their own direct administration,
greater caution now ruled, and the British were anxious to sustain rather
than supplant what remained of traditional political structures. With the
rise of the Indian nationalist movement around the turn of the century,
this more conservative stance was further reinforced because such rulers –
whether the Indian ‘princes’ or the Ranas in Nepal – seemed natural allies
against radical demands for political change.
four months in office. He was sent into internal exile and later moved to
India. Most of his initiatives were abandoned but the Gorkhapatra survived,
though as a kind of official gazette rather than a channel for complaints,
and today it remains the government’s Nepali-language newspaper.
The man who took over, Chandra Shamsher, maharaja from 1901 to
1929, was a skilful administrator, and also a veteran intriguer. Although
he had probably been involved in at least two plots against Bir, he had
managed to avoid the blame when these failed. He was the only one of the
brothers to study in Calcutta University and he was also unusual for the
austerity of his personal lifestyle: he was both teetotal and monogamous.
64 A History of Nepal
Respected rather than loved, it is said that he rarely smiled but that when he
did it was an ominous sign for the person he was talking to. Chandra’s two
most visible legacies in Kathmandu are Trichandra College, set up in 1919,
and his palace, the Singha Darbar, which now houses the government’s
main secretariat in Kathmandu. Chandra also formally abolished slavery
and sati in Nepal as well as systematising the administration, which had
previously depended heavily on the maharaja personally making even very
minor decisions.
Close co-operation with the British was for Chandra very much a strate-
gic choice rather than one of compulsion. Before moving against Dev, he
had hinted at his intention in a letter to a former British resident, and
it has often been assumed that he sounded out the viceroy, Lord Cur-
zon, on the plan when hunting with him in the Nepalese Tarai. Chandra
subsequently became an enthusiastic partner in Curzon’s ‘forward policy’
in Tibet, actually taking the initiative himself to warn the British of the
need to forestall Russian interference. When the Younghusband expedi-
tion was sent into Tibet in 1904, Nepal provided logistical help, and the
Nepalese representative in Lhasa was of great value to the British both as
a source of information and as a mediator between them and the Chinese
authorities.
During the First World War, Chandra assisted in obtaining 55,000
recruits for the Gurkha regiments of the Indian army, and also sent some
18,000 of Nepal’s own troops into India to take up garrison duties. Includ-
ing Nepalese in other units such as the military police in Burma, around
100,000 were involved in the war effort, with at least 10,000 killed and
another 14,000 wounded or missing.1 While the claim by one Nepalese
historian that in relation to its population (then around 5 million) Nepal’s
losses were greater than those of any other country2 is thus clearly untrue,
the contribution was a significant one.
In recompense Chandra would have most preferred the return of some
or all of the territory lost under the Treaty of Sagauli, but this was consid-
ered politically impossible, and he received instead an annual subsidy of
1 million rupees. Subsequent maharajas continued to press for a land grant
but, although they might gain sympathy from the British representative in
Kathmandu, the authorities in India and in Britain valued the hold over
Rana behaviour that an annual subsidy gave them.
The 1923 treaty between Britain and Nepal explicitly recognising Nepal’s
complete independence was also partly a reward for wartime co-operation.
Here, though, the British may have had the additional motive of securing
the loyalty of Gurkha troops used to quell disturbances in India: if Nepal
Nepal under the Shamsher Ranas 65
were completely separate from India, such troops were less likely to feel that
they had something in common with Indian nationalists. Even before 1923
the Nepalese themselves had never admitted that they were not completely
independent and Britain, too, had at one time fully accepted the Nepalese
position. However, by the late nineteenth century, British Indian officials
had begun arguing that Nepal’s status was somewhere between that of fully
independent Afghanistan and the ‘princely’ or ‘native states’ within India
subject to the British Crown.
Chandra died in 1929, leaving to his brother Bhim plans for war with
Tibet over the arrest of a man of mixed Nepalese and Tibetan descent.
Under the 1856 treaty, such individuals were supposed to be subject only
to Nepalese jurisdiction. Hostilities were, however, averted through British
mediation. Bhim’s lasting mark on Nepalese life was the institution of a
weekly holiday on Saturday and the fixing of working hours on other days
as 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., an arrangement only recently superseded by a five-day
week for civil servants in 1999.
10. Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala (‘B. P.’), bare-headed and wearing a Nehru jacket, with
King Tribhuvan (centre) during the anti-Rana struggle.
The political dynamic of the forty years following the overthrow of the
Rana regime was principally the result of interaction among three forces:
the monarchy, around which traditional elements, including much of the
Rana family itself, were to regroup; the political parties, whose support
bases were initially quite narrow; and the Indian government, ideologically
sympathetic to the Nepali Congress Party, but still seeing Nepal primar-
ily in terms of border security. During the 1950s, as has again been the
case in Nepal since autumn 2002, the royal palace remained the effective
centre of government, especially after King Mahendra’s accession in 1955,
but political parties functioned freely and everyone, including the king,
at least paid lip-service to multi-party democracy. When parliamentary
elections were finally held in 1959, the centre of gravity shifted briefly to the
elected government but in the following year Mahendra aborted the demo-
cratic experiment and took full control of the state into his own hands.
Royal dominance, clothed in the rhetoric of ‘partyless Panchayat democ-
racy’, remained secure until Mahendra’s death in 1972, buttressed by the
king’s ability to balance adroitly between India and China. However, his
son, Birendra, who initially tried to retain the old system, faced a more
difficult task. Rapid change in Nepalese society, including in particular
the regime’s own success in expanding education, coupled with failure to
increase opportunities in line with expectations, produced growing ten-
sion. In addition, international room for manoeuvre was reduced when
India confirmed its dominance in South Asia by its victory over Pakistan in
1971. Following disturbances in 1979, Birendra called a referendum on the
constitution, which, thanks to the regime’s grip on village Nepal, endorsed
the Panchayat system. However, the results showed clearly that urban Nepal
was committed to the party system and, when a dispute with India and
the reverberations of the collapse of autocracies in Eastern Europe sparked
protests in 1990, Birendra gave way and allowed the restoration of the
multi-party system. Elections in 1991 were won by the Nepali Congress
86
The monarchy in ascendance 87
Party, which thus regained the position Birendra’s father had deprived it of
a generation previously.
on the birta estates (see pp. 74–5), but it did show that Congress was willing
to make a start with land reform. A second major step was the abolition of
the rajyauta system under which some of the formerly independent rajas of
central and western Nepal had kept control of their territories in return for a
fixed annual tribute to the central government. Finally, Congress extended
measures already begun for nationalisation (this time with compensation)
of the country’s forests, some of which had previously been the personal
property of the king’s own brothers.
In foreign policy, Congress had the advantage of relatively close ties
with India, but B. P. trod carefully to avoid entanglement in growing ten-
sion between India and China in the wake of the revolt in Tibet and the
Dalai Lama’s flight to India in March 1959. Shortly after taking office, the
government announced a 100 per cent increase in defence expenditure to
secure the northern border and agreed to the continued presence of Indian
military monitors at points along it. However, after China had taken a
conciliatory line towards Nepal in the intervening months, the Nepalese
delegation abstained at the UN in autumn 1959 on a resolution censur-
ing China’s conduct, and B. P. subsequently rejected the idea of a defence
pact between India and Nepal. At the same time he remained willing to
make veiled criticism of Chinese policy and the government took a firm
line against Chinese claims to control of Mt Everest, perhaps even deliber-
ately playing up the issue to counter public preoccupation with an alleged
The monarchy in ascendance 97
threat from India. They also obtained an apology and compensation after
Chinese troops fired on a Nepalese border patrol in June 1960. In the midst
of these political difficulties, the government concluded an agreement with
India for the development of the Gandaki River, despite criticism at home
that the terms infringed Nepalese sovereignty. Less controversial was a new
trade agreement which in principle allowed Nepal independent control of
its foreign currency and also freedom to determine its own tariff structure.
Another plus was a pledge from China to follow India and the United States
in offering Nepal development aid.
While not amounting to the immediate transformation of society that
all parties’ rhetoric had promised, the Congress reform programme was
radical enough to alarm individuals likely to be affected by it, in partic-
ular former adherents of the Ranas. A first major demonstration against
taxation proposals was held in December 1959 and the Jana Hita Sangha
(Public Welfare Association), set up in April 1960, staged strikes in sup-
port of their call for royal intervention. The National Democratic Front,
an alliance formed in June 1959 between the Praja Parishad (Acharya),
United Democratic Party and Prajatantrik Mahasabha, organised frequent
demonstrations in Kathmandu. They accused the government of corrup-
tion, of ‘Congressification’ (packing the administration with the party’s own
supporters) and of weakness in dealings with India and then with China –
all charges which were to become standard ones again when parliamen-
tary politics were revived in 1991. The Front was sometimes joined in its
activities by the Communists, though not, of course, when China was the
target.
B. P. had the stature to dominate his party more thoroughly than any
subsequent Congress leader, and was re-elected as party president by an
overwhelming majority at the party’s May 1960 conference. Nevertheless,
there was internal opposition from a group of twenty-seven disgruntled
MPs as well as constant sniping from his elder brother. Matrika had rejoined
Congress in 1956 but now was openly backing the National Democratic
Front’s anti-government campaign and inveighing in particular against
B. P.’s being simultaneously prime minister and party president – a com-
bination which B. P. had himself objected to when Matrika had held both
in 1951–2. Perhaps most serious was the disaffection of two cabinet minis-
ters: Tulsi Giri, a B. P. protégé, resigned from the government in August
1960 while Bishwabandhu Thapa remained in post until the royal takeover,
supplying the palace with details of his colleague’s deliberations.
In some ways the main opposition party, the Gorkha Parishad, was less
of a threat to the government than were its other opponents. Party leader
98 A History of Nepal
Bharat Shamsher, in contrast to the leaders of the smaller parties, accepted
the general elections as free and fair, and in parliament he and his colleagues’
rhetoric became quite radical in tone, thus removing the ideological contrast
previously found between the Parishad’s conservatism and B. P.’s democratic
socialism. There was also a volte-face in foreign affairs: in a speech in January
1960, Bharat abandoned his previous anti-Indian posture and demanded
an alliance with India to guard against a possible threat from China, thus
going further even than the allegedly pro-Indian Congress government.
However, some of his colleagues in the party at national level were
unhappy with his change of stance, while in Nuwakot and Gorkha to
the west of the Valley, which were represented in parliament by Gorkha
Parishad members, there were serious clashes between activists of the two
parties, probably resulting from Congress cadres’ attempts to undermine the
Parishad’s local predominance. Whereas two years previously pro-Congress
farmers in the Tarai district of Rautahat had clashed with poor peasants
backed by the Communists, here Congress organised poorer sections of
the community against landlords and money-lenders. There was also an
ethnic edge to the dispute as at least some of those who fled their homes
were members of the Parbatiya high castes driven out by aggrieved Tamangs
regardless of whether they had personally appropriated Tamang land. When
King Mahendra returned to Nepal after a world tour in 1960, it was these
refugees who met him and appealed for help, and the king cited failure
to maintain law and order, as well as corruption and ‘encouragement of
anti-national elements’, when he removed the Congress government at the
end of the year.
Concern over public order was in fact probably a pretext rather than a
principal motivation for Mahendra, since he himself had funded at least one
conservative Hindu organisation, Naraharinath Yogi’s Karmavir Mandal,
which encouraged the rajyauta chiefs to resist abolition of their fiefdoms and
was also involved in disturbances in Gorkha in October 1960. Mahendra
had really hoped to retain effective control of the government all along and
had probably agreed to the 1959 elections only because he believed that they
would lead to a hung parliament which he could easily manipulate. Faced
with a Congress majority in parliament and a strong-willed prime minister,
he hoped initially to use the Gorkha Parishad and party dissidents to unseat
the government and, when it was clear this would not happen, he finally
used his emergency powers and control of the army to arrest B. P. Koirala
and his colleagues at a public meeting on 15 December. It would, however,
be unfair to see this as purely a matter of personal ambition for, just like
B. P., the king genuinely believed in his own unique ability to guide the
The monarchy in ascendance 99
country. In the words of one Indian analyst, for King Mahendra, ‘Nepal
was an idea and none but he could realise what it was destined to be.‘4
t
Rasuwa
SETI Mu.16 g
in
rb a
Pyuthan B.30 T.65
ad
ZONE
Pa
Si n
B.34 Mg.26
Dh
Th.32 B.39 Syangja Tanahun hu
p
Dangdeukhuri Nuwakot al
hakhanchi Mg.50
Arg
T.22 T.38 T.33 ch ok Dolakha
FAR WESTERN
San
e Solukhumbu
a
d T.46
ha
p
Makaw T.33 Ramech
Ru
sabh
a
RAPTI ZONE
anp
u B.37 Ch.25
Mu.12 r Okhaldhunga
T.23 R.39 R.33
Kh Terhathum L.40
Parsa Sindhuli Bhojpur L.35 ar
hth
c
ot a
Udayapur Ilam
Rautah
Mahott
an
INDEX Siraha
us
h
TOTAL 125
were also differences over security issues. Although Nepal remained opposed
to any formal alliance, some degree of co-operation was maintained on
defence issues; in January 1965 Mahendra even concluded a secret agreement
not to purchase military equipment from other countries if this could be
provided by India. However, in 1969, his government asked for the ending
of the stationing of Indian monitors on its northern border and the prime
minister, Kirtinidhi Bista, gave an interview implying that the semi-alliance
established by the 1950 Treaty of Friendship was no longer relevant and
explicitly renouncing the 1965 agreement. The central problem was that
Indian governments still wanted some acknowledgement, however indirect,
that Nepal was in their sphere of influence, something neither Mahendra
nor Birendra was willing to give. While not wanting an open breach with
India, they wished to maximise their freedom of action and were also aware
that being seen to stand up to Indian pressure boosted their popularity at
home.
Nepal’s room for manoeuvre was reduced at the end of 1971, only weeks
before Mahendra’s death, when India’s swift defeat of the Pakistani army
allowed East Pakistan to secede and form Bangladesh. Particularly because
China offered nothing more than verbal support to Pakistan, the reality
of Indian predominance in South Asia was clearly underlined. Even more
alarming from Nepal’s point of view was the absorption into India in 1974
of the kingdom of Sikkim, which had previously been independent, though
it accepted Indian regulation of its foreign relations. This change of status
was facilitated by leaders of the ethnic Nepalese majority in Sikkim, who
saw it as a means to emancipate themselves from control of the Bhotiya
monarchy. However, within Nepal it was seen as naked expansionism,
and demonstrators in Kathmandu vented their anger on Indian buildings
The monarchy in ascendance 103
and vehicles. The following year, in a farewell address to guests attending
his coronation, King Birendra tried to assert Nepal’s strategic equidistance
from India and China by calling for Nepal’s recognition as a ‘zone of peace’.
This vague formulation was accepted by most countries with which Nepal
maintained diplomatic relations, but not by India, which saw Birendra’s
move as an attempt to repudiate the 1950 agreement by stealth. The whole
exercise merely introduced an extra irritant into India–Nepal relations.
The setting-up in 1983 of the South Asian Association for Regional
Co-operation (SAARC), which linked India and Nepal with Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, did not strengthen Nepal’s
bargaining power since India insisted that bilateral matters could not be
discussed in the forum. The new organisation did, however, raise Nepal’s
international profile since Kathmandu was chosen as the site for the SAARC
secretariat.
Aside from differences with its southern neighbour, the royal regime’s
foreign policy was generally a success story. There were very brief periods of
tension with China over the activities of Chinese diplomats in Kathmandu
at the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1967 and also, according to
rumour, over the raids into Tibet by Kampa guerrillas based in northern
Nepal. These had been supported both by India and (before Nixon’s open-
ing to China) by the CIA, and the Kampas were not disarmed until a three-
month campaign by Nepalese troops in 1974. In general, however, Nepal
enjoyed friendly relations both with other countries in South Asia and with
those outside it, and was able to obtain large quantities of economic aid
both from individual donors and from multi-national organisations. There
was an element of rivalry in the aid programmes, particularly between India
and China and between India and the United States, but this, of course,
served to increase the total amount of help Nepal received. Whether this
assistance was used to the best long-term advantage of the Nepalese peo-
ple is, however, a pertinent question that will be examined in the next
chapter.
Domestically, there were small-scale acts of resistance by party activists
and also local disturbances, often centring on agrarian disputes, but no
really serious challenge to the regime until 1979. This reflected the fact that
the party system had not put down firm roots in Nepal, perhaps mainly
because the educated middle class was still such a small proportion of the
total population. The monarchy was in any case promising development
as well as continuity with the past and some major reform measures were
indeed introduced (see chs. 5 and 6 for a fuller discussion). Ironically,
Mahendra began by following the Congress blueprint: birta and rajyauta
104 A History of Nepal
abolition had been legislated for in 1959–60 but were actually implemented
after the royal takeover. The 1964 Land Reform Act was also similar in some
ways to B. P.’s own proposals. Thus, the Panchayat regime should not be
seen as simply a triumph for reactionary social classes. The monarchy was
careful not to antagonise major vested interests, and power structures at
village level largely retained their traditional shape, but some of the largest
landowners saw their influence reduced and the position of tenants in the
Kathmandu Valley was markedly improved. At least in the early days of
the system, there were reasons for many at least to give it the benefit of the
doubt.
The impressive façade of royal rule nevertheless concealed important
weaknesses. Most important for the nation’s long-term future, though not
yet a pressing difficulty, was the failure to resolve the underlying economic
problems. More immediately apparent was the factiousness among panchas,
as those active politically within the system were known: government propa-
ganda stressed the need for co-operation in place of the old quarrels between
parties, but unity of purpose was easier to advocate than to achieve. It also
became increasingly apparent that, while the educated classes as a whole
accepted and adjusted to royal rule as a reality, the elaborate Panchayat
ideology discussed in chapter 6 had very few really committed adherents.
Pre-1960 intellectual alignments still asserted themselves, and it was signif-
icant that from 1967 onwards the files at the Rastriya Panchayat employed
the labels ‘leftist’ or ‘rightist’ to describe the beliefs of individual members.
The very success of the regime’s drive to expand access to education meant
that the number of potential dissidents would increase, especially once the
aid-driven expansion of the bureaucracy ceased to be able to offer educated
youngsters employment commensurate with their expectations.
Dissent among those who had previously collaborated closely with the
king began early. Rishikesh Shaha, who had served as foreign minister and
as finance minister in the early 1960s and who had also been one of the main
architects of the 1962 constitution, emerged in 1967 at the head of a group
of legislators calling for the Rastriya Panchayat to be directly elected and
to have a say in the choice of prime minister. In 1969 Shaha criticised the
prime minister for denouncing defence co-operation with India without
first consulting the legislature. He was imprisoned for a time and, in contrast
to the limited support he had received two years previously, sixty-four MPs
signed a petition calling for his release. After King Birendra succeeded his
father in 1972, Surya Bahadur Thapa, a former chairman of the Council of
Ministers, called for reform on the lines Shaha had earlier suggested. He,
too, was imprisoned as a result.
The monarchy in ascendance 105
Those who had been opposed to the Panchayat system from the start
pursued varying strategies. In 1968, Subarna Shamsher as leader of the
Congress Party in exile issued a statement offering King Mahendra ‘loyal
co-operation’. B. P. Koirala, who was at this time still in prison in Kath-
mandu, was upset at this seeming surrender and refused to make a similar
declaration. However, Mahendra now released him anyway, calculating
that he would not in practice oppose Subarna’s new line. Once at liberty
B. P. made speeches critical of the king and, after a warning from Surya
Bahadur Thapa that he was in danger of rearrest, he went into voluntary
exile in India early in 1969. Apparently in the hope of managing a rec-
onciliation, Mahendra ordered work to begin on drafting amendments to
liberalise the constitution, but he died before this was finalised; Birendra,
confronted both with Surya Bahadur Thapa’s opposition in the Rastriya
Panchayat and student strikes across the country, preferred initially to retain
his father’s old system unaltered. Against this background, B. P. opted for
military action, even though, in contrast to both 1950 and 1961, the cam-
paign would not have the covert backing of India. Incidents such as the
hijacking of an aircraft to a remote Bihar airstrip in 1973 and a bungled
attempt on Birendra’s life in Biratnagar the following March were of little
military significance but may have contributed to Birendra’s decision in
December 1974 to set up a constitutional reform commission.
Although the eventual amendment of the constitution in 1975 was actu-
ally a tightening rather than a liberalisation of the system, B. P. still returned
to Nepal with his old comrade-in-arms Ganesh Man Singh in December
1976; both were arrested on arrival. B. P. claimed publicly that he wished
to contribute to national solidarity against a danger to Nepal’s indepen-
dence, presumably a reference to India’s annexation of Sikkim two years
previously. However, the real reason may have been that India provided a
less congenial environment after Indira Gandhi’s imposition of emergency
rule in 1975. Legal proceedings went ahead slowly, interrupted by two trips
abroad for cancer treatment at the government’s expense. At the end of one
of these B. P. met Subarna Shamsher on his deathbed in Calcutta in October
1977 and received charge of the party organisation from him, but Subarna’s
former followers were soon unhappy with his leadership and by summer
1978 they were effectively functioning as a rival party under Bakhan Singh
Gurung. In autumn 1978, B. P. was finally acquitted on all charges in Nepal.
Birendra may genuinely have wanted a reconciliation with his father’s old
foe, but leniency may have stemmed also from realisation that the Janata
Party which replaced Indira Gandhi in March 1977 would be less tolerant
of repression in Nepal.
106 A History of Nepal
While Congress by the end of the 1970s had for practical purposes
become two parties, the Communists had split into at least seven factions.
Each claimed to be the true continuation of the party founded in 1949,
but they were divided both on tactics towards the royal regime and the
Nepali Congress, and by their stance regarding the Sino-Soviet split. The
firmly pro-Soviet group led by Keshar Jang Rayamajhi had been prepared
to accept the royal regime and work with it ever since, as secretary-general
of the undivided party in 1960, he had welcomed Mahendra’s takeover. The
more radical majority among the cadres had quickly broken with Rayamajhi
but then themselves had splintered further. Pushpa Lal Shrestha, still today
honoured by most Communists as the founding father of their movement in
Nepal, was sympathetic to Beijing, but unwilling to break completely with
Moscow and had also consistently advocated tactical unity with Congress.
Even closer to Beijing and more suspicious both of Congress and of India
were the followers of Man Mohan Adhikari. Another relatively moder-
ate faction was led by Narayan Man Bijukche (Comrade Rohit), who had
been a collaborator of Pushpa Lal’s but had broken with him over the latter’s
backing for Indian intervention in the 1971 Bangladesh independence war.
Rohit’s support was largely confined to Bhaktapur, but his group had had
considerable success there organising the tenant farmers and in infiltrating
Panchayat institutions.
Most important for the future were two more radical groups. The Com-
munist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist) was established in 1978 by former
members of the extremist Jhapeli group. In the early 1970s this faction had
followed the example of the Naxalites across the border in India and begun
a campaign of assassination of ‘class enemies’ in the villages of Jhapa district
in the far eastern Tarai. Prompt action by the security forces ended their
campaign while the number of victims was still in single figures, and the
group reverted to clandestine but non-violent agitation. More influential
than the Marxist-Leninists in the 1970s but, like them, Maoist in ideology
was the Fourth Convention. This group, set up by Mohan Bikram Singh
in 1974, also laid particular stress on the old demand for a constituent
assembly.
While many Communist activists operated underground, liable to arrest
and imprisonment if their identities became known, the regime generally
during these years regarded the Nepali Congress rather than the leftists as
the main threat. At times the government tried to use Communist factions
as a foil against B. P. and his supporters. Congress sympathisers were more
likely to be purged from professions such as teaching, while there is some
evidence that officials occasionally even channelled money to radical groups
The monarchy in ascendance 107
such as the Marxist-Leninists. Once again, those who followed Nepalese
politics were given reason to be on the lookout for strange bedfellows.
Despite the official ban on party politics, student union elections pro-
vided an arena within which it could still thrive. The contests were most
usually between pro-Beijing Communists and Congress supporters, the lat-
ter normally calling themselves ‘Democrats’. Pro-Panchayat students also
competed but normally came a poor third. Until its abolition in 1975, the
Rastriya Panchayat’s graduate constituency was similarly an arena for oppo-
sition. It gave Rishikesh Shaha a platform in the late 1960s, and Ramraja
Prasad Singh, who won the 1971 election, was eventually expelled from the
legislature for his criticism of the Panchayat system. The administration and
the courts’ tolerance for activities of this kind varied from time to time,
partly as a result of the attitudes of different individuals within the system
but also depending on tactical judgements made by the palace. As memoirs
such as those of Durga Pokhrel, now president of the Women’s Commis-
sion, make clear, those who publicly opposed the system were at times
treated with great brutality. Across educated society as a whole, however,
there seemed to be an understanding that criticism of the system could be
safely expressed in private as long as its open expression was curtailed. The
frankness with which Nepalese expressed their complaints to one another
and to foreigners was proof that at least there was not the pervasive fear of
informers prevalent in truly totalitarian societies.
11. Leftists play the anti-Indian card with this banner from the 1991 election campaign
depicting the three Congress leaders, Girija Koirala, Ganesh Man Singh and Krishna
Prasad Bhattarai as monkeys controlled by the veteran Indian politician Chandrashekhar.
The Indian is ordering them, ‘Dance and say “The rivers are common.”’ The reference is
to a phrase used by Bhattarai and criticised as representing a surrender of control over
Nepal’s water resources.
Banke
d
Syangja hu
Tanahun Nuwakot pa
Dangdeukhuri hanchi lch
Arghak ok Dolakha
Dhading
San
Palpa K.
kh
Kapilvastu B. Taplejung
p
d
a
ha
an
p
Chitwan Makaw L. Kabhre
Ramech
Ru
sabh
anp
a
ur
Okhaldhunga Kh
Parsa Sindhuli um
Bhojpur
at
ath
ar
ot a
hth
c
Bara
ng
Terh
tari
Pa n
Sarlahi Dhankuta
Rautah
Ilam
Dh
INDEX Udayapur
Mahot
an
Siraha
us
International boundary
a h
Note: Another nineteen parties contested the election but failed to win seats.
had decided Congress would offer better protection. In contrast, the UML
established itself as the main opposition force, relying on its strength in the
more developed eastern region and also in the Kathmandu Valley. Here the
party president, Madan Bhandari, whose name had been unknown before
the end of the janandolan, defeated veteran Congress leader Krishna Prasad
Bhattarai. Consequently it was not Bhattarai but Girija Prasad Koirala who
became prime minister, following in the footsteps of his two elder brothers.
He and his party now faced the enormous challenge of at last meeting the
expectations of the previous spring.
c h a pt e r 5
122
The quest for ‘development’ 123
deforestation was also rather less than often supposed, and the prophecies
of the country turning into a mountain desert by the end of the twentieth
century proved unfounded. There was nonetheless a thinning-out of forests
in the hill areas, while the Tarai, where land could most easily be reclaimed
for agriculture, lost 25 per cent of its forest cover in just fourteen years from
1964–5. Over the country as a whole around 50,000 hectares of ‘crown
cover’ (land directly sheltered by tree branches) were being lost each year
by the end of the Panchayat era, a serious depletion of resources even if not
yet an environmental disaster.
Like soil erosion, migration in search of a better livelihood was nothing
new for Nepal: many communities in the hills had long combined long-
distance trade and spells of work on the plains with subsistence agriculture
in their home villages. In the late 1950s, for example, an American survey
in one hill area found that almost 87 per cent of the male population
looked for seasonal employment away from their homes, while over the
country as a whole in the 1960s perhaps a quarter of the population were
continually on the move. The numbers involved, and in particular the
total of those relocating permanently, continued to rise and by 1991 over
a million people had left the mountains or hills to set up new homes in
the Tarai.1 The bulk of them acted on their own rather than as part of
official government resettlement programmes. In the 1950s and 1960s the
great majority of migrants moved into the central and eastern Tarai. From
the 1970s onwards, though these areas still remained the major destination,
the western Tarai, where more land was available for clearance, became
increasingly important. By the 1980s, only 45 per cent of Nepal’s population
lived in the hills, compared with 60 per cent twenty years earlier.
The concentration of resources and economic opportunities in the Kath-
mandu Valley, and, to a lesser extent, in the Tarai towns, acted as a magnet
for some, but most migration was from one rural area to another. Only
12 per cent of Nepalese lived in urban areas in 1991, though a large number
living along the major highways could be classified as semi-urban dwellers.
The Kathmandu Valley’s population rose from around 400,000 in 1952 to
1,200,000 forty years later but this was more or less in line with the overall
national trend, and the growth of other urban centres, especially Pokhara
and Biratnagar, meant that Kathmandu city’s own share of the total urban
population decreased from 36 per cent in 1961 to 25 per cent in 1978.
Many who left their hill villages went in search of work in India, whether
on a seasonal basis or for extended periods. In 1991, some 1.5 million
Nepalese were believed to be in India, in addition to several more million
people of Nepalese descent who had moved across the border earlier. Some
124 A History of Nepal
12. A Parbatiya family in their new home in Parsa district in the Tarai north of Birganj.
Hundreds of thousands made a similar move from the hills to the Tarai from the 1950s
onwards.
13. A street scene in Birganj in the early 1970s. The town was named in honour of Bir,
the first of the Shamsher maharajas. Its importance grew further after 1950 with the
construction of a road linking the town to Kathmandu and some industrial development.
14. A view over the Kathmandu Valley from the temple of Swayambhu, an ancient
Buddhist shrine which stands on a small hill to the west of Kathmandu city.
t he ex pansion of ed ucation
Before the collapse of the Rana regime, Nepalese who received any formal
education at all had usually either had private tutors at home or attended
Lifestyles, values, identities 165
schools in India. In 1950, there were fewer than 330 schools in the whole
country and the literacy rate was under 5 per cent. However, already in the
final Rana years there were plans to improve this situation, and there was
also a model at hand in the expansion of Nepali-medium education in the
Darjeeling district of India. In the late 1940s the government began produc-
ing its own series of primary school readers; these were clearly influenced
by the work of Parasmani Pradhan and others in Darjeeling. After 1951, as
was seen in chapter 5, American aid allowed the system of state schools to
expand rapidly.
The steady increase in the number of enrolments was unfortunately offset
by major problems. In the first place many children recorded as starting
primary school later dropped out because their parents could not afford to
lose their labour power. Even when students remained in class, the quality of
education delivered was often questionable. Teachers were underpaid and
poorly motivated, while the schools themselves lacked proper equipment
and classes could be unmanageably large. Discipline could sometimes be
harsh yet in some cases was sadly lacking, as witnessed by one foreign
researcher during the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examination at a
high school in Pokhara in 1974:
Examinees from various parts of western Nepal sat shoulder to shoulder in the
examination rooms passing answers they received through open windows from
youths outside. These well-wishers approached the examination rooms through a
cordon of disinterested police supposedly stationed around the school to protect
the integrity of the examination. Nervous and embarrassed proctors tried vainly
to maintain an appearance of propriety despite the obvious and open cheating. A
teacher informant later explained that Gurkha dropouts from the Indian army had
sat as private candidates in the 1966 examination with knives and grenades, and
since then no one had dared bother the students from certain schools.5
Cheating might not be so blatant in most schools but it was widespread;
there were also cases when the school itself might decide to tamper with the
results of examinations it was responsible for moderating. Yet even more
significant than the numbers passing the examination fraudulently was the
very low overall pass rate: failure was in fact the norm in most schools
throughout the rural area.
Before 1951, apart from a few government-established institutions, most
schools were private ones. After the end of Rana rule, a system of govern-
ment grants to private schools became the most usual pattern. The New
Education System Plan (NESP) introduced in the 1970s greatly increased
government financing of education but also centralised control, remov-
ing the direct links that had previously existed in many cases between the
166 A History of Nepal
schools and the local community. Key decisions were now in the hands
of the centrally appointed district education officer and, ultimately, of the
Education Ministry in Kathmandu.
University education in Nepal, which had begun with the founding of
Trichandra College in 1918, was state-run from the beginning. After the
establishment of Tribhuvan University in 1959, campuses throughout the
country were affiliated to it. Students who had passed the SLC and usually
a subsequent entrance examination were admitted first to the two-year
Intermediate Programme (rechristened Certificate Level under the NESP)
and then to a two-year course leading to the Bachelor’s degree (later known
as Diploma Level). The Intermediate course was roughly equivalent to
sixth-form study in the UK and so the Bachelor’s degree was of a lower
standard than a European or North American first (or bachelor’s) degree.
This standard was only reached (at least in theory) by students who studied a
further two years for an MA at Tribhuvan’s central campus in Kirtipur. The
whole system ran alongside traditionally organised, and also government-
supported, Sanskrit education, for which the Mahendra Sanskrit University
was set up at Dang in the western Tarai in 1986.
Tribhuvan University suffered from the same problems of underfunding,
compromised examinations and staff absenteeism as the school system. In
addition there was the problem of the use of English as a medium of instruc-
tion, which theoretically applied to most of its courses. As in many parts
of the world, the English standard of students coming into such courses
was often too low for them to cope with advanced study in that language.
The problem was worsened after 1979 when, in the wake of the collapse of
the NESP, the university had to accept any prospective student who had
passed the SLC. Attempts to deal with the difficulty by providing remedial
English classes at the start of courses were of limited effectiveness given the
huge size of the classes; most university teachers continued just to lecture
rather than teach more interactively. The practical solution adopted by
many teachers was simply to translate into Nepali the contents of English
textbooks. In any case, many students chose not to come to classes but
attempted to read up on their own before examinations. Against this back-
ground, chances to study overseas were eagerly sought, though only those
from wealthy families or lucky enough to win scholarships could normally
manage this.
Politics were an important part of university life, and the role played by
student associations aligned with the main political factions was described
in chapter 4. The divisions between the students were mirrored by similar
ones among the teaching staff, though purges from time to time eliminated
Lifestyles, values, identities 167
lecturers too closely identified with the banned Congress Party. The major-
ity of students were not political activists but they would rally behind those
who were when an important grievance of their own or an issue of major
national importance arose. Frequent protests coexisted strangely with old
habits of deference towards teachers. When this author was himself a col-
lege lecturer at a Kathmandu campus in the early 1970s, students in his
class who wished to join an impromptu protest over tuition fees requested
him to dismiss the class so that they could challenge the university without
directly challenging an individual lecturer’s authority.
The greatest problem of the Nepalese education system was not, however,
politicisation but rather the fact that it was breeding aspirations which
Nepalese society could not match. Those who achieved basic literacy very
often then set their sights on white-collar employment, which in Nepal at
this time normally meant government service. Many were disqualified early
on, since, even with widespread cheating, a large proportion of students
simply failed to pass the SLC or, in the case of drop-outs, failed even to
take it. The small minority who did enter higher education tended to go
overwhelmingly into arts courses, thus helping to produce the shortage of
skilled technical personnel mentioned in chapter 5. As also already seen,
the Panchayat regime’s attempt to make education more vocational in the
1970s foundered on student resistance.
The chances of succeeding at university were boosted considerably by
a good private schooling. This was still often sought in India and one
estimate in the early 1990s was that the money leaving the country for
this purpose was equivalent to around 60 per cent of the total national
budget for education. King Birendra himself was an example of this pattern,
studying at St Joseph’s College in Darjeeling and later at Eton and Harvard.
His own son, Dipendra, first entered the British-run Budhanilkantha
School in Kathmandu but then he, too, was sent to Eton. Within Nepal,
high-quality English education had been provided since the early 1950s at
St Xavier’s for boys and St Mary’s for girls; alumni from these institutions
normally stood out when they entered Tribhuvan University because of
their fluent English. The divide between public Nepali-medium and pri-
vate English-medium education caused some social tension on campus and
also disquiet among education planners. Under the New Education System
Plan, it was therefore stipulated that from 1974 all institutions in Nepal
below tertiary level should teach in Nepali. This did not, of course, affect
education in India, and the right to teach in English was restored with
the collapse of the NESP at the end of the decade. During the 1980s, in
a trend which accelerated greatly after 1990, many new ‘boarding schools’
168 A History of Nepal
(meaning simply private schools claiming to teach in English) opened in
the Valley along with a smaller number elsewhere in the country.
Whatever the doubts about its quality, the expansion of education greatly
increased the audience for writing in Nepali and about Nepal. Particularly
as the market for school textbooks broadened, Kathmandu became the
major centre for publishing in Nepali rather than lagging behind Benares
and Calcutta, which had primarily served the Nepalese community in
India but also supplied much of the small amount of printed material
circulating in Nepal itself. Educational expansion also both required and
facilitated standardisation of the written language. This, though still not
complete, was broadly achieved by the 1970s along lines already indicated by
Parasmani Pradhan and other Darjeeling writers. Pradhan had championed
a style of Nepali drawing heavily on Sanskrit loanwords, in the same way
that the more formal registers of English use a high proportion of words
derived from Latin and Greek. The alternative approach of keeping the
written language closer to colloquial Nepali, which had been favoured
by Pradhan’s Darjeeling rival, Padre Ganga Prasad Pradhan, also found
support in post-1950 Nepal. It was the Sanskritisers, however, who won out
and established the norms for the language as used today in government
documents, political speeches or literary essays.
In the first half of the twentieth century, devotional literature, and in
particular Bhanubhakta’s Ramayana, had been the most popular category
of publication in Nepali. Religious works still sold well after 1950, as did
stories for easy reading and poetry by many authors. The education system,
however, helped establish a definitive canon of Nepali literature, includ-
ing Bhanubhakta himself and then the trio of Lekhnath Paudel (1884–
1965), Balkrishna Sama (1902–81) and Lakshmi Prasad Devkota (1909–
59). All three wrote in more than one genre, but the Brahmans Paudel
and Devkota were primarily poets and Sama (‘Equal’), a dissident Rana
who had adopted his surname as a democratic gesture in 1948, was best
known as a playwright. Paudel’s status was dramatically recognised in 1954
when, in imitation of the ceremony used to honour elderly Newars, he was
placed on a wheeled vehicle like those used for religious icons and pulled
through the streets of Kathmandu by fellow poets including the then prime
minister, M. P. Koirala. Devkota, the Nepali poet who has attracted the
most attention outside the country, served briefly as minister of education
in K. I. Singh’s 1957 government and, on his deathbed at the temple of
Pashupatinath, was the focus of attention among the political and literary
elite. All three authors, like other leading intellectuals, were also honoured
Lifestyles, values, identities 169
by enrolment in the Royal Nepal Academy set up by King Mahendra in
1957. Among more recent literary figures, those coming nearest to canonical
status are perhaps the novelist and poetess Parijat (1937–93) and the poet
Bhupi Sherchan (1936–89).
In contrast to the Sanskritised language that Nepalese read in their school
textbooks, the spoken language developed rather differently. The influence
of English was substantial and one did not need to be fluent in the language
to pepper one’s conversation with English loanwords. In some cases, as
also across the border in India, English words had established themselves
so thoroughly before 1950 that it was the literary Nepali which, at least
initially, felt less familiar. From the time of Mathbar Singh Thapa in the
1840s, the executive head of government had been known as the praim
ministar and the term remained in common use even though the radio
news used pradhan mantri. The word polis (police, policeman) had taken
even stronger root and the ‘High Nepali’ term prahari was virtually never
used in ordinary conversation. In these cases English words were used
unthinkingly; in others they might be deliberately employed to give the
speaker an air of learning and sophistication.
As in India, English itself, even if fully mastered only by a small minority,
played an important role. In contrast to India, it was not the language of the
courts nor the one in which most written government records were kept,
but it became increasingly important in those areas of the administration
which had to interact most extensively with foreign-aid donors. As well as
being essential for the operation of the tourist industry, English was also
the medium of much academic research in both the natural and social
sciences. Partly because admission to foreign researchers was granted rather
more readily than in the Indian Himalayas, the country attracted many
outside scholars eager to explore its ethnic diversity and cultural heritage.
The paradoxical result was that Nepalese sometimes had to turn to English
to access knowledge of their own country and culture as well as of the world
outside Nepal.
mode r n me d ia
Before the post-1950 expansion of the education system, fewer than five
in every hundred people in Nepal could read, and so the spoken word
remained overwhelmingly the most important means of communication
at village level. Tales of the world outside brought by returned travellers
remained an important channel, and current happenings in Kathmandu
170 A History of Nepal
and elsewhere might find their way into the songs of the Gaine (singer)
caste who played their sarangis (Nepalese-style fiddles) to entertain villagers,
especially at major festivals.
The expansion in communications discussed in chapter 5 meant that
access to information in either printed or electronic form became easier for
everyone, though exposure was greatest for those living in the Valley and in
Tarai towns adjacent to India. In 1990 the literacy rate for Nepal as a whole
was still only 39 per cent and television could reach only a small proportion
of the population. Radio was thus a crucially important window on the
world: a remote village might only have one or two small radios but that was
enough to deliver a message to many families. The government-controlled
Radio Nepal was before 1990 the only station broadcasting from inside the
country. It certainly helped to make the standard Nepali of Kathmandu
familiar to those whose local dialect might be very different; it also enabled
singers to become familiar to a nationwide audience. Radio Nepal also
made people aware of the government’s proclaimed goals and in particular
with the king’s activities and pronouncements. However, the government’s
official service was probably less effective as a moulder of opinions than it
might have been. The use of a highly literary style of Nepali meant that
many villagers cannot have fully understood what was being said, while
for more sophisticated listeners the propagandist nature of the broadcasts
was so obvious as to be frequently counter-productive. From Mahendra’s
takeover until 1990, news broadcasts normally had to begin with an item
on the royal family and this was usually something of no real news value
but a purely formal act such as sending greetings to a foreign head of state
on his country’s national day. The activities of the political parties opposed
to the regime were either ignored or simply denounced as ‘anti-national’.
Such an approach could work with listeners completely cut off from other
sources of information but, even for many uneducated listeners, it often
served only to heighten cynicism about the whole Panchayat system. Even
with its message backed up, for reasons of self-interest, by many of the
rural elite, Radio Nepal was unable to stop almost half the electorate voting
against the Panchayat system in 1980; it failed even more decisively in the
battle for opinion in the Kathmandu Valley in 1990.
Because it could reach only the educated, the government-controlled
press was an even less efficient means of controlling popular opinion. While
its translations of reports from international news agencies were of some
value to Nepalese who did not read English (and to Westerners trying to
learn Nepali), the Gorkhapatra was basically a government gazette rather
than a newspaper in the full sense; its English-language partner, the Rising
Lifestyles, values, identities 171
Nepal, established in 1965, served mainly to amuse and also to irritate foreign
residents.
Alternative views were available from several sources. Word of mouth was
important, especially given the large numbers of Nepalese who travelled
to other parts of the country or to India in search of work. There was
also the private press, which had expanded rapidly during the 1950s. Even
before 1960 the government sometimes tried to suppress the publication of
dissenting views; after 1960, policy became much more restrictive, though,
as seen in chapter 4, the press functioned a little more freely after the
1980 referendum. The circulation of these newspapers was limited and
in many cases confined largely to the Kathmandu Valley. Private papers
tended, moreover, to be the mouthpieces of particular parties or of their
owners and were little more than political pamphlets. There were also some
‘investigative journalists’ who offered not to print embarrassing material
in return for payment. Nevertheless, it was possible for anyone seriously
interested in politics to gain a much fuller picture of Nepal’s real situation
from these publications than from the government media.
Then there was the foreign, and particularly the Indian, media. These
outlets would not normally include detailed coverage of Nepal but there
were occasional critical newspaper articles; in such cases the government
might attempt to block circulation or distributors might prefer not to
take the risk of handling the publication. In 1973, for example, the British
Council Library removed from its shelves a copy of the Guardian Weekly in
which the Panchayat system was (quite accurately) described as window-
dressing to disguise the reality of royal autocracy. This did not, of course,
prevent material from being passed hand to hand, and in any case there
was no way of blocking foreign radio broadcasts. The regime might be the
centre of power in the country but it could not determine the cultural and
intellectual environment in which educated people lived.
For those who lived in or visited the towns, the Hindi-language cinema
was an important influence throughout these years. Nepal did have its
own film industry and the country’s first Nepali-language feature film was
released in 1974. Even counting Nepali films made outside Nepal, a mere
forty-eight were produced between the early 1950s and 1990;6 by the end
of the period only about a dozen full-length films were being released each
year. This was a drop in the ocean compared with the output of Bollywood,
the Hindi film industry centred on Bombay. Hindi films accounted for
the vast majority of films shown in public cinema halls from the time
Kathmandu’s first, the Janasewa, opened in about 1949. After the easing
of import regulations in 1978 allowed the import of VCR equipment, the
172 A History of Nepal
cinema halls were supplemented first by ‘video parlours’, rooms in private
houses where customers paid to view, and then by the growing number of
VCRs in middle-class homes. By the end of the 1980s, the cinemas had
been largely deserted by the more affluent, leaving an audience of the less
well-off, particularly young males. However, Hindi movies, often in pirated
versions, remained hugely popular with middle-class domestic viewers.
Unlike the ‘art films’ of Satyajit Ray, which focused often on the Indian
poor, Hindi films generally offered an escape into a world of fantasy and
glamour. They were typically melodramas punctuated with song and dance
routines and showcasing the lifestyles of the Indian middle and upper
classes. Sex and violence featured prominently, though, particularly in the
1950s and 1960s, physical intimacy was suggested rather than explicitly por-
trayed. Heroes and heroines successfully pursued affluence but also usually
subscribed to the virtues of family life and of religion. Specifically religious
films, dramatising the deeds of Hindu gods and goddesses, were also pop-
ular. The first film shown at a Kathmandu cinema had been Ramabibaha
(Ram’s Wedding) and the audience had thrown petals and other offerings
at the screen as if the god Ram were really present in the hall.
Filmi git, songs from the soundtracks, were an important element of
popular culture in their own right, and were played regularly on cassettes
at weddings and other social functions in Nepal as in India, despite purists’
objections to the displacement of Nepal’s own traditional forms of live
music-making. While Radio Nepal continued to broadcast a modernised
form of Nepalese folk music, it was Hindi songs that were usually requested
by listeners to British Forces Broadcasting Service programmes for Nepalese
soldiers in Britain’s Brigade of Gurkhas. The attraction of both the music
and the films themselves was also boosted as Nepalese actresses began to
make their mark in the Indian industry. At the end of the 1980s B. P. Koirala’s
granddaughter, Manisha Koirala, was emerging as a major star on the
Bollywood screen.
Nepali films had necessarily to copy the same general format of the
Hindi ones, though the rhythms of Nepali folk music were incorporated
into their music. The first full-length Nepalese production Manko Bandh
(Dam in the Mind) also presented a positive image of the Panchayat system
at village level and preached the message of the government’s Back to the
Village campaign. The hero, younger brother of the gaun panchayat (village
council) leader, returned willingly to his native village to construct a much-
needed dam, despite the pleas of the sophisticated urban woman who had
tricked him into marriage. Manko Bandh and subsequent Nepali-language
films did well at the box office and, because great care was taken to prevent
Lifestyles, values, identities 173
pirate versions appearing before their official release, middle-class viewers,
who normally watched in the comfort of their own homes, also turned out
to see them.
Nepalese cinemas showed relatively few films from outside South Asia,
mainly because of limited audience demand. One 1970s film that did reach
the screen in Kathmandu was the English subtitled version of the French
production Les Chemins de Katmandu (Ways to Kathmandu) set among
the city’s own hippy community of young Westerners. The Hindi movie
Hari Krishna Hari Ram, treating a similar theme and probably inspired by
the French film, ran for considerably longer. In the 1980s, however, there
was considerable demand for videos of English-language films, while in the
early years of Nepal Television, which started in 1985, BBC programmes
made up a considerable part of the schedules. Those able to afford the
equipment were, of course, much more likely to have fluent English than
the average cinema-goer.
189
190 A History of Nepal
traffic off the roads. As on numerous subsequent occasions, fear of attack by
demonstrators throwing stones or worse was enough to enforce compliance.
The UML needed to preserve its own credibility as the main force
on the left but also to maintain the image of a responsible opposition.
It therefore participated in protests against the killings but demanded
only the resignation of the home minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, not that of
the entire government; it abandoned the campaign after Congress agreed
to an inquiry into the shootings. A year later, however, the UML itself
took the lead in street protests following the deaths of party leaders Madan
Bhandari and Jivraj Ashrit in May 1993. The two men had been travelling
in a jeep which plunged into the Narayani River at Dasdhunga on the road
from Kathmandu to Narayanghadh. A government inquiry accepted the
driver’s version that he had lost control of the vehicle but managed to jump
clear himself. The UML and the other Communist parties, however, alleged
there had been an assassination plot and demanded both a fresh inquiry and
Koirala’s resignation. In renewed street disturbances, police again opened
fire with the loss of twenty-four lives. Extensive flooding throughout most
of the country later in the summer helped lower the political temperature,
and the UML again reached an agreement with Congress providing for
a fresh investigation. The smaller leftist parties continued the agitation
on their own for some time. No definite evidence of a conspiracy was ever
found and it was all too common for vehicles to plunge off mountain roads.
In 1997 a Supreme Court ruling confirmed that the deaths had been acci-
dental and the driver, who had been imprisoned for causing death through
negligence, was released the following year. Nevertheless reopening of the
inquiry still figured in the UML’s 1999 election manifesto, and the kidnap-
ping and murder of the driver in 2003 would probably have rekindled the
controversy had much more urgent concerns not then been facing all the
political parties.
The Congress government generally enjoyed good relations with India
and a new trade and transit agreement was reached in December 1991,
under which the origin-of-contents rule for Nepalese exports to India was
further relaxed. In addition to the perennial problem of water resources, a
new difficulty was presented by the flight from southern Bhutan of many
ethnic Nepalese, about 90,000 of whom had, by the end of 1992, ended
up as refugees in camps in south-eastern Nepal. The Bhutanese govern-
ment claimed that many of them were either not actually from Bhutan or
had emigrated voluntarily. They had in fact mostly left under duress after
disturbances following a campaign against the Bhutanese government’s
campaign of forced assimilation and restrictive legislation on citizenship.
Democracy and disillusionment 191
The Bhutanese king and many of the Dzonghka-speaking Drukpa com-
munity to which he belonged were alarmed at the prospect of their Nepali-
speaking population, who were now perhaps the largest ethnic group in
Bhutan, taking control of the country as their fellow Nepali-speakers had
done earlier in Sikkim. Although India had a treaty right to exercise ‘guid-
ance’ over Bhutanese foreign policy, India put no pressure on Bhutan to take
the refugees back. The Nepalese government eventually reached an agree-
ment to classify the inhabitants of the camp into those who had genuinely
been forced out and other categories but disagreement over implementa-
tion dragged on for several years and ‘verification’ of those in the first camp
was not completed until December 2001. The Congress government was
widely criticised within Nepal for failing to take a stronger line, though,
given India’s attitude, there was little any government could have done.
Despite foreign policy embarrassments and recurrent violence on the
streets of Kathmandu, the government was in a relatively secure position in
the country as a whole, and its hold on power was strengthened when it won
over half the seats in local elections in summer 1992. It was nevertheless
brought down by dissension within its own ranks, resulting partly from
genuine unhappiness with some of Koirala’s policies but mainly from dis-
putes over patronage and, as in the 1950s, over the relationship between the
party machine and the party in parliament. Within the parliamentary party
itself, a clear division between pro- and anti-Koirala factions emerged at
the end of 1991 when Koirala dismissed six members of his cabinet without
the approval of the party’s president Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and its senior
leader Ganesh Man Singh. At the beginning of 1994, Bhattarai, who had
been defeated by UML leader Madan Bhandari in the general election,
stood in the by-election resulting from Bhandari’s death. His supporters
were increasingly eager for him to replace Koirala as prime minister and
the Communist parties claimed that, as part of the deal ending the street
protests in summer 1993, Bhattarai had actually given a verbal promise to
remove Koirala. Koirala responded by dissociating himself from Bhattarai’s
candidature and thus contributed to his defeat by the UML candidate,
Bhandari’s widow.
Although Bhattarai himself ruled that no action should be taken against
the ‘sabotage’ of his campaign, thirty-six MPs opposed to Koirala stayed
away from parliament in a vote on the king’s speech in May; Koirala then
resigned and asked Birendra to call mid-term elections. There were more
street protests, involving both opposition parties and supporters of Krishna
Prasad Bhattarai and Ganesh Man Singh. Bhattarai’s faction controlled the
party’s central working committee and also dominated its organisation in
192 A History of Nepal
15. Girija Prasad Koirala denouncing the king’s October 2002 takeover.
the Valley, but Koirala was more popular with party members across the
country and he seemed ready to provoke a final showdown. However,
he shied away from this and a compromise was again reached allowing
Congress to go into the elections more or less united.
The elections were held in November 1994, after an unsuccessful legal
challenge to the dissolution of parliament, and although the UML’s share
of the total vote was less than that of Congress, they emerged as the largest
party, with 88 seats of 205 in the House of Representatives to Congress’s 83.
This left the two senior Panchayat politicians, Lokendra Bahadur Chand
and Surya Bahadur Thapa, holding the balance of power: their factions had
merged in 1992 to form a single National Democratic Party (NDP), which
increased their vote share from just over 10 per cent to almost 20 per cent
and won twenty seats. The other major change was the failure of the United
People’s Front to win any seats after the more radical wing, which was to
Democracy and disillusionment 193
launch the ‘People’s War’ two years later, had broken away and abandoned
parliamentary politics. Coalition negotiations were inconclusive and so the
UML formed a minority government with Man Mohan Adhikari as prime
minister and secretary-general Madhav Kumar Nepal as his deputy.
As well as lacking a clear majority, the UML government needed to allay
suspicion among aid donors and in India, so, even assuming it wanted to, it
was not in a position to make a radical break with the past. It did, however,
freeze the privatisation drive begun under Congress and commissioned
inquiries into the issue of land reform and the problems of the sukumbasi
or squatters on government land. The government also conducted a review
of a major hydro-electric project for the Arun River in east Nepal, for
which the Congress government had sought World Bank financing. The
project was highly controversial both because of environmental concerns
and worries about the high cost of the power it would produce; although the
government finally decided to go ahead, the World Bank itself pulled out
of the scheme in August 1995, just before the government fell. Lobbying by
Nepalese environmentalists had been one factor behind the bank’s decision.
The UML’s major innovation was its Build Your Village Yourself scheme,
under which village development committees, as the village panchayats
were now known, received grants of 300,000 rupees for local develop-
ment projects. The scheme in itself was not controversial, but other par-
ties were strongly opposed to the UML’s setting up a special monitoring
mechanism involving members of different political parties at local level.
To Congress in particular, this seemed a deliberate attempt to bypass the
now Congress-dominated local authorities. There was also criticism that
the 53,000 families eventually granted titles to land by the Landless People
Problem Resolution Commission had been selected for their connections to
the UML rather than on grounds of need. Accusations that the party in gov-
ernment was abusing them were to greet any poverty-reduction schemes,
however welcome in principle they might be. The UML levied similar
charges against the ‘Bisheshwar with the Poor’ scheme introduced by the
1999 Congress government.
In June 1995, after Congress, supported by the National Democratic
Party and the Sadbhavana Party, requested a special session of the House of
Representatives to bring a no-confidence motion against the government,
Man Mohan Adhikari tried to pre-empt defeat by recommending another
dissolution and fresh elections. The king agreed to the request but, in
a reversal of the previous year’s roles, Congress and its allies asked the
Supreme Court to declare his move unconstitutional. The court this time
ruled against the prime minister, and parliament was restored. The main
The Nepali Congress
K – Kathmandu Communist Party of Nepal (UML)
B – Bhaktapur Kathmandu
Humla L – Lalitpur National Democratic Party
Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party
Darchula
Bajhang Bhaktapur Nepal Sadbhavana Party
Mugu
Baitadi Lalitpur Independent
Bajura
Banke
d
m
ja
i
Syang hu
Tanahun pa
Dangdeukhuri hanchi Nuwakot lch
Arghak Palpa ok Dolakha
Dhading
San
K.
kh
Kapilvastu hi B. Taplejung
p
Solukhumbu
uw
ha
pa Makaw L. Kabhre h
Ru
Ramec
sabh
anp
a
ur
Okhaldhunga K
h um
Parsa Sindhuli Bhojpur
at
ath
har
ot a
Bara cht
ng
an
Terh
P
tari
Sarlahi Dhankuta
Rautah
Ilam
Dh
INDEX Udayapur
Mahot
an
Siraha
us
International boundary
a h
Darchula
Nepal Sadbhavana Party
Bajhang Bhaktapur National People’s Front
Mugu
Baitadi Lalitpur United People's Front
Bajura
Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party
Dadeldhura
Doti Kalikot Jumla
Acham Dolpa The number of symbols in each district
Mustang corresponds to the number of constituencies.
Kanchanpur Dailekh Jajarkot
Kailali Rukum
Manang
Surkhet
Myagdi
Bardiya Salyan Baglu
Rolpa ng Kaski Lamjung Gorkha
Parbat Rasuwa
Pyuthan Gu
l
Sin
Banke a
d
m
i
Syangj hu
Tanahun pa
Dangdeukhuri hanchi Nuwakot lch
Arghak Palpa ok Dolakha
Dhading
San
K.
kh
hi B.
p
Kapilvastu Solukhumbu
uw
ha
pa Makaw L. Kabhre
Ru
anp Ramech
sabh
a
ur
Okhaldhunga K
Sindhuli h um
Parsa Bhojpur
at
ath
har
ot a
Bara cht
ng
an
Terh
P
tari
Sarlahi Dhankuta
Rautah
Ilam
Dh
INDEX Udayapur
Mahot
an
us
Siraha
h
International boundary
a
th e rise of t he ultra -l ef t
The ‘People’s War’ launched by the CPN (Maoist) in early 1996, and from
2001 presenting the Nepalese state with its most urgent problem, could be
seen in one sense as an extension of the criminal practices just outlined,
with the insurgents not just trying to bend the rules of the system but to
replace them altogether. At another level a principal cause of the conflict,
as of so much else, was the widespread poverty that continued to afflict
Nepal. However, neither explanation is a sufficient one. Also important
were complex factors in the history of the country and the communist
movement, as well as the fragile balance of power that had emerged from
the 1990 ‘People’s Movement’.
Democracy and disillusionment 203
The area of the mid-western hills that was the Maoists’ original power
base had long been a site of leftist activism. During the 1950s Mohan Bikram
Singh, as the Communist Party’s district secretary for his home district of
Pyuthan and then as a central committee member, had worked tirelessly to
build up support. He was particularly successful with the village of Thawang
in neighbouring Rolpa, where in the general election of 1959 all but 3 of
703 persons on the electoral roll voted Communist. During the Panchayat
years, the villagers maintained their allegiance to the left, and in the 1980
referendum no votes were cast there in favour of the Panchayat system.
Communist support grew in the surrounding area of north-eastern Rolpa
and eastern Rukum district, fuelled by various local grievances, particularly
the decline in living standards, which the inhabitants reportedly ascribed
to the government’s suppression of hashish production in the 1970s.6 The
people of this area were mostly Kham Magars, who spoke a very different
dialect from that of the southern Magars (see p. 14) and who, unlike the
latter, had largely retained their original language and religious practices
rather than switching to Nepali and becoming Hinduised. This height-
ened their sense of alienation from the Nepalese state and, following Mao
Zedong’s own example in pre-Second World War China, Mohan Bikram
played the ethnic card from early on, with a special stress on minority rights
in the platform of the Fourth Convention group he established in 1974.
When open political activity again became possible in 1990, the area was
thus an obvious one for the radicals to concentrate on.
By this time, the original Fourth Convention had splintered into three
different factions. Mohan Bikram Singh’s own group, the Communist Party
of Nepal (Masal), maintained total opposition to parliamentary politics
and boycotted the 1991 election, but his erstwhile followers, Pushpa Kumar
Dahal (known as Prachanda) and Nirmal Lama, formed the United People’s
Front (UPF) to contest it. The UPF was simply the electoral vehicle for the
Unity Centre, the underground party into which Lama and Prachanda had
merged their own groups in 1990 and which another of Singh’s lieutenants,
Baburam Bhattarai, joined just before the 1991 polls. The nine seats the
UPF won included both the constituencies in Rolpa district and one of
the two in Rukum. Prachanda and Bhattarai were both Brahmans, but the
UPP’s Rukum MP and one of those for Rolpa were Magars while the party’s
other MPs included three Tamangs and one Thakali. This made the party’s
MPs a much more ethnically representative body than those of most other
Nepalese parties.
Although the UPF members took up their seats in the House of Represen-
tatives, their declared aim was merely to ‘expose’ the parliamentary system’s
204 A History of Nepal
inadequacy rather than to seek to join a government, and in November
1991 their party conference endorsed Prachanda’s policy of achieving ‘new
people’s democracy’ through a ‘People’s War’. Many in other Nepalese
Communist factions also proclaimed a belief in the indispensability of vio-
lent revolution yet continued to engage in more peaceful political activity,
and until 1994 the UPF concentrated principally on street agitation, often
in concert with other groups. The theory was that, as in 1990, enough
disorder could be created on the streets of the capital to pressure the
government into concessions. Within the UPF/Unity Centre, however,
Nirmal Lama and his allies were coming under increasing pressure from
Prachanda and Bhattarai, who probably had the greater number of activists
loyal to them, and a formal split came in May 1994. In theory the dispute
was over Lama’s willingness to continue ‘making use’ of parliament and
the others’ wish to move towards ‘People’s War’, but another factor may
have been fear that Lama himself was becoming too popular in the united
party.
Following the split, only the three MPs from Rolpa and Rukum sided
with Bhattarai, the UPF’s convenor, and the Election Commission accepted
the claim of Lama’s followers to be the legal continuation of the party.
Bhattarai’s group were thus no longer recognised as a ‘national party’ and,
as well as being unable to use the old name, they had no guarantee that
all their candidates would be issued with the same election symbol. In
March 1995, Prachanda’s wing of the Unity Centre formally renamed itself
the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and renounced participation in
elections.
The party’s intention to launch their ‘People’s War’ was not kept secret,
and in autumn 1995 as part of preparation for this an extensive propa-
ganda and recruitment campaign was organised in Rukum and Rolpa.
Since 1991, and especially after the UPF had gained control of local gov-
ernment in the area in 1992, there had been tension between Congress and
UPF workers, and the Congress side had generally been supported by civil
servants and policemen responsible to the normally Congress central gov-
ernment. Now more serious clashes occurred between Maoists and both
Congress and NDP workers and in November a large-scale police opera-
tion was ordered by Sher Bahadur Deuba’s newly installed administration.
This was understandable, given the Maoists’ publicly proclaimed inten-
tion to launch a rebellion, but police action was indiscriminate and brutal
enough to increase local resentment against the government as well as insuf-
ficiently sustained to act as a real deterrent. On 2 February 1996, Bhattarai
handed the government in Kathmandu a list of forty demands, including
Democracy and disillusionment 205
not only an end to police excesses but also measures such as the abroga-
tion of major treaties with India, the declaration of a secular state and the
election of a constituent assembly. The document was in effect a party
manifesto, but the Maoists stated that they would take up arms if the gov-
ernment did not respond positively before 17 February. The ultimatum
was probably intended for public relations purposes rather than in the
expectation of genuine negotiations, and they launched their first attacks
on police stations and government offices on the 13th, four days before it
expired.
There has been much speculation on whether this slide into civil war
might have been halted if Bhattarai’s group had been recognised as the true
UPF in 1994, if there had been no police atrocities in autumn 1995 or if
Deuba’s government had responded to the Maoists’ ultimatum in February
1996. However, the Maoists would still have faced the problem that they
were a relatively small group with little hope of competing effectively at
national level unless they were content to act as a junior partner to the main
force on the left, the UML. Fundamentally, they saw violence as a chance
to increase their influence in remote areas where they were organisationally
strong and, in the longer term, a chance to regain the leading position on
the Nepalese left which the old Mohan Bikram Singh group had once held
but then lost during the 1980s.
Over the next three years, the Maoists slowly extended their influence
over wider areas of the countryside, concentrating particularly on Rolpa,
Rukum and the districts of Jajarkot and Salyan which bordered them on
the west. The task was made easier because these areas were not of crucial
economic importance and were only weakly penetrated by the Nepalese
state. Neither Rolpa or Rukum had any motorable roads until those to
the district headquarters were competed by the army in 2002 and 2003
respectively. In the past the government had relied on a small number of
local ‘big men’, who owed their status partly to state patronage but were
also chosen partly because they were already influential. Social control
was maintained by these individuals and also through the self-regulating
mechanisms of village communities. In western Nepal, such people had
generally worked within the Panchayat system but switched allegiance in
1990 to Congress. Their role as (relatively) large landowners and often also
money-lenders meant that many of their poorer neighbours feared opposing
them openly but might welcome their removal by a force from outside the
village. The process was not, however, a simple one of ‘class war’, since
one village faction or clan might align itself with a political party simply to
gain support against a rival group. Thus a quarrel within a Kham Magar
206 A History of Nepal
village which might before have been settled within the village could now
end with the killing of a villager as a ‘class enemy’, whatever his actual
economic status. Furthermore, in the Kham areas, there were no really big
landlords and inequality was less than in many other parts of the far western
hills.
The Maoists worked hard to put their political message across at village
level and stressed in particular opposition to the caste system and to the
subordination of women. This brought a response, especially from the
most disadvantaged groups, but they did not, of course, need to secure mass
backing to become a powerful force in a district. Once there was a significant
minority of dedicated supporters, the threat of violence was enough to
ensure the majority’s acquiescence. In this way the insurgents had the best
of both worlds. They tapped into a reservoir of frustration with the status
quo but they could also rely on the old tradition of submission to authority.
Concerned principally with day-to-day survival, the peasant understood
that to be safe he must not anger the local Maoists just as once he could not
anger the village’s largest landowners. The philosophy was expressed seven
years later by an inhabitant of the northern district of Jumla: ‘We obeyed
the Ranas and during the Panchayat we did what we were told. Democracy
came and we followed. Tomorrow there may be another system and we will
have to listen to them too. We can never say we won’t obey.’7
Logistically, the Maoists relied in the first place on local resources, gradu-
ally collecting weapons from their raids on police, and financing themselves
through bank robbery and extortion. When landowners were driven away,
or chose to flee, those who continued to work the land now paid the
Maoists the landlord’s share, often at the 50 per cent rate that had long
been common in the hills. In addition, the insurgents collected funds from
sympathisers among the Nepalese community in India and also established
links with Indian Maoist groups operating in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.
Baburam Bhattarai had been a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University in
Delhi and president of the All India Nepali Students’ Association, while
Prachanda may possibly have once been a negotiator on behalf of Darjeel-
ing tea workers in 1988.8 Finally, there was moral support from RIM, an
international Trotskyist grouping that Mohan Bikram Singh’s Masal had
helped establish in London in 1984 and to which Baburam Bhattarai had
served as representative.
In responding to the insurgency, the state was hampered in several ways.
First, the Nepalese police enjoyed little respect among the civilian popula-
tion. Policemen were recruited centrally and thus did not normally enjoy
close ties to the community in which they were stationed. As throughout
Democracy and disillusionment 207
South Asia, police training was poor, pay extremely low and corruption
endemic; they tended often to respond to threats by lashing out more or
less at random. The Maoists, too, used outsiders to carry out actual acts of
violence, but they had a reliable network of local sympathisers to act as their
eyes and ears, and their coercion was more precisely targeted. As a result,
many in the affected areas regarded both sides as unwelcome intruders, but
the Maoists as less disruptive.
Secondly, the army, which in Nepal had been immediately employed
against any armed opposition before 1990, was not directly controlled by the
elected government. It was in theory under the National Defence Council,
consisting of the army’s own chief of staff, the prime minister and the
defence minister; this was normally a two-man body since until 1999 the
prime minister in Congress governments retained the defence portfolio. In
practice, the army looked to the king who thus had a de facto veto upon its
deployment; in this case Birendra was reluctant to let it become involved.
This was partly through genuine unwillingness to use it against Nepalese
citizens except as a last resort, but probably also because he himself, or
those around him, saw the insurgents as a useful tool against the politicians
who had forced him to yield power in 1990. Initially, the government itself
was also in no hurry to use the army because it was unsure whether the
soldiers could be trusted once out of barracks. All of this had most likely
been factored into the Maoists’ calculations in 1996.
Thirdly, political parties not in government and also educated Nepalese
in general, were reluctant to see full use made of the security forces. There
was genuine concern at the civilian casualties a full-scale crackdown might
entail but also unwillingness among politicians to see state power enhanced
if they were not themselves in control of that power. The left-wing parties
in particular were in a difficult position. They were unhappy with the
Maoists’ tactics, especially in the case of the UML, whose cadres were
sometimes victims of Maoist violence. However, there was broad sympathy
with the Maoists’ long-term aims and, since at village level political workers
might see themselves as ‘leftists’ rather than as belonging exclusively to one
particular faction, there was also the danger that other parties’ activists
might find themselves targeted in any anti-Maoist drive. As a result, except
when the party was itself in government with the NDP in 1997, the UML
joined the rest of the left in calling for negotiations and protesting alleged
police brutality.
Over the first two years of the Maoist insurgency there were intermittent
declarations by both the government and the rebels that they were willing
to negotiate, but no talks were actually arranged and violence continued
208 A History of Nepal
at a fluctuating level. The Maoists called for a boycott of the summer 1997
local elections and tried to enforce it by intimidation and assassinations,
especially of Congress candidates. In the four districts forming the Maoists’
main stronghold, polls were postponed until the autumn and even then no
proper contest could be held in many village development committees. By
early 1998 the rebels had set up their own ‘People’s Committees’ in some
VDCs with representatives of other political parties allowed (or required)
to take part, but with those the Maoists deemed ‘feudals’ excluded. When
Girija Koirala returned to power in April he at first made another failed
attempt at negotiation and then in May launched the Kilo Sierra 2 police
operation, which caused heavy casualties among the Maoists but also among
non-combatants. A report by a Nepalese NGO claimed that from February
1996 to December 1998 409 deaths had been caused by the security forces
(334 in 1998 alone) and 129 by the Maoists (75 in 1998).9 The Nepalese press
was now generally accepting a total of 800 deaths.
In a general atmosphere of violence and intimidation, it was difficult
to know how much popular support the rebels really had. However, in
autumn 1998 a government intelligence report was said to have forecast
that should the Maoists agree to contest elections they would probably
get twenty to twenty-five seats. In March 1999 another report claimed
that they had the allegiance of around 25 per cent of the electorate in
Gorkha, Baburam Bhattarai’s home district. In the event, the Maoists
again called for a boycott of the May 1999 general election but made lit-
tle attempt to disrupt it, perhaps because they wished to build up their
strength after losses suffered the previous summer. By the end of the year
the police estimated that the Maoists had 5000–6000 full-time cadres with
another 8000 sympathisers supporting them. Three-quarters of Nepal’s
seventy-five districts had been infiltrated and twenty-one were ‘strongly
affected’.
16. The ruins of the police station at Rukumkot, which was overrun by insurgents
in April 2001.
from the bank. The money was far in excess of Dunai’s normal needs and
the Maoists had delayed their attack for three days until the plane bringing
the cash from Nepalganj in the Tarai had arrived, so there was suspicion of
collusion by bank or government employees. Controversy centred, how-
ever, on the local army garrison’s failure to come to intervene during the
fighting or to send reinforcements earlier. The home minister publicly
denounced the lack of co-operation but was subsequently compelled to
resign.
In parallel with continuing attempts at negotiation, army companies
were now deployed in all district headquarters, and Girija went ahead with
plans to set up the Armed Police Force mooted by Bhattarai the previous
year. Following attacks on two regular police posts at the beginning of April
2001 that killed seventy policemen, the government announced plans for
an Integrated Security and Development Programme, which would involve
the army taking responsibility both for law and order and for development
projects in selected districts. The plan was agreed by the king only with
some reluctance, and it was rejected by most of the opposition parties, while
the army chief made a speech suggesting they were ready to carry it out
Democracy and disillusionment 211
only if backed by a strong national consensus. Koirala was in the meantime
under considerable pressure from Deuba’s supporters within his own party,
while opposition parties had been boycotting parliament since February and
protesting in the streets to demand his resignation over alleged corruption
in the leasing of an aircraft from Lauda Air for the RNAC. Koirala was
on the verge of resignation in May when the central anti-corruption body,
the Commission for the Investigation of the Abuse of Authority (CIAA),
requested an explanation of his conduct, but he was persuaded by his inner
circle to hang on.
It was at this point that a bizarre tragedy put Nepal at the centre of
world attention for a few days. On the evening of 1 June, members of the
royal family assembled at the Tribhuvan Sadan, a small complex of build-
ings just inside the west gate of the Narayanhiti Palace, for their regular
monthly gathering. Towards 8.30 p.m. Crown Prince Dipendra, who had
been drinking whisky, appeared intoxicated and was helped to his room
by Paras, son of King Birendra’s brother Gyanendra, and other relatives.
Dipendra was there handed cigarettes laced with a ‘black substance’ (pos-
sibly cocaine), which he had instructed an orderly to bring before leaving
the hall. A few minutes later, two servants went to his room, after a close
friend, Devyani Rana, alarmed by his slurred speech on the telephone, had
alerted his aide-de-camp. They found Dipendra lying on the floor and
helped him to the bathroom, but he then ordered them to leave. At around
9 p.m., Dipendra reappeared in the hall wearing combat dress and carrying
an array of weapons including a sub-machine gun and an automatic rifle.
After shooting his father, he withdrew but returned twice to open fire again.
In the space of a couple of minutes he killed outright or fatally injured
King Birendra himself, the king’s daughter Shruti, brother Dhirendra,
sisters Shanti and Sharada, and niece Jayanti, as well as Sharada’s husband,
Kumar Khadga. Also hit, though not fatally, were Gyanendra’s wife Komal
Shah, Shruti’s husband, Gorakh Shamsher Rana, another of Birendra’s
nieces, Ketaki Chester, and his youngest sister, Princess Shoba. Paras Shah
was present in the hall throughout but escaped unhurt, having pleaded
with Dipendra not to shoot, and assisted some of the family to hide behind
a sofa.
When the shooting began the royal aides-de-camp had been in a room
adjacent to the main hall but the connecting door was locked. They moved
along the outer corridor towards the entrance which Dipendra was using
but fear of coming under fire themselves prevented them from entering by
that route. As they finally got the connecting door into the hall open and
began tending to the casualties, more shots were heard from the garden
212 A History of Nepal
17. King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya in 1990 with their children Princess Shruti,
Crown Prince Dipendra and Prince Nirajan (standing in front of them).
between the hall and Dipendra’s own quarters. The crown prince had
been followed out into the garden by his mother, Queen Aishwarya, and
his brother, Nirajan; he apparently shot both of them before turning a
handgun on himself. He was taken with the other victims to the Birendra
Military Hospital at Chauni, seven minutes drive to the west of the royal
palace.
Democracy and disillusionment 213
19. Naulo Bihani, a magazine sympathetic to the CPN (Maoist), makes political capital
out of the June 2001 palace massacre. Below a montage of the kings of the Shah dynasty
are shown three Maoist leaders, Prachanda, Krishna Bahadur Mahara and Baburam
Bhattarai. The caption reads: ‘After the palace massacre the end of traditional
monarchy in Nepal and the establishment of a republic – preparation of the central
people’s government’.
218 A History of Nepal
the army commander-in-chief. Troops were helicoptered in and were at first
reported to have surrounded the rebels and their captives but the result was
a stand-off, with the army commander on the spot apparently deciding
he would not be able to use force without the risk of heavy casualties.
The policemen were subsequently released by the rebels in batches but in
the meantime Girija Koirala submitted his resignation to the king and his
Congress rival, Sher Bahadur Deuba, took over.
The Maoists had backed away from peace talks earlier in the year partly
because they wished to see if the campaign to remove Koirala, always a par-
ticularly resolute foe of the left, would succeed. They responded positively
to Deuba’s declaration of a ceasefire and three rounds of talks were held
between August and November. During his time there were no major clashes
between rebels and security forces, but arrests continued and the extortion
of money by the Maoists if anything increased, as they now had easier access
to urban areas. Although they backed down from earlier insistence on an
immediate end to the monarchy, they were still demanding a constituent
assembly, and when the government ruled this out Prachanda announced
withdrawal from the negotiations. Two days later, on 23 November, the
Maoists broke the ceasefire with attacks that for the first time targeted the
army as well as the police. In a successful attack in Dang in the western Tarai,
they killed over a dozen soldiers and seized a large quantity of weapons.
They also announced the setting-up of the ‘United Revolutionary People’s
Council of Nepal’ under Baburam Bhattarai. In response, the government
declared a nationwide state of emergency and the army was at last fully
deployed against the rebellion.
The next fourteen months proved militarily indecisive. The combined
strength of the army, regular police and expanding Armed Police Force was
over 100,000 as against an estimated force of 5000–10,000 trained guer-
rillas. The rebels also had the support of a large ‘militia’, and the security
forces had to commit a large proportion of their strength to the defence
of fixed positions. Army operations inflicted a large number of casualties
but it was unclear how many of these were actual Maoist fighters, how
many supporters and how many innocent civilians. By concentrating their
forces, the rebels were sometimes able to overrun government positions,
as happened at Mangalsen, district headquarters of Acham district in the
far western hills in February 2002 and at Sandhikharka, headquarters of
Arghakhanchi south-west of Pokhara, the following September. Over 200
army and police personnel died in the two raids. The Maoists accompanied
these set-piece attacks with sabotage of the country’s infrastructure, includ-
ing telecommunications installations, local government buildings and
Democracy and disillusionment 219
hydro-electric plants. The Maoist top leadership, some of whom were
believed to have been at least some of the time in Kathmandu over the past
five years, now appeared to be in hiding across the open border in India,
where the rebels also sought treatment for their injured. But although the
Maoists remained the most influential force at village level over much of
the country, there seemed no prospect of their being able to take and hold
for longer than a few hours even small towns, let alone Kathmandu itself.
Politically, despite disquiet over the security forces’ tendency to shoot first
and ask questions afterwards, the rebels’ action in provoking an extended
conflict at first kept parliament largely behind the government. When the
state of emergency required ratification in February 2002, a few days after
the Mangalsen attack, UML as well as Congress, NDP and Sadbhavana
MPs voted in favour. Opposition came only from the minor Communist
parties – including the National People’s Front (the parliamentary vehicle
for Mohan Bikram Singh’s Masal Party), the United People’s Front and the
Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, which between them had just seven
seats in parliament. From February onwards, however, both the UML and
those within Congress opposed to Deuba became increasingly unhappy
with the continuance of the emergency, which allowed the army to operate
independently of control by the civilian chief district officers. For its part,
the army felt it was not getting adequate co-operation from the political
parties; ill-feeling was exacerbated by reports (later confirmed) that Koirala
and another Congress leader had met the Maoist leader Prachanda in Delhi
in March 2002. When the state of emergency came up for renewal again
in May, the party organisation ordered Deuba to let it lapse. However, he
responded by requesting and obtaining a dissolution of parliament and the
holding of elections in November. The emergency was then reimposed by
executive ordinance and Congress formally split. When the Election Com-
mission provisionally ruled that Koirala’s group was the legal continuation
of the original party, Deuba’s faction adopted the name Nepali Congress
(Democratic).
Deuba’s reason for insisting on the emergency was unclear since parlia-
ment had already in April 2002 passed a robust Special Powers Act. Possibly
he was under pressure from both the palace and the army to ensure the
latter’s continuing insulation from day-to-day control by civilian officials.
However, the dissolution was probably not merely to remove the prospect
of the emergency being voted down. Deuba seemed to have been afraid
that Koirala and UML leader Nepal were planning to combine against
him. In addition, both men had already been discussing amendments to
the constitution and Deuba was concerned that the prospect of an attempt
220 A History of Nepal
20. Masked Maoist fighters posing for the camera. The female fighter in front is wearing
a scarf emblazoned with the names (and images of ) ‘Jack’ and ‘Rose’, a rather
unrevolutionary reference to the film Titanic.
Democracy and disillusionment 221
to reduce royal powers might provoke the king himself into a pre-emptive
takeover.
The feasibility of November polls was always in doubt and, after the suc-
cessful Maoist attack on Sandhikharka in September, Deuba secured the
main political parties’ agreement to their postponement. Constitutionally,
the election had to be held within six months of a dissolution, but Article
127 of the 1990 constitution authorised the king ‘to remove difficulties’
in its operation. At the beginning of October, Deuba accordingly asked
Gyanendra to put the elections back a year to November 2003 and allow
his caretaker administration to remain in power until then. Gyanendra
responded by dismissing Deuba for failure to hold elections as originally
planned, and announced that he was temporarily taking full executive pow-
ers himself. He asked the political parties for nominations for a caretaker
government but, when they could not agree on a common recommenda-
tion, turned instead to Lokendra Bahadur Chand, the trusted royal servant
who had been prime minister twice under the Panchayat system and also
in 1997. In all this, Gyanendra maintained that he was acting in accordance
with Article 127 and that the constitution was still fully operational. In
effect, however, power had returned to the royal palace, where it had lain
between 1951 and 1990, apart from the interlude of B. P. Koirala’s 1959–60
government. The move seemed initially to be welcomed by many ordinary
Nepalese, mainly because of widespread disgust with the party politicians.
For the longer term, however, polarising the country between royalists
and Maoists was a dangerous step both for Nepal and for the monarchy
itself.
Informal contacts between the royal regime and the rebels led to a second
ceasefire in January 2003, brokered by Narayan Singh Pun, a government
minister, who, like the rebels’ military commander, Ram Bahadur Thapa,
was a Magar. Small-scale violations of the ceasefire by both sides neverthe-
less continued, and the atmosphere was soured when the Maoists claimed
in May that the government had reneged on a commitment to restrict the
army to a five-kilometre radius from its bases. The rebels finally withdrew
once again from the peace process shortly after the army’s apparent execu-
tion of nineteen of their cadres arrested in eastern Nepal. The real reason
for the breakdown was, however, the Maoists’ continuing insistence on a
constituent assembly and the government’s unwillingness to concede this.
After renouncing the ceasefire in August, the rebels appeared for a time
either unwilling or unable to repeat their earlier large-scale attacks on
government positions. Although two such assaults did occur in March
2004, targeted killings and ambushes were now the favoured tactic, a trend
222 A History of Nepal
already indicated by the assassination in Kathmandu of the chief of the
Armed Police Force together with his wife and bodyguard just before the
January ceasefire had been agreed. By the end of 2003, the conflict had
resulted in around 10,000 deaths, the bulk of them since the rebels first
attacked the army in October 2001, while at least 100,000 people had fled
their homes. The government was proposing to set up a network of ‘village
defence forces’ to counter the Maoists at grassroots level, a step which in
other countries had proved effective against insurgencies, but which also
greatly increased the danger to the civilian population.
In the meantime, the political parties, except for the National Demo-
cratic Party and some smaller factions such as Sadbhavana, were effectively
sidelined. Even before the royal takeover, Deuba had effectively ended local
democracy by refusing to extend the tenure of existing local bodies, which
were mostly controlled by the UML. He transferred their powers to civil
servants rather than prolonging their life when it was decided that local
elections, due in summer 2002, could not be held as scheduled. The crisis
did, though, bring some increase in co-operation between parties. Bamdev
Gautam and his followers returned to the UML in January 2002, and in
July the United People’s Front and the National People’s Front merged to
form the People’s Front. Both these factions, like the Maoists, derived from
Mohan Bikram Singh’s old Fourth Convention and Singh himself was now
once again their accepted leader.
In May 2003, the People’s Front, the Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party
and one faction of Sadbhavana joined the two main parties, Congress and
the UML, in a campaign of protest against the royal takeover, demand-
ing the formation of a multi-party government or the restoration of the
dissolved 1999 parliament. Just as in 1990, Lokendra Bahadur Chand tried
unsuccessfully to entice the parties into an expanded government under his
leadership. He resigned at the end of May and his place was taken by the
other key figure in the National Democratic Party, Surya Bahadur Thapa.
The five parties had jointly proposed the UML leader, Madhav Kumar
Nepal, as leader of a multi-party administration, but the king rejected this,
ostensibly on the grounds that the NDP and Deuba’s Nepali Congress
(Democratic) had not also approved the choice. Sources close to the palace
also suggested that M. K. Nepal would have been unacceptable to one or
more foreign powers, or that his cadres were too sympathetic to the Maoists,
but the king’s wish to keep the reins of power firmly in his own hands was
probably the major consideration. Whatever rationales were produced, the
fact remained that Koirala’s Congress Party had the support of around half
of the former Congress MPs and almost certainly a majority of Congress
activists. He and M. K. Nepal thus between them clearly represented a
Democracy and disillusionment 223
majority of the parliamentary forces and so, by rejecting their proposal,
Gyanendra showed a determination to rely on the monarchy’s own tradi-
tional support base rather than forge a broad consensus to confront the
crisis.
The international ramifications of the conflict were complex. The initial
Maoist attack on the army in November 2001 came only a few weeks after
the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York. This timing,
in addition to the Maoists’ declared ideology, would have ensured full US
backing for the government in Kathmandu, even if Deuba’s administration
had not also formally declared the rebels ‘terrorists’ – a label which was
removed during the ceasefire in 2003 but then re-imposed. The Maoists
responded by branding the Nepalese government an American puppet
and trying to exploit tensions between the United States and other major
powers as they had long exploited tensions between the palace and the
political parties. They ceased their denunciations of ‘Indian hegemonism’
and claimed instead that American logistical and diplomatic support for
the government, which continued after Deuba’s dismissal, threatened the
interests of both India and China.
India’s own attitude was not entirely clear. Particularly in view of the
links between the Nepalese Maoists and similar groups in India itself, the
Indian government regarded the rebellion as a security threat and had in
fact started describing the Maoists as ‘terrorists’ even before the Deuba
administration did so. In addition, despite all the publicity over American
arms aid to Kathmandu, India was still supplying the Nepalese army with
the bulk of its equipment. Nevertheless, many in Nepal pointed to the use
of Indian territory by the rebels, and to meetings between Maoist leaders
and Nepalese politicians at Siliguri in West Bengal in August 2001 and in
spring 2002, several months after the ceasefire had broken down. To some
extent, such meetings reflected a lack of capacity on the part of India, rather
than deliberate decision, since areas where Maoists chiefly took refuge were
often ones where law and order had long been a problem for the Indian
government. As the fighting continued, India seemed to be making greater
efforts to tighten security near the border. However, some in the Indian
establishment did appear to see direct American aid to Kathmandu as a
threat to its own regional dominance. Perhaps also some hoped to make
the price of full support for the Nepalese government compliance with
India’s wishes on other matters. This had been the tactic India adopted
in 1990 when it pressed the beleaguered Panchayat regime to acknowledge
Nepal’s inclusion in India’s security sphere (see p. 115).
Attitudes varied among Nepal’s other main aid donors. China expressed
support for the government and condemned the Maoists’ use of Chairman
224 A History of Nepal
Mao’s name, but, as had generally been the case since the 1960s, did not
want to play a major role. Most European countries were more worried
than the United States about the human rights abuses committed by the
security forces, and although a major sale of Belgian small arms to the
Nepalese army did go through in 2002, it caused a political crisis within
the Belgian government. The British government’s line was somewhere
between that of the United States and that of most mainland European
countries, providing some assistance to the Nepalese army but stressing the
human rights aspect more than their American allies.
Despite their differences of emphasis, no government wanted a Maoist
victory. Success for the armed rebellion in Nepal might result in instability
that could affect both India and China and would also encourage radical
groups in other countries across the world with similar problems to Nepal
to follow the Maoists’ example. Foreign governments generally also wanted
a negotiated settlement rather than a fight to the finish but a negotiated
settlement would naturally reflect the relative strength of the two sides and
would be difficult to achieve as long as both sides felt that continuing the
conflict would increase their bargaining power. Both the government and
the rebels also understood that many Nepalese, wanting peace and security
rather than any particular political outcome, would be likely to give their
support to whichever side appeared to be winning.
The constituent assembly issue, on which peace talks twice foundered,
was so crucial precisely because it was symbolic of victory or defeat. Simply
because the Maoists had been demanding it for so long, securing it would
be a signal to the country that they were now truly setting the agenda. For
that same reason, the two major parties had been unhappy with the idea
and wished to preserve the constitutional order achieved through the 1990
‘People’s Movement’ that they themselves had headed.16 It was only after
the October 2002 royal takeover that significant numbers of people within
the UML and Congress warmed to the constituent assembly proposal, and
even at the end of 2003 the dominant sentiment in the two parties still
remained opposed. On similar logic, Gyanendra was unlikely to agree to
the proposal unless the monarchy’s position were guaranteed in advance, as
the Maoists made no secret that their aim was to use a constituent assembly
to achieve a republic.
Even if some compromise formula, such as an expanded version of the
1990 Constitution Drafting Commission, proved acceptable, agreement
on the composition of an interim government and on the future of the
Maoists’ guerrilla force would be another stumbling block. While coy about
the exact arrangements they envisaged, the Maoists expected a controlling
Democracy and disillusionment 225
say, if not actually the formal leadership of an interim government, and
also hoped to dominate the round-table conference of political forces they
were also calling for. Perhaps most crucially, they wanted either a merger
of their forces with the Royal Nepal Army or the replacement of both
with some new form of ‘People’s Militia’. None of this was likely to be
acceptable either to the monarchy and the major political parties, or to the
army. At the beginning of 2004 there seemed in consequence to be two
most likely scenarios. The government’s position would slowly strengthen
through continued American and Indian support, and perhaps also by
some kind of accommodation between the palace and the main parties.
Constitutional amendments would be discussed with the rebels, resulting
in their re-entering the political process without total loss of face but clearly
not as victors in a civil war. The alternative would be for the conflict
to continue indefinitely, with the rebels still controlling some areas, the
government holding major centres, and much of the country in the grip
of warlords or gang leaders nominally aligned with one side or another but
in effect running independent fiefdoms. The question would then be how
long foreign powers, in particular India, could live with such a situation.
th e fu tu re of ne pal e se socie t y
Destructive as the ‘People’s War’ had been, it should not be allowed to
obscure the many other trends operating in Nepal after 1990. Even after
the escalation of the violence in 2001, the chance of any one individual
being killed or injured is still considerably lower than in many other parts
of the world. Before then, opinion polls showed that the average Nepalese
thought the problems of unemployment and corruption, not civil war, were
the most urgent ones facing the country.
To a large extent, Nepalese society has continued to develop on lines
already laid down before 1990. The gulf between town and village remains
wide and Kathmandu’s special position was highlighted by a December 1998
World Bank report: ‘Urban Kathmandu Valley and the rest of Nepal, in
effect, are two separate and unequal countries . . . In one, around the capital,
where around 5 per cent of the population live, the incidence of poverty is
around 4 per cent and illiteracy is 24 per cent; in the rest of the country,
poverty is ten times as high and the chance of being literate almost three
times lower.’17 As the ‘People’s War’ intensified, Maoist extortion became a
problem even in Kathmandu and arrests of journalists and political activists
more frequent, but the concentration of security forces in the Valley has
ensured that it has not become a battleground as might villages or small
226 A History of Nepal
towns elsewhere in the country. Apart from military checkpoints along
the ring-road, and clusters of soldiers at some strategic intersections in the
city, the average visitor to Kathmandu still sees little sign of the national
emergency, unless their visit happens to coincide with one of the bandhs or
shutdowns called by the Maoists.
The range of goods and services on offer in Nepal’s cities continues
to expand rapidly. Innovations such as the Internet and mobile phones,
as well as further growth in the electronic media, have naturally affected
Kathmandu and other major centres more strongly, but the spread of elec-
trification and of the road network has made them available to some in the
more prosperous villages. The same can be said of the continuing growth
in print and electronic media. The establishment of private sector national
dailies, in particular Kantipur and its English-language sister publication,
the Kathmandu Post, together with the arrival of private FM radio and
TV channels, have ended the public sector’s former dominance of the
mass media. Newspapers of any sort are still slow to reach outlying areas,
but many of these are now served by a vigorous and growing regional
press.
While media developments have largely been positive, problems remain.
Governments since 1990 have sought to influence the private press; after
the declaration of emergency in 2001 actions against journalists and pub-
lications with real or supposed connections to the Maoists have escalated.
It is likely that the situation would be even worse if the authorities did not
have to worry about the effect on international opinion. While the most
influential daily publications are not directly tied to specific parties, weekly
publications often do toe a party line and, as before, remain ‘viewspa-
pers’. As in other countries, the battle for circulation produces journalistic
excesses. The most notorious instance so far was the publication in 2002
of a photograph of a well-known film-star, taken without her consent and
showing her semi-naked. Caught between the seedy realities of the film
industry and the expectations of a still relatively conservative society, the
actress shortly afterwards committed suicide.
Changing standards are also reflected in the increase in substance abuse
among young people. The use of ganja (cannabis) has been widespread in
Nepal for many centuries and the sale of the drug was in fact legal until
banned under US pressure in 1973, but there is now growing use of heroin
and also, as dramatically highlighted by the palace massacre, of cocaine.
The growing consumption of alcohol has also sparked concern. There is a
long-established tradition among the ‘tribal’ groups of drinking rice- and
millet-based beer and spirits, as the old name for these groups – Matwalis
Democracy and disillusionment 227
(i.e. alcohol-drinkers) – attests. However, since 1990 the production of
Western-style alcoholic drinks has boomed, and brewing and distilling
now account for around 3 per cent of GDP. This trend has been opposed
by a range of groups, including the Maoists, who see it both as a source
of social problems but also as convenient issue for winning support from
a wider prohibitionist lobby. In 2001 they attacked a number of brew-
eries, and a women’s organisation affiliated to them got the government to
agree to restrictions on the industry (so far not implemented). In future, if
calls for greater decentralisation are heeded, regulation of the commercial
production and sale of alcohol may be left to local decisions, as already
happens in many countries. However, the underlying problems of alien-
ation and disorientation, evidenced in recent years by a growing problem
of suicide among young people, will remain.
Particularly important in the towns has been the continuing expansion
of private, English-medium education, which by 2000 was catering for
around 20 per cent of the children in secondary schools across the country.
The School Leaving Certificate pass rate for such schools averages around
80 per cent, compared with 30–40 per cent in the government institutions.
The state-run schools were never particularly good, but politicisation after
1990 has eroded discipline and commitment among the teaching staff even
further. Although there certainly are some dedicated professionals among
them, teachers are often appointed because of their political connections
and often concerned principally with politics. The two-tier system of edu-
cation is, as has already been seen, a particular target of the Maoists, but
has also been criticised by others who think that the private schools’ cur-
riculum is too closely modelled on Indian practice. However, any future
restrictions on such schools in the interests of equality will penalise the
middle class rather than the wealthy, since the latter will still be able to
send their children to elite schools in India. The priority should obviously
be on upgrading standards in public schools. The Norwegian-funded Basic
Education Project, begun in 1991, has been a step in this direction, but real
improvement will require the management problem in these schools to be
addressed. Very recently, there have been signs of this starting to happen;
both donors and government now do seem aware of the need to rebuild
links between schools and communities broken when the NESP was set up
in the 1970s.
A kind of de facto privatisation has also been under way in the man-
agement of development assistance, with foreign donors, and especially
international NGOs, often opting to work directly with Nepalese NGOs.
By 1997 these were believed to be between 20,000 and 30,000 in number
228 A History of Nepal
and the same year they received around $150 million from abroad, com-
pared with an official aid total of around $390 million.18 Cynicism about
the motives and effectiveness of those involved is widespread among mem-
bers of the intelligentsia not actually working for them, and fears are also
expressed that the state’s capacity to co-ordinate and direct development
activities is being undermined. At least some of the NGOs have, however,
been making valuable contributions, for example in raising literacy levels
among the western Tharus, and at village level they are providing opportu-
nities to local people for upward social mobility. Critics are right to point
out that a network of such organisations cannot be a substitute for effective
government institutions but in many cases they are an improvement on
what the government’s own system can offer at the moment.
Foreign assistance through whatever channel continues to be of great
importance. During the 1990s Japan and then the Nordic countries were
the leading individual donors, with the World Bank the most important
of the multilateral agencies. The current crisis has increased the interest of
the major powers, particularly that of the United States, but also placed a
question mark over many programmes. Apart from the threat to the safety
of foreign personnel, the suspension of the democratic process and abuses
by the security forces have led some countries to suggest they may have to
curtail their activities. Yet, whoever provides assistance, Nepal’s dependence
on it is likely to continue for many years. In 2000–1, it was still providing
around one-third of the government’s total budget.
The number migrating within the country or crossing into India has
continued to grow, though it is hard to say how many of those crossing
the border in recent years have done so to escape the fighting and how
many for purely economic reasons. In contrast to the open access to India,
overseas employment normally requires prior payment of huge brokers’ fees
and is thus usually an option only for those already relatively well off. The
number of Nepalese living outside South Asia (both legally and illegally) is
nevertheless very large: in 2003 an unofficial estimate put it at 1.2 million
in forty countries, including over 422,000 in the Middle East, 125,000 in
Malaysia and 80,000 in Korea.19
The economic importance of remittances from those working abroad
also continued to rise. According to official figures, these had reached US
$240 million (4.4 per cent of GDP) a year by 2003, but money is mostly
sent back by unofficial channels, and the true total is probably at least
three times as large.20 Opinions differ on whether dependence on this scale
is healthy, but this may be attributing too much importance to national
borders in an age of globalisation. The state of Kerala in southern India,
which has achieved relatively high levels of education and health care, is
Democracy and disillusionment 229
also highly dependent on money sent back from those working outside the
state. Should Nepal have to find jobs for all of its citizens within its borders
simply because, unlike Kerala, it is a sovereign country?
While most Nepalese abroad are, by host society standards, in low-paid
employment, some have done well by any measure. Kantipur Television,
a commercial station which began operating in the Kathmandu Valley
in summer 2003, was set up with 500 million rupees (US $6.7 million)
capital provided by three Russia-based Nepalese expatriates. Taking its cue
from the Indian government’s wooing of affluent ‘non-resident Indians’,
the Nepalese government hosted a conference for ‘non-resident Nepalese’
in Kathmandu later the same year. Some Kathmandu intellectuals were
offended by the NRNs demand to retain their foreign passports while
also being freed from the restriction on foreign ownership of businesses
in Nepal, but the conference was a sign of the growing importance of the
Nepali diaspora.
One very old link between Nepal and the outside world has, how-
ever, weakened with the rundown of Britain’s Brigade of Gurkhas. Apart
from a battalion on permanent loan to the Sultan of Brunei, the few
Nepalese soldiers retained in the British army after Britain’s withdrawal
from Hong Kong in 1997 are now based in the UK itself. Nevertheless, there
are still around 20,000 ex-servicemen in Nepal drawing British pensions.
Shortly after the janandolan, the newly formed Gorkha Ex-Servicemen’s
Association21 began to campaign for these pensions to be made equal to
those received by native British soldiers. By agreement with India, Britain
originally paid its own Nepalese soldiers at the same level as Indian Gorkha
soldiers. After British Gurkhas were deployed in areas where the cost of
living was much higher than in South Asia, special allowances were intro-
duced bringing daily salaries into line with their British counterparts, but
pensions are still based on the old pay rates. Court cases brought against
the British government by GAESO and individual ex-Gurkhas have usually
been unsuccessful, but the whole campaign signalled a change in attitude
towards Gurkha recruitment by the Communist parties with which many
in GAESO are associated. Having earlier simply demanded an end to the
whole arrangement, they now still argue for some restrictions on the ways
in which Gurkha troops are used but seem ready to accept its continu-
ance on the right terms. In October 2003 a similar pragmatic attitude was
displayed (at least for public purposes) even by a Maoist ‘area comman-
der’. While briefly detaining a British officer on tour at Baglung in the
mid-western hills, he chose to lecture him not on the evils of imperialism
but on the importance of recruitment being open equally to all castes and
ethnic groups.
230 A History of Nepal
Even for Nepalese who remain throughout their lives in their native
land, economic links with other countries are of crucial importance. An
agreement in 1991 reduced to 60 per cent the proportion of ‘Nepalese
content’ required for duty-free entrance into the Indian market; the 1996
agreement relaxed the restrictions further. Under pressure from its own
industries, India nevertheless periodically finds pretexts for restricting
imports of particular Nepalese exports, while in any case Nepalese enter-
prises find it difficult to compete with well-established Indian firms even
in Nepal’s own domestic market. If the plans for the establishment of free
trade between the SAARC countries by 2006 are implemented, Indian
dominance is likely to increase even further unless special arrangements are
negotiated.
During the 1990s, the proportion of Nepal’s trade with countries other
than India stabilised at around 70 per cent. As before 1990, the ready-made
garment and carpet industries remain the most important manufactured
items exported. A decline in the mid-1990s, partly fuelled by concerns over
child labour and pollution, was followed by a partial recovery and in 2000
around 150,000 were directly employed in the industries. However, these
industries are overwhelmingly dependent on the American and German
markets and maintaining sales in the United States will be difficult after
the ending of the multi-fibre agreement in 2004 removes Nepal’s guaranteed
quotas. Even if the industries manage to maintain their current position,
there is little prospect of Nepalese industry supplying jobs for more than
a small proportion of Nepal’s growing population, and those who do not
choose temporary or permanent migration will still have to depend on
agriculture for their living.
The Agricultural Perspective Plan, the centrepiece of current government
policy, aims to boost agricultural productivity on similar lines as before,
through the intensification of research and of extension services introducing
new techniques to farmers. There is a special emphasis on temperate crops,
especially fruit and vegetables, for which the Nepalese hills are naturally
suited and which could, if collected and transported in time, find a ready
market in northern India. There has in fact already been progress in this
direction in the eastern hills (see ch. 5), though this has been jeopardised
as the effects of the ‘People’s War’ spread. A principal long-term objective,
as in the regional planning approach of the 1970s, is to encourage the
development of a network of small towns, dependent on the marketing
and processing of agricultural produce but better able than the villages to
provide both jobs and services for their inhabitants.
Debate continues over how far this growth-orientated approach should
be supplemented by direct action to help the poor. One concrete reform
Democracy and disillusionment 231
measure, following a long campaign by activists from political parties and
NGOs as well as political parties, was the freeing by Girija Koirala’s gov-
ernment in July 2000 of the kamaiyas. Often ethnic Tharus, they or their
ancestors had become bonded labourers after failing to pay off debts to
wealthier neighbours. Their emancipation was an important milestone,
and proof that change could be achieved by non-violent methods, but
they are still left with the problem of earning a living now that their for-
mer masters are no longer responsible for feeding and sheltering them.
A programme to distribute land to them has been launched but many
remained squatters on cleared forest land, without acknowledged ownership
rights.
A wider land reform still remains to be put into practice. Sher Bahadur
Deuba’s 2001–2 government put through parliament a bill reducing the
ceilings on land ownership from 17 to 7 hectares in the Tarai and from 4.2
to 2.75 in the hills. The measure was opposed by a minority in Congress
as too radical but rejected as inadequate by the UML, whose own inquiry
into the problem six years previously had recommended an across-the-
board 3-hectare ceiling. Applied nationwide, this lower ceiling would release
304,000 hectares for acquisition and redistribution.22 Commercial opera-
tion of such small holdings would be impossible without adequate provision
of credit and fertiliser, and also the exchange of plots on a large scale to
consolidate scattered holdings. Implementing such a scheme would require
a very high administrative efficiency, especially since, as in the past, fam-
ilies would probably try to avoid giving up land by registering it in the
name of relatives or dependents. An alternative approach would be to leave
land holdings much as they are and encourage organisation among landless
labourers to ensure they get higher share of returns from agriculture. Some
form of redistribution is virtually certain, whatever the outcome of the
‘People’s War’, since landowners’ influence in their own locality has been
reduced by ‘outsiders’, whether Maoists or soldiers. In some areas, however,
the conflict itself has left local elites with some bargaining power. In the
western Tarai, the Maoists were reported to have given up attempts to force
landlords to take only a third of tenants’ crops, since insisting on this would
make the former more likely to collaborate with the army.23 In any case,
without a dramatic increase in productivity, even a radical redistribution of
resources will provide only a temporary respite. Without such an increase,
the long-term solution can only be accelerated migration from the hills
towards the Tarai, where allowing the clearing of remaining forest could
still release substantial new land for settlement.
Another question for agriculture in Nepal, as in the developing countries
generally, is setting the balance between specialisation in cash crops in which
232 A History of Nepal
the country has a comparative advantage and the encouragement of food
self-sufficiency at national or local level. The first strategy offers a chance
of higher immediate returns, but many environmentalists argue that it may
jeopardise food security if a collapse in export earnings should occur. It is
doubtful, however, that any extreme form of autarky would be feasible, and
part of the solution must involve some degree of specialisation.
The problem of resources and their distribution is also bound up with
the continuing ferment over the religious and ethnic issues which generated
so much heat during the drafting of the 1990 constitution. The principle of
‘reservations’ – quotas for disadvantaged groups – in public employment has
now been conceded by all the major parties and, as in India, is likely to play
a major part, for good or ill, in Nepal’s future politics. In contrast, attempts
by local authorities in the Kathmandu Valley and in the east-central Tarai
to make their working languages Newar and Maithili respectively were
ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1998. Activists’ demands
for education, at least at the primary school level, to be provided in the
mother tongue have also not been met, although a government-appointed
commission in 1993 recommended this, and there have been some exper-
iments such as a Japanese-funded school in Kathmandu using Newar as
the medium of instruction and also some use of Limbu in the eastern
hills. The generally slow rate of progress increased resentment at the gov-
ernment’s 1993 decision (recently reversed) to make Sanskrit, particularly
associated with Brahmans, a compulsory school subject. Languages other
than Nepali have, however, been granted greater recognition and the sev-
enteen most widely spoken among them are now regularly heard on the
radio.24 This has helped spread an interest in the language issue beyond the
core of committed activists; one campaigner suggested this actually helped
Indian Maithils secure the inclusion of Maithili at the end of 2003 in the list
of principal languages in the Indian constitution. A greater role for at least
some of Nepal’s languages is likely in future, and would be in line with the
trend seen in Western Europe to reinforce the status of languages such as
Catalan or Welsh. However, the global trend is still towards the elimination
of smaller languages, and this is also true in China, despite the theoretical
commitment to ethnic minority rights that was a feature of the Chinese
Communist Party’s propaganda before they gained power.
The most radical ethnic demand, endorsed by far left groups includ-
ing the Maoists, is for different ethnic groups to be granted autonomy on
their own territory. At the end of 2003, the Maoists did actually declare
an autonomous Magar region centred on their stronghold of Liwang in
Rolpa, and this was followed by similar moves for other regions in early
Democracy and disillusionment 233
2004. How far this was merely a propaganda move is uncertain, but in any
case any comprehensive plan for ethnic autonomy would involve enormous
difficulties, because in most districts no single caste or ethnic group consti-
tutes more than half the population (see map 3, p. 100). The only practical
solution would be a cantonal system, devolving greater power to villages
dominated by one particular group. Since there is agreement across the
political spectrum on the need for greater decentralisation once the present
crisis is over, this may be the route finally taken. It will be supplemented
by some form of guaranteed representation at the centre, most probably by
converting the Upper House of parliament into a ‘House of Nationalities’
as has long been advocated by many ethnic activists.
The demand for Nepal to be declared a secular rather than a Hindu state
is at heart an ethnic/caste issue since Hinduism for many symbolises the
perceived domination of the high-caste Parbatiyas. After 1990 the propor-
tion of these groups in the legislature, particularly the figure for Brahmans,
actually increased, as did the proportion of Brahmans in the senior ranks of
the civil service. This is matched by the entrenched position of Brahmans
in the hierarchies of the political parties, which in turn reflected the high
proportion of Brahmans among the college students from whom political
activists were largely recruited. This is likely, however, to be only a tem-
porary blip as the lower castes become increasingly assertive. The trend is
a general one across South Asia, beginning before the Second World War
with the anti-Brahman movement in South India and felt increasingly in
recent years across the areas of North India bordering on Nepal. There was
never any possibility that Nepal could remain unaffected by this general
movement, and Marxist ideology, seen in its most virulent form in the
Maoist movement, is now hastening the end of Hinduism’s hierarchical
value system.
Less dramatically, Hinduism and other indigenous beliefs are also being
undermined by the spread of Christianity. It is possible that in some cases
the expansion of one new ideology may be aiding another: one scholar
has suggested that clandestine missionary work among the Chepangs may
have made them more receptive to Marxist ideas later on.25 The 2001
census showed a threefold increase in the number of Nepalese Christians
from around 30,000 (in 1991) to 100,000. However, both disgruntled Hin-
dus in organisations such as the Hindu Vishwa Parishad and Christians
themselves suggest that the latter figure is an underestimate; in any case in
certain areas, including some of the ‘Tamang belt’ north of the Kathmandu
Valley, a significant proportion of the population has converted. The pro-
cess has already led to tension in some villages, though not on the scale of
234 A History of Nepal
the Hindu/Muslim disturbances that occasionally occur in the Tarai. The
majority of Nepalese are still content to accept the ‘Hindu’ label, but claims
from other groups will become increasingly strident and Hinduism itself
will have to change fundamentally.
Beyond the immediate issues of Maoist rebellion and ethnic discontents,
Nepalese society has to find some way of taming the no-holds-barred strug-
gle for supremacy that operates across the political spectrum and in virtually
every institution. This has been displayed in the corruption and instability
under the parliamentary system, in the Maoists’ own decision to launch
their ‘People’s War’ and in many of the actions of the security forces in
response to it. There is, of course, no way to guarantee that civil servants
will never be improperly influenced by their personal political allegiance or
that policemen will see themselves as upholding the law rather than acting
as enforcers for particular politicians or local strongmen. However, some
way must be found to reduce the present very high levels of politicisation
and also to make resource distribution itself dependent on rules, or even on
random selection, rather than on the whims of individuals. Constitutional
change might go some of the way to achieving this, but the key problem
remains not so much the inadequacy of existing rules as a general failure to
abide by them and a lack of trust in any institutions that may be set up to
enforce them.
Achieving a less personalised and more rule-bound system depends in
the long run on increasing the numbers of people who are ready to take
an interest in public affairs without requiring an immediate return for
themselves. Paradoxically, however, it may depend in the short term on the
leadership provided by personalities at the top. Despite the grave weaken-
ing of the institution’s prestige by the events of 2001, there could still be an
important role here for the monarchy, but the king would need to broker
agreement among the politicians rather than use their divisions to retain
political power in his own hands. Without the monarchy, the burden would
be entirely on the shoulders of whatever new political leadership emerged.
There would, however, be the grave danger of a Nepalese republic devel-
oping on Pakistani lines, with an unstable balance of power between the
army, the political parties and (in place of Islamic militants) the Maoists or
whatever new extremist group emerges in future.
The role of the gun in Nepalese politics has become increasingly impor-
tant both because of the Maoists opting for armed revolt and because of
the army’s increased influence as it takes the lead in countering them.
The Maoists’ proposal to merge their own guerrilla force with the army
will probably not be accepted, but, were it to go ahead, Nepal might find
Democracy and disillusionment 235
itself saddled with a very large standing army. This would be a continuing
drain on resources and also under continuing temptation to intervene in
politics. Demobilisation and reintegration into civilian life, though also ini-
tially expensive, would be a preferable solution. Alongside this, if it proved
politically feasible, consideration might be given again to an old proposal
for Nepalese to serve as soldiers in a standing United Nations force.
The search for a solution to these and other deep-seated problems in inex-
tricably bound up with the world beyond the country’s borders. Outside
influences have always been important in Nepal, even when its policy was
avowedly one of self-isolation. Unless the Nepalese themselves now find
better ways of settling their own differences, control over their affairs will
slip even further into foreign hands, despite the continuing strength of
nationalist feeling within the country. Nepal’s emergence into the post-
colonial world as an independent state was not preordained but the result
of a chain of historical accidents. These included both the emergence of
a leader of the calibre of Prithvi Narayan Shah at a crucial point in the
eighteenth century and also his successors’ ability in the following century
to adapt sufficiently to the realities of British dominance in South Asia.
The country is bound particularly closely to the rest of the region, and
particularly to the areas of India that lie, like Nepal itself, east of the line
between Delhi and Cape Comorin. The problems of poverty, casteism and
corruption found throughout South Asia are here particularly acute: Bihar,
for example, if it were not part of India, would be as close as Nepal itself
to inclusion on a UN list of failed states. It is questionable whether Nepal
can make substantial economic progress without significant development
in these adjoining areas. It is even more certain that the political influence
of India on Nepal will remain crucial. Throughout Nepal’s history, there
has been a tendency to beat the anti-Indian drum when in opposition but
to seek a closer relationship when in power. This can be seen to some extent
in the behaviour of different court factions in the late eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries, in party politics since 1951 and also even the Maoists’
abandonment of their anti-Indian rhetoric when they decided to take on
the Nepalese army in 2001. Despite the statements sometimes made by
political mavericks, few Indian politicians are eager to resume full responsi-
bility for Nepal’s problems, and the country’s formal independence is likely
to continue. However, the strength of the reality behind that formal façade
remains to be determined.
Index
Note: Readers seeking information about particular individuals or events should also consult the
‘Key events’ (pp. x–xviii) and ‘Biographical notes’ (pp. 238–51) sections. The index also omits names
of ethnic groups or castes which appear only in table 1.1 (pp. 9–10).
283
284 Index
Basarh, 18 Maithil, 187
‘Basic Needs’ programme, 127–8 in Newar society, 31
Basque language, 11 as Parbatiya caste, 31, 50, 55, 57, 58, 59, 80, 83
BBC, 113, 173, 213 in politics, 94, 177
Beg, Mirja Dil Sad, 202 Brahmaputra, 6, 13
Belgium, 224 Brigade of Gurkhas, see Gurkhas
Benares, 40, 46, 50, 55, 68, 69, 82, 168 Britain, 8, 44, 160
Bengal, 21, 29, 37, 40, 46, 79 post-1947 relations with Nepal, 71–2, 224
Bhagavadgita, 80 aid programme, 134–5
Bhairawa, 87 British Council, 171
Bhakta, Dharma, 82 British India, relations with Nepal, 4
Bhaktapur, 21 1885 to 1947, 61, 64–5, 67–8, 69, 83, 84
as independent state, 16, 22, 32, 33 pre-Shamsher period, 39, 40–1, 42–5, 46–8,
in ‘People’s Movement’, 114 50, 58, 59–60, 163
post-1951 changes, 133, 156 Brunei, 229
in post-1951 politics, 106, 109, 110, 155 buckwheat, 16
Bhandari, Madan, 121, 190 Buddha, 18, 53
Bhanubhakta, 81, 168, 185–6 Buddhanilkante School, 134, 167
bharadari, 49–50, 56, 58–9 Buddhism, 3, 26, 176
Bharatiya Janata Party, 214 current status, 184
see also Janata Party (of India) in the hills, 30, 179
bharos, 21 in Kathmandu Valley after 1951, 155–6, 181
Bhattarai, Baburam, 203–5, 206, 208, 216, 218 and the state in Kathmandu Valley, 29–31
Bhattarai, Krishna Prasad, 110, 115, 116, 118, 121, buffaloes, 16, 140
191, 208–9 Build Your Village Yourself programme, 193
Bheri River, 57 bullocks, 18
Bhimphedi, 78 Burma, 13, 64, 67, 71, 178
Bhojpur, 71 Butwal, 2, 23, 42, 134, 135
Bhojpuri language, 15, 186
Bhonta (family), 21–2, 27, 57 Calcutta, 11, 68, 78, 99, 105, 150, 162
Bhonta (region), 27–8 as publishing centre, 168
Bhotiyas, 12, 58, 163 Calcutta University, 63, 84
bhumigat giroh, 110 Capuchins, 33, 37–8
Bhutan, 76 carpet industry, 145, 148, 149, 230
refugee issue, 216 Casino Nepal, 149
Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 107 caste system, 8, 14, 30–2, 59, 82, 84
Bihar, 18, 42, 105, 139, 202, 206 in post-Panchayat politics, 118, 206
Bijukche, Narayan Man, 106, 109, 110, 113, 155 and social change after 1951, 155–8, 162–3
Bir Hospital, 78 Catholic Church, 135
Biratnagar, 71, 77, 79, 105, 123, 129, 135, 137 celibacy, 30
Birganj, 62, 79, 131, 133, 134, 138 censorship, 84, 226
Birganj-Hetaura-Kathmandu corridor, 147 Chalukyas, 29
Birla group (of India), 146 Chand, Lokendra Bahadur, 109, 118, 119, 192,
birta tenure, 51, 54, 75 195
abolition, 95–6, 103 as prime minister, 110, 115, 196, 221, 222
‘Bisheshwar with the Poor’ scheme, 193 Changu Narayan, 19
Bista, Kirtinidhi, 102 Chantels, 60
Bombay (Mumbai), 164, 171 chaubisi kingdoms, 23, 27, 28, 30, 59
bonded labour, 53 chaudhuris, 51
see also kamaiyas Chaugera Yogis, 52
Bonus Voucher Scheme, 151 chautara, 49
Bose, Sarat Chandra, 70 cheese production, 134
Brahmans, 11, 24, 26, 39–40, 51–2, 82, 84 Chemins de Katmandu, Les, 173
changes since 1951, 159, 162 Chepangs, 13
as dominant group, 179–80, 181, 184, 233 Chester, Ketaki, 211
Index 285
Chetri caste, 31–2, 53, 56, 57, 60, 94 in government, 192–5, 196, 199, 201
as privileged group, 49–50, 85, 185 in opposition, 185–6, 189–90, 195, 196, 197,
child labour, 148, 161, 230 222–3, 224, 231
chillies, 16 split in, 197, 199
China, 12, 44, 130, 134, 139, 174 community forestry, 144–5
aid programme, 130, 133, 136 Congress–Rana coalition, 86, 87–8
arms sales, 112, 113 constituent assembly, proposal for, 88, 91, 93,
cultural influence, 12, 13 106, 116, 205, 218, 221, 224
economic relations, 27, 153 constitution
and Maoist insurgency, 223–4 of 1959, 93
political relations, 4, 19, 28, 37, 39–41, 57, 58, of 1962, 101, 109
86–7, 91, 92, 96–7, 99–103, 130 of 1990, 116–17, 221
Chinese (overseas), 145 Constitution Drafting Commission, 118
Chittaur, 10, 23 construction industry, 146, 147
Chitwan, 137, 180 conversion, religious, 158, 184–5
Christianity, 33, 80–1, 87, 158, 184, 233 copper mining, 55, 60, 66, 77
Chumbi Valley, 76 corruption, 95, 109, 111, 119, 138–9, 146, 147, 148,
Churautes, 11 149, 178, 186–8, 201, 211
Church of Scotland, 80 cottage industry, 77, 147, 149
Churia hills, see Siwaliks cows, 140
CIA, 103, 216 cow slaughter, 56
cigarette industry, 77, 133 Curzon, Lord, 64
cinema, 139, 171 Cwasa Pasa, 182
Hindi, 171–2
Nepali, 171, 172–3, 226 Dahal, Pushpa Kumar, see Prachanda
class organisations, 101–2, 109 Dalai Lama, 96
climate, 8–11 Dang, 15, 166, 180–3, 218
Colombo Scholarship Scheme, 135 Darjeeling, 57, 76, 79, 80–1, 87, 162
Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of as cultural influence, 165, 167, 168, 183, 184, 185
Authority (CIAA), 211 ‘Gorkhaland’ agitation, 112, 185–6, 189–90
Commonwealth, 135 Das, Lakshmi, 59
communism (as ideology), 173–4, 175, 176, 233 Dasain, 56–7
Communist Party of Nepal, 88, 89, 93 Dasdhunga incident, 190
in 1959 election, 94, 96, 203 daura-sawal, 160
post-1960 splinter groups, 105–6, 107, 110, 141, debt (national), 128
177 debt (private), 122, 141, 176, 231
and B. P. Koirala’s government, 90–8 decentralisation, 126, 233
legalisation of, 91–2 deforestation, 3, 15, 16, 17, 55, 122–3, 140
Communist Party of Nepal (Democratic), 121 Dehradun, 80
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), 195 Delhi Sultanate, 22
see also Maoist insurgency democracy
Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist), 113, 117 attitude of left towards, 119
Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist), effect on language, 154–5
106, 107, 113–14, 117 as ideology, 79, 82, 173, 174–5
1998 revival, 197, 199 Deng Xiaoping, 153
ideology, 174 desa, 56
in Panchayat politics, 110 Desideri, Fr, 33
in ‘People’s Movement’, 113, 115–17 Deuba, Sher Bahadur, 190, 195–6, 202, 204, 209,
and the referendum, 108 222, 231
Communist Party of Nepal (Masal), see Masal rivalry with Koirala, 211, 219–21
Communist Party of Nepal (Mashal), see Mashal Devaladevi, 22
Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Devanagari script, 186
Marxist-Leninist), 175 development (as ideology), 173
in 1990 election campaign, 117–21 development districts, 126
attitude to Maoists, 207, 218, 219 Devkota, Devi Prasad, 82
286 Index
Devkota, Lakshmi Prasad, 168–9 ethnic activism, 4–5, 117, 155, 162, 177, 178,
Dhading, 138, 179 179–80, 186–8, 232–4
Dhangar language, see Kurukh language ethnicity, 118, 162, 178–83, 186–8
Dhankuta, 71 Eton, 167
Dharan, 24, 137 Europe, 8, 11–14, 139, 148, 149
dharmashastras, 50 Europeans, 3, 16
dhunga, 56 Everest, Mt, 74, 96, 149, 150
Dibya Upadesh, 37, 56 exchange rate, 127, 133, 151, 152
diet, 159 Exporters’ Exchange Entitlement Scheme, 151
Dolakha, 51, 57, 134, 200
Doms, 11, 163 family planning, 140
Doti, 58 fertiliser, 143, 231
Doyas, 21–2, 35 feudalism, 21
Dravidian language family, 11–12 film industry, see cinema
Dravidians, 16 First World War, 64, 66, 67, 75, 76
dress, 160 forced labour, 28, 53, 95, 179–80
drugs, 111, 226 foreign aid, 103, 128–37, 227–8
Dudh Kosi, 57 problems of, 135–7
Dumakhal, 18 forestry, 96, 134, 144–5
Dunai, 209 Fourth Convention, 106, 107–8, 113–14, 116, 119,
dvairajya, 19 203
France, 69–70
earthquake (of 1934), 65 Fulbright scholarships, 130
East Bengal, 152
East India Company, 4, 37–9, 50, 54 Gaine caste, 170
see also British India Gandaki basin, 23, 39
East–West Highway, 133, 137–8 Gandaki River, 8, 97, 145
Eastern Europe, 113, 114, 175 Gandaki scheme, 132
economic planning, 125–8 Gandhi, Indira, 101–3, 105, 153
Economic Planning Committee, 125 Gandhi, Mohandas K., 83, 84
education Gandhi, Rajiv, 113, 114, 153
after 1951, 104, 107–8, 126–7, 129, 130, 134, 135, Gandhianism, 175
137, 156, 158–9, 162, 164–9, 183, 184, Ganges River, 6, 15
227 Ganges Valley, 8, 14–15, 17, 18
early period, 62, 64, 81, 83–4, 162 Garhwal, 39
effects of insurgency, 209 garlic, 16, 159
and ethnicity, 117, 232 garment industry, 148–9, 230
Edward VII, King of the United Gautam, Bamdev, 196, 197, 222
Kingdom, 85 George III, King of Great Britain, 110
egalitarianism, 175–6 George V, King of the United Kingdom, 83, 85
Egypt, 101 Germany, 134, 156, 230
Election Commission, 199, 204 Gift Parcel Scheme, 151
elections Giri, Tulsi, 97
attitudes towards, 176–8 Gising, Subhas, 185
malpractice in, 119, 199, 201–2 Giuseppe, Fr 135
Ellenborough, Lord, 44 globalisation, 3
emigration, 57, 75–6, 80, 122–3 goats, 140
to India, 123–4, 228 Gorkha, 1, 4, 12, 22, 23, 28, 30
outside South Asia, 125, 228–9 conquests by, 35–42, 52, 55
see also migration as district, 98, 208
English language, 61, 80, 83 as ethnonym in India, 185
as medium of instruction, 166, 167–8 Gorkha Congress, 68
use after 1951, 154, 155, 159, 169, 173 Gorkha Dal, 87, 93
environment, 2–3, 122–3, 148, 150, 193, Gorkha Ex-Servicemen’s Association
230 (GAESO), 229
Index 287
Gorkha Parishad, 87, 94, 96, 97–8, 146 and the state in Kathmandu Valley, 29
Gorkha Sansar, 80 see also sanskritisation
‘Gorkhaland’ agitation, 112 hippies, 149
Gorkhalis (as ruling elite), 55–60, 85 HIV-AIDS, 164
Gorkhapatra, 62–3, 170, 176 Hoabinhian culture, 15
Gosainkund Lake, 179 Hodgson, Brian, 43–5, 180
gosains, 52 Holleri, 216
Graduates’ Constituency, 101, 107 Homo erectus, 15
‘green roads’, 138 Hong Kong, 139, 151
growth rate, 127 House of Representatives, 116
Gulmi, 55 housing, 160–1
Guptas, 19 human rights, 224
Gurjaras, 10 hunter-gatherers, 11, 12, 15, 26
Gurkhas (Nepalese troops in British army hydro-electric power, 132, 134, 135, 139–40, 193
service), 43, 47, 62, 64–5, 67, 70, 72, 75, 76,
82, 94, 172 Ilam, 177, 178
present status, 228–9 ILO, 127
reduction in numbers, 135 IMF, 135, 147
resettlement of, 134–5 import substitution, 127
Gurung, Bharat, 111 India, 8–11, 14
Gurung, Harka, 187 1989 blockade, 113, 153
Gurung, Narsingh, 59 aid programme, 90, 97, 130–3, 136
Gurung, Santabir, 85 as base for dissidents, 49, 66, 67, 70–2, 81, 111
Gurung language, 14, 184 as cultural influence, 4, 29–30, 80–1, 125, 227
Gurungs, 12–13, 16, 27, 31–3, 58 economic relations, 27–8, 38–9, 54, 55, 61,
ethnic activism, 183 74–5, 113, 127, 143, 150–2
role in Nepalese state, 50, 85 cross-border smuggling 141, 143, 148
and Tamangs, 179 tariff arrangements 190, 229–30
guthi tenure, 51, 75 trade ‘diversification’ 150–2
Gyawali, Surya Bikram, 81, 185 transit rights 146, 150, 152–3
water sharing 139, 189, 195
Hamilton, Francis, 59, 60 ethnic Indians in Nepal, 75–8, 112, 124–5,
hand-axe culture, 15 148–9, 150–1, 158, 186
Hanuman Dhoka Palace, 34, 88, 159 ethnic Nepalese in, 112, 123–4, 164, 167, 206
Hari Krishna Hari Ram, 173 as influence on internal politics, 1, 88, 89–90,
Harisimha, 22 91, 95, 105, 114, 174, 235
Harvard University, 167 and ‘People’s Movement’, 115
hashish, 203 political relations, 4, 34, 37, 69–70, 86, 96–7,
Hastings, Warren, 38 101–3, 104, 112, 133
health system, 73, 134, 137, 140 Maoist problem 223, 225
Henry V, King of England, 38 see also Bhutan, refugee issue
Herding, 16, 27 Indian Airlines, 139
Hetaura, 137, 138, 146 Indian military mission, 89
‘hill stations’, 2 ‘Indian Mutiny’, 46, 48, 61
Himalayan Airways, 71 Indian National Army (INA), 70
Himalayas, 1–4 Indian National Congress, 174, 214
formation of, 6 see also Indian Nationalist Movement
Hindi, 8, 94, 156, 186–7 Indian Nationalist Movement, 61, 64, 65, 67, 68,
Hinduism, 3, 4, 79–80, 82, 176 77, 78, 80
in post-1951 period, 94, 117, 162–3, 184–5, Indian Socialist Party, 71
233–4 Indo-Aryan languages, 8, 11, 14
and caste system, 30–2 Indonesia, 101
hill variety, 55 industrial development, 77–8, 126, 145–9
and kingship, 56 private sector, 145–9
as legitimation in Rana period, 84 public sector, 147
288 Index
infant mortality, 73, 137, 200 Kanphata Yogis, 27, 30
‘inner Tarai’, 8, 15, 141 Kantipur, 216, 226
Integrated Rural Development, 143 Kantivati, 39–40
Integrated Security and Development Karmavir Mandal, 98
Programme, 210 Karnali basin, 21, 22–3, 39
Interim Government Act, 88 Karnali River, 8, 10, 13, 57–8
International Committee of the Red Cross, 148 Kashmir, 2, 12, 28, 38
Iran, 8, 108–16 Kaski, 12, 47, 62
iron mining, 58, 77 Kathmandu
irrigation, 55, 126, 142, 200 foundation of, 21
Israel, 134 as independent kingdom, 22, 28, 33
Italian language, 8 as local authority, 92, 110
medieval political structure, 21
Jagarkot, 205 Kathmandu Post, 226
jagir tenure, 49, 51, 54, 74–5 Kathmandu Valley, 3, 12, 55
Jains, 26 early agricultural pattern, 16–17, 18
Jana Hita Sangha, 97 early history of, 13, 14, 15, 16, 32–4
Janakpur, 52, 134, 138 as entrepôt, 27
Janakpur Cigarette Factory, 147 formation, 6–8
janandolan, see ‘People’s Movement’ Gorkhali conquest, 35–9
Janata Party (of India), 105, 113, 114 immigration into, 32
see also Bharatiya Janata Party and industrialisation, 148
Japan, 1, 70, 77, 78, 82, 174 and land reform, 142, 155
aid programme, 130, 134, 228 medieval religion of, 28–31
migration to, 125 modernisation in, 122, 154–61
jarti, 59 population growth, 123
see also Parbatiyas regulation of migrant labour, 112
jat, 8 role of commoners in politics, 33
Jaynagar, 138 special status, 2, 126, 225–6
Jennings, Sir Ivan, 93 in 1979 disturbances, 107
Jews, 145 Kayastha caste, 187
Jha, Vedananda, 94 kerosene, 76
Jhangar language, see Kurukh language Khadgi caste, 31
Jhapa, 106 Kham Magars, 14, 203
Jhapeli group, 106 Khasas, 13, 23, 30, 31, 35
jimidars, 51, 54, 58–9 as a caste, 31–2, 49–50
Jirels, 51 Matwali Khasas, 57
Jiri, 51, 134, 138, 143, 200 medieval empire, 22–3, 26, 27, 58
Jomosom, 12 origin of, 8–10
Joshi, Lakshminarayan, 22 religious life, 30
Joshi, Madhav Raj, 80 see also Parbatiyas; Chetris
Josmani Sants, 80 Khatri, Lt Karbir, 254, n. 11
Juddha Sadak, 66 kipat tenure, 57, 75, 94, 180
Jumla, 57–8, 142, 163 Kiranti languages, 14
jute Kirantis, 13–14, 51, 57, 89
growing, 143 Kiratas, 13, 14, 24–5
industry, 77, 151 Kirkpatrick, William, 39, 54
Jyapus, 31 Kirong, 19, 39, 179
Kirtipur, 38, 166
Kailali, 43 Knox, Captain, 41
Kali Gandaki River, 12 Kohla Sombre, 13
kamaiyas, 230–1 Koirala, Bishweshwar Prasad (B. P.), 68, 72, 81
Kampas, 103 beliefs, 175
Kancha, 23 as home minister, 87, 136
Kanchanpur, 43 premiership, 95–9, 133, 189–92
Index 289
under Panchayat system, 105, 107, 108, 110 literacy, 81, 122, 128, 137, 170
quarrel with M. P. Koirala, 89 literature, 81, 84
Koirala, Girija Prasad London, 46, 52
in pre-1990 politics, 110 Lumbini, 202
after 2001 resignation, 219, 222–3 Lumle, 135
and ‘People’s Movement’, 115
as prime minister, 121, 197–9, 200, 207, Madheshis, 14–15, 58
208–11, 218, 231 languages of, 14–15
Koirala, Krishna Prasad, 94 Madhya Pradesh, 19
Koirala, Manisha, 172 Magadha, 18
Koirala, Matrika Prasad (M. P.), 89–90, 95, 97, Magar language, 13
130, 168 Magars, 14, 23, 27, 28, 31–2, 60
Kolis, 19 eastward expansion, 32
Korea, 125, 228 ethnic activism, 182–3, 232
Kosi agreement, 132 role in state, 50, 53, 58, 59, 85, 177
Kosi River, 71 ‘Magurali’, 183
Kot Massacre, 46, 47 Mahabharat hills, 6, 8, 10, 11, 15
Kshatriyas, 31 Mahakali River, 42
ku, 18 Mahakali treaty, 195, 197
Kumaon, 22, 30–2, 55, 58, 163 mahapatra, 21
Kuomintang, 174 Maharjan caste, 14, 18, 31, 155, 159, 181
Kurukh language, 11, 12 mahasamanta, 21
Kusundas, 11 Mahendra Rajmarg, see East–West Highway
Kuti, 19, 27, 28 Mahendra Sanskrit University, 166
Mainali, Chandra Prakash, 197, 201
Lakhan Thapa, 59 Mainali, Radha Krishna, 115, 116
Lalitaballabha, 252, n. 2 Maithili language, 15, 21–2, 29, 186, 187
Lama, Nirmal, 119, 203, 204 in local government, 232
Lama, Santabir, 179 Maithils, 24, 29, 39
lamaism, 30, 58 maize, 16–17, 73, 140, 141
Lamasangu, 138 Makwanpur, 23, 24, 37, 42
Lamjung, 12, 23, 47, 62 malaria, 14, 129, 135, 141, 180
land assignment, 26–7, 49, 50–4 Malaysia, 228
land occupation, 109 Maldives, 103
land reform, 89–90, 95–6, 103–4, 130, Malla, Ari, King of the Nepal Valley, 21
141–2, 155 Malla, Bhupalendra, King of Kathmandu, 33
post-Panchayat, 193, 231 Malla, Jaya Prakash, King of Kathmandu, 37, 38
land sales, 26, 54 Malla, (Jaya)sthiti, King of Kathmandu Valley,
land tenure, 26–7, 74, 130, 141–2 21, 23, 28, 30
Landless People Problem Resolution Malla, Lakshminarayan, King of Kathmandu, 28
Commission, 193 Malla, Mahendra, King of Kathmandu, 34
language issue, 117, 183, 184, 232 Malla, Parthivendra, King of Kathmandu, 22
Lauda Air, 211 Malla, Pratap, King of Kathmandu, 28, 33–4
Leftist Nepali Congress, 90 Malla, Ratna, King of Kathmandu, 31, 33
Lenin, V. I., 183 Malla, Rudra, 22
Lepchas, 76 Malla, Yaksha, King of the Kathmandu Valley,
Lhasa, 76–7, 150 22, 29
Licchavis (of Nepal), 2, 13, 18–21, 26 Malla empire (of Karnali basin), 22–3
land grants, 27 see also Khasas
religion, 29 Mallas (of the Kathmandu Valley), origin of
Licchavis (tribal confederacy), 18–19 title, 21
life expectancy, 122, 200 Manadeva, King of Nepal, 19
Limbus, 13, 24, 51, 75, 83 mandales, 116
post-1951 changes, 162, 179–80, 183 Mangalsen, 218
and kipat, 94 Manjushri, 6
290 Index
Manka Khalah, 182 Muluki Ain (of 1854), 54, 56, 58
Mao Zedong, 174, 203 Muluki Ain (of 1963), 156, 163
Maoism, 106, 113, 174 multiple-cropping, 17–18
Maoist insurgency, 1, 2, 13–14, 22, 92, 99, 143, Mumbai, see Bombay
163, 195, 202–8, 209–11, 216–25 Munda language family, 11–12
and 1997 local elections, 196, 207, 208 Murmis, 58
initial state response, 206–7 see also Tamangs
Kilo Sierra 2, 197–9, 208 Musikot, 23
methods employed in, 205–6, 226–7 musk, 27
origins of, 202–5 Muslims, 4, 10, 11, 14, 15, 21, 23
marriage, 158–9 current status, 184
Marshall Plan, 123, 128 as settlers in Kathmandu Valley, 33
Marwaris, 145, 146, 181, 186 Mustang, 13
Masal, 114, 116, 119, 189, 206, 219 Myagdi, 60
Mashal, 114, 116, 119
Masta, cult of, 30, 57 Nalanda, 29
match industry, 77 Nanyadeva, King of Tirhut (Mithila), 29
Mechi zone, 114, 161 Narayan, Jaya Prakash, 68, 89
media Narayanghadh, 137, 138
international, 1, 171 Narayanhiti Palace, 211
Nepalese, 169, 226 Narayani River, 138
Meiji restoration, 1 national anthem, 85
Mesopotamia, 12 National Defence Council, 207, 208
Mewar, 10 National Democratic Front, 97
Micha, 23 National Democratic Party, 118, 119, 192, 204,
Middle East, 125, 228 214, 219
middle hills, formation of, 6 Chand faction, 121
migration, 3, 123, 143, 228–9 in government, 195–7, 202, 222
Mihaly, Eugene, 136 Thapa faction, 121
millet, 16 National Development Service, 127
Mir Kasim, 37 national identity, 4–5, 55–60, 85
Mishra, Bhadrakali, 92, 94 ‘National Movement’ (of 1842), 44
mit system, 163 national parks, 144
Mithila, 180 National People’s Front, 219, 222
Mizoram, 112 National Planning Commission, 125
Mohasin, Mohammed, 184 National Social Services Co-ordination Council,
monarchy, 163 111, 135
as divinity, 175 nationalism, 82, 173
emergence in South Asia, 18 and ethnic Indians in Nepal, 186
as factor in national identity, 56 as influence on historiography, 2, 4
future role, 234 as part of Panchayat ideology, 183–5
in modern media, 170 Naxalites, 106
role in Panchayat ideology, 184, 185 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 72, 90, 94, 175
‘Mongols’, 3 neo-liberalism, 189
monopoly system, 51, 77 neolithic period, 15–16
Morang, 12 Nepal, Madhav Kumar, 197, 213, 219, 222–3
mortgages, 26 Nepal
Mughals, 25, 34, 38, 49, 145 cultural diversity, 3
Mughlana, 56 ethnic composition, 8
Mugling, 138 foundation of modern state, 1, 2, 15, 35–9
Mukhiyas, 51 isolationist foreign policy, 1, 47
multi-party system official adoption of name, 85
criminalisation under, 202 origin of name, 252, n. 4
entrenchment in constitution, 117 physical geography, 6–8
factionalism under, 199–200 prehistoric life, 15–18
muluk, 56 role in world wars, 64, 67
Index 291
Nepal Aid Group, 130, 132, 135, 136, 147 as second language, 159
Nepal bhasha, see Newar language spread of, 57, 59, 156, 182, 183
Nepal Construction Company, 134 Nepali National Congress (pre-1950), 68–70, 89
Nepal Democratic Congress, 70, 88, 89 Nepali National Congress (post-1950), 88, 91–2,
Nepal Electricity Corporation, 147 96
Nepal Era, 19–21, 182 New Education System Plan (NESP), 126, 127,
Nepal Food Corporation, 141 165–6, 167, 227
Nepal Industrial Development Corporation, ‘new people’s democracy’, 174, 197, 204
129, 146 New Road, 66
Nepal Jana Congress, 90 New Zealand, 134, 148
Nepal Magar Sangh, 183 Newar language, 14, 32, 85, 156, 182, 183, 184,
Nepal Mother Tongue Council, 183 232
Nepal Oil Corporation, 147 Newar Language Council, 182
Nepal Praja Parishad Newars, 3, 14, 17, 18, 19, 77, 159
Acharya faction, 96, 97 caste system, 30–1
anti-Rana group, 67–8, 80, 82–3, 155 as entrepreneurs, 144
Mishra faction, 96 position in Nepalese state, 59–60, 82–3, 85, 111
as political party, 88, 91–2, 94 religion, 29–30
Nepal Sadbhavana Party, see Sadbhavana Party sense of identity, 30–1, 155, 181–2
Nepal Sangh, 68 and social change, 155–6
Nepal Sarvajatiya Manch, 183 NGOs, 135, 144, 228
Nepal Tamang Ghedung, 179 Nixon, Richard, 103
Nepal Tarai Congress, see Tarai Congress ‘northern neolithic’ culture (of Kashmir), 12
Nepal Telecommunication Corporation, 147 Norway, 134, 227
Nepal Television, 139, 173 Nuwakot, 35, 37, 39, 98, 179
Nepal Valley, see Kathmandu Valley
Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Ochterloney, Sir David, 42, 43
Organisation/Party (Rohit group), 109, 110, oilseed, 144
113, 121, 155, 219, 222 onions, 16, 159–60
Nepali Congress Opium War, 44
in pre-1960 politics, 86–99, 134, 144 Oudh (Awadh), 42
and 1990 election, 117–21 Overseas Development Administration (of
in anti-Rana campaign, 70–2 British government), 143
attitude of Communists to, 106, 174
clashes with UPF, 204 Paharis, 55
in government after 1991, 138, 189–92, 195–6, pajani, 42, 49
197–9, 200, 202, 219 Pakistan, 8, 101, 102, 103, 107, 153
ideology, 174–5 economic relations, 152
in interim government, 115–17 Pakrabas, 135
as opposition, 196, 222–3, 224 palace massacre (2001), 211–16
and ‘People’s Movement’, 113, 115 Palas, 29
and referendum, 107, 108 Pallavas, 21
in reformed Panchayat system, 109–11 Palpa, 23, 42
support base, 94–5, 187, 205 Panchayat Policy and Evaluation
under unreformed Panchayat system, 99, 105, Committee, 109
106–7, 167 Panchayat system, 86–7, 125, 127
Nepali Congress (Democratic), 219, 222 and ethnic groups, 180, 183
Nepali language, 8, 32 fall of, 153
in India, 186 ideology, 173, 183–5
see also Darjeeling opposition to, 104–7
literature, 168–9 organisation, 101
as medium of instruction, 81, 92, 156, 167–8, use of media, 170–1
184, 186–8 voter behaviour under, 176–8
modern development, 168–9, 170 panchayats (local authorities), 91
and Nepalese nationalism, 4, 173, 184 Pande, Dalmodar, 41
as official language, 85, 117 Pande, Ranjang, 44
292 Index
Pande, Vijay Raj, 50 pradhans, 21
Panjab, 42 Pradyumna, 6
paper industry, 133 Praja Panchayat, 69
Papua New Guinea, 11 Praja Parishad, see Nepal Praja Parishad
Parbatiyas, 12, 14, 16, 55–6, 159 Prajatantrik Mahasabha, 94, 96, 97
caste structure, 31–2 Pratinidhi Sabha, see House of Representatives
conflict with other groups, 98, 162, 178, 179 press, role of, 170–1, 226
as dominant group, 55–60, 82–3, 84, 85, printing, 81
118–19, 163, 233 Prithvi Rajmarg, 133, 137
eastward expansion, 27, 32, 51, 57 privatisation, 147, 193
origins of, 8–11 prostitution, 164
treatment of women, 163 Protestant churches, 135
Parijat, 169 Public Security Act, 87, 88
Pashupatas, 27 pulses, 16
Pashupatinath, 27, 29, 149, 157, 168 Pun, Narayan Singh, 221
Patan Pyuthan, 203
post-1951 development, 156
early history, 21, 56 Qing dynasty, 4
as independent state, 22, 28, 32 Quit India movement, 68, 79
role in ‘People’s Movement’, 114
Patna, 139 Radhikapur, 152
patras, 21 radio, private, 226
patron–client system, 75, 176–7, 179, 200 Radio Nepal, 108, 109, 139, 170, 172
Paudel, Lekhnath, 168–9 language policy, 182
People’s Front, 222 radishes, 16
‘People’s Movement’ (1990), 1, 113–16, 121, raikar tenure, 75
156 railways, 76, 79, 138
‘People’s War’, see Maoist insurgency Rais, 12, 13, 14, 75, 183
Permanent Settlement (of Bengal land tax), Rajasthan, 10, 23, 145
54 rajgurus, 50
Persian language, 80 Rajopadhyaya Brahmans, 182
ploughing, 17 Rajputs, 10, 23, 30, 60, 214
taboo on, 18 rajyauta system, 96, 98, 103
Pode caste, 31, 156, 182 Raksha Dal, 89, 92
Pokhara, 79, 123, 126, 128–30, 133, 135, 137, 165, Raktapat Committee, 82
177 Raktapat Mandal, 67
Pokhrel, Durga, 107 Ram, 172
police, 206–7 Ramabibaha, 172
accusations of brutality, 189, 204 Ramavardhanas, 28
polyandry, 164 Ramayana, 81, 168
polygamy, 163 Ramopithecus, 2
population growth, 2–3, 18, 55, 61, 73–4, 122, Rana, Babar Shamsher, 69–72
140 Rana, Bam Bahadur Kunwar, 47–8
porters, 79 Rana, Bharat Shamsher, 87, 98
postal service, 139 Rana, Maharaja Bhim Shamsher, 65, 67, 68, 70,
potatoes, 16, 73, 143 81
Poudyal brothers, 44, 50 Rana, Maharaja Bir Shamsher, 46, 62, 63, 66, 78,
poverty, 3, 122, 127–8 80, 82, 83, 84
Prachanda, 119, 203–4, 206, 216, 218, 219 Rana, Maharaja Chandra Shamsher, 63–5,
personality cult, 209 66, 67, 68, 69, 75, 76–7, 78, 79, 80, 82,
Prachanda Gorkha, 67 83, 84
Pradhan, Padre Ganga Prasad, 168 Rana, Maharaja Dev Shamsher, 62–3, 64, 83
Pradhan, Parasmani, 165, 168 Rana, Devyani, 211, 214
Pradhan, Sahana, 113, 115, 116, 197 Rana, Maharaja Dhir Shamsher Kunwar, 49, 61,
Pradhan, Tribhuvan, 60 66
Index 293
Rana, Gorakh Shamsher, 211 and social structure, 28–30
Rana, Jagat Jang, 48–9 syncretism, 185
Rana, Maharaja Jang Bahadur Kunwar, 45–8, 50, and universalism, 176
51, 52, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59–60, 61, 62, remittances, 144, 149, 228–9
77, 78 reservations, 232
Rana, Maharaja Juddha Shamsher, 65–8, 77–8, rice, 160
82, 83 cultivation, 16, 17, 22–3, 27, 140
Rana, Keshar Shamsher, 69, 87, 89 processing, 77
Rana, Mahavir Shamsher, 70 Rising Nepal, 170
Rana, Maharaja Mohan Shamsher, 69, 78, 79, 83 RNAC, 130, 139, 147, 211
and economic planning, 125 road construction, 78, 126, 130, 133–4, 137–8, 143,
heads coalition government, 87–8 200
personality, 154–5 Rohit, Comrade, see Bijukche, Narayan Man
Rana, Mrigendra Shamsher, 87 Rolpa, 203–5, 209
Rana, Maharaja Padma Shamsher, 68–9, Rong languages, 13
70, 101 ropeways, 78, 138
Rana, Pashupati Shamsher, 214 Royal Nepal Academy, 168, 169
Rana, Ranoddip, 48–9, 52, 60, 66 Rudravarna Mahavihara, 32
Rana, Rudra Shamsher, 66, 71, 94 Rukum, 203–5, 209
Rana, Subarna Shamsher, 70, 99, 105, 136 Ruffles, Stamford, 95
Rana regime, 1, 28, 50, 154 Russia, 64
attitudes to investment, 145 for 1917-1992 period, see Soviet Union
and C-Class Ranas, 65, 66, 69, 70, 90, 214
corruption under, 178 SAARC, 103, 230
downfall of, 1, 67, 68–72, 162 Sadbhavana Party, 118, 121, 187, 202, 219
education under, 164–5 in government, 195, 196, 199, 222
establishment of, 46–9 dissident group, 222
forest management, 144 Sagar, 19
and Newar language, 182 Sagauli, Treaty of, 42, 54, 56, 61, 64
Roll of Succession, 62, 69 Sahid Gate, 67
Ranabhat, Taranath, 213 salt trade, 27, 76
Rani Pokhari, 44 salwar-kamiz, 160
Rapti (eastern) Development Project, 143 Salyan, 205
Rapti Valley (eastern), 141 Sama, Balkrishna, 168–9, 183, 185
Rastrabadi Swatantra Bidyarthi Mandal, 108 samantas, 21
Rastriya Janamukti Party, 118 Sandhikharka, 218, 221
Rastriya Panchayat, 101, 102, 109, 110 Sanskrit, 8, 14, 32, 57, 80, 166, 168, 169
abolition, 115, 116 as school subject, 232
Rastriya Praja Party, 90, 95 as source of loanwords, 186, 187
Rasuwa, 19 sanskritisation, 56–7, 183
Rato Khola, 15 Sant(h)ali, 12
Rautahat, 98 Saptari, 68
Rautes, 11 SATA, 148
RAW, 216 Satar, see Sant(h)ali
Ray, Satyajit, 172 sati, 19
Rayamajhi, Keshar Jang, 106, 107, 110 Satlaj River, 42
Raxaul, 138 School Leaving Certificate (SLC), 108, 165, 166,
referendum (of 1980), 108–9, 125, 126, 127, 167, 201
144 Second World War, 67, 78, 82
regional planning, 126 Sen, Mukunda, King of Palpa, 19
Regmi, Dilli Rahman, 88, 90, 94 Sen dynasty
religion, 3 of Bengal, 29
decline in observance, 159 of Nepal, 23–5, 56–7
economic and political role of, 26–7, 51–2, Shah, Aishwarya, Queen of Nepal, 11, 111, 135,
118, 173 212, 214
294 Index
Shah, Bahadur, King of Nepal, 35, 39, 52 Shah, Shruti, 211
Shah, Birendra, King of Nepal, 86–7, 104, 112, Shah, Surendra, King of Nepal, 44
149, 175–6 Shah, Tribhuvan, King of Nepal, 67–8, 71–2,
and 1975 constitutional amendment, 101 88–91, 92, 93
1989 dispute with India, 113 use of language, 154, 156
attitude towards dissent, 105 Shah dynasty, 1, 23, 50, 154
as constitutional monarch, 116, 196 Shaha, Rishikesh, 104, 107, 108
and development planning, 126, 127, 136 Shaivism, 27, 29, 52
education, 167 Shakyas (ethnic group), 18
and Maoist insurgency, 207, 208, 210 Shakyas (Newar caste), 30, 31, 60, 155–6
murder of, 211, 213, 214 Shams ud-din Ilyas, 21
and ‘People’s Movement’, 115 shankaracharya, 29
and referendum, 108–9 Shastri, Shukra Raj, 80
role under reformed Panchayat system, 110 sheep, 140
use of language, 155, 156 Shekhar, Chandra, 114
Shah, Dipendra, King of Nepal, 11, 44, 167, 211 Sherchan, Bhupi, 169, 170
Shah, Dhirendra, 110, 111, 211 Sherpas, 12, 58, 74, 164, 183
Shah, Drabya, King of Gorkha, 23, 49 shifting cultivation, see slash-and-burn
Shah, Fateh Jang Chauntara, 45–6, 47 cultivation
Shah, Girvana Yuddha, King of Nepal, 39, 43–8 Shiva, 29
Shah, Gyanendra, King of Nepal shoe industry, 133
as Birendra’s successor, 84, 213, 215, 216–18, Shrestha, Marichman Singh, 111, 112, 115, 147
221, 222–3, 224 Shrestha, Pushpa Lal, 106, 108, 113
as infant king, 71 Shresthas, 31, 155
as prince, 110, 211 Shri Panch Sarkar (title), 62, 83
Shah, Jayanti, 211 Shri Tin Sarkar (title), 62, 83
Shah, Komal, Queen of Nepal, 211 Siddhartha Rajmarg, 137–8
Shah, Kumar Khadga, 211 Sikkim, 23, 24–5, 35, 76
Shah, Lalit Tripura Sundari, Queen of Nepal, absorption into India, 102–3, 105
42, 43 silk, 27
Shah, Mahendra, King of Nepal Simra, 79, 134
as crown prince, 68 Sindhupalchok, 55, 57
as king until 1960, 91–9 Singapore, 95, 151
and India, 101–2, 103, 152–3 Singh, Bakhan, 105, 108
personal rule after 1960, 99–101, 103–4, 105, Singh, Balman, 254, n. 11
132, 136, 138, 140, 141, 157, 179 Singh, Gagan, 45
royal takeover, 86–8, 98–9, 129, 130 Singh, Ganesh Man, 82, 83–4, 105, 110, 113, 115,
Russian visit, 130, 133 154
use of language, 154, 156 dispute with Koirala, 191
Shah, Narbhupal, King of Gorkha, 35–9 Singh, K. I., 83, 87, 89, 94, 95
Shah, Nirajan, 212, 214 as prime minister, 92–3, 186
Shah, Paras, Crown Prince of Nepal, 211, 214, 215 Singh, Marichman (civil servant), 82
Shah, Pratap Singh, King of Nepal, 39, 41, 60 Singh, Marichman (politician), see Shrestha,
Shah, Prithvi Narayan, King of Nepal, 21, 22, 45, Marichman Singh
50, 54, 55, 56, 60 Singh, Mohan Bikram, 106, 110, 114, 119, 206–7,
as national icon, 185 219, 222, 226–7
Shah, Rajendra, King of Nepal, 43–6 Singh, Ramraja Prasad, 107, 111
Shah, Rajya Lakshmi, Queen of Nepal, 44–6 Singh, Ranjit, King of the Panjab, 42
Shah, Rama, King of Gorkha, 28, 34 Singh, V. P., 113
Shah, Ratna, Queen of Nepal, 214, 215 Singha Darbar, 64, 66
Shah, Samrajya Lakshmi, Queen of Nepal, 43, 44 Sinkiang, 37
Shah, Shanti, 211 Sino-Tibetan language family, 12
Shah, Sharada, 211 Siwaliks, 6–8, 15
Shah, Sher Bahadur, 41 slash-and-burn cultivation, 16, 27, 74
Shah, Shoba, 211 slavery, 28, 53, 57, 62, 64, 84
Index 295
Slim, General, 67 land reform in, 142
socialism, 79, 175 and language issue, 94
Solukhumbu, 12, 144, 255, n. 13 medieval history, 21, 23, 24
South-east Asia, 12, 139, 145 migration from the hills, 123, 134, 135, 141,
Soviet Union, 82, 125, 158 231
aid programme, 130, 131, 133–4 peopling of, 14–15
Spanish language, 8 regional grievances, 160, 187
Sri Lanka, 103, 155 status of women, 163, 186–8
Srong-tsen-Gampo, King of Tibet, 19 see also Tharus
St Joseph’s College, 167 Tarai Congress, 94, 96
St Mary’s School, 167 Tarun Gorkha, 80
St Xavier’s School, 167 tax-farming, 51
stainless steel, 151 taxation, 26, 50–5, 74, 130
state television, 139, 170, 226
emergence in South Asia, 18 telephone service, 139, 200
as focus of identity in nineteenth century, 56 Terhathum, 71, 83
organisation in post-unification Nepal, 49 textiles, 77, 78, 148
state of emergency (2001), 218, 219 Thakali language, 14, 60, 183
street children, 161 Thakalis, 12, 145, 179
Structural Adjustment Loan, 127 Thakuri caste, 10, 31, 60, 84, 85, 94, 185
student unions, 107–8, 166–7 Thangmi language, 57
Subba, Ranadhir, 87 Thapa, Amar Singh, 43, 44
subbas, 51, 75, 179, 180 Thapa, Bhimsen, 41–4, 50, 51, 60, 66
sugar cane, 140, 141, 143 Thapa, Bishwabandhu, 97
sugar processing, 133 Thapa, Chiran Shamsher, 213
sukumbasis, 141, 145, 193 Thapa, Mathbar Singh, 45, 46, 169
Sun Kosi River, 18 Thapa, Ram Bahadur, 221
Sundarananda, 252, n. 12 Thapa, Surya Bahadur, 104, 105
Sunuwars, 13 campaign against bhumigat giroh, 110
Supreme Court, 193, 196, 197, 232 in post-Panchayat politics, 118, 192, 195
Switzerland, 90, 134, 138, 143, 148 as post-Panchayat premier, 196–7, 222
synthetic fabrics, 151 as prime minister, 108–9, 110, 144
Syuraj, 42 ‘Tharu’ language, 11
Tharu Welfare Society, 180
Taiwan, 6 Tharus, 11, 14, 180–1, 183, 187
Taleju, 34 Thawang, 203
Tamang language, 14, 183 Theravada, 155–6
Tamangs, 12, 28, 58–9, 95 Thomas Cook, 149
clashes with Parbatiyas, 98, 178–9 Tibet, 4, 6, 12, 22, 37, 39
sense of identity, 178–9 1959 revolt, 96
status of women, 164 relations with Nepal, 19, 28, 39, 47, 64, 65, 82
Tanahu, 28 religious influence from Nepal, 29
Tanakpur dispute, 189 trade with Nepal, 27, 39, 76–7, 148, 149, 150,
Tansen, 71 153
Tarai, 2, 4, 8, 11, 37, 44, 68, 83 Tibetan dialects, 12, 58, 179
in post-1951 politics, 87, 94, 95, 107, 110, 118 Tibetans (in Nepal), 145, 148
agriculture, 16, 54, 126, 144 Tibeto-Burman languages, 3
in ancient period, 18–19 relations with Parbatiyas, 27, 58, 82
boundary disputes, 42, 47 speakers of, 11, 12, 23, 118, 159
deforestation in, 123, 144 status of women, 164
as habitat of prehistoric man, 15 Timber Corporation of Nepal, 144
immigration from India, 54, 75, 76, 125 timber trade, 76, 144
industrial development, 78, 147 Tirhut, 29
as internal colony, 58 topi, 160
land-holding system, 51, 52, 54–5 tourism, 149
296 Index
trade, 27–8, 76–7, 113, 123, 146, 152–3, 229–30 United States Operations Mission, 130
across the Himalayas, 19, 27–8 Unity Centre, 203
see also India universities, 63–4, 108, 166–7
Tribhuvan International Airport, 139 Untouchables, 11, 31, 84, 156–7, 163
Tribhuvan Rajpath, 90, 130, 132, 137, 138 Uray, 31, 155
Tribhuvan Sadan, 211–16 urbanisation, 123
Tribhuvan University, 166–7, 185–6, 189–90 Utpidit Jatiya Utthan Manch, 183
Trichandra College, 64, 66, 67, 83, 166 Uttar Pradesh, 39
Tripura family, 21–2 Uttaranchal, 39
Trisuli dam, 132
Trisuli River, 18, 35, 39 Vaisali, 18
trolleybus system, 133 Vaishnavism, 52
Tsangpo, 6, 13 Vajracharyas, 30, 31, 60, 155–6
tuki system, 143 Vajryana, 30, 155–6
Tuladhar, Padma Ratna, 110, 182, 209 vamshavalis, 13, 29, 30
Turks, 15 Vedic period, 18
vegetable oil, 77
ubayarajya, 19 Vietnam, 15
UK, see Britain Vietnamese language, 12
UML, see Communist Party of Nepal (Unified viharas, 29
Marxist-Leninist) Vijaypur, 24–5
UNCTAD, 152 Vikram Era, 182
unemployment, 137 Village Defence Forces, 222
United Democratic Front, 93 village development, 130, 131, 132
United Democratic Party, 92–3, 94, 96, 97 Vishnu, 34, 52, 84, 175
United Front (of 1951), 88 Vrijis, 19
United Left Front, 113–14, 115–17
United Mission to Nepal, 135 water resources, 132, 139–40, 189
United National People’s Movement, 114 West Bengal, 112
United Nations, 127, 130 Western Europe, 123, 129
United Nations Development Programme, wheat, 16, 140
128 WHO, 135
United People’s Front, 119, 121, 175, 203 women, status of, 158–9, 164
post-1991 street agitation, 189–90 Women’s Commission, 107
1994 split, 192 wool trade, 27, 28, 148–50
2002 merger, 222 work permit system, 112
opposition to state of emergency, 219 World Bank, 127, 128, 130, 135, 142, 143, 147, 193,
United Revolutionary People’s Council of 228
Nepal, 218
United States, 69, 94, 97, 134 Yadav caste, 110
and 1991 election, 95 yaks, 27–8, 134
aid programme, 103, 126, 128–30, 131, 133, 136, Yogi, Naraharinath, 98
137, 138, 143 Younghusband expedition, 64, 76, 82
economic relations, 148–9, 230 Yugoslavia, 101
and Maoist insurgency, 223, 225 Yunnan, 13
resettlement programme, 141
support for Kampas, 103 Zhou Enlai, 133