Lichhavi Kal through Panchayat Kal with Rishikesh Shaha

It is not very often that someone who has contributed to the making of his country's history also finds the time to record for posterity his own interpretation of the contemporary events; what is even more rare is that he finds the time to analyse the development of his own country's ethos over the centuries and brings to bear on his own work a profound stamp of his own humanist concerns. The two latest books by Rishikesh Shaha, Nepal's eminent statesman-historian, bear eloquent testimony as much to his scholarship as to his affection and deep concern for the people and institutions of Nepal..His work, Ancient and Medieval Nepal, is a storehouse of information in 155 pages. It delineates in a few bold strokes the historical processes and forces which over the centuries contributed to the moulding of the kingdom in its present shape. It is not merely a narrative of the battles amongst kings or of intrigues amongst nobles. It describes vividly how the hill peoples in Central Himalaya coalesced into cogent political units, later shaped into a strong fortress-state of Nepal in the late 17th century by the political-military genius of Prithvi Narayan Shah. The contribution of the Lichhavi as well as of the Malla rulers is put in perspective in the chapters on social conditions, religion and art and architecture..The first draft of this work was prepared during the authors' imprisonment in 1969-70. Thereafter, the work lay unpublished for almost 20 years. The books appearance on the bookstands after the recent revolutionary transformation in Nepal heightens its relevance to the reawakened conscience of the Nepali people. This is important because, as John K. Locke says in the foreword, failure to root the new order in the culture and tradition of the nation will produce "a bewildered society"..Shaha's other book, Politics in Nepal, which covers the turbulent developments between 1980 and 1991, is a collection of essays which serves to bring the reader up-to-date with modem Nepal (344 pages). However, while revising the work, Shaha has sacrificed some useful essays appearing in the first edition, which was titled Essays in the Practice of Government in Nepal..This book, too, had its share of misfortune. After barely a hundred had been sold, it mysteriously disappeared from the bookstores. Now that it is again available, scholars have a valuable reference for the study of political transformation in developing societies, taking Nepal as a case study. If there is one regret, it is that the book is somewhat silent on the political developments in the Mahendra era..This reviewer feels that the Nepali political bookshelf still lacks an in-depth work on what King Mahendra sought to achieve during his stewardship of Nepal from 1955-56, up to his untimely death in January 1972. The late king, not merely a monarch, was perhaps the shrewdest among the galaxy of South Asian leaders of his time. He captured every opportunity he possibly could to gather real power in his own hands, and he never allowed the tools he chose to become stronger than his own royal will..The decade between 1979 and 1988 was, to put it mildly unexpectedly turbulent. The protest movement of students demonstrating against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's execution in Pakistan gathered such momentum that King Birendra fell it necessary to proclaim "a national referendum…in order to explicitly understand the kind of change our countrymen desire…".Shaha's recapitulation of those tumultuous days is probably the most faithful account on record. He also makes no secret of his scepticism about the reasons for the royal offer of referendum, which was but "a device for defusing the crisis created by the students agitation.".The set of six chapters dealing with the referendum, its aftermath, the Third Amendment to the Constitution, the two general elections —1981 and 1986—and the condition of Nepali politics 1985-1990 deserves to be studied integrally. This is important if the reader is to try and fathom the reasons which led to the formulation of policies leading the Panchayati system of government to its own liquidation..The self-destructive mechanism became inherent in the monarchy that evolved after Mahendra's royal coup of 1960 and the subsequent evolution of the partyless Panchayat system. A parliamentary facade was created for an effectively presidential form of government in which the palace bureaucracy began to wield effective power without being accountable to any elected body..Unlike the presidential system, however, the Nepali monarchy had lifelong tenure and was not renewable through periodic reaffirmation of the public's confidence. If the palace bureaucracy, too, was going to have lifelong tenure not renewable through periodic reaffirmation of confidence, all possibilities of change were automatically ruled out. There was, of course, a Panchayat government for all to see and to take the blame, but its promises could not always be matched in performance. Commitments made by members of the Cabinet, for example, could be blocked at the Palace Secretariat for weeks, months and sometimes years..Shaha's riveting chapters on Monarchy in Nepal and Patrimonial Elites in Nepal serve the valuable function of explaining not only why the events of 1989 and 1990 took place, but also why they were inevitable. In addition, the chapter on Nepal's Zone of Peace proposal reveals how a proposal was floated without adequate preparation and pursued in a manner which finally defeated the very purpose for which it might originally have been conceived. This reviewer might add from his personal knowledge that even several political personalities associated with the Panchayat Government had expressed their strong reservations (although always in private) about Indian support to the proposal because they felt that it could vitiate any possibility of peaceful change in Nepali politics..The events of 1990 and 1991 are generally well documented, although nowhere as coherently as in the present work. The last chapter dealing with the visit of Prime Minister of Nepal to India and after and the epilogue read together with the three important appendices do not in fact conclude the book but only leave some tantalising suggestions on the future course of consolidation of the revolution in Nepal..The reviewer shares Rishikesh Shaha's optimism about the prospects of stabilisation of the restored democracy. King Birendra, who is well-educated in the formal sense of the term and has travelled widely, seems to have die ability to help consolidate the revived structure of multiparty democracy in his Kingdom. He enjoys immense goodwill, not only in his own Kingdom, but also in India, and there is every prospect that he could, if he so wished, provide leadership as a constitutional monarch to his people to facilitate their progress into the 21st century. He would well provide the answer to the question, "Where are the people of Nepal going?" Meanwhile, Rishikesh Shaha's two books provide valuable guidelines..A.R. Deo was India's Ambassador to Nepal from 1986 to 1989.