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NepalThe Democratic Experiment
In the early 1950s, a political style appeared that
characterized much of the era after the overthrow of the
Ranas. On
one side stood the king, who controlled the most powerful
force in
the nation--the army--and found it an increasingly useful
tool with
which to wield his prestige and constitutional authority.
On the
other side stood the political parties. First there was
the Nepali
Congress Party, which claimed to stand for the democratic
will of
the people. Then there were a multitude of breakaway
factions or
other small parties representing a wide range of
interests. The
Communist Party of Nepal, for example, was established in
Calcutta
in 1949 but had refused to take part in the armed struggle
and
condemned it as a "bourgeois" revolution; despite its own
difficulties with factional disputes, this party was
destined to
grow in a country riddled with problems. In the Kathmandu
Valley,
other leaders who had been locked out of high positions in
the
first coalition government formed a revitalized Praja
Parishad.
Opponents of the "antidemocratic" character of the Nepali
Congress
leadership and their pro-India stance, which they claimed
went
against the interests of Nepal, broke away to form a
revitalized
Nepali National Congress. In 1951 a united front of the
communists
and the Praja Parishad formed to oppose the Nepali
Congress
ministers. The themes of politics in the early
1950--class,
opposition to authoritarian trends within party
leadership, and
nationalistic propaganda, combined with agitational united
front
tactics--have remained standard features of party politics
in
Nepal. As the various political parties slashed at each
other and
the king maneuvered for greater power, the country began
experimenting with a limping democracy.
Nepal faced an enormous task. When the Ranas fell, only
2
percent of the adult population was literate, the infant
mortality
rate was more than 60 percent, and average life expectancy
was
thirty-five years. Less than 1 percent of the population
was
engaged in modern industrial occupations, and 85 percent
of
employment and income came from agriculture, mostly
performed by
tenants using archaic methods and working under uncertain
contracts. There were only approximately 100 kilometers of
railroad
tracks and a few kilometers of paved roads in the entire
nation.
Telephones, electricity, and postal services combined
served only
1 percent of the population and only in certain pockets.
Nepalese
currency circulated only in and around the Kathmandu
Valley.
Government expenditures went almost entirely for salaries
and
benefits for army, police, and civil servants, with any
savings
going to the prime minister. Health and education received
less
than 1 percent of the government's expenditures. The
nation still
contained autonomous principalities (rajya) based
on deals
with former local kings, and landlords acted as small
dictators on
their own lands. Caste, ethnic, and linguistic differences
abounded, but only three groups--Chhetris, Brahmans, and
some
Newars--had any say in the national government. The Tarai,
the
richest area in the nation, had been systematically
ignored by the
government and exploited for 200 years, and many of its
people felt
more at home in India than Nepal. National integration was
a major
problem.
Between November 1951 and February 1959, there was a
succession
of short-lived governments ruling under terms of the
interim
constitution or under the direct command of the king,
attempting to
fashion an environment favorable for the calling of a
constituent
assembly that would frame a permanent constitution. As
soon as the
king found a ministry uncooperative or so beset by
contradictions
that it could not function, he replaced it with members
who had
smaller bases of support. At no time during this period
did the
faction of the Nepali Congress Party headed by B.P.
Koirala, which
commanded the widest allegiance, have any chance of
forming a
government because the king continued to postpone
elections for an
assembly.
When King Tribhuvan died, his son Mahendra Bir Bikram
Shah Dev
(reigned 1955-72) carried on as before, experimenting with
types of
councils or ministries that would do his will behind a
democratic
façade. Under pressure from large-scale civil disobedience
campaigns, the king announced that elections for a
representative
assembly would take place on February 18, 1959. As
political
parties of all persuasions were busily preparing for the
elections,
the king had his own commission draw up a new
constitution. He
presented it as a gift to the nation on February 12, 1959,
with the
elections only one week away. In the first national
elections in
the history of the nation, the Nepali Congress won a clear
victory,
taking 74 out of 109 seats. B.P. Koirala at last became
prime
minister.
Under the terms of the new constitution, there were two
legislative houses: an Upper House (Maha Sabha) of 36
members, half
elected by the lower house and half nominated by the king;
and a
Lower House (Pratinidhi Sabha) of 109 members, all elected
by
universal adult suffrage. The leader of the majority party
in the
Lower House became prime minister and governed with a
cabinet of
ministers. The king could act without consulting the prime
minister, and even could dismiss him. The king also had
control
over the army and foreign affairs and could invoke
emergency powers
suspending all or part of the constitution.
Against this background of formidable royal rights, the
Koirala
government was able to accomplish some major tasks. It
finally
abolished birta tenure in October 1959 and the
autonomy of
principalities (rajya) in the western hills. In
1960 the
government revised a crucial Trade and Transit Treaty with
India.
It also negotiated another agreement with India on the
Gandak River
Project, guaranteeing territorial jurisdiction and free
provision
of water to Nepal
(see Relations with India
, ch. 4).
Diplomatic
relations were established with the United States, the
Soviet
Union, China, France, and Pakistan. Koirala himself
addressed the
United Nations, visited China, and presided over the
signing of a
Treaty of Peace and Friendship with China in 1960. In the
economic
sphere, the First Five-Year Plan (1956-61) had been poorly
conceived and executed, but the Koirala government took
steps to
plan effectively for the Second Plan (1962-65).
The king initially was on good terms with the Koirala
government, even taking the unprecedented step of playing
soccer
with his brothers at the National Stadium against a team
that
included the prime minister and his associates. At the
same time,
he was publicly opposed to democracy in principle and
would not
tolerate any official interference in the divine powers
believed to
be conferred on him as king. The army, the former
aristocracy,
conservative landowning groups, and the king all were
uneasy about
the reforms of the Koirala government and the negative
propaganda
of opposition groups inside Parliament, including the
Gorkha
Parishad and the Communist Party of Nepal. When
destabilizing the
Nepali Congress ministry proved difficult, the king used
the
nation's chronic violence--widely believed to be
orchestrated by
the monarch himself--as a reason to act directly. On
December 15,
1960, with the army's support and with little warning, the
king
used his emergency powers to dismiss the cabinet and
arrest its
leaders on the charge that they had failed to provide
national
leadership or maintain law and order. B.P. Koirala spent
the next
eight years in prison and another eight years in exile.
The
experiments in liberal socialism and democracy, at least
as defined
by the Nepali Congress, were at an end.
Data as of September 1991
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