$Unique_ID{bob00401}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Nepal
Chapter 1.    General Character of the Society}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{George L. Harris}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{nepal
national
country
india
king
power
system
development
political
government}
$Date{1973}
$Log{}
Title:       Nepal
Book:        Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, An Area Study: Nepal
Author:      George L. Harris
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1973

Chapter 1.    General Character of the Society

     On February 18, 1964, the Kingdom of Nepal celebrated the thirteenth
anniversary of the revival of the power of its monarchy, which since the
mid-nineteenth century had been wielded in the royal name by a line of
hereditary prime ministers, the Ranas. The event signified more than a
transfer of political authority. It marked the end of 100 years of carefully
guarded isolation from the outside world and the beginning of an effort to
transform a multiethnic, economically undeveloped country into a modern
nation.

     For several thousand years of its history the political entity known as
Nepal consisted of only the Katmandu Valley. The rest of the territory now
contained within the country's boundaries was occupied by a number of small,
autonomous principalities. The state of Nepal in its larger, modern form did
not come into being until the middle of the eighteenth century, when the ruler
of the Kingdom of Gorkha, Prithvi Narayan Shah, subjugated the nearby Katmandu
Valley, made it the center of his kingdom, and extended his authority by force
of arms over the surrounding Himalayan areas. Prithvi Narayan's descendants
continued to rule Nepal until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the
throne fell under the domination of an ambitious military commander, Jang
Bahadur Rana. The monarchy was not abolished, but its absolute powers were
exercised thereafter by the prime minister rather than the king. The despotic
regime of the Ranas lasted until 1951 when, under the impact of revolutionary
postwar changes in South Asia, the family autocracy was overthrown and the
king was restored to preeminence. Since 1951 the monarchy has been the key
element in national political life and its strength has continued to grow.

     By 1964 the country had assumed an active international role and had made
modest progress toward domestic goals. Public education had expanded
impressively; a few small industrial enterprises had been established; some
roads had been built; the legislative foundations of a land reform program had
been laid; and trade, free from feudal restraints, was flourishing. Asserting
a policy of "modified neutralism" or of impartial cordiality to the principals
in the cold war, Nepal had established diplomatic relations with more than 30
countries and was receiving economic and technical aid from both non-Communist
and Communist states, including the United States, India, the People's
Republic of China and the Soviet Union.

     Probably more significant for the country's future than the advances that
had been made were the means by which progress was to be continued and
hastened. At the end of 1960, King Mahendra, angered by the contention of
political parties, which had proliferated after the overthrow of the Ranas,
and impatient with restrictions of his authority, took personal control of the
government. Rejecting parliamentary rule as unsuitable for Nepal, he announced
the establishment of the panchayat system, a pyramidal structure of assemblies
and councils rising from the village through a series of indirectly elected
higher bodies to the national level. Under royal tutelage and control, the
panchayats are to draw the people into the national development program and
involve them in the management of their own affairs. As the country's first
uniform system of local administration the panchayats are to hasten the
organic integration of the nation under the leadership of the King. In
terminating the brief essay in parliamentary government, the monarch committed
himself to a unitary political order which probably cannot be successfully
imposed on Nepal's pluralistic society from above but will have to be
painstakingly constructed from below. In early 1964 it was too soon to gauge
progress.

     Nepal compares roughly in size and population with the state of Illinois,
but 97 percent of its approximately 10 million people live in small
agricultural villages, many of them in remote mountain valleys accessible only
by trail. The population of Katmandu, the capital and largest town, numbers no
more than 125,000, and no other town has more than a third of that. The
landscape varies from the rice paddies and grasslands and jungles of the Tarai
plain on the Indian boundary to mountain heights, which 150 miles to the north
on the border with Tibet soar about 25,000 feet. Climate ranges from the
tropical heat of the lowlands to the arctic cold of the high altitudes and
from an ample 70 to 80 inches of precipitation in the east to a third or
fourth of that in parts of the west. In the mountainous northern three-fourths
of the country, towering ridges separate the high valleys and the rivers
isolate rather than connect the communities on the swift upper reaches.

     The variety of this geographical setting is matched by the ethnic
diversity of its inhabitants. More than 30 languages and a multitude of local
dialects are spoken, representing such distinct families as Indo-European,
Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic. Other differences-cultural, religious and
social-combine with those of language to produce a comparable ethnic
complexity. Considerably more than half of the population in western and
southern Nepal reveals its more or less remote origin in the Indian
subcontinent in its language, Hindu religion, social organization and north
Indian physical traits. A different pattern prevails in the Tibetan linguistic
and cultural connections, Lamaist Buddhism and Mongoloid physical type of the
inhabitants of the mountain villages of the north and east.

     The historical background of this contrast is the penetration into Nepal
from early times of people and influences from India on one side and Tibet on
the other. The influences from both areas were multiple and tended to change
over time. From India came ancient Hindu, early Buddhist and later Hindu
elements; from Tibet and beyond came various primitive tribal cultures,
Lamaist Buddhism (an outgrowth of earlier contacts with an older form of
Buddhism in India and Nepal), and assorted features of east Asia's high degree
of civilization. Change continued to take place in Nepal. Indian and Mongoloid
physical types mixed; old ethnic identities were forgotten and new ones
evolved; primitive shamanism was overlaid with Buddhism; Hinduism
interpenetrated and sometimes replaced Buddhism and was itself influenced by
it; and the transplanted Hindu caste system lost something of its rigor and
structural complexity. The pattern which emerged from this long process of
change in the mountain enclave of Nepal was distinctive but manifold.
Indentities continued to be, and largely remain, ethnic, regional and local.

     Nepal's economy is basically agrarian, most of the people gaining food
and livelihood from the subsistence farming of small plots. Rice, wheat and
barley are the most important products. Cultivable land is limited by the
mountainous terrain, the climate and centuries of intensive exploitation. The
country has few resources other than vast areas of forest and an almost
untouched hydroelectric power potential. Industrial establishments are few in
number and small in scale. The transportation system, although it includes air
services and railroads, is limited and unintegrated. The greater proportion of
goods is carried by porters, and most people who travel do so on foot.

     The economy is heavily dependent on India as a market for its produce and
as its supplier of such basic requirements as salt, kerosene, cotton cloth and
other manufactured goods. India is also Nepal's outstanding source of
financial aid and technical assistance for the development of the country.
Dependency has other aspects as well. Indian currency, for instance, was legal
tender throughout Nepal until 1960 and still circulates widely within the
country, although the use of Neapalese currency has been made mandatory. India
also absorbs most of Nepal's major export-its excess manpower.

     Isolated by Rana policy from the changes taking place in the outside
world, the country remained economically undeveloped, although some
improvements were introduced in the 1920s. Since 1951 an expenditure of about
$80 million on economic development, most of it supplied by foreign
governments and international organizations, has resulted mainly in the
extension of the road system, the establishment of air services and other
public works. The agrarian base of the economy has been little affected. The
current Three-Year Plan (1962-65) emphasizes development projects which will
have the most immediate effect on increasing national income. The United
States is financing aspects of the Plan concerned with improving the
utilization of the nation's resources, and India is continuing to aid in the
development of transportation and the hydroelectric power potential.

     Expansion of the economy is heavily dependent on government expenditure
since private investment from domestic sources is negligible. There has been
some circulation of money for over a century, but the degree to which the
nation is monetized is unknown. The banking system is rudimentary and is in
the process of expansion. Most people subsist on the land and use the cash
that comes into their hands for the essentials they cannot produce for
themselves or acquire through reciprocal relationships with other caste or
artisan groups. Although bank deposits are rising, most savings are still in
jewelry or in private hoards and most credit is supplied by moneylenders.

     An effort to increase agricultural productivity, and hence the income of
the majority, must overcome a variety of difficulties. Aside from the lack of
domestic investment there are problems of soil improvement, erosion control,
irrigation, drainage and prevention of plant and animal diseases. The
scattered villages of farmers and animal breeders working in family units do
not provide the organizational framework for agricultural activity much above
the subsistence level. Equipment of all types is needed but even small
machines and modern handtools presuppose the knowledge to use them, and the
country suffers from a shortage of trained persons in all fields. Above all,
divisive attitudes of the segments of this multiethnic society toward each
other as well as many of their customs are deterrents to communication and
acceptance of improved techniques.

     A fundamental problem in the evolution of a viable political system is
the absence of any developed sense of national consciousness or identification
among the bulk of the population. Despite the passage of almost two centuries
since Prithvi Narayan first brought the whole of Nepal under a single central
authority, the social foundations and emotional bonds of national unity have
yet to develop in anything more than a very rudimentary way, and the country
remains a cluster of isolated localities with little more in common than
subordination to the same king and government. The perpetuation of strong
local ties and loyalties was fostered by the policies of both the Gorkha kings
and the Rana prime ministers. Although it was the former who first created the
basis for a sense of national identity among the Nepalese, they also allowed
many local rulers to remain in power and rule under the aegis of Katmandu,
thereby facilitating the growth and semi-independent states. When the Ranas
came to power they deliberately retarded the development of nationalist
sentiment as a threat to their regime.

     The ability of the central government to combat particularism is hampered
not only by local loyalties but also by the administrative problems. District
offices of the central government in areas far from Katmandu are of necessity
fairly autonomous; it sometimes takes as much as a month to communicate
instruction to them from the center. The rajas (rulers) of the old autonomous
vassal states strive to retain their hereditary privileges, various ethnic and
regional groups resist any transfer of loyalty to the larger community, and
attempts by the central government to extend full control to the country's
frontiers have provoked separatist stirrings.

     King Mahendra in 1958 felt compelled to issue a decree calling on his
people to refrain from using the term "Nepal" with reference to the Katmandu
Valley only and appealing for a greater sense of national identity. The action
was indicative of his concern with the problem of building national unity. If
the task is an extraordinarily difficult one, the King approaches it with
important assets. The most important of these is the symbolic value of the
monarchy. It is the oldest and most firmly rooted political institution in the
country. Even at its lowest ebb under the Ranas, the monarchy still retained
sufficient prestige to prevent Jang Bahadur from deposing the King and
accepting the crown himself when it was offered to him by a deputation of
nobles. Regarded by many of the people as a reincarnation of the Hindu god
Vishnu, the King is the personification of the state to the Nepalese and the
recipient of their loyalty and respect.

     Another important factor in the effort to create a more substantial sense
of national consciousness is the new structure of government-the panchayat
system-which went into full operation in April 1963 after several years of
preparation. The panchayat structure with its four levels-local, district,
zonal and national-is designed to bring every citizen of the country into
participation in public affairs, directly at the local level and indirectly at
higher ones. The class of professional organization constitutes another
feature of the panchayat system. They are six bodies organized according to
occupational or social status, such as workers, students and women, which
include the entire population in their membership and are intended to
stimulate class and national consciousness and to mobilize the efforts of the
people in the economic development of the country. King Mahendra has stated
that through the panchayat system he seeks to create a "new, original and
national philosophy," and calls upon the people for enthusiasm, patriotism and
collective efforts in the achievement of national goals.

     Although the King now controls all major instruments of power and there
are no significant challenges to that control in the present political
context, the existence of many large groups which have not yet been integrated
within the Nepalese polity constitutes a potential threat. In the long run the
King's perpetuation of his dominant position rests to a very large extent on
his success in unifying a heterogeneous society with sufficient speed to
prevent the appearance of grievances which could provide the basis for the
development and organization of rival centers of power. The King has so far
preempted the initiative in reaching such groups, and he must maintain it to
retain royal control.

     The task of welding a unified nation is greatly complicated by the
pressures generated by the trans-Himalayan rivalry between India and China.
When India gained its independence in 1947 and the British withdrew, the
southward orientation of Nepalese foreign policy was continued much as it had
been for more than a century before. The seizure of power by the Communists in
China in 1950 and their subsequent invasion and occupation of Tibet, however,
radically altered the configuration of power on which Nepal's foreign policy
was based. Caught between the two great contenders, India and Communist China,
and concerned about its own defense and sovereignty, Nepal adopted the policy
of modified neutralism.

     Whereas the primacy of British and subsequently Indian influence in Nepal
was generally unquestioned before 1951, it later came to be increasingly
challenged by China as it consolidated its position in Tibet. Although the
postwar rise of Chinese power created conditions more nearly resembling a
balance of power across the Himalayan fulcrum than had ever existed in the
past and increased the flexibility and opportunity of Nepal's foreign policy,
it has also vastly increased the dangers. These reached their peak in the fall
of 1962 when Chinese troops invaded India on both flanks of Nepal. The
immediate crisis has receded, but the danger of the situation remains and is
likely to confront Nepal for many years to come.