The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0040/00401.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 17KB | 270 lines

$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 al