Democracy Comes at Midnight

The arrival of democracy last week in Nepal's capital of Katmandu had a Himalayan flavor all its own. After an endless, crowded tea party on the green lawn of the royal palace, the new Cabinet finally assembled an hour before midnight in a palace hall dimly lit by five huge chandeliers (Katmandu is often short of electric power). Advised by his court astrologers that the time was right, King Mahendra, 39, rose from his silver and red velvet throne and swore into office Prime Minister B. P. Koirala and 19 other ministers. Then everyone present raced across town through streets swarming with mosquitoes for the swearing-in of the 109 successful candidates in Nepal's first elections for M.P.s. More than half belong to the Prime Minister's Nepali Congress Party, but included is a vociferous handful of Communists.

Prisoner King. That democracy arrived at all was remarkable, for the 9,000,000 people of Nepal have spent only the last eight years in the 20th century. Before that, the nation was a feudal state governed by the Ranas, a ruthless family of hereditary Prime Ministers who kept the

King a prisoner. It was said that when a Rana had amassed a $30 million fortune as Prime Minister, he was expected to pass the job on to his nearest male relative. In 1951 the Ranas were overthrown with surprising ease, and the Kings of Nepal came into their own. A democratic constitution, with points of resemblance to the legal systems of Britain, India and the U.S., was drawn up, and elections held last spring.

Enterprising King Mahendra and Prime Minister Koirala are agreed on the need to put their chaotic country to rights. Tawny-skinned and brown-eyed, with a thin face and frame like that of Frank Sinatra, Prime Minister Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala was born at Banaras, India in 1914, where his articulate professional father had fled the wrath of the Ranas. Graduating from the University of Calcutta with a law degree, Koirala joined Nehru and Gandhi in the fight for Indian independence, was jailed for 2^ years by the British. With the downfall of the Ranas, he returned to Nepal with his older half brother, M. P. Koirala, over whom he later triumphed in a struggle for power.

Verbal Contact. Prime Minister Koirala is articulately Western in thought (his favorite author: French Novelist Albert Camus) and has an informal ability to get things done that is rare in inefficient Nepal. A political opponent says: "He keeps his word; that's what counts most." The Prime Minister can expect continuing help from India in money and technicians because Nepal, on the border of Tibet, is a strategic mountain barrier to Red Chinese expansion. The U.S. is supporting road-building projects, developing civil aviation, and setting up a radio communication net to bring Katmandu into verbal contact with the rest of the country. The Soviet Union has promised Nepal a new hydroelectric plant and factories for refining sugar and making cigarettes. Both the Soviet Union and the U.S. are rushing to get into Katmandu first with a fully staffed embassy.

Sharing the vaguely socialist views of India's Nehru, but "with room for free-enterprise capitalism," the energetic Prime Minister recognizes Communists as his enemies at home and Red China as his enemy abroad; in typical Red "cartographic aggression," Chinese maps lay claim to large chunks of Nepal. Not long ago, Koirala declared that "the Tibetan tragedy was an Asian parallel to the Hungarian annihilation." Nehru has not been heard to say as much about either Tibet or Hungary.

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