The King & Koirala

Two months ago King Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Deva brusquely jailed Prime Minister B. P. Koirala, thus bringing an abrupt end to the first government ever to be elected democratically in Nepal. Then, the King explained ingeniously that he had acted because the Koirala government was "killing the people's democratic aspirations." Last week, talking to a TIME correspondent in Katmandu, the King gave a more candid reason: "The Koirala government was always trying to put me in an awkward position . . . It preached that the King was standing in the way of reform."

Koirala's own efforts at reform had been mild enough. To get money for roads to replace Nepal's mountain trails and for schools to educate its 94% illiterate population, Koirala imposed a minuscule income tax on land with such a generous cutoff point that only 500 of the biggest landowners would have to pay anything at all. But Nepal has never paid income taxes and was not planning to start. Grumbled one Hindu leader: "Why should we pay taxes when we can always get more money from the Americans?" To rally resistance, the prospective taxpayers assiduously spread stories among the peasants that the government was planning to tax their cows and even their wives' pigtails. Thus both landowners and peasants seemed content with Koirala's deposition.

Even the King concedes that taxes are inevitable if Nepal is to reform its medieval economy. But Mahendra made clear that if there was any reforming to be done, he was going to do it. And for the moment he wanted no interfering politicians getting in his way or claiming credit.

Political parties were banned and would stay banned indefinitely, said the King, but "I envisage an eventual return to parliamentary democracy." B. P. Koirala and his chief supporters remained under comfortable detention at the Katmandu Officers' Club with little hope of early release or even a trial. Said the King emphatically: "They already stand condemned. We have only to decide what to do with them." More fortunate were local Communist leaders; most of them had managed somehow to elude the government's dragnet when the other political leaders were rounded up and jailed. Shrugged a Nepalese official: "Our Communists seem to have a monopoly on escape techniques." As for Katmandu's 13 tiny newspapers, word had been passed to get in line behind the King or risk losing essential government advertising.

King Mahendra was still faced with the problem of hauling his backward country into the 20th century. Danger was that if the King failed, his powerful neighbors, the Red Chinese, would do the job for him.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.