Nepe wrote: "Rajpal Singh is a NUANCED monarchist, let's say, a political photocopy of our own Ashu Tiwari." Nepe, thank you for throwing this flame. Fortunately, it's verifiably FALSE. Meantime, let me say that unlike some of your comrades in DC (who you now consider to be pukka democrats based on your friendships with them and based on how you went on a couple of democracy picnics with them), let the verifiably true record show that: Neither I nor my immediate family members have ever benefited or been harmed from any patronage or lack thereof of the royal family in any capacity ever. Let me repeat that so that the message clearly sinks in: Let the verifiably true record show that: Neither I nor my immediate family members have ever benefited or been harmed from any patronage or lack thereof of the royal family in any capacity ever. True, my father was a civil servant at a time when most Nepali college graduates went into civil service. He raised us children and gave us education through his "suddha talab" in the '70s and the '80s. Feel free to look into this with your own sources. That is why, you see, since all politics is personal, there is NO burning personal reason for me to support or oppose the King TO THE DEGREE you do. The King has done me no harm nor has he hurt me. As of now. Intellectually though, as a student of economics, I am NOT interested in the 'normative' issues of how the King OUGHT to behave or what he OUGHT to do and what OUGHT to be done to him by others -- concerns that keep YOU and other democrats awake at night. I simply accept the straightforward fact that King as a self-interested player in this political game who's there to maximize his own hold on to power. As simple as that. Once I accept -- in a value-neutral way -- the King as a self-interested player in the political game who's there to maximize his own hold on to power, it makes it easier for me to try to understand why he does what he does,and what he is likely to do next. The point is NOT say that what he does is necessarily right or wrong (which are moral judgements) . . . the point here is that there is a self-interested reason for the king to act in ways he does. That is why, I am constantly amazed by your kind of textbook democrats who get caught up in the "what the King ought to do or what ought to be done to him" issues while neglecting "why he does what he does" to THEN craft a realistic strategy to counter the King's influence to change the flow of the game. Last year, you were all agog about the Ratna Park demonstrations. Even though I was in Kathmandu, you were the one giving us almost live updates of the historic Ratna Park julus. You even scolded me on Sajha for NOT taking me in those demonstrations. But you could never understood that whenever I went to Ratna Park to watch the julus, all I and my friends collected was disappointment about the lack of direction of the julus and disgust about how parties were doing their jhagada even there. No wonder then that the Ratna Park julus -- despite your cyber-enthusiasm -- fizzled into a farce in reality. Even now, political parties have a hard time mustering support form the janata to do anything. This is a BITTER pill for you to swallow. As for my pro-democracy credential, let me say that the happiest day of my life was 17 July 2000, when -- after months of assisting activists who were/are my friends from my US days -- more than 100,000 Nepalis in Far Western Nepal were declared free from bondage and were said to have all their political rights and could live as FREE citizens. The way some of their representatives smiled, laughed and danced to the tune of pure joy near Bhadra Kali in Kathmandu upon hearing the Radio announcement still moves me to greatly positive emotions about the redemptive power of political rights. Nepe, that was/is personal . . . something big of which I was a minor part of, something I can always relate to. The tragedy of Nepali democracy was that it was never made 'personal' for people to tend it as their own. Only the netas made it 'personal' for their own gains. That's why, when the netas now ask for people's support for democracy, people are understandably leery/wary about getting it back AGAIN for the netas ONLY. And what do these so-called netas do? So desperate are they that some of them even try to enlist the Maoists -- who are pure evil -- to come in and help them. How low can they go? If anything, having personally seen how democracies have played out in the US, UK, France and in all of South Asian countries, let's just say that I consider myself a 'nuanced democrat'. oohi ashu If