Manjushree Thapa, an occasional contributor to Sajha and a Nepali writer, has just published a new book of non-fiction.

I'd imagine that the book is NOT available in Kathmandu at the moment; but it's now
available in book-stores in Mumbai, Dhaka, Colombo and Karachi.

oohi
ashu

Here's a review

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20050214&fname=Booksa&sid=1

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Paupers At The Banquet
Eerily well-timed expose of its monarchy and polity, but where does Nepal go from here?

K.V. RAJAN

FORGET KATHMANDU?AN ELEGY FOR DEMOCRACY
by Manjushree Thapa
Penguin/Viking
Rs 350; Pages: 260

Manjushree Thapa describes her book modestly as a "mongrel of historiography...and travel writing, a book on bad politics". But her account will have a deep resonance both inside and out of Nepal, especially now after the "coup within a coup" effected by King Gyanendra on February 1, when he made his intentions clear by dismissing the government, declaring an emergency, censoring freedoms and assuming full powers himself.

Forget Kathmandu is essentially a cri de coeur from a sensitive young Nepalese as she watches her country slide downhill, as violence spreads, governance fails, institutions collapse, politicians squabble, democracy is strangulated, values disappear, hope fades. It is a well-written book?fast-paced, hard to put down, written with style and sophistication, also honesty and emotion.

The author has spared no one?politicians whether of the extreme left or extreme right, veteran freedom-fighters, Maoist insurgents, civil society ("we, the bourgeoisie")?in her account of the multi-faceted crisis that grips her country today. She is especially irreverential about the occupants of Narayanhity Palace, past and present. Perhaps this was the only way to demystify history and expose the cynical self-serving actions of the Nepalese polity, which has brought the country to the brink.

While the unravelling of Nepal comes across with sharp and depressing clarity in the book, she offers no specific options on the way out. In the last chapter, Unfinished Revolution, Manjushree pleads for the democratic revolution of the 1940s and 1990, both interrupted, to be revived and completed. She says, "If only the extreme right and the extreme left can be disarmed and brought into the political centre," it should be possible to "re-imagine Nepal", to bring about a genuine, inclusive democracy. And she has no problem with scrapping the Constitution or ending the monarchy or removing the failed political leaders if they pose obstacles for ushering in a true democratic order.

Other Nepalese intellectuals who have been critical of the monarchy have usually hesitated to suggest that the monarchy is dispensable. Kanak Mani Dixit, for example, recently suggested that if the choice was between Nepal becoming a "banana republic or banana monarchy", he would opt for a banana monarchy. Manjushree herself admits that the democracy which lasted from 1990 to 2002 was only superficially different from panchayat Nepal, in that it basically legitimised the power of Nepal?s traditional elites, and made for an exclusionary rather than inclusive democracy. "Democracy lacking democracy," in Manjushree?s words.

If democracy is to be genuine, it must mean more than free elections and freedom of speech; it must involve people at the local level, the marginalised, offer the hope of a more equitable social order, generate economic performance, be consensual and accommodating, have democratically committed leaders. Otherwise, democracy does not take root, it soon gets overwhelmed by poverty and revolt. Nepal?s challenge is thus not only to restore democracy to the pre-October 2002 position, but to free it from the "elite caste and class cartel" as Manjushree describes the version ushered in by 1990.

King Gyanendra clearly does not agree with the thesis that more democracy is the only route to a credible and sustainable process which would end the present instability and violence. He had the responsibility of taking Nepal out of the cul-de-sac he had pushed it into through his actions on and after October 4, 2002. Instead, he has chosen to end the facade of democracy altogether.

Manjushree?s book leaves the reader not much wiser about the basic questions. What do the Maoists really want? Is the King willing to be a constitutional monarch? Can there ever be a meeting ground between them? As for democracy, faction-ridden, leaderless, eternally squabbling for a share in power, when can it deliver so that it does not get overwhelmed by poverty and malgovernance? How can the international community, especially India, help? Can it at all help, if there is no critical mass in Nepal?s elite willing to put country before self?

But the book is a must-read, even in order to come to terms with Nepal?s grim reality. Now that the King has helpfully imposed censorship in Nepal, the author can rest assured that it will be read by even more people?especially those who have let their country down.

Book cover

Backs to history

Manjushree Thapa's new book on Nepal is timely in understanding the turmoil in the realm

C. Raja Mohan

It is not often that one finds a book in the subcontinent on contemporary politics that is at once informed by an intense political passion, a strong historical sense, a profound insight into the inner dynamics of a nation and is yet accessible to all. That is precisely what Manjushree Thapa has achieved in her remarkable tract on the unfolding tragedy in Nepal.

Thapa, who has already made a name for herself with her first novel The Tutor of History, has now set a higher standard for those who are animated by the unending turbulence in South Asia. That the book has come out barely weeks before King Gyanendra's political coup in Nepal last Monday is a tribute to that rare sense of timing few authors are granted.

Nepal is a country most people love to travel to; but know little about, especially its people. But in fact, the enchanting mountains and cultural religiosity of Nepal have tended to mask profound social turmoil that has gripped the nation for more than a decade and a half.

Thapa's elegiac prose tells us about Nepal's soaring hopes for democracy since the early 1990s and its collapse amidst the recent regicide, the rise of Maoist extremism and the fractious politics of its elite. In recent memory, no one has come up with a better narrative on Nepal than Thapa.

As someone deeply committed to the democratic transformation of her nation, Thapa is not weighed down by pessimism even amidst the crashing political structures in Nepal nor the great concentration of suffering in such a short period. She is determined to ?reimagine Nepal?, while foretelling the death of its most recent dalliance with democracy.

Thapa believes ?a revolution is underway in Nepal. Not the Maoist revolution, but the democratic revolution that began back in 1940s.? She insists that democratic rule can ultimately triumph in Nepal despite the failed experiments launched in 1950 and 1990.

She argues that the re-established democracy must be more than symbolic and embrace the variety of social movements that have risen in Nepal.

She hopes that ?later, looking back, it will be possible to decipher some pattern to what no feels like a clutter of regrettable events. Maybe later, we will be able to look back upon our times and say, 'that was what it was like in the thick of the revolution.?

It is this optimism that helps Thapa see through the extraordinary developments in her country. As she weaves the history of Nepal into an account of recent developments in Nepal, Thapa reminds us she is not a professional historian.

But she brings to the book what most historians don't-a rare understanding of a process under way. And unlike most activists for a cause, Thapa does not tire us with anxious polemics. She makes us understand the complexity and nuance of Nepali history.

As India gets inevitably drawn into the internal politics of Nepal in the coming months and years, Thapa's book is a must-read for all concerned Indian citizens. For whatever happens, the Indian state can never forget the centrality of Kathmandu in its own security, in the widest sense.

But the Indian elite knows so little about Nepal-either its history or its current turbulence. Thapa would be remembered for giving India and the world a better of sense of Nepal's extraordinary story.

The reviewer is professor of South Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi


URL: http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=81770

http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20050207/books2.shtml&SET=T

Cry, My Beloved Country

Nepal's most promising novelist travels in memory and history to redeem her nation from comforting myths


By Sam Miller

FORGET KATHMANDU: AN ELEGY FOR DEMOCRACY
By Manjushree thapa
Penguin
Price: Rs 350 Pages: 260
Year 2001 was one of unbelievable news stories. In the months running up to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the international media was obsessed with another incredible tale, a now largely forgotten massacre. A small nation, already in the throes of a Maoist insurgency, had woken up one June morning to discover that its royal family had been practically wiped out as a result of that most common of events-a dinnertime argument. In a codicil to the story that appeared too bizarre to be anything but invention, the assassin, Crown Prince Dipendra, briefly became king, eventually succumbing to self-inflicted gunshot wounds. And then came the conspiracy theories-that Dipendra was not, after all, responsible and that the new king, his uncle Gyanendra, or the new Crown Prince Paras was behind the massacre. Or maybe it was America. Or even India, for that matter.


PICTURE SPEAK


THAPA: Democracy is my cup of tea

Nepalese novelist Manjushree Thapa has now written a courageous and important work of non-fiction which starts with her retelling of the Kathmandu palace massacre. She declares that "most Nepalis will conclude that we just don't know what happened on the night of June 1, 2001. We lost the truth, we lost our history. We are left to recount anecdotes and stories and to content ourselves with myth". And in this vein, she goes on to examine the history of Nepal, interweaving it with her own history; writing about her inner turmoil and despair (and her retreat into meditation and gardening) as she sees her country falling apart.

Thapa examines other myths, of Nepal as a "pre-political Shangri-La, good for trekking and mountaineering and budget mysticism", a seductively untruthful portrayal that helped bring in lots of tourists, but which some Nepalis were so keen to disseminate that they started believing in it themselves. She savages those diplomats and international aid workers "munching hors d'oeuvres and canapes" at Kathmandu cocktail parties, who declare their support for the new king, as the only way of stopping Nepal from becoming the next Cambodia. Thapa has a hilariously pointless wander through the national museum with its impressively wide-ranging collection of nasty weapons. She also points out that it is not only foreigners but also members of the royal family who have shown an active, long-term interest in inhaling Nepal's large marijuana crop.

Thapa's often cavalier approach to the norms of historical scholarship is like a wondrous breath of fresh air for those who have tried and failed to make sense of the long lists of kings and ranas, prime ministers and regents which figure in all traditional accounts of Nepal's history. It is an approach that also, on occasion, brings real insight, as when she makes an unexpected but thought-provoking comparison between the pre-1990 monarchist, panchayat system of government and the communist one-party states in other parts of the world.

In the second half of Forget Kathmandu, Thapa leaves behind the materialist middle class of the capital (which presumably explains the imperative of the book's clumsy title) and heads to the countryside in search of the origins of Nepal's Maoist insurgency. Here she finds the poor of Nepal, people who have long given up on the country's incompetent politicians. Some of them, she says, find new hope and excitement in joining a movement which has brought government after government to its knees. She declares that if she had grown up in a small village, "Hell, I would have joined the Maoists, too .... Join the Maoists is what any spirited girl would do." But she ends up cursing all sides-the monarchists, the Maoists and the endlessly bickering political parties-and concludes with an impassioned, if rather nebulous, plea for Nepal to become a real democracy.

Forget Kathmandu is a hugely ambitious and largely successful book, that could have been even better with a little more effort in production. An index would have been useful, as well as some help with clunky phrasings ("Members of parliament even exchanged fisticuffs"; "We got in a rush to leave"). But overall, this book, a highly personal view of a country quite unlike any other, is intelligent and challenging and deserves to be widely read, not just by those with an existing interest in Nepal.