Word: koirala
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...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...
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...
...rigorous anti-Communist with progressive policies, Koirala began pushing through land and tax reforms, soon had gathered the reins of government to himself. King Mahendra, who as monarch is regarded by Nepal's pious Hindus as a reincarnation of the god Vishnu, was left little beyond his religious duties...
Apparently King Mahendra decided Koirala had gone too far. Returning from a world tour, the King discovered that the Prime Minister had pushed through legislation subjecting landlords for the first time to property tax and expropriating large estates, last week invoked an escape clause he himself had providently written into the constitution, summarily dissolved Parliament. Prime Minister Koirala, in the act of addressing a youth rally, was hauled off and locked up in the army officers' club. So were all the other Cabinet members whom the army could find. As loyal Gurkha troops patrolled the narrow streets of Mahendra...