Word: mahendra
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Nepal's King Mahendra is a poet, tiger hunter and consummate wheeler-dealer. As monarch of a mile-high, land locked nation, one of whose principal exports is the steely little Gurkha soldier, Mahendra labors not only to hold his throne but also to keep his little kingdom from the jaws of its giant neighbors, Red China and India. He does this so successfully that, far from becoming a tasty morsel for its neigh bors, Nepal has wheedled all manner of goodies from both- not to mention the U.S. and Russia...
...King was wheeling and dealing in style. It began one morning in the ornate state hall of Singha Durbar, where Nepalese and Chinese officials signed an agreement by which Peking will build two warehouses and a brick-and-tile factory for Nepal. That afternoon, wearing his habitual dark glasses, Mahendra and his pretty, petite Queen Ratna attended the formal inauguration of a U.S.-financed, 26-mile aerial cableway that will bring freight and food from the Indian border across the Mahabharat Mountains to the capital city of Katmandu...
...repeated sorties by Indian-backed and -based rebels against the Nepalese government have strained relations with India so severely that King Mahendra for the first time was making overtures to Red China. Already the Chinese have agreed to build a road between Nepal's capital city of Katmandu and Lhasa in Tibet. Backbone of the Nepalese economy is the employment in the British and Indian armies of the 20,000 tough little Nepalese Gurkha soldiers; from their annual pay they send home $5,000,000-equal to a fourth or more of Nepal's yearly budget...
Prime Minister Nehru righteously castigated Mahendra's behavior as a "setback to democracy." But the leader of the Nepali exiles in Calcutta is not quite as democratic as Nehru might have wished. He is General Subarna Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana, a member of Nepal's deposed, autocratic old ruling family. Since last December, under his command, the rebels have mounted dozens of armed attacks on Nepali villages and police posts. Typically, a few score guerrillas will pop out of the jungle, bloodlessly seize a town, run up the Nepali flag with a picture of Subarna, loot the local...
Movable Peak. Red China was quick to take advantage of the strained relations between Nepal and India. Last fall Mahendra and Giri traveled to Peking, where they got the full treatment-little flower girls at the airport, a cymbal-and-gong concert, repeated toasts to eternal Chinese-Nepalese friendship. Peking proved amiable in demarcating the border between Red-run Tibet and Nepal, and even accepted a splendidly Oriental compromise on the question of who owns Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain. Foreign Minister Giri explains that both sides agreed that Chomolongma (the Tibetan name for Everest...