Word: rana
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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King a prisoner. It was said that when a Rana had amassed a $30 million fortune as Prime Minister, he was expected to pass the job on to his nearest male relative. In 1951 the Ranas were overthrown with surprising ease, and the Kings of Nepal came into their own. A democratic constitution, with points of resemblance to the legal systems of Britain, India and the U.S., was drawn up, and elections held last spring...
Barrel-chested, walrus-mustached K.I. Singh, 54, onetime Indian army clerk and practicing homeopathic physician, earned the sobriquet "Robin Hood of the Himalayas" when he began parceling out land to peasant farmers during a nationwide revolt against the autocratic Rana dynasty in 1950. Worried by Singh's deeds of derring-do as head of a band of ragged Nepalese army irregulars, nervous Indian army "observers" stationed in Nepal clapped him into jail. He escaped the Indians, but was picked up again. One night in 1952 Singh broke jail and led a coup that captured the capital's airfield...
Royal Prospects. The King's prospects are better than his predecessors'. For more than a century the Kings of Nepal, whose subjects believe them to be the reincarnation of the god Vishnu, were virtual prisoners of their Prime Ministers, whose usurped power was handed down through the Rana family for generation after generation. A revolution sparked by neighboring India in 1950 toppled the Ranas and restored the Kings, under the benevolent protection of Jawaharlal Nehru, who needs mountainous Nepal as a buffer against Communist China...
Despite his long reign, Nepal's late King had actually ruled over his country for only a few years. For most of his reign he was virtually a prisoner of the powerful Rana nobles, who held despotic power over Nepal as its hereditary Prime Ministers. While the King stayed at home in his palace reading Shelley, the Ranas ran his country with an iron hand, indulging their taste for bizarre ornamentation by filling their 30-odd marble palaces with fancy clocks and comical distorting mirrors imported from Coney Island. In 1950, fired by neighboring India, a revolution at last...
ARCTIC STEEL PLANT will soon make Norwegian heavy industry virtually self-sufficient for the first time. Huge new plant, built by British and German firms at a cost of $100 million, is being completed at Mo i Rana, near the Arctic Circle, will be ready early next year. Initial production: 200,000 tons of rolled-steel products yearly...