The King and I

"Do you know what I mean by a relatively free press? I mean a free press which is edited by one of my relatives." --African dictator Mageeba in Tom Stoppard's "Night and Day"

Such is also the claim of Khadga Bir Bikram Shah, editor of a major daily newspaper in Nepal--and brother-in-law of the Nepalese King. A former fellow of Harvard's Center for International Affairs, Shah this year returned home to southeast Asia during the most turbulent period in Nepal's recent past: for the first time in its history, the government of this tiny nation has temporarily released its oppressive clamp on public expression, permitting street demonstrations, political rallies and an uncensored press. In a recent interview, Shah examined Nepalese politics and reflected on his own role in the publication of a "relatively free press."

Shah considers himself, first and foremost, a realist. He argues that advanced Western nations grant liberties which would threaten the stability of an impoverished Third World country like Nepal. With an annual income of $110 per capita and a literacy rate of 18 per cent, Nepal is undergoing development at an unprecedented, albeit glacial rate. The mountainous terrain--Nepal, home of Mounts Everest and Annapurna, is flanked entirely by the Himalayas--provides for poor communications, medical services and transportation of the agricultural goods produced by 90 per cent of the workforce. Shah denies that the mere infusion of aid and technology will remold Nepal's political and economic institutions to conform to their Western equivalents. "It's very difficult to push through liberal democracy in a world that is really illiberal," he says. "You cannot change the world with a magic wand."

But Nepal is a democracy at least in name. Using the official state terminology, Shah calls it a "partiless democracy"--partiless because every political figure serves the King, a democracy because every citizen indirectly elects a local, regional and state-wide panchayat (council) representative. But in the constitution and in practice, the sole voice of authority is the King, the most revered of all national traditions, even more than the Hinduism professed by 90 per cent of the population.

Nepal's hereditary monarchy dates back to 1559, the year of King Drabya Shah's unification of a people already almost two millenia old. In the unbroken line of kings that has followed, His Majesty Birendra Shah in 1972 assumed the throne vacated by the death of his father Mahendra Shah, and his grandfather Tribhuvan Shan before him. Like his brother-in-law, King Birendra also attended Harvard, spending 1967-8 as a Quincy House student "taking a crash course in affairs of state," according to Shah.

When in 1966 an unrelated law student named Khadga Shah wed the second daughter of King Mahendra, it marked the first time a commoner had ever entered into the royal family. Shah reflects that his marriage constituted "a step forward in a freer intercourse between people and the King."

Fourteen years later, that intercourse has become too free for comfort. A wave of street violence now threatens the stability of the 400-year-old Shah dynasty.

The most potent challenge to the King's autocracy has been waged by students, who in constituting much of the educated, urban elite have mounted a campaign of public demonstrations similar to that in Iran. A few years ago students stormed the offices of the government-run paper The Rising Nepal; when its editors abolished their foreign news section shortly afterwards, they blamed the students for destroying the press that happened to print that section. During last year's ten-day demonstration of the banned Nepalese Congress Party, police killed a total of 25 protestors and arrested hundreds more.

It was in fear of further uprisings, a U.S. State Department official speculates, that the King last May granted new provisional liberties to the people. He announced that for the period of a year, he would suspend his constitutional right to censorship pending a national referendum, (the first direct country-wide vote in two decades, and only the second in Nepal's history) to determine if the people like the existing partiless system. In the meantime, the government is doing some politicking of its own: at a recent pro-partiless rally, a panchayat minister declared that "The supreme objective of the multi-party system is to capture power whereas that of the partiless panchayat system is to promote national welfare and respect."

All this Shah considers necessary background to understanding his role in both press and politics in Nepal. At 41, he has been editor for eight years of Imali Bela, or Modern Times, one of four English-language dailies in the capital city of Kathmandu. (English is Nepal's second language.) At six to ten pages a day and a circulation of 45,000, his is one of the largest papers in the city, and he credits as well for having more "objective news" than the others.

Objectivity in the Nepalese press is a matter of degree. Nearly every newspaper inevitably develops a political bent in response to the interest group that most heavily funds it. The Rising Nepal and Motherland are accepted as organs of the government, while Kathmandu abounds as well with papers professing pro-Soviet, -Indian and -Chinese ideologies.

Without denying his general sympathy for policies of the King, Shah asserts that in his paper, "As far as possible we try to avoid catering to a definite ideological clientele." But again this is a matter of degree. Circulation pays for barely a quarter of his paper's monthly cost, and advertising provides only an incremental addition. Because of the low literacy rate, "Readership is so limited that the entrepreneur does not think it worthwhile to advertise." The result: "You've got to be damn rich to subsidize your paper."

So newspapers must turn elsewhere for funding, and the ones that fail to find a supporter will fold. Modern Times was not destined to such a fate: Mr. Shah admits that the government subsidizes him 1000 rupees ($85), about one quarter of his monthly costs, just enough to keep his paper at subsistence. It is little secret that India, China and the Soviet Union also fund a number of Nepalese papers and Shah acknowledges as much. "When you have a Communist state on the north and a democratic state on the south, you just can't insulate Nepal from these influences."

These influences have always played a part in the politics of Nepal. Over two centuries ago, upon returning from yet another military campaign to unify his kingdom, the legendary warrior Prithvi Narain Shah observed the precarious nature of his country's foreign relations. Nepal, he wrote in his "Golden Sayings," was like "a yam wedged between two huge rocks": to the south lay the vastness of India, while to the north, the "Emperor of the Southern Sea" ruled the even greater dominion of China.

Two centuries later, Nepal continues to be surrounded by the two most inhabited regions on earth, with a combined population now 100 times that of Nepal's scanty 12 million. The Nepalese people are only too conscious of the political tightwire act that has preserved their sovereignty all this time: they need only point to India's annexation of Sikkim in 1975 and the recent Soviet takeover of Afghanistan to show what has happened to their neighbors who have lost their balance.

Despite a policy of non-alignment and friendly relations with both China and India, fear of their political and military leverage exerts a stranglehold on Nepal's internal affairs. The government sees public expression of support for either country as a challenge to the authority of the King, one that has been met with imprisonment, fines and brutal retaliation by the military police. The law considers both the King and the constitution to be above criticism: a serious breach of conduct entails an investigation by the Ministry of Information, possible arrests, fines and censorship. Between 1974 and 1975, widespread action against the press resulted in the closing of eight general papers; the watchful eye of the Ministry has been felt by every editor since.

Because of his newspaper's "moderate" standpoint, Shah maintains, his daily is not likely to run afoul of the law. He regards the government's "code of conduct" as necessary to prevent papers expressing foreign views from eroding the stability of the monarchy. "Because alien resources are at their disposal," he says, "if you give them absolute freedom, are they going to have objective considerations without alien social and political bias dominating their news? Ninety-eight per cent of the people subscribe to the two symbols of Nepal: our monarchy and independent constitution. The remaining two per cent is an urban, educated middle-class elite. We don't want this two per cent to undermine our national symbols."

Khadga Shah professes to separate his own views from those of the government, claiming that "My relation with the King is just not relevant." He identifies his responsibility as an editor with perceiving "how best I can serve the interests of the country, King and people," noting that the equilibrium he must maintain as both an editor and brother-in-law to the King "reflects our country--balancing is an art every Nepalese is adept at." But when a newspaper editor endorses censorship of the press, the source of his ultimate loyalty--the people or the King--no longer seems in doubt. It may indeed be a tightrope act, but he need never fear the fall: someone in the government will always be holding the net.