Who All Are In The Triangle?

Basanta K Lohani

Writer Basanta K Lohani

It was a dark evening of a faded moon on a hot summer Thursday. Perhaps Aryaghat at Pashupati had rarely seen that kind of an ocean of grieving humanity. For the first time, Kathmandu had defied fear and apprehension of the regime after the 1960's royal takeover. The entire city was weeping as people thronged along the street to express their profound grief when the funeral procession went around different parts of the city before reaching Aryaghat. His mortal body, laid on a huge block of ice, was mounted on an open truck, and decked up with flowers. Four leaders were sitting in the same truck, giving their farewell companionship. Only his face perched out that always withstood the tyranny of time and rulers. It looked in deep sleep and eyes in communion with infinity. This way the procession started around eleven in the morning and continued until dusk. And, I was together in it. Looking at some of the photographs I took have now reeled back my memory fresh.

I was in that Jayabageshwori house right from the morning when grieving people came in beeline to offer their respect to the departed leader. His body was kept in the ground floor of the same east facing two-storied house where he had lived since he came from India six years ago. Just an afternoon earlier, I saw him when he was brought back from Bangkok with saline bottle and other medical things attached after his palliative treatment against cancer was thought not to prolong his life even for couple of days more. In the evening, Girija Prasad Koirala was busy in the contingency planning and, thus, announcing the names of the funeral procession management committee from the veranda cum corridor facing the crowd down below in the ground. The same night he died - Wednesday, the 21st of July, 1982. Since then, this day is marked as BP Memorial Day. But the irony is, for the man who fought all his life for democracy and dominated Nepal's politics constantly for forty-six years in his life span of sixty eight, remembering him even on this day by those who are basking on his blood and toil is faint and flickering. That too bears more of a ritualistic overtone. The 25th BP Memorial Day last Friday is the witness to it. I strongly believe BP deserves much more.

Politician and Writer B P Koirala

I think some are born with great mission in life. Bisheswar Prasad Koirala was one such personality who grew with politics and struggled all his life to accomplish his mission. And, his mission was to uphold 'the dignity of a common man.' When he was just a boy of class nine in a school at Varanasi, (born there on Tuesday, September 8, 1914) he was imprisoned for opposing the British rule in India. The second time was in the jute mill strike in Dharbhanga. By 1937, already a graduate in law, he formed his own study circle and started giving political lectures. Some of his fellow students became India's national leaders and Chandra Shekhar even became the prime minister. He underscored BP's leadership with me while in Aryaghat after the BP's funeral procession thus, "BP was not just my Guru and the leader of Nepal, he was one of the greatest leaders of the entire subcontinent."

BP came to Nepal in 1946 calling for democratic movement and since then until his death he became the dominating personality in the Nepali politics. This became possible because of a beautiful blend in him comprising his charisma, intellectual depth, vision and revolutionary character. His 29 day hunger strike in Katmandu's jail in 1949 and his Satyagraha in 1950 rocked the nerve of Rana rule. Finally, his leadership in the armed struggle of 1951 overthrew the Rana oligarchy, bringing democracy into the country. BP remained in power as the home minister in the first democratic government for ten months and as Nepal's first democratically elected prime minister for seventeen and half months from May 27, 1959 till King Mahendra took over the government on December 15, 1960. Rest was all struggle for freedom and democracy either in jail, in self-exile or in court. The most important thing is BP had to struggle in the most turbulent period of history. He had to fight when time was unfavorable. But the way a great man as he was, he continued his struggle unabated.

I have always described BP as one the four great leaders and revolutionaries of Nepal to have shaped its history. My first chance to meet him was in Agni Prasad's house in Butwal in 1979 when he was on a campaign trail for democracy. I was running a dairy industry there for the last seven years. It was suffocating indeed in the district and King Birendra's announcement of holding national referendum on May 24, 1979 had opened the vent that had propelled me to campaign for the multiparty democracy. In this process, I left my job, came to Kathmandu and plunged into journalism and then in teaching. At this point, I had a long meeting with BP when I went to his house for an interview that was published over twenty-six years ago in the vernacular Paristhiti I edited then. He was very courteous to receive me with smiles all across his face and climbed down the stairs all the way to bid good-bye.

Since then we developed a beautiful relationship that lasted until his death. What struck me most was his smiling face. He continued meeting people in the lawn forming an outer circle to avoid infection until he was able to do so. I remember a story that he narrated to me sometime in December 1981. When he had undergone chemotherapy in Bombay, the doctor who administered it had advised him a few days' complete rest. But the very next day, he went to receive his wife, Sushila Koirala, at the railway station, and there he happened to come across the same doctor. "Oh! It's you, how come? What a deceptive face" said the doctor with a voice mixed with awe and surprise. BP retorted, "Well doctor, I am first a politician, so don't worry about my face”

BP was such a wonderful man who had incisive understanding in a spectacularly wide range of human activity, pursuit and emotions. From the main hall that mostly used to be crowded, he later took me to the quietness of his bedroom. I still cherish many hours over the period that I shared with him in his small and barely furnished west-facing bedroom through the main hall. He even came to our place for dinner where he told the members of our family assembled before him how he had learnt to make sweets in Sundarijal jail.

For the sweetness of freedom and democracy, the values that BP cherished and lived for are what his own men have almost abandoned, causing a greater anxiety in this difficult period of our time. BP's national reconciliation is as relevant as ever before though its dimension has changed. BP deserves to be remembered more genuinely, loudly and profusely at least in the BP Memorial Day so that his struggle for democracy and his cherished values to sustain it can guide us in the difficult days ahead. Surely, democracy is not to be used to turn the country into a looter's paradise. Nor is it to be used as a facade for translating authoritarian motives. This is precisely where BP is the tallest because he practiced what he preached. In democracy, a common man's dignity becomes an individual's collectiveness. BP once said, "Nepal's situation can be symbolically expressed by a triangle, one point of the triangle is the king, another point is foreign powers and we constitute the third." The question now in the making of a new Nepal is: who all are in the triangle? There hangs the tale of our democracy.

(Courtesy: 'The Rising Nepal' Tuesday, July 21, 2006)