Nepal in the Nineties: Versions of the Past, Visions of the Future

The historic events that took place in Nepal in spring 1990 have yet to be forgotten. A broad-based democracy movement succeeded in removing the twenty-eight-year-old Panchayat system after a campaign that lasted only six weeks. Five months later a new constitution was promulgated and, just over a year after the ending of the agitation, the Nepali Congress party secured a majority in a general election. Briefly, before other events elsewhere nudged it out of the headlines, the political situation in Nepal was world news. Western academic institutions contain a sprinkling of people from a variety of backgrounds who take a profound interest in Nepal. This book contains eight essays by Western academics which reflect on the changes that occurred in the kingdom as the decade began and on the circumstances that produced these changes. The essays include some divergent views on the details of the political, cultural and social processes at work in Nepal in the 1990s, but they reflect a broad unanimity of opinion based on a combined total of several decades of research. As the events of 1990 pass into history, this book looks back in an attempt to understand them, and to draw lessons for the future of Nepal.